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Architect Toyo Ito listens as translator Noriko Takaguchi explains the concerns of the Berkeley residents and officials for the new Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive building he is designing on Center Street for UC Berkeley. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
Architect Toyo Ito listens as translator Noriko Takaguchi explains the concerns of the Berkeley residents and officials for the new Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive building he is designing on Center Street for UC Berkeley. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
 

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BAM Architect Listens to Community Ideas

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 22, 2006

Tuesday morning Berkeley met the man who will help transform the face of downtown. 

UC Berkeley officials introduced Toyo Ito to a gathering of officials and interested citizens in the seismically unsafe Pacific Film Archive’s (PFA) Gund Theater. 

Ito, a world-renowned Japan-ese architect known for his strikingly original designs, is the university’s choice to hire to design a new home for the PFA and the Berkeley Art Museum in downtown Berkeley. 

Ito, who took notes as he listened intently with the help of translator Noriko Takaguchi, had little to say himself—leaving most of the speaking up to two university officials, museum/ PFA Director Kevin Consey and Kerry O’Banion, a principal planner for capital projects. 

But the images of some of Ito’s projects that played on the screen during part of the 90-minutes session left Calvin Fong convinced the architect would create something that didn’t look like any other Berkeley building. 

“That’s pretty clear,” said the assistant to Mayor Tom Bates. 

Consey said he expects the $120 million project will draw 300,000 people a year to the site that would occupy the eastern half of the block bounded on the east by Oxford Street, on the south by Center Street and on the north by Addison Street. 

Immediately to the west on much of the remaining half of the block that ends on Shattuck Avenue will rise a 19-story hotel also being developed at the university’s behest. 

The project is being funded entirely by grants and gifts, and Consey made a pitch at the end of Tuesday morning’s presentation—ostensibly a meeting of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC). 

DAPAC, created as a result of the settlement of a city lawsuit challenging university development plans laid out for the first two decades of the 21st Century, is helping to draft a new plan forced on the city by the university’s mandate to develop at least 800,000 square feet of new space south of the campus in the city center. 

That figure doesn’t include the hotel, which is a private development. 

While the session was billed as a DAPAC meeting, Chair Will Travis sat in the audience next to Berkeley Planning and Development Director Dan Marks and Planning Manager Mark Rhoades.  

Of the nearly 1,000 daily visitors expected at Ito’s building, three-fourths will be members of the general public and many will be Berkeley residents. “That alone makes it important to listen to the community and hear your aspirations,” said Consey. 

The museum will display examples from the university’s extensive art collection, while theaters and classrooms will offer screenings, conversations and classes about notable films. The facility will also house facilities for restoration and preservation of artworks and films. 

Ito was chosen in a process that began with 141 firms worldwide, and selected because of his track record for “creating inspirational multi-use buildings,” said Consey. The Berkeley project will be Ito’s first North American commission. 

When it came time for comments, Michael Katz, a member of Friends of the United Nations Charter, led off with a plea to preserve a landmark building that now occupies much of the site—the UC Press Building, where the charter was printed before its adoption at the first session of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. 

“It’s a wonderful piece of history and was almost made to be converted into a museum,” Katz said. 

John McBride, secretary of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, seconded the plea, adding that “the university press was the most innovative printing plant in America” when it was built. He also urged preservation of key features of other historic university-owned buildings on the same block. 

 

Creek pleas 

For Helen Burke, a Sierra Club activist in addition to being chair of the city Planning Commission and a member of DAPAC, made a plea for closing the block of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford, as well as daylighting Strawberry Creek down the resulting public space. 

But City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, after noting that the creek now runs through an underground culvert along Alston Way a block to the south, said diverting a waterway “could cause an ecological disaster” and have adverse impacts downstream. 

Carole Schemmerling of the Urban Creeks Council said Wozniak’s worries were misplaced, given that in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake the greatest damage to buildings outside the San Francisco Marina happened to building constructed over culverted waterways. Berkeley’s downtown culverts are already in poor shape, she said, citing three collapses in the civic center area. 

“We have a vision of a great pedestrian space, one that brings nature into the city,” said hydrologist Gus Yates of Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Process. 

“Obviously there is tremendous interest in finding a way to recreate a creek that did flow through downtown Berkeley,” said DAPAC member Steve Weissman. Agreeing that the project would be a re-creation rather than simply daylighting a long-buried channel, he said reestablishing a natural habitat was an important concept, as was reestablishing awareness of the role of the hills and the water they bring through the community. 

“Diversion of some water down Center Street will not ruin the downstream aspects,” said DAPAC member Wendy Alfsen. Given the loss of water-absorbing soil service in the university’s building boom, a watercourse down the street would help divert some of the increased runoff.  

She also noted that the block of Center where the museum is planned carries the heavy pedestrian traffic in Berkeley, 10,000 a day and likely to double by 2020 with increased enrollment at the university, she said. 

Richard Register of Ecocity Builders added his voice to the creek chorus, invoking Al Gore’s recent Berkeley visit and the specter of global warming to encourage a project that wouldn’t add fuel to the flames of global crisis. 

Rob Wrenn, who chaired the Planning Commission’s UC Hotel Task Force, joined the call for turning the key block of Center Street into a pedestrian plaza, and urged the university to coordinate the designs of the hotel and museum. 

 

Other voices 

While some speakers spoke of the need to discourage car use, Kensington museum consultant Ann Harlow said that while Berkeley “is a very idealistic city, I’m more concerned about practicalities and just being realistic. We need parking; downtown Berkeley is just so difficult to park in.” 

David Snippen, chair of the Civic Arts Commission, urged Consey to create street-visible display areas for works of local artists, and Downtown Berkeley Association President Mark McLeod urged the university to consider creation of space for local businesses. 

Architect Erick Mikiten, a disability rights activist, spoke from his wheelchair to urge Ito and Consey to “encourage another aspect of sustainability, one that must be considered from the inside out. I am talking about a built environment that sustains the usability of the building.” 

An supporter of universal design—a school of architecture that advocates access for all—he urged Ito to consider Berkeley’s role as the birthplace of the movement of independent living and universal access and to create “a world-class design that accommodates all people openly.” 

Retired architect Rodney Wong compared Ito’s opportunity to Frank Lloyd Wright’s commission to create the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, a chance to celebrate Berkeley’s role as “the world leader in everything that makes the world a better place.” 

Preliminary designs should be ready for public viewing sometime during the spring and project updates will be posted at the museum/PFA web site at www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/newbuilding/index.html 

O’Banion said coordination is already underway between the museum team and Carpenter & Co., the Massachusetts firm picked by the university to create the projected 19-story hotel at Center and Shattuck west of the museum. 

“Certain aspects can benefit from a joint approach, including parking and collocating services for both projects,” he said.


The Planet Takes a Holiday

Friday December 22, 2006

The Daily Planet will not publish on Tuesday, Dec. 26, but will be back on Friday, Dec. 29, with the annual holiday readers’ contribution issue. Thank you to all who sent in material for the issue.


Temblor Punctuates Debate Over Stadium

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 22, 2006

Raked by a legal broadside, the University of California beat a temporary retreat Wednesday, agreeing to halt development at Memorial Stadium pending a hearing in Alameda County Superior Court. 

The move grants a short reprieve to the grove of oaks and other threatened trees west of the stadium where four protesters are camped out in the branches in protest over the impending loss of the last remaining grove of coastal live oaks in the Berkeley plains. 

The tentative date for the first hearing on the actions is Jan. 11, reports Berkeley City Council-member Dona Spring, a co-plaintiff in an action filed by the California Oaks Foundation. 

“The university has agreed to stop from doing anything further until a hearing on a preliminary injunction,” said City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque. 

Just hours after university officials agreed to the delay, project foes got a boost from Mother Nature, as if in punctuation of the claims of foes that it makes no sense to spending hundreds of millions building on an active fault. 

At 7:12 p.m. the Hayward Fault fired off the first of a pair sharp jolts, followed at 12:55 a.m. by a second, smaller shock—both with epicenters less than 1.2 miles southeast of the stadium. 

The first single, sharp jolt hit 3.7 on the 10-point Richter scale. The second rated a feebler 2.2. 

The first temblor, felt as far away as Las Vegas, Nev.—659 miles southeast—and Eugene, Ore., 689 miles to the north—was more than 1,000 times weaker than the Hayward Fault shocker that U.S. Geological Survey seismologists say has a one in five chance of happening in the next two decades. 

“Maybe that will shake some sense into them,” said Spring, referring to University officials, “though it seems like nothing will deter these guys until they see the chucks of concrete falling into the stadium.” 

“Hopefully it knocked some sense into them” said City Manager Phil Kamlarz, who also reported the only damage so far reported to the paper—a vase that shattered when it fell off a shelf in his house. 

In a sworn statement filed with the city’s action, Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth called the stadium project “a disaster waiting to happen.” 

“The location of the Stadium ... on an active earthquake fault in a hazardous fire area and listed by State and Federal officials as a high-risk target served by a limited and convoluted road network makes no sense,” said the 28-year veteran of Berkeley disasters. 

The California Oaks Foun-dation filed Tuesday, the same day as the city filed its action and a week after the first lawsuit, which was filed by the Panoramic Hill Association, which represents neighbors on the slope overlooking the site where the university plans projects totaling more than a third of a billion dollars. 

Also joining with the Oaks Foundation suit were Spring, Doug Buckwald, Sara Shumer, Henry Norr, Lindsay Vurek, Patricia Edwards, Anne Marie Tayllor, Stan and Carrie Sprague and the McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group. 

Mike Kelly, an officer of the Panoramic Hills Association, said he was pleased with the delay, especially in light of Wednesday night’s quake. “The university recognizes the importance of this case as do we. The fundamental issues of constructing major additions on top of the Hayward Fault have yet to be addressed.” 

Kelley said he and neighbors felt Wednesday night’s quake “quite strongly.” 

 

Tree shaker  

The tree-sitters survived the quake in good shape, even the two who were making a traverse from tree to tree on ropes strung between the trunks high above the ground. “Those two didn’t even feel it,” said Doug Buckwald, the volunteer who has been coordinating ground support for arboreal activists. 

Pending the outcome of the January court ruling, the university has granted a stay of execution to the trees, but that doesn’t mean peace in the branches or for the ground crew, said Buckwald 

“UC Police are back to their aggressive tactics,” he said, including the arrival at 1:30 Thursday morning of two campus police cars and a third car from the Kensington Police Department. “They had backed off last weekend, but they’re back again and asking to see the IDs of everybody on the ground. 

“The Kensington police brought an infrared camera and were taping everything up in the trees,” Buckwald said. “What’s next, LAPD? They could fly ’em by helicopter,” he said. 

Nonetheless, Buckwald said he was glad the trees had been granted a temporary reprieve. 

“We are pleased that the university has agreed to delay implementation of this ill-conceived project,” said Janet Cobb, executive director of the California Oaks Foundation in a prepared statement. 

Handling the foundation’s suit is Oakland attorney Stephan Volker, who said “We are gratified the university has agreed to pull back the chainsaws and bulldozers while the court examines the merit of our lawsuit.” 

 

Legal basis 

As do the other suits, the city’s action, accompanied by supporting affidavits from officials, charges that UC regents adopted an error-ridden environmental impact report and wrongly approved construction of the $125 million gym and office complex planned at the site of the grove. 

The stadium and gym are two of seven projects included in the environmental impact reports approved by UC Regents Dec. 5. 

All three lawsuits make the same basic allegations: “The university’s plans violate the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the Alquist-Priolo Act,” said Oaks Foundation attorney Stephan Volker. 

CEQA requires developers demonstrate either that their projects post no significant threats to the natural, human and cultural environments, or, if so, that mitigations be developed to keep them to a minimum. 

Alquist-Priolo bars new construction within 50 feet of an active earthquake fault, the Oaks Foundation lawsuit features a geologist’s declaration that the Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC) does, in fact, fall within that zone, as does the stadium itself. 

The other suits make the same allegation. 

Volker said the university’s environmental impact report (EIR) failed to adequately address the impact of demolishing “a venerable remnant of California Live Oaks believed by many professionals to be a significant ecological niche which should be preserved.” 

That point is also reiterated in the city’s motion. 

The proposed mitigations—which included planting new saplings—fail to make good for the losses of that last stand of native oaks in the Berkeley flats, Volker said. 

The city’s action, prepared by Sacramento attorney Harriet Steiner, includes sworn declarations from Orth, Planning and Development Director Dan Marks, Associate Traffic Engineer Peter Eakland and Assistant City Manager Arietta Chakos. 

Orth’s declaration was the scorcher. 

The city’s 26-page petition also alleges that the university: 

• Failed to offer reasonable alternatives to building the SAHPC next to the stadium, or to retrofitting the stadium itself; 

• Failed to analyze project impacts on the city and public; 

• Failed to offer reasonable mitigation measures; 

• Failed to comply with Alquist-Priolo by maintaining the gym is separate from the stadium, when it is not, contradicting earlier drafts of the EIR; 

• Violates Alquist-Priolo by calling for projects that exceed the law’s limitation that no work on projects within fault zones can exceed 50 percent of the structure’s value; 

• Failed to give the public and officials adequate information during the comment period during preparation of the EIR; 

• Approved the EIR even though six of the seven projects it includes haven’t been designed; 

• Failed to adequately consider the impact of the projects on city services and infrastructure, especially emergency services, transportation and sewers; 

• Offered flawed analysis that “misstates the true significance of the project’s impacts” that include emergency evacuations during fires and following earthquakes.


How Berkeley Voted in the November Elections

By Rob Wrenn
Friday December 22, 2006

There were no big surprises in the way that Berkeley voters cast their votes this year. As usual, Berkeley led the state in opposition to Republican candidates while showing continued support for abortion rights, public education, the environment and affordable housing. 

 

Governor 

Though easily winning re-election in November’s election, Governor Arnold Schwarzen-egger got only 16 percent of the votes cast in Berkeley. This was the smallest percentage he received in cities with a population of 100,000 or more.  

Schwarzenegger got 20 percent of the vote in Oakland and almost 30 percent in liberal San Francisco. 

The 16 percent he got in Berkeley was actually an im-provement over the 2003 recall election that brought him into office when he garnered only 8.7 percent of the vote, coming in third behind Democrat Cruz Bustamante (74 percent) and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo (8.8 percent). 89 percent of Berkeley’s votes had voted against the recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis. 

Democratic candidate Phil Angelides got 72 percent of the vote in this year’s election and Camejo, running again as the Green Party candidate, got 10 percent.  

Among cities with at least 100,000 people, Angelides got a higher percentage of votes only in Inglewood and South Gate, both located in Los Angeles County. Over 90 percent of the residents of South Gate are Latino and over 90 percent of those living in Inglewood are African-American or Latino.  

Among California cities with majority white populations, Berkeley continues to lead in the percentage of votes cast for Democratic candidates. At the same time, it also leads in votes cast for Green Party candidates. Camejo did better only in two smaller cities, Santa Cruz and Arcata, with 10 percent and 16 percent of the vote respectively. 

Success for both Democrats and Greens is bad news for Republicans. All the other Republicans running for statewide office this year got less than 8 percent of the vote in Berkeley. In most cases, Republican candidates came in third, running behind Green Party candidates. 

The most popular Democratic candidate for statewide office this year was Debra Bowen, who got 83 percent of Berkeley’s vote for Secretary of State. 

 

Propositions and Measures 

In Berkeley, 46,166 ballots were cast and 39,265 of the voters who cast them voted against Proposition 85, which would have amended the California constitution to require a waiting period and notification of parents when a minor seeks an abortion. This was the largest number of votes cast for or against any candidate or measure on the ballot. 

Besides upholding abortion rights, Berkeley voters showed strong support for environmental initiatives. Proposition 87, which would have taxed oil produced in California to reduce petroleum consumption through funding of incentives for alternatives, got 83 percent of the vote.  

Local Berkeley Measure G, which sets a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, got 82 percent of the vote. 

Besides taxing oil, Berkeley voters were also in favor of a big increase in the cigarette tax to fund healthcare. 74 percent voted for Proposition 86. Statewide both the oil tax and the cigarette tax failed, with 45 percent and 48 percent of the vote respectively. 

Besides favoring the two new state taxes, Berkeley voters approved all the statewide bond measures by big margins. The two that garnered the most support were 1D for public education facilities (83 percent yes) and 1C for affordable housing (81 percent yes). 

At the local level, voters continued parcel tax support for Berkeley’s public schools by passing Measure A with 80 percent of the vote.  

Locally, voters also rejected Measure I, which would have made it far easier to convert rental housing to condominiums. Measure I was defeated in every precinct in Berkeley, with 74 percent voting no.  

Variation in the margin of defeat followed the traditional pattern of Berkeley politics. It generally varied by altitude. Measure I topped 40 percent of the vote only in four hills precincts. It got less than a quarter of the vote in a large majority of the flatlands precincts of Districts 1, 2, 3 and 4. 

After expending considerable funds to get Measure I on the ballot, supporters did not follow through by waging a campaign for the measure. The absence of a campaign in support certainly contributed to the large margin of the measure’s defeat.  

Supporters may have decided to throw in the towel when they failed to obtain the endorsement of the moderate Berkeley Democratic Club. The Berkeley Property Owners Association, which represents the city’s more conservative anti-rent control landlords, certainly had the resources to wage a fight for the measure had they chosen to do so. 

In addition, no one on the City Council was willing to sign the ballot statement for Measure I and councilmembers Capitelli and Wozniak joined progressives on the Council in opposing the measure. The most prominent Measure I ballot statement signer was former mayor Shirley Dean, who doesn’t seem to carry much weight in Berkeley politics these days.  

 

Mayor and City Council 

The Daily Planet devoted a lot of coverage to the mayoral and council races, looking at campaign contributions and the role of the Chamber of Commerce PAC hit pieces directed at incumbents Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring. 

To supplement that coverage, a few observations about where the candidates got their votes might be in order.  

Incumbent mayor Tom Bates was easily re-elected. His challenger, former Planning Commission chair Zelda Bronstein, failed to win a plurality or majority in any precinct. She lost to Bates by a margin of 63 percent to 31 percent margin.  

Zachary Running Wolf, who since the election has spent time trying to save oak trees near the UC stadium, got 5 percent; Christian Pecaut got 1 percent 

Compared to the 2002 election, Bates lost some ground in Districts 3, 4 and 7, but still won by comfortable margins. His biggest drop in support came in some precincts near Ashby BART; one of these precincts immediately east of the station was the only one in the city where he got less than 50 percent of the vote.  

Opposition to the planned development of Asbhy BART may have been a factor, though in the absence of exit poll or survey data, it’s only possible to speculate about why people voted the way they did. 

Bates support grew enormously in the hills, where he won, by large margins, every precinct where Shirely Dean had beaten him in 2002. Endorsement by the moderate Berkeley Democrat Club, which opposed Bates in 2002, probably contributed to Bates’ strong support in the hills.  

Zelda Bronstein also failed to win the endorsement of any member of the City Council, while Bates was endorsed by five councilmembers, including Laurie Capitelli and Gordon Wozniak, who represent districts carried by Shirely in 2002. 

While Bronstein criticized Bates for the settlement agreement with UC Berkeley, the issue either didn’t carry much weight or worked to Bates’ benefit in several areas most affected by UC expansion and traffic.  

Bates’ support increased in areas north and southeast of the UC campus. Comparied to 2002, he lost support in a precinct east of campus near the proposed UC stadium expansion site and in precincts in the Willard and LeConte neighborhoods south of campus. 

Incumbents easily won all the Council races. Since district elections were enacted in 1986, only four incumbents have ever been defeated.  

Elections in the two districts with large student populations, District 7 and District 8, attracted most of the interest and campaign contributions this year.  

In District 8 in southeast Berkeley, student candidate Jason Overman, backed by Berkeley’s progressives, won the precincts in the north of District 8 with dorms, fraternities and sororities. But overwhelming support for Gordon Wozniak in the affluent homeowner areas south of Derby Street easily offset Overman’s support among student voters.  

In the hills above Claremont Avenue, Overman got less than 15 percent of the vote. Turnout, as has historically been the case, was also substantially higher outside student areas. Previous progressive District 8 council candidates Andy Katz and Chris Kavanagh also lost because their support in the northern part of District 8 was not great enough to overcome their opponent’s support in the southern and hills portion of the district. 

In District 7, challenger George Beier won a majority of the vote in the three high-rise UC dorm precincts and won two out of three Willard neighborhood precincts with 55 percent of the vote. Worthington’s last opponent, student Micky Weinberg, who ran in 2002, had also won in the dorm precincts.  

When Worthington was first elected in 1996, he won the vote in student areas by a large margin, while losing most of the neighborhoods south of Dwight Way to the incumbent, Carla Woodworth.  

This time around he won a narrow majority of the vote in student areas as the vote of students living in apartments and student coops, who have generally lived in Berkeley longer, offset his loss in the highrise dorms, which house many freshmen. 

Overall, Worthington won by a 53 percent-47 percent margin, with most of his margin coming from the LeConte and Halcyon neighborhoods west of Telegraph. 

Progressive Linda Maio won easily in District 1 in northwest Berkeley; her opponent did not report any campaign contributions. 

Progressive Dona Spring also won easily over Raudel Wilson, despite (or perhaps because of) the support he received from the Chamber of Commerce PAC. Her support throughout District 4 ranged from a bit less than two-thirds of the vote in one precinct to a bit more than three-quarters of the vote in her best precinct (the MAAGNA neighborhood). 

 

(Rob Wrenn makes no claims to being an impartial observer of Berkeley politics. He actively supported Kriss Worthington’s campaign for council and serves as Worthington’s appointee on the Transportation Commission. He also did a little campaign work for the No on I campaign this fall) 

 

November 2006  

How Berkeley Voted : What Got the Most Votes  

Proposition 85 abortion No: 39,265 89 percent 

Proposition 87 oil tax Yes: 36,857 83 percent 

State Bond 1D education Yes: 35,510 83 percent 

State Bond 1C housing Yes: 34,587 81 percent 

Measure G greenhouse gas Yes: 33,293 82 percent 

Measure A school parcel tax Yes: 33,264 80 percent 

Note: a total of 46,166 votes were cast in Berkeley 

 


Hancock to Vie for Senate Seat

By Judith Scherr
Friday December 22, 2006

With the November 2006 elections recently certified, candidates are already pushing at the gate for 2008. 

State Assemblymember Loni Hancock is a likely candidate for the State Senate seat (probably) to be vacated by Sen. Don Perata. Hancock called a few friends and supporters to alert them of her possible decision before leaving for vacation in India with her spouse, Mayor Tom Bates. 

“Over the course of a few months, many people have urged her to run for the seat,” said Hancock spokesperson Hans Hemann.  

Hancock’s possible run for office, yet to be verified by the candidate herself, has sparked the dawn of an early 2008 election season that carries local ramifications. 

Speculation is that if Hancock, 66, does not head off into the sunset for her retirement, Bates, 68, won’t give up public office either. In November, the mayor won a seat set for a one-time two-year rather than four-year term, designed to align Berkeley’s vote for mayor with presidential elections. 

“The mayor is considering running for another term,” confirmed Bates’ chief-of-staff Cisco de Vries. “He will make that decision down the road.” 

Councilmember Linda Maio said Hancock “called a few of us” and left a message saying she was considering the senate race. “It takes so long for someone to get a foothold [in state office] then it’s over,” Maio said of term limits. “I’m pleased to learn she is considering it.” 

As for Bates’ future, Maio, perhaps his strongest ally on the council, said: “I think he’ll consider running again. They make a great team.”  

Wilma Chan, who on Jan. 1 becomes legislator-in-residence at UC Berkeley’s Center on Politics, has long made it known that she will run for the State Senate seat to be most likely to be vacated by Sen. Don Perata due to term limits. Chan, who already has a web site announcing her candidacy, did not return Daily Planet calls. 

There is some speculation, however, that Perata, pro-tem president of the Senate—under investigation for corruption by a federal grand jury—is maneuvering to change the term-limit law to keep his seat. Perata spokesperson Alicia Trost told the Daily Planet that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez is working on the question; Nuñez’ office did not confirm that by deadline. 

“He would like to keep his job,” Trost said. 

If Bates looks like he’s in the run for another term as mayor, opponents will likely declare their candidacy early. Asked if she planned another run, 2006 mayoral challenger Zelda Bronstein quipped, “I’m not planning to run for the Assembly.” She added, “I don’t know what I’ll do in two years.” 

And there could be some local rearranging of the council chairs, as Councilmember Darryl Moore may have his sights set on the State Assembly, for which Hancock is termed out. Moore said he’s in the exploratory stage. “I’m gathering people in January,” he said. “I would like the opportunity to run if people think it is a good idea.” 

Asked if it isn’t too early to make the decision, Moore said, “It takes at least two years.” It’s the fundraising that takes time, Moore said, pointing out that Hancock raised $300,000 for her initial assembly race. 

It is widely believed that Nancy Skinner, who just won the seat she was appointed to on the East Bay Regional Parks District, will run for the assembly post. Skinner, close to longtime political allies Hancock, Bates and Rep. Barbara Lee, did not return Daily Planet calls. 

Another person looking at the Assembly race is Richmond City Councilmember Tony Thurmond, just elected by the voters to the council seat to which he had been appointed in July 2005 

“If the truth be told, I’m not going to say no,” Thurmond said, when asked if he were running. “I love public service.” Thurmond is executive director of a non-profit agency serving youth coming out of foster care. 

When asked to confirm the rumor that he is considering a run for the Assembly seat, former Albany Mayor Robert Cheasty would neither confirm nor deny it, underscoring that his focus is on Solano Avenue and the shoreline. 

Former Assemblymember Dion Aroner confirmed that she is not planning a race for the State Senate. In 1998, Perata beat Aroner for the seat, filling the unexpired term of then State Sen. Barbara Lee. “I’m excited about Loni running,” she said, adding, “The senate will be well-served by either of them.”


Downtown Plan, Landmarks Committee Near Compromise

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 22, 2006

While preservationists worry that a new downtown plan could give short shrift to landmark buildings in the city center, the planner hired to draft the document says not to worry. 

Matt Taecker told a joint subcommittee of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) and the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) that prevailing sentiment at DAPAC favors preservation. 

While DAPAC member Patti Dacey and LPC members Lesley Emmington said they were concerned that some of downtown’s smaller landmarks might be proposed as development sites in the new downtown plan, Taecker said, “I don’t think there are more than a few people at DAPAC who think that landmarks or structures of merit should be at risk.” 

Those are the city’s two principal classes of historic structures which the LPC can designate, both under the city’s current landmarks ordinance and under the new version passed by the council earlier this month and due to take effect in January unless backers of a proposed referendum on the measure generate enough signatures to take it to the voters. 

The joint subcommittee is working with Taecker and Architectural Resources Group, a San Francisco consulting firm. 

Meeting Monday night, the subcommittee devoted most of its session to a review of the historic buildings matrix and accompanying maps prepared under the supervision of ARG senior associate Bridget Maley. 

“I must say the matrix and the maps are not yet ready for prime time,” said John English, a retired planner and preservationist who had been a regular at DAPAC and LPC meetings, and has emerged as a de facto advisor to the group. 

The group’s recommendations will be considered at a joint meeting of its two organizational parents, and DAPAC will decide what to incorporate into the new downtown plan mandated by the settlement of the city’s lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s 2020 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP). 

The university is planning 800,000 square feet of new off-campus projects within the city center. 

In a twist, the university announced this week that it will name a controversial new gym planned on-campus next to Memorial Stadium for Barclay Simpson, chair of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive board which is raising funds to build a major new museum and film complex on DAPAC’s turf on Center Street. 

As the meeting continued and more issues surfaces, members realized they needed another meeting of their own before they make recommendations to the joint DAPAC/LPC session scheduled for Jan. 17. 

In the end, the group voted to hold another session the week before the joint meeting. 

While much of the information Maley presented was drawn from surveys and other work prepared in connection with the existing downtown plan, the LRDP settlement enlarged the district’s boundaries—meaning that many buildings on the periphery of the new area weren’t studied in the same detail as buildings within the old boundaries. 

John English will act as an advisor when LPC members Emmington, Jill Korte, and chair Robert Johnson tour the area with Dacey or Wendy Alfsen from DAPAC. 

One results will be a map which will include buildings identified as significant in their own right, others which contribute to the historic character of the downtown, along with all pre-1941 structures, public and open spaces and “everything else.” 

“My hope is that the map will have a lot of white space,” said Johnson, referring to the color proposed for sites suitable for new construction. “We can do a lot of things without getting into the controversy of mucking around with historic buildings.” 

 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman 

Landmarks Preservaiton Commissioner Steven Winkel inks in a map that will help guide the creation of the section of the new downtown plan that will focus on historic buildings and their role in the city’s future.


District 4 Challenger Wilson Moves Out of Berkeley

By Judith Scherr
Friday December 22, 2006

To some—especially incumbent Councilmember Dona Spring who clobbered him in a nasty District 4 race in November—Raudel Wilson looks like a carpetbagger. The 30-year-old banker moved to Berkeley just two years ago and now, after being shut out by Spring’s win with 71 percent of the vote, has moved out of town.  

“This comes as no surprise,” Spring said. “He knew so little about the district. He was set up by the Chamber.”  

Wilson was endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce whose political action arm spent at least $7,290 on mailers attacking Spring. Accountant Stacy Owens was both the Chamber political action committee’s treasurer and Wilson’s campaign treasurer.  

“His image as a carpetbagger is now complete,” Spring said. 

Not so, says Wilson, who confirmed in a phone interview Wednesday that he had moved to Hercules last week. The move was a family decision, Wilson said.  

In Berkeley, Wilson had rented a flat on the ground floor of a two-story house, which he said was too small. “I have two little boys and an 18-year-old niece,” Wilson said, adding, “I really wanted to stay in Berkeley.” 

Wilson said that to rent a house or larger apartment in Berkeley would have cost $800-to-$1,000 more than he had been paying to rent the flat at 2217 Roosevelt Ave. Wilson said it was important for him to move to a community with good public schools. He looked in Albany, but it was also too expensive. 

The three-bedroom house he rents in Hercules costs less than the rent he paid for the smaller flat in Berkeley, Wilson said. According to Rent Board records, Wilson had been paying $1,800 per month for the two-bedroom flat. 

“It was a hard decision,” Wilson said, explaining that he had enjoyed working as a Zoning Adjustments Board commissioner and Downtown Area Plan Committee member, both of which he said he has quit. Wilson manages the downtown Berkeley Mechanics Bank and said he will continue to be active through the downtown business associations. 

Wilson said he understands how it might appear, having moved to Berkeley just two years ago, then moving out right after the election.  

He explained that he believed when he first moved to Berkeley in 2004 that he was going to be able to buy two units in a triplex he moved into as a renter on Channing Way, also in District 4. When the handshake deal didn’t work out as he thought it would, he moved his family to the Roosevelt Street flat.  

Councilmember Darryl Moore, who appointed Wilson to the Zoning Adjustments Board, said he understood his decision to move. “It was a family decision,” said Moore, “He has two young kids and wanted a backyard.”


Oak-to-9th Lawsuit Will Move Forward

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday December 22, 2006

As was expected, a California Superior Court judge dismissed the City of Oakland’s early attempt to throw out the Oak To Ninth referendum lawsuit late last week, with both sides downplaying the significance of the judge’s ruling.  

Last September, City Attorney John Russo threw out more than 25,000 signatures on petitions seeking a referendum to block the 64-acre Oak To Ninth development near Jack London Square. 

Members of the Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee sued and last week Superior Court Judge Winfred Smith officially upheld her tentative ruling against an attempt by the City Attorney’s office to dismiss the lawsuit through demurrer. 

If the petitioners eventually win the lawsuit, the Oak to Ninth development would be blocked until Oakland citizens have a chance to go to the polls and vote to decide whether the development should go forward. 

A ruling last week by the judge in favor of the demurrer would have meant an immediate dismissal of the lawsuit, but spokespersons for both sides said the continuance of the lawsuit only means that there’s still a long way to go. 

“They cleared the first hurdle in what will be a long race, that’s all,” Erica Harrold, Communications Director for the City Attorney’s office, said in a telephone interview. 

Oakland-based attorney Stuart Flashman, attorney for the Oak to Ninth Referendum Committee, said that the ruling only clears the way for the filing of a series of legal documents by both sides, including an answer to the complaint by the city, and motions for summary judgment. 

Unlike the demurrer—which argues that there is no legal basis for a lawsuit—a summary judgment motion asks the judge to rule that one side or the other is likely to win at trial because the facts and the law are in their favor. 

“It’s likely that the judge will deny any summary judgment motions,” Flashman said. “There’s a significant dispute over the facts in the case, and that’s the sort of thing that can only be settled after testimony at trial.”


Oakland Schools Mislabel Some Teachers Unqualified

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday December 22, 2006

Earlier this fall, in compliance with a provision of the national No Child Left Behind Act, the Oakland Unified School District sent out some 13,000 letters informing parents of the names of teachers who do not meet the “highly qualified” standards required by the act. 

But through district error, at least some teachers who were named on the list actually did meet the NCLB qualifiations. In addition, representatives of both Oakland’s teachers’ union and the Oakland Unified School District agree that the NCLB requirements are flawed, which is to say that although teachers are not “highly qualified” under NCLB, it does not mean that the students in their classroom are not being properly taught. 

“It doesn’t mean that they are bad teachers,” OUSD spokesperson Alex Katz said in a telephone interview. “That’s merely the language in the federal requirement. You could have a Ph.D. in mathematics, for example, and be an excellent math teacher. But if you don’t have a state credential in math, you are considered to be ‘not highly qualified’ by the State of California and subject to the parental notice.” 

But the biggest complaint coming from community representatives was that some of the teachers on the mailed list should not have been there at all. 

OUSD board member Kerry Hammill wrote to a local parents’ email list in late October that she received teacher notification letters “for four of my kids’ teachers, and three of the four were errors. All four of the teachers mentioned in the letters sent to my home are outstanding—which is why this most recent episode left me just shaking my head.” 

And Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen-Jones wrote that in at least some instances, teachers learned about their status in the most embarassing way possible, not from the district but from their own students.  

“The worst consequence of this,” Olsen-Jones wrote to parents, “was that teachers had to find out from students, in a number of cases, that they were considered ‘not highly qualified’—in a district where teacher morale is so low, this only makes teachers feel even more disrespected and smeared professionally. The Oakland Education Association spoke with district administrators … about this, and were very critical that teachers weren’t notified in advance, especially since in many cases letters were sent in error.” 

Hammill reported that she met with district representatives and said she also “asked … that they send copies of the notes to staff before the mailing to ensure that the info is at least correct. The letter also needs to do a better job of explaining that ‘highly qualified’ is a technical and bureaucratic term that has more to do with mandates than great teaching.” 

Information on the status of credentials for individual California teachers can be received from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialling at https:// teachercred.ctc.ca.gov/teachers/PublicSearchProxy. 

OUSD spokesperson Katz acknowledged by telephone that “a pretty high number of mistakes” were made in the letters, and that the district “tried to send out apology notices.” 

Hammill reported this week that she received “apology letters for the three teachers at Claremont MS and Oak Tech that were wrongly accused.” 

Hammill also reported that earlier “the principal at one of the schools” from which Hammill had received one of the teacher letters “sent an electronic call right away to all parents correcting the error and apologizing.” 

Hammill called that action “classy on his part, I thought.”  

But even the clarification attempt had its glitches. Bret Harte Middle School PTA President Lesley Johnson-Gelb reported on the parents’ list that she originally “received letters stating that four of my two kids’ teachers were not highly qualified.” 

A month later, she said, she received “two form letters from [the school] letting me know that ‘After review of additional information, we have determined that your child’s teacher(s) meet(s) the “highly qualified” criteria mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.” Unfortunately, these letters did not include the teachers’ names, so all I now know is that two of the four teachers are now considered ‘highly qualified’ and two are not.” 

Passed in 2002, NCLB required schools to meet the “highly qualified teachers” standards by the end of the 2005-06 school year, with authority for setting those qualifications left in the hands of the state. 

Authority for parental notification of teacher qualifications was written into the NCLB act itself, which reads, in part that: “At the beginning of each school year, a local educational agency that receives funds under this part shall notify the parents of each student … information regarding the professional qualifications of the student’s classroom teachers” 

Meanwhile, spokesperson Katz said that the district “is doing a whole bunch of things to help the affected teachers meet the state and federal mandates,” including providing opportunities for training. 

But that may not be where the real problem lies, according to Hammill.  

“The entire public education system is now being run to comply with mandates from dozens of elected bodies who don’t want to deal with real issues like funding and poor labor standards,” she wrote, “so they force districts into following endless rules that only dispirit staff and families and never improve learning.”


Report: Local Bus Riders Shortchanged

By Judith Scherr
Friday December 22, 2006

A study released Wednesday asserts that Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission funding policies maintain “separate and unequal” transit systems. 

The report that can be found at www.publicadvocates.org was written by three organizations: Public Advocates, Urban Habitat, and Communities for a Better Environment. 

The release of the report coincides with the 50th anniversary of the end of a year-long campaign to win integrated bus service in Montgomery, Ala.  

The report points out parallels between the Montgomery civil rights struggle and today’s efforts to win an equitable share of public transit funding for East Bay bus riders, 80 percent of whom are people of color, according to the study. 

At issue is the disparity in funding MTC provides for AC Transit bus riders in the East Bay compared to BART and Caltrain users. The report details both the per passenger funding disparities and the resulting disparities in transit service: BART and Caltrain services have more than doubled, while AC Transit service has contracted by 30 percent, the report says.  

Commenting on the report, Councilmember Kriss Worthington who serves on the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency and the Alameda County Transportation Authority said, “Senior citizens and the disabled have major problems getting around with current minimal transportation services.”  

Worthington, who does not own a car, added: “It is not fair that if you’re a working person with little income and rely on the bus, it takes you a lot longer to get to work.” 

The councilmember pointed to a Berkeley City Council resolution passed July 12, 2005, calling for an end to the inequities: “The Metropolitan Transportation Commission allocates over $1 billion dollars of public transit funds to the various transportation agencies. However, it appears year after year, AC Transit, which mainly serves people of color and the poor, receives an inequitable allocation of these funds compared to rail commuter services such as BART and Caltrain, which serve more affluent commuters.” 

Mayor Tom Bates, out of the country and unavailable for comment, was recently appointed to serve on the MTC.  

“I’m hopeful that Tom will be a forceful advocate for the concerns for equity that this study raises,” Worthington said.


Police Blotter

By Richard Brenneman
Friday December 22, 2006

Not sham pain 

It was minutes before 2 a.m. Dec. 12; after driving a fare from San Francisco to the 2000 block of San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, the cab driver figured he deserved payment. 

But his non-fair fare thought otherwise, and when the driver got out to demand payment, the scofflaw passenger belted him in the face with an empty champagne bottle. 

The driver refused medical aid, said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan, while the belligerent passenger was able to make good his escape. 

 

Boarded  

An encounter between two homeless men ended with one bleeding and the other rolling off on the weapon used to inflict the injury—a skateboard. 

The attack took place about 2:30 p.m., Dec. 12, in the 2500 block of Telegraph Avenue. The injured man was taken to a local emergency for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, said Officer Galvan. 

 

Bald bandit 

A mustachioed gunman with a hairless pate, gold neck chains and white T-shirt thrust a pistol at a Piedmont couple as they walked along the 1000 block of San Pablo Avenue about 9 p.m. on Dec. 13. 

The couple wisely handed over their valuables, including a purse, a wallet and a cell phone. The gunman was gone by the time police arrived. 

Student attacked 

The principal of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School called police on the Dec. 14 to report that one of his students had been shot with a BB-gun by two fellow students. 

Police took the pair into custody and took them to Juvenile Hall.  

 

Sword stealer 

It was last Friday afternoon when a Berkeley man walked into The Dark Entry, a shop in 2500 block of Telegraph that features replica swords and knives, and proceeded to rob some of the same by using them as the very weapons to pull off his caper. 

The timely response of officers found the fellow a short distance away, and he wisely surrendered to the arrival of deadlier armaments. 

 

Unusual weapon 

The owner of a used bicycle shop at 67th and Sacramento streets was attacked by an angry fellow who used a bike as his weapon. 

“He picked it up and swung it at him,” said Officer Galvan. The merchant declined medical attention. 

The store owner was able to get a license plate as his attacker fled, but the address it led to proved to be a dead end.


A Guide to Finding Green Gifts This Holiday Season

By Judith Scherr
Friday December 22, 2006

’Tis the weekend before giftmas  

And I’m in a panic 

Not a thing for the grandma 

Or friendly mechanic 

I rush out to Macy’s  

Then an Emeryville mall 

Empty wallet on gas  

Buying presents for all: 

Enriching the bosses 

Clearcutting the woods 

The ice caps are melting 

For my giftmas goods. 

 

Stop. 

There are shopping alternatives and you don’t have to leave Berkeley. 

A quick walk along San Pablo Avenue, a short ride up to the Telegraph Fair, a drive to Solano Avenue or over to College Avenue—unfortunately there’s no city-sponsored shopper shuttle or free parking as in some years past—present a wealth of gifts that don’t support employers of child workers, promote global warming or deplete natural resources. 

If you start your shopping spree at the Ecology Center, a block south of Dwight Way on San Pablo, you’ll find organic cotton socks and baby wear. “Organic cotton keeps the pesticides out of the environment,” says Carrie Bennett, employed at the center for eight months, after having quit an accounting job to work where she can promote the environment while learning to preserve it. 

Bennett points out the recycled paper note cards and recycled glassware. And purses made from discarded packaging. She’s also got a list of books she recommends. One is Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets and another is Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway, which Bennett says is a practical “yet an in-depth guide” to gardening. 

On Tuesday, Nuria Bowart was shopping at the Ecology Center with baby Aya for recycled bottles. She fills the bottles with homemade hot sauce to give as gifts. Grace Lee was there too. She had picked out a half-dozen stainless steel water bottles for friends and family. “They don’t leech chemicals like the plastic bottles do,” Lee said, conceding that one has to “get over a little stainless steel taste.” 

If you’re into retro, vintage or even antique clothing, you can cross to the east side of San Pablo and walk toward Dwight Way, where there are three shops that sell vintage apparel, two just south of Dwight Way and one to the north.  

At Icon Vintage, store clerk Bonnie Rippberger told the Daily Planet she had been selling gifts all day—aprons and earrings. Someone had found the perfect gift in a fuzzy 1960s bathrobe.  

The store, Rippberger said, “is for people who really like far out retro stuff.”  

Retro, according to Karen Anderson, owner of Another Vintage, two doors north of Icon, refers to things 20 or more years old, vintage is 30 or more years old and antique is 100 years old.  

“People appreciate not buying new and buying local,” Anderson said. The shop offers a large selection of clothes, hats and jewelry. “They’re all one-of-a kind,” Anderson explained. 

Twisters, just north of Dwight Way, has been in the area for seven years in three different locations. Owner Heidi Spanier welcomes the cluster of vintage shops. Rather than look at them as competition, she says that together they attract more customers.  

Spanier sells mostly jewelry and jackets for gifts—things that don’t have to fit. On the whole, the store’s stock dates from the 1940s to the 1980s. “We do get some ’20s Victorian,” she said. 

Farther north on San Pablo is Ohmega Salvage, which features all sorts of recycled products for the home, including cabinets, lighting fixtures—and even bathtubs. Close by, on Seventh Street near Heintz, is the Wooden Duck that carries furniture made from recycled wood.  

The Global Exchange Store up on College Avenue near Stuart Street, features “fair trade” items. “For all the products in the store, the artisan gets a fair wage,” said Carolyn Gravely, who manages the store.  

Some of the items are environmentally friendly as well as fair trade, such as baskets made from recycled strips of plastic from a co-op in Nepal and doormats made from flip-flops from the Philippines. There are also tote bags, created from old rice sacks by disabled Cambodian workers and silk scarves from Nepal made from recycled silk saris from India. 

There are still two days—Saturday and Sunday—to get to the Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair between Dwight Way and Bancroft Way. Among the hundreds of crafts offered are Peter Neufeld’s belts made from recycled silverware and cheeseboards made by Pat Lloyd from old flattened bottles.  

Of course, on the Avenue are Rasputin Records and Amoeba Music, famous for used records and CDs; for gently-read books on Telegraph there are Moe’s and Shakespeare and Company. 

In fact, in Berkeley one can find used books from independent booksellers in many neighborhoods—there is Pegasus on Solano Avenue near The Alameda and a second Pegasus on Shattuck Avenue near Durant; there’s also Black Oak Books on Shattuck near Durant Avenue. 

And finally, when you get your treasures home, they can be gift-wrapped in something old—the Ecology Center suggests dressing them in old maps, sheet music, colorful advertisements, used baskets or tins, scarves or a child’s drawing.  

At the end of the day, your (organic cotton) wallet will be a whole lot lighter, but you may have saved a tree or two, paid a decent wage to a craftsperson in Berkeley or Nepal and found something you’re happy to give.  

And maybe—possibly—you’ll resist the Macy’s after-Christmas sale.


10 Questions for Darryl Moore

By Jonathan Wafer, Special to the Panet
Friday December 22, 2006

1. Where were you born and where did you grow up, and how does that affect how you regard the issues in Berkeley and in your district?  

I grew up in Fontana, in Southern California, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles. It was very rural. I grew up on a small farm. My father wanted to raise horses, which he did. Along with other livestock: cows and pigs and chickens. I was very involved in my younger years in 4H. I used to show registered Nubian goats at county fairs. I became very good at it. I went all over California showing these animals, and I had a lot of prize-winning animals that I showed. Every morning I would get up and milk about 30 dairy animals before going to school; my foster brothers and I would do this. 

The 4H organization is the largest youth organization in the country, and so I was very involved both in leadership and in 4H itself. Youth issues have always been a priority for me, so here in Berkeley it’s an important issue for me. Probably one of my top five issues. When I meet with young people they say they have nothing to do. They feel like there are not a lot of activities for them. 

One of the campaign promises I’m working on is a multi-faceted, multi-functioning youth center that would allow young people a place to go where they can have their dances, where they can have their spoken word concerts, and at the same time where they can get job skills, learn how to work a computer. That’s what I would like to see in Berkeley. We have toured Youth Uprising’s facility in Oakland. It’s a wonderful facility. I think it could be modeled here in Berkeley. 

 

 

2. What is your educational background, and how did that help prepare you for being a council member? 

I attended UC Santa Cruz. My aunt was living in Berkeley so I would come up to Berkeley on holidays and weekends to visit my aunt, because driving down to Fontana was a much longer drive. So that’s how I fell in love with Berkeley and the Bay Area. After UC Santa Cruz I attended the University of Chicago, where I earned a master’s degree in Public Policy, and after that I went on to Washington, D.C. to work as an urban fellow in the local government of Washington, D.C. I worked in Marian Barry’s budget office. And my final education was two years ago. I was selected to be a part of the senior executives in state and local government at Harvard University, so I spent a few months at Harvard going through that senior executive program. 

 

3. What are the top three most pressing issues facing your district (2)? 

Crime, traffic and transportation issues. We have high incidence of property crime: cars broken into, homes broken into. We have problems of prostitution along San Pablo. I’m always supportive of community policing, letting police officers into the community and onto the street, by foot or bicycle. It seems effective when it’s put in place. So, trying to restore the budget cuts to the police department that will allow greater community policing is a priority, and, of course, neighborhood watch. You can’t have enough police officers so it’s also going to take the citizens being watchful of their neighbors and their friends. I encourage the formation of neighborhood watch throughout my district. 

Traffic is probably a very close second. People are very concerned about cars speeding in their residential neighborhoods. They have their kids, they have senior citizens. People are complaining about cars driving way to fast. Something needs to be done about that. 

I would say affordable housing is third. We need more work force housing. Parents have kids that can’t afford to buy houses in the city they grew up in. I think we need to build more properties that will allow people who have kids, or people who are nurses or librarians, to buy houses here in Berkeley. 

 

4. Do you agree with the direction the city is heading in. Why or why not? 

I do agree. It’s not perfect nor is it a straight line. We have bumps in that road. But I think the general direction of the city is positive. We’ve gotten out of our fiscal crisis. All of the major cuts took place two or three years ago. We’re starting to put money back into programs. Our finances are a lot more stable. There’s stability on the council. Very little bickering. We seem to get along better than councils in the past. So I would say yes we’re headed in the right direction. 

 

5. What is your opinion of the proposal to develop a new downtown plan and the settlement with the University of California over its LRDP? 

I think the DAPAC sounds good. I know we have had a lot of stores close: See’s candies, Eddie Bauer, Gateway Computers. A plethora of businesses have left the downtown. I think we need to look at that and why. What’s the reason for that. What can be done to rejuvenate and reenergize our downtown area? We started with the Arts District, the Berkeley Rep and Freight & Salvage. But we need to expand in other areas and make our downtown more attractive to the business community. Make it more attractive for our citizens. Right now, if you want to buy things, people are going to Emeryville and Albany. We will never have the big box type stores that Emeryville and Albany have. Nor should we ever. But we still should be still attractive to the mom and pop-type companies that want to make a home in Berkeley. And right now, for some reason, we’re just not doing that. 

I think the DAPAC will help us enliven the downtown. I’m excited about the hotel complex along with the new museum the university is going to build, as well as the convention center. I think that will help bring people to the downtown which in turn will support restaurants and our theater district. 

What’s also good about the LRDP agreement with the university is we had very little to stand on. What we could have required our lawyers to do is rewrite the plan which really wouldn’t have accomplished a whole lot. We would have spent probably close to a half a million dollars in lawyer fees. And to me it just wasn’t justified. The university held all the cards. They have the immunity to bypass all of our laws. So with all the cuts and to just throw a half a million dollars away doesn’t make any sense. A negotiated settlement, to me, made the most sense. And I think we had the best deal than any host city of a UC campus has been able to garner so far.  

 

6. How do you think the mayor is doing at his position? Are you considering running for mayor, and if so, what changes would you try to make? 

I think the mayor is doing a good job. He has brought leadership to the council. We do seem to get along and work together for the common good of the city. And I definitely credit the mayor for that. I also credit the mayor for the fiscal recovery that we’ve had. We tightened our belts the last few years and made the kinds of cuts that were necessary to balance the budget, so that’s really helped us as well. No, I’m not considering running for mayor. It’s a difficult job. 

 

7. Has Berkeley’s recent development boom been beneficial for the city? What new direction, if any, should the city’s development take over the next decade?  

The boom has been beneficial. It has helped us not make any deeper cuts. The housing market was high for many, many years. This kept the city from making the draconian cuts that Richmond had to make, Oakland had to make, laying off hundreds of city employees, fireman and police officers. We haven’t had to do that. We were able to strategically and skillfully make cuts because of the development boom that’s taking place in Berkeley. Going forward, though, we’ve got to address the issue of building density along transit corridors. We’re going to have to address how we step down and scale back those developments on those streets that run alongside residential neighborhoods. So we have to work more collaboratively with developers so that everyone benefits. We get better housing, we get affordable housing. And at the same time the neighborhoods build up their community. 

 

8. How would you characterize the political climate in Berkeley these days? 

The political climate is what makes Berkeley unique. I think it’s wonderful where you have a city that’s got so many people that’s engaged and involved. Everyone has an opinion on everything. So it’s great to live in a community where we have so many people that come out to council meetings, that will contact you, e-mail you, write you and voice their opinion. So it’s not very difficult to stay in touch with your constituents because they’re going to let you know. So that’s wonderful. 

I think at some point the community, politicians and the leaders are going to have to grapple with how Berkeley will grow. Because there seem to be two schools of thought: there’s some individuals who say no to development and then there’s those of us who say that in order to be progressive, in order to offer the kinds of programs for our seniors, our young people, we have to grow. I argue that we can’t continue to tax people. Because when you tax people who are on fixed incomes or low incomes, usually people of color get pushed out of the city. I’d rather see us increase our sales tax base on the corridors of Gilman and Ashby so that we can pay for our senior centers, our libraries. 

We are one of only a few cities that have our own mental health clinic. There has to be an effort to work with the business community, to work with development, so we can maintain the richness and the character and the diversity of Berkeley. 

 

9. What is your favorite thing about Berkeley?  

The diversity. It’s just a wealth of people. The university—what it brings to the table as far as culture. The whole educational community. You have artisans that are world renowned. Berkeley High and its jazz band. The football team. Young people doing wonderful things. You just have a wealth of diversity: both ethnically and economically that makes Berkeley a city like no other. 

 

10. What is your least favorite thing about Berkeley?  

Traffic. We have fewer people then when we did 20 years ago, but because everyone has two or three cars and younger people are driving, and college students are driving more, it’s adding to the congestion and that’s not a good thing. 

 

 

Darryl Moore 

Berkeley City Councilmember  

District 2 

First elected: 2004 

Born: 1/8/61  

 


Give of Yourself This Holiday Season

By Marta Yamamoto, Special to the Planet
Friday December 22, 2006

Each of us approaches the idea of gift-giving according to our own set of standards. We consider needs, desires, cost and degree of closeness. For family we solicit suggestions, for friends we debate possibilities, for “duty” gifts we head to Sees or BevMo. We purchase, wrap and present our offerings, awaiting response. In this sense we have given a bit of ourselves. 

Consider the option of the ultimate gift, your time. Taking an elderly relative on a country drive or out to lunch; helping a friend with an arduous chore, more easily accomplished by two; spending hours or an entire day at the zoo, a museum or the park with younger folk.  

In the true spirit of giving, stretch this “gift” toward an organization, for a commitment of several hours over a period of months. Become a volunteer. Whether non-profit or for-profit, organizations can’t get the jobs done on their own, lacking personnel, funding or usually both. They rely on dedicated volunteers to accomplish their missions.  

With the end of the year in sight, many of us reflect back and then forward. The time is ripe to give the gift of time—your time—and, as usual, the choices expand far beyond those waiting in line to serve and the suggestions described below are merely the foam on a cappuccino. 

Focus on your interests: people, animals, books, the environment. Whatever time you have, it won’t be wasted.  

Within the health-care field the range is broad. At Alta Bates Hospital, senior, junior and collegiate volunteers staff the Gift Shop, aid with registration, escort patients and their families, transport charts, medical records and lab tests, fold newsletters and assist nurses. Personal contact with a caring individual eases any hospital experience. The Berkeley Free Clinic is dependent on trained volunteers and volunteer professionals to provide all services, aid in administrative duties, fundraise and maintain the facility. 

The Alzheimer’s Services of the East Bay welcomes those willing to assist with daily Center activities as leaders or aides, work one-on-one with patients and send out letters for fundraising. Special skills in music, performance and art are appreciated. The Crisis Support Services of Alameda County stresses “skilled intervention by nonprofessionals can help people in emotional crisis.” Through a 24-hour telephone crisis line, in classrooms and in the community with homebound seniors, volunteers offer compassion and hope in times of grief and prevent suicides. Multiple tasks await at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center of Oakland, everything from community outreach, information and referral helpline, library work and in-home support. From your time at a fund-raising event to a weekly commitment of two to four hours, all is welcomed. 

Children hold a special place in our hearts and often require our help. Like most public institutions, demands at the 16 Berkeley schools far outnumber resources. Volunteers help fill the gaps. Your time is valued working within a specific classroom, as a writing coach, in after-school programs, in libraries, with Special Education students and in school offices. Even from your own home you can become a literary pen-pal, exchanging letters about books. 

The goal of Big Brother Big Sisters of the Bay Area is to “provide a mentor for every child who needs or wants one.” To become one of these mentors is to leave an imprint on a child’s life while enriching your own. Participate in regular events, like picnics and parties once or twice a year, volunteer through a school once a week or become a “Big.” 

If you’ve ever visited the Berkeley Library during Story Time you’ve heard enthusiastic voices, both children delighted with the tale and the reader pitching his voice above their glee. Volunteers participate as readers, guides and technology helpers, signing on for shifts of two-hours per week and a three-month period. If your interest lies in helping adults, one-on-one, with literacy, the Berkeley Reads Program could use your help tutoring reading and writing and helping English-speaking adults achieve their learning goals. 

The Alameda Community Food Bank uses several methods to connect people with food and to break the cycle of hunger and poverty. It’s a daunting goal and requires the help of dedicated volunteers. People work directly at the Food Bank, sorting and distributing food. Others coordinate Food Drives, educate communities and lawmakers, staff the office and the Food Helpline. Meals-On-Wheels provide warm meals to homebound seniors. Drivers are needed for shifts between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., Monday through Friday. 

If the furry and four-legged capture your heart, the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society warrants your attention. Canine Nurturers and Feline Cuddlers are always being sought to comfort, groom, clean, play with and walk those awaiting adoption. Groomers groom. Volunteers in Mobile Outreach visit shopping centers with potential “pets,” usually on weekends. Some offer foster homes for special needs pets— those too young, ill or requiring help with their socialization skills. After attending an orientation, the Society requests your time with two-hour shifts weekly and a six month commitment. 

At the Milo Foundation, help is needed at the store with adoptions, walking and grooming. Some volunteers opt to help at the Milo Sanctuary near Willits while others open their homes for extended personal attention to just one animal. 

If you’re drawn to preserving our environmental heritage, several organizations seek volunteers. Friends of Five Creeks focus their attention on five creeks within North Berkeley, Kensington, Albany and southern El Cerrito. Monthly work parties get their hands dirty restoring and enhancing wildlife and creek habitat by controlling erosion, removing invasive plants, planting natives and installing interpretive signs, railings and litter cans. You’ll see this grassroots, all-volunteer organization at fairs and within classrooms. 

Similar work on a broader scale is performed by Save The Bay: Wetland Restoration. Beginning with collecting native plant seeds, propagating them in nurseries and returning them along the shoreline, Save The Bay checks water quality and monitors the health of wildlife populations. Here you can get your hands dirty and learn wildlife ecology. Projects in early 2007 focus on San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge and Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline. 

There are thousands of acres, hundreds of miles of trails and not enough personnel to maintain our East Bay Regional Parks. Operations Volunteers are needed to repair existing trails and construct new ones, a task akin to the painting of the Golden Gate Bridge; prune back vegetation and build retaining walls, bridges, causeways and drainage structures. Wildlife Volunteers are the stewards of the parks. They provide hands-on efforts in conservation and resource management, working with quail, least tern, black rail, duck, swallow and frog populations. To share your love of nature or of a particular park, you can become a Regional Park Ambassador; if empty time stretches forward; 10 parks offer docent-training programs. Spend your days at Tilden’s Little Farm and assist naturalists with activities and tours.  

 

VOLUNTEERING INFORMATION 

 

Alta Bates Hospital  

2450 Ashby Ave., Berkeley, 204-2032, www.altabates.com/how/volunteer. 

 

The Berkeley Free Clinic 

2339 Durant Ave., Berkeley, 548-2570, www.berkeleyfreeclinic.org/volunteer. 

 

Alzheimer’s Services of the East Bay 

2320 Channing Way, Berkeley, 644-8292, www.aseb.org/helping/volunteers. 

 

Crisis Support Services of Alameda County 

P.O. Box 3120, Oakland, 420-2471, http://crisissupport.org/index1. 

 

Women’s Cancer Resource of Oakland 

3023 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, 548-9286, www.wcrc.org/volunteering. 

 

Berkeley School Volunteers 

www.bpef-online.org/volunteers. 

 

Big Brother Big Sisters of the Bay Area 

729-5050, www.bbbseastbay.org. 

 

Berkeley Public Library/Berkeley Reads 

www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/volunteer.  

 

Alameda County Community Food Bank 

7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland. Volunteer Manager 635-3663 ext. 308, www.accfb.org/volunteer. 

 

Meals-On-Wheels 

1901 Hearst Ave, Berkeley, 981-5250, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/seniors/portable/portablemeals. 

 

Berkeley East Bay Humane Society 

2700 Ninth St., Berkeley, 845-7735, www.berkeleyhumane.org. 

 

The Milo Foundation 

1575 Solano Ave., Berkeley, 527-PETS, www.milofoundation.org. 

 

Friends of Five Creeks 

Meet at 7 p.m. the first Monday of the month at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., 848-9358, www.fivecreeks.org. 

 

Save The Bay 

350 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Suite 900, Oakland, 452-9261, www.savesfbay.org.  

 

East Bay Parks 

544-2631, www.ebparks.org/volunter/volunter.  

 


Cheerful Crowd Celebrates Stadium Grove Tree-Sitters

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Though the thermometer hovered in the upper 40s and seemed even cooler beneath a mantle of oak leaves and an overcast sky, the crowd that gathered near Memorial Stadium Saturday was anything but cold. 

Students, residents, environmentalists and the merely curious gathered to watch and celebrate as the tree-in entered its third week, with protesters perched in the trees overhead as Country Joe McDonald led the small crowd in an enthusiastic rendition of the “Hokey Oaky.” 

Wavy Gravy, Berkeley’s unofficial jester laureate, clowned around, poets declaimed, singers serenaded and musicians played.  

“It was a great day,” said Doug Buckwald, who has been coordinating ground support for the protesters who have taken to arboreal platforms to protest the planned felling of the grove to make way for a four-story gym and office building planned for the site of the grove along the stadium’s western wall. 

“I estimate we got about 200 people to come out, and if you stage an outdoor event on a cold December day and get over 20, you’ve had a good day,” he said. 

Noticeably absent from the scene were the campus police officers who had been maintaining a constant and sometimes numerous presence over the past week. 

While as many as 13 at a time had been present in the days before, not a single officer was in evidence Saturday. 

Earlier in the week officers had cited Zachary Running Wolf, who had launched the protest by climbing up into a threatened redwood during the pre-dawn hours of Big Game day Dec. 2. 

He and non-tree-sitting fellow protester Asa Dodsworth had been served with orders barring them from campus for seven days. 

Following the arrest, officers had taken up a constant watch at the base of the redwood before abandoning the site before the Saturday celebration in support of the protest. 

Among those who showed up were Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore, historian Gray Brechin and two long-time veterans of other tree-ins, Karen Pritchett and Hal Carlstad of Earth First. 

The small but determined protest to protect the last remaining grove of coastal live oaks outside the Berkeley hills stands in marked contrast to the last time students and activists confronted the university over a plot of land. 

While hundreds of students protested plans to develop the site they named People’s Park in 1969, the turnout at the grove 37 years later has been small—though more than 100 students did march in one Sproul Plaza demonstration for the trees.  

But the hard-core activist spirit was present Saturday, represented by graying Pritchett and Carlstad, who have organized similar protests in threatened redwood forests to the north. 

Both were friends of Judi Bari, the Earth First activist who with fellow activist Darryl Cherney was severely injured in a 1990 car bombing in Oakland. Bari died seven years later. 

In addition to Earth First, Pritchett also works with the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, which is based in Berkeley. 

“Wherever we go, we find ourselves fighting for last remnants,” Pritchett said. “Here in Berkeley it’s the last remnants of the grandmother oak trees. It’s the same with the redwoods on the coast, the last remnants of vanishing ecosystems.” 

Carlstad, a 1954 Cal graduate, said he became involved in Earth First “because they were the only ones getting out and into the action.” 

A retired science teacher, he’s been actively involved in environmental protests since joining Earth First a quarter century ago. 

“I’ve been arrested maybe 150 to 200 times,” he said. “I’d get arrested and Judi would bail me out.” 

In one memorable protest in Humboldt County, he and Bari were among 1,000 others arrested in a single event. 

Though Julia Butterfly Hill is the most widely known tree-sitter, Earth First had launched the tactic first and years before. 

“It remains an effective tactic,” Pritchett said, “and people haven’t grown tired of it. There’s something special about it, a kind of bearing witness that captures the imagination of the public.” 

Carlstad said he was saddened by the university’s plans for the grove. 

“I’m an avid fan of Cal sports, but I think they’re falling in line with the Forestry Department, which was the first to advocate clear-cutting,” he said.  

Meanwhile, two lawsuits have been filed challenging the adoption by UC Regents of the envrionmental impact report which includes the gym and other stadium area projects, said Michael Kelly of the Panoramic Hills Association, which represents homowners on the slope above the stadium. 

Kelly said the association is working with the city, which is preparing its own suit.


Zoning Board Approves Trader Joe’s Building, Project Foes Planning Lawsuit

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Rejecting the pleas of angry neighbors and threats of a lawsuit, the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) voted 5-3 early Friday to approve the “Trader Joe’s Building.” 

Though the name’s not official, it has become a convenient handle for a five-story project that will include 148 apartments, a popular grocery store and a second commercial tenant. 

Neighbors fear it will overshadow their nearby homes, render already scarce parking almost non-existent and lead to more congestion at the heavily trafficked intersection of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. They have already retained a lawyer, Stuart Flashman of Oakland, to prepare a legal challenge. 

The 139,040-square-foot project includes 148 apartments, mostly one bedroom and studio units, 14,390 square feet of retail space, 109 tenant and 48 commercial parking spaces and two truck-loading spaces, one of them on University Avenue.  

“Like many people in this room, I have lived with this project for four years and through many hearings,” said ZAB member Bob Allen as he moved approval. “To me, this is far superior to the original proposal... I think it is a real amenity for the city. It’s terrific for the city and terrific for the street front.” 

“We have addressed all your concerns,” said Chris Hudson, project developer with partner Evan McDonald. “The project provides ample benefits with significant negative impacts.” 

But Steve Wollmer, a leading critic of the project, charged that developers Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald had deceived the city—“They lied and they knew it”—and demanded a 63 percent density bonus above the local zoning standard “for bringing Trader Joe’s to Berkeley.” 

And it was the trendy grocer that won the endorsement of the Downtown Berkeley Association, represent by its president, Mark McLeod. “The DBA has consistently supported the project because Trader Joe’s will be a major contributor to the economic development of the downtown,” he said. 

ZAB member Rick Judd asked the developers if in fact they had a real commitment from the grocer. 

“I have an executed lease with Trader Joe’s that is 100 percent binding provided we can deliver” the space on time and at the agreed cost, said Hudson. The lease was “for more than 10 years,” with an option extending the total period to “more than 20 years.” 

Hudson declined to elaborate on the terms beyond saying the store would pull out if they couldn’t get the parking spaces specified in the permit application. 

The final vote came at the end of a marathon session that began more than six hours earlier. 

 

Foes abound 

While project supporters sent in more than 500 letters urging approval, it was project foes who packed the ZAB meeting. 

Only one other supporter spoke to the board. UC Berkeley student Erik Panzer, who lives a block to the east, said “the objections now are all philosophical” since traffic and noise “have been shown to have minimal impacts.” 

Another project critic is Dean Metzger, who had just been removed from ZAB by Councilmember Gordon Wozniak and replaced by University of California executive and project supporter Michael Alvarez-Cohen. 

“Trader Joe’s has become the emotional vehicle for approval by you,” Metzger told his former colleagues. “You’ve got to get rid of the Trader Joe’s emotion and look at the facts.”  

“I believe they (the developers) are getting incredible benefits from the planning department when in fact this is student housing,” said Kristin Leimkuhler. “I wonder if you would be evaluating the project in the same way if it was a BevMo or a Pottery Barn instead of Trader Joe’s.” BevMo is a corporate trademark of Beverages & More, a discount liquor retailer. 

The maximum project allowed by city zoning ordinances would be 111 units, he said, and neighbors would accept a project with 130 units. 

“Have you carefully considered what you are giving up for a German-owned, non-union” store, said Regan Richardson. “There has been crude manipulation of the worst sort designed to circumvent [city zoning laws. Should Hudson McDonald be allowed to run roughshod over state laws?” 

“The developer is offering a very popular grocery store to wash it down with—a very popular grocery store with not enough parking,” said neighbor Gloria Artese. 

“Also, granting the developer 25 more (housing) units than required by law is opening a huge loophole,” said neighbor Rob Browning, spouse of City Councilmember Linda Maio. The project also calls for a major alteration of streets and a loss of parking, he said 

Parking spaces will be eliminated on both sides of Berkeley Way adjacent to the project to create an additional turn lane, all on-street spaces on the west side of MLK between Berkeley Way and University Avenue will be permanently removed, and parking will be banned in spaces on the east side of MLK between University and Hearst avenues between 3 and 7 p.m. daily except Sunday. 

In addition, a new traffic light is to be added at Berkeley Way and MLK and linked to the light at MLK and University Avenue. 

“It would be a very bad precedent to allow anything to trump local zoning,” said neighbor Tom Hunt. “You shouldn’t give anything away unless it is absolutely required.” 

“I believe this board has been manipulated and held hostage to approve this project,” said Hillary Goldman, who described the project as “a monkey on the city’s back that’s so complicated no one actually knows what kind of monkey it is.” 

Stuart Flashman, a lawyer hired by project foes Neighbors for a Livable Berkeley Way, called parts of the developer’s proposal “a masterpiece of obfuscation and double-talk,” and the neighbors have raised the threat of a lawsuit. 

“We’ll bear that risk,” said Hudson. “We’ll hire the attorneys for the lawsuit that’s promised by Mr. Wollmer. We’re comfortable.” 

 

Board musings 

One concern of ZAB members who voted against the project was the amount and size of affordable housing promised by the developers in return for the density bonus that allowed them to submit a project larger than would be otherwise permitted. 

The plans approved Thursday require the developer to provide 22 units at rentals affordable to individuals and families earning less that the area’s median income (AMI). The total includes 15 one-bedroom and seven two-bedroom units. 

Of the total, 11 apartments will be priced at rates affordable to those earning 50 percent or less of the AMI, with the rest affordable at 80 percent of AMI. 

“I don’t feel that distribution would meet the needs of families,” said board member Jesse Arreguin. “In June you had suggested that 100 percent would be at” the 50 percent rate, a figure he said was reasonable “given that you’re asking for a significant density bonus.” 

“We are meeting the city and state requirements,” Hudson said. “The 80 percent units are the ones that are affordable to teachers and others who couldn’t qualify for the 50 percent requirement.” 

When Arreguin repeated his request to up the number of the lowest price units, Hudson responded that he and his partner are the city’s largest affordable housing builders in Berkeley, with more than 100 units already built. “We haven’t tried to pull the wool over your eyes,” he said. 

Arreguin said he wanted more affordable two-bedroom units, and proposed that half the density bonus apartments be two-bedroom units at the 50 percent AMI rate and the other half one-bedroom units at 80 percent. 

“I wonder if we’re kidding ourselves,” said Alvarez-Cohen, who said the apartments weren’t amenable to families and would wind up going to grad students and others.  

After more discussion, Arreguin amended his amendment to read that all of the bonus units should be rented at 50 percent. 

Dave Blake suggested splitting the units equally between one- and two-bedroom units, with half of each at 50 percent and half at 80 percent. 

The motion failed 5-3, with Arreguin, Blake and Sara Shumer in support. 

The final vote on the project followed the same split. Voting with the majority was former school board member Terry Doran, who was filling in for Raudel Wilson.


Drayage Demolition Moves Forward; ZAB OKs Bus Yard, Condos

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday December 19, 2006

A marathon Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) session Thursday ended with approvals for two major housing projects, new bus yard, a new home for Freight & Salvage and demolition of the Drayage. 

Besides their approval of the 183-apartment Trader Joe’s project, ZAB gave the nod to the 24-condo-over-commercial five-story project at 2701 Shattuck Ave. and the Berkeley Unified School District’s new bus yard at 1325 Sixth St. 

Members also praised another mixed-use project during their first look at a building planned for 2747 San Pablo Ave. that will include 41 condos, including two live/work units, and a commercial space. 

 

Drayage vote 

By a 5-1-2 vote, the board approved the request by Aquatic Park Enterprises LLC to demolish the 19,400-square-foot vacant warehouse at 651 Addison. 

Jesse Arreguin cast the sole dissenting vote, while colleagues Sara Shumer and Dave Blake abstained. 

The structure, once known as the Drayage, had housed the homes and shops of an eclectic group of Berkeley artists who found themselves threatened with eviction a year and a half after inspections by the city building and fire departments. 

After waging a long and ultimately unsuccessful struggle to save their illegally handcrafted dwellings constructed and equipped without the requisite permits, the remaining tenants accepted settlements last year.  

Developers Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald are planning a new project at the 651 Addison St. site, which is directly across the Union Pacific tracks from a block-square housing-over-commercial project ZAB approved earlier in the year. 

A last-minute addition requested by planner Greg Powell inserted the finding that the structure was unsafe, a fire hazard and a public nuisance, and “unsuitable for uses compatible with the district.” 

At no time during the brief discussion before the vote was the word “Drayage” mentioned. 

While Arreguin asked for a condition to be included that any new project include live/work units, developer representative Sean McKinney said, “Before there weren’t any live/work units, so we aren’t taking any away”—a statement that may conform to the official record but not to the reality. 

 

Bus yard 

Despite the pleas of neighbors worried about increased pollution, noise and traffic, ZAB members voted unanimous approval of the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) proposal to build a bus depot with office and classroom space at 1325 Sixth St. 

The new facility would unite functions now housed at three different sites in the city and would feature a 4,094-square-foot office and classroom building, a 6,553-square-foot mechanical shop and a washing station along with 32 slots for bus parking and 37 car spaces. 

BUSD Facilities Director Lew Jones said the district had devoted long effort to exploring alternative sites, but in the end found that the site at Sixth and Gilman streets was the only suitable location in the city. 

Eight neighbors spoke in opposition, including Joe Matera, who owns a commercial building directly across Gilman from the site and said he was representing five businesses who had hoped to see commercial development on a key site on a street that the mayor has proposed for increased commercial use. 

But most of the neighbors, like Ann Armstrong and Tracy Mills, said they were concerned about the effects of increased diesel emissions on their families. 

Jones said the district is increasingly reliant on the less-polluting biodiesel—which it buys from the city—and is now replacing its four oldest buses with new models that are run cleaner and more efficiently. 

Former BUSD board member Terry Doran, who was filling in for the absent Raudel Wilson, made his own plea for the project before voting with the others for its approval. 

 

Shattuck condos 

ZAB gave the green light to the 2701 Shattuck Ave. condo over retail project, with Arreguin dissenting because he felt the structure should have been restricted to the four floors prescribed in the South Shattuck Plan rather than the five the board ultimately approved. 

The project, which is being developed by the family of Rev. Gordon Choyce, will be the first to take advantage of the city’s new inclusionary fee, which allows developers to pay a fee to the city in lieu of building units reserved for lower-income tenants and buyers. 

Senior Planner Greg Powell said the developers will pay the fee for the 4.8 units they would otherwise have had to sell at reduced prices.  

The proposed fee allows developers to sell the units at market rates in exchange for paying a fee that amounts to 62.5 percent of the difference between the mandated inclusionary price—now a maximum of three times 120 percent of the area’s median income—and the market rate price. 

 

San Pablo plans 

The board had nothing but praise for the four-story condo project proposed for 2747 San Pablo Ave. by David Mayeri and Laura Billings. 

Presented as a preview for the board before the permit process begins, the project incorporates green materials and design along solar panels on the roof and concealed in the San Pablo Avenue frontage. 

Bob Allen and Sara Shumer, often at loggerheads on other issues, both said they admired the design—especially the rear of the building where the structure is stepped down and broken up to better meld with the houses across Tenth Street. 

The developer is also including eight inclusionary units for sale at 80 percent of the area median income and planned for only 39 units instead of the 52 permitted by city codes


Oakland School Takeover Investigation Gets Key Support

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Oakland’s newly elected state assemblymember, Sandré Swanson, has proposed setting up a Select Assembly Committee to investigate state takeovers of California schools, and the idea has already gotten support from key legislators from the affected districts. 

Swanson made the announcement at the same meeting two weeks ago at the Oakland Unified School District headquarters where he explained his newly introduced bill to return most aspects of local control to OUSD. 

Oakland’s schools have been run by the state since 2003. 

Swanson said that “the issue of education has been lost while we’re losing a generation of our children” and that the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) “must be held accountable.” 

FCMAT is the Bakersfield-based, semi-private organization created by the legislature to monitor school districts in the state and intervene in schools that are experiencing fiscal or other problems. 

Swanson said he has requested that California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez appoint a select committee—with Swanson as chair—“to hold hearings in every city where there has been a takeover of the schools, to see if there has been a pattern of neglect and decline under state takeover.” 

Swanson said the first hearing would be held in Oakland. 

A spokesperson for Swanson said late last week that the Assembly Speaker is not expected to act on any select committees until after the beginning of the year. 

There have been seven school districts that have been taken over by the state in recent years and have come under the authority of AB1200, the state legislation that create FCMAT and governs current state school takeovers. 

According to a 2005 FCMAT report, three districts—Oakland Unified, Vallejo City Unified, and West Fresno Elementary District—remain under complete state control, with a state-appointed administrator running the schools instead of an elected school board and a hired superintendent. 

Two districts—Emery Unified and West Contra Costa Unified—were originally run by a state-appointed administrator, but have since resumed most local control, with a state-appointed trustee who has the power to veto board or superintendent actions on fiscal grounds. 

Two districts — Compton Unified and Coachella Valley Unified-went through periods of a state — appointed administrator and then a trustee, and have since returned to complete local control. 

As of 2005, five of those districts had outstanding debt to the state, with corresponding annual payment responsibilities. 

Assemblymembers representing two of the affected districts—Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), who represents the West Contra Costa County area, and fellow Democrat Mervyn Dymally, who represents Compton—say they are in support of Swanson’s proposal for a select investigative committee. 

Warren Quann, Dymally’s policy director, said by telephone that “we’re aware of it and we are supportive of it, particularly in light of our experience here in Compton.” Quann said that Dymally’s office has “participated in sharing information [about the Compton takeover] with Swanson’s office.” 

Hans Hemann, Hancock’s chief of staff, called Swanson’s proposal “a good idea. There really is a need to take a look at what’s happening in the districts that have been the subject of state takeovers. They are bleeding from two places. Many of them are still paying back state loans. In addition, many of them are seeing a decline in enrollment. This is particularly true in Oakland. So they’re unable to right their ships because they’re losing Average Daily Attendance money from the state on the one hand, and they have to pay money back to the state out of their budgets to meet the loan payments.” 

Hemann says that while enrollment decline preceded the state takeovers in some instances, such as in Oakland, “the problem is exacerbated following the takeover. Public confidence in the districts is lost when the local school board is unable to respond to the needs of the community. They have to take their grievances to the state administrator, and in a district the size of Oakland, that can be daunting. There’s a level of frustration that grows,” Hemann concluded, which can lead to more parents withdrawing their children from the district. 

Another problem with state takeovers, Hemann said, is that repayment of the state loans become the district’s fiscal priority under the state administrator. “That obligation is put before such things as teacher pay raises, or money for the children, or other instructional needs. There is continued frustration in the West Contra Costa Unified School District because of the burden of the state loan.” 

Hemann said that “Loni and I have talked with Sandré about the problem. We have to deal with it.” 

Representatives in the offices of assemblymembers representing areas covered by two of the other takeover districts—District 31 Assemblymember Juan Arambula (West Fresno Unified) and District 7 Assemblymember Noreen Evans (Vallejo City Unified)—said they were aware of Swanson’s proposal for a select committee and investigation, but did not have a comment on it.


Army Subpoenas Oakland Journalist in Watada Court Marshal

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Freelance journalist Sarah Olson does not want to testify at First Lt. Ehren Watada’s court marshal in February. At around 8:45 a.m. on Thursday, she received a subpoena from the U.S. Army telling her to do so. 

Watada is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment in Iraq. Because of his public comments against the war, Watada is charged not only with refusal to deploy, but with “contempt toward officials” and “conduct unbecoming of an officer.” 

Oakland-based Olson interviewed Watada in May and published a story in question-and-answer form in the June 7 online publication Truthout.org about Watada’s decision to refuse deployment. 

“My commanders told me that I could go to Iraq in a different capacity. I wouldn’t have to fire a weapon and I wouldn’t be in harm’s way,” wrote Olson, quoting Watada. “But that’s not what this is about. Even in my resignation letter I said that I would rather go to prison than do something that I felt was deeply wrong. I believe the whole war is illegal. I’m not just against bearing arms or fighting people, I am against an unjustified war.” 

For about a month, the army has been talking to Olson about testifying, “but she declined to appear voluntarily,” said James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project in Oakland. Wheaton is working with lead attorney David Greene, advising Olson of her options. Olson emailed the Daily Planet, declining an interview. 

“She feels it is not a reporter’s job to become an investigative tool of the state,” Wheaton said. 

Olson has not decided how she will answer the subpoena, Wheaton said.  

Joe Piek, spokesperson for the Army at Ft. Lewis, Washington, where Watada will be court marshaled in February, said, “The Army subpoena asked for Olson to report to verify the authenticity of the information contained in news stories.”  

He added that the army wants Olson simply to testify that the writing that appears in print is an accurate reproduction of what was actually said. “We’re not asking for notes or records,” he said. 

Olson’s apparently not the only reporter the army wants to testify for the prosecution. While Dahr Jamail, another Bay Area freelance journalist who has interviewed Watada, has not yet received a subpoena. His attorney, Oakland-based Dan Siegel, told the Daily Planet he believes through sources at Truthout, that Jamail will be subpoenaed.  

An independent reporter who has written for the London Guardian and the Independent, among other outlets, Jamail transcribed an Aug. 14 speech Watada gave to a Veterans for Peace Convention and published that in Truthout with a short introduction. 

“We need to make sure journalists are not treated as government agents,” Siegel said, adding that his client would have to decide whether he was going to comply with any eventual subpoena.  

According to Aaron Glantz, writing Dec. 14 for Interpress News Service, the military has also approached a Honolulu Star Bulletin reporter about testifying.  

Ehren Watada’s father, Bob Watada, is outspoken on the question of bringing in reporters to testify. “It’s intimidation,” he said in a phone interview Monday. “It’s harassment of the media.” 

If the journalists testify, it could hurt Watada’s case and, at the same time, it could help it, said Watada’s attorney Eric Seitz, speaking in a phone interview from Honolulu, Hawaii. “If they don’t testify, the government can’t prove they made the remark,” Seitz said. “They have to authenticate it—we’re not willing to agree [otherwise].” 

But it would help Watada’s case if they testified to the context of the remarks, that they were made off the base and not in uniform, Seitz said. 

By adding charges related to what Watada said and by trying to bring in journalists to attest to that, “they’re trying to suppress dissent,” Seitz said.  

Berkeley resident and Society for Professional Journalism ethics committee member Peter Y. Sussman, while not familiar with the details of Olson’s subpoena or Jamail’s possible subpoena, noted that this “appears to be part of a pattern of intimidation of using journalists as an arm of law enforcement, undermining the freedom of the press.” 

Sussman pointed to Josh Wolf, the San Francisco freelance journalist who refused to turn his videotapes of a demonstration over to police and is now serving time in federal prison. He may be jailed until the Grand Jury’s term expires in July. “Josh Wolf is currently in prison for acting as a journalist,” said Sussman, one of whose books is entitled, Committing Journalism. 

“Our mission as journalists is jeopardized if we are perceived, because of a subpoena, as agents of the government.” 

Army spokesperson Piek declined to comment on the ethics of compelling journalists to testify in court. “We don’t debate with SPJ on this,” he said.


Woodfin Workers Protest Pre-Christmas Suspension

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Woodfin Suites housekeeper Alma Cruz has spoken out at City Council meetings, walked picket lines and talked to co-workers about the need for Emeryville’s Living Wage Law for hotel workers to be enforced. Voters approved the law—Measure C—in November 2005. 

On Friday, along with 23 other immigrant co-workers, Cruz, who has worked at the Woodfin one year and four months, was sent home with two weeks pay and told not to return to work without corrected Social Security numbers. She says the move was retaliatory. 

“As soon as we started talking about Measure C, they started asking about Social Security numbers,” Cruz said, speaking to the Daily Planet Saturday at an early morning emergency picket in front of the hotel at 5800 Shellmound St. that drew some 50 people with less than 24-hour notice. 

The demonstration was called by Oakland-based East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, which is helping to organize the workers. 

Workers were called in Friday to speak with management one on one, given two weeks pay and told that the hotel had received letters from the Social Security administration saying their Social Security numbers do not match their names. 

Friday’s suspensions, which the workers say amount to firings, come on the heels of last week’s raids on meatpacking plants in six states in which 1,282 people were arrested on immigration violations. 

“Social Security is the tool they use to shut people up,” Cruz said. “The hotel wants to make more money.” 

However, Woodfin General Manager Hugh MacIntosh told the Daily Planet on Monday that the hotel’s goal in giving workers two weeks with pay was to give them the time they said they needed to accomplish the task.  

MacIntosh said the action is not in retaliation for workers speaking out against Measure C. “We are trying to help them,” he said. “They have to resolve the issue. I prefer having them working.” 

Further, MacIntosh said the hotel is in compliance with Measure C. 

“We sent a lot of documentation to the city,” he said, noting that last May they reduced the number of suites the housekeepers had to clean from 17 to 11 rooms, bringing them into compliance with the law.  

But EBASE organizer Brooke Anderson said that, according to her calculations, the workers should be cleaning nine rooms every day to comply with the 5,000 square-foot maximum allowed under Measure C. 

The Woodfin had gone to court trying to get an injunction against implementation of Measure C, but three weeks ago, the court turned down the request. 

“Now the city is free to enforce Measure C,” said Emeryville City Councilmember John Fricke. At tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting councilmembers will be asked to approve procedures for implementing the measure. 

“There were provisions in the law for workers to complain,” Fricke said, “but no details on how to adjudicate the complaints.” 

A number of the workers suspended on Friday were among those who had submitted formal complaints to the city saying the hotel was out of compliance with Measure C. 

“Once the procedures are in place, the city will adjudicate the complaint; it will have to be updated,” Fricke said. “The law has provisions regarding retaliation.” 

If the hotel does not comply with Measure C, the city could deny its permit to operate or it could fine the hotel, Fricke said. 

Amaha Kassa, EBASE executive director, who worked with Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union 2850 to organize the Doubletree Hotel at the Berkeley Marina, addressed the picketers on Saturday. 

“Maybe in Salt Lake City and Kansas City, they can get away with firing workers just before Christmas, but not in this community, not in Oakland, not in Emeryville, not in Berkeley,” he said, noting that representatives of the Alameda County Central Labor Council, SEIU, AFSME, the Berkeley Labor Coalition and the Double Tree Hotel had come to the 8 a.m. rally with less than 24 hours notice. 

“Mr. Hardage, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Kassa said, directing his message to hotel chain owner Samuel Hardage, a former chair of the San Diego Republican Party. 


Problems With Measure A, Says Former Peralta Counsel

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday December 19, 2006

The former bond counsel to the Peralta Community College District says that the list of projects in the Peralta’s troubled Measure A bond ballot statement last June may not be specific enough to have qualified the measure under the Proposition 39 requirements under which it was passed. 

Attorney John Hartenstein, chair of the School Finance and General Obligation Bond Practice Group of the San Francisco law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, said that although state courts have not clarified how specific bond project lists must be to qualify under Prop 39, “my advice to my clients is that language should not be included which indicates that the projects under the bond measure ‘are not limited to’ projects actually listed on the ballot measure. My legal view is that this does not meet the measure of Prop 39.” 

Proposition 39, passed by California voters in 2000, dropped the requirement for bond measure passage from two-thirds to 55 percent, but included the requirement, among other things, that the future bond measures qualifying under the new law contain “a list of the specific school facilities projects to be funded.” 

Last June, area voters overwhelmingly approved Peralta’s Measure A, authorizing the issuance of $390 million in bonds to finance facilities upgrades at the four-college district. 

The list of projects accompanying Measure A on last June’s language included the caveat that “project costs … may include, but are not limited to” the included projects. 

There has been growing controversy within the Peralta district in recent weeks about how the Measure A bond money will be spent, with several different “official” project lists released, Laney College faculty members complaining that their college is not getting its promised share of the projects, and members of the board of trustees narrowly rejecting $17 million of a district administration proposal for $21 million in spending on materials out of Measure A money. 

And now, if what Hartenstein says is correct, Peralta could also be vulnerable to possible lawsuits seeking to overturn the results of the Measure A vote. 

Earlier this month, a Superior Court Judge in Santa Clara County overturned two lawsuits against Foothill-De Anza Community College District’s Measure C Prop 39 bond, which passed voters in June of this year. 

According to the Mountain View Voice, the citizens bringing the lawsuit “claimed [in part that] Foothill-De Anza did not provide a thorough and accurate list of funded projects to voters and was going to misappropriate funds. But in his ruling, Judge [C. Randall] Schneider found that “The ballot proposition for Measure C contained a list of specific projects to be funded which satisfied all requirements under California law.” 

While it may clarify the Prop 39 law, the Foothill-De Anza bond lawsuit ruling may not have a direct effect on Peralta’s Measure A. While Foothill-De Anza’s Measure C included a project list similar to Peralta’s Measure A, with no projected costs, Measure C did not include Measure A’s qualifying language that the bond money “may” be spent on the included projects, and that other projects could also be added. 

Instead, because Measure C referenced the Foothill-De Anza district’s Facilities Master Plan, Information Technology Strategic Plan and Renovation Master Plan, which Measure C indicated can be “amended from time to time,” the Los Altos Town Crier noted that the claimants in the lawsuit alleged that “there is not a binding list, thus casting the entire bond’s validity in doubt.” 

Earlier court decisions have ruled that Prop 39-qualifying bond measures do not have to include a specific list of bond projects, but can reference a list that has been passed by the district and is on file and available to the public. 

The petitioners in the Foothill-De Anza case have said they will appeal, and California bond attorneys are expected to study Judge Schneider’s 30-page ruling to see if it begins to clarify what is legally allowable and not allowable under Proposition 39. 

Hartenstein said shortly before the Foothill-De Anza ruling was announced that bond law firms in the state were “hoping we’ll get some guidance from the court from this ruling. Up until now, we have just been operating with guesswork. Prior court rulings have said that if a district includes a specific project list in a bond measure, they are bound to those projects. But now we have language in state law that specifically mandates a list of specific projects. We just don’t know how specific that must be.” 

Hartenstein’s firm—which represented the Oakland Unified School District in its successful Measure B bond vote last June and counsels school districts on bond matters in the Bay Area, throughout California, and nationally—did not represent Peralta in either last June’s Measure A vote or in the passage of Peralta’s previous bond, Measure E, in 2000. 

Orrick, Herrington last represented Peralta in its successful 1996 Measure A bond campaign which, according to the Oakland Greater Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, “allowed the district to use $7.5 million of [previous bond measure] funds for the construction of the new Vista facility and provided an additional $8 million for Vista.” 

Peralta’s current bond counsel, the Jones Hall firm of San Francisco, did not return a telephone message seeking comment for this article.


Curt Flood: 10 Years Later and No Closer To the Hall of Fame

By Bill Fletcher, Jr., New America Media
Tuesday December 19, 2006

2007 marks 10 years since the passing of baseball legend Curt Flood. Many of today’s sports enthusiasts, including those who follow baseball, have little sense of the man and his contributions to the sport of baseball. 

There were two Curt Floods. There was Curt Flood the baseball player who had a 162 game average of .293 and a career high of .335. There was the Curt Flood who received seven consecutive Gold Gloves. There was Curt Flood the All-Star player. 

Then there was the other Curt Flood. There was the Curt Flood who challenged the notorious “reserve clause” which bound players to the clubs that owned their contracts. In 1969 when the St. Louis Cardinals attempted to trade Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies, he refused to move. Taking this to court, he proceeded to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that came to be known as Flood v Kuhn. Flood, with the backing of the Major League Baseball Players Association (the union of the players) attempted to break a system that was the equivalent of a 20th-century indentured servitude. Though the Supreme Court ruled against Flood, Flood’s actions set in motion a series of events that ultimately led to the elimination of the reserve clause and the emergence of the system of “free agency,” which most Major League baseball players take for granted. 

In taking these actions, Flood’s career was effectively ruined and the owners, who resented his actions, went on to ensure that Flood would not be considered for the Hall of Fame. Though many people over the years have raised the call to right this great wrong, it has fallen on deaf ears. With 2007 upon us, perhaps the time has come for more voices to be heard. 

Flood’s actions took place in the context of the great battle to expand democracy that was represented by the social movements of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Flood became a champion for the goals of those movements on the field of baseball. While Jackie Robinson, by his presence, broke the color line in baseball, Flood, by his actions, challenged the feudal-like system that restricted the ability of players to get out from under the thumb of the team owners. In that sense, Flood was more than a symbol, but was as much an agent of change. 

In 1997 Curt Flood died from cancer. In the subsequent years, those who have raised his name to be advanced into the Baseball Hall of Fame have been dismissed. While there are many people who believe that Flood’s record, plus his sacrifice, deserve his being placed in the Hall of Fame, there is no organized constituency that has been willing to push the envelope. 

The time has come for this to change. 

The Major League Baseball Players Association, for instance, which stood with Flood in his legal challenge, does not normally take a position on who goes to the Hall of Fame. Given that they are a union of players, this makes sense under normal circumstances. Yet the Curt Flood case is not normal, and that is precisely why the Players Association should be at the forefront of demanding that Flood be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Flood took a stand on behalf of all baseball players. He is not simply an icon of a constituency of fans, such as “Shoeless” Joe Jackson from the Chicago White Sox of the early 20th century (denied entry into the Hall of Fame due to his being accused, though never convicted or proven, of being connected to the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” scandal). Flood was the person who threw himself on the barbed wire that encircled the baseball players, making it possible for others to jump over not only the restrictions imposed by the reserve clause, but to jump over him as well. 

Flood’s actions are those that organizations from within the Black Freedom Movement, whether the NAACP, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists or the Black Radical Congress, should embrace and extol. Yet even within our own movement, there has been silence, a silence that seems to have represented some combination of having taken for granted the courage and vision of this great man, along with simply forgetting him altogether. The fact that upon his death so few great baseball players, of whatever race or ethnic group, showed up to pay respect was an insult to Flood’s commitment. That black players did not show in mass is nothing short of humiliating. 

We need symbols of courage to inspire us forward, but also to remind us that the job of overcoming injustice has not yet been accomplished. 2007 needs to be the year where we take one small step in redressing a wrong: Curt Flood needs to be in the Hall of Fame! 

 

Black Commentator Editorial Board Member Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a long-time labor and international activist who currently serves as a visiting professor at Brooklyn College-CUNY. He is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum.


Law Students Help Score Win for Immigrants in Supreme Court

By Rene P. Ciria-Cruz, New America Media
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Immigrants whose lives are upended by unfair rules and arbitrary law enforcers should thank the day electrical engineer Jayashri Srikantiah decided to leave Intel to become a lawyer. 

The young San Franciscan is the enthusiastic director of Stanford University Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, where students learn public interest law by doing actual asylum, domestic violence and deportation cases on behalf of immigrants. 

Students in Srikantiah’s clinic—more than a dozen sign up each term—learn not only the preparation and handling of immigration cases, which may involve representing individuals as well as impact litigation, but they also learn that community outreach, education and collaboration are critical parts of defending immigrant rights. 

Most recently, Srikantiah and her students had a hand in an important U.S. Supreme Court victory that can bring relief to immigrants facing unjust deportation. 

On Dec. 5, the high court ruled 8-1 that immigration authorities cannot use a felony under state law that is a misdemeanor under federal law to summarily deport Jose Antonio Lopez, a permanent U.S. resident for 16 years. 

Lopez, a grocery store owner in Sioux Falls, S.D., pleaded guilty to telling someone where to get cocaine. As a result, he was imprisoned for 15 months and then deported to Mexico in early 2006. Although Lopez’s crime is a felony in South Dakota, it is, as a first-time offense, a misdemeanor under the federal Controlled Substances Act. 

The Supreme Court ruled that immigration authorities should not have denied him the opportunity to ask for relief from deportation. Lopez now can return to his family here, which includes his 6-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, where an immigration judge will decide whether he can remain. 

Top lawyers from the firm Covington & Burling successfully argued the case for Lopez. “They did a wonderful pro bono job representing Mr. Lopez, says Srikantiah.” 

What Srikantiah and her law clinic did, through an amicus brief, was widen the impact of the ruling so that it may benefit the thousands of law-abiding immigrants whose otherwise blameless legal histories are marred by first-time drug convictions. 

The brief explained to the court the unfairly harsh and disruptive impact a ruling against Lopez would inflict on immigrant communities. 

As a result of the favorable ruling, legal immigrants with one drug-related conviction can now apply for relief from removal from the country instead of being automatically deported. 

Srikantiah explains that a large coalition of advocacy groups and community organizations came together as soon as the Lopez case appeared headed for the Supreme Court. The coalition knew the case could have an effect on entire communities. 

“The Immigrant Defense Project of the New York State Defenders Association led in coordinating the briefing in the case and developing the key legal issues facing the courts,” Srikantiah explains. The National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, its Asian American counterpart AALDEF and ethnic bar associations joined the brief. 

The perfect storm of drugs, wayward immigrants and crime doesn’t seem to be the best condition for fighting a pro-immigrant battle. Potential supporters could have easily been confused, “thinking that people deported for drug offenses, like Mr. Lopez, were dangerous individuals,” says Srikantiah. 

Immigration authorities, she notes, can reach back into an immigrant’s legal past and deport the person based on a single blot. She recalls that an Iraq war veteran married to a U.S. citizen was deported and separated from her family as a result of one drug conviction. 

“But people quickly learned that the Lopez case is one of many instances of people with a drug conviction turning their lives around and becoming law-abiding, but their lives are reduced to that one single conviction and they’re deported,” Srikantiyah explains. “At least now there’s a chance for protection against that automatic punishment.” 

Srikantiah warns that there are many hurdles ahead for immigrants as a result of the use of immigration law to “target, question and detain people based simply on their ethnicity.” 

The fusing of immigration control and national security, she says, brings in the new factor of secrecy, making unfair regulations and practices harder to challenge. “There’s a lot the press and the public can’t know because government won’t release information based on national security grounds,” Srikantiah says. 

Compounding the secrecy, she adds, is that government targets are very vulnerable, “usually they’re on unstable or temporary visas, and are more prone not to challenge the authorities.” 

The UC Berkeley engineering and New York University Law School graduate isn’t someone to shy away from a court battle, especially in defense of immigrants. Her choice of public interest law as an arena was particularly inspired by Prof. Burt Neuborn’s voting rights clinic at NYU. 

Her switch from engineering to law didn’t delight her parents at first. “But they’re now very happy and quite proud ever since I began working for the ACLU,” Srikantiah confides. Before joining Stanford Law faculty she was ACLU Northern California’s associate legal director. 

As an ACLU attorney Srikantiah successfully challenged the government’s denial of the existence of a no-fly list that barred certain passengers from boarding airplanes. The government was forced to turn over information about the list and pay attorney’s fees, and other ACLU lawyers are now trying to stop the government’s use of the no-fly list itself. 

As staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Immigrant Rights Project, Srikantiah represented the teenage victims of Berkeley entrepreneur Lakireddi Bali Reddy, who was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison for human trafficking and sexual abuse. Two Reddy sons received lesser sentences for conspiracy to defraud the INS as part of plea agreements. 

Srikantiah’s immigrant rights clinic is currently challenging before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights mandatory deportation as a violation of international law. The group also has a case before the U.S. District in Los Angeles challenging the indefinite detention of immigrants and asylum-seekers.  

 

Rene Ciria-Cruz is an editor at New America Media.


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Humans Still Missing Peace at Home

By Becky O’Malley
Friday December 22, 2006

Peace on earth. People talk it up at this time of year, but what’s being done to make it a reality? Quite a lot, and not nearly enough. 

A man I’ve known (though not well) for a couple of years called asking if I had time to read and comment on an opinion piece he was writing for the papers back home. I’d known vaguely that he was from a place called Nagaland, now part of India, but that’s all I knew about the topic. To prepare for his visit, I Googled up a few references which I found amazing. I didn’t know, for example, that Nagaland is the largest predominantly Baptist country in the world—the inhabitants, former head-hunters, were converted by American missionaries about a century ago.  

The writer had come to Berkeley 30 years ago to get a Ph.D. in archeology, and had stayed here, but his family of origin was still in Nagaland, and he was increasingly concerned about their safety and about the fate of his country, which now has a semi-autonomous status within India. There are at least 60 Sino-Tibetan language groups in Nagaland without a common language except English, and tribal rivalries have led to increasingly violent clashes in recent years. Assassination has become a favored technique. His essay, intended for op-ed publication in newspapers, was a moving plea for peace based on an appeal to Christian ideals of morality.  

All of this was completely new to me, and at the same time depressingly familiar. Humans, it seems, are the same all over the world. Given half a chance, they will slip into bloody factional disputes, often blamed on outsiders but really stemming from the unquenchable desire for power among locals. The recent death of President Niyazov of Turkmenistan prompted stories in the world press which could have been descriptions of Nagaland: “Despite Niyazov’s stress on Turkmen national identity, tribal and local loyalties continue to exert a strong pull in the country and are likely to be an important consideration in the political succession.” (Financial Times). 

In Palestine, despite the best efforts of a few of those at the top of the Hamas and Fatah organizations, assassination as a political strategy is finding a new constituency. Israeli democracy has never really recovered from the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing activist, and now assassination is accepted by many Israelis as an appropriate tool of foreign policy. In Iraq various factions too numerous to follow are bent on mutually assured destruction. In Iran a dangerous crackpot who denies that the Holocaust took place controls the country, though polls say that voters there now favor saner candidates for Iran’s occasional more or less democratic elections. 

It’s noteworthy that in all the conflicts listed above most of the participants have been—at least as self-identified—believers in one of the major world religions. It’s tempting to blame religion for such problems. Richard Dawkins, prominent Darwinian professor at Oxford, has been all over the talk shows this week doing just that as he flogs his latest book. He was famously quoted in The Guardian after Sept. 11, 2001, as saying, “Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense,” and he’s still an equal opportunity attacker of all religions, not just of Muslims.  

What’s confusing about this picture is that it’s also religion which tries, if unsuccessfully, to work against the human failings which have produced this continuous world-wide strife. Christians a hundred years ago persuaded the Nagas to give up headhunting. The original and best-sustained opposition to the war in Vietnam was from Christian churches. Prominent American Muslims spoke out this week at the Holocaust museum to counter the Iranians’ folly. Religious (and non-religious) Jews took leadership roles in human rights movements in the United States and South Africa in numbers quite disproportionate to their representation in the population. Religion often speaks to what may be a natural human desire to do the right thing, even though humans don’t always listen.  

Dawkins also has theories on altruism which I know only from secondary sources, but I don’t think personal charity is part of the picture. There are no soup kitchens run by militant atheist organizations that I’m aware of. I don’t know of any kind of charitable programs organized by anti-religious people of the Dawkins stripe, unless of course you count historic world communism, which has gotten into a bit of trouble of its own in the places where it’s taken over. In fact, when you think about it, the excesses of religion and the excesses of militant anti-religion (think about La Terreur after the French Revolution) look quite a bit alike. It’s sobering to contemplate the idea that human nature seems to tend toward inter-group strife with or without the intervention of religion.  

Those of us who still wistfully hope for Peace on Earth have our work cut out for us. 


Editorial: PC or Not, Trader Joe’s is Coming

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Over the weekend, talk at parties was how the project now known as Trader Joe’s got the green light from Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board to set up shop on University Avenue, accompanied by several stories of market-rate condos-in-waiting and a big parking garage. One Berkeley-reared guest at Saturday night’s event thought Trader Joe’s was a nice addition to Berkeley because it’s owned by a southern California family, and expands by bootstrapping, one store at a time. Well, no, we said. Since 1979 it’s been part of a German billion-dollar conglomerate, though the whole empire is indeed owned by two German brothers in a family trust. She seemed shocked, almost disbelieving, so cleverly has TJ’s (as it’s called by its devotees) marketed its downhome image. Founder Joe is long gone. But it treats its employees very well, she said. Well, yes, as long as they don’t try to organize a union, we said. That also seemed to surprise her. 

The store assiduously cultivates what Deutsche-Welle called its “Bourgeois Bohemian” image for “the socially conscious, well-educated middle class with income to spare.” Those are what used to be called “Upper Bohemians” in the ’50s — today’s Berkeley in a nut-shell, or more precisely, Upper Berkeley, those citizens who are protected by their R-1 zoning and elevated home sites from unpleasant incursions like the monster apartment complex the city plans to drop on the hapless Berkeley Way residents who will live next to the truck entrance to the TJ Building. The distribution of votes in favor of Measure J, the preservation initiative, was telling: it did much better in the flats than in the hills, where residents don’t need its protection. 

Upper Berkeleyans like TJ’s pseudo-ethnic specialties and cheap wine, and don’t like having to drive all the way to Emeryville or El Cerrito to get them. But you can be pretty sure that most of them won’t be walking down to University Avenue either. That’s why the big garage is needed, though some neighbors fear it’s still too small.  

Trader Joe’s PC aura, whether deserved or not, has made it easy for pro-growthers to recruit a claque to make speeches at commission meetings, and when the beleagured neighbors make their final appeal to City Council after the first of the year the pro-Joes will probably turn out again in force. But an El Cerrito citizen who doesn’t shop at the existing TJ’s, even though she lives not far away, buttonholed me at another holiday party to complain that the store might not be as politically pure as its public relations department would like us to believe. 

The evidence? A Trader Joe’s paper shopping bag brought by another guest. In honor of the season, the management saw fit to print a “Holiday Story,” a pretty bad piece of doggerel loosely patterned after “The Night Before Christmas,” on it. The punch line was that “Holidays are always so hectic and crazy. Trader Joe’s is nearby. Go ahead. Be lazy!” Her objection, however, wasn’t to the quality of the verse (though it should have been) but to one of the purchase suggestions: “…even some wrapped gifts for that sullen old biddy.” 

The outraged complainer, an Englishwoman of a certain age, sees that line as gratuitously nasty misogyny and age bias. She’s sensitive to traditional depictions of older women as evil hags, and thinks that even Trader Joe’s wouldn’t use similar deprecatory language about racial groups, for example. The online Urban Dictionary of usage says of “biddy”: “In the UK usually preceded by the word old to denote a generally annoying old woman getting in the way or ruining your fun.” That seems to be TJ’s European management’s intended meaning. I’ve also heard “biddy” used as an ethnic slur, taken from the Irish name Bridget and parallel to the similar use of “Paddy” (from Patrick) for men. As a sometimes sullen woman of a certain age myself, with an Irish name to boot, I do find the line offensive. But then I find the whole premise of the store offensive, with cutesy-poo ethnic names (Trader Giotto’s spaghetti sauce, Trader Ming’s won-tons) used to cover up what are basically generic house brands of no particular distinction. 

However such annoyances should be neither here nor there when the Berkeley City Council takes up the neighbors’ inevitable appeal. If Berkeley wants Trader Joe’s, there are other downtown sites where it would be welcome, as letter writers have suggested.  

In a case like this, councilmembers are not supposed to think about whether the groundfloor tenant is PC or consumer-friendly, but about whether the developer’s plans comply with all applicable laws. One possibility for grounds for an appeal is the California Environmental Quality Act. The city is trying to sidestep doing an environmental impact report, which is a dubious decision in view of the massive size of the project. Whether or not the ZAB decision complies with the requirements of the city’s iniative-passed Neighborhood Commercial Preservation Act is another potential appeal question. It will be interesting to see what happens after the first of the year, when the holidays are over. 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday December 22, 2006

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Help me to understand what is objectionable about Trader Joe’s. Is it that they are privately owned by a “secretive,” wealthy German family? Does this mean the dollars we spend on Two Buck Chuck will go to a murky private operation in Munich? Is this worse than having a billion dollar multinational public corporation like Safeway, Andronico’s, or Whole Foods build another market in Berkeley? The other reason to ban Trader Joe’s from Berkeley is that the company has used the image of an cranky old lady to make a joke. I forgot that being PC means having no sense of humor.  

The best reason is the store’s use of “offensive...cutesy-poo ethnic names...to cover up what are basically generic house brands of no particular distinction.” Where’s the offense? If you are offended by “Trader Giotto” step back and put it in perspective. If you want generic house brands, shop at Safeway. Who is being elitist here?  

Perhaps the union establishment is threatened by a non-union business that does well and offers more employment opportunities to Berkeley citizens. 

M. Gross 

Emeryville 

 

• 

TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I commend Becky O’Malley for her clear-headed exposition of the “real” Trader Joe’s behind its “user-friendly” public image; the TJ’s that appeals to a “middle class” clientele, including many progressives, who can buy more for less at its stores, while in denial about its “big box,” fast-food, plastic-wrapped, anti-union realities. 

But that’s not the only issue here in Berkeley. The opposition to a big-box store-plus-parking at a major downtown intersection is not limited to immediate neighbors. As a North Berkeley resident, I try to avoid University and Martin Luther King Way at both rush hours, and I shudder to think of the huge traffic and parking problems that will descend on the area from all directions. Even at the shopping malls in El Cerrito and Emeryville it’s difficult to park. In a time when Berkeley is promoting ecologically sound solutions to traffic, air pollution, water and electrical power, vehicles, houses, and produce, how it is that Trader Joe’s—or any big-box store—gets an invitation to invade a prime downtown intersection with the overwhelming support of Berkeley’s leaders? Where is our perspective on size/density/traffic in a vulnerable residential and small business location? 

It’s no wonder the nearby neighbors are up in arms—and a shame so many Berkeley residents and leaders choose to be blind to TJ’s real persona. 

Count me in on the appeal, neighbors. 

Marianne Robinson 

 

• 

CARTOON IDEA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thoughts and an editorial cartoon idea regarding the Zoning Board’s approval of the Trader Joe’s building: 

My understanding is we got 5-3 in favor instead of 4-4 no decision or a no because Gordon Wozniak replaced Dean Metzger on the Zoning Adjustments Board, who would have voted no, with someone who voted yes. 

The cartoon is Wozniak with his finger/hand on one arm of a balance, such that the thing that touches the ground is a Trader Joe’s at that location—render the whole borg cube if you like—and for effect, have it squashing the surrounding neighborhood, residents squished or flying, with cars falling out of the thing. If I drew it I would emulate R. Crumb and make Wozniak scowl with rage, with some typical peripheral characters trying to dodge out of the way, etc. Some way of showing Fred’s Market) getting stomped would be nice. A two-buck-chuck wino. Profits flying off to Germany. A euro with NO through the word “unions.” An employee being told “You’ll smile because it’s a job requirement.” And maybe Hudson-McDonald as a pair running off scene, each with a grin on their face with a pack of cash in their back pocket and not looking back.  

Eric Dynamic 

 

• 

GIFT SUGGESTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m blind. Gifts should be showered on folks who make the lives of the people with differences better. Like BORP, the East Bay Blind Center, Lion’s Center for the Blind, UCB’s and Berkeley College’s disability staff, all restaurants with Braille menus. (And where is the theater with the second audio track for blind people? We have to go to Emeryville or San Francisco. Why? Can’t our theaters hop on board?) And for audiovision, who announces/translates shows, theater and events for the blind, including events at La Peña, and especially the good work of John Neuman and Bill Johnson who have trained the Goal Ball team, a blind sport, including a para Olympic medal winner.  

That’s what should happen. 

What I really really want is for Cheeseboard to be open on Sundays. That’s the only day I can get there. 

Santa should be kind to the merchants and organizations and webmasters of shopBerkeley.com. And of course, the writers, editors, publisher, distributors and readers of the Daily Planet! 

Dirk Neyhart 

 

• 

SHOP TELEGRAPH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank Steve Finacom and the Daily Planet for the very positive and thoughtful article published in the Dec. 15 edition. As a merchant on “The Ave” and a participant in the Street Faire, this kind of positive push can do nothing but help. I hope the Planet can do more as we fight/struggle to revive Telegraph. Your help is badly needed and greatly appreciated. A point of information, the Ave is not limited to the 63 commercial storefronts on Telegraph from Dwight to Bancroft. We have many fine stores south of Dwight. On the one block between Blake and Parker you will an exciting new Tattoo shop, a Dollar Store, a Time Zone (vintage clothing), Uni-Tech (a complete electronics store), a great Bakery, Blue Note Music, a Dance Cooperative, 2 print shops, Indian food, Fondue Fred’s, the mysterious Dark Entry, Buffalo Exchange, and the world’s best “Pot Club.” Of course, we are there too, Collector’s Realm3, your one stop adult and collectors shop. 

Come check us out, there is far more to the Ave than you thought! 

Bob and Al at Collector’s Realm3 

 

• 

WHERE’S THE BOONDOCKS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So where is Boondocks? I would sacrifice anything except Boondocks and Doonesbury. I don’t do puzzles. 

Jean Lieber  

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Boondocks has essentially been discontinued by the artist. The strip has been in re-runs for six months while he has been on an sabbatical, working instead on the Boondocks television show. His editors recently announced that it’s unlikely that he will resume drawing the strip. 

 

• 

THE REAL NEWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We thank Executive Editor Becky O’Malley for her Dec. 12 editorial in defense of publishing the real news, in preference to “the good news” uncritically repeated from government sources. 

We also value and appreciate the Daily Planet running news reports and reader commentaries about the library, including things we have written—and particularly our jointly written commentaries of Dec. 8 and Nov. 17 (and our Nov. 21 correction). 

We view the Daily Planet’s publication of these materials as valuably contributing to public knowledge of, and public discussion about, vitally important matters in a vitally important institution. 

Gene Bernardi 

Peter Warfield 

 

• 

GATES AND IRAQ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Failure in Iraq would be a calamity,” Robert Gates said after he was installed as secretary of defense. He echoed the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld delusion that we still have the possibility of not failing. The fact is that the neocon’s gamble in Iraq has failed; it’s lost; we’re toast. Why? Two words: Abu Ghraib. From America’s torture chambers we showed the world, and particularly the Muslim world and all Iraqis, that we were subhuman. We lost all legitimacy. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, and Alberto Gonzales’ dismissal of the Geneva Conventions certified that Abu Ghraib wasn’t just the misdeed of “a few bad apples.” Strategically, they dishonored our moral authority, and defiled our democratic ideals. Tactically, by disbanding the Iraqi army, by turning loose thousands of men with guns who had no way to feed their families, they provided overwhelming force to the insurgency.  

The Bush administration policies are zombies—dead bodies walking around, unaware that they have died. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

 

• 

POVERTY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Amnesty International has again pointed out the massive poverty and inequality that exists, persists in our world. In a world that boasts advances in science, technology and industry billions of fellow humans remain locked into poverty. 

Humanity is living off its ecological credit card with overconsumption being the culprit. We have been exceeding the planet’s ability to support our lifestyles for the past 20 years. 

Seventy-seven million children in the world are still not going to school. 

How long before the mass of people realize the futility of war? War solves no problem; it creates only chaos. 

Reflect on some of these issues during the holidays and prosper peace, sharing and justice for all. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

 

• 

LISTEN UP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said “The clock is ticking, Mr. President…”, and yet, while the clock ticks on lives continue to be lost. Your failure to heed the call of the American people since the November elections about developing a new bi-partisan exit strategy for Iraq has resulted in the continued killings of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens. The lives of U.S. soldiers will never be lost in vain, though. Soldiers are simply carrying out orders, doing their duty as prescribed to them by their democratically elected government. It is the American public’s duty to ensure that U.S. soldiers dying in our names are doing so for just causes. When and if we fail to do our duty, we are to blame, not them. But the majority of American voters have spoken. They have said time is up. Your endeavor of spreading democracy through the barrel of a gun has got to end. It has turned into a mega-disaster with huge impacts on America’s national security, as well as putting the human security of the entire Mideast at risk. The majority of Americans no longer support you or your adventure. Bring a quick and decisive end to this war, Mr. President, or the deaths of U.S soldiers will fall on your hands since the majority of American voters have spoken out as no longer supporting your war. Listen to the people who have endowed this democracy with their vote and their trust, for they are the ones who ultimately decide what causes our young men and women should die for. Your Iraq debacle is no longer one of them. The ultimate deciders within a democracy have spoken, so Mr. President, you must listen! 

Eric Norman 

 

• 

CLOSING OUT THE YEAR  

WITH A POEM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m sad each time we lose an independent bookshop. We lost so many this year I wrote a verse: 

 

2006 & bookshops farewell!  

by Susan Southworth 

 

Shambala, North Beach Black Oak, 3 Clean Well-lighted Places for Books, Cody’s Telegraph all became  

casualties regardless of fame. 

Don’t complain 

or blame the staff. 

It was your gaff 

to laugh 

and fall for Amazon’s math 

that led you down the internet path.


Commentary: Grameen Bank: Micro-Credit for Marginalized Families

By Krishna P. Bhattacharjee
Friday December 22, 2006

This year’s Nobel Peace prize has been awarded to Dr. Mohammad Yunus (economist, Ph.D from an American university) and to Grameen Bank, an institution he founded. His concept of micro-credit has received international recognition after 30 years of dedicated service. It is a story of giving shape to a dream. 

The concept of providing micro-credit to marginalized families, who are considered not bankable (the common conception is that poor families do not repay their loan), has been firmly established by the success of Grameen Bank project. 

The idea of providing micro-credit to the villagers in Bangladesh grew out of an action research project started in Bangladesh by Dr.Yunus with the following objectives: 

a) to extend banking facilities to the marginalized families; 

b) to eliminate money lenders; 

c) to create opportunities for self employment among marginalized families. 

The action research project to extend micro-credit, particularly to women in a village called Jobra (adjacent to Chittagong University), demonstrated its success during 1976-79. The program was extended to many villages during the following years and found to function satisfactorily. 

Dr. Yunus’s concept of extending micro-credit to marginalized families was totally different from that of the conventional banks, housing loan associations and other financial institutions. While people went to these financial institutions and banks to obtain credit and loans, Dr Yunus’s Grameen Bank went to the people to extend credit/ loan to them. This was perhaps the most fundamental change in the process of extending loans to the people that has been initiated by Grameen Bank 

The other fundamental change that Dr. Yunus has been able to execute is that Grameen Bank does not demand collateral security from the persons taking loans. Collateral security is one of the basic requirements a person has to comply with when taking loans (in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan). Grameen Bank has introduced the concept of security for loan repayment by a group of five persons who form the group; each person is known to the other. Each member of the group is responsible to ensure that the members of the group repay the loan and the interest on time. By this process, a social pressure is exerted on members of the group to repay the loan, and this has worked very well and repayment of loans is in the range of 70 to 80 percent; and this is very high in this part of the Asia, where the repayment of loans may be in the range of 50 to 60 percent. However it must be mentioned that forming groups of five (women) to be eligible for loans has been a difficult task for the Grameen Bank employee at the initial stage; it has taken months of discussions and persuasion at the local community level to make the women understand their responsibility and the benefits that they would gain from such a commitment to form the group.  

During his action study, Dr.Yunus realized that it is the women who are most vulnerable among the marginalized group and a neglected lot. Moreover women in Bangladesh have no right to property and once they are divorced (which is quite easy in that country) they are thrown out on the street to fend for themselves. Since, such a situation does not exist in the United States, it may be difficult to comprehend the enormous difficulty the marginalized women face. 

In view of these conditions, Dr. Yunus decided that women would be given the preference in applying for loan. Following this policy and after 30 years, it is stated that there are 6.5 million borrowers and out of this about 90 percent are women; this process has empowered the marginalized women of Bangladesh who now have economic freedom to achieve their goals. 

Moreover, Grameen Bank did not stop at providing economic freedom; it has gone a step further and provides loans for construction of houses, and the loan is provided to the women head of the house, so that in case of divorce or separation, women are able to retain the house and not be thrown out and be homeless. This has been a great achievement for the marginalized women of Bangladesh and it has given them security and respect. In Bangladesh individual plots are owned by men, and to make husbands agree to transfer land to their wives has ushered in a major social change. 

Jhanara Begum and her family are one of the beneficiaries of housing loans from Grameen Bank. Earlier to 1999, Jhanara, her husband and children lived in a mud hut covered with thatch, which got washed away every year during annual cyclones and torrential rains. In 1998 she received a loan from the Grameen Bank and built her house with a roof of corrugated iron sheets supported on concrete posts and beams supplied by the agencies of Grameen Bank. Such a house protects her family from annual torrential rain and cyclone. What is perhaps most important in this project is that Grameen authorities not only provided a loan for the house but also the technical know-how and materials for constructing safe houses. 

Now, each year thousands of U.S. families are made homeless and uprooted from their homes by hurricanes and tornados. During last two years Hurricane Katrina and others caused havoc within the Southern states of the USA, particularly in New Orleans, Miami and the area around Gulf of Mexico. As reported in the media, the homeless people had difficult time reaching the community shelters in schools as the water remained high all around for days. Rehabilitation has been slow and there have been many adverse comments on the same. Even while the new houses were being built, not much attention has been paid to providing technical inputs to make the houses safe from hurricanes and tornados. Perhaps example of Grameen Bank housing would illustrate where and how the state and federal governments of the United States can intervene to improve upon their assistance (technical and managerial) to the marginalized families. 

In the United States, the new Senate with Democrats in majority- who support the “have-nots” will woo the poor and would introduce new schemes to improve the economic conditions of the marginalized families, may look at the ideas and concepts of Grameen Bank’s micro-credit and housing loan schemes. 

M.I.T. political science Ph.D candidate Adam Ziegfield’, in his article “A Historic Victory?” (Nov. 16, the Statesman, Calcutta), predicts that in view of recent political change with the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives and Senate “the party will hinge on its ability to recapture its position as the party of the ‘have-nots’ while at the same time reaching out to the one third Americans, who do not identify closely with the major party.”  

It is predictable that in days to come more attention will be paid to improve economic and social conditions of one third of American who still do not have access to easy finance and housing loan and basic amenities of life. Micro-credit may be one of the instruments that the democrats will try to introduce in the months to come in view of its success story and also considering the fact that former President Bill Clinton’s support for the micro credit system of Grameen Bank and he has already advocated micro-credit to many countries around the world. Today, micro-credit is being implemented in more than 50 countries of the world. 

 

Krishna Bhattacharjee is a freelance writer and author and an alumnus of UC Berkeley. 


Commentary: The Serious Business of Play

By Stevanne Auerbach (aka Dr. Toy)
Friday December 22, 2006

Facing a barrage of advertising and marketing ploys, adults may exhibit some childish behavior when looking for kids’ toys. Have you ever been in a stampede for this year’s must-have game or plaything? With great places to find the right toys like—The Ark Toy Store, Sweet Dreams or Mr. Mopps, the challenge of finding the right toy is much simpler to solve for Berkeley residents. 

You can visit www.drtoy.com for more details on great products. Playthings made locally include Folkmanis, Pamela Drake Designs, Leap Frog, Tangle Toys, Peaceable Kingdom, and others. 

Selecting the best toy is not about what the “hot” toy is, but what is best for the children. Matching age, interests and abilities is paramount—as is recognizing the importance of play in everyone’s life. Playing with toys provides countless valuable experiences. Since play is the child’s “work,” what you provide to your child is essential, and is not based on how much you spend. There are many playful activities you can do with children that cost little or nothing: nature observing in Tilden Park or the waterfront, biking, walking, gardening, visiting libraries and much more. For a small fee you can enjoy Habitot, Lawrence Hall of Science, and other special places and events. 

Children gain an understanding of community and the world as they play with a fire truck, globe or maps. They learn to act productively with other children and adults when they play games, take turns and share toys. They learn to get and hold the attention of others in a suitable way when they use crafts, puppets or a yo-yo. They expand their ability to observe and concentrate using a construction set, kaleidoscope or puzzles. They practice other essential skills important for learning such as dexterity, eye-hand coordination, small and large motor skills when they play with toys that involve twisting, turning, hammering, pulling apart and putting together. 

Play helps your child expand natural curiosity, whet his or her ability to solve problems and foster spontaneity. These are central components of mastering learning. Playing with the right toys assists development for all ages. Everyone, regardless of age, needs time to play, to engage in something new and fun, that reduces stress and provides varied, new activities. 

Playing is a serious business—especially in how it reinforces the bond between adult and child. Before you buy a toy, observe your child at play. See what he or she enjoys doing, listen to what is desired and use your best judgment as to the value of the item. Finally, select at least one item on their “must have” list. Give the child plenty of time to play, and extend the play time with items you can add to their fun. Show the child how to use the plaything properly, but even more important, take time to play with your child and have fun together with a construction, creative project, game or puzzle. It’s beneficial when playtime is shared.  

The parent is the child’s first “big toy” and the most important plaything of all. The time you spend with the child is the “secret” ingredient for optimal play experiences. When you take the time to play checkers, construct a tower, assemble and fly a kite, play with a puppet or combine reading a story with the puppet, or make a doll house, you and your child are giving each other the greatest gift of all—laughter, joy and togetherness. For any family facing economic issues contact Toys for Tots in Alameda. All toys I evaluated every year are contributed to this terrific organization. Playful and peaceful year ahead for each and everyone 

 

Checklist on buying the best toy 

The mystery of finding the best toy is solved when you look for toys that offer the child balance between playthings that are active, creative and educational. Focus on the age, sex and interests of the child. The toy should fit the child and be worthy of their time and attention, and of your expenditure. 

Some shopping guidelines will assist you to select the best product: 

Is the toy safe? Toy must be tested by the manufacturer and by an independent laboratory. It must meet U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Standards, and should be nontoxic and free of obvious hazards. 

Is it fun? The product should be appealing in color, shape and workmanship. It should amuse, delight and be enjoyable. 

Is it appropriate? The product should be test-marketed carefully by the manufacturer for the intended age group, and fit the child’s skills and abilities. Products too complex are easily frustrating. Toys too easy are boring. Items should have clear instructions so you and your child are guided to the best use by the designer and manufacturer. 

Is it well designed? The right materials should have been used to produce the product. The item should be durable, easy for the child to use and keep clean. It should also enable the child to expand his or her imagination and creativity. 

Is it durable? How long will the product last? Can you visualize the child playing with the product? Is it childproof? Playthings should be long lasting and not easily breakable. 

What is its play value? Find a product that has many different uses, one that helps the child express emotions and practice positive social interaction. Make sure the toy does not have any violent, sexist or other negative aspects, and that it helps expand self-esteem, understanding and cultural awareness. 

 

Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D., “Dr. Toy,” is the director or the Institute of Childhood Resources, and is the author of Smart Play/Smart Toys: How to Raise a Child with a High P.Q. (Play Quotient). Visit www.drtoy.com for many resources on toys, play and parenting.


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday December 19, 2006

ABAG GUIDELINES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m no public policy wonk so I have become quite puzzled having read the Dec. 5 article reporting on the revised ABAG guidelines doubling the quotas for the construction of new housing in Berkeley. This was followed by the commentary by Fred Dodsworth (Dec. 8) expressing concern that “Berkeley’s charm is at risk.” 

Up to now I have believed in the value of creating infill housing along the traffic corridors of University, Shattuck and San Pablo Avenues as a way to provide new living spaces for our residents and to reduce urban sprawl. But as I have been visiting these new buildings recently, I have noticed curious facts: The units are incredibly small and the rental or the selling price is incredibly high, not satisfying the needs of most of our long-time residents, many who are looking for ways to downsize. UC students may be able to afford renting by doubling up in each bedroom, but most of us cannot — nor do we wish — to do that. 

Someone needs to explain to me how ABAG directed infill housing for the Bay Area is going to stop middle class families from buying homes in the suburbs, or now the exurbs. Their needs are not met by simply requiring more units to be built without first establishing guidelines for livability standards. If under the current economic conditions this cannot be done in an affordable manner, then what are we doing to our cities? 

ABAG should come clean with what the real goal is, because affordable housing for families does not appear to be the magical result. 

Helene Vilett 

 

 

• 

THE PUPPET MAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Back in the ’60s there was a little old man named Tom Roberts who performed his street puppet act out on the Berkeley streets, and he also published his own books of poetry. One example: I Gotta Hunger — I Gotta Need, by Tom Roberts (The Puppet Man), Berkeley local folk artist and puppeteer, 44 pages, Cody’s Books, Inc. Berkeley, CA, 1971. In addition to poetry, it contains photocopied portraits of Tom, one of which was taken by Imogen Cunningham. Does anyone have a story to tell about Tom, or articles, photos, or additional info about him? Would be much appreciated. You can contact me at rhubarbfarm@hotmail.com. 

Nathan Rounds 

• 

TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Zoning Adjustments Board voted on the 148-unit residential complex that includes a potential Trader Joe’s at MLK and University Thursday night, and Michael Alvarez-Cohen, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s sudden replacement for neighborhood activist Dean Metzger, hit the nail on the head as he was urging the board to approve the building exactly the way developers Christopher Hudson and Evan McDonald wanted it: “We’re kidding ourselves if we think anyone but students are going to live there.” But here’s where I don’t agree with him: I don’t think that’s what makes a good building for Berkeley. 

The building Hudson McDonald first showed the board had lots of units a family could live in. They told us that if we’d just accept a building that size, they’d come back with a Trader Joe’s. We got the Trader Joe’s, but the building had grown in mass by 7,000 square feet, and the size of the residential units had shrunk by more than 20 percent. All the three-bedroom units were gone. How many families can live in 700-square-foot apartments? 

The original building also had more affordable housing units, and all those units were to be priced for families making $33,000. Now there are fewer affordable units, and they’re priced much higher. Alvarez-Cohen was trying to convince the board not to approve a very modest amendment to make half of the affordable units family-sized (two-bedroom, now the largest-sized units available). The amendment lost by one vote. 

The sole purpose of the state law Berkeley interprets to require us to approve these immense projects is to increase the production of modest- and low-priced housing for a growing California. We’re supposed to be building housing for everybody, but what we got Thursday was just what we don’t need: another big dorm, especially since UC is not building enough housing for its students.  

Jesse Arreguin 

Zoning Adjustments Board Member 

 

• 

JERRY BROWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve just read J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s hit piece on Jerry Brown and I have ask what in the world could have motivated you to write that way? 

It seems to me that when Jerry came to Oakland he saw something he thought needed done and was willing to take a stand for it. As Oakland embraced Brown’s Oakland First and elected him, Jerry set about to make good on his promises when he was in office. 

In a continuum of his hope for a better city he walked the streets as virtually no elected mayor had ever done, and for that real ability to see the man , the city residents surely felt there was someone in government that was there, even in the dead of night on the mean streets. 

He looked at the city as it was, saw it as it could be and set about to make it happen. To be sure there was more that he could have done, and there must have been things he simply could not get done and there is the rub, but always I am sure he did what others failed to do and for that he has earned a place in Oakland’s future having left the city as mayor better than he found it, and that is a great deal more than what others throughout the country can honestly claim. 

Whether Jerry will stay in Oakland for the rest of his life or not I surely cannot say, but I do believe he will always have an eye on Oakland as the states top cop and in that capacity he will continue his assault on crime that he could not do as mayor as he will throughout the state and for that Oakland and every city in California will be better off too having seen first hand and standing against the violence he saw during his tenure. 

Your views on his planning scheme are yours and time will tell what the results of Brown’s vision will be over the long term but for today?  

I cannot see that his leadership failed Oakland at all. 

Stewart Resmer 

 

• 

KPFA VOTING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just came across John C. Sanderson’s letter on the recent KPFA board election in your Nov. 24 issue. Although it was published several weeks ago, his misunderstanding of choice voting, the method used at KPFA, still requires a response. 

Sanderson wrote, “The voting system the station uses means that one top vote getter on a slate drags most others on that person’s slate onto the board with them. Other slates and individuals have a tough time winning a seat. It precludes the possibility of a diversity of people or ideas and is a winner takes all system.” 

Despite the different name, choice voting is actually the multi-seat sibling of instant runoff voting (IRV). It does exactly the opposite of what Sanderson says. When candidates run as members of slates, and most voters support one slate or another, each slate wins seats in proportion to its support in the community. An independent candidate can get elected by winning a percentage of votes that depends on the number of open seats being filled. Far from precluding diversity, choice voting guarantees it. 

The election method that best facilitates the sweeps that Sanderson doesn’t like — where the largest slate wins more seats than is justified by its support — is the vote for N method we use for many city councils and most school boards and special districts. Political scientists call this block voting because one block of voters can control all the seats. Choice voting overcomes this problem, while also reducing negative campaigning, promoting higher voter turnout, encouraging more candidates to run, and overcoming the inherent defects of district elections. One last note: when the proportional logic of choice voting is applied to elections to fill one seat, the result is majority rule, as guaranteed by instant runoff voting.  

Bob Richard 

Marin County Coordinator 

Californians for Electoral Reform 

 

• 

‘THE FOREST WAR’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for Ken Bullock’s Dec. 15 review of The Forest War. He revealed layers of theatrical and filmic influences on Shotgun Players’ rich play that I’d entirely missed. 

All I can add is: Go see this remarkable production before its Jan. 14 closing date, or be prepared to kick yourself when it moves to some place like Broadway and wins something like a Pulitzer. 

While deep, Mark Jackson’s epic is also an accessible and transparent allegory about the last decade. It refracts the sabotage of the Clinton presidency, the Bush restoration, a needless war based on concocted “intelligence,” and the risks of flirting with apocalypse. 

This play runs just under three hours, but flies by at the pace of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. (The prologue ends halfway through the first speech, and there’s not a spare word or gesture afterwards.) It’s a tragedy leavened with laugh-out-loud slapstick. You’ll root for the hesitating good guys and hiss the neocon villains. 

The Forest War isn’t your uncle’s sackcloth-and-kazoos Brechtian performance. Its fluid, rigorously pure style might be called Screwball Noh/Kabuki/Kurosawan/Manga/WPA/New Deal/Brechtian/Shakespearean/Marlowean/Strangelovian/Pelepelosian/Lewinskyan/Looney Tunes/Austin Powers/Mimetroupean dell’Arte. Don’t worry, it all works. 

Michael Katz 

 

• 

IMPEACH BUSH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I totally agree with Ron Lowe’s letter urging the impeachment of George W. Bush. To those who would argue, “Why bother — he only has two more years in his presidency?,” I would say, in those two years thousands more American soldiers and Iraqi civilians would lose their lives, there would be utter destruction of a country that never posed a threat to the United States, and our standing among nations around the world would plummet even lower than it is now. What greater reasons do we need for impeaching this arrogant and obstinate man who doesn’t even fathom why his ratings are sinking to an all-time low? 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

UNKINDNESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am concerned about the unkindness I find on buses and at bus stops. People bring their beer and wine bottles. They sit on the benches, drink the contents, and toss their bottles onto the pavement near the bus stop. The area around the benches is littered with cigarette ends and broken glass. Others bring their bottles into the bus, start acting funny, use abusive language and play their radio very loud. Most of us who uses buses travel on them to get to work and make our living. How can we feel safe from the recklessness of those who have forgotten about the caring for one another we poor people depend on? 

Romila Khanna 

 

• 

SHUTTLE SERVICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Dec. 8 letter from Margot Smith pointed out the inadequacy of AC Transit and proposed a shuttle service for Berkeley. This could be paid for by creating a Berkeley Residents’ Association. Dues-paying members would receive a pass that lets them ride on the shuttle at no charge. It could also be valid for AC transit. Landlords could be offered one membership for all their units, so that tenants would ride for free. There would then be no cost for an extra trip, which would get people to use the shuttle instead of their cars. The key is to make the transit riding a fixed cost, with no extra cost per ride, unlike today with the absurd extra charge for AC transfers. 

Fred Foldvary 

 

• 

JOIN THE 21ST CENTURY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

You know, I’ve got a penchant for waxing nostalgic as much as the next native Berkeleyan. If an old timer wants to chat about the good old days, I’m always a happy participant in the conversation. I draw the line however, when it comes to people who refuse to join the 21st century when it comes to paying their way through life. The old rent control logic rears it’s ugly head again with the cry from tightwads who won’t buy a ticket to Cal football. “It’s always been this way, therefore it must stay” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Like the rest of the fans, buy a ticket, be a fan, support the Blue and Gold. Go Bears! 

Tim Cannon 

 

• 

SHOP TELEGRAPH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Nothing made me happier last Friday than to see Steven Finacom’s article encouraging shopping on Telegraph Avenue. The Ave needs us all. I’ve been having a good time lately there myself. The flower guy in front of old Cody’s always has incredible deals in bouquets — stunning ones for $5 — and plants — orchids for around $20. I bought the wonderful new (and expensive) book of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs at 10 percent off at Moe’s, may he rest in peace. The new guy on the block, What the Traveler Saw, is “testing” the waters of Telegraph. So for heavens sake, take a look! And I always browse Ed and Carol’s hat store south of Dwight for gifts and village gossip; it’s a social center. And on the weekend before Christmas, the sidewalk array of original and beautiful clothes, jewelry, pottery, etc. is stunning and is worth appreciation. Merry Christmas/Hanukuh!  

Heidi Seney 

 

• 

A SOLUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Save the Oaks people and UCB need help so here it is: Build up and over the right of way of Piedmont Avenue. It’s free of trees and is public space.  

Richard Splenda 

 

• 

THE WHOLE TRUTH? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anne Wagley and her compatriots deserve praise for their efforts to get the truth out regarding the city’s agreement with the University regarding the new Downtown Area Plan (DAP). However, I am wondering if her recent commentary gives the “whole truth” on this important issue. 

Based on the agreement’s wording, no one can deny that UC retains a veto power over the DAP. I’m not sure, however, if that is the same thing as a controlling voice in shaping Berkeley’s downtown. 

Suppose that, after a long contentious process, the city adopts a new DAP that is not satisfactory to UC. What would happen if UC determines that the DAP does not meet its needs? Section II.B.6 indicates that the DAP would not be released. 

In that case, it seems to me that the city (and UC) would be left with the existing downtown plan. (Can someone confirm this interpretation?) Since UC is obviously not content with the current plan, it would not be in their interest to veto a new DAP unless it presents them with a situation that they see as worse than the existing plan. 

If my interpretation is correct, the city need not bow to UC’s wishes. Rather, the city would have the power to create a plan that meets some of UC’s demands, and then say “Take it or leave it.” If the new DAP dies, I would imagine the city could conduct its own downtown planning process in the usual manner (drawing on the information gathering in the joint DAP process). 

One question: if the new DAP is not issued, is the entire city-UC settlement agreement void? 

Steve Meyers 

 

• 

WALKIN’ THE DOG 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This holiday season, when resolutions run high, let’s think about benefits. Ahhh, the good old lose-weight-and-excercise one is popular. May I suggest walking dogs at your local animal shelter? What a great way to get in shape and help homeless dogs. The Berkeley Animal Shelter on Second Street has friendly, fun, happy dogs that love to go out for walks. give it a try, you will be glad you did. These dogs need homes and foster care as well. 

Vanessa George 

 

• 

NUKES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have a very different take, a quite neglected one, on North Korea’s atomic bomb test: the disarmament (or “non-proliferation”) one. 

It is now high time to get rid of nuclear bombs by the countries most likely to first use them, especially the United States, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, along with Russia, China and India, before these bombs get rid of us. (Also the U.K. and France.) 

(Note: I have carefully thought about the order in which I listed these countries.) 

Bruce Provin 

P.S.: Too often of late the way world affairs are carried on reminds me of a cabal of sixth-grade boys in the playground running things. I think it’s time to try to regain our sanity. 

 

• 

PARKING, TRAFFIC COURT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Roy Nakadegawa is right about too much parking downtown. It takes up space without merchants selling anything from that space. Parking should be on the periphery of downtown and then planned very carefully. 

There is already a glaring instance of bad planning. The free charging for electric vehicles is on the top floor of the Center Street garage. By the time any drivers get up there, they may run out of any juice they have left, if they make it! 

On another topic, I’m suspicious of the traffic court’s move to Oakland. Doesn’t that mean more people will just mail in their fines on citations, rather than go to Oakland to contest them? This puts the mayor in a contradictory position. How does he oppose the move at the same time the city wants more money for the General Fund? 

Charles Smith 

 

• 

THE PRESS’ RESPONSIBILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The New York Times has now published photographs showing the physical abuse of Jose Padilla under arrest by an arm of the United States. Yet, if memory serves accurately, I read quite recently that having obtained, by leaks or whatever means, information of the United States’ sending “terrorism” suspects to other countries, although they knew them, the Times has not printed the names of those countries that received the suspects and frequently tortured them. 

To me, the Times thereby sidestepped the highest calling of a free press — to shine light on matters needing urgent remedy, wherever and whenever. The citizens of those countries, that on request, and probably to cement expected or continuing “aid,” etc., took United States suspects, need to know and punish those responsible for what their own governments have done, and possibly are still doing. 

Here we struggle against secret repressive government (under the guise of protections), and I urge all who know their names to publicize the culpability of those countries guilty of scenarios like that imposed on Jose Padilla. The full facts can help ensure humane government abroad as well as in the United States. 

Judith Segard Hunt 

 

• 

OAKPAC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is amazing that the reader in the Nov. 17 edition would defend the undemocratic practice of OakPAC’s buying the District 2 City Council election when it had succeeded in having the Oakland campaign reform law lifted so they can spend their money in the last minute of the election, to the incumbent, Pat Kernighan. 

Kernighan is known to be pro-developer next to City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and the both favor outside developers’ interests over the majority of Oaklanders. With Kernighan still in the council seat, the developers can build as many condos as they want without any checks and balances. Their actions can result in further water shortages in the city. 

By criticizing commentary writer Paul Rockwell for exposing the dirty deeds of OakPAC for buying the District 2 City Council race, it seems that this reader is either part of the corporations or developers that want to encourage more water shortages in Oakland in order to build as many condos as they want. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 


Commentary: Examining the Opposition to the New LPO

By Alan Tobey
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Now that the City Council has passed its community-compromise LPO, after more than six years of stalling and resistance by the hyper-preservationist community who brought us Measure J, we’re faced with the bad dream of a referendum campaign and up to 23 more months of additional delay. And for what? Basically, it comes down to objection to the “request for determination” provision of the new law. So let’s look at RFD and its alleged dangers: 

RFD gives to property owners (not to developers merely prospecting) the ability to neutrally ask the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) whether or not an owned property meets the city’s criteria for either landmark or structure of merit. An RFD application must include a thorough historic study that’s either conducted by a qualified consultant — chosen by the city, not the applicant, from a list established by the LPC, and at applicant expense — or written by the applicant but vetted by a qualified city-chosen consultant at applicant expense. At least 21 days after the application is complete, the LPC will decide after a public hearing whether or not to “initiate” the property for consideration of historic designation, which can be granted or denied after a second public hearing. If the LPC declines to initiate a property, citizens have the right to initiate by petition, which requires only 25 signatures. And if the LPC declines to designate an initiated property, citizens may appeal that decision to the council. 

The outcome of an RFD process therefore may, in fact, be the historic designation of the subject property. This would not necessarily prevent any changes to the property, but either proposed alteration or proposed demolition would have a much higher bar to clear. The new LPO grants to the LPC, for the first time, the authority to deny demoitions of historic resources (again subject to appeal to the council). If, after one or two public hearings and three to six months of public process, a property is declined for designation, then that non-landmark status can’t be revisited for two years (or longer if a valid building permit remains in force). This two-year protection is designed to allow property owners to consider potential changes with full knowledge of what constraints the LPO may impose. 

For those of us who worked to enact this provision, RFD adds to our ability to carry out historic preservation in Berkeley, rather than weakening that effort. From the perspective of a developer, or a property owner contemplating changes to his or her property, filing an RFD creates the very real risk that the property will be designated a landmark or structure of merit. With that real possibility, no one should apply for an RFD without a very high degree of confidence that the property does not qualify as an historic resource. And that creates the public benefit: that would-be developers are motivated by the RFD process to focus their attention on properties that don’t qualify as historic resources, and to leave alone those worthy properties we do want to preserve. As a second public benefit, the RFD provision will in many cases alert neighbors to potential development much earlier than now occurs, encouraging earlier developer-neightbor conversations instead of desperate battles at the ZAB. 

This neutral RFD provision, however, does not satisfy those Berkeleyans who want the LPO to be used as a weapon against development in general, and against any and all “growth” in particular. But all forms of the LPO — the former ordinance, the new council ordinance and even the Measure J alternative — are very properly silent on the virtues or vices of growth and development. That issue is the province of the Planning Commision and the council, and decisions are expressed via the General Plan. So opponents of RFD mainly mourn the loss of the ability to throw rocks in the development gears via the LPO — and rightly should they do so. 

Going forward with the referendum, of course, will mean that all right-thinking and mainstream preservationists will also be tarred as extremists. As a result, all progress on further improving our historic protection process — such as by establishing neighborhood conservation districts — will be put on the shelf for two more years. What’s the civic good of that? 

 

Alan Tobey has lived in Berkeley since 1970 and worked for the original Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. 


Commentary: The 2008 Presidential Primaries: Another Inconvenient Truth

By Thomas Gangale
Tuesday December 19, 2006

The 2006 elections are over, and the 2008 presidential race has begun. Most news coverage will focus on personalities, and once in a while on issues. What will go mostly unreported is the fact that we have a serious structural flaw in the presidential selection process that renders the issues and personalities almost superfluous. The “inconvenient truth” is that the primary/caucus system is an unfolding disaster, a bad process that produces presidential nominees who are less than America’s best. 

The problem is that every state wants to be first on the calendar. Being first means that all of the candidates desperately want to win your state to claim the mantle as the front runner. Being later in the season means being ignored by the candidates; by then, one of them has locked up the nomination, and the campaign is already over. 

Of course, as states shift their primaries and caucuses earlier in the calendar, Iowa and New Hampshire move their respective caucuses and primary forward to stay ahead of the pack. In 1972, New Hampshire held its primary on March 7. In 2004, the primary was held on Jan. 19. 

It’s going to get worse before it gets ... even worse. Earlier this year, when a bill was introduced in the California legislature to move its presidential primary ahead of all other states, to as early as Jan. 2 if necessary, New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner threatened to thrust his state’s primary into December. The best idea the Democratic Party can come up with to fix the problem only adds to it. In 2008, it is allowing Nevada’s caucuses and South Carolina’s primary to move near the front of the calendar. 

So what? Why should you care when presidential primaries occur, or when the parties’ nominees are determined? 

In 1976, there were four months of competitive campaigning. The delegates from every state had to be selected before it was determined that Gerald Ford had survived Ronald Reagan’s challenge. In 2004, when Dean suspended his campaign, only about one-fifth of the delegates had been selected from a handful of states. To 80 percent of the country, the Kerry nomination was a fait accompli. That’s not democracy. 

A shorter campaign season also means that any grassroots campaign operating on a shoestring budget is doomed from the start. There is no chance to score a few early victories in small states where campaigning is inexpensive, leverage these to bring in more media attention and more campaign contributions, and thereby grow the campaign to be competitive in the later, larger, mass-media markets. The real campaign is not about courting votes, it’s about counting cash. A Republican National Committee report lamented in May 2000, “It is an indisputable fact that in every nomination campaign since 1980, in both parties, the eventual party nominee was the candidate who had raised the most money by Dec. 31 of the year before the general election.” The early primaries dutifully rubber-stamp the decision of the donors. That’s not democracy. 

So, about a year from now, on Dec. 31, 2007, the presidential nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties will be determined. Just count the money, then indulge in New Year’s revelry as you may. The primaries and caucuses that follow will be an empty sham. 

The curious thing is that so few have noticed that the real decision has been taken out of the hands of the voters. If, in one quadrennial cycle, had gone from the campaign calendar of 1972 to that of 2004, we would, as Al Gore’s frog, have immediately jumped out of the boiling pot. However, we have sat in that pot for thirty years without noticing that our democracy was slowly being cooked.  

 

Thomas Gangale is an aerospace engineer and a former Air Force officer. He is currently the executive director at OPS-Alaska, a think tank based in Petaluma, where he manages projects in political science and international relations.  

 


Commentary: Who’s Being Served?

By Erin Wolfe
Tuesday December 19, 2006

The holiday season seems to open the flood gates of compassion, with volunteers and resources pouring in during the one time of the year the less fortunate are fed, clothed, and remembered. Meanwhile economists monitor the sales temperature, hoping feverish shoppers will exceed the boiling point and consumerism will bring balance to a system delicately suspended by a few coins in either direction.  

A recent West Coast transplant, I decided to spend my first Thanksgiving away among people who would truly value their meal. I volunteered to serve with Father River, the self-titled punk priest who ministers to the drug addicts, sex workers, and punk youth in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. 

Cheryl, a sociology grad student, posted an online ad looking for a place to volunteer for Thanksgiving. We met at BART at 4:30 to ride into the city. “Look for the girl with a red handbag,” she advised. I wondered if a girl with a red handbag would be prepared for the night ahead. 

Father River lives on Polk Street in a one-room apartment. Thirteen years have overgrown the four walls with photos and memorabilia branching onto the ceiling. Pictures of Jesus peek out from among the photos of the transient youth that have ebbed and flowed through River’s life. The logo of a cross crafted from hypodermic needles hangs above the desk. 

Roy, another volunteer, sits on the futon that slices the room in half. He’s brought two cans of baked beans. With nothing more than a microwave we decide to serve them cold from the can. Once Heidi and Jeff arrive with the turkey and dressing we’re off to Hemlock Alley, one of the dark, dank alleys that serves as home to drug addicts, sex workers, and other outcasts on the edge of the village.  

River navigates the nooks and crannies amidst the bars and cafes, winding through alleyways and the familiar haunts responding to the chorus of his name sung by the regular street residents, reminding them of a warm meal at 7 p.m. in Hemlock Alley. An emaciated woman sits in her wheelchair waiting for a customer. Matt, a bright young man whose intelligence is distorted by mental illness and drugs, falls in step and joins us in this sort of Thanksgiving Parade. We pass several well-dressed couples whose innate fear response signal a reflexive withdraw. I feel like saying “Boo” but instead march on. 

We serve Thanksgiving meal from the back of a pick-up truck. With our limited supplies we ration turkey and dressing, green bean casserole, baked beans, and a roll into Styrofoam bowls. For dessert and refreshment we have pumpkin pie, Capri Sun, and a pair of clean socks. One gentleman declines a serving of beans for his partner on account of her dialysis. I wish I’d brought yams. 

My hands are numb from the cold. Cheryl is shivering as she cuts pie with a plastic spoon. Someone has nabbed a bed in front of a vent blowing warm air. 

Bobby asks me if I believe in Jesus. He recalls the night he prayed for deliverance from his drug addiction and was saved by God’s grace. Still on the streets, he relapsed a month ago but that minor incident served as a reminder, he insists. Bobby was wondering how to stay warm tonight when River appeared with an offer of blankets, a beaming smile that affirms his newfound faith. He gives me a printed copy of his testimony warning, “It’s graphic.” River appears to take our picture and Bobby asks, “Do you mind if I stand next to you?”  

After 9 p.m. River dons his robes and begins liturgy. I eat of Christ’s body and share in his blood from the cup that’s passed around the few who’ve chosen to stay. We send leftovers with some and set the rest on the street that smells like raw sewage. Cheryl insists on leaving the plastic spoons too, a sort of symbolic grant of full recognition of human civilization. 

River seeks momentary respite in his room for what is still an early night where silence may crescendo in a cacophony before sunrise. At 10:30 p.m. Cheryl and I spot the neon warmth of the open sign at Bob’s Broiler and rush in to refuel. “I have to have a Thanksgiving meal,” Cheryl says. “I can’t go home and eat cereal.” She orders a turkey burger. I order an omelet and we both clean our plates. 

When I finally crawl into bed at 1:30 a.m., my mind is still saturated with the evening’s images and interactions. I can’t put the experience on a trophy shelf of good deeds. What’s so phenomenal about dishing up some food and a smile?  

We feel protected from the refuge of our homes and a steady paycheck, but what truly separates you from the person on the street? The eyes that glance at you are the very same you use to look away. An outstretched hand resembles your own. 

I am washed in tears of real gratitude for the respect and courtesy I received in the street home of my hosts. Serving, I remembered my own humanity— where people lingered hungry for something more than food. 

 

For more information about Father River Damien Sims and his ministry in the Polk Village area of San Francisco, visit www.temenos.org. 

 

Erin Wolfe is an East Bay resident. 

 

 

 


Columns

Column: Dispatches From the Edge: Spy vs. Spy; War With Syria?

By Conn Hallinan
Friday December 22, 2006

Spy vs. spy, the gang that couldn’t poison straight, or welcome to the new Cold War?  

Trying to unravel the tale behind the poisoning of former Russian KGB officer Alexander Litvineko is like taking a journey through Alice’s looking glass, with the central characters just as about as bizarre as those who populated Lewis Carroll’s tale. 

Take “Russian intelligence expert” and “academic” Mario Scaramella, who met with Litvineko the day it was thought the former agent was poisoned with radioactive polonium 210. Scaramella has led a chorus of Litvineko’s former associates who claim Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the hit. 

It turns out that the two universities at which he claims he teaches —Naples University and San Jose State University—never heard of him. As for his assertion that he is an “expert” on Soviet intelligence, he got that credential in 2003 when former right wing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appointed him as consultant to the Mitrokin Commission, a parliamentary body supposedly investigating KGB influence in Italy. 

However, according to the center-left coalition that took power last April, the Commission was set up solely to smear Romano Prodi, the current prime minister. Scaramella was never able to demonstrate that Prodi was a KGB agent, but he told the Commission’s chair, Paolo Guzzanti, a member of Burlusconi’s Forza Italia Party, that Prodi had “friendly relations” with the Soviet intelligence organization. Prodi filed a libel suit Dec. 1 against “persons” who tried to link him with the KGB. 

Then there are on-the-lam Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and Chechnya rebel spokesman Akhmen Zakayev, who have also fingered the Russian government for the poisoning, and who arrived arm in arm at Litvineko’s funeral. Zakayev claims to have converted Litvineko to Islam on his deathbed. 

Litvineko was close to London’s wealthy Russian community and worked for Titon International, a security firm that spies on businesses. The Observer reports that a Russian academic living in London, Julia Svetlichnaya, claims that Litvineko told her he intended to make a living blackmailing Russian billionaires and spies.  

On one level this all seems like dark comedy—John Le Carre on acid—but the fallout from the whole matter has deepened the chill between Russia and the West and damaged bilateral relations between London and Moscow.  

Which, as a German radiation expert suggests, may be the story behind the story. 

Sebastian Pflugbeil, president of the German Society for Radiation Protection, and a physicist, has strong doubts about the “Russian connection.”  

Pflugbeil says “If you keep polonium in a tightly shut vial, you can transport it without contamination. Either these killers were rank amateurs or, and I think this is also plausible, a trail has been deliberately created to cast suspicion in a certain direction.” 

The physicist, who has studied how East German spies used radioactive material, says that “secret agents are normally trained to kill without leaving any evidence,” but in this case, “it’s not just a trail. They have practically bulldozed a superhighway all the way to Moscow. They wanted to make a spectacle of it.” 

Oh, what tangled webs we weave… 

 

War by summer between Israel and either Lebanon or Syria is what a number of Middle East experts are now predicting. In a recent article in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff report that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are “already undergoing an intensive process of preparation, which is based in part on lessons already learned from last summer’s second Lebanon war. 

According to sources in the IDF, a major military incursion into Gaza is also likely. “Lebanon and the Gaza Strip have left too many issues undecided,” Haaretz reports the sources saying, “too many potential detonators that could cause a new conflagration. The army’s conclusion from this is that a new war in the future is a reasonable possibility.”  

Training of reservists has been stepped up, and Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz told army radio that the country must prepare itself for fighting an “unconventional war.”  

Peretz’s comment suggests that the IDF is preparing to strike at Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, but recent remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggest Syria might be the target. In rejecting recommendations by the Iraq Study Group that Israel should consider negotiating over returning the Golan Heights, Olmert said “In my view, Syria’s subversive operations, its support for Hamas—which may be what’s preventing real negotiations with the Palestinians—do not give much hope for negotiations with Syria anytime soon.” 

That position was bolstered by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said, “There is no indication that Syria wishes to be a stabilizing force. They are causing problems in Lebanon of extraordinary proportions.” Rice went on to charge that Damascus is undermining the “moderate Arab states” and the “road map” peace plan between Israelis and Palestinians. 

In fact, the previous Sharon government and current Olmert government steadfastly maintained there was no “Palestinian partner” to talk with, and opted for unilateral actions rather than negotiations. The “road map” is considered largely defunct, particularly after the Bush Administration agreed with the Israeli interpretation that the plan did not require Israel to give up its large West Bank settlements.  

Not everyone in the Olmert government is a fan of war with Syria. Amos Yadlin, the chief of Israeli Military Intelligence, recently argued that Tel Aviv should examine the possibility of peace negotiations with Syria, a position Peretz took shortly after the end of the Lebanon war.  

Peretz came under fire for his comments, and Olmert suggested that Yadlin was “exceeding the bounds of his authority” write Harel and Issacharoff.  

There is little doubt that the IDF could smash up Syria’s conventional army, but, according to Yadlin, Damascus paid close attention to the Israeli debacle in Southern Lebanon this past summer and is creating a military force modeled on Hezbollah. That would mean missiles and guerilla units armed with anti-tank weapons. Those anti-tank weapons were not only efficient in neutralizing Israeli armor in Lebanon, they served as short-range artillery pieces that had a devastating effect on IDF infantry. 

If the Olmert government does decide to attack Syria, it will find that the Israeli public—at least for now—supports it. A recent poll by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research found that only 18 percent of Israelis thought that long-term peace with Syria is possible and 67 percent reject returning the Golan Heights in exchange for peace. Slightly over half think there will be another war with Syria. 

 

President George W. Bush has always said that he would be led by the views of his commanders on the ground when it came to making decisions about the war in Iraq.  

He should ask the men and women on the front line, like a Zogby International/Le Moyne College poll did. The poll found that only 23 percent of the troops felt they should stay “as long as they were needed,” and a whopping 72 percent felt the U.S, should withdraw within 12 months. A hefty 29 percent wanted out immediately, a figure that went up to 49 percent among reservists and 45 percent among National Guard troops. 

Zogby also found that most American troops thought the Iraq war was over the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Some 85 percent said the U.S. invasion was “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks.  

 

 

 

 

 

 


Undercurrents: Debating the Use of the Word ‘Nigger’

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday December 22, 2006

I waited a bit to comment on comedian Michael Richards’ comedy club “nigger” meltdown, in part because there were other more pressing things to write about, in part because the use of the word “nigger” in American life is a serious, long-term discussion that need not rise to the surface only when it has become the talk-show, blogsphere fad of the moment. I’ve written on the subject before, at length, and expect to do it again, from time to time. 

For those who missed it—if that is possible—former “Seinfeld” television star Richards made national news late last month when he was caught on camera during a routine at L.A.’s Laugh Factory responding to black hecklers in the audience by repeatedly calling them “niggers.” 

“Throw his ass out,” Mr. Richards shouted. “He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!” And when several in the audience voiced their disapproval of his tirade, he said, “They’re going to arrest me for calling a black man a nigger.” Richards also told the men, “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass.” 

For those who know something about recent American history, the reference to American lynching immediately took Mr. Richards’ remarks out of the area of mere name-calling and into the realm of the indefensible, and there were more than enough condemnations from sources various and sundry to fill several file cabinets. 

But Mr. Richards also had his defenders, people who wondered why it is OK for African-Americans to use the word “nigger” while others are condemned for it. 

Typical of that sentiment was someone signing himself “Jack” at Matt Dentler’s entertainment-based blog (http://blogs.indiewire.com/mattdentler/), who remarked that it is “two-faced of civil rights leaders to make a mountain out of mole hill with the comedian/actor Michael Richards’s affair where he used the word ‘nigger’ multiple times. Black comedians on the Black Entertainment Channel can scream ‘nigger’ and the audience will scream with laughter with some almost falling out of their chairs. Pardon my French, but if a Nigger says ‘nigger’ he is not engaged in a racist tirade and he can get paid top dollar for doing it.” 

“Sillier yet,” Jack continued, “the word ‘nigger’ is so taboo that some people are expected to make reference to it by saying ‘the n-word’. We do not have a ‘g-word’ for ‘gringo’ [etc., etc. etc.] …  

Jack concluded that Mr. Richards “was mouthing off at a night club where folks expected some insults. Black folks, especially the civil rights leaders, ought to be able to roll with the punches like everyone else.”  

Like everyone else? No, let’s leave that. It’s a distraction. 

In order to emphasize that we are advancing a universal truth rather than a point of personal privilege, let us make our assertions, first, in broader terms rather than the particular: those who are or have been the victims of some form or other of social oppression—racial, religious, gender, et. al—forever retain the right to use, in whatever way they want, the epithets used against them in advancing that oppression. Those who were not and are not the victims, do not (except under special circumstances, which we will talk about in a moment). That seems simple enough. 

In other words, Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho can make all the jokes in Asian dialect because she is of Asian descent, but comedian Rosie O’Donnell cannot. Ms. O’Donnell, on the other hand, is free to joke at will about lesbians, while for Ms. Cho (unless she is lesbian; I don’t know her well enough to determine), that is forbidden territory. So it is, also, with my Native American brethren, who can ridicule Uncle Tonto all they want. I would do so at my own risk. 

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule.  

The first is the “walk a mile in my moccasins” exception—those who are willing to accept the burdens of the oppressed are also made benefit to whatever perks may accrue (Johnny Otis, the Berkeley native musician who gave up his Greek ancestry early in life to identify himself exclusively as African-American, heart and soul, comes instantly to mind, here). The second exception are those who use ethnic epithets in their humor, for example, as methods of healing rather than hurting. The comedian Richard Pryor had the knack of it, almost always beginning his routines by ragging on himself—by the time he moved on to black people in general (who he almost always referred to as “niggers”) and then, finally, to other groups, the effect was more often than not to show the universal humanity in all of us, rather than an emphasis on the differences. 

But few of our non-African-American compatriots who seem so eager to be unleashed to use the word “nigger” at will appear willing to put the time or the energy in to qualify for either exception. Instead, like little children impatiently eyeing the bright packages under the Christmas tree, the ask from time to time “can’t we say it yet?,” sighing when told “no,” as if the word “nigger” were a present that they just cannot wait to open. 

The word “nigger” itself has vastly different effect upon most African-Americans, depending upon who is using it. 

For many years of our time here in this country, it was one of the terms we most often used to apply to ourselves. When the term went out of general use as a self-identification—supplanted by a succession of terms from “colored” to “negro” to “Negro” (with a capital “N”) to Black (with a capital “B”) and then to the present-day “African-American”—”nigger” was taken over exclusively as a perjorative and a put-down by anti-black racists. But even in the 1950s and the 1960s, a move was afoot among African-Americans to try to recapture the word, cleanse it, and rob it of its sting. 

In 1964, the comedian Dick Gregory titled his autobiography “nigger.” On the dedication page is a note to his mother by way of explanation: “Dear Momma,” it reads, “wherever you are, if ever you hear the word ‘nigger’ again, remember they are advertising my book.” 

That was, in part, the intent of many of the black comedians of the ’60s and ’70’s—Richard Pryor most famously and notably—attempting to defang the term by continued use. In doing so, they were mirroring the use of the term in “non-polite” black circles. One of the unspoken truths about black life is that many black people have never stopped referring to each other by that term—not in a way of putting each other down, but in descriptions that can range from admiration to friendship to affection, and even love. This is a fact not widely-known outside the African-American community but, then, why should it be? 

Thus, the adoption of the term by today’s hip-hop generation—transformed from straight “nigger” to its variation “nigga”—is not a new innovation at all, but merely a continuation of a long-term trend. What is different is that through cd’s and videos, the rest of the country—indeed, the world—is now privy to what used to be an exclusive and private dialogue. 

And, in fact, that usage of the term by African-Americans is by no means universally accepted among African-Americans, and there is a fierce and healthy dialogue going on amongst us as to its appropriateness under any circumstances. The results of that discussion have yet to be determined. 

Meanwhile, though the marvel of modern communications has allowed our non-black friends and not-so-friends to listen in to its use by African-Americans, this should not be construed as an invitation to join the “nigger” chorus. The term “nigger,” when used by anyone but an African-American, almost regardless of the context, revives dark and difficult memories—the rape of Africa, the slave trade, the horrors of the Middle Passage, the yeas of Southern chain slavery, the Hundred Years of Terror between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Civil Rights Era. We live, now, in the backwash of that foul history. And though African-Americans of my generation are mostly polite and mention it far less than we think about it, the consciousness and memory of our history, here, remains heavy on our minds. For almost all of us of my generation it will never go away, not to the end of our lives. 

A day will come when the word “nigger” will have lost its edge and bite, and generations can read of it and talk, dispassionately, of its history and its meaning. But that is not this day. And until that time, the word “nigger” belongs to African-Americans, and we alone have the right to regulate its use.  

We would ‘preciate it, a good number of us, if others would honor that. 

 


About the House: The Benefits of Solar Water Heating

By Matt Cantor
Friday December 22, 2006

The practice of home inspection is tied, to a surprising degree, to a study of history. Some of that history is ancient and broad and some of it is as diaphanous as the study of the last five presidencies. 

When I first started inspecting houses in the late 1980s, one of the things I frequently saw was the tired and, more often, dead vestige of a solar heating system. Not the kind of systems that you’re seeing so many of today which generate electricity but systems that heat water. 

Jimmy Carter remains one of my favorite U.S. presidents and I’m glad I was here to see him do his thing. Jimmy was the real deal. Less politician and more futurist. He’s still one of the few sane voices for true democracy (through a good cleansing of the electoral process) in the world today. In 1979 Jimmy sponsored and enacted a 40 percent federal tax rebate as an inducement to get Americans to buy solar water heating systems. Prior to this, the industry just hobbled along on innovation and the good will of a very small number of adventurous folks. 

Before I get into much more of the history of solar water heating, let me explain a little about what solar water heating is. 

Heating water using the sun’s energy is pretty much a no-brainer. It’s happening around us all the time. When the sun hits the ocean each day, it elevates the water temperature several degrees. The same happens with a pool or any body of water exposed to the sun. It seems natural to try to harness this effect, especially when we spend as much money as we do on domestic hot water (the hot water we shower or wash dishes with).  

Although there are a range of configurations for performing this task, all systems involve some type of solar collector as well as some form of storage. All the way back in the 1890s Clarence Kemp produced the first commercially manufactured solar water heater, dubbed the Climax. In 1897, 30 percent of the homes in Pasadena heated water using solar water heaters. 

These and most subsequent heaters employed large numbers of fine tubes (the early ones were nearly all copper) laid out in the sun and arranged so that water would flow through a very long thin passageway during which it would be heated up. Some of these were inside of boxes that helped to retain the heat. A combination of silvery or white surfaces for reflecting heat and black or dark covers helped to increase the temperature. That last part is an important passive heating concept and important in understanding many aspects of what one might dub “the secret life of houses.”  

Dark things not only get hotter, they also expand more than light colored materials exposed to the sun and thus move around more. Dark materials also wear out faster.  

In the case of the solar panel, black is the magic color since a black solar panel will heat water much faster than a white one. At least one popular panel is made of black butylene formed from two sheets into a labyrinth of tubules. Again, as water travels from one end to the other, water is raised to a high temperature. In addition to panels formed from great lengths of tubing, panels can also have shorter pipes that are heated to much higher temperatures using parabolic mirrors. One panel type has a short fat tank inside with a parabola built around it. The tank gets extremely hot and water can be heated inside the vessel very quickly.  

Once you have hot water, you need to store it and keep it hot, especially for night-time so the other critical component of a system like this is a well insulated tank. These tanks are often confused with water heaters since they tend to be pretty much the same size and shape and are connected to the water piping in the house. In systems I’ve inspected (almost all left over from the Carter administration), these are nearly always standing side by side with a gas water heater designed to heat water when the solar water heating system has gone cold. The smart systems have a small controller and an motor-driven valve that automatically switches back and forth between the gas and solar systems. The gas system runs at night after the solar tank has cooled below a reasonable bathing temperature and the solar runs during sunny days and as long as the heat holds out in the tank. 

Solar credits are back today and systems as I’ve just described can generate a federal tax credit of up to $2, 000 (or 30 percent of the installed cost) The government requires that at least half of the hot water demands of the house be provided for by the solar heating system in order to receive the credit. Payback for a system like this looks similar to photovoltaic system with about 8-10 years for a return on your investment (and free hotness thereafter) but it seems likely that a rise in energy costs (and hopefully, improved tax credits under future executive branch leadership) will bring these payback durations down somewhat. 

For years, the only systems I saw were ones with rusted out tanks and disconnected solar panels on the roof. The Regan administration killed the tax credit as soon as they took office and when the installation industry died, the service end died too. When the last installer has fled into plumbing or siding installation, there was no one left to keep these working for Dr. and Mrs. Jones and all that remained when I arrived was another system that had been completely disconnected and put back on the gas heater full time. 

This is definitely about global warming. I can’t think of a single alternative technology that has a deeper advantage over fuel burning than the heating of water. It’s a natural.  

If you’re looking at ways you can help the planet while upgrading your home, do yourself and your planet a favor by talking to your contractor about this most elegant of energy (and money) saving techniques. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Garden Variety: Aunt Ron’s Holiday Advice For The Gift-Lorn

By Ron Sullivan
Friday December 22, 2006

Uh-oh. It’s the 22nd. Last-minute gift shopping! If you celebrate Solstice, you’re late already. No matter. ’Tis the season on some calendar or other, and there’s a good chance you’ve forgotten someone, maybe or the quasi-mail service lost that perfect present you found in the Fussbudgets International catalogue. You’ve just now fished it out of your spamtrap, the email notice about the Christmas party at the executive director’s husbands’ brother-in-law’s stepdaughters’ new club, and you know that if you don’t show up you’ll be nominated to that Interminable Search Committee again. And you’re the Human Resources Director’s Secret Santa, oh joy. 

If the person you need a gift for is a gardener, you’re in luck. There’s doubtless some piece of crap, um, fascinating vintage repurposed objet d’art around the house you can give a gardener, if you call it a garden ornament. If it’s rusty, so much the better. If it’s not, scrape patches of the surface off and say, “It’s supposed to acquire a patina if it’s kept outdoors long enough.” 

If it has parts that still move, say it’s a gopher or deer repellent. When it doesn’t work, it’ll be just like every other alleged gopher or deer repellent.  

Or you can do a quick and legal Martha Stewart number and handcraft something.  

Strategy One: Grab the nearest concave object and plant something in it. In a streetside garden in south Berkeley, I’ve seen a pair of old boots planted with succulents. They looked good, too.  

Sneakers would give the plants even better drainage. Quick, take that pair you keep by the back door for emergency trash runs and split up the echeverria on the windowsill and/or the sedum groundcover out front. If you have a matchmaking urge, give the left shoe to one victim and the right to another.  

If the giftee is the sort of person who bronzes baby shoes, feel free to cover your old Keds with metallic spray paint—ideally before planting. Paint them white if they’re going to a Shabby Chic home. Glue beads all over them if you have spare beads and glue. Sign them if you have the nerve.  

Strategy Two: Promise something your target will have to try on first. Garden gloves, or a garden hat, or (if you’re feeling generous) a pair of Felco pruners. Make a date for February, after the mad shopping rush is over.  

Strategy Three: Find a pass-along plant. Split up your spiderplant or orchid or some other houseplant you actually like and pot up the puppy for a present. This is probably a less dubious gift than the version that includes old shoes. To glam it up, fish some gravel out of the aquarium for a top dressing, or swipe your kid’s marbles or even a scoop of kitty litter. Probably best if it’s clean kitty litter.  

If all else fails, call the nearest stable. A great heap of horse manure is always in good taste. No stable? Try City Hall—wherever you live.  

 

 


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday December 22, 2006

Why Are We So Complacent? 

 

It is a never-ending source of amazement and consternation to me to see how most people living in the Bay Area are so totally in denial about the Big One in our future. 

Not one of us would intentionally put our children, our grandchildren, our spouses, or ourselves in a dangerous situation that we knew would cause injury, or even death. Yet 85 percent of us don’t have our furniture/appliances secured, don’t have an emergency kit, don’t have an automatic gas shut-off valve, and almost that number of us live in homes that have been incompletely retrofitted, or not retrofitted at all.  

Why is this? I wish I knew the answer to the question. If I did, perhaps I could do a better job of raising people’s awareness. If you have any thoughts on the subject, please email me at larry@quakeprepare.com or give me a call. 

Here’s hoping that 2007 will be the year that the majority of folks in the Bay area wake up and do something to make themselves, their families, and their homes safer and more prepared. 

 

 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.


Column: Christmas in Las Vegas, Part One

By Susan Parker
Tuesday December 19, 2006

Friday, 4:30 p.m.: Arrive at Oakland International Airport with sister-in-law, one four-year-old and one two-year-old. Stand in line to check in bags. Stand in line to pass through security. Stand in line to view flight schedule. Learn that all Southwest Airline flights to Las Vegas are delayed by at least two hours due to bad weather in the Pacific Northwest. Stand in line at gate to see if tickets can be changed to fly out on 4 p.m. flight that is now leaving at 6 p.m. 

Get sent to Customer Service at opposite end of Terminal Two. Wait in line. Request change. Told to sit in waiting area until flight is called. Four-year-old needs to use bathroom. Stand in line in Ladies Room, find stall, help flush, rush back to Customer Service. Miss 6 p.m. flight. Stand in line to get on waiting list of 5 p.m. flight that is now leaving at 7 p.m. Told to go to Gate 10 in Terminal One and wait at desk for standby list to be called. Rush to Terminal One. Lose boarding passes on way. Stand in line at Gate 10 and report that boarding passes are missing. Woman at desk says, “No problem.” Man at desk says, “Yes, it’s a problem.” Told to step back and wait for further instructions. At 6:55 p.m. name called. Proceed to counter. Asked by check-in lady for boarding passes. Explain again that they have been lost. Long consultation between multiple agents. Two-year-old begins to cry. Four-year-old joins in. Agents decide to issue new boarding passes. Instructed to rush to Gate 17 for immediate departure. Party of four will arrive in Las Vegas at 8:30 p.m. but baggage will not arrive until 10:30 p.m.  

Friday, 8:30 p.m: Arrive at McCarran International Airport but Granny and PopPop have read flight information board and expect flight to be two hours late. They sit on bench near baggage claim and are spotted by brilliant four-year-old. Pack everyone into rental van, depart airport, hit Friday night Strip traffic, wander through neighborhoods, eventually arriving at Sun City, Summerlin, winter home of Granny and PopPop. 

Friday, 10 p.m.: Discover diapers packed in luggage that has not yet arrived. PopPop and Auntie rush to Walgreens. Disaster diverted. 

Saturday, 6 a.m.: PopPop and Auntie drive to airport, pick up lost luggage, come home, everyone changes clothes. 

Saturday, 3 p.m.: Extended family of six loads into van and drives 80 miles to Sagebrush Ranch for covered wagon Christmas ride. Wait two hours around small campfire in freezing desert while horses are saddled, 30 riders are seated atop swayback steeds, and 30 revelers are packed into decrepit wooden wagon outfitted with Christmas lights and bad audio system. Head out onto the prairie just like in the olden west, singing Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. Hit many rocks and cacti. Spend one hour jostling back and forth within the wagon, viewing not the purple sage and fruited plain, but a Girl Scout Troop from Henderson crammed like sardines on the middle bench. Arrive back at camp in order to indulge in gruel-like “cowboy chili,” questionable hot dogs, bad hot chocolate, and Costco cookies. Tramp through horse manure-filled desert back to van, pile in, drive 80 miles to Sun City. Vow never to visit Sagebrush Ranch again. 

Sunday, 11 a.m.: Pack kids into van, head to Valley View Mall, stand in line at J.C. Penny’s Portrait Center in order to have Christmas pics of children taken. Stand in line in shoe department to buy new shoes for four-year-old. Rush back to Sun City in order to eat early dinner and head back out to Magical Forest for light display and visit with Santa. Stand in line to enter Magical Forest. Stand in line to buy tickets for rides within Magical Forest. Stand in line for merry-go-round. Stand in line for choo-choo train. Stand in line to see Santa. Stand in line to wait for picture with Santa to develop. Walk through Enchanted Garden out to parking lot. Wait in line of cars to leave parking lot. Head back to Sun City. Stand in line to use bathrooms at Granny and PopPop’s house. Children and mother take master bedroom, Granny and PopPop take guest room. Auntie stuck on couch in middle of small living room but she doesn’t dare complain for fear she will be left out of next adventure: trip to Ethel M. Candy Factory and lighted Cactus Garden. 


Crow Talk and Chickadee Alarms: What Birds Are Saying

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 19, 2006

I’ll admit that I don’t have much of an ear for the language of crows. Ron says they have a specific call that means “Raven!,” uttered when the crows are harassing one of their larger relatives or escorting it out of the neighborhood. This wouldn’t surprise me at all, since they do have an extensive vocal repertoire. 

One researcher described eight variations on the basic caw, used in different contexts: territorial defense against other crows, warnings when a predator is sighted, and so on. Crows also have many non-caw vocalizations, even a kind of song, a mixture of “coos, caws, rattles, clicks, and grating noises” strung together in long sequences with “a rambling, improvised quality.” Crow jazz. 

It hasn’t been established whether these birds can recognize each other by voice, but it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch. Voice recognition is how seabirds find their own offspring in a crowded breeding colony, how emperor penguins locate their mates after that long trudge over the ice. It’s what allows territorial birds to distinguish a known neighbor from an unknown intruder, and flocking birds to synchronize their movements. 

But it was up to four New York biologists—Jessica Yorzinski, Sandra Vehrencamp, and Kevin McGowan at Cornell and Anne Clark at Binghamton—to demonstrate that the calls of individual crows have distinctive acoustic fingerprints, as reported recently in The Condor. 

Yorzinski and her colleagues focused on the inflected alarm caw, a short, sharp burst of sound given in the presence of a soaring bird of prey, or sometimes an unwelcome human. They worked with wild crow flocks in Ithaca, all of whose members had been tagged, banded, and identified as male or female. Each bird’s inflected alarm caw was measured in terms of 25 acoustic variables, including duration, bandwidth, and center frequency. 

I’ll spare you the math, but the researchers found that the crows had individually unique alarm caws, differentiated on seven factors. If the biologists could tell them apart by acoustic properties, presumably the birds could as well. They also found a gender difference: in general, female calls had higher frequency, stronger frequency modulation, wider bandwidth, and shorter duration than male calls. 

The exception was a male who was low in his flock’s pecking order and whose vocalizations were more like a female’s. Since male crows tend to dominate females, this would make you wonder about the confounding effects of gender and status. 

Why would it matter if a crow could identify the source of an alarm? Yorzinski and colleagues suggest that not all crows are equally reliable sentinels. Young, inexperienced birds may issue a disproportionate number of false alarms. 

It would be important to know if the warning came from some mistake-prone rookie or one of the flock’s keen-eyed elders. And if a neighbor’s alarm call sounded different from any made by a flock member, the birds could gauge the approximate distance of the threat. 

Mind you, this is only one call out of a couple dozen. The crows’ signaling system may also be able to specify the degree of danger. This appears to be the case for another bird, the black-capped chickadee, which had never been suspected of any kind of vocal sophistication. Black-capped chickadees, like our local chestnut-backed species, are known for mobbing predators like hawks and owls, giving a characteristic “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” call. This is often how birders are able to detect the presence of a roosting—and disgruntled—owl. 

In an ingenious experiment, Chris Templeton, then a doctoral student at the University of Washington, measured the responses of chickadees in an aviary to the presence of live predators. The hawks and owls came from Raptors of the Rockies, a rehabilitation facility in Florence, Mont. 

Templeton also used two mammalian predators, a domestic cat and a ferret (standing in for native weasels), and a bobwhite quail as a control. He found that different predators elicited different numbers of “dees” in the alarm call. In general, the smaller raptors triggered more consternation than the larger ones. 

Great horned owls rated only a few “dees”; northern pygmy-owls, up to 23. Since pygmy-owls are specialized predators on small birds and great horned owls take mainly mammals, this makes sense. “A great horned owl going after a chickadee would be like a Hummer trying to outmaneuver and catch a Porsche,” says Templeton. 

But the size of the test bird was clearly not the only factor. The chickadees didn’t react at all to the non-predatory quail. And a Cooper’s hawk, a mid-sized raptor that preys on smaller birds, drew more “dees” than would have been predicted from its size alone. These little birds are either equipped with some kind of mental field guide to the local raptors or are remarkably fast learners. 

If chickadees can pack that much information into their calls, Lord knows what the bigger-brained crows are capable of. They may well be saying not just “Raven!” but “Raven with a missing right primary feather at ten o’clock!” And the response from the other crows may be “George knows what he’s talking about—let’s scramble!” 

 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday December 22, 2006

FRIDAY, DEC. 22 

EXHIBITIONS 

Don Clausen Oil Paintings Abstract and Portaits at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., #4. Runs through Feb. 4. 421-1255. 

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 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 8 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martinez St., Pt. Richmond. Donation $10. 232-4031. 

Aurora Theatre Company “A Little Cole in Your Stocking” at 8 p.m., Wed.-Sat., at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 30. Tickets are $25. 843-4822. 

Berkeley Rep “All Wear Bowlers” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through Dec. 23. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. 

Circus Fellini’s Holiday Extravaganza at 1 and 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Sun. Tickets are $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

Shotgun Players “The Forest War” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan 14. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Christmas Carol” Actor Martin Harris reads the Dickens classic at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Donation $5-$10. 848-7800. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Christie McCarthy & Starting Five at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baguette Quartette at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

In Harmony’s Way, a cappella, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jim Grantham Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

David Gans, Mario DeSio, and Mokai at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The New Hour, 5 Cent Coffee, Stella at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Wounds, Have-Nots, Skyflakes at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Tracy Bartlow, Femi at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Grease Traps, Oaktown funk and soul, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Flowtilla at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Invisible Cities, Scrabble at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100.  

Mike Stern at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sat. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 23 

CHILDREN  

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Polar Express” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

Circus Fellini’s Holiday Extravaganza at 1 and 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Sun. Tickets are $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 8 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Caroling with Terrence Kelly at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Steve Taylor and Derek See at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Solstice Celebration in Honor of David Nadel with Zydeco Flames, Sidewinders, Nigerian Brothers, Edessa and others at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Drum circle and potluck at 6:30 p.m. Free. 525-5054.  

The Zoopy Show, Sugar Butt Tiger, The Yard Dogs at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100.  

Matt Morrish & Trinket Lover, funk, afro-cuban, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Peter Barshay’s “Fog” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Lady Soul, Sonny, Mr. Grench at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Island of Misfit Music Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. 841-2082.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 24 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Clairdee at 7 and 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 26 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Will Durst “Big Fat Year End Kiss Off Comedy Show” at 18 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$17. 925-798-1300. 

Reggae Reunion and Boxing Day Celebration with Fireproof at at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

McCoy Tyner Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 27 

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 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Stars Original at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

The Zazous, original bossa nova, jazz and reggae, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 28 

THEATER 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“924 Gilman: Past, Present and Future” with panelists who have been involved with the music venue for the past 20 years, at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman. Free, all ages. www.924gilman.org 

”Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Phoenix and Afterbuffalo, Earthquake Weather at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082  

Paul Mooney Thurs.-Fri. at 8 and 10 p.m., Sat. at 7, 9 and 11 p.m. and Sun. at 7 and 9 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $40-$100. 652-2120. 

The Attik, Diga Tio, Theory, Naya Binghi at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

FRIDAY, DEC. 29 

THEATER 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. 

Aurora Theatre Company “A Little Cole in Your Stocking” at 8 p.m., Wed.-Sat., at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 30. Tickets are $25. 843-4822. 

Shotgun Players “The Forest War” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan 14. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ralph Nader on continuing the themes of “The Good Fight” at at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Alex Pfeifer-Rosenblum at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dick Conte Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

David Grisman Bluegrass Experience at 5 and 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mark Robinson Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dave Lionelli and Jamie Jenkins at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

That Man Fantastic, Ramon & Jessica, Sligo Rags at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

All You Can Eat, Born/Dead, Drain the Sky and others at 6 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $10. 525-9926. 

Chris Zanardi Quartet, jazz and groove, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Frost Bite, RBL Posse at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Lord Loves a Working Man, The Struts at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

McCoy Tyner Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 30 

CHILDREN  

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Wererabbit” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Black Tie Botanical Experience” Botanical watercolors by Bay Area artists. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Jan. 29. 444-7411. 

FILM 

“924 Gilman” Screening of the documentary in celebration of the music venue’s 20th anniversary at 2 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. 525-9926. 

THEATER 

International Comedy Showcase with comedians from Africa, China, Labanon, Scotland, India and Iran at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattucks Ave. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tanaora at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Workingman’s Ed at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Stephanie Crawford, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Clifford Lamb Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Paul Mooney Sat. at 7, 9 and 11 p.m. and Sun. at 7 and 9 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $40-$100. 652-2120. 

The Loud Family, Anton Barbeau, Fainting Goats at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

California Flight, Mike Marshall at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $10. All ages. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Cyril Guiraud Trio, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

924 Gilman’s 20th Anniversary with Social Unrest, El Dopa, Black Fork, and others at 6 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $10. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 31 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra New Year’s Eve Celebration, dedicated to the memory of Maestro Edgar Braun at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Free. 415-248-1640. 

Jesus Diaz and his Bay Area Cuban All Stars at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $25-$27. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bobby Cespedes & Her Trio with John Santos at 7 and 10 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $50-$75, includes traditional Cuban dinner. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Will Durst “Big Fat Year End Comedy Show” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$17. 925-798-1300. 

High Country at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Disappear Inompletely at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. Cost is $10. 655-5715. 

New Year’s Eve Flamenco Fiesta at with dinner and performances by Yaelisa and Caminos Flamencos Company at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $50-$145. 287-8700. 

Jazz Fourtet at 10 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Balkan Bash with Edessa, Ziyia, Joe Finn at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Kings & Queens New Years Bash at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $20 in advance from ticketweb. 548-1159.  

Zadell at 9:30 p.m. and Jason Martineau at 6:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

California Flight, Baby James at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Cost is tba. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Antioquia, Sinclair at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

McCoy Tyner Quartet at 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $100. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

 

 

 


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Friday December 22, 2006

A CELEBRATION OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE 

 

A solstice celebration in honor of David Nadel will be held at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 23 at Ashkenaz. The event will feature the Zydeco Flames, the Sidewinders, the Nigerian Brothers, Edessa and others, as well as a drum circle and potluck. Admission is free.  

1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054. 

 

INTERNATIONAL COMEDY SHOWCASE 

 

South Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center will host an “International Comedy Showcase” at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 30, featuring comedians from Africa, China, Lebanon, Scotland, India and Iran. $13-$15. 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. 

 

20th ANNIVERSARY BASH FOR 924 GILMAN  

 

924 Gilman, Berkeley’s venerable member-run punk rock venue, will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a 6 p.m. show Saturday, Dec. 30 featuring a number of bands, including Solcial Unrest, El Dopa and Black Fork. All ages welcome; no alcohol, no drugs, no violence. $10. The celebration will be preceded by a 2 p.m. screening of 924 Gilman, a documentary about the venue.  

525-9926. 

 

CELLULOID CLASSICS IN EL CERRITO 

 

The Cerrito Theater continues its weekend series of classics from yesteryear with Cary Grant in The Bishop’s Wife (1947), showing at 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 23 and at 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 24. The following weekend will feature After the Thin Man (1936), the second film in the Thin Man series, at 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 30 and at 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 31. 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.picturepubpizza.com.


Moving Pictures: Two Films of Transformation and Enlightenment

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday December 22, 2006

Words of My Perfect Teacher, opening today at the Elmwood Theater, begins with a dose of comedy, a sequence of close-ups of two men, both seemingly deep in thought. We are meant to interpret this as some sort of Buddhist exercise, the teacher perhaps leading the student in a form of meditation. But then the camera pulls back, the soundtrack kicks in, and we see instead that the two men are engrossed in a televised soccer match. 

It is a great opening, perfectly setting the tone and premise for the story that follows, a portrait of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Norbu Rinpoche, one of the world’s most preeminent and iconoclastic Buddhist lamas. If only the film were able to maintain the ironic distance and awareness of this opening scene. But unfortunately director Lesley Ann Patten has neither the skill nor apparently the sophistication to create a film with the insight and depth warranted by her subject. 

There are few things more nauseating than self-satisfied white westerners opining on the virtues of eastern religions and philosophies. Too often the opiner has been disproportionately impressed by a dollar-book summary of a major religion’s tenets and has taken that grain of truth and blown it up into a mountain of simplistic misinterpretations. Words of My Perfect Teacher suffers greatly from this malaise.  

The film follows Khyentse Norbu during the course of a year which includes the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2002 World Cup. We see the guru on the streets of London, in New York, at a soccer game in Germany, and in Bhutan. In western cities, Khyentse Norbu is an unassuming presence, a modest man sometimes in robes, sometimes in jeans and sweatshirt. He is seen as a kind but enigmatic teacher, a man who embodies the east in a demeanor that fits in perfectly in the west. But it is in the east that we see Khyentse Norbu truly in his element, performing ceremonies in Bhutan, a nation where his religion is practiced and embraced and his station understood. Here he is able to administer his teachings at a high level, while in the west it as though he is simply playing a role, a sort of dog-and-pony show, babysitting the privileged white folks who have neither the depth nor the dedication to truly master the techniques and teachings he has to offer. 

One of the first and seemingly most obvious of his teachings is the danger of idolatry, of looking upon a teacher as an infallible and unfailingly wise creature who can bestow wisdom upon his disciples like a gift. Perhaps we’re seeing these students at too early a stage in their studies, but this is one lesson they seem to have trouble learning. Throughout the film they persist in this indulgence, viewing Khyentse Norbu as an all-knowing, all-seeing master of their fates. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a glance from Khyentse Norbu is just a glance, and sometimes a guru who appears lost in an airport is truly just a man lost in an airport. No matter, Khyentse Norbu’s disciples prefer to treat him like a human Rorschach test, taking his every glance and gesture as a great lesson to be learned and every all-too-human error as a mysterious and profound teaching moment—though they can never quite convey to us precisely what they have learned.  

Patten’s press materials for Words of My Perfect Teacher enthusiastically cite the film as Patten’s first on-screen appearance in one of her own works, an admission that Patten indeed falls short of her Buddhist aspirations. It is clearly an error of ego for her to believe that her presence and narration shed any light on the subject, and the film would have benefited greatly from a collaborator’s intervention. Instead we get inane voiceovers and absurd reaction shots in which Patten’s face emotes nothing; she is so intensely conscious of the camera that her appearances have the feel of a dreadful TV reality show in which participants awkwardly ape mannerisms they perceive as natural.  

What saves the film is Khyentse Norbu himself, for his charisma and enigmatic appeal are indeed very real and palpable. And human. The guru acknowledges the problems of the teacher-student relationship, is forthcoming about its inherent shortcomings and potential hypocrisies, and even admits that he too falls prey to these problems. His everyman persona is natural and naturally complex, and while some may see his silly hats or obsessions with soccer and cinema as eccentric for a Buddhist lama, his simple message of humanity and humility and fallibility apparently goes unheeded by the film’s participants. 

 

A more satisfying tale of adults in search of enlightenment comes in the form of Soap, a Danish import opening this week at San Francisco’s Lumiere Theater. 

The contrasts are simple: Charlotte is an easy-going, sensual woman, natural and earthy in appearance, with no makeup and no apologies. She has left her boyfriend and moved into a bright and sparse apartment to start her life as a single, sexually liberated woman. In the dark, cluttered apartment downstairs lives Veronica, a transsexual waiting anxiously for a surgery appointment that will finally make her a woman.  

The film uses the device of Veronica’s obsession with an American soap opera to both frame and gently mock the melodrama of its own story, a technique that can be perceived as either endearingly quirky or as a shameless crutch. Or maybe both. Early on the plot and characters seem too trite and simplistic to be taken seriously, making the soap opera device seem like a poor attempt to mask the film’s weakness as irony. However, the film only gets better and the characters more sympathetic, eventually casting the framing device as a playful chorus offering comment on the simple story line. 

The contrasts between the two characters are emphasized at every turn. Veronica’s shabby apartment looks as though it has been lived in for centuries, while Charlotte’s stark white walls and packing boxes reveal her as a woman in transition, afraid to become attached to anything or anyone. Her charm and sensuality mask a personality turned cold and withdrawn while Veronica’s humble, worn environment shields the fragile existence of a man trying desperately through awkward wigs and makeup to feel natural as a woman. Of course the two come in contact with one another, and of course they clash, and of course they gradually come to like one another, though the relationship is always fraught with tension and uncertainty. But the contrivance of it softens over time as the two women get to know each other, together adding up to something resembling a complete human being, the two imperfect halves coming to form a happier if still imperfect whole. 

The film’s best moments are in the simple details of the performances. Trine Dyrholm effectively conveys the spiritual isolation of a woman who has been treated by her brutish man as all sex and neediness and has now run as far with the identity as she can, distorting her sexuality into a promiscuous, vapid existence where she is finally incapable of even expressing polite interest in the lives of those she beds. A particularly poignant moment comes when Charlotte stands before her bedroom window, looking longingly and in vain for the peeping tom she has previously castigated. But there is no one out there to pay attention to her, and she simply stands there, flashing her breasts to the city like an S.O.S. 

And David Dencik, as Veronica, takes the cliché of the suicidal transsexual and imbues his performance with the undercurrents of agony spawned by the rejection of the father and the lack of understanding of the mother, as well as the failing life force of a woman who has ceased to believe in her own worth.  

Sure, there are plenty of hackneyed devices at work here, from the depressing depravity of Veronica’s johns to the ball-busting coldness of Charlotte, the woman scorned. And yes, it’s a soap opera, and not even that—it’s just one small subplot of a soap opera, a narrative that would be resolved and discarded in just a week’s worth of daily broadcasts. But director Pernille Fischer Christensen manages to take Soap beyond the trite contrivances of its framework, casting light on the humanity and depth that lies beneath the melodrama. 

 

Photograph: Words of My Perfect Teacher is a portrait of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Norbu Rinpoche, a preeminent and iconoclastic Buddhist lama. 

 

WORDS OF MY  

PERFECT TEACHER 

Directed by Lesley Ann Patten and featuring Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Norbu Rinpoche, Bernardo Bertolucci, Steven Seagal. 103 minutes. Playing at the Elmwood Theater in Berkeley.  

 

SOAP 

Directed by Pernille fischer Christensen. Starring Trine Dyrholm and David Dencik. Playing at the Lumiere Theater in San Francisco. 104 minutes.


The Theater: Circus Finelli Clowns Around at Julia Morgan Center

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday December 22, 2006

“I’m a doctor,” said Dr. Samba, aka Molly Shannon, as she passed out paper napkins for kleenex to a family suffering from little sniffly noses while waiting for Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza at the Julia Morgan Center on College Avenue. “I have these things under control.” 

Then, springing up to the stage, she asks those assembled, “Do you like my outfit?”—a bright, scanty Carneval two-piece with tutu—receiving a big shout from the kids. The samba music starts, Dr. Samba herself, shimmying, introduces the Circus en Espagnol, and a clown trombonist with big glasses and pigtails like antennae (Luz Gaxiola) blats her way onstage, kicking a high-hat cymbal strategically placed. 

Another act’s announced, getting a single cheer from the audience—from Verka Zaskodna, who rushes up the aisle and onstage, realizing it’s her act and she’s late. Clad in a bathrobe and slippers, crowned with a bathcap, munching a banana, Verka dryly translates Dr. Samba’s orotund Spanish intros into terse English, as Luz, playing yet another of her many instruments, peels off Dr. Samba’s tutu as she marches past and suddenly we’re at the beginning of Beth Clarke’s slack rope act. 

Circus Finelli’s all-female phantasmagoria, presented by the Circus Center in San Francisco, rolls along at this brisk clip (it’s under an hour), droll pauses and counter-beats to mix up the fun. It’s a family show, and perfect for the kids (who were howling with glee), but also an amusing holiday escape during for unaccompanied adults, with matinees (two a day) up through Christmas Eve. 

Beth Clarke’s a slack rope walker with style, smiling with confidence, posing with elegant gestures, even hopping backwards or balancing a rolled-up carpet on her raised feet as she stretches back on the rope, to the tune of “My Black Market Baby.” 

At the end of her act, Pepito (Z. Smith) makes a clown ballet out of an ungainly pas de deux with stage manager Mike Clifford in getting the rigging down. Luz on harmonium shoots Pepito with her finger, and Verka in her housewife get-up shoves the clown corpse offstage with a pushbroom to the hilarity of the kids present.  

There’s a cartoon quality to the sound effects and instruments that texture the string of acts, but it’s all dependent on live timing—nothing like you’d ever see on TV or in the movies. There’s lots of comical juggling and acrobatics, thrown in with the real thing; humor and excitement are inextricable. Pepito plays a roaring lion, bursting out on stage after Dr. Samba asks for a replacement tamer—a boot with a big bone in it and a frayed whip have just been tossed from the wings—ferociously gnawing the boot, swallowing the bone like a sword swallower, and using the whip handle as a mic to do a little leonine rap act, before tearing into the audience to chew on a few little rainboots, feet wriggling in ticklish delight. 

But the lion turns out to be a relation to Bert Lahr’s cowardly lion, scared by a dancing cow shuffling onstage to James Brown and twirling hula hoops on her hooves. Later, Lorelei MacDonald, the trapeze artist, will ride on with great eclat astride the same cow, doing her fabulous act aloft to the old Yiddish swing tune, looking in her get-up and big grin for all the world like Ann Miller. 

There’s a funny contortionist bit, a bit of audience participation here and there, like Dr. Samba switching to English as she treats patients by misting them, until a disguised clown plant retches her way up from the audience and everything goes awry. There’s some slap-boxing, too, and a great finale with curtain call, Pepito hitting the deck again, and Verka with the pushbroom, following the great Wilson Mizner (of Benicia and the Barbary Coast) and his advice when he managed a theatrical flophouse in Manhattan: “Carry Out Your Own Dead!” 

 

CIRCUS FINELLI’S  

HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA 

1 and 3 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. 845-8542. 


About the House: The Benefits of Solar Water Heating

By Matt Cantor
Friday December 22, 2006

The practice of home inspection is tied, to a surprising degree, to a study of history. Some of that history is ancient and broad and some of it is as diaphanous as the study of the last five presidencies. 

When I first started inspecting houses in the late 1980s, one of the things I frequently saw was the tired and, more often, dead vestige of a solar heating system. Not the kind of systems that you’re seeing so many of today which generate electricity but systems that heat water. 

Jimmy Carter remains one of my favorite U.S. presidents and I’m glad I was here to see him do his thing. Jimmy was the real deal. Less politician and more futurist. He’s still one of the few sane voices for true democracy (through a good cleansing of the electoral process) in the world today. In 1979 Jimmy sponsored and enacted a 40 percent federal tax rebate as an inducement to get Americans to buy solar water heating systems. Prior to this, the industry just hobbled along on innovation and the good will of a very small number of adventurous folks. 

Before I get into much more of the history of solar water heating, let me explain a little about what solar water heating is. 

Heating water using the sun’s energy is pretty much a no-brainer. It’s happening around us all the time. When the sun hits the ocean each day, it elevates the water temperature several degrees. The same happens with a pool or any body of water exposed to the sun. It seems natural to try to harness this effect, especially when we spend as much money as we do on domestic hot water (the hot water we shower or wash dishes with).  

Although there are a range of configurations for performing this task, all systems involve some type of solar collector as well as some form of storage. All the way back in the 1890s Clarence Kemp produced the first commercially manufactured solar water heater, dubbed the Climax. In 1897, 30 percent of the homes in Pasadena heated water using solar water heaters. 

These and most subsequent heaters employed large numbers of fine tubes (the early ones were nearly all copper) laid out in the sun and arranged so that water would flow through a very long thin passageway during which it would be heated up. Some of these were inside of boxes that helped to retain the heat. A combination of silvery or white surfaces for reflecting heat and black or dark covers helped to increase the temperature. That last part is an important passive heating concept and important in understanding many aspects of what one might dub “the secret life of houses.”  

Dark things not only get hotter, they also expand more than light colored materials exposed to the sun and thus move around more. Dark materials also wear out faster.  

In the case of the solar panel, black is the magic color since a black solar panel will heat water much faster than a white one. At least one popular panel is made of black butylene formed from two sheets into a labyrinth of tubules. Again, as water travels from one end to the other, water is raised to a high temperature. In addition to panels formed from great lengths of tubing, panels can also have shorter pipes that are heated to much higher temperatures using parabolic mirrors. One panel type has a short fat tank inside with a parabola built around it. The tank gets extremely hot and water can be heated inside the vessel very quickly.  

Once you have hot water, you need to store it and keep it hot, especially for night-time so the other critical component of a system like this is a well insulated tank. These tanks are often confused with water heaters since they tend to be pretty much the same size and shape and are connected to the water piping in the house. In systems I’ve inspected (almost all left over from the Carter administration), these are nearly always standing side by side with a gas water heater designed to heat water when the solar water heating system has gone cold. The smart systems have a small controller and an motor-driven valve that automatically switches back and forth between the gas and solar systems. The gas system runs at night after the solar tank has cooled below a reasonable bathing temperature and the solar runs during sunny days and as long as the heat holds out in the tank. 

Solar credits are back today and systems as I’ve just described can generate a federal tax credit of up to $2, 000 (or 30 percent of the installed cost) The government requires that at least half of the hot water demands of the house be provided for by the solar heating system in order to receive the credit. Payback for a system like this looks similar to photovoltaic system with about 8-10 years for a return on your investment (and free hotness thereafter) but it seems likely that a rise in energy costs (and hopefully, improved tax credits under future executive branch leadership) will bring these payback durations down somewhat. 

For years, the only systems I saw were ones with rusted out tanks and disconnected solar panels on the roof. The Regan administration killed the tax credit as soon as they took office and when the installation industry died, the service end died too. When the last installer has fled into plumbing or siding installation, there was no one left to keep these working for Dr. and Mrs. Jones and all that remained when I arrived was another system that had been completely disconnected and put back on the gas heater full time. 

This is definitely about global warming. I can’t think of a single alternative technology that has a deeper advantage over fuel burning than the heating of water. It’s a natural.  

If you’re looking at ways you can help the planet while upgrading your home, do yourself and your planet a favor by talking to your contractor about this most elegant of energy (and money) saving techniques. 

 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Garden Variety: Aunt Ron’s Holiday Advice For The Gift-Lorn

By Ron Sullivan
Friday December 22, 2006

Uh-oh. It’s the 22nd. Last-minute gift shopping! If you celebrate Solstice, you’re late already. No matter. ’Tis the season on some calendar or other, and there’s a good chance you’ve forgotten someone, maybe or the quasi-mail service lost that perfect present you found in the Fussbudgets International catalogue. You’ve just now fished it out of your spamtrap, the email notice about the Christmas party at the executive director’s husbands’ brother-in-law’s stepdaughters’ new club, and you know that if you don’t show up you’ll be nominated to that Interminable Search Committee again. And you’re the Human Resources Director’s Secret Santa, oh joy. 

If the person you need a gift for is a gardener, you’re in luck. There’s doubtless some piece of crap, um, fascinating vintage repurposed objet d’art around the house you can give a gardener, if you call it a garden ornament. If it’s rusty, so much the better. If it’s not, scrape patches of the surface off and say, “It’s supposed to acquire a patina if it’s kept outdoors long enough.” 

If it has parts that still move, say it’s a gopher or deer repellent. When it doesn’t work, it’ll be just like every other alleged gopher or deer repellent.  

Or you can do a quick and legal Martha Stewart number and handcraft something.  

Strategy One: Grab the nearest concave object and plant something in it. In a streetside garden in south Berkeley, I’ve seen a pair of old boots planted with succulents. They looked good, too.  

Sneakers would give the plants even better drainage. Quick, take that pair you keep by the back door for emergency trash runs and split up the echeverria on the windowsill and/or the sedum groundcover out front. If you have a matchmaking urge, give the left shoe to one victim and the right to another.  

If the giftee is the sort of person who bronzes baby shoes, feel free to cover your old Keds with metallic spray paint—ideally before planting. Paint them white if they’re going to a Shabby Chic home. Glue beads all over them if you have spare beads and glue. Sign them if you have the nerve.  

Strategy Two: Promise something your target will have to try on first. Garden gloves, or a garden hat, or (if you’re feeling generous) a pair of Felco pruners. Make a date for February, after the mad shopping rush is over.  

Strategy Three: Find a pass-along plant. Split up your spiderplant or orchid or some other houseplant you actually like and pot up the puppy for a present. This is probably a less dubious gift than the version that includes old shoes. To glam it up, fish some gravel out of the aquarium for a top dressing, or swipe your kid’s marbles or even a scoop of kitty litter. Probably best if it’s clean kitty litter.  

If all else fails, call the nearest stable. A great heap of horse manure is always in good taste. No stable? Try City Hall—wherever you live.  

 

 


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday December 22, 2006

Why Are We So Complacent? 

 

It is a never-ending source of amazement and consternation to me to see how most people living in the Bay Area are so totally in denial about the Big One in our future. 

Not one of us would intentionally put our children, our grandchildren, our spouses, or ourselves in a dangerous situation that we knew would cause injury, or even death. Yet 85 percent of us don’t have our furniture/appliances secured, don’t have an emergency kit, don’t have an automatic gas shut-off valve, and almost that number of us live in homes that have been incompletely retrofitted, or not retrofitted at all.  

Why is this? I wish I knew the answer to the question. If I did, perhaps I could do a better job of raising people’s awareness. If you have any thoughts on the subject, please email me at larry@quakeprepare.com or give me a call. 

Here’s hoping that 2007 will be the year that the majority of folks in the Bay area wake up and do something to make themselves, their families, and their homes safer and more prepared. 

 

 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.


Berkeley This Week

Friday December 22, 2006

FRIDAY, DEC. 22 

Muir Family Christmas Tours of the Muir House in Martinez decorated for the holidays on Fri. and Sat. Cost is $3. For details call 925-228-8860. 

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

“Life of Mammals” The documentary by David Attenborough at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Apollo N Berkeley” with dancers, singers, comedians and a visit from Santa at 8 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Cost is $5. 652-2120. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Potluck supper at 7 p.m. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 23 

Telegraph Avenue Holiday Fair with more than 200 vendors, music and food, Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

 

Berkeley Crew’s Annual Holiday Sprints with informal races between Berkeley High Crew Team and alumni, from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the Jack London Aquatic Center, Oakland Estuary. www.berkeleyhighcrew.org 

SUNDAY, DEC. 24 

“Giving Birth to God” with Sarah Lewis of the GTU at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 27 

Winter Break Movie Series for Teens will show “Harold and Maude” at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6133.  

THURSDAY, DEC. 28 

Winter Break Movie Series for Teens will show “Fame” at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6133. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 29 

“Life on Earth” The documentary by David Attenborough, a chronology of the flora and fauna of the Earth over 3,500 million years, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 31 

New Years Eve Circle Dance Party Simple folk dancing done in a circle. No partners or dance experience needed. No alcohol. Donation of $5 appreciated. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

“Toward a Unified Theory of Religion” with Sarah Lewis of the GTU at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

ONGOING 

Help with Medicare Part D Enrollment Seniors who need to enroll in the prescription drug plan, or change their plan can get help and advice at Berkeley Senior Centers. Appointments required. Call 1-800-434-0222.  

Peace Action West, a local non-profit which promotes peace and justice, is looking for volunteers to do data entry, stuff envelopes and other tasks. Locates across from the Berkeley Boawl. 849-2272, ext. 104. 

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


Arts Calendar

Tuesday December 19, 2006

TUESDAY, DEC. 19 

CHILDREN 

Fratello Marionettes “Peter and the Wolf” at 1 p.m.. at Oakland Public Library, Lakeview Branch, 550 El Embarcadero. 238-7344. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bayo Seco with the Creole Belles and Andrew Carrier at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $59 525-5054. 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.  

The Christmas Jug Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Mike Stern at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sat. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 20 

CHILDREN 

Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza at 1 and 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company “A Little Cole in Your Stocking” at 8 p.m., Wed.-Sat., at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 30. Tickets are $25. 843-4822. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joel Ben Izzy reads at 6:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Berkeley Poetry Slam at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for Advent with Ron McKean, organist, at noon at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Whiskey Brothers Old Time and Bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

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.  

Kurt Ribak Trio, Mingus-inspired jazz and groove at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 21 

CHILDREN 

Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza at 1 and 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Christmas Memory” Actor Thomas Lynch will perform an abridged reading of Truman Capote’s short story at 4:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6280. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Winter Solstice Concert with over 35 solo artists perfoming at 6 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland dress warmly and bring a flashlight. 228-3207. 

Ras Kidus, Undah P, Hurricane, McGuyva at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Benefit for Urban Community Action Network. Cost is $10-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mike Stern at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sat. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Freight Holiday Revue and Fundraiser with Laurie Lewis, Tom Rozum, Cascada de Flores, and others at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50-$17.50. 548-1761.  

John Gordon Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Sueco, Naomi and the Courteous Rudeboys at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Loop Station, Knees and Elbows, Ragwater Review at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 22 

EXHIBITIONS 

Don Clausen Oil Paintings Abstract and Portaits at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., #4. Runs through Feb. 4. 421-1255. 

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 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” Thurs. and Fri. at 8p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martinez St., Pt. Richmond. Donation $10. 232-4031. 

Aurora Theatre Company “A Little Cole in Your Stocking” at 8 p.m., Wed.-Sat., at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 30. Tickets are $25. 843-4822. 

Berkeley Rep “All Wear Bowlers” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through Dec. 23. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. 

Circus Fellini’s Holiday Extravaganza at 1 and 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Sun. Tickets are $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

Shotgun Players “The Forest War” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan 14. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Christmas Carol” Actor Martin Harris reads the Dickens classic at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Donation $5-$10. 848-7800. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Christie McCarthy & Starting Five at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baguette Quartette at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

In Harmony’s Way, a cappella, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jim Grantham Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

David Gans, Mario DeSio, and Mokai at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The New Hour, 5 Cent Coffee, Stella at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Wounds, Have-Nots, Skyflakes 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. 

Tracy Bartlow, Femi at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Grease Traps, Oaktown funk and soul, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Flowtilla at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Invisible Cities, Scrabble at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100.  

Mike Stern at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sat. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 23 

CHILDREN  

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Polar Express” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

Circus Fellini’s Holiday Extravaganza at 1 and 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Sun. Tickets are $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 8 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Caroling with Terrence Kelly at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Steve Taylor and Derek See at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Solstice Celebration in Honor of David Nadel with Zydeco Flames, Sidewinders, Nigerian Brothers, Edessa and others at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Drum circle and potluck at 6:30 p.m. Free. 525-5054.  

The Zoopy Show, Sugar Butt Tiger, The Yard Dogs at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $6. 451-8100.  

Matt Morrish & Trinket Lover, funk, afro-cuban, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Peter Barshay’s “Fog” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Lady Soul, Sonny, Mr. Grench at 9 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. All ages. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Island of Misfit Music Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. 841-2082.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 24 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Clairdee at 7 and 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 26 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Will Durst “Big Fat Year End Kiss Off Comedy Show” at 18 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$17. 925-798-1300. 

Reggae Reunion and Boxing Day Celebration with Fireproof at at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

McCoy Tyner Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com


Arts and Entertainment: Around the East Bay

Tuesday December 19, 2006

SOLSTICE CELEBRATION 

 

“From the Darkness, Solace,” a winter solstice concert, will be held at the Chapel of the Chimes Mausoleum from 7-11 p.m.Thursday. More than 35 solo artists perform original music throughout the columbarium in honor of the darkest day of the year. Dress warmly. Flashlights encouraged. $10-$20. 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207 

 

ABSTRACTS AND PORTRAITS 

 

Don Clausen, an East Bay resident and graduate of California College of Arts and Crafts, is showing his oil paintings, abstracts and portraits through Feb. 5 at the Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., #4. 421-1255. 

 

MATINEE TO BENEFIT 

LOCAL SCHOOLS 

 

Elmwood District merchants are sponsoring a matinee screening at the Elmwood Theater as a benefit for local schools. Robert Zemeckis’ The Polar Express (2004), starring Tom Hanks, is about a doubting boy who takes a magical train ride to the North Pole. 10 a.m. and noon Sunday. Admission is $2. schools. 2966 College Ave. 843-3794. 

 

FINAL DAYS FOR ‘BOWLERS’ 

 

All Wear Bowlers, the absurdist comedy by Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford, will finish up its run at the Berkeley Rep with performances at 8 p.m. Friday and and at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. 75 minutes.$23.50-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org.


Arts: Hits and Rarities From the Cole Porter Songbook

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 19, 2006

“Both a little naughty and a little nice” is the apt description for husband and wife cabaret team Billy Philadelphia and Meg Mackay’s holiday season show, A Little Cole in Your Stocking, featuring hits and rarities from Cole Porter’s songbook (as well as a few “traditional and non-traditional holiday songs”), playing evenings at 8 p.m., Dec. 20-23 and 27-30, at the Aurora Theatre, where it debuted last year. 

This year’s show, however, will be the real debut of Billy Philadelphia at the Aurora with his wife. Last year, in “just one of those things,” Philadelphia was rushed into emergency heart surgery on opening night, replaced at the last minute at the keyboards by Larry Dunlap (himself comprising half another noted husband-and-wife jazz and cabaret act with Bobbe Norris). 

Though it was an anxiety-fraught situation, troupers Mackay and Dunlap put on such a show that the audience easily shed their own cares, whetting the appetite of anyone who sampled the tunes that evening, or those which followed, for Billy Philadelphia’s return to the stage, and the reprise of A Little Cole in Your Stocking, accompanying his talented partner. 

Meg Mackay demonstrated the range of Porter’s oeuvre, from melodic to finger-popping, dramatic to very intimate, with both spontaneity and poise—real style. Her patter between songs was often witty, and just as likely to be in a warm, conversational address, giving a personal touch to an evening of sophisticated salon and saloon songs. She’s familiar to Bay Area audiences from her appearances in three seasons of A Karen Carpenter Christmas (written and directed by Aurora artistic director Tom Ross), in Beach Blanket Babylon in North Beach, and TheatreWorks’ production of Gypsy! on the Peninsula, as well as on the cabaret stage and her two CDs, both produced by her husband. 

Energetic Billy Philadelphia has, in a quarter century of performing in the Bay Area, done everything from accompanying Dame Edna (on piano) during the San Francisco run of her Royal Tour, to staging Hoagy—a musical tribute to Hoagy Carmichael, to his role as KNBR radio’s The Man About Town. 

In addition to the Cole Porter classics like “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “Night and Day,” Mackay and Philadelphia dust off some seldom-played Porter tunes, as well as a few holiday songs, both familiar and offbeat, to celebrate the season. Porter, whose output covered so much of modern life, never wrote a Christmas number! 

A Little Cole in Your Stocking is a perfect escape from the commercial rush of the holidays, restoring a bit of real conviviality, as this talented couple air the witty, touching works of America’s premiere composer of sophisticated showtunes and intimate numbers for cabaret. 

 

A LITTLE COLE  

IN YOUR STOCKING 

8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday through Dec. 30 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addision St. $25. 843-4822. 

 

Photograph by David Allen 

Meg Mackay and Billy Philadelphia in A Little Cole in Your Stocking.


Arts: Mussorgsky’s ‘Khovanchina’ at First Congregational Church

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 19, 2006

A 16th-century Russian conspiracy swept Boyars and Old Believers last Friday night into the First Congregational Church at Dana and Durant, where they put on a private show of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera, Khovanchina, for an audience of friends and family. 

Scores in hand, the two dozen singers acted out in voice and gesture the tale of a thwarted rebellion of the Streltzy Guards and the harsh reaction of the tsar’s forces, with the able producing and stage direction of Phil Lowery, utilizing only a few scenic devices and bits of costumery—a couple of ornate armchairs, a fur cap or two, white scarves for the Old Believers who offer themselves up for martyrdom at the opera’s close. 

The libretto was translated into English from the original Russian. “This is an old Bay Area tradition,” said the conductor, whose name was also translated from its original language to be listed in the program as K. G. Longfield, but who was quickly recognized by local concert-goers. “Those participating have donated their time for the love of doing this. Some have corporate day jobs and are singers at night. Artists of all sorts have gotten together informally to sing and play this way for generations. It refreshes the rounds of professional performances.” 

The singers included amateurs and semi-pros, as well as some of the luminaries of the local music scene. Particularly fine were the performances of mezzo Valentina Osinski as Marfa, the lovelorn “young Old Believer,” and her love object, Andrei (tenor Codrut Birsan), son of the revolt’s leader, Prince Ivan Khovansky (played by bass-baritone Roger McCracken, a fine and appropriately haughty baritone). Sopranos Marcelle Dronkers and Eliza O’Malley sang and acted outstandingly in brief scenes as, respectively, Susanna, an Old Believer who heaps fire and brimstone on Marfa’s expressions of love, and Emma, a German Lutheran damsel in distress that the roving eye of Andrei latched onto. 

Clifton Romig’s bass rendition of Dosifei, leader of the Old Believers, was impressive in jousting with Susanna or Princes Ivan and Vassily Galitsin (tenor Mark Narins, with bass Andrew Brumana as his retainer), and in sympathy with Marfa, but touched profundity in his solo, glimpsing martyrdom, at the beginning of Act V. Indeed, Mussorgsky’s music became more and more profound, with soloists and duets more finely articulated from the chorus, as the tragic plot deepened. 

Ensemble members (Sibil Demirmen, Alexina Butler, Bianca Showalter, Ellen St. Thomas, Joanne Bogart, Marney Margules, Kelcey Poe, Miguel Fennick, Rick Bogart, Gregory Friedman and Puay Kua) doubled in the chorus and other roles—the women as wives mocking their drunken, or condemned, Guard husbands (Art Mahoney, Wayne Wong, Torlef A. Borsting), or as Prince Ivan’s serving women, strived to entertain him (Kelcey Poe as a Persian dancer) while awaiting repercussions of the downfall of the revolt. In the end, swelled by the voices of defunct soloists, the choir brings forth an unearthly sound, as the Old Believers accept their fate, trapped in a burning monastery chapel. 

Baritone John Burton provides a wry thread of sardonic humor as Shaklovity, a Boyar who early on hires a Scrivener (tenor Ross Halper) to pen an anonymous letter warning the Tsar, and later has a Mephistophelean laugh as Prince Ivan is assassinated on his way to a meeting with the Tsarevna which the boyar had urged the prince to attend. 

Pianist Doug Han, whom Phil Lowery credited with much of the musical preparation, accompanied the show with exceptional playing, laced with remarkable figures, arpeggios and arabesques. 

At the end—rebels defeated, assassinated, exiled or run to ground, and the Old Believers self-immolated—artists and audience retired in true Russian fashion to a pot-luck repast, marvelous in its diversity, though somewhat scant in black caviar, starka vodka and blinis.


Crow Talk and Chickadee Alarms: What Birds Are Saying

By Joe Eaton, Special to the Planet
Tuesday December 19, 2006

I’ll admit that I don’t have much of an ear for the language of crows. Ron says they have a specific call that means “Raven!,” uttered when the crows are harassing one of their larger relatives or escorting it out of the neighborhood. This wouldn’t surprise me at all, since they do have an extensive vocal repertoire. 

One researcher described eight variations on the basic caw, used in different contexts: territorial defense against other crows, warnings when a predator is sighted, and so on. Crows also have many non-caw vocalizations, even a kind of song, a mixture of “coos, caws, rattles, clicks, and grating noises” strung together in long sequences with “a rambling, improvised quality.” Crow jazz. 

It hasn’t been established whether these birds can recognize each other by voice, but it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch. Voice recognition is how seabirds find their own offspring in a crowded breeding colony, how emperor penguins locate their mates after that long trudge over the ice. It’s what allows territorial birds to distinguish a known neighbor from an unknown intruder, and flocking birds to synchronize their movements. 

But it was up to four New York biologists—Jessica Yorzinski, Sandra Vehrencamp, and Kevin McGowan at Cornell and Anne Clark at Binghamton—to demonstrate that the calls of individual crows have distinctive acoustic fingerprints, as reported recently in The Condor. 

Yorzinski and her colleagues focused on the inflected alarm caw, a short, sharp burst of sound given in the presence of a soaring bird of prey, or sometimes an unwelcome human. They worked with wild crow flocks in Ithaca, all of whose members had been tagged, banded, and identified as male or female. Each bird’s inflected alarm caw was measured in terms of 25 acoustic variables, including duration, bandwidth, and center frequency. 

I’ll spare you the math, but the researchers found that the crows had individually unique alarm caws, differentiated on seven factors. If the biologists could tell them apart by acoustic properties, presumably the birds could as well. They also found a gender difference: in general, female calls had higher frequency, stronger frequency modulation, wider bandwidth, and shorter duration than male calls. 

The exception was a male who was low in his flock’s pecking order and whose vocalizations were more like a female’s. Since male crows tend to dominate females, this would make you wonder about the confounding effects of gender and status. 

Why would it matter if a crow could identify the source of an alarm? Yorzinski and colleagues suggest that not all crows are equally reliable sentinels. Young, inexperienced birds may issue a disproportionate number of false alarms. 

It would be important to know if the warning came from some mistake-prone rookie or one of the flock’s keen-eyed elders. And if a neighbor’s alarm call sounded different from any made by a flock member, the birds could gauge the approximate distance of the threat. 

Mind you, this is only one call out of a couple dozen. The crows’ signaling system may also be able to specify the degree of danger. This appears to be the case for another bird, the black-capped chickadee, which had never been suspected of any kind of vocal sophistication. Black-capped chickadees, like our local chestnut-backed species, are known for mobbing predators like hawks and owls, giving a characteristic “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” call. This is often how birders are able to detect the presence of a roosting—and disgruntled—owl. 

In an ingenious experiment, Chris Templeton, then a doctoral student at the University of Washington, measured the responses of chickadees in an aviary to the presence of live predators. The hawks and owls came from Raptors of the Rockies, a rehabilitation facility in Florence, Mont. 

Templeton also used two mammalian predators, a domestic cat and a ferret (standing in for native weasels), and a bobwhite quail as a control. He found that different predators elicited different numbers of “dees” in the alarm call. In general, the smaller raptors triggered more consternation than the larger ones. 

Great horned owls rated only a few “dees”; northern pygmy-owls, up to 23. Since pygmy-owls are specialized predators on small birds and great horned owls take mainly mammals, this makes sense. “A great horned owl going after a chickadee would be like a Hummer trying to outmaneuver and catch a Porsche,” says Templeton. 

But the size of the test bird was clearly not the only factor. The chickadees didn’t react at all to the non-predatory quail. And a Cooper’s hawk, a mid-sized raptor that preys on smaller birds, drew more “dees” than would have been predicted from its size alone. These little birds are either equipped with some kind of mental field guide to the local raptors or are remarkably fast learners. 

If chickadees can pack that much information into their calls, Lord knows what the bigger-brained crows are capable of. They may well be saying not just “Raven!” but “Raven with a missing right primary feather at ten o’clock!” And the response from the other crows may be “George knows what he’s talking about—let’s scramble!” 

 


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday December 19, 2006

TUESDAY, DEC. 19 

Visioning for Downtown Berkeley Art Museum at 10 a.m. a the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive, Gund Theater, 2625 Durant Ave. 981-7487. 

Discussion Salon on The Next ? Years at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation at 6 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Do not eat for 8 hours before-hand. 981-5190. 

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. 

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, DEC. 20 

New to DVD “Joyeux Noel” at 7 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

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. 

Gingerbread House Party from 9:30 a.m. at 1 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. Please bring a bag of candy. 647-1111. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, DEC. 21 

Candlelight Vigil to Save the Oaks and to Celebrate the Winter Solstice at 5 p.m. at the Memorial Stadium Oak Grove, 841-3493. www.saveoaks.com 

Winter Solstice Gathering at 4:15 at the Interim Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. Led by Alan Gould, dress warmly. www.solarcalendar.org 

Easy Does It Disability Assistance Board meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. Open to the public. 845-5513. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “Make Money in Short Sale Foreclosures” at 1:30 p.m. at Barney’s on Solano. 433-2911. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, DEC. 22 

Muir Family Christmas Tours of the Muir House in Martinez decorated for the holidays on Fri. and Sat. Cost is $3. For details call 925-228-8860. 

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

“Life of Mammals” The documentary by David Attenborough at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Apollo N Berkeley” with dancers, singers, comedians and a visit from Santa at 8 p.m. at Black Repertory Group, 3201 Adeline St. Cost is $5. 652-2120. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Potluck supper at 7 p.m. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 23 

Telegraph Avenue Holiday Fair with more than 200 vendors, music and food, Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Berkeley Crew’s Annual Holiday Sprints with informal races between Berkeley High Crew Team and alumni, from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the Jack London Aquatic Center, Oakland Estuary. www.berkeleyhighcrew.org 

SUNDAY, DEC. 24 

“Giving Birth to God” with Sarah Lewis of the GTU at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

ONGOING 

Help with Medicare Part D Enrollment Seniors who need to enroll in the prescription drug plan, or change their plan can get help and advice at Berkeley Senior Centers. Appointments required. Call 1-800-434-0222. www.lashicap.org 

Peace Action West, a local non-profit which promotes peace and justice, is looking for volunteers to do data entry, stuff envelopes and other tasks. Locates across from the Berkeley Boawl. 849-2272, ext. 104. 

Holiday Food Drive Sponsor a Food Drive to help the Food Bank reach its goal of collecting food for families in need during the holiday season. 635-3663, ext. 318. www.accfb.org  

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

CITY MEETINGS 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meets Dec. 19 at 10 a.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, Gund Theater, 2625 Durant Ave., for a visioning session on the new downtown art museum. 981-7487.