Rosa Parks Elementary School went solar for a couple of days earlier this month. 

Students went around classrooms, playgrounds and the school track racing solar cars, designing solar homes and eating s’mores cooked in solar ovens on May 11 and showed off their handiwork to proud parents at the Solar Fair held at the school’s annual carnival the next day. 

The fair was organized to honor a PG&E grant that was awarded to the school last fall to install a solar collector in the yard. 

“Rosa Parks was the only school in the Berkeley Unified School District to get this grant,” said Suzanne Ingley, the school’s enthusiastic science teacher.  

“The collector is a nine-foot-tall pole that holds a large photo-voltaic (PV) solar cell which is going to offset some of the electricity used by non-renewable resources. The neat thing about this is we are hooked in to all the other schools in California which have similar collectors. As a result, we get to track how the sun is affected by different geographies in different parts of the state.” 

After Ingley filled out an application from the PG&E/National Energy Education Development Project (NEED) project, the school received a $5,000 grant for the fair. 

She then started looking at state standards and sorted out projects which would best meet the needs of the students in each grade. 

“Each staff member took on a solar energy project for their class,” she said while conducting a workshop inside the science lab. “It united the whole school in a way that’s never been done before. Today the entire school took part to watch each of the classes present their work. Since we are an Environmental Magnet School, we want to make a statement about going toward using solar energy.” 

As the fourth-graders got their mini solar cars out on the track to race them on Friday, curious first- and second-graders gathered around to talk about circuits, electricity and resources. 

Ten-year-old Tiffany Zhau made her way to the science workshop to glue up a piece of easel wood that had come loose from her model. 

“It’s kind of working right now, but I want to make it better,” she said. “I want to win the race tomorrow, but it all depends on the sun.” 

The students soldered the wires from the PV cell and the motor together to build a circuit for the solar car. 

“The fourth-grade curriculum teaches kids to build electric circuits and parallel and series wiring,” said Ingley. “This little lesson show them that they can create electrical energy from the sun and that it is clean.” 

Fourth-grader Andrew Jones said he hoped solar will become the future. “Gasoline is what’s causing a hole in the ozone layer and we want that to stop,” he said. 

Fifth-graders took on the role of architects during the spring semester as they designed passive solar homes for the fair. “You are capturing as much of the sun’s energy as possible by virtue of the design of the house,” said Ingley. “They learned that a house should always be longer on the south side and have a lot of windows. Today, they’re able to tell you during a walk down the neighborhood how each house is designed and which way they are facing. They know what makes a house warmer or cooler and how they need to design it to make it that way.” 

First- and second-graders took part in scientific investigations on plants, while kindergartners—who were too young to carry out experiments—had an artist come in and teach them how to make Van Gogh sunflowers and sun-print paper. 

Out in the garden, third graders Dylan Jones and Hasani Green were trying to rustle up s’mores in their solar ovens. Made from pizza boxes which were cut on the top to make room for plastic covers, the ovens used heat from the sun to cook the food. 

“The aluminum and the black paper under the box doubles the heat,” said Andrew, who was completely taken up with the whole process. “The difficult part was putting it together. But it was a lot of fun. We are going to try to make quesadillas next time. The best part is that we can use as much solar energy as we want for this and the sun will never die out.” 

Berkeley High School administrators informed students this week about a change in board policy that requires all juniors and seniors who do not want their names and addresses released to the U.S. military for recruitment purposes to sign an “opt-out” form. 

Prior to this, Berkeley High had simply handed over names and addresses of students who had “opted in” or wanted to receive information from recruiters. 

But under threat of losing millions of dollars in federal funds, the Berkeley school board decided earlier this month on the change. 

According to the federal No Child Left Behind act (NCLB), school districts must provide the military with the names and addresses of all juniors and seniors for recruiting purposes unless there is a signed letter from the parents or the student indicating that they are “opting out” and do not want information released. 

Berkeley High was the last high school in the country to acquiesce to this policy.  

Since the inception of this law in 2002, the Berkeley school board had taken the position that the district would not disclose names or addresses of students to any group including PTA, booster groups, colleges and the military, unless they received written permission to do so, that is “opting in.” 

The district’s belief had been that by applying the same restrictions of access to student information to all organizations, it would be able to guard privacy and shield students from unwanted solicitations as well as military recruitment, unless desired. 

School district superintendent Michele Lawrence said she had sent out a letter to the Berkeley High community on May 11 about this change. 

“Over the past few years, when only a handful of students have signed releases, I have been visited by recruiting officers from several branches of the service seeking all student names and indicating our policy was illegal,” her letter stated. “Progressively, my visits from military representatives came from higher ranks. They were all respectful but still insistent. Although we have made attempts, through our legislators, to get this provision of NCLB changed, it is highly political, and that process will take some time.” 

Lawrence said that the school board had held its position all along because of their commitment to protecting students from “some of the obvious ramifications of an open release of information, and especially to the military given our country’s political climate.” 

The situation escalated when the undersecretary of defense called to inform her that BHS was the only school in the nation not to comply with this particular provision. 

“So,” Lawrence’s letter explained, “the earlier threats of losing a few million dollars of federal funds seem closer at hand. Added to this, the federal government passes the responsibility for our compliance to the state; these officials have also called and indicated our position is illegal. So, in order to safeguard your student’s information, we will need to take another approach; one more cumbersome and perhaps not as tightly implemented.” 

Lawrence expressed regret about the change in procedure but said that the district couldn’t risk losing millions in federal funds. 

Eleventh and twelveth graders were handed “opt-out” forms during assembly Monday, which they had to sign if they didn’t want any information from the military. 

“We are currently in the process of alphabetizing these pieces of paper,” said Janet Huseby, a volunteer coordinator and former BHS parent. 

“We will then do a master list of all the juniors and seniors who did not fill out this form,” she said. “We will do our best to deliver a form to those who were absent. Hopefully we will be able to carry out a 100 percent survey. It is important that families pay attention to the new process since we are now being forced to give out information of any student who does not have a signed denial form.” 

Huseby said that in the past only a handful of people had signed the “opt-in” forms.  

“It’s a big change and, no, it’s not,” she said. “I could bet that people who would be willing to hear from the military would be slightly more. Earlier you had to request it. If you didn’t do anything you were opted out. So now, the burden is to say ‘no’ as opposed to saying ‘yes.’” 

Huseby said that although exact figures wouldn’t be available till the end of the week, it was safe to say that 90 percent or more students had opted out. 

Susan Lawrence, whose son, a BHS senior, had opted out on Monday, said that schools should not be used for marketing the military to students. 

“While to a lesser degree than many of the possibilities in the Patriot Act, it is also another version of the disregard for personal privacy that this administration has shown,” she wrote in an email to the Planet Thursday. “I would like BHS to return to an opt-in program.” 

Lawrence pointed out that the military already had access to student information through those who took College Board exams such as the SATs, on which students indicate by checking a box whether or not they want to receive information from the military or not. 

“This opt-out is aimed to reach the socio-edu-economic class who doesn’t as often take those exams and who traditionally fills military ranks,” she said. 

“My understanding is that the military branches can already have presentation days in the College Career Center for interested students such as the various colleges do, so students can choose to hear that information and get more if they want.”  

The military can also access student information when they register for the Selective Services. 

“18-year-old males are required by law to sign up for Selective Service,” said Huseby. “Once they do that, the army has all the personal information it needs to make any recruiting calls it wants. That’s what this whole thing is about—recruiting. Because there is no draft, the army must convince young men and women to join the army. With the unpopularity of the war they have had an increasingly difficult time recruiting soldiers. As a result their recruiting tactics have become more aggressive.” 

Rio Bauce, a junior who chairs the city’s Youth Commission (and who contributes to the Daily Planet as a freelance writer) said he had opted out. 

“Most people I know did,” he said during lunch break Wednesday. “I don’t want to join the military. A lot of the money our country is losing is money that is being put in the military to murder innocent Iraqis.” 

Bauce said he had received a brochure from the military last Tuesday. “I was pretty surprised,” he said. “It promised up to $40,000 in college funds if you signed up for reserves or joined the military. However, I think that changing the policy was the right thing to do since it is important that we abide by the law.” 

However, there were others in the Berkeley Unified community who said they were disappointed by the policy change. 

“We have fought the battle and lost,” Berkeley High principal Jim Slemp said. “It’s our responsibility now to explain the law to our students and make sure they understand their rights.” 

School Board Vice President John Selawsky, who had researched the “opt-in” policy before its implementation in late 2002, said the policy change had been decided in a closed session because it involved possible litigation. 

“A military provision such as this has no place in an education bill such as NCLB,” he said. “Many districts started with the ‘opt-in’ as a policy but changed to ‘opt-out’ when they started getting letters from the federal government saying they were not in compliance with the NCLB. I spoke with organizations such as the ACLU who said that we had a legal argument but that it was weak. I am still researching this from a legal point of view to see if we can challenge this particular provision in the NCLB.”

Skewered in a city attorney’s report for incompetencies such as housing dead people in low-income apartments and obstructing investigations, Berkeley Housing Authority workers fought back at Tuesday’s BHA meeting, where the City Council approved the city manager’s recommendation to eliminate the positions of all BHA workers except the manager.  

Housing authority workers sporting purple union shirts lined up at the public microphone to address the BHA board—the City Council plus two tenants—that oversees the city’s 1,800 low income housing units. 

Saying they were being scapegoated for longstanding managerial problems, workers blasted city manager and city attorney reports that alleged workers had obstructed BHA Manager Tia Ingram’s efforts to investigate problems and had given “extremely poor service to clients.”  

The employees attacked City Manager Phil Kamlarz’ proposal to fix the BHA problems by “cleaning house,” abolishing the 13 permanent and eight temporary housing authority positions at the end of June.  

Under the city manager’s plan, Ingram will stay on, working beginning in June with an outside agency with which BHA will contract for managerial services. 

A divided council approved 5-2-2 the recommendation to end the positions and a companion recommendation to contract out for managerial help during the month of June.  

Tuesday’s meeting was a joint session between the City Council and the Berkeley Housing Authority board. Only the City Council participated in the vote to eliminate positions and contract for staff. 

Calling the wholesale employee cuts “a meat axe” approach, Councilmember Kriss Worthington joined Mayor Tom Bates in voting against cutting the positions and contracting out for services; Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore abstained on both measures. 

The 13 permanent BHA workers will receive 30-day layoff notices, be placed in vacant city positions and have the right to reapply for their jobs, the city manager said.  

Worthington blasted the staff reports as “unprofessional” and commented, “It doesn’t tell us what alternatives were considered.” 

Councilmember Max Anderson agreed. “We need to look at real options—we can’t do it at the meeting tonight. I wish this thing had been discussed more openly with the union and with us.” 

Tilda Barnes has worked for the BHA for two and one-half years under three different managers and addressed the BHA Tuesday night. 

“When I saw the [newspaper] articles, I fell apart,” she said. “I take this work seriously.”  

Several other workers stood before the BHA board and talked about computer problems, lack of training and heavy caseloads. They blasted the city manager’s proposal to turn the BHA over to a private agency for a few months—“contracting out” public sector work—while keeping Ingram who has been with BHA for nine months.  

In addition to eliminating staff positions, the council approved a contract with Montreal-based CGI, Inc., known by its initials, for one position to help Ingram develop interim and permanent staffing models. An initial $20,000 contract will run through the month of June. When a new BHA board takes over in July, it can opt to continue the contract.  

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1021 officials told the Planet Wednesday they are seeking legal advice regarding the council action, as they believe it may have violated workers’ contracts. City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque argued at the meeting Tuesday that terminating the positions is legal, given that employees will be offered other jobs. The city has a “no lay-off” policy. 

But SEIU 1021 Field Team Supervisor Andre Spearman told the Planet on Wednesday, “You can’t put it all on the workers.” 

When he addressed the BHA at the Tuesday meeting, Spearman pointed to the landlords said to have 15 apartments rented to deceased persons. “Let’s talk about the dead people,” Spearman said. “HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] guideines obligate landlords to certify the tenants who live there.” HUD pays Berkeley landlords about $25 million each year for Section 8 rents, according to the housing authority web site. 

The Daily Planet has made a Public Records Request, asking for relevant landlord information. 

Berkeley’s housing authority, which oversees some 1,800 units of federally subsidized Section 8 housing and 75 units of public housing, was designated as “troubled” in 2002 by HUD. BHA has been unable to improve to HUD’s satisfaction to get the designation removed. The city is in danger of losing local control of the department, according to city staff. 

Restructuring the governing board is part of the effort to manage BHA more efficiently. In a separate unanimous vote Tuesday, the City Council confirmed the nomination of six members to a new seven-member board appointed by the mayor. The new board will officially begin work July 1, although it will meet with the City Council beginning June 12.  

“We all bear some responsibility,” said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, of the council role in overseeing the troubled agency.  

Worthington agreed, pointing to the short BHA meetings shoehorned in before the council meeting. “[Meeting] five-to-10 minutes a month is not a reasonable way to supervise the housing authority,” he said. 

Albuquerque sent a report detailing the problems to the HUD Inspector General in Washington D.C. HUD spokesperson Michael Zerega said he received the report, but would not comment at that time and could not comment on whether he would speak to the report in the future.

A bid to designate downtown Berkeley as a priority development area (PDA) targeted for state-funded high-density development failed by a single vote Wednesday night. 

Planning and Development Director Dan Marks presented the Planning Commission with a cautious report, triggered by a crash program sponsored by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), aimed at winning unspecified sums of state bond money for unspecified local programs. 

“I am as confused about it as probably most of you are,” said Marks as he began his presentation. “ABAG is seeking to influence how some of the state bond money will be invested, based on policies that have grown up over the last few years.” 

The bond money would come from a package of infrastructure improvement issues approved by California last November, but Marks cautioned that state legislators have yet to determine how or when the funds will be allocated. 

The most critical of the bond measures is Proposition 1C, which allocates $2.9 billion in bonds to fund low-income housing and development along urban transit systems. 

ABAG’s proposals—still being formulated—would follow the so-called smart growth principles the agency espouses, which focus on increasing housing density in close proximity to urban transit hubs. 

“The goal here is a good one, to place financial incentives behind smart growth, but they have not yet managed to convince the Legislature,” Marks said. 

In the interim, ABAG—a state-mandated regional government agency responsible for divvying up many housing and transport-related funding programs—has initiated an application process, which the city would have to complete by June 29. 

“The cities would designate PDAs where we would want growth to occur, and we would have to apply soon because of the bond deadlines,” Marks said, with the first one coming “very, very soon.” 

One key problem is that “a PDA is not something many people in this city would necessarily endorse,” he said, although some areas of the city have already been designated as areas for growth. 

Marks also said he wished that ABAG had come up with a less politically charged name.  

Citing the neighborhood furor over the proposed construction of a 300-plus unit housing complex over the Ashby BART parking lot, Marks cautioned commissioners that “you will have to balance the risk of making a designation with the risk of potential backlash.” 

While the proposed parking lot project was later downsized and then shelved—at least for the moment—Marks said that the existing downtown plan already meets the requirements for a PDA, so the commission would be able to designate it if they chose. 

Otherwise, the city runs the risk of receiving any of the bond funds. 

“One place I do not recommend, though, makes a lot of sense, and that is Ashby BART because of the significant amount of backlash” likely to ensue, he said. 

Marks added another caution: “I don’t think we can do this justice in the next two, three or four weeks,” he said, noting that in Berkeley, public process was always a central concern when taking potentially controversial actions. 

“I have two possible recommendations,” he said. “The first is to do nothing, but if we do apply, that downtown would be the easiest to do, and certainly one we could try for.” 

But Commission Chair James Samuels indicated that applying made sense, given that “there’s no guarantee there will be a second round” of funding. 

“There’s no guarantee there’ll be a first one,” Marks said. “I hear the legislature is really torn on this.” 

The planning director said he also didn’t know what strings the legislature might attach to the funds. 

Harry Pollack then weighed in with his support for the application, saying “there’s not a lot of reason not to encourage the staff to move forward.” 

Once the recommendation was made to the city council, he said, feedback from other parts of the city could lead to other areas being added. 

But Marks said there wouldn’t be time after the proposal went to the council, “and I doubt that other portions of the city will be breaking down our doors to be designated.” 

At that point Marks added an area himself, telling the commission that “Loni Hancock wants to create San Pablo Avenue as a corridor. She sees it as a tremendous opportunity area.” 

Hancock is the Berkeley Democrat who represents the region in the state Assembly and the spouse of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. She’s now running for the State Senate. 

Pollack then proposed adding the avenue, which he said “is as good or better than the downtown” for designation. 

Marks said he wasn’t inclined to initiate the avenue at this point. 

Samuels asked if the commission had to designate specific areas before staff could move forward with the applications. Yes, said Marks, adding that he also planned to take the proposal to the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), which is currently formulating the basis for a new city center plan. 

While Samuels replied that he didn’t think there’d be any significant objections, Gene Poschman responded, “I think you’re terribly wrong.” 

Praising Marks for writing an equivocal report, Poschman added that he was grateful that Pollack and Samuels were “willing to take the responsibility for anything that happens” afterward, given the earlier backlash to Ashby BART. 

“In Berkeley,” he added, “submission of an application is an action of deep meaning.” 

Poschman and Samuels disagreed on whether DAPAC was yet ready to make recommendations on a critical land-use issue, given that the panel still hasn’t begun their formal discussions or drafting of the proposed plan’s land-use element. 

Poschman also noted that none of the members of DAPAC lived or owned property or businesses downtown, adding that six of the planning commission’s nine members lived in two council district in the Berkeley hills. That number includes Poschman himself. 

He also rejected any notion of designating San Pablo Avenue, and dubbed the whole application procedure “a truncated, highly dubious process” spawned by an ABAG “grab for bond money.” 

With Poschman and Samuels both DAPAC members, a third member of the downtown planning panel was filling in for an absent Helen Burke. 

Steven Weissman said he was also skeptical, especially given the uncertainty over what the legislature might or might not do. 

“I wonder if we are jumping ahead of the process,” he said. 

Though hundreds of neighbors had showed up at meetings over the Ashby BART project, resulting in angry confrontations with area Councilmember Max Anderson—with Mayor Bates one of the two leading proponents of the now-stalled project—it was Larry Gurley, Anderson’s appointee on the commission, who moved to designate downtown a priority development area. 

The vote failed to with the five votes needed for passage, failing with four votes in favor, three opposed and high school student and commissioner Rio Bauce abstaining. 

While George Williams, filling in for an absent David Stoloff, voted with Pollack, Samuels and Gurley in favor the designation, the absence of Susan Wengraf, who normally votes with Samuels, Stoloff and the other proponents, may have played the decisive role. 

Though the proposal failed, Marks is still planned to attend an ABAG workshop today (Friday) which will help local governments with their designation applications.

The City Council meeting ended in a complete meltdown just before midnight Tuesday with Councilmember Betty Olds walking out of the meeting followed by Councilmembers Max Anderson and Kriss Worthington. 

The exhausted council was in the midst of addressing nine complex elements of the proposal put forward by Mayor Tom Bates as part of an evolving set of laws and services intended to curb the impact of inappropriate street behavior on others. 

“We’re kind of unraveling,” quipped Councilmember Linda Maio, just after three councilmembers walked out with the others voting to adjourn the meeting.  

That left a proposal for a Sunshine Ordinance process—an expansion of city government transparency—unheard by the council. Exclusion of the item mattered little as the city attorney hadn’t had time to prepare the materials. 

Councilmembers had been meeting since 5 p.m., at which time they addressed a 200-page report by the city’s Health Department showing that, while overall life expectancy in Berkeley has grown, a dramatic divide in health between affluent whites living in the hills area and low-income African Americans living in the flats persists. (The Planet will report on the workshop Tuesday.)  

The council addressed Housing Authority problems (see page one) at 6 p.m. and at the regular council meeting designated Berkeley a City of Refuge, remanded the question of antennas on Shattuck Avenue back to the zoning board, and set a public hearing to address the proposed development at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way and University Avenue. 

Sitting and Lying 

The mayor’s plan to remove people exhibiting inappropriate behaviors from the city’s shopping areas through new laws, such as those against “prolonged sitting,” enforcement of laws already on the books, such as the prohibition of tying dogs to parking meters, and provision of services for the homeless or drug dependent came to the council again on Tuesday in the form of nine proposals expanding on the ideas he’d presented earlier.  

One significant change from the loosely crafted measure Bates is calling the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative signaled a willingness to slow the process down: He’s now advocating a Nov. 20 date at which time the council would be presented with his definitive proposals. Bates also expressed a willingness to meet with the Homeless, Mental Health and Human Welfare commissions, whose members have expressed concern that indigent and unstable people will be criminalized for poverty and mental illness. 

Elizabeth Gil, who is homeless and has been on the Section 8 low-income housing waiting list since 1999, spoke to council of the criminalization of the mentally ill. “Will they die in jail like the ‘naked guy’?” she asked, referring to Andrew Martinez, a mentally ill man who committed suicide in jail. 

Chamber of Commerce Chair Roland Peterson, a strong supporter of the initiative, spoke to the council pointing out that “voters” on the Kitchen Democracy website—an east-hills-oriented URLfunded in part through Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s office account—were overwhelmingly in support of the initiative, 203 to 18. Many of those few who voted in opposition voted “no” because the measure wasn’t strong enough, Peterson told the council. 

Bates, who emailed some constituents asking them to vote on the Kitchen Democracy site, also pointed to it as an indicator of support, while saying at the same time that it isn’t an absolute measure. 

Councilmember Max Anderson, however, called Kitchen Democracy “selective e-mails from affluent people in Berkeley” and asked how many homeless people have access to computers. 

Commenting on the proposal in the initiative to provide placards indicating the location of restrooms and writing laws to cite people for public urination, Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said: “It seems disingenuous to provide signage to rest rooms that are locked.”  

Capitelli added, “We can’t pass a law that criminalizes urination and defecation if there’s no bathrooms.”  

Part of the initiative the mayor is proposing includes services; mostly, he’s spoken about diversionary programs such as the drug rehabilitation program run by Options Recovery Services.  

Councilmember Linda Maio asked how one would use such services for a mentally ill person who defecates in public. “Where would you direct that person?” she asked. 

Maio also clearly laid out her position on Bates’ proposal to ask law enforcement to cite individuals for “prolonged sitting.”  

“I won’t vote to criminalize sitting on the sidewalk for someone with no place to go,” she said. 

The meeting unraveled once the council tried to address the mayor’s specific proposals, which will likely be back on the council’s June 12 agenda. 

City of Refuge 

With some two dozen supporters in attendance, the council unanimously passed both a resolution authored by Mayor Tom Bates and the concept of an ordinance—the city attorney is charged with putting the ordinance into the proper legal format—to make Berkeley a City of Refuge.  

Both the resolution and the ordinance, which will embed the action in the city code, says, “No department, agency, commission, officer or employee of the city of Berkeley shall use any city funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law or to gather or disseminate information status of individuals in the city of Berkeley unless such assistance is required by federal or state statute, regulation or court decision.” 

The ordinance will charge a commission with overseeing its implementation. 

“Enact the strongest ordinance possible,” said Sr. Maureen Duignan, executive director of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, addressing the council. “Be the shelter for the refugees.” 

Support for open police complaint  

hearings 

The council unanimously approved a resolution to support SB 1019, State Sen. Gloria Ramirez’ legislation that would allow police oversight agencies to hold hearings in public. “Our democracy is at stake,” Jake Gelender of Copwatch told the council, noting that police are entrusted to carry guns. “This is not the time to step back,” he said. 

Fair labor practices at Trader Joe’s 

The council voted unanimously to add the proposed Trader Joe’s at University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way to the list of Berkeley businesses asked to show a “strong commitment to fair labor practices.”  

“Trader Joe’s is a vehemently anti-collective bargaining company,” David Rush of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 told the council. 

The council also: 

• Remanded the question of telecommunications antennas atop 2721 Shattuck Ave. to the zoning board because new information was received on the question. The remand was opposed by Councilmembers Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak. 

• Set a July 9 public hearing for a neighborhood appeal on the 148-unit housing/Trader Joe’s development proposed for 1885 University Ave. 

On Wednesday evening, the Police Review Commission (PRC) approved 3-1 new rules that will govern hearings involving complaints against police officers and set June 7 as its first hearing date since September—an action commissioners say is likely to get the city back in court facing off against the Berkeley Police Association. 

Commissioners Sharon Kidd, Bill White and Sherry Smith voted in favor of the measure; Kamau Edwards voted against it; Commissioners Mike Sherman and Jonathan Huang were absent and three commission seats are vacant. 

Public Boards of Inquiry, made up of three members of the Police Review Commission, have for some 30 years conducted hearings in public on allegations of police misconduct in the presence of both officer and complainant.  

But since September and the California Supreme Court Copley Press v. San Diego case, Berkeley’s hearings have been suspended. The court ruled that police discipline is a personnel matter and cannot be made public. In the more recent Berkeley Police Association v. City of Berkeley decision, the Alameda County Superior Court ruled similarly that the Police Review Commission would violate officers’ confidentiality rights by hearing cases in public. 

The Berkeley Police Association “will likely try to move to court to try to get a restraining order” to block the scheduled closed-door complaint hearing, Deputy City Attorney Sara Reynoso told the commission, adding, however, that she thinks the city is on solid ground in its right to hold the hearing.  

“We based the regulations on case law out of San Francisco,” she said. 

“The police officers union is probably ready to sue our socks off,” added Commissioner Sherry Smith. 

Through its attorneys, the BPA has said that regulations for closed-door hearings need to be part of the “meet and confer” contract negotiations.  

The PRC has asked for a more informal process. “[The BPA] strategy is to stall our process and they have succeeded,” PRC officer Victoria Urbi told commissioners at their May 9 meeting, according to meeting minutes. 

The inability to hold public meetings is taking its toll on commissioners. Commissioner Jack Radisch told the Planet Thursday that he resigned from the commission in part because he has gone back to work, but mostly because without open public hearings “what we do is meaningless.” 

The commission is also addressing several other hot-button issues: writing policy to respond to issues raised by the theft of drug evidence by former police Sgt. Carey Kent, the alleged theft of cash and other personal property of arrestees by former police officer Steven Fleming, and high-speed police chases through Berkeley streets. 

The subcommittee looking at creating policy addressing police theft issues, however, has hit a snag. While Police Chief Doug Hambleton, not a member of the BPA, has been willing to meet with the commission and respond to questions, the BPA has refused to allow its members to respond to questions. 

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna attended Wednesday evening’s PRC meeting to try to resolve the matter, asking two members of the subcommittee on theft issues—less than a quorum so that the meeting can be held out of public view—to meet with the police chief, city attorney and others to discuss what kinds of questions might be acceptable to the BPA officers. 

Caronna said the problem is that the city attorney fears that questioning the officers on policy issues could spill over to personnel issues and could hurt the city’s appeal of the lawsuit or trigger a new case.  

“Anything that relates to individual officer conduct, even matters that are public information, we can’t talk about,” Caronna told the commission. “Our goal is to try to have a discussion. How do we get to the core issues without crossing the line of confidentiality?” 

Moreover Caronna said the possibility of triggering a new BPA lawsuit has to be weighed with other important activities of the eight-member city attorney office. “We have to be careful about the possibility of taking away from the other work the council has directed us to do,” she said. 

“The idea is not to violate the court order,” Reynoso added. 

Commission Chair Sharon Kidd, a subcommittee member, argued that questioning officers is “not about pointing the finger at anybody.” For example, the subcommittee could call in random officers and, in order to formulate policy, ask the question: “How would you respond to an officer who came to work inebriated?” (Unlike Oakland, Berkeley has no specific policy mandating officers to report fellow officers who do inappropriate or criminal acts.) 

But Caronna responded that the question, “ ‘What would you do if?’ crosses the line” into personnel issues. 

Commissioner Sherry Smith said what the commission needs is its own attorney. “There’s not enough championing” of the commission’s work, she said. 

Commissioners expressed concern about the three vacancies on the commission. Reached by phone Thursday, Councilmember Linda Maio, whose commission seat has been vacant for about a year, said she would appoint someone in the next few weeks. Mayor Tom Bates’ seat has been vacant for about six months and Councilmember Betty Olds’ seat, to which Radisch had been appointed, has been vacant for a week. 

UC Berkeley custodians have won their equity raises, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 announced in a press release Tuesday. 

In part, it took high profile personalities such as actor Danny Glover and presidential hopeful Barack Obama refusing to speak at UC Berkeley and State Sen. John Burton’s mediation to win the wage hikes. 

The settlement includes an immediate initial wage increase of $1.25 per hour for UC Berkeley custodians ,and will be increased an additional $.50 per hour in October.  

“This has been an important struggle for those of us who work very hard every day to make the university work,” said Maricruz Manzanarez, a UC Berkeley custodian, quoted in the AFSCME press statement. “To finally receive public recognition from the university that they must address their system of substandard wages validates the time and effort that we put into this fight.” 

As part of the agreement, UC Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz custodians will get the same wage increases as UC Berkeley and the university will end its practice of outsourcing groundskeepers at UC Irvine.  

A last-minute lawsuit filed this week alleges the Richmond City Council violated state environmental law by signing a $310.4 million contract to provide services for a North Richmond casino. 

The action followed by five weeks a critical state appellate ruling voiding a municipal services agreement in Amador County. 

In that lawsuit, the court held that by approving a service agreement for a project extensively detailed in the agreement, the Plymouth City Council had acted in breach of its obligation to first conduct a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review. 

The court held that the council’s approval of the agreement constituted an approval of the project itself, the same claim made in the Richmond suit. 

In the case of the Sugar Bowl Casino in unincorporated North Richmond, Chair Donald Arnold of the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo tribespeople and then-Richmond Mayor Irma Anderson signed the contract Dec. 27. 

The lawsuit filed Monday seeks a writ ordering the city and councilmembers to void the agreement, a judicial ruling declaring the agreement unlawful, and a restraining order and eventual permanent injunction barring further attempts to have the federal government declare the land a reservation or implement the contract pending completion of a review of the proposal under CEQA. 

Challenging the agreement is a coalition consisting of the Parchester Village Neighborhood Council, environmentalist Whitney Dotson, who also serves as president of the neighborhood council, Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) and the recently formed SPRAWLDEF (the Sustainability, Parks, Recycling and Wildlife Legal Defense Fund). 

Representing the plaintiffs is Stephan Volker, an Oakland attorney who specializes in cases involving alleged CEQA violations. He said he recommended the action to his clients after the appellate ruling in the Amador County case. 

Named as defendants are the City of Richmond and the Richmond City Council, with the Scotts Valley Band named as a “real party in interest.” 

The lawsuit charges that the city violated CEQA by approving the municipal services agreement without first conducting an environmental review as required by the statute. 

“That’s very interesting,” said Doug Arnold, chair of the Pomo tribal group that has proposed to build the casino with the backing of Noram Richmond LLC, a special-purpose corporation formed by Maitland, Fla., developer Alan H. Ginsburg—a major player in the tribal casino industry. 

Speaking from San Diego, Arnold said he had rumors of “something like this. But I haven’t seen it, and nobody I know has seen it.” 

Arnold said he would have to discuss the action with the tribe’s legal representatives before he could comment further. 

“We’re very confident,” said Volker, citing the April decision by the state Court of Appeals Third District, which struck down a similar agreement on the same grounds cited in Volker’s suit. “The case is right on point,” he said. 

Because the tribe is a federally recognized Native American nation, it can claim immunity from the lawsuit, something Arnold said would be a distinct possibility. 

While Volker’s petition, filed with the Contra Costa County Superior Court, cited the tribe’s ability to declare itself immune, the plaintiffs contend that shouldn’t bar action on the litigation because “the city’s interest duplicates that of the Band, and the Band’s interest will thus be adequately defended by the city.” 

The $200 million-plus, 225,000-square-foot primary structure planned by the tribe would be built on a 29.9 acre parcel in unincorporated North Richmond along the eastern side of Richmond Parkway north of Parr Boulevard. 

The building would include a 79,320-square-foot casino, 24,000-square-foot showroom, a 250-seat venue for lounge acts, a 150-seat sports bar, a 600-seat buffet, plus a 120-seat restaurant and a food court. 

The complex would also feature 3,549 parking spaces, most in a separate five-level, 160,000-square-foot structure. 

The tribe’s plans to develop the gambling spa can’t move forward in any case until the federal Department of the Interior agrees to take the land into trust for the tribe and federal and state officials agree to an application to use the site for gambling. 

Assemblymember Loni Hancock, the Berkeley Democrat who represents the area, said last week that the casino application stands little chance of winning approval. 

The lawsuit charges that “the Band has no ancestral ties to the proposed Casino site,” an assertion Hancock also cited. 

Because the site is in an unincorporated area of Contra Costa County with few emergency services available, the tribe started negotiating with the city in November, 2005 for a service agreement, only to be rebuffed because the city then had an exclusive agreement with the Guidiville Rancheria Pomos who are planning a casino inside city limits at Point Molate. 

The Guidivilles subsequently agreed to a modification, which was approved in March, 2006. Following negotiations with the Scotts Valley Band, a proposed services agreement for the Sugar Bowl was presented to the city council Nov., 14, 2006 and approved a week later. 

The document was signed by Arnold and then-Mayor Irma Anderson last Dec. 27. 

Gayle McLaughlin, who defeated Anderson to become the city’s new mayor two weeks later, had opposed both casino projects as a city councilmember. 

The agreement provides police, fire and other emergency services, as well as provides funding for either a new fire station within 1.5 miles of the casino or renovation of an existing station, and mandates that the tribe pay a proportionate share or fund outright a series of projects, including: 

• A new northbound lane on Richmond Parkway; 

• New lanes on Parr Boulevard; 

• A new interchange where the roads intersect; 

• Shuttle service from the casino to a proposed Richmond Parkway Transit Center and the Richmond BART station, and 

• A new bike lane along Goodrick Avenue between Parr and the Parkway. 

Payments would be dispersed through the length of the 20-year agreement, adjusted to rise and fall with the Consumer Price Index, and totaling $310 million adjusted to keep pace with the value of the dollar at the time the agreement was signed. 

Richmond City Attorney John Eastman did not return calls seeking comment on the litigation.

Tod Mikuriya, M.D., died Sunday at his home in the Berkeley Hills. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer. In the final days he’d been in the care of his sisters, Beverly, an M.D. from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Mary Jane of San Francisco, and his longtime assistant, John Trapp. 

Cancer had been diagnosed originally in his lungs, and as of last March it had been detected in his liver, too. Dennis Peron and Dale Gieringer threw farewell parties for him. He canceled a trip to Hungary where he was to present a paper at the International Cannabinoid Research Society meeting. His office began steering patients to other doctors.  

And then his condition improved. In late May 2006 Mikuriya attended his 50th reunion at Reed College and sang rounds with his old madrigal group. His office geared up again. He wrote the lead section of an article recounting what California doctors had learned in the 10 years since the passage of Proposition 215 (“Medical Marijuana in California, 1996-2006”). 

He met with a publisher about reissuing Marijuana Medical Papers, his 1973 anthology of pre-prohibition medical literature -the new edition to include a CD containing eight more articles that had come to his attention over the years. He had many visits from his 12-year-old daughter, Hero, the apple of his eye; they even went cross-country skiing one weekend.  

As recently as this March Mikuriya played a key role organizing a symposium at which retired colonel James Ketchum discussed the Army’s secret search for a cannabinoid-based incapacitating agent. Mikuriya had begun assembling the contents for a new anthology, Cannabis Clinical Papers, that would include studies by colleagues and three major papers of his own: “Cannabis as a Substitute for Alcohol;” “Cannabis as a First-Line Treatment for Mental Disorders;” and “Cannabis Eases Post-Traumatic Stress.” (The titles alone reflect the relevance of Mikuriya’s concerns. Even his historical studies related to our present time and place. For example: “An 1873 survey by British tax officials in India elicited a range of views on cannabis that seems strikingly contemporary... ‘the general opinion seems to be that the evil effects of ganja have been exaggerated.’”) 

Mikuriya liked to use the slogans “Grandfather it in!” and “Back to the future!” in discussing the legalization of cannabis for medical use. The generations of Americans who discovered cannabis in social settings in the 1960s and the decades that followed had no idea that it had been widely used in this country between the Civil War and the Great Depression, with tinctures manufactured by Eli Lilly, Parke, Davis and other major pharmaceutical companies available by prescription. 

For decades Mikuriya was the only M.D. among the small group of activists and scholars who collected the bottles and labels and sought to unearth and publicize the history that our educational system had erased so systematically. Mikuriya was given to creating polysyllabic phrases that forced one to puzzle over their meaning. For example, America’s cultural preference for the modern he called “temporal chauvinism.” Cannabis clubs, he said, showed the efficacy of “proactive structuralism;” by which he meant, “People can create something and, by doing so, set a precedent.” 

Tod Hiro Mikuriya was born in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1933 to Anna (Schwenk) and Tadafumi Mikuriya. His father was a Japanese Samurai who converted to Christianity, his mother a German immigrant and practicing Baha’i. Tod and his two younger sisters went to Quaker schools. “The Quakers were proprietors of the underground railway,” Tod noted. “The cannabis prohibition has the same dynamics as the bigotry and racism my family and I experienced starting on Dec. 7, 1941, when we were transformed from normal-but-different people into war-criminal surrogates.” 

He graduated from Reed College in 1956, served as a medic in the U.S. Army, and then attended Temple University School of Medicine. It was at Temple that a reference in a pharmacology text to the medical utility of marijuana triggered the interest that would define Mikuriya’s career. After getting his medical degree, Mikuriya served an internship at Southern Pacific General Hospital in San Francisco, specialized in psychiatry at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, and completed his training at Mendocino State Hospital. 

In 1967 he became director of non-classified marijuana research for the National Institute of Mental Health Center for Narcotics and Drug Abuse. He left the position after several months, he said, “When it became clear they only wanted research into damaging effects, not helpful ones.” 

Mikuriya moved to Berkeley in 1970 and entered private practice. He was active in Amorphia, a West Coast reform group that eventually folded into NORML, and helped organize a 1972 marijuana legalization initiative, working alongside Michael and Michelle Aldrich, Pebbles Trippet, and others who stayed with the struggle through the ensuing decades of cultural and political rollback.  

“Western medicine has forgotten almost all it once knew about the therapeutic properties of marijuana,” Mikuriya lamented to a UCSF medical student interviewing him in 1996. (I had the privilege of sitting in.) “Hemp-based tinctures and preparations were prescribed for myriad purposes—analgesic and hypnotic; appetite stimulant; anti-epileptic and antispasmodic; for the prevention and treatment of the neuralgias, including migraine and tic doloreux; antidepressant and tranquilizer; oxytocic (to induce uterine contractions); topical anesthetic; withdrawal agent for opiate, chloral and alcohol addiction; intraocular hypotensive; childbirth analgesic; hypothermogenic.”  

Cannabis is also an anti-asthmatic and antitussive (cough suppressant), Mikuriya told the med student. It went out of favor with doctors in the early decades of the 20th century “not because it was deemed toxic or dangerous but because alternatives came on the market—injectable opiates and synthetics such as aspirin and barbiturates— that were quicker-acting and offered more consistency in dosage and patient response.”  

When Dennis Peron launched the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club at the start of the ‘90s, Mikuriya saw “a unique research opportunity.” He began interviewing club members in an attempt to confirm or add to descriptions in the pre-prohibition literature. When Prop 215 was being drafted, Mikuriya contributed the all-important phrase in the first sentence that allows doctors to approve marijuana use in treating “any...condition for which marijuana provides relief.” (Eleven other states have since passed laws allowing marijuana use to treat specific conditions. Mikuriya considered them all intellectually dishonest compromises.) 

Mikuriya’s contention that marijuana alleviates an extremely wide range of symptoms was ridiculed by Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey and other federal officials at a press conference in December, 1996. Reform advocates promptly sued the drug czar’s office and obtained a federal injunction confirming the Constitutional right of doctors and patients to discuss marijuana as a treatment option. Nevertheless, for several years following the passage of Prop 215, almost no California M.D.s were willing to risk the wrath of the government by putting in writing a recommendation for cannabis in the treatment of say, depression, or lower back pain. 

People all over the state were calling cannabis clubs to report that their doctors—many of whom had expressed their approval of marijuana previously—would not give them a written “letter of diagnosis” entitling them to join a club. These people would very often be given the name and phone number of Tod Mikuriya. 

Thus Mikuriya became the doctor of last resort for thousands of California patients. He flew or drove with John Trapp to cities and towns around the state to preside at ad hoc clinics. 

“It’s one of the most satisfying experiences for me as a psychiatrist to be able to remove the stigma of criminality from an individual,” he said after testifying for an alcoholic Vietnam vet in 1998. “Not just the self-perceived stigma, but removing the real danger of civil forfeiture and other kinds of state viciousness.”  

Mikuriya was investigated by the California medical board on the basis of complaints from law enforcement officers (none from patients, and no allegations of harm to a patient). At a disciplinary hearing in 2003 all the patients named in the accusation praised and thanked Mikuriya. He was placed on probation by the board, but continued to practice until two weeks ago. Then his decline was rapid.  

He had issued some 9,000 approvals. Mikuriya was the founder of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, a specialty group whose members have issued more than 160,000 approvals.  

“Tod was the mentor of every doctor working in the field,” says SCC president Philip A. Denney, M.D. “His observation that cannabis alleviates so many seemingly disparate symptoms has been explained by recent research showing that its active ingredients modulate virtually every neurotransmission system in the body.” 

In other words, the finding the drug czar mocked as “a fraud” turned out to be a most significant truth.  

A Quaker service honoring our mutual friend will be held at 4:30 p.m. today (Friday) at the Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St.

After Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) workers were skewered in a city attorney report for in competencies such as housing dead people in low-income apartments and obstructing investigations, they fought back at Tuesday’s BHA meeting.  

Line workers spoke out, saying they were being scapegoated for longstanding managerial problems and attacked the city manager’s proposal—approved 5-2-2 by the council—to fix the BHA problems by “cleaning house:” eliminating 13 permanent and eight temporary housing authority jobs. (The BHA is made up of the council and two tenants, but voting on the issue was restricted to the City Council.) 

Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Kriss Worthington opposed the measure; Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore abstained. 

“When I saw the [newspaper] articles, I fell apart,” Tilda Barnes told the BHA. 

“I take this work seriously,” said Barnes who has worked for the BHA for two and one-half years under three different managers. Workers told the council about computer problems, lack of training and heavy caseloads. 

Service Employees International Union 1021 officials said Wednesday they are seeking legal advice regarding the council action, as it may have violated workers’ contracts. City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque argued at the meeting Tuesday that terminating the jobs is legal, underscoring that the city is offering vacant positions in other departments to all permanent employees. 

The BHA was designated by HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) in 2002 as a “troubled” agency and is implementing a number of changes in an attempt to reverse the designation and keep the agency in Berkeley. One change to be implemented July 1 is that a new board chosen by the mayor and approved Tuesday night by the council will replace the present City Council plus two tenant configuration.  

See the full story in Friday’s Daily Planet 

The Oxford Street parking lot was closed and bulldozed Monday morning, April 2. That night, nearby businesses had little business. The lot is the site of plans to build a residential housing project (called Oxford Plaza) and environmental center named in honor of the late activist David Brower. 

“Everybody has no parking,” said Mike Yu, owner of the 25-year-old Great China restaurant at 2115 Kittredge St. Yu was re-arranging cars in the parking lot which he operates behind his restaurant, trying to fit customer cars in without blocking cars in spaces he had already rented out to other merchants. 

“It’s bad,” said Dale Sophiea at the California Theater next door. “We’ll have to work around it. Definitely, we should hit the city up for some kind of parking accommodation.” 

Shihadeh Kitami, owner of Razan’s Organic Cafe, next door to the dug-up, machine-filled lot, said his sales have fallen 25 percent and, on the other side, standing in a half-filled club on a weekend night, Anna de Leon of Anna’s Jazz Island at 2120 Allston Way, said, “There was a huge difference the day it happened.” 

Business since has gone from bad to slow to OK to bad again. “It feels like one good day and 10 bad days,” Kitami said. 

In a 2005 negative declaration—a sort of unilateral method for the City Council to bypass a fuller environmental impact report—a paragraph was devoted to parking: “There is enough parking available in the downtown to accommodate unmet parking demand from the project.” 

Councilwoman Betty Olds abstained in an 8-0 vote. “She believes there are serious environmental consequences to the project,” said her aide, Susan Wengraf. 

In fact, there’s plenty of nearby parking. People just don’t want to use it. On a recent weekend night, only three of the five floors at the 612-space Allston Way parking garage, which is two blocks away, had any cars on them. The attendant said this wasn’t unusual. 

A person answering the phone at the office of Parking Concepts Inc., which runs the garage, said, “We haven’t been full in quite a while.” When it does fill up, an attendant double-parks the extra cars behind ones already there. 

Robert, a regular customer at Razan’s, said he used to pay $1 to park at the Oxford Street lot for an hour. Now he looks for on-street parking. “I don’t want to pay $5 bucks to park,” he said. 

Customers outside Great China said they were waiting for one of Yu’s other parking operations to open up—the spaces he rents in the evening from the Touchless Car Wash parking lot across the street. 

There’s a sense that upper Kittredge Street, where it runs to its end at Oxford Street, isn’t wholly a part of downtown Berkeley but more like a crossroads hamlet. All the businesses are off-normative. 

Great China is filled with large groups of extended Chinese families. Razan’s is the first and allegedly only all-organic restaurant in Berkeley. Also, it welcomes small children, even 2-year-olds, who sometimes conduct experiments involving organic rice and the laws of gravity. 

The California Theater, built in 1913 as a vaudeville house, is the first to run controversial and off-beat films such as Farenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, The U.S. vs. John Lennon and The Passion of the Christ. Employees’ dress tends toward a kind of black, anarchist style. Maria, a homeless woman who sometimes sleeps in doorways on the street, sweeps the street clean in front of the businesses everyday. 

The parking lot was eccentric too. 

Demolished with it was an existential footpath, used by scores of people a day. It opened out in front of Razan’s, where I sometimes work. Over time, people peeled back the parking lot fence and tramped down the shrubbery.  

One night, a guy came out of the dim lot with pliers and yanked out a protruding metal rod that was the last obstruction. 

This kind of activity was first noticed by landscape architects. The walkways they drew on paper and cemented into the ground often weren’t used. People favored shortcuts, cutting pathways in the grass down to bare dirt.  

The architects called these “desire paths.” People’s Park is full of them. 

Berkeley High School students once attempted to make a “desire path” across two lanes of moving traffic. 

Billy Keys, a Berkeley graduate and now school safety officer, recalls: “It was four or five years ago, during renovation. The kids would walk across to the park in the middle of the block, dodging traffic. 

“One morning we came out and the kids had painted a yellow crosswalk here,” he said, indicating two dark, faded stripes running across the middle of Allston Way. 

“Cars saw it and stopped.” This backed up traffic at the intersections and “after a couple of days, the city came and painted them over.” 

The Berkeley Housing Authority has paid rent on at least 15 units where tenants are dead—as much as two years of rent on the deceased, failed to inspect units where substandard conditions exist, and allowed ineligible family members to “inherit” a unit ahead of others on the waiting list.  

These are just a few of more than a dozen serious problems cited by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque in a report to the Berkeley Housing Authority members. The report also recommends the removal of all housing authority staff except new manager Tia Ingram. 

The report will be discussed today (Tuesday) at the 6 p.m. BHA meeting. 

The city will contract for temporary staff until the new board takes over and hires staff or contracts with the city for staff. The current BHA board, made up of the City Council and two tenants, will continue to serve until June 30. At tonight’s meeting BHA will be asked to approve members of the new authority (selected by Mayor Tom Bates) who will take over new responsibilities July 1. 

“The problems are so numerous and pervasive that they reveal BHA’s inability to perform routine functions in conformance with federal regulations,” Albuquerque says in her report. 

HUD (the federal Housing and Urban Development eepartment) has deemed the Berkeley agency “troubled” since 2002; if the authority does not significantly improve, it could ask an agency outside Berkeley to manage the city’s low-income housing efforts. 

Reacting to the removal of 13 permanent and eight temporary staff, Section 8 tenant Patrick Kohoe told the Planet, “This may be what it takes to clean up the ‘troubled’ agency.” There are “some really hard-working employees with tremendous workloads,” Kohoe added, but there are others that no other department wants.  

The housing authority “has long been the Siberia of Berkeley’s ‘no lay-off’ policy,” he said.  

Employees won’t be laid off. “We’re looking at it as a major reshuffling,” City Manager Phil Kamlarz said in an interview Monday. Some employees may go through the city’s “progressive discipline” procedure in other departments, he said.  

Temporary employees will be hired in the interim and the new board will oversee hiring new employees. Former employees will be able to reapply for their jobs, according to a report authored by Kamlarz accompanying the city attorney’s report. 

In her report, the city attorney detailed concerns with staff: files had disappeared then reappeared, employees have “actively obstructed Ms. Ingram’s attempt to piece together missing information….”, obstructed HUD (Housing and Urban Development) oversight, and has given “extremely poor service to clients.” 

Kohoe said he has felt the impact of the agency’s problems. When he first received his section 8 voucher, he wanted to stay in the apartment he had been renting and his landlady agreed to accept the voucher. She had so much difficulty in getting a response from BHA, however, that he almost lost the apartment, he said. 

Kamlarz doesn’t place the entire blame on line staff. “Part of the problem is that we’ve had so many different managers,” he said, noting that there have been four different managers over the last four-to-five years. 

“I have concluded that the city simply cannot competently staff BHA operations and that the new board must be able to create its own staffing structure in order to attempt to address the deficiencies of the current operation….” says Kamlarz’ report. 

Another concern noted in the city attorney’s report is the management by Affordable Housing Association of the city’s 75 public housing units. “Eight public housing units have remained vacant under AHA’s management. The dates the units initially became vacant range from May 1, 2004 to Sept. 1, 2006 and they are still currently vacant,” the Albuquerque report says, also alleging that BHA had received complaints of criminal activity at the units “but has failed to take any action in response until Ms. Ingram arrived.” 

But in a phone interview Monday, Susan Friedland, AHA’s executive director, explained the problems this way: when AHA took over management of the public housing three and a half years ago, they were in poor condition and “files on tenant certification were non-existent.”  

Some of the units remained unoccupied while AHA did the rehabilitation work necessary, Friedland said. Further, she said, “We take complaints of crime seriously, responding to the neighbors and working with police.” 

Friedland said that currently there are five units that need to be rehabilitated and two vacant units, which she is unable to rent because BHA’s waiting list is not up to date. 

Friedland said AHA has decided not to renew their contract with BHA to manage the units at the end of June.  

While Housing Director Steve Barton generally authors BHA reports, his name is conspicuously absent from the city manager and city attorney’s May 22 BHA reports. Barton said he was unaware, until recently, of some of the problems, such as the rental of the units to dead people. 

He said he has been aware of poor service on the part of employees, and while he could not be specific, he said employees have been disciplined. 

Barton also faulted the city for cutting staff at the BHA. “It was the wrong thing to do,” he said.  

Further Barton defended AHA’s record, saying the nonprofit has done a good job, stepping in when the city could find no other agency to manage the public housing units. The slow pace of rehab work there was due to the city’s “elaborate” contracting procedures, Barton said, adding that the problem is that “they don’t own and control the [public housing] units.” 

The housing authority will meet at the Maudelle Shirek Building, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way at 6 p.m. today (Tuesday) after the workshop on the city’s health and before the council meeting.  

Poised to reaffirm its status as a city of refuge for immigrants at tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting, councilmembers are likely to debate the format of the proposal—ordinance or resolution—while supporting the concept of Berkeley as a sanctuary city, a designation made first in 1971 and again in 1986. 

Based on a San Francisco law, the draft ordinance was written by the Peace and Justice Commission, with input from Le Conte Elementary School PTA president Cary Sanders, Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA), and the American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees (AFSME 3299) at UC Berkeley. 

The ordinance was placed on tonight’s agenda by Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington.  

Written as a resolution, a similar measure has also been placed on the agenda by Mayor Tom Bates. The council could support one, both or none of the measures. 

“An ordinance is here to stay; a resolution is gone tomorrow,” Spring told the Daily Planet last week. “The ordinance has teeth; it becomes part of the laws of the city.”  

The ordinance Spring is presenting to the council tonight, however, will have some teeth missing from the proposal she presented at last week’s Agenda Committee meeting. That draft of the law included the explicit power to sue employees who violated the ordinance.  

If Spring and Worthington get council support for the ordinance, it will go to the city attorney for approval, then go back to the council for a vote on the final draft. If supported by the council, the mayor’s resolution will go into effect immediately. 

Both the Bates and the Spring/Worthington measures speak to the need for cities to take a stand in opposition to the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in which thousands of people have been arrested and deported in a program they’re calling Operation Return to Sender. 

Bates’ resolution says: “Immigrant parents who are victims of ICE raids are being separated from their young children, or equally abhorrent, children are being incarcerated along with their parents” and a Berkeley family’s deportation “is leading to an increased climate of fear and intimidation among Latino families and students.”  

The Spring/Worthington ordinance says that through the Return to Sender program the federal government has “escalated a program of fear and intimidation against the immigrant/minority communities” and states that the “extreme actions by the federal government against the immigrant communities are violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as several other international treaties ratified by the United States.” 

Both the proposed resolution and ordinance use the same language in concluding: “No department, agency, commission, officer or employee of the city of Berkeley shall use any city funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law or to gather or disseminate information status of individuals in the city of Berkeley unless such assistance is required by federal or state statute, regulation or court decision.”  

In her original draft, Spring proposed that employees who violated the law would be liable for civil action up to $1,000 plus damages and attorneys fees, but after hearing from City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, Spring backed down.  

“There are likely some labor management meet-and-confer implications of imposing such employee financial or other penalties for violations of city policies,” Albuquerque wrote the councilmember, further saying that a city such as Berkeley, with its city manager form of government, uses resolutions rather than ordinances to create policy.  

“We should not use an ordinance to regulate ourselves,” Albuquerque told the Planet last week. 

Spring did, however, retain some “teeth” in the current draft ordinance, which says that the appropriate city commission “shall review the compliance of he city departments, agencies, commissions and employees with the mandates of this ordinance in particular instances in which there is question of noncompliance….” 

Individuals from both BOCA and AFSCME said they would like the council to pass the ordinance. 

“I support the ordinance. Because of the horrible situation, I don’t want the city to collaborate with ICE,” said BOCA organizer Belen Palido, calling Bates’ resolution “kind of symbolic.” She said BOCA was going to try to meet with the mayor to ask his support for the ordinance. 

And Seth Newton, lead organizer for AFSCME at UC Berkeley said the union supports the ordinance. “As a union, we support the strongest possible measure.” 

Newton added, “We want to be sure the city respects the rights of all the members of the Berkeley community.” 

Cary Sanders said the main point is for the city to make a strong statement of solidarity with the immigrant community. 

“There’s fear in the community,” she said. 

Tonight at 6:30 p.m., before the 7 p.m. council meeting, BOCA is organizing a rally in front of the Maudelle Shirek Building, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way to speak out supporting “the civil rights of all of its residents and declaring itself an immigrant sanctuary.”  

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Berkeley Friday, declaring that market forces would solve one of the greatest issues in global warming. 

Backing him up was retired General Charles F. Wald, who described global warming as a national security issue, a “non-traditional security threat” in an increasingly complex world where the free flow of Middle Eastern oil to the United States is a military mission. 

“The governor, in a previous career, is known throughout the world as the quintessence of an action hero. Today he is calling for action, not just words, in addressing climate change while maintaining our economic prosperity,” said Steve Chu, the Nobel laureate who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). 

“Thank you very much Dr. Chu for that great introduction,” said Schwarzenegger. “It was just the way I wrote it.” 

The event was the International Law Carbon Fuel Symposium, held at LBNL. 

But one critic who attended the event, a leading European environmental regulator, cast doubt on the program, warning that it lacked safeguards for both the people and the land most likely to be affected by the research now under way at the lab. 

“There are real issues about diversity and protection of the environment,” said Axel Friedrich, who directs the programs on transportation issues and noise reduction for the Umwelt Bundes Amt, Germany’s federal environmental agency. 

Gen. Wald, who retired last July at the four-star rank after serving as deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, responsible for military affairs in 91 nations, is now a private-sector consultant who serves on the Energy Security Leadership Council of the advocacy group Securing America’s Energy Future and advises the CNA Corporation, a Pentagon-linked think tank. 

With “our national security dramatically influenced by the demand for oil,” Wald said, the best solution is development of alternative fuels. 

That mission dovetails perfectly with LBNL’s current push for a $125 million Department of Energy biofuel grant and with the lab’s central role in a controversial $500 million grant from BP (the erstwhile British Petroleum) to UC Berkeley, which relies heavily on the lab and its resources. 

As if to emphasize the point, UCB Chancellor Robert Birgeneau walked into the meeting room with the governor and Chu and left when they did, none of them staying for the full program. 

The governor, who announced an executive order in January mandating that the state reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels sold in the state by 10 percent by 2020, said the solutions would be found “by unleashing the power of market forces.” 

Indeed, the new standard “is our best weapon against rising oil prices and gas prices because a vibrant market in alternative fuels and alternative vehicles, alternative engines, gives customers a great choice, gives different choices, and that empowers the customers, of course, to say no to those high fuel prices, to say hasta la vista, baby.” 

And UC Berkeley’s efforts, the governor said, are “showing us what the world could look like in 2020 and way beyond, and they’re showing us what steps we actually need to take to create this low-carbon environment that everyone wants.” 

Wald and other speakers reiterated the governor’s position, and many of the presentations featured projections that relied on significant increases in productions of cellulose-derived biofuels to reach his targets. 

Behind Schwarzenegger as he spoke, a video display featured as its largest single element a stand of miscanthus, the energy crop which is the basic element in the proposal UC Berkeley used to win the BP grant. 

That proposal called for development of genetically modified strains of the crop to grow in normally inhospitable environments, to be transformed into fuels after harvesting by genetically modified microbes derived from those that inhabit the guts of termites, where they digest cellulose to feed their six-legged host. 

Friedrich’s concerns 

Only one critic, Axel *Friedrich, rose to speak during the question period following the morning session. 

Friedrich, who holds a doctorate in engineering, said he was alarmed at the rush into alternative fuel production without serious consideration on long-term impacts. 

Afterwards he explained his concerns in greater detail.  

“Clearly, they understand the problem, but you need to look at the effects 50 and 60 years down the line,” he said, noting that a British participant had said that efforts there would be evaluated only five years down the line. 

“You have to address the whole transportation system as well, and you have to address what the impacts on land use will be” for people in the areas where crops are grown. “You have to look at the environmental impacts. And you have to look at other pollutants that may arise and at quality of life.” 

One of the greatest concerns, he said, is that the likely sites of biofuel production are in lesser developed countries in areas with the greatest and most-threatened biodiversity. 

“You have to look at all these things before you start, not afterwards,” he said. 

He also noted that despite the claims of the governor and others at the conference, Germany has a much higher target for carbon reduction, 40 percent by 2020. 

“Maybe that’s why they didn’t let me speak on one of the panels,” Friedrich said. 

Friedrich also said Germany had an even more stringent goal than California, a 40 percent reduction by 2020, “and we are the only country in the world that is reducing our total fuel consumption, and that’s not just for transportation.” 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman. 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened a day-long conference on low-carbon fuels at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Friday as lab director Steve Chu and retired four-star general Charles F. Wald looked on. The retired officer declared climate change a national security issue, best solved by alternative fuel development.

By Judith Scherr 

The mayor’s kick-off event aimed at cutting local greenhouse gas emissions brought almost 150 people—most of them already active in the fight against global warming—to the South Berkeley Senior Center Saturday morning to network and hear speakers talk about walking lighter on the planet.  

Berkeley resident, comedian and environmentalist Josh Kornbluth served as MC. 

Introduced by her husband, Mayor Tom Bates, Assemblymember Loni Hancock lauded AB 32, which requires a statewide reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. “Now our task is to implement the bill,” Hancock told the crowd. 

Timothy Burroughs, recently hired by the city to plan the local emission reduction effort, pointed out that half of the city’s emissions come from vehicles. (The statistics exclude freeway emissions, he said.) Residents contribute about 26 percent of the city’s greenhouse gases and businesses emit 27 percent, he noted.  

Tom Kelly, director of Kyoto USA, a grassroots effort to encourage U.S. cities to actively address global warming, spoke to the Planet after briefly addressing the gathering.  

Kelly said that while the room was mostly filled with committed environmentalists talking to each other, the mutual support would sustain future efforts to “reach out more deeply” to yet uncommitted people in the community.  

The next step is to take the question of greenhouse gas reduction to various commissions to get input into the effort, he said. The Community Environmental Advisory Commission is tentatively scheduled to discuss the question at its June 6 meeting at 7 p.m., 2118 Milvia St. 

While some ideas cost relatively little, such as the effort to get people to use compact fluorescent light bulbs, large-scale ideas are expensive. “We might have to tax ourselves,” Kelly said. 

For example, one costly suggestion Kelly raised would be to put solar panels on every building in the city. 

The city plan, which the council is expected to adopt at the end of the year, will likely designate choices among possible projects. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington briefly addressed the gathering, supporting the concept of creating a free bus pass for workers on Telegraph Avenue, similar to the eco-pass that has reduced city worker dependence on the automobile. 

Worthington also talked about developing a “zero waste” facility, where all items “dumped” at the transfer station would be reused. 

Another effort the city might decide to fund is Community Choice Aggregation, which was put forward at the Saturday event by a nonprofit called “Bay Localize.” CCA would be a partnership among Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville to sell electricity to residents of the three cities. A plan for CCA is moving toward implementation in San Francisco and is being discussed by the Energy Commission, which will present CCA options to the City Council in the fall.  

Photograph by Judith Scherr 

Josh Kornbluth, comedian, environmentalist and Berkeley resident was the MC for Saturday’s community meeting on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It was good news/bad news in the Bay Area media world last week. 

The good news came in the announcement that a local chain newspaper was going independent; the bad news was the proclamation of the wholesale downsizing of the area’s largest news staff. 

Village Voice Media, owner of both the East Bay Express and the SF Weekly, revealed an agreement to sell the Express to a group of buyers including local editor Stephen Buel. 

The bleak news came Thursday, when San Francisco Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega tersely announced that the paper would slash its newsroom staff by 25 percent—for a total of 100 jobs, or 80 reporters and 20 editorial managers. 

Blogger and media maven Allen Mutter (part-owner of the Berkeley Daily Planet in its previous incarnation) reported that when combined with an additional 60 jobs lost in the last two years, the cutbacks will amount to 35 percent in newsroom strength. 

Mutter wrote that the paper had lost more than $330 million since Hearst bought in seven years ago. 

“When Hearst bought the paper, they committed to keeping all the reporters at both the Chronicle and from the Examiner. So at a time when other newspapers were cutting jobs, the Chronicle was contractually obliged to keep those it had,” Buel said.  

The news nonetheless came as a shock to some Chronicle reporters, prompting one to quip to a Daily Planet reporter, “The way things are going, we’ll be the same size as you guys before long.” 

Ben Bagdikian, former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a revered figure in the world of working journalists, said the move poses serious risk for the Chronicle. 

“By substantially cutting back on the paper’s ability to produce detailed stories about local events, they could greatly reduce the Chronicle’s appeal to its readers,” Bagdikian said. “If they go for brevity or less detail, they make themselves less competitive with broadcast media and with other newspapers.” 

He said the downsizing is especially shortsighted in light of the paper’s essential monopoly on news on its side of the bay, and in light of the “short-sighted” agreement Hearst had concluded with the firm that dominates daily news coverage of the rest of the Bay Area. 

The MediaNews Group owns 12 Bay Area newspapers, including the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News and the Marin Independent Journal. 

Under an agreement between Hearst Corp. and MediaNews, the two papers contemplated cooperating on advertising sales and distribution of their papers. But a lawsuit filed by San Francisco entrepreneur Clint Reilly apparently scuttled the proposal, at least for the moment—though details of the settlement are sealed and accounts of its contents differ. 

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said the Chronicle’s cutbacks weren’t unexpected, “especially because they hadn’t done so in the past couple of years even though they’re losing tons of money.” 

Blogger Tim O’Reilly, whose O’Reilly Radar blog covers tech issues, had predicted the layoffs back in March, when he reported on a newsroom meeting called by Editor Phil Bronstein, who, he wrote, had lamented that the news business “is broken, and no one knows how to fix it...And if any other paper says they do, they’re lying.” 

Tim Redmond, executive editor of the Bay Guardian, called the cutbacks “tragic, all those reporters, 80 of them, looking for jobs, and there aren’t any. These are people with mortgages, with children in college, with rent to pay.” 

On the other hand, he said, “it’s ridiculous that the virtual monopoly newspaper in this city can’t make money.” 

Redmond said the Chronicle made its biggest mistake when it decided to become a regional newspaper rather than concentrating on San Francisco. As a result, he said, “their market penetration in San Francisco is abysmal. They fought a competitive war they couldn’t win.” 

Chronicle editorial and managment representatives either didn’t return calls for this story or declined to comment on the record. 

While downsizing has become the norm in newsrooms across the nation, most of the recently announced reductions are smaller in scale than Hearst’s. A random sample of recent downsizing in other newsrooms includes: 

• 50 of 383 newsroom workers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune, announced on May 8. 

• 71 journalists at the Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 percent of that paper’s editorial department. 

• 36 reporters and four editors at the Akron, Ohio, Beacon-Journal, with the cutbacks, announced in August, matching the Chronicle’s one-journalist-in-four level of severity. 

• 80 newsroom workers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, announced as part of a wide-ranging restructuring on Feb. 15. 

Other papers have been gradually cutting back their newsrooms, including the Los Angeles Times, which cut 62 newsroom jobs three years ago and offered buyouts to more last month.  

And if cutbacks aren’t enough, some newspapers are shutting down, including the King County Journal in Kent, Wash., which folded in January, with 40 workers losing their jobs after a buyout and consolidation. 

The decline of print has also hit the magazine sector, with Time Inc. announcing in January plans to eliminate 300 magazine jobs, after axing more than 600 workers last year. 

The week also witnessed the Oakland Tribune’s abandonment of the building it had called home for most of the last century and a move to more industrial quarters near the Building Formerly Known as the Oakland Coliseum. 

While dour is the mood of the day in the Chronicle’s newsroom, Buel and his staffers are smiling at the East Bay Express in Emeryville, following last week’s announcement that Village Voice Media (VVM) had agreed to sell the paper to Buel and a consortium of investors. 

Hal Brody, a former alternative weekly publisher and record industry figure, heads a group of three investors who have a 50 percent stake in the paper, while Buel heads a group of another five which controls the other 50 percent, including Kelly Vance, the paper’s veteran calendar editor and co-founder of the Express. Brody is president of the independent Express, and Buel remains as editor.  

While Buel wouldn’t confirm reports which had the Express alone losing $500,000 every year, but he did say that the previous owner, New Times—which owned the paper outright between 2001 and late 2005 before merging with VVM—“doesn’t do well in places with competition.” There has been no announcement about the fate of the SF Weekly, Village Voice Media’s other Bay Area newspaper, which is rumored to be losing $1 million a year or more. SF Weekly’s main competitor in the San Francisco alternative market is the Bay Guardian. 

“It will be wonderful to be independent again,” said Buel, although the paper will continue to maintain a cooperative advertising sales program with SF Weekly, he said. 

He added, “If you look at the paper in the past year or so, you will see that it has gotten a lot thinner.” The chain does well in places like Denver, Phoenix and Miami, he said, “which are basically suburban markets, which are not competitive. But they didn’t do well here.” 

Now, “out from under the ax of New Times, we will be able to make a much better paper,” Buel said. 

The paper remains the target of a lawsuit about Village Voice Media’s advertising sales practices filed by the Bay Guardian, charging that the chain owners engage in predatory advertising pricing designed to corner the market and drive competitors out of business. 

Buel said the Express will still be a defendant in the suit, but that VVM has assumed all responsibilities for the litigation as part of the sale. 

How much did the new owners pay? Buel isn’t saying, but he did say he’d refinanced his home to help pay the tab. 

What lies ahead? 

“You won’t see a lot of changes right away if you look at the paper,” he said. 

One major change to happen soon will be a return of events listings, currently offered only on the website, to the print paper.  

Buel said the paper will also reorient itself to its previous home turf of Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont and environs. New Times/VVM had expanded distribution to all of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The Berkeley Board of Education will vote Wednesday on whether to approve $750,000 in funds from the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC) and $305,000 in PG&E funds to complete a solar project for Washington Elementary School. 

The board first discussed this proposed pilot solar project at the April 11 school board meeting but refrained from giving it the go-ahead. Board members asked staff to come back with a more comprehensive report. 

The Berkeley Unified School District estimates the cost of the project to be $1.25 million, which takes into account the cost of putting in photovoltaic panels as well as replacing the current roof at Washington. 

KyotoUSA, a volunteer group which encourages cities to work with their governments to reduce greenhouse emissions, estimated the initial cost to purchase and install a solar system to be $800,000. The district, with KyotoUSA’s help, submitted a request to PG&E on March 21 for partial funding valued at $305,000. The school bond Measure AA would contribute $195,000 toward the cost. 

Dubbed as the HELiOS Project (Helios Energy Lights Our Schools), the proposed system would cover 100 percent of the main building’s electricity needs. It also comes with a 25-year warranty. Washington consumed approximately 170,560 KwH in energy and paid around $25,505 in electricity costs in 2006.  

School board vice president John Selawsky and superintendent Michele Lawrence both spoke in favor of the project at the last school board meeting. 

“If we don’t do this in the next six months, the $305,000 in funds is going to become $225,000,” because the PG&E grant will be reduced, Selawsky told board members at the April 11 meeting. “We are not inventing the project. It has been done before.” School districts in San Jose and San Diego and some individual schools in Marin have installed solar in their schools in the past. 

Benefits of the HELiOS project to the district and the community claimed by proponents include: 

• Significant cost savings to the district over the life of the system 

• Environmental benefits including reduction in fossil fuel use, cleaner air and reduced GHGs 

• Educational benefits that will flow from the presence of a photovoltaic system. 

• Bringing in new donors and volunteers to assist in expanding the project beyond Washington School and the City of Berkeley 

• Giving students tangible evidence that adults were taking climate change seriously and are doing something about it 

Measure A funds for Visual and Performing Arts 

The board will vote whether to approve expenditures for visual and performing arts from Measure A. Measure A money will be spent for the first time to support both visual and performing arts programs in the school district next year, including dance, theater, music, drawing and painting. 

The board will also take into account recommendations made by the BSEP Planning and Oversite Committee. 

Child Development Services 

The board will vote whether to approve contracts with the Berkeley-Albany YMCA and the UC Berkeley Early Childhood Education Program to subcontract child development services. The California Department of Education (CDE) recently informed district staff that state funding for the district’s child development program could be reduced next year. 

District staff has requested the CDE to carry on the present contracted amount for next year by outlining the district’s plan to: 

• Rebuild the pre-school sites with additional classrooms 

• Develop partnerships with two programs in the area, the UC Berkeley Child Development program and Berkeley-Albany YMCA (Head Start), for the 2007-08 academic year.  

Under the contract, agreements have been set up with both agencies to provide services for pre-school students at an amount not to exceed $200,000 each. 

This step will allow the district to expand enrollment in the pre-schools once the pre-school facilities have been completed. 

Mayor Tom Bates has added to and clarified some elements in his Public Commons for Everyone Initiative proposal, which the City Council will be asked to address tonight (Tuesday).  

The meeting will be preceded by a workshop on the status of the city’s health, information on which will not be released until the 5 p.m. workshop. Earlier, such reports showed a dramatic discrepancy between health and longevity of Caucasians living in the Berkeley hills and African Americans living in the flatlands. The Berkeley Housing Authority meeting is at 6 p.m. The City Council meets at 7 p.m. 

The mayor’s proposal, which may be off its original fast track, is aimed at removing people with inappropriate behavior from shopping areas. 

In his new proposal, the mayor has accepted a recommendation from the Homeless Commission to organize a joint meeting among the Mental Health, Homeless and Human Welfare commissions. Many of these commissioners have said the measure criminalizes homelessness. 

The mayor and Councilmember Gordon Wozniak have been asking the community for its support; a number of positive responses were received. 

“I had some young students visiting from Germany recently,” Marna Owen wrote the mayor in support of the measure. “They were afraid to cross the street at University and Shattuck due to the number of loitering homeless people. Please, it’s time to make our city more livable and friendly.”  

To formulate new laws on “sidewalk obstruction,” develop diversion programs, look at community policing and “significant public discussion” on the question, the mayor is asking the city to hire a new six-month staff person. 

Because the mayor is asking for existing laws to be more strictly enforced, for the addition of new laws such as no smoking in commercial areas, and for community policing, Bates is asking for new policy development by the Police Review Commission. 

To pay for additional police and services, he has proposed funding the initiative by increasing parking meter rates and installing new meters.  

In addition to making Berkeley a City of Refuge (see related story), the council will hold a public hearing on the budget and discuss: 

• The Telegraph Avenue and North Shattuck Avenue business improvement districts’ annual reports. 

• A Sweatshop-Free Ordinance, that would prohibit the city from buying goods made under sweatshop conditions. 

• Setting a public hearing for an appeal of the new Trader Joe’s/housing development at 1885 University Ave. The council also will look at approving “fair labor practices” at the new Trader Joe’s on University Avenue. 

• The sunshine ordinance process. 

• Requests to refer the following items to the budget process: $3,000 for a Berkeley Boosters intern, $8,000 for the Dorothy Day breakfast program, $10,000 for the Malcolm X Arts Collaborative, $15,000 for Services for West Berkeley disabled children and $1 million for police. 

Berkeley High School named Cheryl Draper as its new girls’ basketball coach Monday. Draper replaced Gene Nakamura two weeks ago and her team will play their first basketball game in November. 

Coach “Nak” Nakamura, who had coached the girls’ basketball team for 25 years, retired on Feb. 16 after leading his team to win the Division I State Champions twice and Division I Northern California Champions seven times. 

Draper is a graduate of Division I Bradley University and has held the all-time assists record for the Indiana Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (IAIAW). 

She has taught physical education at Longfellow Middle School and has served as junior varsity coach with the Berkeley High Lady Jackets since 2000. 

From 1998 to 1999, Draper was head coach at Piedmont High School. She was also co-head coach at Kennedy High School in Richmond. 

“It feels fantastic,” she told the Planet in a telephone interview Monday. “It’s a great great honor. I hope I can keep up with the expectations.” 

Coach Draper’s advice to her team is to be consistent with their fundamental development and keep up the competitive spirit. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) will once again hear the appeal of an administrative use permit on Thursday that would allow construction at a single-family residential building at 2008 Virginia St. 

Applicant Lorin Hill of Oakland had requested the permit to construct a 1,434-square-foot addition, raising the existing structure approximately six feet to create habitable space on the ground level, and expanding the footprint of the building to create a two-story west wing. 

A group of neighbors have appealed the permit, saying they are concerned that the additional height will block air and light. On Jan. 25, ZAB members had asked the applicant to put up story poles at the site of the building so that ZAB and neighbors could get a better visual representation of the project. 

Staff reported that during this process the applicant had modified the proposed project in a way that could satisfy the neighbors’ concerns. 

Staff recommends denying the appeal and upholding the zoning officer’s decision to approve the project with minor modifications. 

Other items 

• ZAB will once again hear the appeal of an application for an administrative use permit for 933 Keeler Ave. Applicant Ken Winfield of Berkeley was denied a permit for construction of a second story atop an existing one-story detached garage, set back five feet from the property line abutting the street and two feet from the property line to the north, with an average height of 24 feet and a maximum height of 26 feet. 

At the April 17 ZAB meeting, board members set the item for public hearing. The site, at the corner of Keeler Avenue and Forest Lane, one block west of Grizzly Peak and one block south of Marin, is in a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes ranging from one to three stories. 

The zoning officer denied the permit on the grounds of the project’s inconsistency with the neighborhood and the height of the proposed building. Winfield has appealed, but staff recommends denying the appeal and upholding the decision to deny the project. 

• Aran Kaufer of San Francisco will request a use permit modification to allow modification to the ground floor plan and to modify the inclusionary housing for the project at 2700 San Pablo Ave. Staff recommends approval. 

•Sunny Grewal of Studio G+S Architects will request a use permit to remove an existing, detached garage, construct an attached garage and expand the floor area of an existing four-unit building at 1300 Monterey Ave. Staff recommends approval. 

Nationally known African-American talk show host Tavis Smiley brought his Road to Health Wellness Expo to the Oakland Convention Center recently, with hundreds of residents turning out to the downtown facility on May 11 and 12 to hear presentations on various aspects of healthy living, sample food and products, and get free medical testing by representatives of local health clinics and medical facilities. 

Oakland was the last stop in a four-city spring tour for the Smiley Wellness Expo, with earlier stops in Baltimore, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The Oakland event was primarily sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 

Smiley said that the expo offered “one of the few places these days where you can come and get things for free.” He said that in four years of the expo’s operation, “we have not had one time where at least one person’s life had not been saved by the testing.” 

Twice after being tested at previous expos, he said, people discovered that their health was in such bad shape “they had to go directly from the floor to a hospital.” 

But other press conference participants gave out a bleak assessment of the current state of health and health care. 

Dr. Dwayne Proctor, senior program officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the sponsors of the Oakland expo, said that the current generation “could be the first American generation to live sicker and die earlier than the previous generation.” 

Roy Combs, Oakland Unified School District general counsel, gave out a set of sobering health statistics on the district, saying that some 16,000 of its 45,000 K-12 student population is overweight, with 7,000 suffering from asthma and 7,000 with no health care at all. 

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums called the health problems in the country and the world “an incredible challenge. We need to fashion a solution not to the size of the available funding, but to the size of the problem.” Dellums said that for their own sake, Americans can no longer afford to ignore health problems either in poor communities within the country or in other countries. “This is an increasingly tiny world, interrelated and interdependent,” the mayor said. “There is a universal health vulnerability. Someone can cough in one country today and a couple of days later, someone in another country can die as a result of that cough.”  

Repeating the old environmentalist slogan, Dellums said that “while we have to think globally and act locally, our health security ultimately stands outside of our local communities. To preserve our own health, we need to solve the health problems everywhere. We need to address the issues of environmental degradation, hunger, and poverty that are driving the health crisis.”  

Bernard Tyson, executive vice president with Kaiser Permanente, another major expo sponsor, thanked Mayor Dellums for the city’s cooperation in the event, saying, “most mayors just show up for the press briefing for these events, and that’s it. But Mayor Dellums has been a full participant.” 

Smiley called Oakland “a great place to wrap up the tour; we’re glad to be in a city where we are welcomed.”  

While the theme for each day of the two-day event was identical—with an emphasis on how minority citizens, particularly Latino and African-American, can make affordable personal lifestyle choices to improve their health—the energy level in each of the two days was distinctly different. 

Friday was youth day, with the AC Transit District and the Oakland Unified School District cooperating to bring in busloads of local middle school students. Scores of students in powder blue “Tavis Smiley Presents Health & Wellness Expo” T-shirts roamed the floor of the convention center, doing double-dutch rope-jumping at the Oakland Office of Parks & Recreation pavilion, lining up to go up the artificial rock-climbing wall, or crowding around a platform where one local cook was preparing a dish of chicken, greens, and mandarin oranges, a helper giving out samples in small cups that were greedily consumed. 

“Do you like fast food?” the cook asked as she stirred more food in the pan. When a large show of hands from the young crowd went up, she asked, “Why?” and after some students replied, “It’s good,” or “My parents take me,” the cook asked, “How many of you saw the movie Supersize Me? If you saw the movie, why are you still eating fast food?” 

Friday’s focus was childhood obesity, which Smiley said was “not a sexy topic. It’s not a topic that you can get a lot of traction on.” 

While the adults sat in on a symposium panel that included several experts in the field of childhood health or fitness, students were down the hall participating in workshops run by students themselves. 

In the workshop operated by West Oakland’s Asa Academy, middle school student workshop leaders hammered their peers on the target-of-the-day: fast food. 

Yaminah Abdur-Rahim explained that “kids who eat fast food regularly” gain weight, suffer from headaches, and are at increased risk for diseases like Type 2 diabetes. She explained how fast foods are addictive, with such extra elements as high levels of salt and sugar. “You wouldn’t think there is sugar in burgers because they’re not sweet,” she said, “but it’s there.” 

Other presenters took surveys on how many students liked fast food staples like MacDonald’s Big Macs or burritos from El Pollo Loco or Taco Bell, and then cited statistics on the calorie counts and ways students could reduce the fat intake by such tactics as “keeping your portions small (don’t supersize it!),” or “getting a healthier side dish; go for the greens; drink water instead of a soda.” 

It was not certain how much of this the student listeners took in, but as Kaiser Vice President Bernard Tyson later said, “I came into [the health business at Kaiser] because I wanted to save the world. I’ve been around enough to know that we’re not going to save the world. But if we’ve changed the lifestyle of just one child this weekend, we’ve done a great thing.”  

At the Friday press conference, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a $100,000 grant to Oakland’s San Antonio Neighbors for Active Living organization for its work on child obesity. 

On Saturday, the focus shifted to adults, with workshops on such topics as disease management, sexual health, promoting healthy lifestyles, and finding affordable healthcare. Local health organizations, including Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Medical Center, provided free health screenings from dental to blood pressure to prostate exams to HIV testings.  

Other pavilions on the convention floor were set up specifically for 20- minute presentations on topics of women’s or senior health. In place of the high school hip hop dancers on the main stage on Friday, Saturday’s dancers featured a chorus line of middle-age women in T-shirts and jeans doing a (slightly) less exaggerated version of some of the same moves. 

Drivers leaving the freeway at the Fifth street exit in San Francisco often find their cars besieged by several men carrying signs: middle-aged or older, many though not all African-American, disheveled, some with teeth missing. Frequently they wave signs, hand-lettered on cardboard boxes, saying things like “I’m a veteran who needs help.” Or “Will take any kind of job.” It’s easy to keep the windows rolled up and drive on. 

If you get off BART in downtown Berkeley, it’s a bit harder to avoid the supplicants as you leave the station at street level. They’re not so likely to carry signs, but rely on spoken pleas and eye contact to make their case. Still, most people manage to look elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, the Iraq misadventure continues, seemingly without any end in sight. A valiant effort by congressional Democrats to bring it to an end by withholding funds has fizzled for lack of enough Republican support to override a Bush veto. The 2008 presidential campaign is underway, and concerned Americans are counting the days until Bush can be sent packing. Others who think we can’t wait that long are promoting impeachment.  

Each day that the Iraq war continues, the number of potentially indigent and homeless men (and now women) that we will see on our street corners increases. Consider these statistics from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans:  

• 23 percent of the homeless population are veterans. 

• 33 percent of homeless men are veterans. 

• 47 percent served during the Vietnam era.  

• 67 percent served for three years or longer.  

• 76 percent experience alcohol, drug, or mental health problems. 

And this war promises to produce even more damaged veterans wandering our streets, as many young people return from Iraq with traumatic brain injuries. Because of improvements in body armor, coupled with concussions caused by the increased use of improvised explosive devices, soldiers may escape visible bodily injury and yet have long-lasting or even permanent brain damage. A report from the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) says that in earlier wars such injuries accounted for 14-20 percent of surviving combat casualties, and now the number is even higher. Men and women with injuries like these may appear perfectly normal externally, and yet suffer from all kinds of trauma-related conditions. According to the DVBIC, “Difficulties experienced as a result of a closed-head blast injury include post-concussion complaints such as decreased memory and attention/concentration, headaches, slower thinking, irritability, and/or depression.” Many with these problems will end up on the streets. 

Memorial Day is now celebrated conveniently on the last Monday in May. Californians think of it as the first good beach weekend, a day for barbecues and baseball. But it used to be called Decoration Day, always observed on May 30, a day when people went to cemeteries to clean and decorate the graves of veterans, especially those of the great bloody conflict which northerners called the Civil War and southerners called the War Between the States. A very high percentage of those who were injured in that war didn’t survive, but those who did were honored and cared for by the folks at home. The Veterans’ Administration hospitals in my youth were splendid establishments with verandas for rocking chairs and rolling green lawns, places where veterans who needed help could live out their days in peace.  

But no more. Horrendous conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital are now coming to light. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling has done a series of pieces on experiences of veterans at Fort Collins, Colorado, reporting that those with mental conditions of the kind associated with traumatic brain injury have had trouble getting proper care. Care for veterans has been going downhill ever since the Vietnam War, when it was possible for well-connected men like George Bush to escape combat, leaving regular guys, many of whom are now today’s homeless veterans, to take the hits.  

Many of us even way back then knew what was happening, but felt powerless to stop it. Every time I hear Danny Zwerdling’s excellent reports (I don’t know him) I’m reminded of his grandfather, Ozias Zwerdling, whom I did meet long ago. In 1970 I was managing a congressional campaign for an under-funded and ultimately unsuccessful anti-Vietnam-war congressional candidate in Ann Arbor, and we rented a storefront campaign headquarters from Ozias. I remember him as a small, white-haired bent old man with a heavy accent—and when he heard what we were up to he immediately cut the rent to almost nothing, because he was strongly opposed to the war. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they used to say in the Midwest. 

That war was eventually stopped, as this one will probably be, but many more lives were destroyed before the end came. That’s why every day counts, because every day means more of our young people killed or injured in ways that will affect the rest of their lives. Even without a draft, the consequences of the war in Iraq are getting closer to home for many Americans. More and more of us know people who face combat duty.  

One of my friends has a young cousin who enlisted as a teenager after his mother’s death, lured by the usual promises of getting an education. He’s now awaiting being shipped out to Iraq in November, clearly part of the unannounced “Second Surge” which the press is starting to uncover. One of my daughter’s friends from high school, a school teacher in his forties with a family, has been called up in the reserves. Another friend’s nephew is due to be discharged from the Navy’s submarine service any day now, but his family fears he’ll be held over and sent, like many Navy and Air Force personnel lately, to carry a gun in Iraq.  

What can we do? There are many ideas. Some write letters to papers like ours or to papers with more conservative opinion pages. (We get many more of these than we have room to print, and among our readers they’re preaching to the choir anyway.) Others lobby Congress: not only Barbara Lee, who doesn’t need it, but Ellen Tauscher from over the hill, who does. Keeping people like Jerry McNerney in Congress at the next election and adding more of them is essential, but what else? The usual protests, marches, pickets, direct actions—all are worthwhile, none a silver bullet, but we have to keep at it. 

But while we’re working on stopping this war, let’s not forget the victims of earlier wars, many of whom can be encountered on the streets of Berkeley. We owe them a lot more than Berkeley politicians’ latest ploy to get unsightly people out of sight and out of mind: tickets for loitering on the sidewalk or smoking on the street or peeing in the bushes.  

Especially because national veterans’ programs are falling apart, every veteran on our streets (one of every three homeless men) deserves a clean and comfortable place to sleep, enough to eat, and physical and mental health support. When we’ve accomplished that, we can talk about solving whatever “street behavior” problems they’re perceived as causing.  

West Berkeley’s been the top planning controversy in the news in the last couple of weeks. On the southern flank, yet another edgy, vibrant artists’ colony is being pushed out, this one The Shipyard, a prominent contributor to the annual Burning Man extravaganza. On the north, speculators seem to have big plans for the approximately 5 acre home of the former Cal Ink company, once a central player in a small industry. In 1999 Cal Ink (now owned by Michigan’s Flint Ink) was the oldest factory in Berkeley operating at its original location. If information about their plans gleaned from the internet by Public Eye columnist Zelda Bronstein is reliable, some developers might be hoping to parlay the Berkeley City Council’s authorization for the addition of a zoning overlay for auto dealerships into much, much more.  

A good guess would be the currently chi-chi form of gentrification: condos upstairs, retail down. A faux-urban mall like Silicon Valley’s Santana Row seems possible. But whatever’s going on, it should be going on in the open, not under the radar as it seems to be. 

The area is currently governed by the West Berkeley Plan, which took untold amounts of public money, years of citizen labor and much compromise to enact. Adding more space for auto sales is a logical extension of the spirit and intent of the plan, but it looks like the promoters of the new development might be trying for an even bigger bite of the apple, if the disclosures made as part of the offer to sell are to be believed. 

In Oakland, there’s been a similar effort to take over a big chunk of the land set aside for “dirty” uses like manufacturing and art and gentrify it for condo/retail use without bothering to make appropriate zoning changes. Jerry Brown’s administration came and went without making the official zoning amendments which were needed to support the city’s general plan for crucial areas of the city.  

It’s so much easier to do land use planning by making small changes to the rules which only the privileged few are party to, or simply by giving variances to the people you favor. That’s historically been a bit harder to pull off in Berkeley than in Oakland, but Berkeley’s Planning Department is now getting the reputation of doing sweetheart deals with people it likes, and the City Council has become accustomed to just rubberstamping them. That’s why former School Board chair Anna DeLeon, currently the proprietor of Anna’s Jazz Island, is suing the council. She alleges that all the concessions the city granted to her Gaia building landlord, Patrick Kennedy, were illegal, and that they’ve harmed her business.  

The worst thing about planning by privilege is that it almost always has results which aren’t consistent with the greater public good. Auto dealerships are good producers of sales tax revenue, and given California’s love affair with the auto they probably have to be near the freeway. But taking this well-defined and reasonable change in West Berkeley’s rules and trying to leverage it into more and different kinds of retail, including perhaps a Big Box store, is another matter entirely. Doing it by fooling around with the language of the proposed zoning overlay which was supposed to be specifically for auto dealerships is inexcusable. And some of the buildings on the Cal Ink site are designated historic resources protected by CEQA, but promoters seems confident that they can just be demolished anyhow, no problema.  

The condo part of the conventional equation, if it materialized in West Berkeley on that site, would add many new drivers to the already overloaded freeway exits without contributing a fair share of the city’s tax revenues. There’s not much public transit in that area, and what there is doesn’t go much of anywhere that condo-dwellers would want to go. And when manufacturing is driven out to the distant burbs while the cities are packed with cheap condos for singles, it creates reverse long-distance commuters. It’s happening all over the country, not just in Berkeley or Oakland. 

In the meantime, back at Berkeley City Hall, they’re again talking about about funding the mayor’s no-smoking plan for improving downtown by raising parking fees. Here’s a question for our Berkeley readers, and even for the couple of hundred anonymous members of the Kitchen Democracy claque: why don’t you shop downtown? Is it (a) the weird people on the street, (b) parking problems, (c) nothing much to buy there any more or (d) all of the above?  

It’s a cinch that making (b) worse will do nothing at all to make (a) or (c) better. That’s our city management, dropping the planning ball again. And the city manager floated another trial balloon at the budget workshops recently: raising property taxes yet again. Even Berkeley’s public-spirited citizens are finally starting to notice that all we seem to get with each new tax is bigger and better pension plans for city employees, while services continue to go downhill fast.  

Here’s what current West Berkeley trends, if they’re not addressed by the City Council, will add up to: fewer good jobs for local residents, more new residents who don’t pay their share of the upkeep for public services and shop elsewhere, and higher taxes for the long-suffering taxpayers in the rest of the city. It looks like a bad deal, but it also looks like it will be hard to stop.  

LAWN FURNITURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just read your piece about how the city of Berkeley has put out for several dumpsters for students to put their furniture as they move out. While this has its advantages for the reasons you’ve mentioned, you missed out on a key point: recycling. This program blindly trashes all furniture with the threat of getting fined for leaving something on the sidewalk; however, with students moving out, there are other students moving in, and many of these students rely on free, previously-used furniture to decorate their new apartment or house. I, myself, have used these “services” for all three years I have been a student here. While the program instituted by the city of Berkeley eliminates littering and alleviates the headaches of the cranky Berkeley elderly, the fact that it completely prevents recycling may, in fact, make it more wasteful than not having the program in the first place. I am writing this because I feel this is a key point that you should address on this topic—not only that, but it is a key point that should be made aware to the Berkeley City Council, because I feel they are responding to the complaints of Berkeley residents without consideration of the students. 

Noah Grant 

• 

GIVE ’EM JOBS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What’s the best way to keep teenagers off the streets, away from drugs and on the road towards success? Give them jobs. Although filing papers for hours or picking up dog excrement may not exactly epitomize success for many of us, this is precisely what the city of Berkeley believes. Several city council members are lobbying for over $400,000 to pay for youth jobs. This comes partially from Mayor Bates’ campaign promise to “create a city that supports…young people” and partially from the fact that Berkeley could employ only 120 of 350 teens looking for summer work last year. More kids in the office (or day camp or McDonald’s), less on the street.  

As a Berkeley teenager, I must agree with them. Obviously, you can’t make drugs or underage drinking any more illegal than they already are, and there are only so many suspensions you can give one loser kid, but helping them reach a position where they must learn responsibility and maturity or face a pay cut, is much more successful. A job inherently teaches lessons a professor, policeperson, or counselor never could. The city council would be doing itself a favor by passing these measures, keeping kids busy and developing the economy of Berkeley. Hell, who else are you going to get to pick up dog crap? 

Emma Floyd 

Oakland 

• 

TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was impressed by the article in March in the Daily Planet on the City Council’s new policy on the state of the homeless and loitering. I agree with the initiative to get them into employment, but I don’t know if it’s such a good idea to penalize them for loitering.  

Some would say that the homeless need to be penalized for causing businesses to lose money, making the street less attractive, etc. However it isn’t a good idea to penalize all homeless for this reason unless they are harassing someone. In reality, at this point the homeless really have no other options than to be out on the street. In 2006 Berkeley cut funding for the homeless because of the amount of local churches responding to the crisis. If the homeless are penalized for their condition it will only make matters worse. It must also be taken into consideration that realistically it will be extremely difficult to enforce any policy against loitering because of the many homeless in Berkeley, especially in the downtown area. (It is not likely that many of those in law enforcement would take the time to respond to that kind of call).  

In my opinion, the city should continue their positive efforts such as the ones that will be provided in the City Council’s initiative. Getting the homeless into employment (and hopefully, housing eventually) will make the citizens happier because it will ultimately prove to them that their tax dollars are being spent on things that are of concern to them. Obviously it will be beneficial for the homeless.  

Finally, we should treat the homeless with respect. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? 

Kimberlee Cox  

Richmond 

• 

A BERKELEY TAX REBELLION? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent letters published in the Planet objecting to Berkeley’s high taxes are most interesting, I find, because they don’t necessarily come from conservative writers. My impression is that a good number of progressives in our city share the view that their taxes are being wasted by city officials. Many Berkeleyans are realizing that City Hall, under the influence of wealthy real estate entrepreneurs and developers, has been promoting development projects in our neighborhoods that are detrimental to residents’ quality of life and safety. 

The consequence of this new awareness on the part of citizens across the political spectrum may be the defeat of all future Berkeley ballot proposals to raise taxes. There is a tax rebellion of sorts going on in our city. Almost all of us recognize that taxation can serve the common good. Berkeley has historically used its tax dollars to support some worthwhile causes, and I personally have supported these expenditures for decades. Aware that our lives are bound up with the lives of others far and near, many of us continue to support involvement of our city in the affairs of the state, nation, and planet. Berkeley should, for instance, join with other city governments to change federal priorities, shifting funding away from the military economy to address dire civilian needs. Our tax dollars at the federal level should be used to beat the proverbial swords into plowshares. 

We perceive that our local taxes are being misused too. When residents’ and merchants’ tax dollars are placed in the pockets of special interests, resulting in wasteful, developer-driven, neighborhood-detrimental policies, and when protest against those policies goes unheeded by City Hall, then it’s not surprising that citizens become unwilling to pay additional taxes. 

Raymond Barglow 

Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club 

Berkeley 

• 

TAXING SITUATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I concur with Gus Lee’s letter of May 18, “A Taxing Situation.” Berkeley homeowners can’t keep paying increasing taxes to fund huge salaries and benefits for non-emergency staff. 

I recently heard that our City Council voted to give Planning Manager Mark Rhoades a 10 percent salary increase. Would that be the same Mark Rhoades who, according to a letter published in this newspaper in 2003, falsified a document to help Patrick Kennedy secure a few of his millions of dollars in ABAG loans? Those particular millions were used to build the Touriel Building at 2004 University Avenue, one of the ugliest of the Kennedy creations. The letter, entitled “Doyle House” and dated May 6, 2003, can be found in the archives of this publication. 

Ten percent is a hell of a salary increase for someone who seems to be using our tax dollars to work directly for developers, rather than for us. Why would the City Council select this employee for financial favoritism? 

Ed Johnston 

• 

GREENING BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your paper does a wonderful job of presenting the current news to our city; in the May 22 edition we were able to read about the mayor’s program to “cut local greenhouse emissions.” Our mayor’s initiatives to “green” Berkeley create a phantasm of the imaginary—Berkeley is Oz, a wonderful place where everyone puts the environment first and it goes without saying, people’s health as well. Unfortunately this is not true.  

Pacific Steel Casting has been polluting Berkeley for over 25 years. Haven’t you smelled it? And let me remind you can smell this polluter up in the hills, on Allston Way, on a lovely Saturday morning as you purchase your organic vegetables, and at the local restaurants that provide down home cooking on San Pablo, and Gilman, and even at REI, another venerable Berkeley institution that makes us feel good about our environment and our values in the world. The smell is there. Yet, worse, much worse, are the hidden pollutants that have been documented and are continuing to be documented (for more information, please go to the West Berkeley Alliance website, as well as the city’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission’s website).  

The good news is the CEAC (Community Environmental Advisory Commission). These dedicated people know that we are not living in an imaginary, ideologically constructed green environment. Pacific Steel Casting is dangerous for our local citizens. Go to any local citizen’s group meeting and hear the citizens speak; yet we, the citizens, are asked to get more data and get more data. 

Most horrific of all is that PSC gets a free ride. (Oh, OK, not entirely free, they do have slapped hands, and fines to pay, but hey, what’s that compared to being given free reign by the mayor and City Council of a green city!). The City Council voted in March based on CEAC recommendations to help clean up PSC. Now, the mayor says that the city won’t act on the CEAC recommendations until PS’s Health Risk Assessment (HRA) is completed. It was due in April and now the state agency, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, is allowing PSC until July to get the report in! What is going on here?! 

PSC constantly and consistently misses its deadlines and gets slapped, gets fined and goes on polluting our neighborhood. Hey, if you missed a deadline at work as many times as PSC has missed its report deadlines, you would be out on the street. 

We, the citizens of Berkeley, demand that the CEAC’s recommendations get funded now! We cannot wait again. I, for one, do not look forward to another summer of staying in doors.  

Meryl Siegal 

• 

TELEGRAPH GOODIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Some of the good stuff on and near Telegraph Avenue: 

Peoples’ Park now has beautiful flower and vegetable gardens, lovingly tended. Because it’s sheltered from the winds off the bay, many plants bloom earlier and better than they would have in other locations. 

It’s also a great birding spot. Many bushes have been selected because they are favorites of hummingbirds. Anna’s Hummingbirds live there year round. I’ve seen many warblers, chickadees, plain titmice with their cute little crests, house finches, goldfinches, the ubiquitous rock dove, and more. 

The fourth annual Berkeley World Music Weekend takes place June 2 and 3, noon to 9 p.m., various locations, free! Schedule of great music is at www.berkeleyworldmusic.org and www.telegraphlive.com. 

Caveat: Loading zones directly on Tele are sometimes enforced on Sunday. You can contact the city if, like me, you think this is pointless and silly, or a great idea. 

Enjoy the art, music, interesting people, flowers, birds, shops, coffee, food! 

Ruth Bird 

• 

STEVE BARTON MUST GO! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, the police and the merchants on Telegraph Avenue think the Berkeley City Council is on their side regarding reduction of homelessness and begging? In what may be the worst tenant eviction scandal in Berkeley’s history, the city is preparing to put 750 households consisting of possibly 1,000 or more elderly, disabled (including veterans) Berkeley citizens on the street this year. This is done by secretly giving the funds HUD provides for poor Section 8 folk to developers instead. In Berkeley Housing meetings, which are now called “special” meetings and are held at 5 or 6 p.m. before City Council meetings, most of the City Council has been giving away Berkeley citizens’ homes to the highest bidder.  

The developers promise “affordable” housing, but the joke is that in Berkeley the definition of affordable is: You must make $60,000 a year. Debra Ward, Assistant Manager of Berkeley’s Section 8 Housing promises a 2007 $60 a month rent increase for disabled, veterans and elderly living in one bedroom units, and a $50 a month raise for those living in studios. Other members of the housing authority sadly back her up, as they must follow the incompetence of Berkeley Housing Director Steve Barton and City Manager Phil Kamlarz as they pant after developers’ money. While this is against state and city law, most of the City Council continues to give only minimal funds and lip service to the homeless cause. So that people will not see which hand is taking away citizens’ homes, the City Council is setting up a shell “housing” group that includes at least two tenant rubber stampers. In practice, the City Council majority is the direct cause of the coming tidal wave of Berkeley homelessness by failing to use HUD or Housing Fund monies for the purpose they were intended.  

Steven Yee 

Berkeley Citizens for Fair Housing  

• 

HOUSING AUTHORITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many thanks to the Berkeley Daily Planet for running the recent commentary I wrote about the Berkeley Housing Authority! I can only hope that all the attention they are getting lately, will finally put enough pressure on the city to produce the results needed to get that agency back on track. It was not my intention to see anyone get fired, although I called for Steve Barton’s resignation a while back. There’s no way that he cannot know what’s been happening in that agency. My opinion... 

Lynda Carson 

• 

PORT PROTEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anti-war protesters marched into the Port of Oakland on Saturday, May 19 and picketed a war profiteer, Stevedoring Services of America (SSA). “The war is for profit—Longshore workers can stop it,” read our signs and banners. We asked the longshoremen to honor our picket line, and they did. One ship sat unloaded at the dock, and two more ships waited in the harbor. Cargo did not move that day. Themes and issues of the action were: Stop the shipping of war material; bring the troops home now, and give them the healthcare they need; Port money for schools and social services. It was at this very same SSA Terminal that protesters and longshoremen were attacked by police four years ago, on April 7, 2003, when 59 people were injured. Fortunately, this time all went well, and the war profiteer was successfully shut down for two shifts. This does not happen often—not every year, not every decade. Possibly not even during the war in Vietnam. It was more than just another major news story; it was an historical event. Several TV and radio stations reported it, but most of the print media somehow missed it. 

Daniel Borgström 

Oakland 

• 

ARNOLD IS GREEN? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Green with cash, that is. Dirty oil money is behind the Terminator’s slick efforts to terminate high-speed rail. Chevron has greased his palms with large reelection contributions. Chevron spent millions to defeat the 2006 ballot proposition on clean alternative energy. Throw in another $2 million in other campaign contributions from other oil companies. The governor’s office has become like a cash register at a gas station—money comes in from the oil companies and out of the pump comes policies against clean air and energy independence. 

Schwarzenegger is a gasoholic. The cure will require throwing out the office cash register, selling the six Humvees, and getting new friends. The road to recovery is lined with rail. High-speed rail. California’s first, state-wide, public transit system will unclog freeways, halve travel time from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and help clean the air. 

Arnold’s first step is to recognize he has an oil abuse problem. Next, become a Friend of Al’s (as in Al Gore). Join the Sacramento chapter of Gasoholics Anonymous. Wash the dirty oil money by supporting high-speed rail. Don’t be in denial about the last best hope for California public transit. 

Paul Page 

San Francisco 

• 

MEASURE A 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It pains me to witness the vitriol that is rapidly becoming the agenda on both sides of the pro and con arguments relating to the issue of Measure A. It is dividing the citizenry in a very unhealthy way.  

It needs to be clearly understood that all of us who favor retaining Measure A act solely for the current preservation of our Treasured Island. That is our only agenda. We are not paid or subsidized nor influenced by any outside pressure. 

In my view, the proponents of striking down or revising this Alameda City Charter Amendment are misguided and, in many cases, influenced by the corporate culture and real estate factions involved in that attempt. I have never bought the ‘affordable housing’ ploy and never will. I view that to be obviously phony. The future of Alameda is at stake.  

I implore the Planning Board, City Council and city staff take some serious unbiased time to thoroughly investigate who/what precisely is behind the anti-A movement. I find their documentaries lacking in forthright disclosures, We need some honesty in that respect. 

One example—I am suspect of HOMES. My logical side prompts me to ask, who/what is dollar-backing them and certain other anti-Measure A antagonists? Furthermore I have witnessed backing of the Sierra Club siding w/the Anti Measure A discussion. That, to me is a mind boggler! Is not that organization pledged to preserving what’s left of the Bay Area? 

We need clarification and honest disclosure as to backing of the these factions that appear to be adamantly determined to either strike down or revise/alter Measure A. Alameda Point is being used by those entities to covertly strike down Measure A for that particular area. Lookout! It won’t stop there.  

Margie Joyce 

Alameda 

• 

GLOBAL CHILD SURVIVAL ACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The U.S. Commitment to Global Child Survival Act was introduced in the House and Senate. This bill promotes the use of effective, affordable preventative measures such as immunization, antibiotics, clean drinking water and vitamin supplements, which would save the lives of those almost 30,000 children under age 5 die who die each day from preventable, treatable diseases, such as diarrhea, pneumonia and measles. 

In addition, our leaders introduced the Education for All Act, which would expand access to education by training teachers, building infrastructure, promoting life skills training as well as supporting initiatives that reach the most disadvantaged populations, like the almost 77 million children worldwide who lack access to basic education up to the sixth grade. Some children, in our own county, go un- or under-educated. 

Every child deserves to live. Every child deserves an education. Every member of Congress should hear from us on these issues. I hope that all of us will visit ONE.org to learn more about why these bills are important, and then write or call our representatives and encourage them to support these important bills. 

Rev. Gregory Schaefer 

• 

NO LOGICAL THREAD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Poor Mr. Tratner hopelessly perplexes himself trying to find a logical thread in Becky O’Malley’s May 18 editorial (“Rude, Crude and in Your Face”) which concludes with a seemingly incongruous reference to Israel. Put simply, the state of Israel and the so-called Zionist lobby in the United States, what Pat Buchanan, David Duke and Joanna Graham regularly denounce as its “Amen corner,” are to the Berkeley Daily Planet what the destruction of ancient Carthage once was to Cato the Censor in his speeches before the Roman senate. All his speeches ended on the same tiresome, redundant theme, no matter what the nominal topic at hand. But perhaps the most cogent comparison of all is that Israel represents to Becky O’Malley what Chief Inspector Clouseau did to former Chief Inspector Dreyfuss? Does anyone recall one of the Clouseau films which ends with Dreyfuss sequestered in a white padded cell in a straightjacket, eye furiously twitching, lying on his back with a crayon perched between his bare toes painstakingly scrawling on the padded wall the name “Clouseau”? For her sake, with her dotage clearly approaching, I hope a similar fate does not await Ms. O’Malley! Perhaps it’s not too late to get help? Modern psychopharmacology offers many miracles (and not every local psychiatrist is a “Zionist”!). Please check with your insurance carrier (who might well be a “Zionist”) to see if you qualify for a negotiated rate. 

Edna Spector 

EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES OF BERKELEY DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing to make you aware of a situation that is happening in Berkeley and perhaps should be the subject of investigative reporting. 

Yassir Chadly, head lifeguard for the Berkeley city pools, has worked for the City of Berkeley for 17 years and now that he has reached the age of 53 his hours are being reduced and he will lose his health benefits and his retirement benefits. It would be interesting to know if this is how the City of Berkeley treats its long term aging employees. 

Yassir is well liked by all the people who use the pools—seniors, master swimmers, lap swimmers, children, etc. It would be terrible to lose this well loved employee but worse to find out the City of Berkeley has the policy of trying to get rid of its older employees. 

Alice Scheelar 

• 

VALUED EMPLOYEE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Yassir Chadly has been a valued employee of the City of Berkeley for 17 years. As a head lifeguard at the city’s pools, he manages a great deal of responsibility, as well as welcoming the people who come to swim. It is Yassir who transforms lap swimming into community. He greets us, knows us by name, and finds us a place to swim when the pool is busy. He cares about us. He creates community. The lap swimmers love him. The senior aerobics class loves him. Come watch and hear the seniors laugh for an hour as Yassir leads them in water aerobics with his inimitable sense of humor and Middle Eastern music. The kids love him too.  

The decision to remove him from his position, turn him into a temporary worker, and remove his health benefits is a travesty. This is a mature man with a family. He does an excellent job. This is not a college student who is heading to a more highly paid future. Who made this disastrous decision? What were they thinking? 

Building a warm community of healthy people is what Yassir does. Making Berkeley a better, happier place to live is what Yassir does. Yassir should be reinstated in the position he has had, with full benefits. The mayor and councilmembers can show Berkeley’s citizens that Berkeley does care about our health and happiness and community spirit, and about its highly valued employees, especially Yassir Chadly. 

Sally Nelson 

• 

SAVING CHADLY’S JOB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My wife and I have swam in Berkeley public pools for 19 years. We have just heard about the city’s firing of Yassir Chadly, a beloved life-guard at the city’s public pools. Yassir has greeted us for most of these years each early morning we arrive bleary-eyed to swim. It is through his ministrations—greetings, wisdom through advice, matching of swimmers in lanes, introducing folks to each other—that swimming at a city pool is transformed into an experience of community building. 

This soul of a man is an asset to the city; dare I say a living treasure to all he whose lives he touches each day at the pool. 

I managed large public sector R&D projects for 25 years. People (not ideas, technologies whatever per se) are the core to the success of any such enterprise. Pay for the right person, encourage and build around their skills, and the swimmers will come. Thus, Mr. Chadly’s incredible influence on the city’s swim programs. 

Mayor Bates and Councilmembers, reverse this travesty of a decision to fire Yassir Chadly. 

Peter Seidman and Bonnie Benard 

• 

SERVES GENEROUSLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The City of Berkeley swimming pools need lifeguard Yassir Chadly, who has for the past 17 years cheerfully, determinedly, and faithfully held together a chaotically administered public aquatics program. Cutting his position in order to save the cost of health benefits is wrong.  

Yassir’s humor, warm greetings, and knack for knowing who will be good lane partners are just the tip of the iceberg. His respect and sociability toward each individual, child or adult, who enters, permeates the swim experience. His work to make the pools centers of health and harmony ripples out to the entire community. 

Yassir serves the public generously, creatively, and responsibly. If city budget managers were more like Yassir, we wouldn’t have to write letters like this. 

Gael Alcock 

• 

COMMUNITY-BUILDING  

CHARACTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I write to support Yassir Chadly, an employee of City of Berkeley Aquatics Department for the past 17 years. Apparently, on June 15, his position will be reduced from half-time with medical benefits to hourly without medical benefits.  

Yassir’s welcoming community-building character as well as his pool safety knowledge and gentile management of lap swimmers, master’s swimmers, children, and us folks over 55 cannot be replaced. His senior aerobics classes promote health through stamina, cardio, bone and strength building exercises; relaxation; and a joyful sense of community to those who participate. 

I feel that it makes more sense to promote him than demote him. However at least continuing his medical benefits would be a kinder, gentler way to go. 

Mary B. Moorhead, MS, LMFT 

Elder Care Consultant 

• 

KEEP CHADLY ON STAFF 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have patronized Berkeley pools since 1984, which has enabled me to observe the job performance of many lifeguards. Currently, Yassir is the only lifeguard who knows the ins and outs of all pools, performs optimally, has relationships with all swimmers, understands and cares about our needs, and goes the extra mile for consumers. While other staff are content to do the minimum, Yassir is conscientious, takes initiative on thing like cleanliness and efficiency, sets an example for younger lifeguards, and motivates them to maintain the pools and their surrounds. He’s the only lifeguard who, on his own initiative, takes out a screen and cleans the pool. 

Today I swam at Willard for the first time this year, having been turned away daily due to operational problems, which still exist. When I arrived, I pointed out to the lifeguard a homeless person sleeping bag at the entrance, who was still there when I left. The lifeguard tried to dissuade me from swimming, stating that the pool was dirty. Yassir would have cleaned it; this lifeguard didn’t. Yassir would have had the sleeping person removed, aware that many swimmers don’t use Willard because they don’t want to walk over bodies on their way in. Yassir is the go-to guy for problems. He doesn’t pass the buck and is committed to customer service. His pleasant demeanor and sense of humor provide a high quality environment for both pool users and staff. He has managed our pools in the past, will manage King Pool’s summer program without medical benefits (outrageous!), and already acts in a supervisorial role day to day, supervising staff who respect and admire him. He is very intelligent, learns quickly, and can easily be trained to perform tasks required of the supervisor position. 

This decision cannot stand or Berkeley will lose the Aquatics program’s most valuable asset. I have run my own business for 40 years, and Yassir Chadly would be for me the ideal employee. He brings honor to the City of Berkeley, and it’s a shame that, rather than being appreciated, he is being forced out. That will be a great loss for all of us. 

Marcy McGaugh 

In separate reports, City Manager Phil Kamlarz and City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque have found gross incompetence, if not fraud, in the Berkeley Housing Authority. BHA manages a budget of $25,000,000 per year. This is supposed to provide subsidized housing for nearly 1900 needy families. The truth, as reported in the Daily Planet on May 22, is that in too many cases the money goes to ineligible persons, and even to people who are long dead. Finding “egregious violations” of federal rules, and active employee resistance to reform, Kamlarz and Albuquerque ask the mayor and City Council to replace themselves as directors of BHA with a set of Mayoral appointees, and to terminate the employment of 13 full time staffers. Strangely (given the alleged misconduct), the fired employees are to be offered equal or better positions elsewhere in the city bureaucracy. The city will kick in another $947,000 to help BHA to “transition” to something different (what exactly is not described). 

At 6 p.m. on May 22, I went to the raucous council meeting that was called to deal with the reports (everyone knows that if Berkeley can’t fix BHA, the feds will). What came out was typical for Berkeley: lots of finger-pointing, and no assumption of responsibility by the likely culprits, who include just about everyone in sight. For example: 

The mayor and council have been the directors of BHA since the beginning. They hire the city manager (Kamlarz) and appoint the housing director (Steve Barton). These two in turn recommend the BHA manager, and supervise his/her performance. While each of the councilmembers said a ritual mea culpa, most of them didn’t really mean it. They said they were “surprised” at the reports, even though they have gotten many similar reports ever since 2002. They criticized the May 22 Planet article as “one-sided,” even though the article is taken almost word for word from the official reports and from interviews with Kamlarz, Barton and other principles. And in the end the council majority promised equal or better jobs (or a full year’s severance pay) to the accused employees regardless of fault. 

The employees, who dominated public comment, complained (with some justification) they were being scapegoated. But many of them were hostile and in-everybody’s-face, and none conceded the slightest possibility of being wrong. If this is how some city workers behave in front of the TV cameras, you can only imagine how they act with their clients, the citizens of Berkeley. And if it is true that the city’s SEIU contracts guarantee continuing jobs for persons found after investigation to be incompetent, we have a far bigger problem than these 13 BHA employees. 

Management seems to get off scot-free. By putting his name on the indictment against the employees, Kamlarz obscures the fact that he himself should be one of the accused. As for Barton, the Planet notes the absence of his name on the latest reports, and quotes him as having been “unaware” of some of the BHA problems. This is strange indeed since Barton himself has been enmeshed in the BHA/HUD fight from the beginning, and on Jan. 17 of last year told the City Council, in writing, of instances of “fraudulent reporting” at BHA. 

Barton does not have the excuse of Kamlarz and the council, i.e. that they are too busy with other matters to pay much attention to BHA. He is not protected by SEIU, and should be fired. As housing director for the city, Barton is responsible not only for BHA’s Section 8 program, but also for the now bankrupt affordable housing trust fund. He is the author of the condominium conversion ordinance which he said would bring the city $4 million a year in added trust funds. Now, nearly two years later, not a single dollar has come in. He continues to resist any reevaluation of Berkeley’s rent control program, which costs $3 million per year but which no longer helps those most in need of help. 

The whole thing reminds us of the Bush administration, which continually blames lowerlings for the gross mistakes of political appointees, and which rewards the people on top with even better jobs than before. Paul Wolfowitz screws up in Iraq. Is he held accountable? No, he’s sent to the World Bank. 

That’s no way to run a country. It’s no way to run Berkeley. 

David M. Wilson is a Berkeley resident and landlord.

There have been many articles on this subject lately. To generalize, it comes down to two very broad reasons. The first is based on the desire for the Democrats to just let the bastard stew in the mess that he created and in the process take the Republicans down with him. The Dems are dreaming of winning back the presidency without having to work very hard. This is probably correct. It insulates the Dems from having to make a courageous stand on principle, an especially odious enterprise for the other corporate dominated party, but, it also makes them culpable for this endless war. This will be the Republican’s defense come next elections: You were with us on this war until it got hard. They have a point. 

The other broad category is the public psychological angle. “The unpleasant truth is that Bush did what a lot of Americans wanted him to. And when it became clear after the fact that Bush had lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, it made no sense for those Americans to turn on him. Truth was never their major concern anyway—revenge was.” By this account Bush is merely expressing the public’s base desire to seek revenge and to kick ass. Superficially this is correct, although, the president could have used his bully pulpit to guide the public’s anger and blood lust towards a more constructive end. He did not. In fact, he amplified those public sentiments and pointed them, like a loaded gun, towards a rational and vulnerable target for controlling oil, a very valuable and indispensable commodity for our oil based economy.  

The president, I maintain, is just the kind of John Wayne most “good Americans” hate most of the time but are thankful for when it comes to defending our lifestyle based on cheap oil. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows we are not in Iraq to dispense democracy or to fight the bad guys. We are there to defend our way of life, again, based on cheap oil. It’s not pop psychology. It’s not political machinations. It’s not fighting the evil doers. It’s the oil. We all know this and it corrupts our politics when we don’t admit it. It corrupts our ethics and our will to fight to end this catastrophic war and the presidency that actually had the John Wayne courage to go after this valuable commodity with lies and fake rationales. But, he kind of goofed up in the process. 

Now we are upset because he made a mess of it. He didn’t listen to his generals that said he needed three times the troops to get the job done. He didn’t listen to his CIA about planning for the post invasion period. He used terror not only to inflame the public but to get information from prisoners. He did these things and he decided to jettison important parts of the constitution to get what we want, cheap oil. Neo Conservatives have a way of keeping their eye on the prize and not getting all tangled up in decorum and niceties. Shoot first, ask questions later. We don’t like to see ourselves in this unflattering light. It undermines our self image as a nation. The uncomfortable truth is that we are complicit because of our addiction to oil. 

The question comes down to: Are we as a people willing to forgo our oil based lifestyles in exchange for a sustainable and rational domestic and foreign policy? When the answer is yes we will then be willing to end this war and impeach this president.  

Bill Hamilton is a Berkeley resident.

Residents of the 2400 block of Seventh Street in Berkeley, be warned. A couple of weeks ago my sister’s little poodle, Floy, got her throat ripped out by a neighbor’s pit bull. A young man was walking past our home with this vicious dog on a leash with no muzzle, while Floy was happily romping in her yard. Being a friendly sort, the poodle ran over to greet this dog, and with no warning the pit bull seized her by the throat. There was a terrible struggle, in which my sister’s hand was somewhat mangled. The young man had no idea what to do, so he just kept beating his fist on the dog’s head until it finally relaxed its jaws enough to pull Floy loose. But, oh it was so awful! Her little jaw was crushed and her throat literally tore out. My God, it could have been the little girl who lives across the street! Why didn’t this animal have a muzzle on?! 

The neighbors who saw the attack wanted to call the police, but did not at my sister’s request. My sister still will not report this attack. She at first thought the pit bull was a beloved family pet and feels that the attack was her fault, since (although in her own yard) she didn’t have Floy on a leash. She also did not want to cause a financial hardship to the owner of the dog. However, it turns out that the dog is not a pet. The woman is fostering these pit bulls for a local animal shelter. She cannot possibly know anything about the animals she takes in, except that they were probably abused, or they wouldn’t have wound up in a shelter.  

The woman agreed to pay only a portion of the vet bill, although I don’t understand why she does not feel responsible for the entire bill. My sister is disabled, on a fixed income, with no savings, and her credit rating wrecked by the ex-husband (as am I, so I can’t help much). We must carefully budget our money, and are often forced to skip meals towards the end of the month. This pitt bull attack cost us every penny we had budgeted for the month. We still owe the vet money and have no groceries. Floy now requires a special kind of food (what with having her jaw and throat ripped off), which we cannot afford. Right now we can only feed Floy some bread soaked in milk, because the special food is so expensive. Fortunately, a kind neighbor has offered to purchase a case and bring it over this evening.  

I think that the animal shelters should require their foster volunteers to take some sort of training course teaching them what to do in case of an attack. I also think that this woman needs to walk these dogs herself, and not leave the task to her son or anyone else (unless they too have been trained what to do in such an emergency). The dogs should be muzzled at all times, in case they accidentally get out of the yard. They should absolutely not foster these dogs to people in neighborhoods with children. And, of course, I would also like an apology for all the pain, sorrow, and hardship this highly irresponsible woman has caused.  

Sally Tarver is a West Berkeley resident.

Despite the many complaints we have heard about its being “stupid,” we commend the City of Berkeley for erecting the 10-foot high self-locking gates at each entrance of the Ohlone Dog Park to prevent unauthorized persons and/or animals from entering the park during the hours in which it is closed. We have several suggestions for further improvements. 

We suggest that the gates be electrified and that its height be extended to cover the perimeter of the park. We further suggest that the entire fence be topped with razor wire to keep out unauthorized persons and/or animals who might be tempted to jump the fence. We suggest that the electrification and razor wire be augmented with klieg lights and a sensitive alarm system to further deter unauthorized persons and/or animals from entering the dog park during the hours in which it is closed. We suggest that the klieg lights and alarm system be mounted on a guard tower, located in the vicinity of the house on the northwest corner of the park. 

We suggest as a further deterrence that there be a moat installed around the inside perimeter of the park, and that this moat be stocked with crocodiles and/or piranhas. We suggest that the crocodiles and/or piranhas be fed with unauthorized animals, such as squirrels and birds, that inhabit the park and/or those annoying little yappy dogs that their owners seem to find endearing. We suggest that warning signs in Braille, at distances two feet apart, be placed in front of the moat. We suggest, as a manifestation of our patriotism in these troubled times (and to demonstrate that Berkeley is not out of touch with the rest of the nation), that American flags be posted on the fence, every two feet or so. We further suggest that the opening of the park each day at 6 a.m. (or 9 a.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays) be signaled with a rousing call to reveille over a loudspeaker and that “Taps” be played every night at 10 p.m., when the park is officially closed. 

We suggest that only residents of a one-mile area adjacent the Ohlone Dog Park be permitted to exercise their dogs at the dog park. Persons found inside or attempting to enter the dog park who cannot—or will not—produce valid photo identification and a PG&E bill will be considered “illegal aliens” and will be removed from the dog park and have their dogs seized. We suggest that temporary non-resident visitors to the Ohlone Dog Park who reside in the City of Berkeley but not in the one-mile area adjacent to the Ohlone Dog Park be issued green temporary visitor cards and present such cards in lieu of photo identification and a PG&E bill. The aforementioned “green cards” will be issued by the City of Berkeley for a nominal fee and will expire after six months’ use. Residents of areas outside of Berkeley will not be permitted access to the Ohlone Dog Park. 

We suggest that rules and regulations about use and misuse of the Ohlone Dog Park be clearly delineated and posted around the inside perimeter of the dog park, between the moat and the “playing field.” We suggest that these rules and regulations be printed in Braille and in any and all languages that people residing in or visiting the Berkeley-East Bay area might read, write or speak. And Esperanto as well. We suggest that announcement of the Ohlone Dog Park rules and regulations be broadcast, intermittently and at random intervals, over the loudspeaker. 

We suggest that a designated grid be assigned for urination and defection, perhaps around the perimeter of the house at the northwest corner of the park. We further suggest that designated sanitation cans in which “doggy-poo” bags are deposited be placed in this area so that the smell will encourage dogs to “go” only in this designated area. We applaud the large signage warning against “continuous barking” and suggest that the signs be expanded to include growling, showing teeth, jumping on tables, misplaced urination and defecation, inappropriate genital-sniffing and non-consensual humping. 

We suggest that various violations forms, housed in Lucite containers with Braille labels, be posted around the perimeter of the Ohlone Dog Park, so that park visitors can quickly access them as necessary and document any and all violations, such as barking, growling, showing of teeth, jumping on tables, urination and/or defecation outside of the designated area, inappropriate genital sniffing and non-consensual humping. 

When a dog is observed to have committed a violation, such as barking, growling, showing of teeth, jumping on tables, urination and/or defecation outside of the designated area, inappropriate genital-sniffing and non-consensual humping, we suggest that excuses such as “he’s never done that before” or “he never does that at home” not be accepted. In addition, we suggest that owners who admonish their dogs to “play nice” and/or “share” be immediately cited, as will owners who constantly talk to their dogs. 

We suggest that violations boxes, with instructions about what constitute violations and what the penalties are, be attached to each tree. We suggest that a City of Berkeley staff person collect completed violations forms and turn them in to the Berkeley Police Department daily, perhaps right before or after he feeds the crocodiles and/or piranhas with the aforementioned little yappy dogs. 

We suggest that the Berkeley Police Department immediately investigate the case of each dog alleged to have committed a violation of Ohlone Dog Park rules and regulations. We suggest that each offending dog be immediately removed and returned to the country of their breed origin, or, if their breed cannot be determined, euthanized on the premises. (Our research indicates that there has never been a habeas corpus challenge in the courts as to the Constitutional rights of companion animals. However, the City of Berkeley might deem it appropriate to employ legal counsel to research this matter further. But time is of the essence, so they say, and we suggest that these improvements be instituted with the due diligence and efficiency that the City of Berkeley demonstrated in erecting the gates.) 

We believe that the aforementioned improvements to the Ohlone Dog Park will bring increased peace and security to the dog park neighborhood, as well as increase the property value of the neighborhood homes. We therefore believe that the people whose homes border the Ohlone Dog Park would be happy to pay all expenses incurred from these improvements. 

Beverly Slapin writes on behalf of the Ohlone Dog Park Association and eight Ohlone Dog Park Commission members who wish to remain anonymous. 

Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Some people say, “What happened?!” 

A ball rolls down a hill because it has no sides or angles and offers no resistance. People on the other hand have many sides and often have to choose sides. It makes us vulnerable! We can be hurt by words and comments as well as by sticks and stones. To me, this past year has been somewhat controversial for the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. Some have accused the Chamber of being mean spirited, divisive and even of engaging in questionable political activity. Perhaps they’ve made questionable decisions and bet on dead horses, but I don’t think that any of this has lead to Rachel Rupert’s decision to step down as executive director of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. Rachel has never been afraid or ashamed of expressing her opinions and names will never hurt her. As one of her staff recently said, “She can get down and dirty if she has to.” I’ve often heard that what’s good for business is good for Berkeley. And I always counter that what’s good for people (including the poor) is good for business and Berkeley as well. One is not exclusive of the other! Here I want to express what Rachel has done that was good for people in general, and me personally. 

When I first started working for BOSS (homeless service provider) I had already successfully run employment and training programs for low income people in Philadelphia Penn., Davenport Iowa, Hayward and Oakland. When I started programs in Berkeley I was somewhat surprised at no matter the good I thought I was doing someone would object. If I found the solution to world hunger and clean air—someone else would say, that’s a bad idea and it could lead to overpopulation! When I started programs in Berkeley, at the end of 1988, I was trying to help homeless people find jobs and become self-sufficient, but unfortunately the businesses, merchants, homeless people and the community at large were on opposite sides, and rarely in agreement.  

Rachel invited me to come to the table (chamber meetings) and present the opinions, needs and issues of poor and homeless people who were trying to become self-sufficient. We often talked, and though on many things we didn’t agree and were often on the opposite sides of the table, I could tell that she was not immune and had personal knowledge of poverty and people in crisis. Regardless of the topic and our many disagreements, we always treated each other with respect. (Look out Rodney King, maybe we can all get along!) She provided a forum where I could represent the issue of the poor to some of the wealthiest and most powerful business owners and landlords in Berkeley as an equal. Eventually she invited me to join the Board of Directors. Some people questioned—and still question—my decision to join the board. They talked about me like a dog! But like Slick Willie Sutton responded when asked why he robbed banks, “That’s where the money is,” and to me the chamber provided access to where the jobs were.  

At one chamber meeting the subject of the Berkeley City Council’s decision to look into who had connection to slavery in America and did business in Berkeley led to several board members commenting that they thought it was amusing and a waste of time. As the great grandson of slaves, I was offended. Not only was Rachel not a part of those who thought this topic humorous, she didn’t come to me later (like some folks did when no one was looking) and apologize, which irritated me even more. Actually she told me, “Winston speak your piece, handle your business.” 

Rachel and I also talked about starting a program that could serve the needs of the homeless, businesses and residents as well. She pointed out the streets were dirty in downtown, even though the city was doing it’s best to keep them clean, and the large amount of graffiti and tagging that was prevalent in the community at the time. She encouraged me to approach the merchants and the city to provide a service that would not only keep the streets clean, but would also remove or prevent graffiti and get homeless people employed. To this day over 400 people have benefited from the programs she helped me develop in 1992—the Clean City Program. Most of the participants are now housed and the program continues to this day. (They wear blue vests.) 

She was a supporter of the MASC (Multi-Agency Support Center), which has provided drop-in services to over a 100 low income people a day (many of them chronically homeless) in downtown Berkeley, when it wasn’t politically correct. Rachel has hired BOSS participants, and is a regular Spiral Gardens patron, a nursery in South Berkeley (Sacramento and Oregon streets) which promotes healthy food and eating, and she regularly donates food and clothing to help seniors and poor people. In addition, as director of the chamber, she gave me many opportunities (at no or reduced cost) to present BOSS’s programs at business showcases held annually, which led to donations and volunteer support. 

I don’t know who the next executive director of the chamber will be, but I hope that like Rachel, they will also invite community based organizations to the table and extend their hand when no one is looking.  

Rachel has sides and will never smoothly roll down the hill. But who wants to—you’ll probably end up in the bay! She has quietly, behind the scenes, helped poor and low-income people reach self-sufficiency. For me, she helped make things happen! 

Aloha! 

Winston Burton is an advocate for the homeless and a member of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Board.

KITCHEN DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Using Kitchen Democracy to see which way the wind blows (on the street behavior proposal or any other issue ) is not an accurate or wise way for the mayor to gauge public opinion. 

A lot of people don’t have computers. And of those who do have computers, not everybody sits around the house all day sending e-mails. They have to go to work, cook dinner and put the kids to bed. 

I’m sure the people who “vote” using Kitchen Democracy are in no way a cross section of the Berkeley populace. And there is no way to know if the participant is a Berkeley voter or even lives within 50 miles. You are asked, but you can lie and there is no verification. 

Yet, I’m sure I will hear reference to the Kitchen Democracy “vote” as support for the mayor’s proposal, as it was used for the Wright’s garage issue. 

I suspect the people who started Kitchen dDemocracy would agree they are not a polling organization and city policy should not be based on “votes” from their web site. 

If the mayor wants to know what the people of Berkeley think, hit the pavement; talk to people.  

F. Greenspan 

• 

PUBLIC COMMONS FOR EVERYONE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am against this neo-lib proposal. I myself have never had a bad experience with the homeless. Some have put money in meters for me. Yes, they’re out on the streets, asking for money. So? You do the same at your fundraisers. They’re urinating, defecating, and sleeping on the streets. So? What are they supposed to do, kill themselves because they’re poor and alone?  

Solution: Put up public toilets, create some humane shelters and day centers.  

The worst street behavior I’ve encountered was done by Tom Bates when he stole newspapers and thereby revealed what his core values are all about. He embarrassed Berkeley far more than the homeless do. Yet, here he sits, head of our once great city none the worse for wear. 

Besides being intolerably cruel, the Public Commons for Everyone proposal reveals a terrible lack of imagination as to how to turn Berkeley back into the hot place it used to be. Clue: It’s through the arts. Oakland today is far more exciting than Berkeley. For example, learn about their monthly Art Murmur if you don’t know about it.  

But encouraging something like Art Murmur would bring the wrong kind of crowd to Berkeley, that is the diverse 20-35-year-olds that Bates and cronies are deathly afraid of. 

Bates’ vision seems to be nothing more than people happily consuming on neatly managed green space, never creating street music without a permit, never creating street theater without a permit, just constantly stuffing their mouths, and going to discreet, safe jazz clubs. And never, ever encountering a homeless person to interrupt the fantasy of living “the good life.” 

If you truly want to do something about the homeless, Mayor Bates, why not organize the mayors of this country and do some direct action in D.C. for money to build really low cost housing. You know, the money for subsidized housing Reagan starting whittling at and Clinton finished erasing. 

If you want to see what a vital city looks like, go to Mazatlan where everything is out in public. Unlike here, people there seem to be happy. 

Maris Arnold 

• 

A TOWN WITHOUT PITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If city staff can retire at 55 with benefits and lifetime pensions, then city residents should also be allowed to retire, in a manner of speaking. After 55, we shouldn’t have to pay so much in property taxes. When a person has paid taxes for 10, 15, or 20 years, that’s a substantial part of retirement savings that’s been lost forever. Instead, we have to keep working after age 55. We have to support city staff in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. They’ve become accustomed to taking advantage of us. 

Carla Katz 

• 

VERY RIGHT, VERY WRONG 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the May 15 Daily Planet James K. Sayre writes on Public Commons, and offers opinions that are frustratingly very right and very wrong. This results from his confusion of a general premise with a particular problem. He is absolutely right in decrying the state of health care in the United States. It is intolerable that this, the wealthiest nation in the world, does not provide universal health care. The care of citizens of every economic class, which includes not just medical attention but minimal subsistence, demands a comprehensive national policy. 

But he then castigates the City of Berkeley for failing to undertake, single-handedly, the solution to this problem. He suggests that the mayor and the City Council were intent on making life miserable “for the down-and-out that have the misfortune of currently living in Berkeley.” Can he possibly be unaware that they are “currently living in Berkeley” because this city has a 40-year reputation as a tolerant haven for drifters, runaways, and other vagrants? Think the homeless problem is bad now? Provide shelters and amenities for them, and Berkeley will become even more their perpetual campground. Mr. Sayre praises the accommodations provided for travelers and the poor in France and New Zealand—but those are countries! Yes, it would be great if those accommodations were provided by the United States, or even by the state of California, but until they are, Berkeley, for once, should attempt a realistic solution. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

CRITICAL MASS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

James K. Sayre seems to be so angry at Critical Mass that he condemns bicycling and bicyclists in general. He should remember that Critical Massers are a tiny minority of bicyclists. You should not blame all bicyclists for their behavior, any more than you would blame all motor vehicle users for the behavior of the Hell’s Angels. 

Though it has nothing to do with Critical Mass, Mr. Sayer insists at great length that bicycles are not non-polluting vehicles, detailing the materials that have to be produced and transported to manufacture bicycles. But a bicycle uses 20 or 30 pounds of materials, while a car uses thousands of pounds of similar materials. If you divide the weight of a bicycle by its useful life, you find that owning a bicycle consumes only one or two 2 pounds of materials in a year. 

Cars generate the great bulk of their pollution when they are being driven, not when they are being manufactured. Motor vehicles account for 40 percent of the CO2 emissions in California—and that only counts their emissions when they are being driven. Of course, bicycles emit no pollution when they are being ridden, so they meet the standard definition of a non-polluting (or “zero-emission”) vehicle. 

Now that we are beginning to realize how great a threat global warming is, we should make a personal effort to reduce the amount we drive, in order to reduce the number-one source of greenhouse gas emissions in California. Mr. Sayre writes: “Not all of us are young, healthy, courageous and single enough to be able to depend on bicycles for local transportation and shopping expeditions.” Yes, but many of us could easily shift some of our local trips to bicycles, if we remembered that driving the average car one mile emits about one pound of CO2. 

I myself am not young, not single, and not very courageous, but because I have bicycled all my adult life, I am healthy. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

“WAR ON THE POOR” 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his May 18 letter to the editor titled “War on the Poor,” written in response to my commentary, Alameda Point Collaborative Director Doug Biggs ignores facts and re-writes history to his convenience: 

First of all, I did collect Alameda PD crime states for Alameda Point, where his Collaborative is located, and I did perform an analysis of that data. I did this in response to a publication in the local newspaper claiming that Mr. Bigg’s Alameda Point Collaborative was a “crime and drug infested ghetto.” 

Second, I offered my data set for Mr. Biggs or anyone else to analyze by their own methodology to see if they came to a different conclusion regarding the number of crimes and type normalized to population. This offer stands. To date, neither Mr. Biggs nor anyone else accepted this offer. However, Mr. Biggs and his friends keep falsely accusing me of “egregiously” manipulating data. 

Third, I was privately contacted by a Bay area resident with relatives living at Alameda Point Collaborative who expressed similar concerns to me about drugs and crime at Alameda Point Collaborative and about the response to her concerns from Mr. Biggs himself. 

Fourth, I did share my analysis with various groups with an interest in the Collaborative and Alameda Point—to get them to investigate the anecdotal reports of crime and my statistical conclusions. 

Finally, Mr. Biggs pays no mind to the suggestion that car ownership for low income families improves outcomes for those families. And he ignores that fact that “Measure A” which he is trying to change, supports housing density up to 21.78 dwelling units per acre, (du/ac) and that the City of Alameda’s own hired experts indicated that density of 12 to 15 du/ac is the minimum at which public transit is workable. He also ignores the fact that public transit usage is well under 30 percent in Alameda. There is no reason that workable transit oriented community can’t be built at Alameda Point within the constraints of Measure A while also providing support for low-income families to improve their lot in life with the benefits of a (low-emission) hybrid automobile. Of course, Mr. Biggs’ job depends on a steady supply of low-income people to his Collaborative. 

David Howard 

Alameda 

• 

WOZNIAK’S APPOINTEE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I write to thank the Daily Planet for Judith Scherr’s article exposing the use of city funds to disseminate racist propaganda, and to add a few points. The first regards Commissioner Wornick’s absurd claim that e-mailing a hate filled tirade was “…an honest attempt to bring dialogue.” It seems dubious to believe that a hateful diatribe labeling Muslim women “mentally ill,” and calling Mohammed a “desert nomad with a psychological disorder” would provoke meaningful discussion, but assuming for a moment that this were true, it would mean that Councilmember Wozniak’s commissioner admits he intended to unlawfully violate the Brown Act, which requires discussion to be publicly noticed and held in open meetings, not by the secrecy of e-mail. 

Councilmember Wozniak’s appointee therefore either intentionally violated the law, or intentionally used City personnel and resources to transmit racist propaganda. Neither is acceptable. 

More disturbing is the attempt to excuse this vile racist attack by labeling it “diversity.” I wonder if the councilmember would have offered the same defense if the victims had been black or Jewish? Equally troubling is Councilmember Wozniak’s comparison of his commissioner’s action with an incident involving ill-tempered insults made during heated debate, with the thoughtful and deliberate actions of Councilmember Wozniak’s appointee, which required: 

1. Watching the video clip. 

2. Creating an e-mail containing a link. 

3. Addressing and e-mailing the link of a racist video clip to a city employee, knowing the employee is required, in his capacity as secretary, to use city resources to disseminate it. 

Since arguments of diversity have been raised to excuse this, we should not be surprised if some defend it as “free speech.” In anticipation of this I want to make clear I respect the First Amendment right of any citizen to say or write what they please. Speech is clearly protected, but when a person acts in his or her capacity as a city commissioner, as Councilmember Wozniak’s appointee did here, they are not acting as a private citizen, but as a government official, and as such they are accountable for their statements and actions. 

Ironically, Councilmember Wozniak has devoted substantial energy to removing some commissioners, claiming service on multiple city commissions was somehow inappropriate. Inappropriate? How about this letter that Wornick sent to Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley: 

“Sometimes I go to bed pleased that your crappy insignificant paper is read by so few people. And those who do read it, (there are of course a couple hundred graying leftists) many are like myself, who check it out online only to see what outrageous and entertaining bullshit you (or the couple dozens regular letter writers) will say about an evil real estate developer, or Republicans or Christians or Zionists. You’re delusional, really angry and alone and I’m sorry to say, very fat. You should know that people like that die early and sad.” 

When it comes to “inappropriate” Councilmember Wozniak’s appointee wins hands down. He actually sent the above quoted e-mail to the editor. Whatever one may think of this paper I implore you to consider if this is the manner in which a city commissioner should address a member of our community. 

More shocking than the above e-mail, or the use of city resources to spread racist propaganda, is the sad fact that to this day Councilmember Wozniak continues to sanction such conduct by allowing the individual who conceives and spreads such hatred to remain his appointee. 

I hope you will join me in respectfully asking the councilmember to find an appointee who better reflects the City Council endorsed policy that Berkeley be a Hate-Free Zone. 

Elliot Cohen 

Peace and Justice Commissioner 

• 

SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Holding fast to my resolution to lay off President George Bush—at least for the time being—I will instead “sweat the small stuff.” Having a deep-seated need to always gripe about something, I shall now take on television, listing a few of my pet peeves. 

1. The whale story. If I hear one more word about the whales sailing up the Sacramento Delta, I shall hurl a heavy paperweight at my TV. Sorry, animal rights activists! 

2. “Breaking News.” There was a time that whenever those words were spoken, the blood would turn cold in my veins, assuming a 9/11 type disaster had occurred. I know now that the “breaking news” most likely will be about the misfortunes of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, or if it’s really breaking news, Angelina Jolie adopting a new baby. 

3. Use of expression “You Guys.” I literally cringe when supposedly polished, articulate TV anchor men (i.e., Charlie Gibson) uses the term “you guys” when speaking to senators, Supreme Court judges, priests, etc. I recall that in a recent discussion about an important Supreme Court decision, Charlie asked one of the judges, “What do you guys think about .......? You guys? I could go on at great length but I’ve let out enough steam for the moment. (This isn’t as satisfying as blasting Bush.) 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

THE SHIPYARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing in opposition to Berkeley’s recent decision to force a quick eviction of the artist’s space in Berkeley known as the Shipyard.  

New culture as a rule does not usually emerge from mainstream cultural establishments; it emerges from the fringes. The same could be said about truly innovative technologies. 

The decision to evict the Shipyard is the 21st century equivalent of Kitty Hawk banning kite flying or Paris disallowing the Salon des Refusés. 

The Shipyard has been a place where artists have been allowed to make important and ambitious work over the last six years. Artists and engineers have created hundreds (thousands?) of innovative pieces and performances there, including elegant, substantial new work: giant steam powered Victorian vehicles, working wooden clock towers, and a carbon-neutral pickup truck that runs on refuse. The current gasification project has the potential of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. This is important work by any cultural or technological standard. The physical plant is itself an important experiment in alternative energy use.  

We understand that there were code violations, but we also understand that the Shipyard has been working with the City, in good faith, to mediate those violations. Is it really so difficult to accommodate artists and inventors? As a city employee myself (Palo Alto Art Center) I understand liability and safety issues, but there needs to be a balance, and there must be a place for our innovators to work. Otherwise, we are doomed as a culture of any lasting importance.  

The timing of Berkeley’s action is particularly reprehensible. Three days notice to remove over a million pounds of artist’s material and structures is ridiculous and arbitrary. A team of artists was just gearing up to build a breathtakingly ambitious work, “Mechabolic,” that would be enjoyed by thousands of people and likely be a subject for future art historians, as well as advancing our understanding of gasification as an alternative energy source. The project was recently mentioned favorably in the New York Times.  

Berkeley has an international reputation for progressive “out of the box” thinking. With this action, Berkeley is saying to the world that this reputation is no longer deserved. You are opting for a safer, less vibrant culture. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

Larnie Fox 

• 

THE WAR TSAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Bush administration, after a month long search, has finally found one an active duty general willing to serve as the nation’s first “War Tsar.” Lt. General Douglas E. Lute, if approved as a special assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor, will bear responsibility for coordinating operations and for infusing “a more proactive role” among the commanders and ambassadors in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

Some senators will no doubt welcome this creative approach to harmonizing discordant activities in the messy situation over there; a Tsar, after all, is an autocrat, a figure possessing absolute authority over everyone. Philip Zelikow, former State Department official, predicts that General Lute will be a “force multiplier” which I take to be military jargon for an individual who keeps everyone bent to the objectives of the surge with multiplied force.  

On the other hand—the hand holding facts not the one holding wishes—there’s sure to be criticism. General Lute must coordinate individuals who out rank him. So, say critics, how can a subordinate coordinate?  

Save a place for General Lute on the shelf now occupied by other dis-appointees, failed advisors like George Tenent, Jay Garner, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo  

• 

UC INC. 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is increasingly obvious that the line between UC Berkeley and private sector Corporate America, has become so blurred (i.e., audit of UC offices, etc., San Francisco Chronicle, May 17) that it’s high time and appropriate for UC to go private, a la Stanford and U.S.C. Then, at least, California taxpayers wouldn’t be burdened by having to support an institution which has all the symptoms of a Corporation. Perhaps, then, UC could go “public,” and we could all invest in the University of California Inc. and make big bucks. 

Robert Blau 

• 

THE PUPPET MAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

You have no idea what great responses I have had to the editorial you generously posted regarding Tom Roberts, the Puppet Man. Here is a short version of everything to date that I have received. 

Tom Roberts was born Morris Diamond and came to California following his failed acting career New York. He had a son (still alive, and an author) named Jed Diamond. Mr. Roberts suffered from manic depression. This would make success of any kind difficult. But he managed to win over the Berkeley college kids with his great puppet performances held outdoors. Roberts wrote bold, honest poetry and presented his books to students. Imogen Cunningham, a great photographer, took his portrait and mentioned the book he gave to her. He died in 1996 at the age of 89. He was a witty, engaging, warm-hearted man. His son is very much alive and thrives as an author and professional counselor. 

For those who want a larger document, including Robert’s obituary, e-mail here: rhubarbfarm@hotmail.com 

Nathaniel S. Rounds 

• 

WEAPONS INDUSTRY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The weapons industry: With the world already overstocked with misery, why keep manufacturing more? 

With all the millions and millions of people in this world who are hurting and dying, why does the one of world’s largest industries keep manufacturing a product whose only goal is to make sure that even more people are hurting and dying? What’s the point?  

It seems to me that deliberately manufacturing even more ways to create misery in this world is a bad business practice. Get a clue! The misery market has already been overstocked and swamped. What about the law of supply and demand? Doesn’t anyone read Adam freaking Smith any more? There is more than enough misery in this world to go around already as it is. Why deliberately go out and manufacture cluster bombs, depleted uranium ammunition, nuclear weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide belts and improvised explosive devices? Why bother? It just doesn’t make sense—when we already have our warehouses and stockyards and supply depots bulging to the seams with all kinds of high-quality misery-producers like starvation, drought, famine, global warming and AIDS. 

The misery market is already glutted! Get a clue! 

Just look at Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan and Palestine. You can find misery on every corner—and it’s for sale at bargain prices that you wouldn’t believe. Guys! Enough already. It’s time to diversify. 

My suggestion? There’s still an wide-open market in other areas. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor. There’s still a tremendous shortage of healthcare, education, food, medicine, housing, etc.—and a very high demand. Let’s move our production capabilities over to this almost untouched consumer market—one that hasn’t already been saturated.  

And here’s another suggestion. Let’s recommend to the weapons industry that they have just one more big sale—a going-out-of-business sale. I know a guy here in Berkeley who will buy off your weapons, melt them down and cast their metal into sculptures. It’s time to recycle our arms—while we still have any arms—and legs, fingers and toes—left to recycle. 

And here’s a word to the women: “Ladies, do your sons, husbands, fathers and/or significant others lack enough business acumen and self-control to stop manufacturing a product that no one needs any more? Then perhaps it is time for you to take away their credit cards—and even lay them off—until they stop their obsession with manufacturing misery, come to their senses and go into a more productive line of work.” 

Jane Stillwater 

• 

IMMIGRATION REFORM? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Senator Ted Kennedy’s immigration reform package has eerie similarities to that of the famous 16th Century Spanish reformer Bartolome de las Casas. Kennedy is known for sympathy for immigrants. Las Casas was known as the friend of the indigenous in Spain’s colonies. 

Kennedy responds to a labor crisis in which the right-wing inspired roundups of “illegal” workers break up families and leave businesses without labor. Las Casas responded to a crisis in the colonies in which death from overwork of enslaved indigenous and Africans, combined with rebellion and flight, was leaving plantation owners without labor. Kennedy co-sponsors a “compromise” intended to help both employers and immigrants. The latter will be granted a torturous path to citizenship that begins with the Z card. It allows the immigrant to work in the U.S., but is invalidated if he or she stops working. The Z card holder is denied welfare, food stamps, SSI, non-serious Medicaid, “or other programs and privileges enjoyed by U.S. citizens”—states a White House blurb of support for the Kennedy plan. As presently written, the “reform” will help some immigrants while placing others more on a path to slavery than to citizenship. 

Father Las Casas argued before the Royal Council of the King of Spain that the solution to the labor shortage in the colonies was the abolition of the murderous institution of slavery. On a preliminary council vote slavery was abolished. But plantation owners declared free people would not labor hard enough. The liberal minded Las Casas then proposed that, in exchange for abolition of slavery for the Indigenous, there would be African slavery on a large scale. This labor “compromise” of 1542 is considered the beginning of the intense Africa to America slave trade.  

Ted Vincent 

• 

JERRY FALWELL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Even though Jerry Falwell had a lighter side one tends to remember the other side, the public persona of the preacher we came to know so well.  

Falwell spotlighted everything that is wrong with Christian conservatives and the fundamentalist right. The preacher spent years fanning the flames of hate. Falwell led the charge of those trying to tear down the wall between church and state. 

Falwell was a major player in the frontline of the anti-abortion crazies and had a serious case of homophobia. If the right reverend had had his way we would have prayer in school. Let’s not mince words and try to glorify Jerry Falwell. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

GUILT BY IMAGINARY ASSOCIATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have never participated in any Critical Mass ride, but James K. Sayre’s commentary about “Critical Mob” is so based on insupportable guilt by (imaginary) association that even I, a lapsed cyclist, feel compelled to respond.  

Equating the “mind-set” of the Bush “crime family” (as if they were cartoonish Mafiosi instead of the figureheads of something much more nefarious) with that of activists agitating for increased bicycle visibility would be hilarious if Sayre weren’t so self-contentedly serious. The Bush administration isn’t just some inbred motley crew of arrogant extortionist bullies who like to push people around whenever they feel like it; they are the latest in a series of plutocratic American gangsters bent on expanding the Atlanticist Empire with all the economic and military muscle available to them. Critical Mass participants, by way of extreme contrast, are an ad hoc group of individuals with varying degrees of commitment to bicycle activism, who use the power—and safety—of numbers to get their message across to a mostly apathetic automobile-addicted public; the point of Critical Mass is to make bicycles visible as vehicles using and sharing public roadways. Any cyclist who has been doored, or forced into a parked car (or other stationary or moving object), or hit by a car, bus, truck, or SUV will have some sympathy for the way Critical Mass participants make their point: effectively taking over some streets and causing traffic to travel at their speed.  

This may seem like bullying to non-bicyclists, who are in the habit of getting their own way all the time when they’re on the road. It is certainly inconvenient; but a regular traffic jam due to too many motor vehicles using a limited amount of roadway is, at the very least, equally inconvenient. Critical Mass happens once a month; normal (that is, non-bicycle-related) traffic problems occur multiple times each day. Confrontations tend to spring up where inconvenience occurs. However, road rage was not invented or pioneered by bicyclists; that innovation belongs to automobile drivers who feel that their privileges (having the law cater to your whims or actually being above the law) have been impinged upon by others.  

The issue of what resources and industries are required for the manufacture and maintenance of bicycles is a red herring. I don’t know of any bicyclist (activist or not) who isn’t already aware that they rely on the same industries as automobiles—Sayre forgot to mention all the cement that’s required for roads to be maintained. The patronizingly smug tone of those middle paragraphs is as palpable as it is obnoxious. The point of Critical Mass and other low-tech partisans is that the current exclusive reliance of the US economy in general, and motor vehicles in particular, on fossil fuels is what is highly polluting and ultimately unsustainable. 

It would be much easier to take seriously the criticisms of the anti-Critical Mass crowd if motor vehicle drivers themselves would follow the rules of the road and pay attention to motorcycles, bicyclists, and pedestrians, not to mention other motor vehicles! Participants in Critical Mass have no access to economic sanctions, blockades, international pressure, or military action. Sayre is being deliberately dishonest, trying to whip up the emotions of his readers by appealing to their assumed hatred of Bush and Company. In this technique, he is much more like Bush than he would like to admit. 

C. Boles

On May 10, the office of Mayor Tom Bates sent out a press release to announce that seven new board members have been chosen for the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA), as part of the effort to salvage the embattled agency from a HUD takeover, and to keep it under local Berkeley control. 

On May 22, the full City Council is expected to approve the mayor’s pick for the BHA, which includes many well respected members of the community. The seven new board members are to replace the old BHA board members which included the mayor, the full City Council, and two tenant board members receiving housing assistance from the BHA. 

Despite the assurances that the City of Berkeley is doing all that is possible to get the BHA back on track, and to pull it out of it’s status as a troubled agency, the mayor sent the wrong message by re-appointing two of the old board members back to the BHA. 

Dorthy Hunt and Adolph Moody, were with the old BHA board, and it is deceptive of the mayor to announce that seven new board members were appointed to the BHA, when there are actually only five new members being appointed.  

This is a bad sign, and raises the possibility that city officials are not really serious about fixing the numerous problems facing the housing authority through the years. 

As board members, Hunt and Moody remained largely silent as the problems grew within the BHA through the years, and this is very troublesome to Section 8 tenants that expected more from these two tenant board members. 

After discussing this with several members of the tenant’s group called Save Berkeley Housing Authority, it was apparent no one felt that re-appointing old board members to the new board, was a real solution to resolving the problems at the BHA. 

In addition, recent reports reveal that problems with the BHA’s Section 8 program have become so severe that it’s become apparent that landlords have actually been charging rent to dead people for several months and more in Berkeley, while the BHA kept making payments to these greedy landlords. 

In other cases, former landlords still kept receiving rent checks from the BHA, long after the tenants moved away, and it turns out that the BHA ended up making payments to both old and new landlords simultaneously, for several months and more. Full details of these very serious problems have not yet been fully disclosed to the public. 

Since April of 2004, the nation’s Section 8 program was switched from being a fully funded voucher based program, to an underfunded budget based program, and every dollar that is now being misspent by the BHA, it ends up taking away funding from all the other voucher holders needing help in the program. 

These serious types of problems need to be remedied immediately, and the landlords need to return the money that they did not deserve back to the BHA, so that the money can be used to house real tenants who are in need. 

To the good, out of the so-called seven new board members appointed by the mayor, at least two of them seem promising because one has experience in affordable housing projects, and another was employed in the past by the Housing Action Coalition. 

As well meaning as the other new appointees may be, it does not appear that they have the real experience needed to run the BHA, during such a critical period in it’s history. 

At this point, the BHA needs new board members that have some knowledge and understanding of HUD’s policies, and will not just be political appointees that are expected to rubberstamp the failed old policies of City Manager Phil Kamlarz and BHA’s Steve Barton. 

The elderly, disabled and poor need Berkeley’s housing authority, and the opportunity to save this housing authority from reaching a point of total collapse seems to diminish day by day. 

Lynda Carson is a member of Save Berkeley Housing Authority.

I should disclose up front that I do not generally agree with the points of view of the Daily Planet’s editorials. I find many of the editorials offensive, frankly. I was not surprised, therefore, as I read through the May 18 editorial (“Rude, Crude and in Your Face”), to find myself thinking: “What planet is Mrs. O’Malley living on?”  

For example: “The British (my own ancestors) have always counted a fair number of bigots among their number ... .” The qualification that the British are Mrs. O’Malley’s “own ancestors” does not excuse the ignorance or offensiveness of that comment. First of all, unless she is British, she does not have the authority to make such a comment. Second, even if she were British, it’s an ignorant comment. Putting aside the definition of “a fair number,” I’m reasonably certain you could say the same thing of any group. Berkeley residents, to name but one, not to mention every nation on the planet. (No offense intended to the planet’s other nations.)  

Then there was this: “People my age with white Anglo-Saxon Protestant names like my birth name grew up hearing disparaging references to all kinds of people, Jews and ‘Ay-rabs’ among them, often lumped together, with African-Americans called by a name too rude to repeat here.” Once again, I am at a loss about where to begin. First of all, why not leave it at “I grew up hearing disparaging references about various ethnic, religious and racial minorities”? I think most of us can guess which groups she is referring to. Why inflame the situation by repeating the specific disparaging comments, eg, “Ay-rabs,” instead of saying that she heard disparaging comments about Arabs? Why try to be obsequious, eg, by referencing “a name too rude to repeat here,” instead of saying that people used the N-word?  

Beyond all that, I would point out that everyone of her age grew up hearing these disparaging references, most importantly, the people about whom the disparaging references were made. Does the fact that she heard the disparaging references somehow create solidarity between her and the folks to whom the references were directed? I note, by the way, that she did not include people with white Anglo-Saxon Protestant names among those who were referred to disparagingly. And who was making these comments, anyway? Was this her coy way of saying that people her age with white Anglo-Saxon Protestant names grew up in families that made these disparaging references? If so, why not just say so?  

As offensive as I found all of this, I would probably have shrugged, said “there she goes again,” and moved on, had it not been for the editorial’s final sentence: “Uncivilized behavior, whether or not it’s legal, is not good PR for either Israel or bicylists.”  

What?! That’s funny, I thought, I don’t remember anything in the editorial about Israel. Sure, she discussed Critical Mass, so I understand the reference to bicyclists, but Israel? And she referenced Jews when she spoke about the disparaged minority groups of her youth, although of course we know that Jews and Israel are not one and the same. Then I re-read the piece and found the word “Zionists,” which was used incidentally in a somewhat ranting letter from Peace and Justice Commissioner Jonathan Wornick that she quoted. But that was it. There were no references to the State of Israel in the entire editorial.  

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe I have found the connection. Mrs. O’Malley cited the “appalling anti-Islam video” that Mr. Wornick circulated to his commission. I just watched the video. It is indeed offensive. Mrs. O’Malley then tells us, towards the end of the editorial, that Mr. Wornick is “doing harm to” the cause that he “claim[s] to espouse." She doesn’t say what this cause is, but, two sentences later comes the comment about Israel. So that’s it, then. Mr. Wornick must be “pro-Israel,” to use that offensive phrase. But where is the evidence?  

According to an article in the same edition of the Planet, Mr. Wornick forwarded the video “in an honest attempt to bring dialogue.” I’ll admit that I don’t see how viewing this video could bring any useful dialogue, but that’s not my point. Let’s say, only for the sake of argument, that Mr. Wornick explicitly said he was forwarding the video to remind people that Muslims are bad people, and Muslims hate Israel, and that everyone should therefore support Israel. He didn’t, but let’s say that he did. I’d say that was “pro-Israel.” I’d also say it was bad PR . . . for Mr. Wornick. Why, though, would it be bad PR for Israel? As far as I know, Mr. Wornick is not an official of the Israeli government, nor an official spokesman for Israel. He is a private citizen who happens to be Jewish. Apparently Mrs. O’Malley and the Planet need reminding that not everything that a Jewish person does is automatically attributed to and associated with Israel. It strikes me as the height of hypocrisy for you to decry the “disparaging references” about other people that you heard as a child, then to make your own disparaging reference by lumping together one particular Jewish person and all of “Israel.” I would love to hear your explanation. And yes—before you make an offensive insinuation—I am Jewish.  

Joel Tranter is a Berkeley resident. 

Jonathan Wornick may be an unpleasant human being but he’s not a loose cannon. He’s a Zionist ideologue, doing the job to which he has been assigned: to keep the Peace and Justice Commission from functioning. 

Let us remember that after the commission’s Rachel Corrie vote, John Gertz, according to Commissioner Elliot Cohen, met with several commissioners and “demanded” that they rescind their votes. “‘He told us we had to reverse our vote or else,’ Cohen said.” (Planet, July 22, 2005). Failing to get the recision, Gertz solved his problem by packing the commission with Zionist stalwarts, including Wornick. “My sense,” Gertz said of his nominees, “is that, consistent with the principles of the Peace and Justice Commission, they are waging a peace campaign—they want peace to return to Berkeley on this issue.” (Planet, July 29, 2005). Since “this issue” may be presumed to include not only the Israel/Palestine conflict narrowly construed, but everything related thereto—such as the U.S. war on “terrorism”; current U.S. hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; potential U.S. hot wars in Iran and possibly Syria; the Middle East in its entirety; oil policy; nuclear weapons policy; immigration policy; relations with Europe; the U.N.; homeland security; military recruitment; and peace concerts (just for starters)— pretty much everything for which the Peace and Justice Commission was established is, under the Gertz plan, off its table. 

Should Wornick be kicked off the commission because he’s not a nice guy or has bad taste in videos? I don’t think so, since I’m a first amendment absolutist and also agree with Gordon Wozniak that a diversity of opinion is useful. But something more serious is at stake here. Wornick’s role is to subvert the commission itself. That is, he intends to keep the will of the people of Berkeley from being expressed, whether we wish to support human rights; to stop, limit, or ameliorate current wars; or to prevent future ones. We know why he is doing this. Both he and his mentor, John Gertz, are serving what they believe to be the interests of a foreign power. Not to put too fine a point upon it, on behalf of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, they are at work to prevent us Berkeleyans from taking what steps we can to end the sacrifice of American lives. 

But what’s up with Gordon Wozniak, who presumably does not share Gertz/Wornick’s fealty to a foreign master? Either he is marvelously naïve about Zionist politics, or some consideration—such as campaign contributions or the threat of withholding same—is outweighing the embarrassment of his appointee’s severe case of political incorrectness. Of course there is always the possibility that, for his own reasons, Wozniak, too, seeks to stymie the Peace and Justice Commission. Perhaps the councilmember will let us in on his reasoning. 

At least the e-mail Wornick sent O’Malley wished only indirectly for her death. Direct death threats from rabid Zionists are, sadly, all too common. Ask Rabbi Michael Lerner, whose home address was posted on a website along with a suggestion that he should be taken out. Ask Rabbi Stephen Pearce, who made the mistake of inviting an Israeli refusenik to speak to his San Francisco congregation. Ask revisionist Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who has moved to England to protect his family. Some death threats are even official. Ask (until recently Member of the Knesset) Azmi Bishara, who faces a death-penalty-carrying charge of treason should he ever step foot again in his native land. 

I’m sufficiently familiar with Zionist thought to believe that Wornick was sincerely trying to do his fellow commissioners a favor by alerting them to the true nature of Muslim barbarism. Fine. He’s entitled to his point of view. If you disagree, argue, don’t freak. What’s important is that Zionists play hardball. Therefore we must not bog down in liberal angst but play hardball right back. Heck, if you don’t like your e-mails, delete them! And if you think there’s anybody on the Peace and Justice Commission who has no business being there, get on the phone to the relevant persons and say so. The last time I looked it was still a democracy, if spottily, and John Gertz et alia get to run things only if we let them. 

Joanna Graham is a Berkeley resident.

Deja vu all over again? The longer the United States and NATO stay in Afghanistan, the more the place is looking like Vietnam:  

• Body counts. Remember when the United States used to claim things like “250 Vietcong” killed during a firefight, most of whom turned out to be civilians? On April 27 the United States said “more than 130 Taliban” were killed after Special Forces called in air strikes during a two-day battle in western Afghanistan. Except local residents said there were no Taliban in the village and that the dead included many women and children. With U.S. and NATO forces relying more and more on air power, large numbers of civilian casualties are inevitable. 

• Drugs. With the help of the CIA, the U.S.-supported regime in South Vietnam and Laos shipped opium from Laos to Thailand, making the Vietnam War ground zero in the heroin epidemic that gripped Europe and the United States in the late ’60s and early ’70s. For details see “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia,” and Frontline’s “Guns, Drugs and the CIA.” Well, 2006 was a banner year for opium production in Afghanistan and, according to an investigation by the Financial Times, Afghan government claims that it had eradicated 21,000 hectares of poppies in Kandahar and Helmand provinces “bore little resemblance to reality.” Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium.  

• Meaningless battles. Remember the “critical” battles at Khe Sanh and “Hamburger Hill,” where hundreds of Americans and thousands of Vietnamese died? Six weeks after the battles ended, the Vietnamese reclaimed them, and the “critical” clashes disappeared into esoteric military history. The United States has been battling to pacify the Tora Bora region of Eastern Afghanistan, the supposed hiding place of Osama bin Laden. The Russians tried to tame Tora Bora as well, and recently Gen. Victor Yermakov (Ret.), who commanded the Soviet’s 40th Army, commented that he “was very impressed by the Americans. Gaining control of Tora Bora is a great accomplishment. I should know. I did it three times. Unfortunately, the second I turned my back on the place, I needed to conquer it again. It is the same now. It will never change.”  

The rising toll of civilian deaths and the friction created by the on-going occupation led the upper house of the Afghan parliament to demand that the government open ceasefire talks with the Taliban. According to the Independent, the Karazi government has already reached an informal agreement with the insurgent leader and former U.S. ally, Gulbuddin Hikmatayar, that has kept Kabul free from suicide bombers for the past several months.  

Meanwhile, a number of NATO members are having second thoughts about the Afghan adventure. A recent Der Spiegel poll indicates that 57 percent of Germans want to withdraw from Afghanistan. 

Opposition is also on the rise in Canada, where the Conservative government recently beat back a resolution to withdraw troops by 150-134. Canada has suffered more than 50 deaths in Afghanistan—a larger percentage than any other NATO country—and polls indicate increasing unrest among voters. 

Most of the Canadians have been killed by roadside bombs. “It costs a couple of hundred dollars for a bomb,” says Sunil Ram, a professor at the American Military University in West Virginia, “but they can knock out a $3 million or $4 million vehicle, and kill troops that cost millions of dollars to train.” 

Which brings to mind a line about Afghanistan from Kipling’s “Arithmetic of the Frontier:” 

A scrimmage in a border station— 

A canter down some dark defile— 

Two thousand pounds of education 

Drops to a ten-rupee jezail*— 

(*A cheap rifle) 

It’s time to leave. 

• • • 

Up and comer to watch is Monsignor Fernando Lugo Mendez, a former priest and current frontrunner in the presidential race in Paraguay. Lugo, who is strongly influenced by liberation theology, is trying to dislodge the Colorado Party, which has held power since 1947. The Colorado Party was the backbone of Alfredo Stroesser’s brutal and corrupt dictatorship from 1954 to 1989. 

Lugo’s politics are populist—he calls himself “the bishop of the poor” and says he is “inspired by some elements of socialism.” There is a lot to work with in Paraguay. It has the singular distinction of having the most unequal distribution of land in Latin America. Some One percent of the population owns 77 percent of the land.  

It also plays host to U.S. Army Special Forces, and President George W. Bush recently purchased an enormous ranch close to a military base used by the United States. 

According to Jorge Lara Castro, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Asuncion, the Colorado Party is widely discredited, because it is divided “between those who rule with “unbridled corruption” and those who “administer corrupt practices in a more rational and sustainable way.” 

Lugo’s detractors call him the “Red Bishop” and claim he will align himself with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia.  

Benjamin Dangl, editor of Upsidedownworld.com, who has traveled widely in the area, says “for Paraguay, Lugo is a revolutionary.” Dangl says Lugo could “significantly” change the culture of repression and corruption, but that “he is not Evo Morales or Chavez. He isn’t likely to do too many radical things economically. Perhaps he will be more like Tabare Vasquez of Uruguay.” He says radicals are more “hopeful” than they are “satisfied” with his candidacy. 

Nonetheless, Dangl says, Lugo “is shaking up the establishment big time in a place where the same party has ruled for a long time. So it is big.” 

But taking the presidency will be an uphill battle, because the Colorado Party has joined forces with the Vatican in an effort to torpedo Lugo’s candidacy. Even though Lugo resigned from the priesthood, the Vatican refuses to accept his resignation. That allows the Colorado Party to say he can’t run because the Paraguyan constitution bars ministers of any religion from holding office.  

• • • 

The little weapons systems that couldn’t. The U.S. Marine Corps will deploy the V-22 Osprey troop carrier in Iraq, despite the aircraft’s troubled record. The ungainly looking craft, a helicopter-airplane hybrid, is designed to carry 24 troops and 20,000 pounds of cargo. However, it has a distressing habit of crashing and killing large numbers of Marines.  

While the Osprey is a disaster in waiting, the eight-wheeled, armored Stryker troop carrier is a current calamity. The vehicles, which carry 11 soldiers and two crew, have been falling to roadside bombs like wheat before the sickle.  

In March, the Second Infantry Division arrived in Baqouba, figuring the 19-ton behemoths, armed with a heavy machine gun and a 105mm cannon, would scare off the insurgents. Instead the Strykers were pounded with machine gun fire, grenades and roadside bombs. Within a few days, the Division had lost five of them.  

So why are weapon systems that don’t work being sent into war? Because Boeing and Bell made $20 billion off of the V-22, and General Dynamics raked in $11 billion on the Stryker. And now the Army and the Marines are pushing for a new Mine Resist and Ambush Protected (MRAPS) armored vehicle. The Pentagon ordered almost 8,000 of them at a cost of $8.4 billion from the International Truck and Engine and an Israeli armor maker. Plans are to order thousands more. 

War may be Hell, but for some, Hell is very profitable.

It’s bug time! The plants in the garden are just starting to thrive and get real leaves; the flowers are midway in their annual sequential display; what was mud is starting to look like future meals.  

But the bugs. They’re here, and they outnumber us. They have diabolical designs on our tomatoes and greens and bouquets, ands some of them are out for blood—and infectious besides. Quick, Henry, the Flit!  

(Ten points if you recognize that; five more if you can name the author.) 

Resist the temptation to bomb the yard, please. Resisting will be better for the rest of the world, and in the long run—not very long either—it will make things easier for you. 

First, it’s a good thing to know your pests. Some of the nastier-looking things on your plants might be your allies. Ladybeetles, in their voracious young stages, look like little black gator things with curved claws up front. Those “claws” can’t pinch you or me, but the youngsters are even better against aphids than their parents.  

Spittlebugs are icky, but not very threatening. They generally have only one generation of kids per year, and that’s what’s making bubbles on plant stems now. If you spray them off with plain water, they’ll land elsewhere sans protective foam and die or get eaten. 

Other plant-eaters abound, of course, but nearly all of them are on someone else’s menu. If you load the pests with esoteric toxins, you’ll not only starve your allies, but poison them—and their children. 

The flush of animal life at this time of year follows closely on the plants’ growth and bloom. Within that animal expansion, predators lay eggs or give birth, hatch or awaken, in time to make the best of their prey’s plenitude.  

Those predators include, for example, birds that eat mostly seeds the rest of the year: finches, sparrows; also nectar specialists like hummingbirds. Everybody feeds their kids bugs; it’s a high-protein diet for fast growth and development. If you want birds, don’t poison the babyfood.  

And of course if you want butterflies, you’re going to have to let the caterpillars chew on the foliage! 

Meanwhile, everything flows downhill and downstream, where the leftover nasties can do in our neighbors. Even the stuff that’s been marketed to replace organophosphates is dangerous; for example, pyrethroids, chemically modeled on natural pyrethrins, can kill aquatic critters, starting with the little amphipods, “scuds,” at the base of the average creek’s foodweb, and are toxic in solution to fish as big as salmon.  

Natural pyrethrins are potent allergens, by the way, so use it with caution if at all. “Natural” does not equal “nontoxic.” 

An alliance called “Our Water Our World” distributes handy wallet folders with the names of some less toxic ingredients to match with what’s on the shelves when you shop. Its website at www.ourwaterourworld.org has references and details and at least one hilarious swarm of similes. Download and print the card from that, or look for it by cash registers in nurseries.  

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Planet.

Woody Allen says “When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you.” 

We’re all getting older. There’s no nice way to put it. There are benefits to aging, but with time, things and people wear out. It was hard not to think of this today as I looked a condo that was, you might say, “of a certain age.” There was nothing substantially decrepit about the place but there were what we Berkeleyans like to call “issues.” I have issues too. 

The reason this seems noteworthy, at least to my geeky mind, is that I see many of the same set of issues repeatedly, so I’d like to offer some sort of list of the things one might find when looking at a condo of, say 45 years. Now that would be 1962 (was that actually 45 years ago?) 

The things I might note from a condo of this vintage fall roughly into two categories; things that are wearing out (or worn out) and things that we’ve learned from (and improved). 

Let’s start with the latter. One of the things that had just begun to change in 1962 (but not widely or quickly enough to reach every way station) was the use of safety glass. The place I saw today had a sliding glass door in three segments that stretched 11 feet across the boundary with a balcony. 

Should an unwary and marginally clad inhabitant stride blithely through the clean class door, assuming it to be open, they might slice open an artery and terminate their rental agreement on earth. This was so common prior to 1961 that the building codes, followed eventually by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, began mandating the use of safety glass in glass doors. Shower doors have also taken a huge toll and even today, over 300,000 a year suffer some sort of injury involving non-safety glass. 

If shower doors have not been replaced, I’ll often see original (and dangerous) glass doors in a condo of this age (and, of course, other housing types as well). By the way, don’t be too quick to dismiss this danger. Only about 300 people a year die from electrocution. That is 1/1000 of the number of people harmed (sometimes killed) by non-safety glass. 

If you’re buying a place of this era, look for the “bug” or fused emblem in the corner of the glass and if you don’t see it, replace the glass. This should also apply to glass that’s near the floor (say, 18”) or next to a door. 

Another thing that has changed, and was common in this time period, is the practice of placing electrical panels in closets. We get more fires and also put electricians and service personnel more at risk when breaker or fuse panels are installed in closets. When they’re worn out, which is certainly the case with a 45 year old breaker panel, they should be relocated to a space that’s got good clearance, say 30” wide and 3’ in front. This is roughly what modern codes call for. 

Again, this is less likely to result in fire (sparks and flames can actually shoot out of a panel and set clothing and storable ablaze!) and also provides for a safe “ejector-seat” distance in front of a panel. It may sound shocking (I didn’t really mean to say that) but when working on a panel, you might actually be thrown from the panel by contact with hot wires but if that same person is bunched up in a closet trying to work on the same panel, it is harder to detach and you can get “locked-on” and expire in this inauspicious manner. They’ll have to lie about how you died. 

Breaker panels that are this old are no longer reliable. Period. I don’t care what anyone tells you. A breaker is an electro-mechanical device on which your life and property rest. That’s a big job and not suitable for something that is both seriously worn and also of primitive make. See, breakers have not been around all that long. A breaker that is 45 years old is essentially a prototype. They came into common use in the 1950’s (though they had been invented in Germany in the late 1930’s, so by 1962 we were still figuring out a lot about how to make these work properly. So, it’s probably best to replace any panels that are this old. I use 40 years as my standard although there is, sadly, no industry standard for the replacement age of circuit breakers (shouldn’t there be?) 

By the way, I always seek an opportunity to mention our most notorious of electrical devices, the Federal Pacific Stab-Loc Load Center and it’s wonderful trip-proof breakers. Depending on which of the many documents and opinions you can find on the web, these are either wholly unreliable or just largely unreliable. In either case, I wouldn’t keep one in my house or apartment building for a nanosecond longer than absolutely necessary. 

This begs a further question (actually two) for condo owners. The first is, what about the other 11 panels in the building? And the other is “How many people can you kill with your bad panel?” The latter question actually applies to all manner of fire hazards. When we live clustered in condos or apartment buildings, it is far more important to minimize possible causes of fire since so many more people are depending upon it. This is one of the reasons that fire codes are so much more stringent for multi-family dwelling. You’re more apt to see fire sprinklers (saw them today), fire hoses (yep, saw them too), and hard-wired smoke or detectors (nope, didn’t see ‘em). 

The former question regarding your 45-year-old Federal Pacific panel should really be a question for the home owner’s association and I genuinely urge those of you who own condos to take charge of your HOA and steer the ship to safe shores by replacing all the old panels in the building, not just the one in your unit, for what good is your good deed if it is overwhelmed by the inertia of the many. 

One thing I’d like to add that isn’t exactly chronologically authentic to this article is the issue of aluminum wiring. Houses and especially apartment buildings between 65 and 73 years old (mostly but not exactly) often have aluminum small-branch wiring and, while I’ll save the long spiel, this should always be identified and referred to an electrician familiar with the problem. Aluminum small-branch wiring is really, seriously dangerous. 

The last item I saw at my condo today was a very worn-out furnace. Here’s my old furnace rap: It’s getting a little tired but I’ll take it out for a spin just so you can see just how droll I get. 

An old furnace is like a Model T Ford. Now, you may own a Model T and it might be in good working order and all but taking it out on the freeway is a bit crazy. A modern car has air-bags, anti-lock brakes, side walls that crumple and a plethora of safety features that came about as a result of years of advances. 

Your 45-year-old furnace (or your 80-year-old furnace) is like the Model T. Yes, it may still be running and it might even be free from obvious signs of leakage of flue gases into the air supply but there are all those other issues (including efficiency) that make the new furnace well worth the money. 

My other favorite saw is that you wouldn’t keep riding on brakes that hadn’t been serviced in 10 years. Brakes need servicing because your life depends on them. Circuit breakers, furnaces, water heaters and all mechanical devices are like this. New ones keep getting safer (as a rule) and old ones keep getting … older.  

Condos have many advances. They’re greener, because we live in clusters with less surface area per square foot of living area (meaning less energy required to heat or cool) and less construction cost per person. They’re also less of a gamble to own because we share the cost of a roof or a paint job. It’s very socialistic. You also don’t have to concern yourself with gardening if it’s not your thing. On the whole, there are very good reasons to go condo. Just remember that you’re clustered, for better and for worse. Sound issues and smell issues often arise in condos and fire safety is amplified.  

Aging has benefits and old buildings certainly win on charm and often on space and flow but as someone said “aging isn’t for sissies” and this surely applies as well to our homes as it does to our selves. 

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

Bad Advice From PG&E? 

It’s no secret: PG&E doesn’t like automatic gas shut-off valves. I’m sure they don’t want your house to go up in flames, but many PG&E employees are advising people not to have valves installed because they claim the values activate at the slightest shake (they even say a garbage truck going down the street will set them off). This is not true! 

Many years ago, the first automatic gas shut-off valves were calibrated too low, and would activate at around a 3.6 quake. So PG&E had a lot of nuisance calls from folks wanting their pilots re-lit after mild quakes.  

The people at PG&E are not stupid—they undoubtedly know that the current valves are set to activate at around 5.2, which is very serious shaking. We invite them to do the right thing and start encouraging people to make their homes safer with automatic gas shut-off valves. 

Wishing you a safe home and peace of mind. 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and gas shut-off valve installation service. Contact him at 510-558-3299 or visit QuakePrepare.com to receive semi-monthly quake safety reports. Quake Tip appears weekly in Home & Garden. 

It’s been a crappy year for wildflowers, but a great one for roses. When I mistook something for a startling pink tree and then realized it was a ‘Cecile Brunner’ rose climbing fifteen feet up a utility-pole guywire, and then did the same double-take for the same cultivar climbing a tree on Sacramento Avenue, I decided to write about roses this week. 

People have all sorts of theories (meaning unproven hypotheses, not “theories” in the scientific sense) about roses, and that’s contributed to their reputation as finicky. I’ve long thought that the reason for the multiplicity of theories is rather the opposite, and similar to the reason for the bewildering variety of theories about raising children.  

Like children, roses are tough enough to survive most of the wacky things that get done to them. When they do so, the owners of the wacky theories conclude that whatever regimen they’ve put their charges through must have been The One True Way™, and thereupon publish those theories.  

Inexperienced people setting out to raise roses (or rear children) and confronted with this great stack of undifferentiated data conclude that there must be a great deal to learn, since there’s a great deal being taught, and that doing it exactly right is absolutely necessary. Many try earnestly to do what they’re told, even when it’s self-contradictory.  

Needing to reconcile contradictory dictates can make people try even harder to fulfill them. It looks like some neuropsychological reward-frustration cycle to me: King Tantalus’ syndrome with a side of unimpeachable virtue. 

This may explain religion and gambling, as well as Dr. Spock and his spiritual heirs. It certainly explains at least half the tomes on growing roses, and the regrettable tendency of gardeners to douse their roses and soil with weird cocktails of fertilizers and pesticides. 

Sometimes they get ingenious. A surgeon of my acquaintance, in the years before AIDS triggered a lot of epidemiological restrictions, used to take home age-expired units of blood from the hospital, usefully recycling the wasted blood by pouring it around his roses. Lots of nitrogen there, and trace elements; he said it tended to repel deer too.  

I’m sure his plants loved their vampirish treat. I have first-hand evidence of the bloodthirsty nature of roses, and so does anyone else who’s spent time pruning them. No matter how scrupulous one is about wearing gloves—leather gloves, goatskin gloves, Kevlar for all I know—those thorns are going to find a way through to skin. The rose-lovers’ mantra is “Ow.” 

Sometimes people just get desperate and pile the storage shed with scary compounds that happen to get marketed with “rose” somewhere on the label. I’ve seen a collection that included several things specifically aimed at Japanese beetles—which (knock wood) we don’t have here in northern California.  

This foofaraw is not necessary. 

There are a couple of rose cultivars that demonstrate the essential toughness of roses. Those ‘Cecile Brunner’ heroines I noted are members of one. 

Cecile’s blossoms look frail enough, heaven knows. They’re an ethereal pale pink, aging to a paler shade still, and small and delicately shaped. They have a light, fresh version of the classic rose scent and they’re generous about casting it to the breeze.  

Cecile bears those flowers in profusion even under less than ideal circumstances. This year, they’ve been stunning; as you go about Berkeley and the rest of the East Bay, you’ll see cataracts and tumbles and swells and sprays of them coming over fences, arbors, trees, and anything else that holds still long enough.  

Every other rose in the area is showing off this spring too. I swear I’ve been dazzled by rushes of roses’ perfume while driving on main streets. Heady stuff. 

Because Cecile Brunner roses are small and hold together well as they age, people like to put them on cakes and such edibles. Fortunately, the plant seems to be extraordinarily resistant to diseases, so there’s no need to taint it with unhealthful or even unaesthetic remedies. If you’re the sort of person who wants to eat roses—and why not? Ten thousand deer can’t be wrong—this is a rose to eat. 

There’s one by our driveway; it’s been there for who knows how long, certainly since before we moved here 12 years ago. It’s in partial shade and still blooms prolifically, and I’ve never noticed a spot of rust or mildew or anything else nasty on it. The only care it gets aside from incidental water is pruning, and that only when it gets in the way.  

It got top-heavy this year, and one of those big windy rainstorms flopped a hunk of it over into the driveway. It was a week before we got to tie it up, and it responded to being driven through just as it’s responded to any other mistreatment: it went on blithely blooming, as I scattered rose petals from the RAV4 and occasionally arrived somewhere sporting a pink car-corsage.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

Cecile’s blossoms are tough despite thier ethereal pale pink color, aging to a paler shade still, and they are small and delicately shaped size.

FRIDAY, MAY 25 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Last Five Years” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through June 10. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep “Oliver Twist” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through June 24. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org  

Impact Theatre “Measure for Measure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 26.Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Just Theater, “I Have Loved Strangers” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., to May 26. Tickets are $12-$25. 421-1458. www.justtheater.org 

Shotgun Players “The Cryptogram” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through June 17. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500.  

“The Striders Club” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Arts Center, 1421 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$11. 450-0891. 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871. 

TheatreFIRST “Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Old Oakland Theatre, 481 Ninth St., Oakland. Tickets are $18-$25. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

Travelling Jewish Theater “Death of a Salesman” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through June 10. Tickets are $15-$44. 1-800-838-3006. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Milvia Street 2007 Readings and art showing from Berkeley City College’s art and literary journal at 7 p.m. in the 3rd flr Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jerry Kuderna Piano “From Bach to Babbitt” at 1 p.m. at 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“Dance Elixir” with Leyya Tawil and Zari Le’on Fri. and Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oaklakland. Tickets are $20. 435-6413. 

Jerry Kuderna, piano and Nora L. Martin, vocalist perform Hanns Eisler’s cycle of 18 songs on Poems by Bertolt Brecht at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Arts Festival, 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Sangita Sharma “Bajra Yogini Charya Dance and Nepali Folk Dance” at 7:15 p.m at Mount Everest Restaurant, 2011 Shattuck Ave.  

Nicolas Bearde and His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Brother Resistance, Chalkdust, and the D Platinum Crew at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $TBA 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse Bar, 4th & Webster, Oakland. 451-3161. 

Katie Garibaldi and Jeremy Rourke at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Spotlight Stealerz at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Flowtilla, Judea Eden Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Social Unrest, Hellbillys, Static Thought,at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Cheeky at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Saoco, Rico Pabon, Santero at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Mingus Amungus at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Filthy Thieving Bastards, Druglords of the Avenues, The Sore Thumbs at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

SATURDAY, MAY 26 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Amazing Blooms” Floral art by Leslie Winoku. Artist reception and tea at 3 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. Exhibit runs to June 1. 644-4930. 

FILM 

Berkeley Arts Festival “Noisy People” a documentary on the artists and musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area’s improvisational music community, at 8 p.m. at 2323 Shattuck Ave. Costi si $5-$10. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com  

Lost Film Fest with shorts from The Yes Men, TV Sheriff, Guerrilla News Network at 8 p.m. at AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$10. 208-1700. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Sitka Trio Medieval and Baroque music for recorder, vielle, ‘cello, harp and voice, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Jesus Diaz & su QBA at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ray Obiedo Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baba Ken and the Afro-Groove Connexion at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Mystic, Conscious Daughters, Pam the Funkstress at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$15. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Nate Lopez and Olivia Voss at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Ben Goldberg at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Caroline Chung Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Skinlab, WillHaven, Ankla at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

Culann’s Hounds, The Mor Rigan’s Wake at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Tracorum, roots music, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Animosity, As Blood Runs Black, The Faceless, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MAY 27 

FILM 

“The Kreutzer Sonata” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Cynthia Sailors, Jeff Clark and Alfonso Alvarez read at 7 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St. at Broadway, Oakland. Cost is $4.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Love” a two act musical for soprano and baritone at 7:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Arts Festival, 2323 Shattuck Ave., between Durant and Bancroft. Tickets are $10 at the door. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“Low-down Hoedown” with Cosio, Hardy Harr, The Parish at 1 p.m. at The Living Room Gallery, 3230 Adeline St. Barbeque facilities available. livingroomgallery@gmail.com 

Brazilian Soul! at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Trick Kernan Combo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Tom Huebner at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Vernon Bush Group, soul, gospel, jazz, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MONDAY, MAY 28 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Stan Apps and Ara Shirinyan read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Monday Jam at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. 

TUESDAY, MAY 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Painting to Live: Art from Okinawa’s Nishimui Artist Society, 1948-1950” opens at the IEAS Gallery, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor. 642-2809. 

FILM 

BALLE Film Festival “Manufactured Landscapes” on China’s industrial revolution at 6 p.m. and “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” at 8:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$15. www.livingeconomies.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling with Margery Kreitman, Zoe Sheli Sameth, Dana Chernack and Jeff Byers at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

Paul Hawken discusses “Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Suggested donation $5-$10. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Motordude Zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Randy Craig Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 30 

FILM 

BALLE Film Festival “Everything’s Cool” on addressing global warming at 6 p.m. and “A Drop of Life” on clean drinking water at 8:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$15. www.livingeconomies.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Paul Duchscherer, author of many books on Arts & Crafts homes, on “Beyond the Bungalow” at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $20. 848-4288. 

David Corbett reads from his new novel “Blood of Paradise” set in present-day El Salvador, at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Sherman Alexie reads from his new novel “Flight” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. 559-9500. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trombonga with Jeffrey Carter, Marcus Bell, Pat Mullan and Curtiss Mays at 12:15 at Berkeley Arts Festival, 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.org 

Del Sol String Quartet “Umbilical Chords: Women Composers & the Creative Process” Compositions by Kui Dong, Linda Catlin Smith, Teresa Carreño, Sally Beamish, Ruth Crawford, Mark Fish at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $7-$20. 415-374-0074. www.delsolquartet.com  

Joe Escobar Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kusun Ensemble at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. Ghanian dance workshop at 7:30 p.m. for $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Orquestra Candela at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Alexis Harte at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Klez-x and Davka at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

THURSDAY, MAY 31 

THEATER 

Berkeley High School “Schoolgirl Figure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Benefits the Eating Disorders Program at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University.Tickets are $6-$12. 236-1620. ShiftTheatre@aol.com 

FILM 

8th Annual Berkeley High School Film Festival with music videos, animation, documentary and experimental works from students at Berkeley High School at 7 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Allston between Milvia and MLK. Tickets are $5-$10. 

“Long Train Running: The Story of the Oakland Blues” A documentary, presented by Oaklandish at 9 p.m. at the Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park Blvd. Oakland. Cost is $6. 962-5044. www.oaklandish.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michele Simon describes “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Arnie Passman reads from “Scherzofrenia” at 8 p.m. at The Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave, near Alcatraz, Oakland. 654-BOOK. 

J. Ruth Gendler reads from “Notes on the Need for Beauty: An Intimate Look at an Essential Quality” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

“Kosher Hollywood: Jews, Food, and Film” with Alisa Braun at 6:30 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Tickets are $6-$8. 549-6950.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pat Nevins and Ragged Glory, Victor Barnes at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. All ages show. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Congolese Dance and Drum Conference A weekend of Central African culture, music, and dance Thurs.-Sat. at Laney College, 900 Fallon Sr. Dance Studio D-100, and Sun. at MCC, 1428 Alice St., Studio A, Oakland. Cost is $15-$20 per workshop. 368-2475. www. 

youmustdance.blogspot.com 

In the Steel of the Night: Joe Goldmark and the Seducers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Josh Workman Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Wiggle Wagons, Uncle Monk, Lariats of Fire at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

The Dilettantes, The Mania, The Countless Others at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Selector: DJ Riddm at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

BERKELEY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENTS ‘LOVE’ 

‘Love’ is a two-act musical for soprano and baritone. This is a mostly sung “boomer” tale of love, sex, drugs, families, careers, divorce, loneliness and middle age. Book, music and lyrics by Richard Jennings, additional lyrics by Ted Newman. Music director and pianist, Rona Siddiqui; directorial consultant, Ellen Sebastian Chang. Featuring Eula Janeen Wyatt and Gregory Marks. Sunday, 7:30 p.m., $10, Fidelity Bank Building 2323 Shattuck Ave. For more information, 665-9493 or www.berkeley artsfestival.com 

BRECHT / EISLER ANTI-WAR SONG CYCLE 

The dynamic duo, Jerry Kuderna (piano) and Nora Lennox Martin (vocals), will preside over a program of Hanns Eisler’s cycle of 18 songs on poems by Bertolt Brecht at 8 p.m. today (Friday). $10. Fidelity Bank Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. 665-9496. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com  

‘NOISY PEOPLE’ MUSIC FILM DOCUMENTARY 

A fun and noise-filled documentary on the artists and musicians of the Bay Area’s improvisational music community at 8.p.m. Saturday. $5-$10. 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyarts festival.com 

MAMMOTH GARAGE SALE AT PT. RICHMOND  

The annual extravaganza, which benefits the Masquers Playhouse, features more than 100 locations in Richmond’s most charming historic neighborhood. Maps, coffee and donuts are available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m, in front of the theater at 105 Park Place in Point Richmond, across from the town square.

Think of Japanese cinema and one of two things probably comes to mind: either the robust, action-filled, western-influenced samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, or the more refined, restrained and elegant films of directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Mikio Naruse.  

Shohei Imamura, one of the primary filmmakers of Japan’s New Wave, falls into neither category. His work focuses instead on the dregs of modern Japanese society. Pacific Film Archive is hosting a retrospective of the iconoclastic director’s work through June 30. 

The New Wave refers to the generation of filmmakers that rose up through that country’s studio system in the years following World War II. Unlike the directors of the French New Wave—outsiders who began as critics and then set out to re-define their nation’s film culture—the directors of Japan’s New Wave were trained, cultivated and encouraged by the industry they would later challenge.  

Imamura began his career as an assistant to Ozu and quickly came to the conclusion that, though Ozu was undoubtedly a great director, his restrained style was not for Imamura. When he finally got his hands on his own crew and camera, he veered in the opposite direction, renouncing the refinement and formal beauty of Ozu’s work and opting instead for a cinema of cruelty, perversion and dark humor.  

Imamura thought of himself first as an anthropologist. His goal was to document the world as he saw it, not to shape, explain or judge it. And in fact, after making such classics as Pigs and Battleships (1961) and The Pornographers (1966), the director turned to documentary filmmaking in the 1970s. 

As he explains in an interview included in the Criterion Collection’s new DVD edition of Vengeance is Mine, Imamura became somewhat disenchanted with actors while making The Profound Desire of the Gods in 1968 and afterwards sought other means of expression. For the next decade, he made nothing but documentaries, until returning to narrative, commercial filmmaking in 1979 with Vengeance is Mine, in which he fashioned a sort of reality-fiction hybrid. 

The film, showing Tuesday, May 29, is based on the exploits of a real-life killer who roamed Japan for a few months in 1963. Ken Ogata plays the role of Iwao Enokizu with a steely impulsiveness, the very personification of id. He seeks only the immediate satisfaction of his desires, regardless of the human cost.  

Imamura makes no effort to explain this man’s actions; he presents them as a simple fact of Japanese life in the post-war era. We learn much of Enokizu’s youth, his upbringing and his relationships, and though these details certainly help us get to know the character, there is still no clear motive given for his crimes. As critic Michael Atkinson puts it in the DVD’s liner notes, “Vengeance Is Mine … wastes no breath on compassion, no calories on decorousness, and no time on explanations.” Atkinson places Imamura among what he calls the “Sardonic Objectivists,” directors such as Fritz Lang, Luis Buñuel and Douglas Sirk, who tried to shed light on humanity’s dark side. Imamura, Atkinson says, was “a Japanese Samuel Fuller, fascinated with working-class ruin and primal impulse.” 

In the opening scenes of Vengeance is Mine, Imamura gives us the impression that the worst is over. The killer has been arrested and is being transported to prison. But soon we are subjected to flashbacks of Enokizu’s first two killings, graphic scenes which contain none of the usual screeching violins or tawdry effects of many a serial killer film, but are instead shot at arm’s length and with no adornment. Imamura sought no attention for his camerawork or framing; he wanted his technique to remain invisible. Thus, in simple documentary terms, we see murder not as a melodramatic plot point but as an almost mundane occurrence: grisly, clumsy and primitive.  

There are no pure innocents in Imamura’s films. The killer's wife is somewhat deranged and manipulative herself. This is one of the themes that runs through much of Imamura’s work: women clawing their way through the morass of Japanese society, resorting to the baser instincts in the struggle to survive. These are not the long-suffering women of quiet dignity as found in classical Japanese cinema—“Those women don’t exist,” Imamura once said—they are bold, lusty, self-interested and at times desperate, using whatever means available to survive in a society that is structured to subdue and degrade them.  

The result is a body of work unique in Japanese cinema, one that seeks not to organize and understand the world, but to simply document it without explanation or condemnation. 

SHOHEI IMAMURA’S JAPAN 

Through June 30 at Pacific Film Archive. 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-1124. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

VENGEANCE IS MINE (1979) 

Starring Ken Ogata, Mayumi Ogawa, Mitsuko Baisho, Frankie Sakai, Kazuo Kitamura, Chocho Miyako, Nijiko Kiyokawa, Rentaro Mikuni. Directed by Shohei Imamura.  

140 minutes. Playing at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Available on DVD from the Criterion Collection. $29.95. www.criterion.com.

The night fears and mania of a boy are juxtaposed with two adults’ uncomfortable discoveries of ambiguity, betrayal, abandonment and the unreliability of memory in the brilliant, tortuously overlapping dialogue that powers David Mamet’s semi-autobiographical Cryptogram at the Ashby Stage in a Shotgun Players production. 

Mamet, who made much of his stellar reputation in the ‘70s and ‘80s with hard-edged stage speech and characters representing the lonely, brutal dissociations of American public and private life (something that could be associated with the theatrical tradition of Strindberg), here shows a deceptively quieter, more domestic perspective. Like The Old Neighborhood, directed by Joy Carlin at Aurora awhile back, it’s more Chekhovian, exploring the spaces in between what’s said and thought and done. Not very much seems to get done onstage, though the background of life in all its little details becomes the foreground of this kind of play, seemingly predicated on autobiography and can open up into (for want of a better term) the spiritual, even the cosmic, as experienced in everyday language and routine, or its disruption. 

A bachelor family friend talks genially, sometimes in games and riddles, sometimes in shared references, with his friends’ son, who can’t sleep—at first waiting for his father who will take him to “the lake,” and later, after his never-glimpsed father has left the family, of his fears and near-visionary experiences, which he describes to the adults, emerging repeatedly from his bedroom. 

Del, the genderlessly-named old friend, as played a bit floridly by Kevin Clarke, refers to himself at one point as a silly old queen, and it’s his ambiguous friendship with Donny (also ambiguously named, though not played ambiguously by Zehra Berkman) and her absent husband, the boy’s father (an otherwise unambiguous Robert), that’s the dramatic fulcrum on which the matter of the play is hammered out by dialogue, tempered with the silence between lines, between thought and speech.  

In the meantime, there’s much looking at photos, trying to discern what’s what even in the documents that should jog memory, one disagreeing with the other, and interrupting them midstream, filling in what that other remembers differently, or at all.  

Like Beckett’s plays, or an older kind of theater, the very objects onstage, handled and discussed by the cast—a book, a camping knife—take on a mysterious, almost fateful quality, changing in meaning as their apparent insignificance is colored by an almost Proustian sense, touchstones to the past, or even another dimension of whatever experience is in question. 

A play like this is hard to act, hard to stage, and Shotgun approaches it with their can-do signature, their hallmark. Patrick Dooley, Shotgun’s founder, had the task of keeping his actors on the strict tether of the text (which, as an actor friend once said of Pinter, “It’s like chamber music, a string quartet, you play it right from the page in ensemble; there is no other subtext,”) while paradoxically giving them their own head. Post-show talkbacks heard the cast and director discussing all the ways they tried framing and delivering this virtuoso piece. They threw themselves into this wringer of verbal exchange, and Gideon Lazarus, as young John, deserves special mention for his handling of the boy’s end of it, more than a child’s portion. 

With exchanges that, in a more emotional moment, run like: “Am I to be accused of this? What do you mean?” “...That’s my point,” sympathies have to be on the side of the actor. There’s a little bit too much of accenting on the beat, though, which emphasizes jangles and “hot spots” in a play where what comes out of the quieter, offbeat moments and what’s unsaid constitute much of the point. 

One character talks about how we “live as if there’s no end to it, and suddenly ...” A good deal of what’s suggested in this small masterpiece is about the limits of mortality and what seems to continue, beyond our immediate apprehension, in spite of it--or in anticipation of it. Less confrontational than some of Mamet’s more famous work, this is a play that audiences need to confront and absorb. 

Cryptogram at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. 

Thurs.-Sun. 8 p.m. 

through June 17 

Tickets $17-$25 

841-6500

It’s bug time! The plants in the garden are just starting to thrive and get real leaves; the flowers are midway in their annual sequential display; what was mud is starting to look like future meals.  

But the bugs. They’re here, and they outnumber us. They have diabolical designs on our tomatoes and greens and bouquets, ands some of them are out for blood—and infectious besides. Quick, Henry, the Flit!  

(Ten points if you recognize that; five more if you can name the author.) 

Resist the temptation to bomb the yard, please. Resisting will be better for the rest of the world, and in the long run—not very long either—it will make things easier for you. 

First, it’s a good thing to know your pests. Some of the nastier-looking things on your plants might be your allies. Ladybeetles, in their voracious young stages, look like little black gator things with curved claws up front. Those “claws” can’t pinch you or me, but the youngsters are even better against aphids than their parents.  

Spittlebugs are icky, but not very threatening. They generally have only one generation of kids per year, and that’s what’s making bubbles on plant stems now. If you spray them off with plain water, they’ll land elsewhere sans protective foam and die or get eaten. 

Other plant-eaters abound, of course, but nearly all of them are on someone else’s menu. If you load the pests with esoteric toxins, you’ll not only starve your allies, but poison them—and their children. 

The flush of animal life at this time of year follows closely on the plants’ growth and bloom. Within that animal expansion, predators lay eggs or give birth, hatch or awaken, in time to make the best of their prey’s plenitude.  

Those predators include, for example, birds that eat mostly seeds the rest of the year: finches, sparrows; also nectar specialists like hummingbirds. Everybody feeds their kids bugs; it’s a high-protein diet for fast growth and development. If you want birds, don’t poison the babyfood.  

And of course if you want butterflies, you’re going to have to let the caterpillars chew on the foliage! 

Meanwhile, everything flows downhill and downstream, where the leftover nasties can do in our neighbors. Even the stuff that’s been marketed to replace organophosphates is dangerous; for example, pyrethroids, chemically modeled on natural pyrethrins, can kill aquatic critters, starting with the little amphipods, “scuds,” at the base of the average creek’s foodweb, and are toxic in solution to fish as big as salmon.  

Natural pyrethrins are potent allergens, by the way, so use it with caution if at all. “Natural” does not equal “nontoxic.” 

An alliance called “Our Water Our World” distributes handy wallet folders with the names of some less toxic ingredients to match with what’s on the shelves when you shop. Its website at www.ourwaterourworld.org has references and details and at least one hilarious swarm of similes. Download and print the card from that, or look for it by cash registers in nurseries.  

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Planet.

Woody Allen says “When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you.” 

We’re all getting older. There’s no nice way to put it. There are benefits to aging, but with time, things and people wear out. It was hard not to think of this today as I looked a condo that was, you might say, “of a certain age.” There was nothing substantially decrepit about the place but there were what we Berkeleyans like to call “issues.” I have issues too. 

The reason this seems noteworthy, at least to my geeky mind, is that I see many of the same set of issues repeatedly, so I’d like to offer some sort of list of the things one might find when looking at a condo of, say 45 years. Now that would be 1962 (was that actually 45 years ago?) 

The things I might note from a condo of this vintage fall roughly into two categories; things that are wearing out (or worn out) and things that we’ve learned from (and improved). 

Let’s start with the latter. One of the things that had just begun to change in 1962 (but not widely or quickly enough to reach every way station) was the use of safety glass. The place I saw today had a sliding glass door in three segments that stretched 11 feet across the boundary with a balcony. 

Should an unwary and marginally clad inhabitant stride blithely through the clean class door, assuming it to be open, they might slice open an artery and terminate their rental agreement on earth. This was so common prior to 1961 that the building codes, followed eventually by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, began mandating the use of safety glass in glass doors. Shower doors have also taken a huge toll and even today, over 300,000 a year suffer some sort of injury involving non-safety glass. 

If shower doors have not been replaced, I’ll often see original (and dangerous) glass doors in a condo of this age (and, of course, other housing types as well). By the way, don’t be too quick to dismiss this danger. Only about 300 people a year die from electrocution. That is 1/1000 of the number of people harmed (sometimes killed) by non-safety glass. 

If you’re buying a place of this era, look for the “bug” or fused emblem in the corner of the glass and if you don’t see it, replace the glass. This should also apply to glass that’s near the floor (say, 18”) or next to a door. 

Another thing that has changed, and was common in this time period, is the practice of placing electrical panels in closets. We get more fires and also put electricians and service personnel more at risk when breaker or fuse panels are installed in closets. When they’re worn out, which is certainly the case with a 45 year old breaker panel, they should be relocated to a space that’s got good clearance, say 30” wide and 3’ in front. This is roughly what modern codes call for. 

Again, this is less likely to result in fire (sparks and flames can actually shoot out of a panel and set clothing and storable ablaze!) and also provides for a safe “ejector-seat” distance in front of a panel. It may sound shocking (I didn’t really mean to say that) but when working on a panel, you might actually be thrown from the panel by contact with hot wires but if that same person is bunched up in a closet trying to work on the same panel, it is harder to detach and you can get “locked-on” and expire in this inauspicious manner. They’ll have to lie about how you died. 

Breaker panels that are this old are no longer reliable. Period. I don’t care what anyone tells you. A breaker is an electro-mechanical device on which your life and property rest. That’s a big job and not suitable for something that is both seriously worn and also of primitive make. See, breakers have not been around all that long. A breaker that is 45 years old is essentially a prototype. They came into common use in the 1950’s (though they had been invented in Germany in the late 1930’s, so by 1962 we were still figuring out a lot about how to make these work properly. So, it’s probably best to replace any panels that are this old. I use 40 years as my standard although there is, sadly, no industry standard for the replacement age of circuit breakers (shouldn’t there be?) 

By the way, I always seek an opportunity to mention our most notorious of electrical devices, the Federal Pacific Stab-Loc Load Center and it’s wonderful trip-proof breakers. Depending on which of the many documents and opinions you can find on the web, these are either wholly unreliable or just largely unreliable. In either case, I wouldn’t keep one in my house or apartment building for a nanosecond longer than absolutely necessary. 

This begs a further question (actually two) for condo owners. The first is, what about the other 11 panels in the building? And the other is “How many people can you kill with your bad panel?” The latter question actually applies to all manner of fire hazards. When we live clustered in condos or apartment buildings, it is far more important to minimize possible causes of fire since so many more people are depending upon it. This is one of the reasons that fire codes are so much more stringent for multi-family dwelling. You’re more apt to see fire sprinklers (saw them today), fire hoses (yep, saw them too), and hard-wired smoke or detectors (nope, didn’t see ‘em). 

The former question regarding your 45-year-old Federal Pacific panel should really be a question for the home owner’s association and I genuinely urge those of you who own condos to take charge of your HOA and steer the ship to safe shores by replacing all the old panels in the building, not just the one in your unit, for what good is your good deed if it is overwhelmed by the inertia of the many. 

One thing I’d like to add that isn’t exactly chronologically authentic to this article is the issue of aluminum wiring. Houses and especially apartment buildings between 65 and 73 years old (mostly but not exactly) often have aluminum small-branch wiring and, while I’ll save the long spiel, this should always be identified and referred to an electrician familiar with the problem. Aluminum small-branch wiring is really, seriously dangerous. 

The last item I saw at my condo today was a very worn-out furnace. Here’s my old furnace rap: It’s getting a little tired but I’ll take it out for a spin just so you can see just how droll I get. 

An old furnace is like a Model T Ford. Now, you may own a Model T and it might be in good working order and all but taking it out on the freeway is a bit crazy. A modern car has air-bags, anti-lock brakes, side walls that crumple and a plethora of safety features that came about as a result of years of advances. 

Your 45-year-old furnace (or your 80-year-old furnace) is like the Model T. Yes, it may still be running and it might even be free from obvious signs of leakage of flue gases into the air supply but there are all those other issues (including efficiency) that make the new furnace well worth the money. 

My other favorite saw is that you wouldn’t keep riding on brakes that hadn’t been serviced in 10 years. Brakes need servicing because your life depends on them. Circuit breakers, furnaces, water heaters and all mechanical devices are like this. New ones keep getting safer (as a rule) and old ones keep getting … older.  

Condos have many advances. They’re greener, because we live in clusters with less surface area per square foot of living area (meaning less energy required to heat or cool) and less construction cost per person. They’re also less of a gamble to own because we share the cost of a roof or a paint job. It’s very socialistic. You also don’t have to concern yourself with gardening if it’s not your thing. On the whole, there are very good reasons to go condo. Just remember that you’re clustered, for better and for worse. Sound issues and smell issues often arise in condos and fire safety is amplified.  

Aging has benefits and old buildings certainly win on charm and often on space and flow but as someone said “aging isn’t for sissies” and this surely applies as well to our homes as it does to our selves. 

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

Bad Advice From PG&E? 

It’s no secret: PG&E doesn’t like automatic gas shut-off valves. I’m sure they don’t want your house to go up in flames, but many PG&E employees are advising people not to have valves installed because they claim the values activate at the slightest shake (they even say a garbage truck going down the street will set them off). This is not true! 

Many years ago, the first automatic gas shut-off valves were calibrated too low, and would activate at around a 3.6 quake. So PG&E had a lot of nuisance calls from folks wanting their pilots re-lit after mild quakes.  

The people at PG&E are not stupid—they undoubtedly know that the current valves are set to activate at around 5.2, which is very serious shaking. We invite them to do the right thing and start encouraging people to make their homes safer with automatic gas shut-off valves. 

Wishing you a safe home and peace of mind. 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and gas shut-off valve installation service. Contact him at 510-558-3299 or visit QuakePrepare.com to receive semi-monthly quake safety reports. Quake Tip appears weekly in Home & Garden. 

FRIDAY, MAY 25 

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 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore pond life, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Free Compost for Berkeley Residents Self-serve from 11:45 to 2:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Marina Maintenance Yard, 201 University Ave, next to Adventure Playground. 644-6566. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andy Stern on “Journalism” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“Dam Nation: Dispatches From the Water Underground” with Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, Laura Allen and July Oskar Cole on river restoration worldwide at 7:30 p.m. at AK Press, 674 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

0 to 100 Watts in 4 Days: Build an FM Broadcast Transmitter A workshop sponsored by Free Radio Berkeley to teach you how to build a 40 watt FM broadcast transmitter and related items from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Free Radio Berkeley Workshop, 2311 Adeline, Unit P, Oakland. Cost is $200-$250 sliding scale. 625-0314. www.freeradio.org 

Solo Sierrans Briones Sunset Hike Meet at 6 p.m. in the first parking lot, near kiosk inside Briones Regional Park. Bring warm, layered clothing, flashlight, and optional snack to share. 601-1211. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction. Potluck supper at 7 p.m., dancing at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Kol Hadash Shabbat at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger food to share and non-perishable food for the needy. 428-1492. 

SATURDAY, MAY 26 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Reptile Rap Meet our resident snake and turtle friends in an interactive talk for the whole family at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Long Lived Blooming Perennials and Shrubs” with Gail Yelland, landscape designer, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Lost Film Fest with shorts from The Yes Men, TV Sheriff, Guerrilla News Network at 8 p.m. at AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$10. 208-1700.  

International Institute for the Bengal Basin Raja Ram Mohan Day Community meditation to preserve watersheds and wildlife and to further human rights at 5 p.m. at 1700 Dwight Way. Donations welcome. 841-3253. 

Berkeley Hillside Club Fundraiser for Building Maintenance at 6 p.m. at 2286 Cedar Street at Arch. Cost is $35. www.hillsideclub.org 

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

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

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

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 27 

Children’s Garden Fun at People’s Park Join naturalist Terri Compost from 1 to 3 p.m. as we plant sunflowers and an heirloom bean garden, play games and go on a bug safari. Especially for children in grades K-5, but all welcome. Meet at the community garden at the west end of the park. 658-9178. 

Wild About Watersheds A 4.5 mile hike from Tilden Nature Area to Wildcat Canyon to explore the watershed. Meet at 1 p.m. For information call 525-2233.  

Silent Spring? Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s birth as we listen to bird songs in Tilden Park. From 9:30 to 11 a.m. 525-2233. 

Berkeley City Club Tour of the “Little Castle” designed by Julia Morgan at 1:15, 2:15 and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. 883-9710. 

“Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West” A documentary at 1 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Sponsored by Stand with Us. info@sfvoiceforisrael.org 

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

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Mark Henderson on “The Life of Shakyamuni Buddha” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, MAY 28  

Tilden Open House With farm songs at 11 a.m., meet a snake at noon, and games at 1 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Masquers Playhouse Annual Garage Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 201 Martina St . corner W. Richmond Ave. Pt. Richmond. 236-0527. 

Junktique II Garage Sale to benefit Masquers from from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St. Pt. Richmond. Pancake Breakfast from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and chili lunch from noon to 3 p.m. 236-0527. 

Read Aloud Theater A free Berkeley Adult School class at 9 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, MAY 29 

Community Meeting on the City of Berkeley Budget at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst and MLK, Jr. Way. The budget may be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/budget 981-7008. 

Strawberry Tasting at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 2 to 7 p.m. at Derby St. at MLK,Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will explore ponds from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meet at 10 a.m. at Miller Knox. For information call 525-2233.  

Best Swimming Holes in Northern California at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Solo Sierrans Hike at Lake Chabot Reservoir Meet at 6:30 p.m. at the boat house. Optional dinner follows. For information call Delores 351-6247. 

Live Oak Codornices Neighborhood Assn meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park, Arts & Crafts Rm. We will discuss the proposed North Shattuck Plaza. 

“Am I Ready to be a Parent?” A workshop for prosepctive LGBT parents at 6:30 p.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave., Oakland. 415-865-5533. www.ourfamily.org 

Berkeley PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. near corner of Eunice St. MelDancing@aol.com 

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. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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, MAY 30 

“Beyond the Bungalow” with Paul Duchscherer, author of many books on Arts & Crafts homes, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $20. 848-4288. 

Environmental and Political Action Films “Everything’s Cool,” “A Drop of Life” and “The Forest for the Trees” at 6 and 8:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Cost is $10 per screening or $15 for the night. 415-255-1108. www.livingeconomies.org/events/conference07/filmfest/ 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will explore ponds from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

National Senior Health & Fitness Day with information booths, health and fitness experts, and presentations from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. 534-3637.  

New to DVD Screening and Discussion at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MAY 31 

North Shattuck Community Meeting on Safeway Development Plans at 6:30 p.m. at the JCC.  

Congolese Music and Dance Workshops Thurs.-Sun. at Laney College. Cost per workshop is $8-$20. For information call 368-2475. www.youmustdance.blogspot.com 

“Long Train Running: The Story of the Oakland Blues” A documentary, presented by Oaklandish at 9 p.m. at the Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park Boulevard, Oakland. Cost is $6. 962-5044.  

Lifeskills 411 Graduation Gala Dinner, with music, dinner, student speeches, at 7:30 p.m. at the Emeryville Hilton, 1800 Powell St. Tickets are $65-$75. 741-2045. www.lifeskills411.org  

Family Storytime for children ages 3-7 at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6107. 

Baby and Toddler Storytime at 10:30 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.

Due to an edited error, in the May 22 story “Chronicle Newsroom Slashed, East Bay Express Goes Indie” the new ownership of the East Bay Express was incorrectly reported. 

According to editor Steve Buel, two groups of investors, each holding a 50 percent interest, are the new owners, with one group of three headed by new President Hal Brody and the second group of five investors headed by Buel.

TUESDAY, MAY 22 

CHILDREN 

Comedy & Tricks with Dana Smith & his dog Lacey, for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free. 524-3043. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Irons, author of “God on Trial: Dispatches from America’s Religious Battlefields,” in conversation with Jeffrey Brand, dean of USF Law School, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. lewis@litminds.org 

Rebecca Mead talks about “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Debussy Trio at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. www.berkeleychamberperform.org 

Courtableu, cajun, zydeco, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Audrey Auld Mezera with Nina Gerber at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “Barrio Cuba” at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$6. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Talbot describes “Brothers: A Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Writing Teachers Write, student teacher readings, at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fred Randolph Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tamsen Donner Blues Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Benny Velarde Super Combo at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Hip Bones, instrumental jazz with funk and rock, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Mikie Lee and Amber at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

THURSDAY, MAY 24 

THEATER 

“The Other Side of the Mirror” written and performed by Lynn Ruth Miller at 8 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline. Cost is $10. 650-355-4296. 

Travelling Jewish Theater “Death of a Salesman” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through June 10. Tickets are $15-$44. 1-800-838-3006. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Residency Projects, Part I” Reception for Kala Fellowship artists, Freddy Chandra and Su-Chen Hung at 6 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs to June 30. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

FILM 

POV 2 Bay Area Animation Festival at 9:15 p.m. at El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $6. 848-1994. www.picturepubpizza.com  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Christopher Hitchens and Chris Hedges on “Is God Great?” at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $20 from www.kpfa.org/events/Hitchens 

Eric Drooker: Musical Slide Lectures, spoken word to projected graphics at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. pegdowntown@sbcglobal.net 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Clotilde DuSoulier introduces her cookbook “Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Richard Walker reads from “The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tim O’Brien at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $25.50-$26.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Dick Conte Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Falso Baiano, Brazilian instrumental at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Haale, Samvega, The Hobbyists at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Fishtank Ensemble at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Selector: Cubik & Origami at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, MAY 25 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Last Five Years” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through June 10. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep “Oliver Twist” at 8 p.m. at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through June 24. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org  

Impact Theatre “Measure for Measure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 26.Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Just Theater, “I Have Loved Strangers” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., to May 26. Tickets are $12-$25. 421-1458. www.justtheater.org 

Shotgun Players “The Cryptogram” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through June 17. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“The Striders Club” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Arts Center, 1421 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$11. 450-0891. 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871. 

TheatreFIRST “Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Old Oakland Theatre, 481 Ninth St., Oakland. Tickets are $18-$25. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

Travelling Jewish Theater “Death of a Salesman” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through June 10. Tickets are $15-$44. 1-800-838-3006. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Milvia Street 2007 Readings and art showing from Berkeley City College’s art and literary journal at 7 p.m. in the 3rd flr Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jerry Kuderna Piano “From Bach to Babbitt” at 1 p.m. at 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“Dance Elixir” with Leyya Tawil and Zari Le’on Fri. and Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oaklakland. Tickets are $20. 435-6413. 

Jerry Kuderna, piano and Nora L. Martin, vocalist perform Hanns Eisler’s cycle of 18 songs on Poems by Bertolt Brecht at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Arts Festival, 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

Nicolas Bearde and His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Brother Resistance, Chalkdust, and the D Platinum Crew at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $TBA 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Dave Matthews Blues Band at 8 p.m. at The Warehouse Bar, 4th & Webster, Oakland. 451-3161. 

Katie Garibaldi and Jeremy Rourke at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Spotlight Stealerz at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Flowtilla, Judea Eden Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Social Unrest, Hellbillys, Static Thought,at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Cheeky at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Saoco, Rico Pabon, Santero at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Mingus Amungus at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Filthy Thieving Bastards, Druglords of the Avenues, The Sore Thumbs at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

SATURDAY, MAY 26 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Amazing Blooms” Floral art by Leslie Winoku. Artist reception and tea at 3 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. Exhibit runs to June 1. 644-4930. 

FILM 

Berkeley Arts Festival “Noisy People” a documentary on the artists and musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area’s improvisational music community, at 8 p.m. at 2323 Shattuck Ave. Costi si $5-$10. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com  

Lost Film Fest with shorts from The Yes Men, TV Sheriff, Guerrilla News Network at 8 p.m. at AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$10. 208-1700. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Sitka Trio Medieval and Baroque music for recorder, vielle, ‘cello, harp and voice, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Jesus Diaz & su QBA at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ray Obiedo Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baba Ken and the Afro-Groove Connexion at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Mystic, Conscious Daughters, Pam the Funkstress at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$15. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Nate Lopez and Olivia Voss at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Ben Goldberg at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Caroline Chung Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Skinlab, WillHaven, Ankla at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

Culann’s Hounds, The Mor Rigan’s Wake at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Tracorum, roots music, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Animosity, As Blood Runs Black, The Faceless, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, MAY 27 

FILM 

“The Kreutzer Sonata” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Love” a two act musical for soprano and baritone at 7:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Arts Festival, 2323 Shattuck Ave., between Durant and Bancroft. Tickets are $10 at the door. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com 

“Low-down Hoedown” with Cosio, Hardy Harr, The Parish at 1 p.m. at The Living Room Gallery, 3230 Adeline St. Barbeque facilities available. livingroomgallery@gmail.com 

Brazilian Soul! at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Trick Kernan Combo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Tom Huebner at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Vernon Bush Group, soul, gospel, jazz, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MONDAY, MAY 28 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Stan Apps and Ara Shirinyan read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Monday Jam at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.

SONGS AND POEMS OF BERTOLT BRECHT 

Jerry Kuderna and Norah Martin, the dynamic duo, will preside over a program of Hanns Eisler’s Cycle of 18 Songs on Poems by Bertolt Brecht at 8 p.m. Friday. $10.  

Fidelity Bank Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. 665-9496. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com. 

‘IS GOD...GREAT?” 

Journalist and and literary critic Christopher Hitchens, noted for his iconoclastic wit, outspoken anti-theism and fiery political temperament—not to mention his abrupt abandonment of both a Trotskyist youth and, more recently, the progressive left—joins journalist Chris Hedges in conversation under the title, “Is God... Great?” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at King Middle School. $20. The event is sponsored by KPFA and will be introduced by and moderated by Sasha Lilley, formerly co-host of Against the Grain, and presently KPFA’s interim program director. 1781 Rose St.

In a swirl of scenes that quickly alternate between darkness and light, at first very different in what they show, then interpenetrating, Just Theater stages the Bay Area premiere of Berkeley native Anne Washburn’s “text about message,” I Have Loved Strangers, for just three more performances, through Saturday. 

In the darkness, the cast files in, intoning a Gregorian chant, giving the City Club a cloistered air. But just for a moment. Lights on, there’s a downtown rush of busy-ness and overlapping dialogue, techno-chatter, banalities ... reading from the book in which “he wrote it all down,” Baruch (Michael Barrett Austin) throws the immediate into retrospect: “It was a day of astounding light, bursting out everywhere ... Not yet noon ...” 

Above the audience, seated on the sides of the Julia Morgan-designed salon, is a structure that resembles the model for a freeway overpass. And there is a recurrent atmosphere in the play of backrooms and of the subterranean, of being underneath something.  

Into the contemporary bustle wanders a rudely robed, bearded man (Ryan Oden)—a street person? He starts speaking in apocalyptic, scriptural rhetoric as the others shy away from him. It’s recognizable: from Jeremiah in the King James Bible. 

Other scenes follow, seemingly disjointed. A couple (Mick Mize and Alexandra Creighton), clearly cityfolk, hike in the dark, with the sound of frogs and the stars overhead, later exploring the headstones in an old cemetery, the rest of the ensemble in tableau as the Victorian funerary sculpture. One woman asks her friend (Creighton again and Lindsey Gates) to tell her who she (the questioner) is. Are they old school friends playing a game? Or is it a change to a nom-de-guerre? ... A man (Carson Creecy IV) posed with an espresso cup (with which he’ll later do a wry flamenco) asks the Old Testament prophet out to dinner—from which he’s abducted. A modern-day prophet (Anthony Nemirovsky) chats at a cocktail party about how he receives his prophecies, later telling his wife (Gates again) how he was whisked away by armed men while buying coffee beans and questioned by—the king? (later played by Joseph O’Malley) ... The Old Testament prophet wakes up in a safe house in the middle of the night as the Whore of Babylon (Meera Kumbhani) sings to him. 

Ensemble work and the portrayal of individuals provide a contrast, yet in their back-and-forth provide the fluid motion of the show. All the disparate pieces, in their various registers of tone and rhetoric, are gathered up into one odd compound that is—refreshingly—never completely pinned down by plot or “back story.” Besides the scriptural passages, the author and her collaborators were inspired by “material overheard on the streets of New York [in 2005] ... and the activities of the Weather Underground.” 

The binding together of the different vignettes into one tale displays irony, quite different from the usual melding of discrete episodes in a film or TV show. Maybe the lyrical passages take off too much of the edge (which the humor of unlikely juxtapositions relieves pretty well), but they might also provide some of the bright notes in a scale that runs from admonitory to conversational. 

Washburn spoke of how she’s used memories of her childhood in ’70s-’80s Berkeley, “a city obsessed, in the most graceful and graceless ways possible, with the truth.”  

Just Theater’s a young troupe, with the show directed by Jonathan Spector, literary manager of Playwrights Foundation (which partnered in presenting the show), and produced by company founder Molly Aaronson-Gelb, who’s worked with Shotgun, Berkeley Rep and CalShakes. Based in the East Bay, they’re a welcome addition to our diverse stage scene. 

Photograph: Jay Yamada 

Alexandra Creighton and Lindsey Gates in I Have Loved Strangers. 

I HAVE LOVED STRANGERS 

8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave.  

$12-$25. 421-1458.

It’s been a crappy year for wildflowers, but a great one for roses. When I mistook something for a startling pink tree and then realized it was a ‘Cecile Brunner’ rose climbing fifteen feet up a utility-pole guywire, and then did the same double-take for the same cultivar climbing a tree on Sacramento Avenue, I decided to write about roses this week. 

People have all sorts of theories (meaning unproven hypotheses, not “theories” in the scientific sense) about roses, and that’s contributed to their reputation as finicky. I’ve long thought that the reason for the multiplicity of theories is rather the opposite, and similar to the reason for the bewildering variety of theories about raising children.  

Like children, roses are tough enough to survive most of the wacky things that get done to them. When they do so, the owners of the wacky theories conclude that whatever regimen they’ve put their charges through must have been The One True Way™, and thereupon publish those theories.  

Inexperienced people setting out to raise roses (or rear children) and confronted with this great stack of undifferentiated data conclude that there must be a great deal to learn, since there’s a great deal being taught, and that doing it exactly right is absolutely necessary. Many try earnestly to do what they’re told, even when it’s self-contradictory.  

Needing to reconcile contradictory dictates can make people try even harder to fulfill them. It looks like some neuropsychological reward-frustration cycle to me: King Tantalus’ syndrome with a side of unimpeachable virtue. 

This may explain religion and gambling, as well as Dr. Spock and his spiritual heirs. It certainly explains at least half the tomes on growing roses, and the regrettable tendency of gardeners to douse their roses and soil with weird cocktails of fertilizers and pesticides. 

Sometimes they get ingenious. A surgeon of my acquaintance, in the years before AIDS triggered a lot of epidemiological restrictions, used to take home age-expired units of blood from the hospital, usefully recycling the wasted blood by pouring it around his roses. Lots of nitrogen there, and trace elements; he said it tended to repel deer too.  

I’m sure his plants loved their vampirish treat. I have first-hand evidence of the bloodthirsty nature of roses, and so does anyone else who’s spent time pruning them. No matter how scrupulous one is about wearing gloves—leather gloves, goatskin gloves, Kevlar for all I know—those thorns are going to find a way through to skin. The rose-lovers’ mantra is “Ow.” 

Sometimes people just get desperate and pile the storage shed with scary compounds that happen to get marketed with “rose” somewhere on the label. I’ve seen a collection that included several things specifically aimed at Japanese beetles—which (knock wood) we don’t have here in northern California.  

This foofaraw is not necessary. 

There are a couple of rose cultivars that demonstrate the essential toughness of roses. Those ‘Cecile Brunner’ heroines I noted are members of one. 

Cecile’s blossoms look frail enough, heaven knows. They’re an ethereal pale pink, aging to a paler shade still, and small and delicately shaped. They have a light, fresh version of the classic rose scent and they’re generous about casting it to the breeze.  

Cecile bears those flowers in profusion even under less than ideal circumstances. This year, they’ve been stunning; as you go about Berkeley and the rest of the East Bay, you’ll see cataracts and tumbles and swells and sprays of them coming over fences, arbors, trees, and anything else that holds still long enough.  

Every other rose in the area is showing off this spring too. I swear I’ve been dazzled by rushes of roses’ perfume while driving on main streets. Heady stuff. 

Because Cecile Brunner roses are small and hold together well as they age, people like to put them on cakes and such edibles. Fortunately, the plant seems to be extraordinarily resistant to diseases, so there’s no need to taint it with unhealthful or even unaesthetic remedies. If you’re the sort of person who wants to eat roses—and why not? Ten thousand deer can’t be wrong—this is a rose to eat. 

There’s one by our driveway; it’s been there for who knows how long, certainly since before we moved here 12 years ago. It’s in partial shade and still blooms prolifically, and I’ve never noticed a spot of rust or mildew or anything else nasty on it. The only care it gets aside from incidental water is pruning, and that only when it gets in the way.  

It got top-heavy this year, and one of those big windy rainstorms flopped a hunk of it over into the driveway. It was a week before we got to tie it up, and it responded to being driven through just as it’s responded to any other mistreatment: it went on blithely blooming, as I scattered rose petals from the RAV4 and occasionally arrived somewhere sporting a pink car-corsage.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

Cecile’s blossoms are tough despite thier ethereal pale pink color, aging to a paler shade still, and they are small and delicately shaped size.

TUESDAY, MAY 22 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Redwood Regional Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Half Dome: a Primer on Hiking to the Summit at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Solo Sierrans Hike Hike at Lake Chabot Reservoir Meet at 6:30 p.m. at the boat house. Optional dinner follows. For information call Delores 351-6247. 

“Rethinking the Market: How Conservatives Get It Wrong and Progressives Can Get it Right” with Dean Baker at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Suggested donation $10. No one turned away for lack of funds.  

“A Crucial Conversation about the War between Religion and Law in America” with Peter Irons at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donation $5, no one turned away. lewis@litminds.org 

“Climate Change and US” with Andrew Hoerner, Director of the Sustainable Economics Program at Redefining Progress, at the El Cerrito Democratic Club’s meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Makemie Hall, Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. 375-5647.  

“Movement and Healing: Coping With Cancer And With Trauma Of War” with Ilene Ava Serlin at 7:30 p.m. at Institute for World Religions/ Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, at the corner of McKinley and Bancroft. Free. 527-2935. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

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. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234.  

“Two Angry Moms” A documentary about mothers trying to get healthy food for their children at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cos tis $5-$10. 388-8932.  

“When the Levees Broke” Part 1 of Spike Lee’s documentary on New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina at 7 p.m. at CodePINK office, 1248 Solano Ave, Albany. Donation $5. RSVP to 524-2776. 

Organic Cooking Class “A South Indian Feast” at 6:30 p.m. in the Temescal neighborhood of North Oakland. Cost is $60. To register call 914-1142. daramerin@gmail.com  

“Listen to Iran’s People: A Call For Peace” Margot Smith’s video of her March 2007 visit to Iran with Fellowhip of Reconciliation will be shown at 1:30 p.m. at the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers monthly meeting at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MAY 24 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore pond life, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Berkeley Retired Teachers Association Awards Luncheon at 11:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Yacht Club, Berkeley Marina. 251-2127. 

“Is God ... Great?” A discussion with Christopher Hitchens and Chris Hedges at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $20-$25. 848-6767, ext. 609.  

Baby and Toddler Storytime at 10:30 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

FRIDAY, MAY 25 

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 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore pond life, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Free Compost for Berkeley Residents Self-serve from 11:45 to 2:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Marina Maintenance Yard, 201 University Ave, next to Adventure Playground. 644-6566. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Andy Stern on “Journalism” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“Dam Nation: Dispatches From the Water Underground” with Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, Laura Allen and July Oskar Cole on river restoration worldwide at 7:30 p.m. at AK Press, 674 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. www.akpress.org 

0 to 100 Watts in 4 Days: Build an FM Broadcast Transmitter A workshop sponsored by Free Radio Berkeley to teach you how to build a 40 watt FM broadcast transmitter and related items from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Free Radio Berkeley Workshop, 2311 Adeline, Unit P, Oakland. Cost is $200-$250 sliding scale. 625-0314. www.freeradio.org 

Solo Sierrans Briones Sunset Hike Meet at 6 p.m. in the first parking lot, near kiosk inside Briones Regional Park. Bring warm, layered clothing, flashlight, and optional snack to share. 601-1211. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction. Potluck supper at 7 p.m., dancing at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Kol Hadash Shabbat at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring finger food to share and non-perishable food for the needy. 428-1492. 

SATURDAY, MAY 26 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Reptile Rap Meet our resident snake and turtle friends in an interactive talk for the whole family at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Lost Film Fest with shorts from The Yes Men, TV Sheriff, Guerrilla News Network at 8 p.m. at AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$10. 208-1700. 

Berkeley Hillside Club Fundraiser for Building Maintenance at 6 p.m. at 2286 Cedar Street at Arch. Cost is $35. www.hillsideclub.org 

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

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

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

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 27 

Children’s Garden Fun at People’s Park Join naturalist Terri Compost from 1 to 3 p.m. as we plant sunflowers and an heirloom bean garden, play games and go on a bug safari. Especially for children in grades K-5, but all welcome. Meet at the community garden at the west end of the park. 658-9178. 

Wild About Watersheds A 4.5 mile hike from Tilden Nature Area to Wildcat Canyon to explore the watershed. Meet at 1 p.m. For information call 525-2233.  

Silent Spring? Celebrate the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s birth as we listen to bird songs in Tilden Park. From 9:30 to 11 a.m. 525-2233. 

Berkeley City Club Tour of the “Little Castle” designed by Julia Morgan at 1:15, 2:15 and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. 883-9710. 

“Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West” A documentary at 1 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Sponsored by Stand with Us. info@sfvoiceforisrael.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Mark Henderson on “The Life of Shakyamuni Buddha” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MAY 28  

Tilden Open House With farm songs at 11 a.m., meet a snake at noon, and games at 1 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Masquers Playhouse Annual Garage Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 201 Martina St . corner W. Richmond Ave. Pt. Richmond. 236-0527. 

Junktique II Garage Sale to benefit Masquers from from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St. Pt. Richmond. Pancake Breakfast from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and chili lunch from noon to 3 p.m. 236-0527. 

Read Aloud Theater A free Berkeley Adult School class at 9 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., May 22, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., May 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., May 23, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., May 23,at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed. May 23, at 7:30 p.m. at at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., May 24, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7010.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., May 24, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., May 24, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.