Saying the university’s “compromise” plan to settle city and community lawsuits over building a new athletic facility next to the football stadium was inadequate, the City Council voted 7-1-1 in closed session Tuesday to turn down a settlement offer and move ahead to trial.  

Councilmember Gordon Woz-niak voted in opposition and Councilmember Kriss Worthing-ton abstained. 

The vote came after a day of heavy community lobbying against the compromise, including a daytime rally and press conference which attracted some 60 supporters and produced an overflow crowd at the public portion of the closed-door council session. 

UC Berkeley did its own mobilization, bringing student athletes, their supporters, university officials and others to speak to the council in favor of UC’s offer. 

Three lawsuits targeting the university’s proposal to build an athletic training facility—those of the city, the Panoramic Hill Neighborhood Association and the Save the Oaks Foundation—will be heard together Sept. 19 and Sept. 20 in Alameda Superior Court.  

At issue is whether the university wrote an adequate environmental document concerning the construction of the training center adjacent to Memorial Stadium and whether the university has adequate plans to retrofit the stadium, which sits on an active earthquake fault. Other concerns noted in the lawsuits include the legality of cutting down the grove of trees west of the stadium to build the training facility and concerns that a proposed parking garage will bring increased traffic down a narrow road. 

Many of those calling on the City Council to continue the lawsuit homed in on the safety question. At the rally/press conference Tuesday afternoon called by “Stand Up Berkeley,” Gray Brechin, UC Berkeley geography professor and historian, was among those who spoke about the possible collapse of Memorial Stadium, which holds 70,000 people and daily houses 500 office staff. 

The stadium “is resting on one quarter of a million yards of loose fill. A fault passes through the middle,” Brechin said, going on to point out that there is “rusty rebar” sticking out of the structure, there are dry rot problems and more. 

The university has yet to announce specific retrofit plans for the stadium. 

Before the closed session, 18 speakers called on the council to settle the lawsuit and allow the university to move ahead building the training facility adjacent to the stadium. There were 47 speakers who opposed settling. Because of the lawsuits, a judge’s order has stopped the university from moving ahead with construction of the facility, originally planned to be built before the stadium is retrofitted. 

One of the arguments in favor of settling, repeated several times, including by women on UC lacrosse and crew teams, was that the new training facility was needed because currently female athletes have inferior locker rooms.  

“Several women’s teams have no facilities,” Berkeley resident Mitchell Wilson told the Daily Planet before the public comment period began, adding that building the stadium anywhere else would be “radically inconveniencing students.” Wilson, who held a printed sign calling for settling the lawsuit, said he is unaffiliated with the university. 

The offer released by the university to the council and public Tuesday afternoon included the university’s commitment to retrofitting the stadium, including “aggressively pursuing a financing plan.” That plan will be before the UC Regents in November. 

The university further promised (as it had earlier) to build only enough parking spaces to replace the parking lost when developing the various projects in the southeast quadrant of the campus. 

The offer included a promise to the city that in addition to eight football games, the seven other events to be held at the stadium would not have amplification greater than for football games, “which precludes scheduling of rock concerts or similar commercial high-amplification events,” the document says. 

The offer letter also repeated an earlier commitment to widening the access road to the stadium. 

The city’s attorney on the case, Harriet Steiner of McDonough Holland & Allen, summed up the council position in a short written response to the university’s offer: “The City Council reviewed the settlement offer and determined that it was not acceptable because it does not seriously address the issues that the city was concerned with . . .” 

At the public comment session before the council’s executive session, Ted Garrett, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce’s new executive director, had claimed that an out-of-court agreement would improve now-strained town-gown relations. “The old paradigm of push and shove has to end,” he said. 

Vice Chancellor Nathan Brostrom spoke to counter the city’s arguments that alternative sites hadn’t been considered in the EIR. “We evaluated a dozen sites,” he said. “There’s one that meets our needs.”  

The cost of the lawsuit was raised several times. Settling out of court “stops the hemorrhaging of public funds,” said Alexis Kleinhaus, a Berkeley resident and former player on the UC Berkeley women’s varsity soccer team. Others said the money would be better spent for the homeless or other city needs. 

Inadequate sports medicine facilities will be brought up to quality standards in a new training facility, including the availability of a whirlpool, which is currently lacking, said Celia Clark, who works in sports medicine at the university.  

Among the 47 people spoke to the council before the closed-door session in favor of going forward with the lawsuit were people who have been sitting in the trees west of the stadium for months protesting the university’s plan to cut down the trees when it builds the training facility. 

“We can have old trees and a new gym,” said a man who identified himself as Ayr and who has been working on the ground to support the tree sitters. “We need to protect the few places we haven’t destroyed,” he said. Others noted that the oak grove is part of a fragile eco-system that should be preserved. 

While some who supported the settlement pointed to the cost of the lawsuit itself, Berkeley resident and opponent Judith Epstein noted that the city already pays for police and fire protection for all the events the university has at the stadium. To bring in more revenue, the university is now proposing seven more events each year in addition to the eight football games. 

Safety was brought up a number of times. “When that fault goes, we’ll be excavating the bodies,” Berkeley Disaster Commissioner Jesse Townley told the council. 

Michele Lawrence’s golf clubs ride along with her in the back of her silver 2004 Volkswagen station wagon wherever she goes.  

Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) first Latina superintendent has no time for golf, but it’s her favorite sport none the less. 

School board agendas, report cards and classified documents clutter the back seat of her car, spelling out more work, more commitments and more time away from home. 

But after January, Lawrence will have a chance to bid farewell to her 20-hour-weekdays and finally play that eighteen-hole-game she had set her heart on. 

“Even though I have a deep and abiding role for public education, my role as superintendent, with the long hours and time commitment, have afforded me little time for myself,” Lawrence told the community at Wednesday’s Board of Public Education meeting. 

“So, while I am still young and healthy enough, I want to explore other life interests.” 

It was with mixed emotions that Lawrence announced her retirement, which will take effect from Feb. 1. 

While the surprise announcement caused her critics to breathe easier, there were those who felt a sense of trepidation at her departure. 

“I am sorry to see her go,” school board president Joaquin Rivera said after her announcement. 

“But there’s never really a good time for people to leave. It’s good that she is leaving when she can enjoy her retirement. If she had waited for some more time, she might not have been able to do that.” 

There were also those who said they were happy to see her finally leave. 

“She has always been very unresponsive and elusive,” said Berkeley High parent Elizabeth Scherer. “There were no efforts to reach out to the community. I hope they find a good replacement who can come up with solutions. Lawrence would not even admit there were problems.” 

During her tenure, Lawrence battled her critics by appearing at school board meetings, PTA associations and school picnics and trying to prove them wrong time and again. 

“She is very strong, very determined and has very high standards,” Rivera told the Planet. “One of the tough decisions she had to make was how to balance a faltering budget when she first started, and she did a great job with that.” 

After taking over a troubled school district from former superintendent Jack McLaughlin in 2001, Lawrence spent four of her six years as district superintendent trying to balance the district’s staggering budget deficit. 

“It’s definitely one of the things I am most proud of,” Lawrence told the Planet Thursday. “But it was definitely a group effort. We realized we had to reduce expenditures. Our employees went without raises, programs were cut and sacrifices were made. But it brought credibility and accountability to our system and restored the community’s faith in our schools.” 

Alameda County superintendent Sheila Jordan also credited Lawrence with accomplishing a stable budget. 

“She came at a time when it was clear that the budget was in trouble,” she said.  

“We had given a negative certification to the district and it was well on its way to being taken over by the state. She recreated the foundation and was able to work with the community to pass various parcel taxes and bonds to improve the schools.” 

A graduate of CSU Fullerton, Lawrence has worked in the California public schools for more than 34 years. 

She leaves behind a legacy of stronger academic programs, increased test scores and an attempt to defend the BUSD student assignment and integration plan. 

Under her, the district emerged victorious in two successive lawsuits filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation which charged the district with violating California’s Proposition 209 by racially discriminating among students during placements at elementary schools and at programs at Berkeley High. 

Recently, Lawrence also spoke to the judges and attorneys of the Ninth Circuit Court during their annual conference on the topic of the aftermath of Brown vs. the Board of Education 

“She is the finest superintendent I know anywhere,” said Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp, who was hired by Lawrence to run the school four years ago. 

“People can connect to her leadership and her vision. She has changed the school district completely and really really really cares about her students.” 

The biggest challenge Lawrence faced at the high school was the lack of leadership on campus. The school, which saw eight principals in 10 years, changed dramatically after Slemp took over. 

Both Lawrence and Slemp were also pivotal in protecting students’ personal information from being used for military recruitment under the No Child Left Behind Act. 

Pressure from the federal government finally led to that policy being overturned, although both administrators promise to continue protecting their students’ rights. 

“She’s definitely leaving the district on a better footing,” acknowledged Barry Fike, former president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. 

“It’s taken longer than we expected, but she has focused on professional worker conditions and professional pay.” Teachers were left without a contract a couple of years ago, and all those walkouts and protests would have been unnecessary if the superintendent listened to us earlier. It was an unfortunate period but we did come out of it stronger. Hopefully the new superintendent will be able to focus on student achievement now.” 

Lawrence said her decision to retire in February had to do with budget decisions. 

“The new superintendent will have time to talk about new programs,” she said. “Otherwise, when you start in July everything is already decided and you have to wait another year.” 

Apart from playing golf, Lawrence said she is also looking forward to taking naps. 

“That and washing all the clothes that have piled up,” she said laughing. “I also want to pull some weeds and spend three solid months thinking of what I want to do next.” 

Contributed photo. BUSD Superintedent Michele Lawrence announces her retirement as school board member Joaquin Rivera looks on. 

The Planning Commission on Wednesday voted to drastically scale back a proposal to rezone parts of West Berkeley to allow car dealerships, appeasing critics who said the plan would displace recycling and building businesses by raising property values in the rezoned areas. 

In an attempt to encourage auto dealers to set up shop in Berkeley—a need identified by the City Council in 2005—the Planning Department came up with a proposal to allow auto sales in districts with large lots and proximity to the freeway. 

Staff had recommended rezoning two areas: one along Eastshore Highway between Codornices Creek, Virginia Street and 3rd, 4th and 5th Streets, the other south of Ashby between Bay Street, San Pablo Avenue and the Emeryville border. 

The debate centered on the desire to retain car dealerships—which generate $1.2 million in sales tax revenue—while protecting the thriving West Berkeley industrial community and meeting its zero waste goal. The commission heard from 30 or so critics of the proposal and representatives of three of the four auto dealerships in the city. Two of those businesses—Berkeley Honda and McKevitt Volvo-Nissan located on Shattuck—have expressed interest in relocating to West Berkeley. 

“If we want to grow our business it would be very helpful for us to be down by the freeway. That’s really the most important thing,” said Steve Haworth, General Manager of Berkeley Honda. 

In the end, the commission leaned toward opponents of the plan, deciding to go through with rezoning the Eastshore Highway area but to eliminate the proposed area south of Ashby, citing concerns that several recycling facilities and building businesses in that part of Berkeley might be forced out of the market by auto dealers able to pay higher land prices. 

In doing so, the commission rejected claims by David Fogarty, the city’s economic development project coordinator, that auto dealerships might actually have a more difficult time affording land prices in the proposed areas, an assumption he derived from recent land sales data. 

“I don’t think it makes sense to have an auto row right there and I think your rent will go up in a year if we allow this,” said commissioner William Falik. 

Urban Ore attorney John Moore said Fogarty’s analysis is flawed because it relies on land sales data. “An appraiser determines land value based on what the price per square foot is at comparable places.” he said. “I would strongly guess that auto dealers in comparable places are paying more.” 

Urban Ore, located just south of Ashby, is under a 10-year lease that runs out in 2009. At that point, Urban Ore will have to enter into arbitration to renew the lease for another five years. Moore said if the area were zoned for auto dealerships, the reuse business would most certainly be priced out. 

The commission also voted to examine exempting the city’s Transfer Station, located on 2nd Street near the Gilman Street freeway exit, from the proposed rezoned area along the highway at a subsequent meeting. The recycling center is expected to draw increased activity as the city boosts efforts to divert waste from landfills. 

The commission directed staff to come up with exact language to implement the new zoning policy, which will be considered at the next meeting. The City Council is expected to vote on the policy change in December.

A few Southwest Berkeley residents concerned about a proposed Community Benefits District (CBD)—an area where property owners will be taxed for particular services—called a meeting at the end of August to ask their neighbors what they think of the plan. 

More than 100 people came to the meeting at the Ecole Bilingue on Aug. 27 and, with the exception of a handful of supporters—mostly CBD steering committee members—expressed “enthusiastic” opposition to its formation, according to Sara Klise, one of the organizers of the neighborhood meeting. 

The first formal step toward creating the district was to be before the City Council Tuesday—a new ordinance enabling CBDs in Berkeley. However, Wednesday evening, Michael Caplan, acting manager of the economic development division, said in an email that consideration of the ordinance would be postponed.  

The West Berkeley Business Alliance (WBBA) steering committee, proposing the district, understands “this got off to a bad start [and] realize[s] that everyone would benefit if they reassess their approach on this, take a step back, and do more substantive public outreach to the community and potential assessees,” Caplan’s email says. 

In the meantime, the residents, small-business owners and small businesses who rent space within the proposed district—roughly between University Avenue south to the Oakland-Emeryville border and San Pablo Avenue west to the Bay—are continuing their efforts to fight creation of the district. 

Organizers of the Aug. 27 meeting are calling a second meeting Monday evening to begin to fashion what Klise is calling a “plan of action.” The meeting will be at the  

Ecole Bilingue, 1009 Heinz St. at 7 p.m. 

The West Berkeley Business Alliance (WBBA) has controlled the effort to create the assessment district. The CBD steering committee, made up uniquely of WBBA members, has mostly bankrolled the $60,000 effort. They’ve been working for about a year with the help of city staff, $10,000 from the city and consultant Marco Li Mandri from San Diego-based New City America.  

The idea behind the CBD is to collect an assessment from all property owners within district boundaries; assessments would vary according to property size. Some of the services the CBD may fund, according to draft steering committee documents, include security, beautification, transportation and planning activities related to possible zoning changes.  

Creation of the district would be by vote of the property owners within the district. The vote would be weighted, with the owners of larger properties having a vote proportional to the size of their properties. 

People showed strong opposition to the district at the Aug. 27 meeting, Klise said, noting, “They talked about getting together and hiring an attorney.” Some wanted to put the funds they would otherwise be paying to the district into fighting it, she added. 

All were welcomed at the meeting and members of the CBD steering committee were given time to make a presentation, Klise said, underscoring that the community meeting was open, in direct contrast to the CBD steering committee meetings, which have been closed to the public.  

Klise did manage to attend one meeting uninvited and said she wasn’t told to leave. However, an email from consultant Li Mandri confirmed that CBD steering committee meetings are restricted.  

Responding to a Daily Planet query, Li Mandri wrote in an Aug. 10 email: “Yes [they are restricted to the steering committee] until we finalize the plan. The purpose of the Steering Committee is not to debate the existence of the district, but rather to determine what the district will be. We need to finalize the plan because people will want to know what services would it fund and who would be included. Once it has been finalized it will be an open document and we will have a public meeting or meetings to discuss it. We are not there yet.” 

Klise said neighborhood and small businesses people who attended the neighborhood meeting were “furious” that they might be forced to pay for services that they didn’t want in the first place.  

“Not only do I have to pay, I get no say in anything that happens,” Klise said, referring to the weighted voting. 

The neighborhood meeting proved to the WBBA members present that opponents were “not the 10 crazy people they were making us out to be,” Klise said. 

Understanding the mounting opposition, the WBBA steering committee could decide not to form a CBD, but to create a simple Business Improvement District (BID), taxing only the commercial property owners.  

Councilmember Darryl Moore told the Daily Planet on Thursday that he is thinking along these lines: “I prefer to see a BID developed in West Berkeley that would include the business community and not residents,” he said.  

There are several BIDS in Berkeley: downtown, Solano Avenue, Telegraph Avenue and North Berkeley.  

If residents get taken out of the equation, Klise said the neighborhood group will have a decision to make: “Do we stay [in the fight] and help the small businesses?” She noted that small businesses do not need the proposed shuttle buses and many do not care about paying to spruce up the neighborhood, as they do not have customers who visit their sites.  

The property owners will pass on the tax to the businesses, Klise said. “Five hundred to six hundred dollars affects them—those are small businesses.”  

John Curl rents his woodworking space in West Berkeley. Rents will be increased to pay for the assessment, but those business owners who don’t own their properties won’t have a say in its establishment, Curl told the Daily Planet on Thursday.  

Curl added that the city is not giving information on the district to business owners who don’t own their properties. “Nobody’s coming to you, telling you about this,” he said. “Nobody’s going to notice us.”  

If the large West Berkeley landlords don’t put together the CBD, they will likely find another way to do what they want to do, Curl said. 

“This is just part of their strategy to gentrify West Berkeley,” he said. “They don’t give up. If they can’t do this, they’ll come back another way. There’s a lot of cards in their deck and they keep playing different cards.” 

As for the artists, residents and small business owners in the area, “We’re almost always in reaction mode,” Curl said. 

Moore said that in conjunction with the city’s Economic Development Division, he is planning a community meeting toward the end of September to address the Community Benefits District question. 

The enabling ordinance will likely not come back before the council until after that meeting.  

The draft ordinance as it is now written modifies the current ordinance establishing Business Improvement Districts. It allows creation of CBDs funded by both commercial and residential property owners and prevents a single land owner from controlling more than 20 percent of the weighted decision-making process (although there is no such landlord in the proposed CBD). It creates the district for 20 years, though normally BIDS have a life of 10 years, and it provides for repayment of the funds lent to start the project.  

For information on the neighborhood organizing efforts opposing the CBD, go to http://pottercreek.wordpress.com. For information on the CBD, call Marco Li Mandri at 619-233-5009.

Pedestrian pathways, high towers and hotels dominated the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) meeting Tuesday as landscape architects, urban planners and UC Berkeley officials fielded questions from city commissioners and community members about their vision for a better downtown. 

DAPAC’s 40th session kicked off with landscape architect Walter Hood—best known for designing Oakland’s Splash Pad Park and the de Young Museum gardens in San Francisco—introducing potential options for a “public right-of-way” on Center Street to the 14-member committee for the first time. 

Hood, a professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley, was hired by Ecocity Builders and Citizens for a Strawberry Creek Plaza to do conceptual plans for an open space on Center Street. 

“I am not calling it a plaza at this point,” he said after the presentation. “It’s a street right-of-way from Oxford to Center Street, a pattern of development from the watershed to the site. We want to see and learn something different, look at how water flows in different ways ... how revelatory the 80 feet of space can be to people and if we can create light and shadow there.” 

Hood discussed various options with the committee, including a water feature, but was unable to make a powerpoint presentation due to a technical snafu. 

“I want to find something completely new,” Hood told the committee. “We just got a surveyor on board and we are gearing up to start working on a project. Hopefully, we will be able to start a survey in the next 30 days.” 

Mark McLeod, president of the Downtown Berkeley Association, emphasized the importance of involving downtown merchants in the proposed project. 

Deborah Badhia, executive director of the association, stated in a letter to DAPAC that although a water feature would be a desirable element in an improved Center Street, care should be taken to prevent flooding. 

She added that on-street parking should be maintained and that diagonal parking could be an acceptable alternative to the current configuration. 

“Any of us who work in the urban environment understand that cities are dynamic,” Hood said. “I would like to go back to the ABCs of urbanism.” 

DAPAC member Jim Novosel expres-sed concern about DAPAC’s involvement in the project, since the committee will be dissolved in November. 

Calling the Center Street Plaza project an advocacy plan, Matt Taecker said that public decision-making would be given priority. 

“I hope to add on a lot of things DAPAC has [suggested] and not those contrary to it,” Hood informed him. 

In January, DAPAC voted in favor of a pedestrian plaza on Center Street which would close off traffic and incorporate the best features of the hills, Strawberry Creek, the buildings and the bus and BART plaza on Shattuck Avenue. 

The UC Hotel Task Force—which oversees plans for the hotel the university proposes for the northeast corner of the intersection of Center and Shattuck Avenue—has also supported the concept. 

UC Considerations and Viewpoints 

Emily Marthinsen, assistant vice chancellor for capital projects and physical and environmental planning at UC Berkeley, presented the university’s current thinking on four critical areas in the Downtown Area Plan: public realm, height and density, employment, and housing and parking. 

Marthinsen, who said she was representing the chancellor, vice chancellor, provost and vice provost at the meeting, stressed that a successful downtown was critical to the university in its leadership. 

“The university is not a single entity,” Marthinsen said. “The university as a whole has interests in the downtown. Both academic and administrative officials as well as the Executive Campus Planning Committee have been engaged in the planning of the downtown.” 

Although the DAPAC is responsible for crafting the heart of the downtown plan, including its strategic statements, goals and policies, a complete draft of the plan—with recommended implementation measures and detailed background statements—will be developed after November with guidance from the Planning Commission. 

The 2005 legal settlement of a lawsuit filed by the city over the impacts of the university’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) 2020 resulted in the creation of DAPAC. UC contributed $250,000 toward the planning process, but reserves the right to cut off $15,000 a month from compensatory funds it is paying the city to mitigate the financial impacts its development would have on the community if a new downtown plan is not completed on schedule. 

In a letter to the city’s Planning Director Dan Marks, Marthinsen said that DAPAC’s direction is uncertain in several critical policy areas. 

“While the committee strongly advocates sustainability and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as city policy, many of its members also advocate a relatively low-density future for the downtown, despite its excellent transit access,” she claimed. “Some have proposed a three-story maximum base height for new buildings in downtown Berkeley, with taller buildings permitted if they meet ‘bonus’ criteria. The committee is also considering a very ambitious program of new public open spaces.” 

DAPAC member Gene Poschman said that the university should concentrate on the areas of conflict and agreement. 

“We shouldn’t be looking for differences, we should be looking for commonalities,” DAPAC chair Will Travis said. 

Marthinsen’s letter said that the university preferred a taller downtown than most DAPAC members. 

“Although a greater maximum height, particularly in the downtown core, would be desirable, the university considers a 90-feet limit as the minimum acceptable maximum height on blocks adjacent to the campus,” Marthinsen said. “There is space for buildings with extraordinary benefits, but that will depend on the site.”. 

She added that although the university was committed to meet its obligation to the public under its Long Range Development Plan which was supposed to extend until 2020, it was limited to “frontage and other improvements directly related to university projects.” 

“The university’s fund for landscape improvements is extremely limited,” she said. “The Campus Park landscape stewardship is our principle responsibility.” 

Marthinsen said that Downtown Berkeley as a job center would add to economic reliability for the city. 

“We have an interest in more office space,” she said. “We encourage synergies that have ties to us. Business groups that have spun off from academic research are looking for space. Having offices downtown is important for a healthy retail sector. As the downtown process has moved forward it’s been very clear to me that we share many goals.” 

DAPAC member Jesse Arreguin asked Marthinsen if UC wanted to develop 800,000 net new ground square feet downtown on current university-owned sites. 

“Yes, it will be on university-owned sites,” she replied. 

Marthinsen stressed that the downtown plan should not rule out parking as a use on any university owned site, and “should not preclude above-grade parking as a primary use on the University Hall Annex site.” 

The 2020 LRDP encourages more university parking. The university agreed to build no more than 1,270 net new parking spaces as part of the settlement agreement. 

According to the letter, the concentration of a greater number of spaces on the University Hall Annex site “supports the parking needs of the proposed hotel and museum on the adjacent block, and makes shared parking operations viable for the arts district and the retail core.” 

Land Use Alternatives 

Planning staff has asked DAPAC to choose a preferred land use alternative for the purpose of the environmental review of the downtown plan. 

Initially, staff had presented two alternatives in the form of a point-tower alternative and a baseline (development under existing conditions) alternative.  

After strong opposition to the point-tower idea, staff had scaled back the number of towers proposed and renamed it the “high rise” alternative.  

A third alternative which allowed an eight-story maximum base height in the Downtown was also added. 

There are various points of view expressed in the debate. 

Some members are willing to accept a modest increase in maximum height but want the new development to provide community benefits.  

This is put into perspective by DAPAC members Rob Wrenn, Juliet Lamont, Helen Burke, and Wendy Alfsen who want to maintain the existing heights of five stories in the core area and four stories in other areas but allow for those heights to be exceeded through bonuses for green and affordable projects.  

Another group, principally those associated with the university, wants taller buildings, and wants to expand the retail sector, build more parking and high end condominiums.  

DAPAC member and former UC Berkeley executive Dorothy Walker endorsed this view by proposing 3,000 new residential units downtown which would be accommodated by up to 20 high rise “point towers”.  

While Wrenn emphasized the importance of a transit accessibility study for downtown and of green buildings, Gene Poschman contended that research on transit oriented development and transit behavior did not justify creating a dense high-rise downtown Berkeley. 

Arreguin said that while the Walker alternative proposed high-rise buildings and more units than the other options, it would result in minimal affordable housing. 

He added that the Wrenn proposal would provide flexibility to create real incentives to build housing for low income residents and ensure that it was built downtown. 

DAPAC considered all three sets of alternatives at Tuesday’s meeting. Since the committee had limited time to discuss the alternatives and the additional information provided by Wrenn, Poschman and Arreguin, it agreed to meet again Oct. 3.

Parimal “Perry” Patel of Palo Alto-based BPR Properties told DAPAC Monday about a plan to renovate the Shattuck Hotel and expand the building to house 320 rooms, part of which involves the construction of a new tower at the rear end of the historic building. 

Patel did not provide any specifics for the dimensions of the tower, apart from the fact that the tower would be 16 stories high with 150 new hotel rooms and maybe even condos.  

The hotel, at 2086 Allston Way, is in the process of modernizing its rooms, after which owners plan to begin the construction of the tower. Patel said he had recently applied for city permits for the construction, though no commission has yet seen his plans. Since the proposed height of the addition exceeds current downtown zoning and violates Berkeley’s General Plan, it would require variances from the Zoning Adjustment Board. Changes to the exterior of the building, a designated historic resource, would have to be approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. 

“We are not touching the outside of the building until we go before the Landmarks Preservation Commission,” said Robert Richmond of R2L Architects, the firm hired by BPR Properties to work on the proposed project. “We have not prepared any extensive drawings or conducted any studies on the massing yet. The height has been determined from the financial standpoint and not from the aesthetic standpoint. The majority of the tower will be behind the existing hotel building on Shattuck. This will soften the impact a tower would have on downtown.” 

In a letter to Dan Marks, Berkeley’s director of planning and development, Patel explained the reasoning behind the hotel’s proposed larger rooms. 

“In order to qualify for ranking as a ‘four star’ hotel and affiliation with a national hotel chain, we need somewhat larger rooms than can be accommodated in the historic building, even though we are merging substandard rooms and reducing the room count there from 220 to 172,” his letter said. 

“With the tower, a total hotel room count in the range of 320-plus will allow us to host larger events and make our hotel a major destination. A national hotel ‘brand’ and reservation system is necessary to get us the occupancy and room rates needed to make the project a success and justify the large expense we have already undertaken to renovate the historic building.” 

Patel stressed what he thought was the need for more meeting space in the city and his desire to work with the university to expand conference areas. 

“A lot of business is going to the Claremont Hotel, Doubletree or Emeryville right now,” he said. “We’d like to keep all the conferences in the downtown area.” 

DAPAC member Rob Wrenn asked if any market analysis had been done to show if Berkeley could support two hotels downtown. UC Berkeley is planning a 19-story hotel and conference center a few blocks away on the corner of Oxford and Center streets. 

Other concerns among DAPAC members for the Shattuck Hotel were related to parking and labor issues. 

Patel said he was also considering plans to build a parking structure downtown and valet services to meet parking demands. 

Long-term residents of the hotel have currently filed a petition with the Rent Board alleging that the owners are trying to force them out. 

The hotel is scheduled to reopen in spring of 2008. 

Christopher Hollis smiled and laughed in court today as prosecutors added another charge in a case in which he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in state prison on charges that he murdered his close friend Meleia Willis-Starbuck in Berkeley two years ago.  

Hollis, a 23-year-old Hayward man, pleaded not guilty to the new charge against him, which is that he was an ex-felon in possession of a firearm July 17, 2005, when he allegedly fired a shot that took the life of Willis-Starbuck, a 19-year-old Dartmouth College student who attended Berkeley High School with him.  

The incident took place near her apartment at the intersection of College Avenue and Dwight Way, not far from the UC Berkeley campus.  

Prosecutor Elgin Lowe said Hollis wasn’t supposed to be carrying any weapons as part of the terms of his parole from his 2002 felony conviction for possessing marijuana for sale in Merced County.  

Hollis has been awaiting trial since Feb. 10, 2006, when a judge ruled that there was enough evidence for him to stand trial on charges that he murdered Willis-Starbuck.  

His trial was scheduled to begin Oct. 15, but Alameda County Superior Court Judge C. Don Clay today postponed it until Jan. 28 at the request of Hollis’ lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Greg Syren, who said he needs more time to prepare for the trial even though he’s represented Hollis for a year.  

Hollis smiled and waved at two women friends when he was brought into the courtroom and pulled up the sleeves of his yellow jail uniform to show them a lengthy scar on his left arm.  

Prosecutors initially charged both Hollis and Christopher Wilson, a 22-year-old Berkeley man who attended Berkeley High with Hollis and Willis-Starbuck, with murder for the shooting death of Willis-Starbuck as well as assault with a firearm in connection with a minor injury to UC Berkeley football player Gary Doxy, who was grazed on his right wrist.  

But a judge dismissed the murder and assault charges against Wilson after he identified Hollis as the shooter in the incident and pleaded no contest to the lesser charge of being an accessory to murder after the fact for driving Hollis from the scene. Wilson is expected to be sentenced after he testifies at Hollis’ trial.  

Prosecutors say that Hollis fired shots near Willis-Starbuck’s apartment building after she called him for help with an argument she and her female friends were having with some Cal football players.  

According to Wilson, Hollis and Willis-Starbuck were such close friends that they called each other “brother” and “sister.”  

At a preliminary hearing last year, Wilson testified that he and Hollis were at a party near the UC-Berkeley campus July 17, 2005, when Willis-Starbuck phoned Hollis to ask for help because she’d been in an argument with some men.  

Wilson said he heard four or five shots after Hollis jumped from his car when they pulled into a parking lot near Willis-Starbuck’s apartment and jogged in a crouched position to the intersection of College and Dwight.

Officials of Children’s Hospital an-nounced plans this week to rebuild their aging hospital facility in Oakland, but whether the hospital will actually be built inside the city limits, and whether the announcement will settle the hospital’s dispute with the Alameda County Board of Supervisors over a proposed property tax increase ballot initiative, remains to be seen. 

Following the press conference, Children’s Hospital officials and Board of Supervisors representatives were sharply divided on whether progress was being made in resolving the dispute, or even whether talks were being held. 

At a Wednesday press conference, Children’s Hospital officials said in a prepared release that “the board of directors of Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland has approved a plan to rebuild a world-class pediatric medical center on its current site in Oakland. The new medical facility will be constructed on land between 52nd and 53rd streets near the hospital’s main campus. The hospital will continue to operate in its current facility during construction, which is expected to begin in 2010 and must be completed by 2013 to meet the state’s deadline for seismic upgrades. 

“Construction is expected to cost approximately $700 million,” the prepared release continued. The hospital plans to finance the new medical center through three sources including $173 million in past and future state bonds, $150 million raised through private donations and $300 million from The Children’s Hospital Construction Fund measure, which is a modest $2 per month parcel tax on residential properties in Alameda County.  

The measure includes a $100 a year assessment on small non-residential properties and $250 for large non-residential properties annually. Residents over age 65 and the disabled are exempt from paying the assessment. 

But passage of the parcel tax, which Children’s officials hope to have placed on the February, 2008 presidential primary ballot, has been put in jeopardy by a simmering dispute with members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. 

Petition signatures for that proposed tax initiative are still being gathered. 

While supervisors have said that they support the rebuilding of the privately operated Children’s Hospital in Oakland, earlier this year they bitterly complained to hospital officials after Children’s began circulating petitions to put the parcel tax initiative on the ballot without first sitting down with county officials to iron out details and resolve conflicts.  

Saying that they were “blindsided” by the introduction of the ballot measure, supervisors said that it would tie up much of the county’s bonded indebtedness, making it impossible for the county to introduce a bond measure to retrofit the Alameda County Medical Center, the county’s own aging medical facility. In addition, supervisors said there were legal discrepancies and problems with the Children’s tax initiative that needed to be cleared up. 

Last month, the five county supervisors signed a public letter to area elected officials asking them to “withhold your endorsement [of the tax initiative] until our Board has completed its review of the measure.”  

A report by County Administrator Susan Muranishi “address[ing] the fiscal impacts of the measure, including its effect on the ability to finance infrastructure, the potential effect of the measure on County operations including on the Board of Supervisors, and any legal issues associated with the measure” is scheduled to be presented to the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 30. 

One of the issues to be cleared up is whether the language of the tax initiative allows Children’s Hospital to collect the tax money and then use it to rebuild its facility away from Oakland, despite hospital’s officials’ pledge this week that they will remain in the city. 

Following the Children’s Hospital press conference, a spokesperson for Children’s Hospital Vice President Mary Dean, who is coordinating the tax initiative, said that Dean felt that “good progress” was being made in talks with supervisors over supervisors’ concerns. Dean herself was out of town and not available to answer questions. 

But a spokesperson for Board of Supervisors President Scott Haggerty referred queries to the office of Supervisor Keith Carson, who Haggerty’s office said was the board “point person” on the Children’s Hospital issue.  

A spokesperson for Carson said that there had been “no follow-up” to the “issues and concerns” that supervisors had earlier expressed about the initiative.

Business for Better Government, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee, should file its campaign disclosure forms in Berkeley and not with Alameda County as it has done since 2002, an Aug. 15 letter from the state Fair Political Practices Commission says. 

To correct the error, the PAC will have to re-file the disclosure forms with the city. 

“My feeling is that we’ve got to follow the law—and we will,” Ted Garrett, new executive director of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce told the Daily Planet. Garrett was not with the local chamber when the PAC filings were done and was only marginally familiar with the issue. When contacted Wednesday by the Planet, he had not received a copy of the FPPC  

letter. 

“If we need to change the way we file, I’ll let the PAC board know, ‘here’s what we’ve got to do,’” he said. 

On May 30, Deputy City Attorney Kristy van Herick wrote to the state Fair Political Practices Commission asking if the BBG should have filed with the city, given that the PAC’s only out-of city contribution was a $500 donation to a state assembly race. It spent more than $100,000 on various Berkeley campaigns in 2006. 

The question is important, according to Berkeley Fair Campaign Practices Commission Chair Eric Weaver, because of the differences in the way the city and county inform the public of the sources of funds from a candidate or committee. Berkeley campaign finance laws mandate that the city post the source of funds on the Internet and in newspapers, but to see reports of candidates and committees who file with the county, one must go to the County Registrar’s Office in downtown Oakland during business hours. 

The letter to van Herick from Scott Hallabrin, general counsel to the state FPPC, concludes: “The history of the PAC you have provided covers the five years (and three election cycles) covering 2002 through 2006. During that time, all but approximately 0.4 percent of the money the PAC has spent (for non-administrative purposes) has been spent on multiple candidates, measures or committees in city-only related elections. This extra-city activity by the PAC does not constitute “regular’ contributions, or a ‘significant degree’ of involvement in non-City campaigns. Therefore, the single, $500 contribution the PAC made to a non-City candidate should be deemed de minimis and the PAC (at this point) should be deemed a ‘city general purpose committee.’” 

Weaver said future commission action would depend on whether the PAC contests the ruling. If it does not, then the commission could ask the PAC to file locally. In that case, the PAC can be charged late fees of $10 per day, but only up to $100 he said.  

The commission will likely discuss the state letter either at its September or October meeting, Weaver said. 

Two major pieces of Berkeley property have changed hands, the Hotel Durant at 2600 Durant Ave. and the Berkeley Tower, a seven-story office building at 2015 Shattuck Ave. 

The six-story 1928 hotel, often used by visitors to the nearby UC Berkeley campus, was acquired by Joie de Vivre Hospitality, Inc.—a fast-growing San Francisco hotel firm. 

The 1983 office building, with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as its primary tenant, was bought by ScanlanKemperBard, a Portland-based real estate merchant banker. 

The 144-room hotel was designed by architect William H. Weeks, who also designed the landmarked Elmwood Hardware Building. 

The new owner describes itself as “California’s largest boutique hotel company,” with annual revenues of nearly $200 million. 

Founded in 1987 by Stephen T. “Chip” Conley Jr., Joie de Vivre now owns 35 hotels in California, said Dawn Shaloup, the firm’s public relations director. 

“We’re a collection of hospitality businesses based in San Francisco,” she said.  

The company has had a long-standing interest in acquiring an East Bay hotel, and when the firm was contacted by the hotel’s previous owners Buzz and Jeff Gibb, “We were very interested, because it’s such an iconic property,” she said. 

Shaloup said the firm has no immediate plans for the newest acquisition beyond performing a necessary seismic retrofit. 

“We are keeping all 100 of the current employees,” she said. 

Shaloup said the sale closed on Aug. 31. 

The Berkeley Tower, also known to the staff of LBNL as Building 937, is located at the southeast corner of the intersection of the northbound split of Shattuck Avenue at University Avenue. 

While retail businesses operate on the ground floor, the upper six floors are filled with an assortment of lab functions. 

Sale of the Berkeley Tower was part of a $61.5 million, two-building acquisition that also included Jackson Center I & II in Oakland. 

That building’s tenants are also primarily governmental agencies, including Alameda County, the federal Social Security Administration, the National Park Service and the Department of Homeland Security. 

Robert Scanlan, CEO of the new Berkeley Tower owner, said the Berkeley building was a very desirable buy because of its primary tenant. 

Governmental clients “tend to pay their bills on time,” he said. 

Scanlan said, “We’re hopeful the lab will renew at the expiration of its current lease, which ends in April 2009.” 

The company was formed in Portland in spring 1993, he said, and has acquired $2.5 billion in properties since then, with the 2007 total likely to hit $600 million, he said. 

Scanlan said the firm typically holds properties for three to five years, “and we try to create added value in that time,” he said. ScanlanKemperBard has scored major profits for its investors. “If you’d gotten in on everything we’ve done since we started, you’d have made almost a 25 percent rate of return” annually, Scanlan said. 

Berkeley High senior Rio Bauce was sworn in by Alameda County Superior Court Judge John True as the new student school board representative Wednesday. 

Bauce, who has chaired the city’s youth commission and is probably the youngest member to have served on the city’s planning commission to date, also writes for the Daily Planet. 

“I look forward to working with each member of the board, the Superintendent, the staff, students, parents, teachers, and other groups,” Bauce told the school board during the Board of Education meeting.  

“I want to thank all the students who supported me during my campaign and gave me ideas for the upcoming school year. Although I was elected by the students, I am open to feedback from everyone and I welcome your input.” 

He added that he hoped to increase funds for counseling staff, specifically at the high school level. 

“While the school counselors have been more efficient in dealing with schedule changes this year, there are simply not enough of them to accommodate 3,200 students,” he said. 

“I want to praise the School Board and the City for their cooperation in expanding youth playing fields around Berkeley. I hope to help build on that that.” 

Judge True, a former Berkeley High parent, praised Bauce. 

“I have heard about Rio from all my four kids and I am very impressed,” he said. “I am sure his commitment will help the school district on the whole.” 

Bauce, who moved to Berkeley from San Francisco when he was 3 years old, joined the National Youth Rights Association—a group dedicated to empowering youth—in high school. 

Although the group’s attempts to allow 17-year olds a vote in school board elections failed, Bauce continued to fight  

for students’ rights as youth commission chair.

A spokesperson for the proposed Wayans Brothers Oakland Army Base project says that despite the impression being given in some local media outlets, the Wayans Brothers are “absolutely committed to Oakland” and their Army Base proposal is not dead but is only being modified. 

The Wayans Brothers—film producers and nationally-known comics—are proposing putting a film production studio, a children’s digital arts learning center, retail development, and several other projects on a 47-acre West Oakland parcel formerly part of the now-dismantled base.  

In an Aug. 17 article entitled “Wayans partnership says no to movie studio in Oakland,” the San Francisco Chronicle said that “Actor/director Keenen Ivory Wayans and a Los Angeles development firm have dropped plans to build a movie studio and shopping center on the former Oakland Army base, a city official said today. Wayans and the Pacifica Capital Group informed city officials earlier this week that the land adjacent to the Port of Oakland would not work for the film studio/shopping center project that was dubbed Destination Oakland, a spokeswoman for City Administrator Deborah Edgerly said today.” 

An Oakland Tribune article “Wayans Quit Development Talks” published on the same day had a similar take, stating, “The Wayans Brothers development team pulled out of negotiations with the city over plans to build a movie studio and arts and retail center on the former Army base in West Oakland this week, leaving the future development of the base in question, city officials said Thursday evening.” 

But Britten Shuford, co-managing partner of the Wayans Brothers-Pacifica Capital Urban Development Partnership, the group the signed an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city over the army base property in early July, said the group has not pulled out of the deal, but is working on modifications to make it more feasible to them. 

“We plan to make the rounds with representatives of the mayor’s office, the city administrator, and City Councilmembers sometime this month,” Shuford said by telephone this week. 

Shuford said that “we learned at the same time that the city did that the Port of Oakland was proposing to fill in 42 acres of the bay directly across from our development, and they are planning to stack storage containers on that land six to 15 stories tall. That would entirely block our view of the San Francisco skyline.” 

Shuford was vague on details of how the Wayans-Pacifica group would modify their proposal, saying only that it would be reconfigured in some way on the same acreage that the city originally proposed to sell them.

When the UC Berkeley vs. Tennessee football game concluded Saturday and 72,500 fans poured out of Memorial Stadium, John Brandt of Davis found himself in what he called a “dangerous situation,” with gates on the west side of Memorial Stadium off-limits. 

“At the conclusion of last Saturday’s Cal football game, an enormous throng of people … attempted to leave Memorial Stadium, only to find out that numerous exit gates on the west side of the stadium had been locked ... An extraordinarily dangerous situation existed that should NEVER have happened … Once I was amid the crowd, there was virtually no way I could get out. Like everyone else, I simply had to wait until I was at the first open gate. This gate was about 10 feet wide, and EVERYONE was trying to get through it,” Brandt wrote to the city’s fire marshal, who sent the email on to the university Fire Marshal Anthony W. Yuen. 

Speaking to the Daily Planet Wednesday, Yuen said he apologized for the conditions people experienced. He emphasized that the gates were at no time locked, but “they were closed and staffed by police officers and staff in case of emergencies.” 

The university did not want people leaving by the west gates because of the fence the university had erected around the oak grove, occupied by protesters. If fans had exited the west gates, they would have walked straight toward the fenced-off area. The other exits led fans away from the protest area. 

Protesters have occupied trees in the grove since December, in opposition to university plans to cut down the trees and build an athletic training facility.  

Last week, the university erected a fence to protect the protesters from fans who may have verbally abused them, Yuen said. 

“I think we could have done a better job of letting people know” the west gates would be closed, Yuen said. “It’s kind of a unique situation.” 

Berkeley High School football practice was noisy and chaotic. The field was shared with the woman’s field hockey team, a jogger circling the perimeter and random groups of children throwing footballs. 

In the more-or-less football portion of the field, a coach is yelling: “Hit! Hit! I want to see you hit!” and players accelerate toward each other from a few yards apart until they crash with a sound that only crashing football players can make. 

No one seems to get hurt. But this isn’t surprising. Teenage athletes are nearly as indestructible as they think they are. 

A distance away, a group of offensive linemen watches silently. There are five of them. Even standing by, they stand in formation with a “Thou Shall Not Pass” look about them. After a while, they go off by themselves to practice the intricacies of their craft.  

This involve scores of perceptions and decisions in the few seconds they get to protect their quarterback from what off the field would be a felonious assault, or the second or two to swindle formidable people out of enough space for a running back to slip through who then unaccountably seems to look for the first opponent he can find to smash into. 

They are considered the most essential players on the team. Bob Ladouceur, head coach at De La Salle in Concord, one of California’s best teams, is also the offensive line coach. In the National Football League, the best offensive team frequently is the team with the best offensive line. 

Varsity line coach Greg Pedemonte, who looks like a math teacher, described a lineman’s skill as “esoteric.” 

“Misplace a hand by six inches and you lose control of the block,” he said. 

The players are big (Omar Kitami, a starting tackler on the junior varsity, is 14 years old and weighs 240 pounds) and you’d think they would be slow. 

But they have very fast hands. 

The shouts from a lineman scrimmage are esoteric. 

“If he pushes your hands away put them right back.” 

“Nice job Clarence, nice job. Take him all the way to the end of the  

field.” 

“See what happens when you do it like that. It works.” 

What worked was unclear. It’s all a blur of hands, shoulders, forearms and twisting bodies that lasts about three seconds. 

It’s like watching something like full-contact speed chess.  

Berkeley will play an exhibition game against Deer Valley this evening (Friday) at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley High School field. Admission is usually $8.

By Steven Finacom 

Special to the Daily Planet 

Historic parks, beautiful neighborhoods, Berkeley’s downtown, restored creeks, and a little-visited district where Bernard and Annie Maybeck developed their own real estate subdivision, are all part of the fall season of Berkeley Historical Society walking tours, starting this Saturday, Sept. 8.  

There’s also a visit to Berkeley’s historic radio museum—you probably didn’t know there was one, did you? 

All tours are on Saturday mornings. Reservations are required. Tours cost $10 per person, with discounts for Berkeley Historical Society members and “season ticket” purchasers. See sidebar for more details. 

Two of the tours this season, the first and the last, relate to the current centennial of Berkeley’s public park system. The first tour is also co-sponsored by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) in honor of the centennial. The tours benefit the non-profit BHS and are led by volunteer guides. 

The schedule begins this Saturday in one of the most attractive residential districts of the North Berkeley hills. Guide Susan Cerny—author of two books about Berkeley and Bay Area architecture and landmarks—will lead a walk through Indian Rock Park, Mortar Rock Park, Grotto Rock Park, and John Hinkel Park. 

All these parks were gifts to the city from private landowners and developers, and all feature large natural stone outcroppings or manmade stonework, oaks, winding paths, and several decades of history.  

They’re surrounded by residential neighborhoods of picturesque homes whose designers and owners made every effort to incorporate the natural landscape into the built environment. This tour is not wheelchair accessible because of the steep terrain and outdoor stairs. 

The second tour, Sept. 22, heads down to Berkeley’s tidewater district and back to the early days of radio broadcasting. Sitting just south of Berkeley’s Aquatic Park, the old KRE radio station dates to 1937 and was one of the first buildings constructed in the Bay Area specifically for radio broadcasting.  

It’s now being refurbished as a museum of radio history by the California Historical Radio Society (CHRS). Steve Kushman, president of CHRS, will lead the tour and explain the history of KRE and why AM ration stations are often built in wetland areas. 

Tour three on Oct. 6 reprises a popular BHS tour to an area of Kensington known as Maybeck Estates. Here Annie Maybeck—the business brains of the family—had acquired land that she and husband Bernard sold to hand-picked homebuyers, and encouraged them to hand-build their own homes along a ridge with magnificent views. 

The Maybecks specified that buyers not smoke, and “Ben”—who hiked up the hill regularly to offer advice—suggested to one household that they should build a home without windows, live in it for a while, then decide where they wanted windows. They demurred. 

Paul Grunland, a Berkeleyan since the 1930s and expert on the history of the North Berkeley hills, leads the tour with Bob Shaner, a resident of the Maybeck Estates. The Maybecks’ son, Wallen, was one of the area residents, and it may be possible to tour his Maybeck-designed house. 

The history and historic built environment of downtown Berkeley, particularly around Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, is the focus of the fourth tour on Oct. 20. Leader Austene Hall, historic preservation and civic activist, will focus on “the old and new environment and how they came together.”  

She’ll be accompanied by UC Principal Planner Jennifer McDougall and environmentalist Juliet Lamont. All three are involved in the current Downtown Area Plan process. 

“Lower Codornices Creek: from rails to restoration” is the theme of the fifth tour on Nov. 3. Guided by long-time local creek activist (and previous BHS tour leader) Susan Schwartz, the tour will cover some 2.5 miles tracing through changing geography and history the route of Codornices Creek in north Berkeley and highlighting recent successful restoration efforts along the lower lengths.  

Drew Goetting of Restoration Design Group and Richard Register of Ecocity Builders, will join Schwartz to discuss their roles in Codornices projects. Portions of this walk are not wheelchair accessible. 

The last tour, on Nov. 17, led by the writer of this article and Linda Perry, is also part of the park centennial celebration. Downtown Berkeley is not usually thought of as an area of open space, but it has one of Berkeley’s most historic parks and a history of park plans, projects, and visions. 

The tour will visit the sites of a now-vanished park and civic fountains that once lay at the heart of downtown, a nearly forgotten war memorial grove, and a surviving park containing and surrounded by masterpieces of Art Deco and Moderne design.  

We’ll also learn about plans for downtown open space that never came about. Co-leader Linda Perry was a leader of the effort to restore the Marin Circle Fountain and both guides worked on preservation planning for Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park. 

After the regular schedule of tours there’s a Dec. 1 bonus tour for those who subscribe to at least three of the earlier tours. The bonus tour visits Hillside School, one of Berkeley’s oldest surviving and most picturesque public school buildings, designed in 1925 by Walter Ratcliff. Past teachers, students, and parents at Hillside will lead the tour. 

Photograph by Steven Finacom. 

The 1937 KRE Radio Station beyond the south end of Berkeley’s Aquatic Park is being transformed into a radio history museum, and will be visited on a Sept. 22 tour. 

HISTORICAL WALKING TOURS 

All tours are on Saturdays, start at 10 a.m., end around noon. Reservations are required; space is limited. 

$10 per tour for the general public, $8 for BHS members. Members can buy a season ticket for $30. Join BHS when making tour reservations, for $20/individual, $25/family.  

Send a check payable to Berkeley Historical Society to P.O. Box 1190, Berkeley, CA 94701. Include phone and/or e-mail to receive instructions on where to gather for each tour. 

For last minute reservations, call 848-0181 between 1-4 p.m. on the Thursday or Friday before the tour, or visit the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St., during the same hours. 

More detailed descriptions of the tours are on-line at http://berkeleyheritage.com/calendar.html. 

The city will pursue its lawsuit against the University of California.  

The 7-1-1 vote came in a closed-door session Tuesday night with Councilmember Gordon Wozniak voting in opposition; Councilmember Kriss Worthington abstained.  

The decision came after a heavy day of lobbying, with the newly formed organization Stand up For Berkeley holding a 1:30 p.m. press conference-rally with about 60 people—including former mayor Shirley Dean and singer-activist Country Joe McDonald—at City Hall in favor of continuing to fight university plans to build an athletic training facility adjacent to its football stadium. The active Hayward fault passes beneath Memorial Stadium.  

A two-hour public comment period before the closed-door vote drew an overflow crowd to the Council Chambers, with some 65 people speaking, more than 70 percent in favor of continuing the lawsuit.  

An Alameda County Superior Court judge will hear the lawsuit Sept. 19, with the Panoramic Hill neighborhood and the Save the Oaks Foundation arguing with the city that the university's environmental study of the project was inadequate.  

A closed-door Berkeley City Council session set for 5 p.m. today (Tuesday) could freeze the public out of the process and result in a deficient compromise settlement of the December 2006 City of Berkeley v. University of California lawsuit, Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington say. 

Or the settlement could bring about a positive compromise, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak told the Planet. 

The suit challenges university plans to build an athletic training facility that would be connected to Memorial Stadium, the university’s football arena. 

A formal announcement of the closed session, coming from City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque’s office (despite the fact that the city attorney has no legal right to call a closed session, according to Worthington) says simply that the council will discuss the litigation. It says nothing of addressing a settlement agreement.  

UC spokesperson Dan Mogulof, however, told the Planet Friday that a university-proposed compromise settlement was in the works and that the council would have it soon. “They’re still working on the final details,” he said. 

Councilmember Dona Spring said that from experience, the university settlement would be lacking. “I assume there’s some piddley little offer [that will be on the table] at the meeting,” she told the Planet Friday.  

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he didn’t know whether the proposal would be good or bad, but the critical error in discussing the question in closed session Tuesday would be that the public is left out of the loop. This is what happened in May 2005 when Berkeley settled a lawsuit over the university’s Long Range Development Project before the public had a chance to see the proposal and weigh in on it, he said. 

“How can the public advocate for or against the proposal?” Worthington asked. “The public is effectively prohibited from making comments.” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak welcomed the closed-door opportunity to discuss a possible settlement agreement. “There’s no great conspiracy,” he told the Daily Planet Friday.  

Wozniak said he wasn’t sure if the UC proposal would be made public before the meeting, but assured the Planet that “the terms [of the agreement] will have to be made public.” 

Wozniak underscored that it is better for the city to settle with the university than to go to trial. 

Worthington said that if the university wanted to settle the lawsuit, the appropriate place would have been in court, at a pre-trial conference. (The trial is on the Alameda County Superior Court calendar for mid-September.) 

UC’s Mogulof said there had been some proposals made in court earlier in the year. But, more recently, new facts have come to light, particularly that the proposed Student Athlete High Performance Center likely lies outside a critical earthquake hazard zone. The city had argued earlier that the athletic training facility plans fall within the earthquake zone. 

In a letter written to attorney Charles Olson, the attorney working on behalf of the university, and faxed to the council and the media Friday afternoon, Worthington urged the university or city to e-mail the council in advance of the meeting with the proposed settlement conditions.  

“To wait and distribute at the special council session would make it difficult for City Councilmembers to have the time to analyze the pluses and minuses of such proposals,” Worthington wrote. 

The city lawsuit challenges more than university approval of the Student Athlete High Performance Center. The litigation faults the university for preparing what it says is an inadequate environmental review of the project and for proposing the destruction of 100 trees, many of them Coastal Live Oaks, in the building process. 

Further, the city—and its neighborhood partners—contend that egress from the Panoramic Hill neighborhood adjacent to the proposed facility would be cut off during a disaster and that enhanced football lighting would be detrimental to the neighborhood. 

The meeting will be held at the council chambers in the Maudelle Shirek Building, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Public comment on the litigation will be heard in open session. 

It was a decidedly mixed message for Oakland and Berkeley schools in the heavily anticipated Academic Performance Index scores released by the California Department of Education at mid-day Friday, with BUSD schools dropping 5 points overall (752 to 747) from 2006 to 2007, and OUSD schools gaining 7 points (651 to 658). 

There were also mixed results from the two Oakland public charter schools established by California Attorney General Jerry Brown while he served as mayor of Oakland. 

Brown’s Oakland School for the Arts, currently awaiting its permanent home in the soon-to-be-refurbished Fox Theater, had the highest score (742) of any high school in Oakland, jumping 37 points from its 2006 score of 705. 

At the same time, Brown’s Oakland Military Institute dropped 39 API points from last year to this, 676 to 637. 

There was also a mixed message from the scores of East Oakland Community High School, which the OUSD state administrator disbanded at the end of the last school year. EOCH had the highest API gains of any Oakland high school at 60 points, but with a 513 API score, the now-defunct school tied with Paul Robeson College Prep for the second lowest score among high schools in the city. 

API scores, which range from a low of 200 to a high of 1,000, are the state’s method of judging academic performance in its schools. The scores are calculated from the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program and the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE). All schools in the state are expected to eventually reach a base score of 800. 

In Berkeley, Malcolm X, Emerson, and Whittier had the highest API increases over the past year among elementary schools. Malcolm X rose 33 points (785 to 818), and Emerson (785 to 801) and Whittier (781 to 797) both rose 16 points. Washington, with a 37 point drop (757 to 720) and LeConte, with a 24 point drop (730 to 706), had the greatest API losses among Berkeley elementary schools. 

Jefferson and Oxford had the highest API scores among BUSD elementary schools overall at 834, while Leconte, at 706, had the lowest. 

All of BUSD’s middle schools increased their API scores from 2006 to 2007. Willard rose 52 points (669 to 721), Longfellow rose 25 (719 to 744), and King rose 7 (771 to 778). 

Berkeley Alternative lost 109 points, dropping from 537 to 428. API data were not available for Berkeley High School. 

In Oakland, Golden Gate (with an 87-point jump from 643 to 730) and Monarch Academy (85-point increase from 710 to 795) had the highest jumps among elementary schools, with four schools (Hillcrest at 961, Thornhill at 938, Montclair at 932, and Chabot at 905) all breaking the 900 barrier. 

Dolores Huerta Learning Academy (losing 81 points from 675 to 594) and Sobrante Park (losing 60 points from 731 to 671) had the largest drops among Oakland elementary schools, while Sankofa Academy (535) and Webster Academy (536) scored the lowest among Oakland elementaries overall. 

Among Oakland middle schools, Aspire/UCB (77 point rise from 648 to 725) and Madison (53 point rise from 551 to 604) had the highest API increases, while the American Indian Public Charter (950) and Oakland Charter Academy (896) had the highest API scores. 

Among Oakland high schools, Media College Preparatory had the second highest API gain (52 points, up from 498 to 550), while Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy (667) and Skyline (652) had the largest overall API scores next to Brown’s Oakland School For The Arts. 

Leadership Public Schools Oakland (down 85 points from 620 to 585) and Business and Information Technology High (down 41 from 526 to 485), had the largest losses among Oakland high schools. Business and Information Technology also had the lowest score (485) of any high school in Oakland. 

The Department of Education’s full API report on all California schools is available online at www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ar/index.asp. 

Six new out-of-district students will be able to transfer to the Berkeley public schools this school year since the Alameda County Board of Education overturned the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) decision to deny them the transfers. 

Berkeley Unified only accepted inter-district transfers for students continuing their last year at the Berkeley public schools and denied all new applications this year. 

Seventeen of those who were denied new transfers appealed to the Alameda County Board of Education.  

After a five-hour-long hearing, the board approved six cases and denied the rest.  

“The board listened to everyone carefully but only approved the six who had siblings in the Berkeley elementary schools,” Alameda County Superintendent Sheila Jordon told the Planet. “There was a strong attempt to be consistent. It was not my decision. The board made the decision. It was extremely difficult but they had a set of criteria. This was a particularly tight year.” 

Francesco Martinez, manager of admissions and attendance for Berkeley Unified, said that the district had denied all new inter-district applications because of a space crunch. 

“I denied them because there is no more room in our schools,” he said. “Parents presented their case, we rebutted. They want to send their kids to our schools because it’s a somewhat successful district sandwiched between two failing districts, Oakland and Contra Costa.” 

The lack of space has forced Berkeley High students to attend some classes in portable classrooms at Washington Elementary School. Some students at Rosa Parks Elementary School are being taught on the auditorium stage because there are no more available classrooms left. 

District policy states that no transfers will be allowed into Berkeley High School. 

Last school year, the district approved 415 inter-district continuing students and 34 new inter-district permits. 

This school year saw 430 inter-district permits approved for continuing students in the Berkeley schools. 

“If students met the criteria for satisfactory grades, attendance and behavior, they are approved,” Martinez said. “The good news is that the vast majority of them were approved.” 

The school board’s policy dictates that any out-of-district student failing to meet these three criteria will not be re-admitted for the coming year. 

Jacki Fox Ruby, who represents Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville and north Oakland on the county education board, said that the board based their approval on ten different criteria. 

“The most important ones are childcare and hardship,” she said. “If one of the children is going to Berkeley and the parent works in Berkeley then there are childcare issues involved for the other child. You know you are affecting families. You know you are affecting lives. We don’t want to break up a family.” 

The controversy over inter-district transfers continues. There has been a lot of concern among residents and district administrators about students who are illegally registering as Berkeley residents to get into Berkeley schools. 

According to school officials, policies on inter-district transfers have often been enforced unevenly over the years, and undetected “illegal transfers” add to the total number of transfer students. 

“Berkeley schools are considered an oasis between two large urban school districts,” Jordon said. “Berkeley residents are paying more taxes for smaller classes and there are more inter-district denials happening every year. Parents often take to illegal means to send their students to Berkeley, but it is hard to get into the district with a false address.” 

Fox Ruby, who has taught in the Berkeley schools for almost 30 years, said that teachers had always been aware of students who were there illegally from another district. 

“If the district would do its job of weeding out those students whose parents have illegally admitted them, then there will be room for more children who have gone through the correct process,” she said. 

In a report prepared by the Berkeley Public Education Foundation for the Measure A Campaign, Ken Hall, former deputy director of the state Department of Finance, said that transfer students in lower grades brought in money to the district. 

“As long as you have the facilities, the per-student average daily attendance income that comes with inter-district transfers is more than the additional cost per student.” 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence told the Berkeley education board earlier this year that while the school district did not want to act like the U.S. immigration system, it was important to maintain a balanced check on students. 

School board president Joaquin Rivera has repeatedly stated at board meetings that the main problem was whether there was any kind of overdue strain on the system as a result of the illegal students. 

The district has recently stepped up efforts to verify proof of Berkeley residency. Students who want to enroll in Berkeley schools have to show three proofs of residence. 

When a student lives with someone other than a parent, a district-hired investigator does a home visit in order to confirm residency. 

Martinez said that half of the transfer students are children of Berkeley teachers, as is required in their contract. Others are children of people employed within the city limits by the City of Berkeley or UC Berkeley. 

The school board is working on a proposal to re-enroll students in grades six and nine to help enforce the residency requirement in the public schools..

Berkeley Rent Board Member Chris Kavanagh should “step down immediately” if he is not a legal resident of Berkeley, said a statement issued Friday by the Berkeley Green Party. 

Kavanagh’s residency has been in question since it became known in July that he was fighting an eviction from a cottage in Oakland. Kavanagh told his rent board colleagues and his attorney that he lives in Berkeley, where he is registered to vote and where he receives mail. 

“Chris has worked tirelessly for the Green Party over the years,” Jesse Townley of the Berkeley Green Party Steering Committee told the Daily Planet Friday, adding, however, “The Green Party takes good government seriously.”  

Kavanagh was invited to the Berkeley Green Party’s meeting Thursday evening, but did not appear, Townley said. “A party of good government cannot look the other way. It’s all about good government, not just about getting by,” he said. 

Rent Board Chair Jesse Arreguin told the Daily Planet Friday that Kavanagh had missed a meeting in August and had sent a note to the board secretary that he would be out of town on vacation. Arreguin said that at the board’s Sept. 17 meeting, he plans to offer Kavanagh time under the rubric of “personal privilege” to update his colleagues on the situation. 

The rent board cannot make a determination about Kavanagh’s residency. The city attorney turned the matter over to the district attorney last month.  

Arreguin said he had was interviewed by the DA’s office last week and told the interviewer what Kavanagh had told him last summer—that he lived in Berkeley but had a girlfriend in Oakland. Arreguin said he thinks the DA would make a decision in mid-September on whether to bring charges.  

The Green Party statement calls on the rent board to name a replacement if Kavanagh does not meet residency requirements. 

For nearly six years after he got out of prison in 2000, 40-year-old Ernie Johnson kept coming up empty whenever he applied for a job. Even as he checked the “yes” box on job application forms that asked whether he had ever been convicted of a felony, he knew his chance of landing a job was slim to none. 

About a year ago, he got the break he was looking for when Oakland-based AB Trucking hired him as a driver to haul cargo in and out of the port of Oakland. 

“Man, it was tough, having that felony conviction on my record,” said Johnson, the father of three teenagers. “Having this job means no more worry. It means security. It means relief,” even though the commute from his home in Stockton takes him more than an hour each day. 

But Johnson and scores of ex-offenders like him—as well as undocumented workers who work at the nation’s ports—could be forced to quit their jobs when the federal government this fall begins enforcing a program approved by Congress in 2002 to make U.S. ports safer. 

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program will require the more than 750,000 port employees, truckers, mariners, longshoremen and others who require unescorted access to secure areas of ports to have background checks before being issued cards with their biometric data. 

Workers must pass a Transportation Security Administration (TSA)-administered threat assessment in order to receive an ID card, which will contain the worker’s fingerprint, digital photograph and biographical information. The card, which will be good for five years, will include technology that can be read remotely by port employees and security. 

Although Congress ordered TSA to develop the identification card in 2002, the Bush administration has been delaying its implementation because it wanted to make sure the infrastructure was in place so as not to interrupt “the flee flow of commerce,” said a TSA spokesperson. The mandatory enrollment in the program is expected to take 18 months to complete. 

A provision in the TWIC program will make undocumented workers ineligible for the card. That could mean the 30 to 40 percent of undocumented truck drivers working the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles could likely lose their jobs, according to environmental activist Jesse Marquez. The same goes for those working the 325 or so other official ports of entry in the United States. 

“It’s going to be ‘aloha’ for those who are undocumented,” said Ray King, general manager of marine operations and marketing for the Port of Oakland. 

Marquez worries about the consequences of this. “It’s going to bring the fleet to a stop,” he warned, “because they won’t have enough truck drivers.” 

Another provision will allow convicted felons to be designated as a “terrorism security risk” if they’ve been incarcerated within the last five years, or convicted of a felony within seven years of enrolling for the program. 

TWIC’s website describes the act as a “comprehensive national system of transportation security enhancements to protect our maritime community against the threat of terrorism, requiring federal agencies, ports and vessel owners to take numerous steps to upgrade security.” 

“(TWIC) ignores rehabilitation,” pointed out Chuck Mack, national port director in New York for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. “I don’t think it makes a lot of sense.” 

Bishara Costandi places ex-offenders in trucking jobs through his organization Outside Lane, Inc. 

“How can we paint with a broad brush everyone who comes out of prison as a threat to security?” asked Costandi, founder and project director of the four-month-old Oakland-based Outside Lane, Inc., a non-profit that finds trucking jobs for the “formerly incarcerated.” Costandi blasted the new program as “just another form of control” by Homeland Security. 

Costandi has placed truck drivers with such trucking companies as AB Trucking, where nine of the 12 truck drivers currently on its payroll are ex-offenders. 

“The drivers I hire are mostly parolees, and mostly black,” said AB Trucking owner Bill Aboudi. “I want to give them a chance. If you give them a chance, they’ll produce for you.” 

John Casselberry, 50, convicted of drug possession a few years ago, was a parolee when Aboudi hired him as a truck driver in 2005. Within months, he was promoted to recruiter and trainer. Casselberry vehemently opposes the TWIC program. 

“I wouldn’t want to have a biometric card,” he asserted, shaking his dreadlocks. “Why does the government need to know so much about me for me to drive a truck? I think it’s invasive. What next? Do I have to wear a chip, or have a barcode?” 

Johnson feels likewise. Visibly upset when he learned about the TWIC program last week, he wondered how Congress even approved such a program in the first place. “Man, everybody should get a second chance,” he said, barely able to hide the fear in his voice. “I know a lot of former felons working the port. I mean, what’s going to happen to all of us?” 

Volunteer extraordinaire John Stansfield passed away on Aug. 18 at the age of 79 from complications of pneumonia. He was the man to whom visitors and reporters alike would turn for answers at the Berkeley History Center. His enthusiasm about Berkeley’s history was absolutely contagious.  

He had a sharp sense of humor and he enjoyed being around all kinds of people. He was one of the kindest men we ever met. We will miss his twinkling eyes, his helpfulness, and all the knowledge he shared at the History Center.  

When I was the Berkeley Historical Society president, he told me that he would volunteer only on the condition that he be allowed to work three days a week. Since we were open just three days a week, I told him that could be arranged! He was a tireless docent, who participated at the center every week for years. He much preferred to work with the public than to stay at home. Even when his lung disease forced him to stay home, he continued to work on special projects. 

Sue Austin wrote an article about John Stansfield called “Man With a Mission” in the Spring 2005 BHS newsletter:  

John began his volunteer work by taking two courses on Bay Area history from local historian Charles Wollenberg. In addition, he had the benefit of having taken a college course on California history years ago. And, of course, his post-graduate work in modern European history at Cal is what grounded him in history. John had a life-long love of history, largely due to the influence of a Garfield Junior High School teacher.  

“She started it,” he recalled. “But also, as a young boy my parents took me to the missions as well as other significant historical locations throughout California. Even though I knew a lot about history, running a museum was out of my realm. But, if Carl Wilson, with his background in forestry could do it, so could I.” John has another unique advantage that adds to his value as a BHS volunteer. He was born and raised in Berkeley. 

“I remember things,” he said. “I remember growing up in this city and roaming around. I used to walk from one end of Codornices Creek to Live Oak Park through backyards and through long tunnels under the streets. These tunnels went through major intersections and along the creek. I would go through yards, even though I was told not to. Luckily I never got caught. However, my wet shoes and socks and the mud and dirt on my pants usually tipped off my mother. But, as a result of my wanderings and my growing up here, I can look at the old photos and make pretty good guesstimates on location.  

John likes to attribute the staying power of his BHS involvement to the people with whom he has worked. … “I like teaching, and I like hearing visitors share their fabulous stories.”  

John appreciated a well-written book on California or contemporary American history and books on politics. He was a dedicated collector of stamps, particularly from Hungary, having won several awards for his displays.  

He was also an avid postcard collector. I remember calling him with only moments to spare on an E-Bay postcard bid. He was able to identify what we had and didn’t have in our collection based on a verbal description of the camera angle and objects in the scene. He told me to go for the Key System Terminal card, which I did. He loved to collect and trade old books to build the History Center collection. He knew all the films and videotapes and maps at the center. He was also skilled at reading and explaining the intricacies of the Sanborn maps and the old block books. The question, “"How do I find where my grandfather lived?” was a fun challenge for him. Former volunteer Tanya March says, “We were like two kids given the keys to the candy store with the maps, books, postcards.” 

Millie Stansfield adds, “John retired from the California School for the Deaf after 25 years of work with children as a dorm counselor. He was especially great with the young kids and often took them to Codornices Creek. He spent another ten years at the Hearing Impaired Program of Catholic Charities. Then he came to the Berkeley Historical Society, which, I believe, was his true love.”  

He leaves his devoted friend, Millie Stansfield, his son, John, and two grandchildren, Arianna, 7, and Jeanine, 6, as well as friends and community, who benefited greatly from his life of service.

Molly Fraker will join the Berkeley Public Education Foundation today (Tuesday) as its new executive director. 

A graduate of American University, Fraker led the Chez Panisse Foundation for seven years as its first executive director.  

She brings more than 30 years of experience in the non-profit sector to the foundation, eleven of which have been in Berkeley. 

Besides serving the Berkeley Community Fund as its executive director during the past year, she also managed the Centennial Campaign for Cal Performances. 

Before moving to Berkeley with her family, Fraker worked in Washington, D.C., and New Jersey. 

“We are delighted to welcome Molly to the Berkeley Public Foundation, and feel fortunate to have someone with her knowledge, skills, and experience,” said Calvin Eng, who chairs the foundation’s board. “She brings a deep understanding of the importance of philanthropy in our community, and a commitment to bringing resources and innovation to Berkeley schools. We look forward to her leadership as we continue our efforts to sustain and broaden the foundation’s positive impact in classrooms across the school district.” 

In its 25th year, the Berkeley Public Foundation raises funds for classroom grants. It also encourages volunteering through its Berkeley School Volunteers program and works to bring resources and address special needs and programs within the schools. 

The foundation has raised over $1.5 million annually through donor contributions and volunteers services. 

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) will meet Thursday at a new time and with a new secretary. 

The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

The board will review the draft environmental impact report for Biofuels Oasis at 1441 Ashby Ave. At an earlier meeting the board passed up landmarking the building. 

Other items 

• The board will continue the request permit for structural alteration of the Amy and Frederick Corkill House at 2611 Ashby Ave., perhaps with the addition of a subcommittee to start looking at the project. 

• The board will conduct a public hearing before they vote to designate the Cambridge Apartments at 2500 Durant Ave. as a city landmark. The property had first appeared before the LPC on June 5. 

• The board will review plans to remove the rear portion of an existing seminary chapel at 2452 Ridge Road in order to construct a new assembly area which will be connected to the remaining front portion of the chapel.  

Since the removal will affect more than 50 percent of the exterior walls and roof, it is considered as “demolition” under the zoning ordinance. The ordinance requires the LPC to review any proposal to demolish a non-residential building which is more than forty years old. 

However, since this is a church building, it does not fall under local land use law for landmarking status. 

With support from two key East Bay representatives, State Senate President Don Perata’s SB67 sideshow 30-day car confiscation legislation easily passed the state assembly on a 74-0 vote last week. 

The measure has already passed the senate, and now moves to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office for consideration. 

Because the bill has received virtually unanimous support from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in both houses, Schwarzenegger is expected to sign it. 

Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) was the assembly sponsor for the bill, and Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland) voted in favor. 

Aimed directly at Oakland’s illegal street sideshows, SB67 renews provisions in California law that were originally passed in 2002 but expired in January. 

Under the new law, if it is signed by the governor, as expected, California cities will again be able to seize vehicles whose drivers are accused of violating various reckless driving traffic laws. Cities will also be authorized to hold those vehicles for 30 days, without a prior hearing, solely on the word of a police officer that a violation has occurred. 

Despite the fact that there have been complaints of abuse of the law by Oakland officers, Oakland police officials have failed to provide reports to either the public or city officials on how the confiscation provisions were handled in Oakland in the five years the original law was in effect between 2005 and 2007. 

Last month, the California Supreme Court ruled against a City of Stockton ordinance that allowed such no-trial vehicle confiscations in drug and prostitution pickup cases on the grounds that city’s did not have the authority to pass such laws when state laws were already in effect. That nullified car confiscation ordinances passed at the city level by cities such as Oakland, but had no effect on such laws passed by the legislature. Despite asking lawyers to provide briefs on the constitutionality of the non-hearing car seizures, the court decided not to rule on the constitutionality of such seizures. 

A number of citizens, including some who live in District 5, have forwarded to us Councilmember Laurie Capitelli’s thoughtful explanation of why he voted to reject UC’s proposed settlement of the city’s lawsuit on the EIR for the gym/office building proposed adjacent to Memorial Stadium. He makes several good points, obvious ones that can’t be reiterated too often. 

First, “As the provider of first-response emergency services to everyone, including UC students and staff along the Piedmont corridor, the city should have some input into the density and configuration of development along the eastern edge of the campus.” 

And also, even more important “the real seismic safety issue is not whether an athletic center can be built to appropriate standards, but the Memorial Stadium itself, its age and the fact that it straddles the Hayward fault. There is a lot of work to be done—time and resources—to determine whether or not the stadium is even capable of being retrofitted adequately under the strict requirements of the Alquist-Priolo Act. My deep fear is that UC will move its athletes into a new facility next to the stadium, only to find out that the stadium cannot be seismically retrofitted.” 

He ends by saying that the “City Council has the privilege and the responsibility to weigh all these factors in light of our priority —public safety—and make a reasoned decision based upon risks and benefits...To that end, I would support a negotiated settlement with the university, ONLY IF there are adequate mitigations that can be guaranteed. I was not satisfied this was the case in reviewing UC’s proposal last evening.” A sensible decision, supported by at least six of his colleagues.  

But in his final conclusion, his reasoning jumps the tracks a bit. He says that “I did vote to proceed with the lawsuit, leaving open the possibility of entertaining another more comprehensive and significant proposal from the university either before or after the results of the lawsuit are released.” 

Here’s the problem: The lawsuit contends that the environmental impact report submitted by the university is inadequate, that it doesn’t provide sufficient information on which to base crucial decisions. The problem with offering to settle “if adequate mitigations...can be guaranteed” is that until you have full information about what all the environmental impacts of the project will be, you can’t be sure that the offered remedies are adequate. 

One example of the problem is the one frequently cited by the ardent but poorly informed sports fans who want to build it all now and damn the torpedos: the location of the Hayward fault. Whether the building and the stadium are smack on top of the fault or a few feet or yards off it makes not much difference: what counts is how both buildings will behave when the big shaking comes down, how the 72,000-plus fans will get out, and where they’ll go when they do. Or even how the tenants of the gym/office building will get out if a game’s not in progress when the quake strikes.  

George W. Breslauer, executive vice chancellor and provost, and Nathan Brostrom, vice chancellor-administration, even admit the point in a letter to the UC faculty forwarded to us by a recipient who described it, tongue firmly in cheek, as a remarkable document which should be used in a rhetoric or logic course. A typical bit of shaky analysis: 

“The city also asked that we conduct additional seismic testing on the site of the new Student-Athlete High Performance Center. In response, an independent geological firm was hired. New cores were drilled and new trenches were dug, in addition to the ones we had done as part of our original study. The additional testing proved beyond any reasonable doubt that there are no active fault lines under the site. Recently those findings were reviewed and certified by the country’s leading seismic authority, the United States Geological Survey. Moreover, seismologists and engineers know from studies of past earthquakes that the level of ground shaking is approximately the same right next to a fault as it is anywhere else within two miles of the fault” [emphasis added].  

Exactly. Shall we discuss the failure of logic in the preceding paragraph, class? Proving that there are no active fault lines under the site proves.....what? Within two miles, it’s what we all agree is a toss-up, pun intended. 

One more point: on Thursday the UC student council, now grandly named the ASUC Senate, passed a resolution saying, among other things: “the ASUC encourage the City of Berkeley to engage in dialogue with the University of California regarding a settlement before the lawsuit goes back to court on Sept. 19, 2007.” 

Capitelli’s argument that the stadium and the gym can’t be considered in isolation is key. The reason so many different parties are suing the university at this point, including the city, is that the school is proposing so many projects simultaneously that it’s virtually impossible to assess their cumulative impact. Well-established California law, under the California Environmental Quality Act, prohibits “segmentation”: breaking up projects into small parts so that the overall impact is disguised. That’s why there’s absolutely no point in even considering settling the city’s lawsuit before it goes to court.  

The only way all the relevant information about the huge amount of contemplated activity, even just in Strawberry Canyon, can be intelligently analyzed is by doing a full dress environmental impact report with all the cards on the table. The Berkeley City Council has a responsibility to citizens not to settle for anything less, especially before the case goes to court. 

The sponsors of the ASUC resolution put out a Facebook call-to-action before the City Council meeting:  

“LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!” Meet on the Sproul steps at 3:30. We will take the bus to the City Council special session together and let them know we want a safe and state-of-the-art facility for the best student-athletes in the country!”  

Why sports-minded young folks thought they needed a bus to get to the City Council chambers, a few blocks from Sproul, is not clear. Perhaps someone, for example the Cal athletic department, offered to provide a bus for them?  

And not all students responded enthusiastically to the rallying cries. Here’s one Facebook naysayer: “Use that money to pay for tuition. This is a public university, not a football fan club. If our donors don’t like us without a good football team, then what does that say about them? College is about education, not thinly-veiled homoerotic wargames. We have a real war going on, anyway. You want to see grown men hurting each other, switch on CNN. Only in Iraq, sometimes kids get in the way.”  

The writer has no business blaming only gay men for excessive drooling over virile football players, since many women have the same problem, but otherwise he speaks for a lot of students and alumni, and for many Berkeley citizens. 

A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet  

I am from Tennessee and just returned home from a wonderful experience with the fans and citizens of the Bay Area. We were treated well every place we toured. The Cal fans were kind in victory. We would have enjoyed a victory, but your team played better. Those of us in the Southeastern Conference could learn some lessons on sportsmanship from your fans. I think you live in the most beautiful part of America. God has truly blessed you to allow you to live and work where you do. Hope to visit again. Thank you for all the kind words. I will be pulling for you to win the rest of your games this year.  

Phil Saylors 

Tennessee 

• 

UNNERVED BY TREE-SITTERS 

Editors, Daily Planet 

I flew from Tennessee to California to attend the UT-CAL game this past Saturday. The Cal campus is beautiful. Although I wore the most obnoxious orange clothes and shoes I had, everyone I met was exceedingly friendly and gracious. Except for the fact that my team lost the game (the better team won) everything else about my time and experience in Berkeley and on campus was exceptionally positive. 

I was, however, slightly unnerved by the people in the trees. Everywhere I went I heard people saying they had high-powered rifles and could be snipers. Although I didn’t take such talk seriously it did create a slight sense of uneasiness. I asked a police official stationed at the base of an occupied tree overlooking the football field if there were any truth to the “rumors.” His half-smile while saying “no” was not very reassuring. 

The attitude of the authorities and people in California is cavalier and dismissive as if a Virginia Tech or University of Texas Bell Tower incident couldn’t happen there. I know this is very unpleasant, uncomfortable, difficult and even painful to contemplate for some of you but it could happen. 

Perhaps they have conducted background checks and psychological tests to ensure the people they allow in the trees are emotionally and psychologically healthy and stable. I hope so. 

Robert W. Overman 

Memphis, TN 

• 

UC AND THE OAKS: WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL STAKES? 

Editors, Daily Planet 

The ongoing controversy over the oak grove is about much more than several dozen trees; it is about the character and future of the university. The campus’ architectural design of classical Greek and Roman arcs and lines was to embody principles of learning and democracy, and the current battles over its layout are simultaneously battles over the future of our public university.  

When John Galen Howard finished plans the university in 1922 he oriented what was to be a “City of Learning” on an east-west axis, drawing a stark line from the Strawberry Creek Canyon headwaters, through a central glade, and on out through the Golden Gate. Fiat Lux was literally inscribed in the landscape. The very geographic layout was designed to embody in this “Western Acropolis of Learning” ideals of public interest (but also racist imperialism, which, until recently, we had mostly moved past).  

Since then, much of the canyon and creek have been built over and polluted. The university’s idealist layout is being corroded and cornered on all sides by financial and military interests (Bechtel to the North, Haas and Lawrence to the East, in the West the Department of Energy and Shing bioterrorism center). Down go testaments to great figures of public interest such as Earl Warren Hall—named after the Berkely alum and Supreme Court justice key in forming landmark civil rights rulings—and up come glass-and-steel engineering complexes named after the highest bidder.  

True, the UC has throughout history embodied a contradictory mix of corporate and public interest. Yet, the university’s mix is being shifted in unprecedented ways by the deliberate international projects of free market idolatry and militarization waged by groups such as the Mont Peleran Society and the neo-conservatives.  

The campaign to save the oaks and stop UCBP are not in essence about these particular trees or that edifice, but about whether we seek to replace Fiat Lux with secretive deals with abusive corporations and eschew difficult public fundraising for short-term sports advertising gimmicks. The oaks and BP campaigns are rightly part of the Phoenix Coalition to free the UC—“democratize, demilitarize, divest” is their slogan—that ultimately requires reforming the Regents and Proposition 13.  

The blunders of UC pay scandals, back room dealings with BP, and now the heavy-handed oak fencing indicate an increasingly out of touch and arrogant UC administration. The chancellor has called the proposed BP-Berkeley collaboration “our generation’s moonshot.” We would do well to remember the numerous errors and threats to human life that plagued that mission and that its slim success relied heavily on chance, open communication, and flexibility.  

Go Bears!  

Clement S. Calado 

• 

EAST BAY-MARIN TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet 

In his Aug. 31 commentary, “Berkeley’s Misplaced Planning Priorities,” Paul Glusman states that “... there has never been any direct public transit between Berkeley or Oakland and Marin County.” For many years Golden Gate Transit (GGT) has been running a bus service from El Cerrito Del Norte BART station to San Rafael. The GGT No. 40 Express runs several times in both direction during the morning and evening commute hours. The No. 42 runs every half hour from 5:30 in the morning till 11:30 in the evening. Travel time is 30-40 minutes. Fare is $3.60 one way. The bus schedule for the 40/42 line is available at http:// goldengatetransit.org/schedules/pages/Bus-Schedules.php. Aside from arriving on BART, the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station can be reached by the 72 Rapid bus on weekdays from most locations on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley within 15 minutes. 

Len Conly 

• 

O’MALLEY’S FACTS 

Editors, Daily Planet 

As a longtime Berkeley resident who recently moved to New York, I read the Planet to catch up on some of the little quirks that make Berkeley so unique and utterly bizarre. However, it seems that recently the Planet has deemed it fit to publish columns that contain obviously false statements. In her recent column, Becky O’Malley states:  

“The whole ugly scene, complete with nasty skinhead cops with gas masks clubbing unarmed victims, has been captured on You Tube by LA Wood on the Berkeley Citizen website at www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKCY4MJuJeY> .”  

Has Ms. O’Malley ever watched the video she cites in her column? I can read through columns detailing the erosion of First Amendment rights, the expansion of the police state and the overall collapse of western civilization brought about by the cutting down of a small grove of trees, but when your own statements are completely contradicted by the video evidence that you cite as proof, it is too much. All the video shows is several police officers restraining two individuals without using excessive force, no use of clubs or other foreign objects, and, unless my eyes deceive me, not a single gas mask or skinhead in sight. I will grant Ms. O’Malley a certain amount of creative license, but each of her statements is loaded with additional meaning. Using them, without any sort of corroborating evidence, is both irresponsible and unprofessional—let alone completely wrong. 

Tomas Holmes 

• 

HOUSING BID 

Editors, Daily Planet 

Please pass my e-mail address onto Becky O’Malley. If she does live in Berkeley I’d love for her to give me her home after she moves out of this horrible country we live in. I love the city of Berkeley, I can’t think of a better place to live than in a great city in the greatest place in the world, the Bay Area. I can’t afford to live there and would love it if Becky would offer me her home when she moves to Canada or maybe Switzerland because she can’t stand the United States. It must be a fact that Michael Vick is exactly like every other athlete in the world and it also must be a fact that athletics are what is wrong with the world. Becky can you please leave me all your wisdom, so I can live a life like you, as you exit the USA.  

How about Becky you come back to reality, stay here in the US, vote against the Republicans in the next election, help push for sustainability and environmental understanding across the world, and quit worrying about a grove of oak trees between a city street and an athletic stadium. Many organizations in the Bay Area are pushing to save real wilderness lands and I’m a part of one of them/Save Mt. Diablo.  

If you don’t come to your senses please remember me, a contributing member of society who lives in an active earthquake region but who is not afraid, loves the country but knows there are many things that should change about our government. Athletics is not to blame for the worlds evils. 

Please remember me Becky as you exit the United States, I’d love to take your spot. 

Would love to hear an offer. 

Andrew Sproul  

• 

A FEW WORDS ABOUT  

SEN. LARRY CRAIG 

Editors, Daily Planet 

Mr. Allen-Taylor’s opinion piece regarding Sen. Craig was unusually empathetic and thoughtful amid the current media circus on the topic It was the best of Allen-Taylor’s writing thus far. 

Bob Gable 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet 

A few recent letters have said that AC Transit should provide more bus service instead of building Bus Rapid Transit. Most recently, Teddy Knight wrote: “It would cost no more to double/triple the current schedules than to build BRT.” 

These letter writers don’t know a basic principle of transit funding: there are separate budgets for capital expenses and operating expenses. If AC Transit dropped the BRT project, it could not use that capital funding to operate more buses. It would simply lose the funding. 

BRT actually would allow AC to provide more frequent service. Because buses go more quickly in dedicated lanes, BRT would have lower operating costs than this line has now. AC could use the money saved to provide more frequent service on other lines. 

I can understand why people don’t know the difference between capital and operating expenses, when they have no history of supporting transit and suddenly become interested in the issue when a project is proposed in their back yards. But some of the red herrings that opponents are throwing at BRT are beyond understanding. 

For example, an opinion piece of July 31 claimed that, instead of BRT, we should use an “incremental approach,” which would include not only “more buses/shorter headway” but also “increased gas tax.” I can understand why he would not know that BRT funding cannot be used to run more buses at shorter headways, but I cannot understand why in the world he would think that stopping BRT would help us to increase gas taxes. 

BRT and increased gas taxes obviously are not mutually exclusive. I am in favor of increasing taxes not only on gasoline but on all CO2 emissions. And I am in favor of BRT for the same reason: because I want to slow global warming and leave a livable world to our children. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

IRAQ IS IMMORAL 

Editors, Daily Planet 

The Republican Party has fielded the worse White House team in history and although it has failed in some recent objectives— privatizing Social Security, reforming immigration—it remains strong and against all odds may win again in 2008.  

The party’s major source of strength comes from Bush’s global war on terror (GWOT), which, strictly speaking, is not a war but a tactical instrument, a political bludgeon he uses to intimidate and subdue his opponents. Democratic leaders are afraid to challenge the “war” head on; after a few whimpers they give Bush whatever he wants—money, tribunals, torture, spying, etc. 

The spearhead of Bush’s GWOT is Iraq and although public support is slipping away lawmakers of all stripes are diligently seeking ways “to keep on keepin’ on”—setting benchmarks, changing the mission, supporting (or replacing) Prime Minister al-Maliki, involving Iraq’s neighbors, etc. Neither lawmakers nor establishment intellectuals take ethical considerations into account. You’d think “morality” was a dirty word. 

Most every one seems to accept that armed might is a substitute for moral right. Old-fashioned virtue is no longer embraced as the wellspring of American ideals of freedom, justice, and equality. Bush leads the way, offering his own righteousness in place of what is right and Congress falls in line.  

The Bush team’s immoral behavior—unprovoked invasion—cannot be excused by faulty intelligence, inept planning, and incompetent leadership and his continuing military occupation cannot be disguised by U.N. Security Council resolutions.  

Sooner or later we as a nation will be ethically required to make right the bloody god-awful consequences of this president’s imperious and immoral calamity.  

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo 

• 

MISREPRESENTING KITCHEN DEMOCRACY AND CITY HALL 

Editors, Daily Planet 

In your Aug. 31 edition, Steve Martinot writes that Kitchen Democracy pretends to host referendums, and that City Council and the zoning board follow that pretense. 

Mr. Martinot is wrong on both counts. The KitchenDemocracy.org website clearly states that the Kitchen Democracy tally is not legally binding. Moreover, the archive of closed issues on the website contains cases where Berkeley City Hall decisions diverged from the Kitchen Democracy tally. 

Mr. Martinot is also wrong when he states that Kitchen Democracy does not belong to the constituency whose interests are presented in our issue statements. Kitchen Democracy is its users. If the 3,000 Berkeley residents and stakeholders who formulate, select and discuss Kitchen Democracy issues do not belong to that constituency, who does? 

Kitchen Democracy forums are simply another channel through which residents can participate in democracy. Some people prefer to attend City Hall meetings; others prefer to read about issues at home and check Yes or No on their browser. Simona and I believe that a healthy democracy welcomes all forms of participation. That’s why we started Kitchen Democracy eighteen months ago, and why we are thrilled to see it becoming more vibrant every day. 

Robert Vogel 

Co-Founder, Kitchen Democracy 

• 

KNOWING THE TRUTH 

Editors, Daily Planet 

This quote pretty well sums up the conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East: “All wars are holy wars fought by people who think they alone know the truth.” God told George Bush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq while Osama bin Laden claims he is fighting God’s holy war. Republicans of a religious stripe pushed America into war in Iraq and fundamentalist terrorists are on the rise everywhere. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

• 

BERKELEY HIGH FOOTBALL 

Editors, Daily Planet 

I really hope you cover the Berkeley High football team a little this year. Coach Alonzo Carter and his student athletes have spent a lot of time and energy to prepare for the season that starts this week. While some in Berkeley may not care about high school sports, and view it as a distraction to what is “important” in life, there are many in our city (especially long-time residents) who believe youth sports develops character and discipline. These aren’t clichés for the boys on the teams sweating through practices and study halls. 

The football team at Berkeley High is energizing a lot of people who don’t normally read the Daily Planet, but might if it contained news about the boys they know in a positive light rather than just in crime stories. 

Coach Carter has the boys thinking about winning games and going to College. A great way to help many of the boys at BHS become successful young men in our society would be to support the football team. The football team doesn’t have a lot of rich parents or alumni to fund it, and Coach Carter’s program should be allowed to thrive with community support and your paper’s attention.  

Paul Lecky 

• 

CRYING FOR JUSTICE 

Editors, Daily Planet 

Crying for Justice 

The president said “I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on.” He cries in mansions staffed with servants who peel grapes for banquets. Today’s news carried photos of a woman and her children crying in horror as her husband was hauled off by American soldiers in a night raid. She despairs that like other arrested men, his body might later be found dumped around Baghdad.  

The people of Iraq did no harm to Americans. The Iraq war was plotted with lies by Bush and Cheney. They should be in the docket of the War Crimes Tribunal. Bush must answer for hundreds of thousands of widows, orphans, amputees, and refugees. They have a right to demand justice and tell of their pain. They should have a chance to see Bush cry.  

News stories abound that Bush and Cheney are plotting a massive bombing attack on Iran. This would be the greatest disaster in history and lead to economic chaos, a bottomless military nightmare, and rivers of tears and blood.  

The people must swarm Congress, demand that Bush and Cheney be removed, and remind the generals and admirals that conspiring to wage a war of aggression is a war crime. 

John Mackesy 

Middletown 

• 

TRAIN NOISE IN BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet 

The sound of a train whistle has long had a connection for me to the romance of train travel. I have wonderful memories of taking the train across the United States and Canada. Unfortunately that sound is now waking me regularly between midnight and dawn. Although, I live more than a mile from the train tracks in Berkeley/Oakland, freight train engineers seem to like to blow their loud horns almost continuously as they go through Berkeley/Oakland during the night.  

I believe it is time to impose restrictions on this disturbance. Airports in the Bay Area measure the noise of airplanes landing and taking off. They are restricted in the hours that they can take off during the night. We need the same rules for trains in urban areas. It may be difficult to restrict the times that trains run through Berkeley but it should be easy to restrict the speed they travel at and the way they use their horns. For example, if trains in Berkeley were limited to 20 miles/hour from 11 p.m. till 6 a.m. they would not need to use their horns since there is no danger of a collision at that speed. In addition, just as airports measure their noise, Union Pacific should be required to install noise-recording machines at the Berkeley and Emeryville stations. This time history of train noise would establish a way for local residents to examine for trains that violate good procedures and would be an incentive for Union Pacific to improve their performance. 

Al Thompson 

Oakland 

• 

GRAFFITI 

Editors, Daily Planet 

Graffiti is the art of those who do not much care for public spaces. Why can’t these people accept the social responsibility of caring for our common property? I am under the impression that graffiti destroys the beauty of our clean walls and benches, and reveals at the same time the anger of some uncaring people. Such people may experience relief if they are given special public spaces fitted with whiteboards to display their anger. At the same time neighborhood watch committees can help. They can remind graffiti writers of their responsibility for the cleanliness of public spaces. If the graffiti writers still don’t stop, they should be dealt with severely. Let us keep our cities looking clean. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

On Tuesday, Sept. 4, I attended the public comment before the City Council on the university’s proposed Memorial Stadium athletic center and other interrelated projects. Opponents of the university project outnumbered supporters by two or three to one. But the repeated misuse of the word “cooperation” by supporters of the UC project during that event compels me to comment. 

To recap events leading up to the meeting: Without consulting with the city or the community, UC hatched a project to intensify multiple uses of the stadium area, a plan that would (famously) demolish a mature, attractive oak grove and (less famously) pile yet more damage on the neighbors of the university. The city and other groups sued to protect the trees and themselves. The university responded with a settlement offer to marginally reduce the damage. UC officials and supporters called UC’s offer “cooperation,” and claim to be “baffled” that the project victims and City Council refused to “cooperate” by accepting it.  

As usual, it is difficult to tell whether the university is self-deluded, or merely trying to delude the rest of us.  

The university and its supporters are confusing “cooperating” with “bargaining,” which is the real model for this situation. In bargaining, two parties are motivated solely by their own self-interests. Each attempts to achieve as many of his own unilateral goals as possible. Bargaining generally results in fair, or mutually acceptable, outcomes only if the two parties have approximately equal power.  

Because it is so powerful, and because the City of Berkeley is so effectively deluded, the university usually does what it wants without having to bargain. But the city is the only Berkeley entity with the power to achieve a bargaining outcome remotely resembling equity or justice. This is why it is abusive and unjust when the city fails to defend its citizens from the university, and forces citizens with few resources to defend themselves against a multi-billion-dollar entity. 

Unlike bargaining, to cooperate is to act or work with another or others for a “common purpose,” or “mutual benefit.” This means that the two partners share a goal and work together to achieve it. Because the goal is shared and the strategy is not adversarial, cooperation works fine despite imbalances in power and resources. The university cooperates occasionally when it shares goals with someone and can generate good PR for itself. This happens on “feel good” issues (student community volunteers, etc.), but rarely on land use issues.  

UC’s multi-million-dollar PR machine works overtime to convince us that we share UC’s goals. Most Californians agree with the goal of providing higher education and research. But beyond that, things become murky very quickly, especially in the host UC cities that bear a disproportionate share of UC detriments and costs. That’s why UC is doing its utmost to convince us that both a winning football team and a “high performance student athletic center,” built precisely where and how they want it, are vital to higher education in California and therefore in Berkeley’s best interest.  

Who believes this? 

Sadly, in almost all land use and livability matters, the university and the citizens of Berkeley share no common goal. The university’s development goals are entirely internal, often questionable, and rarely benefit the citizens of Berkeley. Because UC does not share the goal of keeping the city livable and pleasant, their gain is always our loss. In fact, the university is notorious for “internalizing the benefits and externalizing the detriments” of all its activities.  

The “goal” of the nearly powerless citizens is simply reactive: to minimize the damage. But minimizing the damage done by someone else’s goal hardly constitutes half of a shared goal. It stretches the definition of “mutual benefit.” So does giving or receiving payment for unwanted damages; this too is bargaining, not cooperation.  

Real cooperation starts early, by sharing goals and plans and asking each other how we can be of mutual assistance on mutual goals. If the university really believed that it shared any stadium project goals with Berkeleyans, it would have started “cooperating” in time for Berkeleyans to nix the Memorial Oak Grove location when it was still just a stupid idea and not a full-fledged plan. Devising plans in isolation without early consultation with others about their needs is not intended to be the beginning of cooperation. At best it is the beginning of bargaining. True cooperation on land use is very difficult, especially in crowded areas.  

Berkeleyans have a remarkable appetite for self-sacrifice, which has allowed bad development to diminish our city. But until we stand up and demand that the university make it a goal to be honorable in its treatment of others and to keep Berkeley livable, Berkeley citizens and the university can never cooperate. We can only move beyond bargaining into cooperation when the university acknowledges the legitimacy of our goals, not merely its own agenda. 

No matter how much they pretend otherwise, the university and other powerful developers love the bargaining model, in which they have the upper hand because of their power. However, it is to the developers’ advantage to pretend to be in a cooperative model, because it plays on the middle-class desire to be “nice,” which is pervasive in Berkeley, even in neighborhoods under attack by people who are not nice at all.  

When involuntarily caught in a bargaining model with a powerful adversary, do not accept the myth of cooperation. When your “partner” calls you “uncooperative,” ask him to explain your shared goals and mutual benefits. If the goal was not on your own “to do” list before your “partner” showed up with his project, you can bet you’re going to be a lot better off accumulating power than being nice. Good luck. 

Sharon Hudson is a university neighbor. 

For over two years, SuperBOLD and the First Amendment Project have been working towards a more democratic public comment procedure in Berkeley. In April 2006 the First Amendment Project threatened a lawsuit if the city did not discontinue the use of a lottery for choosing speakers at public meetings. The lottery denied some persons willing to speak the right to do so. It also resulted in some agenda items not being addressed by the public. 

In reaction to the threatened lawsuit, the City Council abandoned the lottery for choosing speakers and soon thereafter stopped requiring speaker cards. So far, so good. However, the mayor has continued “experimenting” with the public comment procedure for almost a year now. In fact, the latest brochure, Guidelines for Public Comment and Council Meeting Order, Revised June 2007 states: “The City Council is currently experimenting with its public comment procedures.” 

Presently, public comment is called for on consent calendar items before the council votes to approve them. Public comment is then intended to take place before or during council discussion of each action item, but sometimes the mayor has neglected to call for it. The mayor has moved public comment on non-agenda items, which used to follow comment on consent items, to the end of the agenda. As a result, he has on many occasions failed to call for comment on non-agenda items—clearly a violation of the Brown Act. 

Whether called upon or not, it is a great disservice to those persons raising issues of concern not on the agenda to be compelled to wait several hours to speak. Berkeley lags behind surrounding East Bay cities: Richmond, El Cerrito, Oakland, Walnut Creek and Livermore. All have an open forum for non-agenda items at the beginning of their meeting. Only two limit the comment time allotted for non-agenda items, but reconvene open forum at the end of the meeting. 

In the interest of bringing an end to the mayor’s experimentation with public comment, and to avoid litigation, Councilmember Worthington placed a recommendation, endorsed by SuperBOLD, on the council’s June 19 agenda. It was postponed to June 26 and again postponed so it could appear on the July 17 agenda with Mayor Bates’ competing proposal. 

Despite Council Rules of Procedure, which call for Old Business to precede New Business, Bates placed the “Recommendations on Public Comment” last on the July 17 agenda. Shortly after 10:45 p.m., Mayor Bates declared there was not time to discuss the public comment agenda items, and that he was postponing the items from the agenda until the Sept. 11 council meeting. He then informed those who had come to comment on the public comment recommendations, that the items were now non-agenda items. Therefore, they could address them at 11 p.m.—the public comment period for non-agenda items! 

Councilmember Worthington’s recommendation, in accord with the intent of the Brown Act, allows all persons who wish to speak the right to do so. The compromise is: the mayor is allowed to reduce the amount of time allowed each speaker when there are five or more persons wishing to speak on an agenda item. Worthington places public comment on non-agenda items, early in the meeting, after comment on consent items. 

Mayor Bates’ latest recommendation allows only three speakers in support of a consent calendar item, while the remaining supporters will be asked merely to stand. If there are more than three people in opposition to a consent item the Presiding Officer will move the item to the end of the Action Calendar.  

On action items, if there are more than nine persons desiring to speak, the presiding officer may limit the public comment for “remaining” speakers to one minute per speaker. The question here is, who was “not remaining” and how much time did they get to speak? This reeks of inequity. Further, Bates’ proposal keeps public comment on non-agenda items as the very last item on the agenda.  

Support the right of every member of the public who so desires, to speak. Lobby your councilmember to support Worthington’s recommendation. If the councilmembers want shorter meetings, they can meet weekly, rather than twice per month as they are scheduled for the rest of this year. 

The City Council will hold, in council Chambers, Old City Hall, on Tuesday, Sept. 11, a 5:30 p.m. work session on amendments to Council Rules of Procedure. This will be continued at the City Council’s meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. the same day.  

Please attend these meetings and speak in favor of Councilmember Worthington’s recommendation on public comment. 

Jim Fisher, Gene Bernardi and Jane Welford serve on the steering committee for Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense (SuperBOLD).

MISVIEWING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

During the Reagan years, one of the authors of either The Clothes Have No Emperor, or Reagan’s Reign of Error, collections of verbal slips by President Reagan, pointed out that while watching the president and his press secretary’s televised speeches, he couldn’t help but notice that the sign behind him, 

THE WHITE HOUSE 

WASHINGTON, D.C., 

was (and still is) often shown from an angle where his head, shoulders and torso block some of the letters, leaving the words: 

THE WHITE 

WASHING 

Recently, it was especially interesting when Press Secretary Tony Snow blocked those letters. 

O.V. Michaelsen 

• 

COMMUNITY BENEFITS DISTRICT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One of the problems with the Community Benefit District (CBD) proposed for West Berkeley is its lack of specifics. Merely duplicating City services is not a program that can be tracked or measured. How can we tell if the fact that we haven’t been raped or burgled is due to the private security presence (only proposed for daylight hours) or simply because we live in a somewhat civilized society that provides an effective police force? If a benefit district has a specific project such as undergrounding the utilities there is a way to measure progress and success. For the proposed CBD the services to be provided are vague and there is no way to measure their effectiveness.  

Furthermore the proposed services were decided upon with no input from the majority of property and business owners in the affected area. Many of us feel city services are adequate and we do not wish to be taxed to duplicate those services. In some cases a weighted method of apportioning taxes seems appropriate. For example, if there was a benefits district for sewers or undergrounding utilities the property owners who use the most of the service should pay the most. It would be relatively easy in such a case to calculate usage and benefit and apportion it accordingly. Where the type and amount of service is stated in the vague manner of the proposal now being considered how is it possible to measure the effectiveness and fair proportioning of the services? This benefit district was concocted by a few large property owners. They are a minority in numbers but wealthy in land and therefore get to tax the majority of the property owners. To those of us who were brought up to believe democracy is the ideal form of government this weighted power for the wealthy is shocking. Just because it is legal does not make it right. 

The Mello-Roos bill of 1982 was designed to allow this form of taxation in order to make up the shortfall to cities from the passage of Proposition 13. However it contains an insidious accelerated foreclosure clause. The County must allow tax payers 5 years to catch up when their taxes are in arrears, the CBD may foreclose after 180 days. The potential land grab of foreclosed properties by developers seems obvious.  

The effects of Proposition 13 are still being felt and continue limit the ability of cities to provide the services that make the local environment viable and pleasant. The short-sighted voters in 1979 passed a law for their own benefit without realizing the unintended long-term consequences. Californians who want to live in clean and well-functioning communities with adequate services are going to have to put the public interest ahead of their self-interest and roll back Proposition 13. Then there would be no need to bring in outside private resources with little or no accountability to citizens. 

Margret Elliott 

• 

OUSTING BUSH, CHENEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here is a winning scenario for the present public disgust with Bush et al.: 

First, Rep. Kucinich must be reminded that if Cheney is impeached alone, without Bush, Cheney still has right of free speech and could still “run” Bush. After acknowledging this truth Kucinich should persuade his fellow Democrat House members to expel Pelosi by requisite simple House majority. Pelosi has from the first given Bush and Cheney carte blanche, by personally superseding a vital part of the Constitution when she took impeachment “off the table,” thus leaving in place the only other real Congressional check on presidential power—override of vetoes—impossible to achieve with present small Democrat majorities in both houses. 

After expulsion of Pelosi the House’s Democrat caucus should elect Kucinich speaker of the House and then proceed to revise House rules to vote directly up or down (as Bush asked of the Senate for Ms. Meir’s failed appointment to the Supreme Court) on impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. By their imposing neither fines nor imprisonment, only removal from office, the founding fathers told us that impeachment is merely a premature firing from a job done unsatisfactorily. No trial is needed, and the Constitution makes no mention of one for impeachment. Breaking oaths to support (obey) and defend the Constitution, (including the Eighth Amendment forbidding cruel and unusual punishments—with no geographic limits), by publicly okaying water-boarding (not as punishment but, worse yet, in interrogation of the presumed innocent) has become common knowledge around the world and is surely sufficient justification for firing.  

Unlike the full two-thirds vote required in both houses for an override, after House impeachment by a simple majority, Senate conviction of the impeachment requires yes votes from only two thirds of the senators present for the vote. The 20-odd Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 should be persuaded that in their own interest they best stay home for the vote, or vote for conviction with the Democrats. Republican senators facing election in 2010 should also fear to appear for the vote lest they be seen by their states’ voters as pro-Bush/Cheney and the war. It should be noted that every Republican senator who votes with the Democrats means two fewer Republicans need stay home for the vote in order for conviction to be achieved. 

Completing the scenario after removal from office of Bush and Cheney, Kucinich, having supplanted Pelosi as speaker of the House, would become president until 2008, with power to name a new cabinet, etc. Kucinich may lack movie and TV handsomeness, but if he performs well in this scenario might he not also continue as winner of the presidency in 2008? Or do I dream too much? 

Judith Segard Hunt 

• 

IF IRAQ WERE 51ST STATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What if Iraq became our 51st state, think of the results. We would offer Iraqi citizens an incentive. They would have three U.S. senators instead of the normal two, one for each region. They would have representation in the House of Representatives according to their population. The U.S. Senate would have 103 members. I don’t know how this would effect the Democrat/Republican ratio and balance of power in the Senate. I am guessing it would favor the Democrats. Each region of Iraq would have its own governor and Legislature. 

This of course would only happen if the Iraqi people voted for statehood. If the residents of Hawaii wanted statehood, why wouldn’t the Iraqis? It has been a long time since we added a state to our union. We could insure the statehood election would be fair by sending over as our election representatives the Republican secretaries of state from Ohio and Florida. They both have experience in running fair elections. The outcome would be unquestioned.  

I know there is no snorkling in Iraq, but there would be other benefits. 1) We would increase the U.S. population and add more diversity to our already diverse nation. 2) We would be able to add a 51st quarter to our collections. A friend of mine suggested a camel for the design. 3) If our weapons disappeared, at least they would be in U.S. hands. 4) It would drive the Iranian theocracy nuts, or are they already there. 5) We would have a strong and legitimate presence in the region. 6) The oil. We would have the oil, especially as a backup reserve in case a Katrina-style hurricane devastated our Louisiana and gulf oil supplies or wealthy coastal residents near Santa Barbara wouldn’t allow oil rigs in their views. 7) Baghdad would have both a major league baseball team (I hear the ball travels farther in the light desert air) and an NFL football franchise. Think of the marketing. The teams could have meaningful names, like the warriors or the insurgents. 8) We would have a common currency. Think of the power. Look out Euro. 9) HBO. If HBO can give us the Sopranos from New Jersey and Big Love from Utah, think what they might provide us from Iraq. There would be no end to our Sunday night television entertainment. 10) Cell phone calls to Iraq would improve. No more are you there or can you hear me.  

There are other benefits worth mentioning. One of course would be that U.S. News and World Report would be able to rank their universities. Another benefit worthy of mention is Iraqi citizens would have freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Something we Americans take seriously.  

Would the Iraqis want to be U.S. citizens? Let’s give it a shot.  

Paul M. Schwartz 

• 

THE COMPLETE PICTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the rhythm of our nation’s political life August is an interval of rest during which leaders gather their thoughts, review what was done, not done and study what needs doing.  

We are at the end of August and the coming season promises to be a stunning finale to the worse presidency we’ve ever had. It will begin with a cacophony of views, proposals, prospects and prophecies regarding the mess in Iraq, prelude to which will be a report General Patraeus, Bush’s surge chief, and Mr. Crocker, his ambassador to Iraq, will deliver to Congress.  

Given the obstinacy, not to mention the self-serving habits, of our governing elite, it is unlikely that anything will change; the general and the ambassador will inform Congress of the details of the surge’s “tactical momentum” and leave those spineless lawmakers to bicker, not debate, about what to do next.  

I long for someone to make them see a missing but vital bass line to Iraq’s current devastating inhuman dissonance: it began with unprovoked “shock and awe” and gains raw energy from the Iraqi people’s desperate need to expel our occupying forces.  

Far from providing stability, our military presence provokes violence.  

How would you react if foreign soldiers lived in fortified compounds from which they patrolled your city streets day and night, death-dealing weapons at the ready? 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

On Wednesday, Aug. 22, the Berkeley School Board voted to charge youth groups “only” $35 per hour to use the new field at East Campus. This is “only” 300 percent higher than what these groups currently pay to use other grass fields in Berkeley. To put this in perspective, if BHS baseball and softball teams were required to pay this same amount for the City of Berkeley fields that they use it would cost about $300-$400 per player per season, just for field costs. This would be on top of the expenses for uniforms, equipment, umpires, coaches, etc. 

For board members regularly dealing with taxpayer dollars in the millions this $35 probably seems like an inconsequential number. However, these youth groups are mostly all-volunteer non-profit organizations whose only source of income is from the pockets of the parents who want their children involved in these after-school recreation programs. If BHS was forced to require parents of children who wanted to play baseball or softball to pay a participation fee of $300 or $400, the outcry from the parents would be loud enough for board members to understand that $300 or $400 is a number that actually means something to a lot of families, particularly low-income parents who would not be able to afford this cost. 

But who are these “youth groups”? They are BUSD elementary and middle school children who play in these community programs because the school district cannot afford to provide them. They are BHS high school students who want to play soccer in the fall because they don’t have an interest in the football and field hockey being offered by the school. They are the children of parents who want their kids exercising in supervised after-school programs because they are concerned about their child being healthy and engaged. They are the same children the School Board wrings its hands over when it talks about the obesity crisis and keeping children out of trouble. 

And given all the above the School Board doesn’t understand that raising prices 300 percent only makes these programs more expensive and less affordable to many families in the community—particularly low-income families? Do board members really believe this is good public policy and is in the interest of the children they are supposed to be serving? 

Ah, but we do have the issue of costs. After all, these fields cost money to maintain and it only seems fair that the people using them help pay for the upkeep. If this is the case, why is it that children playing on BHS teams pay nothing to use City of Berkeley fields but City of Berkeley children have to pay $35 per hour to use school fields? This rate is one of the most expensive hourly rates (if not THE most expensive hourly rate) in Northern California. And why is it that our organization, ASFU, can charge $12 an hour for children and $29 for adults and cover the maintenance costs for the playing fields it maintains but the school district needs to charge $35 and $90 for the same service? 

Thankfully, there is a simple solution to this problem. The School Board does not need to reinvent the wheel. The City of Berkeley, which oversees the maintenance and management of 23 playing fields, already has worked through the issue of pricing for the use of athletic fields. Prices are set through a cooperative process, which involves the Parks and Recreation Commission, the Parks Department, which is also concerned about maintenance costs, the various youth groups that use the fields, and the Berkeley City Council. The same taxpayers that accept this field pricing process are the same ones that pay the taxes, which support BUSD. The School Board can simply agree that it will charge the same rates for its grass and artificial fields that the community has agreed are appropriate for City of Berkeley fields. 

Doug Fielding is chairperson of the Association of Sports Field Users.

I am a student at Berkeley City College and am quite distressed at the cost of books, especially the ones sold in the schools own bookstore, and one policy in particular which I feel is totally unfair: the buy-back and return policy. As students, we have seen the results of state budget cuts with fewer classes, the increase in fees and the painfully high cost of our textbooks, no teaching supplies and more, but to be ripped off by our own school is terrible. First, if I buy let’s say a $100 book and return it, still wrapped four days later the bookstore will pay me only $50 for it, then turn around and sell it again for $100 to the next unsuspecting student. That has got to be criminal, but what’s worse is returning your old textbooks.  

The book I buy for $65 at the beginning of the semester the bookstore will buy back for 50 cents, then resell it as used for $40. The BCC Bookstore generates over $100,000 per year and I am unable to find out from anybody here what the mark-up rate is or who is even responsible for this thieving policy. Due to my financial situation I applied for a book voucher program here, they gave me a voucher good only at the schools bookstore for $175...can you guess how many books I can get? If you said more than two, you’re wrong, some people can get only one book. There are alternatives of course: online shopping can cut costs by 50% or more, but in many cases delivery can take several weeks and put the student quite behind in classwork, affecting performance and motivation.  

You would think another alternative would be the school library. Wrong. For a class of 30 students you might be lucky to find one textbook on reserve, if it hasn’t been stolen. I have found for many of my classes the required reading simply doesn’t exist. Our book stacks are less than half full! So I go to a school that gouges its students with insane book prices and policies, an empty library and teachers who use road maps from AAA to teach history. 

For many of us this will be our only college experience. What are they preparing us for? I’ve got a clue but I am too polite to say it. I need help and at least got a little something, and while its sounds like I may be unappreciative, I really am. I am not the only student with this problem, there are 5,000 non-represented students. I somewhat envy the Cal students who at least have Mr. Worthington working with them, but where’s Dona Spring or whoever is our district’s councilmember? What about the mayor? I think both have come to our city’s community college once; they don’t support us at all. Who will care for us? Who will shed light on the policies of buying and selling books here? Who is there that can help us and is there any hope? In such a beautiful building that cost millions of dollars, it is dismally bleak inside.  

David Kamola is a Berkeley City College student.

A media campaign on television has been launched to brainwash Americans into thinking that alcohol fuels are mechanically impractical for cars and to be produced, require huge amounts of petroleum. These are myths that I can strongly argue against with a few engineering facts. I believe the big oil merchants are influencing the press and promoting the idea that oil consumption is the “only way after all.”  

To begin with, we should be suspicious concerning the timing of these news pieces. These news pieces are being coincidentally run at a time when progress would be expected on the transition toward alternatively powered transportation. The public has been fed ideas that we can expect changes in how our cars are powered, and now is the time when it is psychologically prudent for the propagandists to give the public the letdown.  

I expect that many of the same corporate conglomerates that own the oil companies also own the television channels that run these stories. These same conglomerates could own the farm corporations who are most inefficiently growing corn to produce ethanol.  

Another main point is that we are still being fed huge gas-guzzling automobiles to drive. The mainstream advertisements promote the idea that we must have a huge, towering presence on the road or be run over by the other guy. Cars haven’t become smaller. This is another indication that a sincere effort isn’t being made to reduce our petroleum consumption. 

As for the technical arguments, they are as follows: Corn isn’t necessary to manufacture ethanol. It can be done with waste products like sewage and compost. Natural gas can also be used. Methanol, ethanol’s cousin that could power the Model T and is used in race cars, can be manufactured out of wood and potatoes. Hydrogen fuel can be derived from water with a solar-powered hydrolysis unit. These can be put on every block. Hydrogen can power fuel cell cars. It isn’t necessary to spend all that money on farming tons of corn to get ethanol.  

The problem with how the government wants to do things is they pick the most inefficient possible method involving the greatest number of steps to accomplish a task. This way the most people possible can be paid. If you are in charge of more people, your paycheck is bigger. 

The conspiracy I expect exists is this: Some big entities want us to stay plugged into foreign oil so that we will continue to stay plugged into the Middle East. Why are they doing this? I don’t have access to that.  

What can Americans do? At the very least, we can demand smaller more reasonable cars. We can demand that real progress be made toward alternately powered vehicles. We can openly disbelieve propaganda from the oil companies. 

Jack Bragen is a Martinez resident.

Did Israel know that its settlement policies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza were illegal? Yes, according to a senior legal official who warned the Labor government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in September 1967, “that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” 

The man who wrote those words is Theodor Meron, a Holocaust survivor and currently an appeals judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Meron told the Independent, “I believe I would have given the same opinion today.” 

Meron says Eshkol’s foreign secretary, Abba Eban, was “sympathetic” to the view that the settlements would violate the Hague and Geneva conventions. 

There are currently some 240,000 settlers on the West Bank, and another 200,000 in occupied East Jerusalem.  

According to the Independent, Meron’s memorandum is “a direct challenge to Israel’s continuing contention that the Geneva Convention’s provisions on settling people in occupied territory did not apply to the West Bank because its annexation by Jordan between 1949 and 1967 had been unilateral.” 

The article points out that not only did the United Nations think that Israel was an occupier, so did the Israeli Army. A 1967 decree from the Israeli Self-Defense Forces command said that military courts would “fulfill Geneva provisions,” and the first West Bank civilian settlement at Kfar Etzion, was designated a “military outpost.” The Geneva Conventions allow military bases in occupied territories. 

A recent survey of West Bank land found that up to 38 percent of the settlements were built on Palestinian-owned land. According to Israeli writer Gershom Gorenberg, such settlements explicitly violate the 1907 Hague Convention. The settlements were declared illegal by the International Court of Justice and a series of UN resolutions. 

According to a new map of the West Bank produced by the UN Office for Coordination and Humanitarian Affairs, the network of Israeli settlements, roads and military bases blocks 2.5 million Palestinians out of 40 percent of the West Bank. The 60 percent of the West Bank left is split up by 450 roadblocks and 70 manned checkpoints. 

The expansion of “Israeli only” roads has drawn widespread criticism—and lawsuits— from human rights organizations. “We do not use the word apartheid in court,” says Yoav Loeff, a spokesman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), “but it is difficult to find another term for roads that can only be used by Israelis.” 

In a recent report to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, B’Tselem, a human rights organization, and ACRI, said that government polices are aimed at “the dispossession of Palestinian residents of the center of Hebron.” 

According to the two organizations, the Israeli Army has blocked Palestinian residents from walking on a-Shuhada, one of Hebron’s major streets. Under pressure from B’Tselem and ACRI, the Army admitted that the order was “in error” and unlawful, but have yet to allow Palestinian residents to use the street. 

A recent study by the World Bank found that restrictions like those in Hebron have deeply crippled the Palestinian economy. The bank found that while Israel did have “security concerns,” that many of the restrictions have the effect of “enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population.” 

The Israeli settler population is growing at a rate of 5.5 percent a year, compared with a 3 percent growth rate for Palestinians. 

One group that has taken the issue head on is Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, which monitors the treatment of Palestinians at roadblocks. Founded in 2001, the group sends 50 to 100 women out in 24 shifts to watch over the checkpoints.  

“Most the soldiers are very angry at us,” Daphne Banai told Robert Hirschfield of In These Times. “They don’t like having ‘those bitches,’ as they call us, looking over their shoulders.” Machsom Watch has successfully lobbied for the installation of water taps and shade at some checkpoints, and according to human rights groups, made life a bit easier for the Palestinians. 

Banai says the checkpoints are a violation of human rights, and that she is less interested in improving the behavior of the Israeli troops that man them, than getting rid of them altogether. “I want them gone,” she says. 

Canada, Russia, the U.S., Denmark and Norway are laying claim to the frozen north. At stake are oil and gas reserves thought to lie under the Arctic Ocean, as well as control of the Northwest Passage, a sea route that could greatly shorten the distance between the East Coast and Asia. 

First, Moscow planted a titanium flag on the Arctic seabed to underline its contention that the Lemonosov Ridge that runs from Greenland to Siberia is part of Russia’s continental shelf. Under the Treaty of the Sea, a country can lay claim to areas beyond its 200-mile territorial waters if it can prove such a geographical formation is connected to its mainland. 

A few days later, Canada’s conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, made a quick trip north to defend “our sovereignty over the Arctic.” Harper announced plans to build a military base on bleak Baffin Island, and another on the shores of the Northwest Passage. While other countries argue that the Passage is an international waterway, Canada claims the route is part of its territorial waters. Harper also announced Ottawa would spend $3 billion to build eight icebreakers. “We either use it [the Arctic] or lose it,” he said 

Because the United States never signed the Treaty of the Seas, Washington has been silent about Canadian and Russian claims, but it did send the icebreaker Healy through the Bering Straits to map the polar sea floor.  

Then things got silly.  

Reuters showed a video of the Russians planting their titanium flag on the sea bottom. But a sharp-eyed 13-year-old Finnish boy thought the photos looked awfully familiar. Indeed they did. The “Russian” submarines were footage from the 1997 movie, “Titanic.”  

There is nothing silly, however, about the more than $200 billion in gas and oil deposits the arctic may harbor. 

When former General Vang Pao was arrested this past June for trying to overthrow the current government of Laos, the media pretty much buried Vang’s role as a drug dealer. When mentioned, it was only in passing, and just that he was “linked to drug running” (New York Times) or that he “partly” controlled the opium trade (San Francisco Chronicle). 

Take the time to sit down with Arthur W. McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, and watch Andrew and Leslie Cockburn’s “Drugs, Guns and the CIA,” a Frontline special.  

It wasn’t Vang who was in control, it was the CIA. The agency used the profits from the drug trade to run its “secret war” in Laos and underwrite the huge sprawling air base at Long Chen. Vang was their front man, but it was the CIA’s Air America that flew the opium from outlying areas to Long Chen. From there it went to Saigon and Thailand, where it was refined into heroin and shot up by GIs in Vietnam and people all over Europe and the United States. 

Vang Pao made millions off the drug trade, but the CIA used it to run a war. When the Pathet Lao finally sent the U.S. and its puppets packing, the CIA moved the drugs-for-guns operation to Central America where cocaine was used to fuel the Contra War against Nicaragua.  

Lest we forget. 

State Sen. Don Perata’s SB67 sideshow vehicle tow bill passed in the Senate this week with no dissenting votes, not surprisingly, and now goes to the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for consideration. It will not be surprising if Mr. Schwarzenegger signs it and thus propels it back into law, but it will be sad if he does. Fluidly, easily, without so much as a whimper of complaint from the usual civil liberties lobbies, California lops off a branch of the tree of Constitutional protections—the right of a citizen to due process before the seizure of property. But since the sideshows are so unpopular and the sideshow participants voiceless and unrepresented, we hardly think it matters, and wonder why this columnist—alone amongst all other sources—continues to make a fuss about it. 

It matters. 

It matters because Mr. Perata’s SB67 sideshow vehicle tow law—born in an Oakland experiment but available for application anywhere in the state—establishes and cements a precedent that allows police departments and cities throughout California to target “undesirable” elements in their jurisdiction, providing the ability to enact punishments without the bothersome necessity of having to first go before a court of law to determine that some law has been broken. 

That should bother us because history has taught that once granted such extra-constitutional abilities to be enacted against one set of “undesirables,” governments get greedy and seek the power to enact them against others, and soon enough what we thought was a solid and flowering tree of constitutional protection has been hacked and sawed round and round, beyond recognition. 

Already, ominously, it has begun to happen with SB67, even before the governor’s anticipated signature turns it into enforceable law. 

Some brief background. 

SB67 is the reinstatement of a bill originally passed in the sideshow hysteria of 2002, a bill that expired in January of this year after Oakland city and police officials failed to come back to the state legislature to provide information on how the original bill had been enforced, or why the bill was still needed. The original 2002 bill, the “U’Kendra Johnson Memorial Act,” the marriage of Oakland Police Department parsing and a local politician’s—Mr. Perata’s—desire to make a political gain out of a terrible tragedy. But to understand that you have to read carefully and patiently, all the way down to the end of the news accounts. 

At the bottom of last week’s MediaNews story (“Bill Meant To Put Dent In 'Sideshows'”) about the passage of SB67 in the assembly, MediaNews Sacramento Bureau reporter Steve Geissinger writes: “The reinstated law would again be named the U'Kendra K. Johnson Memorial Act, after a 22-year-old Oakland woman who was killed in 2002. A suspected sideshow participant being pursued by police crashed into the car Johnson was riding in.” 

“Pursued” is the operative word here. 

It is against Oakland Police Department policy to “chase” an individual accused of a non-felony crime, as was the case in the U’Kendra Johnson death, when Oakland police officers went after the car which they had observed “doing donuts” in the middle of Foothill Boulevard near Seminary. So to keep from admitting that they broke OPD policy and “chased” a driver for a minor traffic violation, the police officers involved and OPD officials have consistently said that police did not “chase” the driver, but only “pursued” him. The difference in wording meant little to U’Kendra Johnson, who died instantly when the “pursued” or “chased” car ran a stopsign on Seminary Avenue and plowed into the side of the car Johnson was riding in. But the difference in wording meant Oakland police were able to get away with not breaking an OPD policy that directly led to the death of an innocent Oakland citizen. That police can be so shady when asked to give their “word” should be a sobering enough thought as California citizens now contemplate the passage (or re-passage) of a bill that allows the confiscation of major pieces of property solely upon a police officer’s “word.” 

In Oakland, the original “U’Kendra Johnson Memorial Act” was designed to go after participants in Oakland’s sideshows, but since “sideshows” is not a term that is defined in state law, this has become a moving target aimed in many creative ways by Oakland police. 

The original state law somewhat loosely defined the offenses under which a vehicle could be towed and impounded for 30 days—the offenses being generally “reckless driving”—but that was not loose enough for some Oakland police officers. Instead, some of them enforced the state car confiscation law by using the definitions of sideshows contained in former Mayor Jerry Brown’s old arrest-the-sideshow-spectators Oakland city ordinance. Mr. Brown’s ordinance said that police could use several observations—cars spinning donuts, a large number of spectators, drivers playing their music loud, for example—to determine that a sideshow was going on. These occurrences were intended to be used in combination. Instead, some Oakland police took single occurrences—rather than the intended combinations of occurrences—out of the Oakland ordinance and then applied them to the state law. Thus you had the most infamous instances where Oakland police used the “U’Kendra Johnson Memorial Act” anti-sideshow law—written for violations of the state reckless driving statute—to tow and confiscate the car of a 35 year old basketball coach because the coach was driving through East Oakland taking team members home while allegedly playing his music too loud, something which the participating police officers said constituted participation in a sideshow. 

How has the original bill actually been enforced? Some media outlets, at least, think there is enough data available to make a determination. 

A Sept. 1 online California Chronicle article describing the passage of SB67 in the Assembly (“Perata Bill Cracking Down On Sideshows Clears Assembly Floor”) reads, in part, “The bill, SB 67, would reenact the provisions of SB 1489, also by Perata, that was signed into law in 2002 and contained a sunset date of January 1, 2007. The city of Oakland requested extending the law after collecting data showing that it was effective in keeping the streets of Oakland safe.”  

Really? The Oakland Police Department has never publicly released a report in Oakland, to my knowledge, showing data collected involving the enforcement of the original sideshow car confiscation bill, or what specific effect such enforcement had on sideshows in Oakland. Officials in the Oakland Police Department’s Records Division, in fact, have told me that they are unable to isolate such data between 2002 and 2004, the period when enforcement of the law was at its highest. So where is this data “collected” that is referred to in the California Chronicle article, and who was it “showed” to? I’ve asked repeatedly, and I haven’t seen it. 

Meanwhile, while Oakland police fail to provide information on how the original law was enforced in the past, we are getting a foretaste on possible expansion of the newly-enacted law’s targets in the future. 

In the same MediaNews article cited above, we learn that “(Governor) Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on SB67, but supporters expect him to sign it. … The governor also has been sympathetic toward Oakland's efforts to quell gang violence, which can spring from sideshows.” 

The “gang violence … can spring from sideshows” is the phrase that should stick out, here, if you’re astute and have been paying attention. 

Gang violence is one of the new buzz words in California political and law enforcement circles, a serious and rising problem into the curbing of which a lot of state attention and money is being poured. It is a particular problem in Oakland, the source of many of the murders which have taken place in the city over the past couple of years. 

But what is the connection between gang violence and sideshows? Do groups from different gangs make a habit of meeting at sideshows to fight? How much of the violence that takes place at sideshows can be attributed to gang rivalry? For that matter, how much violence takes place at sideshows? We have only anecdotal information, nothing more, because no official report written by any agency of the City of Oakland appears to exist that provides any documented evidence. And so we have a “solution” in hand, before we have determined or defined the problem. A bad way to run a government, as experience has taught us. 

We have already seen instances where vehicles were towed and confiscated in Oakland—incorrectly applying the state sideshow law—for someone simply playing their music too loud. With the turn towards curbing gang violence, will we soon see vehicles towed and confiscated on the word of police that the vehicle was displaying something which the police interpreted to be a gang “color?” And, if so, will this actually do anything to actually stop gang violence, or will it be a convenience merely to be used by (some) police and (some) politicians to “show” that “something is being done about the problem, your civil servants are serving you, and your tax dollars are at work.” 

There was a simple fix that would have remedied all of this, at least with regard to the new introduced “U’Kendra Johnson Memorial Act,” Mr. Perata’s SB67. Instead of allowing the 30-day car confiscation to take place immediately, upon the police officer’s word that a violation had occurred, with the towing and storage fees to be reimbursed if the charges were not proven in court, the act could have been amended so that the towing and confiscation could not take place until a conviction in court on the underlying offense. That would have preserved our Constitutional protections—which we say are supposed to be important—at the same time keeping intact all of the punishments in SB67 which supporters say are important. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anybody interested in making this change to the bill. 

I worry about the loss of constitutional protections which are at the heart of Mr. Perata’s bill. I worry that it happened so easily, in the State of California, with almost no dissent. I worry about what will come next. 

I worry that the rest of us don’t seem to be worried. 

A hundred years ago, a sizable population of refugees from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire made the East Bay its permanent home. Among the new arrivals were many Italian families, a good number of whom settled in West Berkeley. 

One shrewd capitalist immediately recognized in this new demographic trend a business opportunity that was too good to pass up. His name was Simone Marengo, and he was an old-timer, having been a West Berkeley homeowner since 1891 or ’92. 

A debonair figure, his stocky 5’2” frame invariably clad in a custom-made three-piece suit and a homburg hat on his head, Marengo (1867–1941) was a man of substance and authority, later to become known as West Berkeley’s unofficial mayor. 

He learned capitalism the hard way. Born in the Cuneo province of Piemonte in northern Italy, Simone completed only the third grade of elementary school before his father apprenticed him to a baker, where he slaved carrying immense sacks of flour. His conscription to the army was a welcome release from years of back-breaking labor, but halfway through his mandatory year of service, Simone’s father died. Aged 20, the young man had to provide for his mother, three sisters, and younger brother. America beckoned, and the family sailed to New York. 

Arriving in San Francisco in 1888, Simone began as a window washer. Before long, he had figured out that the road to affluence could be considerably shortened if he let others do the work. As a window-cleaning contractor, he prospered. By 1892—a mere four years after his arrival in the Bay Area—Simone was listed on the Alameda County assessor’s rolls as the owner of a house at 2216 Sixth St. in West Berkeley. 

The Marengo house was a spacious two-story Victorian with a well and a windmill in the rear. In this house, Simone and Natalina Marengo reared six children, five of whom survived to adulthood. In 1906 their extended San Francisco family found refuge in and around this house, as the Army erected a tent village on the adjacent open land. 

That year, Simone’s holdings in the assessor’s rolls still consisted of the one lot on which his house stood. By 1907, however, he was the owner of three houses on the 2200 block of Sixth St. and a lot at 2215 Fifth. 

One can only conclude that Marengo saw the growth potential of Berkeley and capitalized on it without delay. His San Francisco business having burned out, he devised a new stream of income in his own neighborhood. The two other houses on Sixth St. were rented to newcomers. For the empty lot on Fifth Street, he had a grander idea: the new population had to eat—why not manufacture pasta? 

On April 20, 1907, the Oakland Tribune printed a photo of the just-opened West Berkeley Macaroni Factory, a two-story building with a false front, shiplap siding, and rows of windows on front and sides. The accompanying story revealed that the factory’s construction had begun the previous November and that it covered an area of 46 ft. x 60 ft. and was equipped with the latest “improved” machinery. “The firm,” announced the Tribune, “has been doing business in Oakland and Berkeley for 19 years. S. Morengo [sic], the manager, is a baker by trade and sells to retail and wholesale companies 5,000 pounds daily. The establishment manufactures all kinds of paste and employs fifteen skilled workmen.” 

Whether the firm existed at all prior to the 1907 opening of the factory remains to be discovered. In his prior 15 or 16 years as a Berkeley resident, Simone never manufactured pasta. He was variously listed as a laborer, window cleaner, or house cleaner. In 1896, he operated a general merchandise store on the corner of 7th St. and Bristol (now Hearst Avenue). His chief associate and successor in the macaroni factory was Peter “Papa Pete” Costamagna, a San Francisco storekeeper a few years older than Marengo who had arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1880s. The skilled workers were new immigrants from Italy. Most likely, the firm’s résumé was a yarn that Marengo fed the newspaper for effect and credibility. 

According to his son Carlo, who still lives in West Berkeley, Simone Marengo was an articulate man with almost no trace of Italian accent. He was a natural promoter, even visiting local schools to tout the nutritional benefits of pasta. Costamagna, who settled at 728 Allston Way, was listed in the 1907 directory as “helper” and the following year as “driver, S. Marengo.” In 1921, Marengo and Costamagna would become in-laws as the former’s son married the latter’s step-daughter. 

Like many entrepreneurs, Marengo was more interested in creating the business than in running it. In 1908, Costamagna took over as manager, and a year later, he brought in Giuseppe Bertolè, a pasta maker recently arrived from Italy, who lived at Costamagna’s house. The business became known as Costamagna & Bertolè, and Marengo’s role was reduced to that of landlord. 

The firm’s stationery listed the types of pasta manufactured: “maccaroni [sic], spaghetti, vermicelli, tagliarini, mustaciolli [sic], ditalini, riginette, lasagnette, lasagne, stars, barley and all kinds of fine paste.” 

In 1914, Giovanni Coppa came in as co-owner, and the firm incorporated as West Berkeley Macaroni Company. Eventually “Papa Pete” retired, and the company continued under the ownership of Bertolè and Coppa. 

Meanwhile, Marengo wasn’t sitting idle. Through his eldest sister and her husband, he discovered investment opportunities in Redding, CA and began doing business there in 1906. Among his acquisitions were buildings, lots, and ranch land. 

The most notorious of his Redding properties was the Palm Hotel at 510 Division St.—a two-story structure with a saloon on the ground floor and rooms arranged in a row along a balcony above. This establishment catered to the miners who would come into town after long stints in the nearby gold and copper mines. Behind the hotel lived a troupe of prostitutes—in 1910 there were 10, three of whom were French and none Italian—who were available to the hotel’s clients, apparently as independent operators. Marengo derived his income—often in gold dust—by supplying accommodations, food, and oceans of beer. 

On the hotel’s permanent staff was Mrs. Marengo’s brother, Thomas Olivieri. The Marengos’ two eldest sons, Victor and George, served stints as barkeepers. Around 1918, the hotel burned down, with suspicion of arson falling on a disgruntled prostitute who had been evicted by Simone. Carlo Marengo says that his father replaced the hotel with a brick building, which he leased to the local Buick agency. 

Back in Berkeley, the Bertolè & Coppa pasta factory came to an end in the mid-1920s. Coppa retired, and Bertolè, who continued making pasta, moved to Oakland. For a while, the building was occupied by a company calling itself Radio Food Products, but the health department closed the operation because the boiler tanks had rusted. In the late 1920s, the building was used by a chemical works. Having been expanded in the rear years ago, the structure was now clad in wood shingles. 

During the Depression, the former macaroni factory stood empty, and many of its windows were broken. Simone Marengo finally leased it to the Nursery Cans and Containers Co., which obtained defective food cans from nearby canneries—like the Heinz factory on San Pablo Avenue—and recycled them for potting plants. 

Even during the hard times, Marengo knew how to cope. He allowed his tenants to remain in their houses even if they could pay no rent, figuring it would be better for the houses to be occupied. In his back yard, he grew vegetables and chickens for the family table. He made his own wine in the cellar, annually buying a ton and a half of grapes for the purpose. After repeatedly crushing the grapes for every last drop, the leftovers were fed to the chickens. 

Always a bon vivant, Marengo frequently entertained family and friends at gatherings where wine and song abounded. His closest friend was John A. Carbone, the “Orchid King,” whose large flower nursery was located on Fifth Street, directly behind the Marengo house. 

Following Simone’s death, his heirs disposed of his various properties. The former macaroni factory was sold in 1948 to the Berkeley Pump Co., which removed the windows on the side walls and stuccoed the exterior. 

Of the various Marengo properties on the block, the macaroni factory is the only survivor. In 1991, the building was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark, Structure of Merit. It was restored in 1994 and serves as the office of an environmental consulting firm. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson  

The Berkeley Macaroni Factory at 2215 Fifth St.

Watering plants in containers is both easier and harder than it seems. Everyone has a vice about this, generally a tendency to either overwater or underwater. (If your tendency either way is impossible to reform, you might consider underwater plants. Go on over to Albany Aquarium on San Pablo Avenue just north of Solano and have a look at some nicely planted tanks first.) 

Overwatering does not mean adding too much water at one time; it means watering too frequently. If your planting mix and pot together have decent drainage, any excess water will run through and the plant’s roots will get access to the air they need in due time.  

If you water too often, though, roots will stay soggy and ultimately rot and/or drown. Fungi are pretty much ubiquitous and will show up in even “sterile” (usually just pasteurized, which is quite good enough) potting mixes because their little bitty spores are part of house and general urban dust.  

In fact, if you want to give yourself the heebie-jeebies, do a bit of research about what’s floating around us all the time. You’ll never trim your nose hairs again. Ever think about where the rubber is going as tires are wearing out? Uh-huh, you’re soaking in it. And spores of all sorts, mineral particulates, industrial outfall, pollen, little bits of dead bugs et alii, dander, shed skin cells, the excretions of dust mites which live on those shed skin cells… Dust mite allergies are partly allergies to the dung of those dust mites. You’re inhaling bug poo! No wonder you’re sneezing! 

But I digress. (And I’m allergic.) Some fungi are a necessary part of life for many plants. The magic phrase is “mycorrhizal association.” Most container plants, though, aren’t mycorrhizal associates. If you have a plant of local origin in a pot and it needs a boost, you might try a tablespoon or two of the earth from which it sprang, what the heck. 

A plant that’s succumbing to the ills of overwatering will look rather as if it needs more water: leaves drooping, bits yellowing or browning off. If it actually falls over, give it a respectful burial in the compost because chances are it’s rotted right through at the root crown.  

Stick your finger in the plant’s soil mix, if you want to know anything about its water. If it’s damp and the plant’s drooping, worry. I don’t mean the surface; get down to a knuckle or two below the top. If it stinks, also big trouble: stagnant water. Unpot the plant, gently shake off some of the wet soil, and repot with some new dry soil. Then vow to change your ways. 

Even succulents need water in pots, but they’re most susceptible to overwatering. Again, stick that finger in. If your plant has spines or points or vegetable fangs, keep a scrap of cardstock handy to shield yourself. If that doesn’t work, consider investing a few bucks in a soil water indicator; you can probe painlessly and watch the meter.  

Resource: Plant sales at Merritt College on Saturdays: Sept. 15, Oct. 13, Nov. 17, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. See www.merrittlandhort.com for updated plant lists.  

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

Everybody has a little internal list of least favorite ways to die. Some of these are rational, but mostly they’re derived from some fantasy, childhood experience or errant datum we’ve chanced upon. Perhaps we were children and heard an awful story. Maybe we encountered saw someone killed in a movie—lots of those, aren’t there?! Perhaps it was simply a story related by a friend. Regardless of the source we all have these.  

I think these fears extend into injuries as well and not just to the finality of death. I know that, for myself, certain kinds of sickness are nearly unbearable while others, and these may be the dread of another, are sort of no big deal. For example (am I grossing you out yet?) I have little fear of bleeding, having cut myself about a thousand times and sometimes rather severely. It might be a carpenter thing. Those of us who have built houses and handled tools are fairly accustomed to sucking our own blood while we wait for a promised coagulation. 

While I do not fear a death by blood loss nearly so much as numerous other fates, I am much aware that it is a common way to leave the humanosphere. In the late 1970’s deaths caused by glass lacerations were so common that the Consumer Product Safety Commission created a series of heavy guidelines that continue and grow today.  

What was happening was mostly one of two things. People were either walking through glass patio doors (OW!!) or striking and breaking shower doors or enclosures (OW again!). Blood loss can kill you in minutes if the damage is sufficient. The carotid (neck) or femoral (leg) arteries, when sliced, can bleed out in five minutes. Basically this means that you simply do not have the time to get adequate medical help. Again, sorry. This is so awful to discuss but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s important; mostly because there are real answers and valuable actions that CAN be taken. 

The glass industry, much aware of these issues (who gets sued, after all?) began in the early 1960s to produce shower and patio doors of a relatively new material called tempered glass. The easiest way to think of tempering is to visualize a vandalized car. Those funny little squarish pebbles of glass that litter the ground are the remains of tempered glass. Tempered glass, invented by the Austrian chemist, Rudolph Seiden (b.1900), is made by heating one side of a sheet of heat-strengthened glass to a higher temperature than the other and then cooling it very rapidly. This creates a tension between the two faces of glass that forces it to crack perpendicular to the plane of the glass, rather than in sharp shards that can cut through my sensitive and incredibly important body. Breaking perpendicular to the surface of the glass creates little squarish pebbles and, while these may cause abrasion, will spare us the nastier experience when we strike and break a sheet of glass. Danke schön, Herr Seiden! 

Let’s talk about patio sliding glass doors just a bit. I feel as though the greatest danger with these is where there is a distant objective that acts as an incentive to speed. Let’s say you have a swimming pool surrounded by happy people and clam dip twenty feet from the door and a good twelve or fourteen feet of room to cross toward the door leading to the pool. Now, let’s say that the door is clean and there’s nothing to alert one to the presence of the glass. You might, as many before you have done, assume that door is open. You see, it looks almost the same open or closed if the glass is clean. You might then be walking at 5 mph by the time you hit the glass. Some just walk right through and this, of course, it usually tragic. 

If you have a non-tempered sliding glass door please consider replacing it with a new one. These days you can’t buy anything BUT tempered glass doors unless you buy something used. If you’re really strapped for funds, there are two alternatives. The first is to put a safety film on the glass. These films are commonly available and help limit the nature of the breakage. The film is essentially a sheet of strong sticky plastic that holds the shards of glass together and prevents deep laceration. A very cheap alternative is to put stickers on the glass door so as to alert the potential victim to the fact that the door is present. This is a better but bad choice (all you parent know about these choices, right?). The point is that any action is better than none but given the concern level, replacement is the wise choice. 

So how do you know if you have a non-tempered glass door? Tempered glass nearly always bears a tempering mark or “bug” in one corner of the glass, usually at the bottom. The mark is sort of a glass tattoo, heat fused onto the glass and somewhat translucent. You may have to wash the door to find the mark. Well, HAVE you washed the sliding glass door in the last five years? If the door has no discernable mark, it is extremely likely that this door is low strength glass and dangerous. By the way, these same marks are used on all forms of tempered glass and you’ll recognize them as being similar to the ones seen on your car windows. 

Aside from breaking in such a mannerly and genteel fashion, tempered glass is also less likely to break at all, being roughly 4-6 times the strength of common glass. Laminated glass is another form of safety glass but less desirable than tempered due to the fact that it will still crack sharply and grab little flaps of skin (sorry) as one bounces off the plastic-reinforced sheet. Wired safety glass is a much older form and again, while safer than common float glass, can still do tremendous harm when compared with our beloved tempered glass. 

Shower doors are another major concern and have been the subject of the building codes for about 30 years. While no one is making anyone remove older ones, it has been impossible to buy a new untempered shower door or enclosure since the 1970s. Again, tempered ones have been available since the early 60’s but enforcement has taken time to catch up with manufacturer wisdom. What all this means is that you may still have a shower enclosure that can kill or injure someone who does nothing more malicious than swing around, elbows out, and smack the door.  

Today, none of the glass in a bathing area below 5’ and none of the glass in either an enclosure or a shower door may be non-safety type. This includes windows in the shower or bathing area as well as mirrors. Some special exceptions are made for art glass. 

The more we learn about the danger of glass in our houses, the more extensive the list of uses or places where we want to use safety glass grows. Here are a few of the other places we want to be looking out for: 

Windows that nearly reach the ground are vulnerable to kicking, rolling objects and children at play. Most codes today demand that where glass is within 18” of the ground, it should be tempered.  

Where glass is in any kind of door, including those multi-lite “French” doors, it should also be tempered. Again, unless you buy an old used door, you just can’t find a non-tempered “French” door. Nobody makes ‘em. 

Glass that is within about two feet of a door (sidelites) should be tempered due to the shock of a slammed door. Many a marital dispute has ended with the crash of such a window (followed by that most absurd of proclamations, “See what you made me do?”). 

Mirrored sliding closet doors (how I hate having to see myself that much) are not required to be tempered in most communities but must be adhered to a backing that prevents those nasty pieces from coming free. Nonetheless, you can buy these in tempered glass and this gets my vote. 

These are the traditional areas that we in the home inspection business have been looking at for decades- but wait, there’s more! Now the building codes are asking us to look at all glass in the walking path. If you can walk within three feet of any large glass pane (>9 s.f.) that is close to floor level (>18”) and at least three feet high, the new codes are asking that this be make of tempered safety glass. My guess is that we’re just a few years away from ALL of our windows being made of safety glass. It may seem like a pain but in the long run, we’ll look back in disbelief that we ever lived so blithely with such treachery. 

The code is also speaking to glass used in railings as well and thank Buddha! What crazier place than a stair railing might you use glass? Actually, I think glass is very cool and love it in all these odd places but I feel a lot better about that platform-heeled mom in short-shorts and a tee as she walks down the glassed-in stairway knowing that when the worst case occurs and she losses her footing, that the paramedics will spend most of their time complimenting her voluntary piercings and no time treating the involuntary ones. 

Since the invasion of Iraq, in March of 2003, George W. Bush’s rationale for the occupation has continually shifted. On Aug. 22, the White House once again changed its criterion for success. As disturbing as this is, what’s more disturbing is the new justification: keep Iraq from becoming another Vietnam. 

America invaded Iraq as retribution for the alleged complicity between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and because Iraq was said to harbor weapons of mass destruction that were an imminent threat to the United States The Bush administration’s original justification for the occupation was to find the WMDs. When none were located, the rationale shifted to establishing Iraq as a model democracy. When Iraq’s new government floundered, the criterion changed: the United States would train Iraqi forces until they provided the security needed for the fledgling government to function. As the Iraqi security forces faltered, U.S. forces were bolstered—the “surge”—and it was implied they would remain until the government matured.  

On Aug. 22, Bush again changed the rationale and compared Iraq to Vietnam. “One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens.” “If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened ... Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America.” 

Fortunately, the Iraq Study Group, a non-partisan body, assayed the prospects of the occupation last year. Their report observed, “There is no action that the American military can take that, by itself, can bring about success in Iraq.” They cautioned, “The United States should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq.” 

On Aug. 22 President Bush made the open-ended troop commitment the ISG recommended against and claimed, “Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror—but it’s the central front.” Disturbingly, Rudy Giuliani and other front-runners for the 2008 Republican nomination for President share Bush’s position that Iraq is the center of the war on terror. 

There are three problems with Bush’s argument. The first is that most observers believe we are primarily fighting Iraqi insurgents rather than al Qaeda. The second is that the administration is determinedly pursuing a strategy the ISG strongly recommended against because it would weaken U.S. security. And, there is a critical third problem: it is a continuation of his “war on terror.” In her July 29 New York Times article, terrorism expert Samantha Power observed that this Bush administration policy has been counter-productive: “The administration’s tactical and strategic blunders have crippled American military readiness; exposed vulnerabilities in training, equipment and force structure; and accelerated terrorist recruitment. In short, although the United States has not been directly hit since 9/11, we are less safe as a result of the Bush administration’s rhetoric, conduct and strategy.” 

Despite compelling arguments to the contrary, George W. Bush intends to continue to deploy large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq. Remarkably, the Republican Party has adopted Bush’s fight-them-there-not-here stance. The basis for this is not a clear-eyed understanding of the nature of Islamic terrorism, but rather Party orthodoxy. 

Many leading Republicans, including Presidential candidate John McCain, agree with Bush that the United States made a mistake withdrawing from Vietnam. They believe that if American troops had stayed, they would have won the war. They argue that Vietnam was not lost because of poor decision-making and squandered opportunities, but rather because the United States lost the will to continue. Many claim that Richard Nixon had no choice but to bring that war to end, because defeatist Democrats turned public opinion against it. 

This Republican orthodoxy sees a parallel between Iraq and Vietnam. The United States could have “won” in Vietnam if it had the will to persevere. The United States can still “win” in Iraq if we stay the course. Therefore, Giuliani, McCain and most of the other Republican presidential candidates are unwilling to countenance any withdrawals on Bush’s watch. They see themselves as real men, while war opponents are cowardly defeatists. 

Thus, the terms of the debate over Iraq could not be clearer. Republicans see Iraq as the forefront of the battle against Islamic terrorists and argue that success is dependent on America’s will to prevail. War opponents see Iraq as a dangerous distraction that has made the United States less safe. They contend that national security is dependent upon our leaders regaining their senses and insisting on a rational decision process: one that has clear standards for success and holds people accountable for bad decisions. 

In the early days of the Bush administration, they boasted of their “faith-based” initiatives. Little did any of us suspect at the time that Iraq would become a faith-based initiative. Now, this has become the Republican rallying cry: Keep supporting the administration and we’ll eventual have “victory” in Iraq. No matter what the cost there must be no more Vietnams. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net. 

Although you wouldn’t expect a book about metabolic ecology to be a page-turner, I found John Whitfield’s recent In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature engrossing. Whitfield, a British science journalist, explains how metabolism relates to size, volume, and surface area. Along the way, he looks at why bats outlive mice, whether humans are allotted a fixed number of heartbeats in their lifetime (astronaut Neil Armstrong said that if that was true, he was damned if he was going to waste any of his jogging), and the tragic fate of Tusko the elephant. 

Tusko, a bull Asian elephant at the Oklahoma City zoo, was the recipient of the largest hit of LSD ever administered to a living organism—297 milligrams, right in the rump, back in 1962. Psychiatrist L. Jolyon West was trying to induce musth, a state of apparent derangement to which male elephants are prone during the breeding season. West and his associates calculated the dose by extrapolating in linear fashion from the amount required to make a cat hallucinate. 

It was too much, of course. Tusko staggered despite his mate Judy’s attempts to support him, trumpeted, collapsed on his side, and began having seizures. He was pronounced dead an hour and 40 minutes later. Scale matters. The results were published in the prestigious journal Science, with the following summation: “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD—a finding which may prove to be valuable in elephant-control work in Africa.” 

Size isn’t the only variable affecting metabolism. Some creatures are able to bank their internal fires during periods of extreme cold or heat and scarce resources, living on stored body fat: aestivating ground squirrels, hibernating bears, those male emperor penguins guarding their eggs through the Antarctic winter. It’s a risky strategy. Once fat levels fall below 10 percent of body mass, the animal has to burn its own protein—effectively digesting itself.  

Snakes, like other living reptiles, were known to keep their thermostats set lower than mammals or birds (the dinosaurs may have been different). But it was unclear until recently how they endured periods of food deprivation. As you will have noticed if you’ve ever handled a snake—something I would recommend, although not necessarily in a spiritual context—snakes don’t have much fat on them.  

To explore that question, Marshall McCue, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas, worked with captive ball pythons, rat snakes, and western diamondback rattlesnakes. The reptiles, in cages that constrained their activity, were kept at a constant 80.6 degrees F, limiting their body temperatures. They were deprived of food for up to 168 days while McCue recorded their oxygen consumption. Snakes were sacrificed at various set points during the experiment and their fat and protein levels measured; McCue went through a lot of snakes during this project. 

The snakes were able to lower their resting metabolic demands by up to 72 percent. “It would seem that their pilot light, which we already thought to be as low as possible, can actually go much lower,” McCue told a reporter for Nature. Their fat levels fell to 5 percent, which would have doomed most other vertebrates.  

And they accomplished this without going dormant. They stayed alert enough to attempt to bite their handlers; if a tasty rat had been offered, they would have been right on it. Some even managed to grow while starving.  

The rat snakes began to break down protein sooner than the rattlers or pythons, which makes ecological sense. Rat snakes are active pursuit predators; the others are ambush predators, more likely to experience significant lag time between meals. But the fact that snakes from three diverse lineages, including the relatively underived (it’s bad form to say “primitive”) pythons, share the ability suggests it’s an ancient trait in this group of reptiles. 

McCue uses an economic metaphor: the snakes reduce energy demand by lowering their metabolic rate and cope with the supply side by frugal use of their fat reserves. Just how they do this remains uncertain: maybe by reducing the density of mitochondria—the energy-generating powerhouses of the cells—in liver, heart, and other highly active tissues. 

All this may explain how snakes lucked out at the end of the Cretaceous, when some combination of extraterrestrial impact and volcanism killed off the dominant reptile groups—the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, the great sea dragons. With whole ecosystems trashed and food webs disrupted, being able to just shut down for a few months would have had enormous survival value.  

According to McCue, the snake study may have practical spinoffs in monitoring nutritional success—more than can be said for the experiment that left the unfortunate Tusko a martyr to science.  

Photograh by Ron Sullivan. A gopher snake relaxing between meals near the Richmond shoreline.  

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees. 

Department of Corrections: the photograph of the California clapper rail accompanying my Arrowhead Marsh article was taken by Ron Sullivan.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 7 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Urinetown, The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 6. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Hysteria” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Sept. 30. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Black Repertory Group “Secret War” Fri.-Sun. at 2:30 and 8 p.m., Gala Sept. 15. Tickets are $25-$35. 652-2120. www.BlackRepertoryGroup.com 

Impact Theatre “Sleepy” opens at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. and runs to Oct. 13. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “The Shadow Box” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. matinees, at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. This show is not recommended for children. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Sept. 16. Tickets are$23-$36. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Heading North: Journey to Atacama Desert, Chile” Photographs by Thea Bellos. Artist reception at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“The Sacred in the Mundane” works by Pauletta M. Chanco. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

“Down There” New Work by Ayako Higo and Meadow Presley at 7 p.m. at Front Gallery, 35 Grand Ave., Oakland. 444-1900. 

“Distractions” Works by Janelle Renée. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at The Gallery at Lavezzo Designs, 5751 Horton St., Emeryville. 428-2384. 

“Food for Thought” Works by Barbara Garber, Vita Hewitt and Laura Parker. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. www.chandracerrito.com 

FILM 

“War Made Easy” narrated by Sean Penn at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Zubeidaa” with filmmaker Shyam Benegal, at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Sunset Cinema: “Mighty Warriors of Comedy” about an Asian American sketch comedy group from San Francisco, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

“Great Wall of Oakland” Prjected video and improvisational music at 8:30 p.m. on Grand Ave., just west of Broadway. www.aoklandculturalarts.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

Jim Ryan & Friends at 8 p.m. at Free-Jazz Fridays at the Jazz House, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 415-846-9432. 

E.W. Wainwright’s Tribute to Elvin Jones at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Adam Shulman Quartet, jazz and pop at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 845-1350.  

Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Iris Dement at 8 p.m. at The Thrust Stage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Baha and Sam Coble at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Sleepyboy Moe, The Slow Poisoner, L. Cooper at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Du Uy Quintet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Cari Lee & the Saddle-ites at 9 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810.  

MDC 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. 

Kenny Burrell & The Jazz Heritage All-stars at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 8 

CHILDREN  

“The Panchatantra: Animal Lessons from India” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “The Three Musketeers” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkle Park, Southampton Ave., off The Arlington, through Sept. 9. Free. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

The Crucible’s Fall Open House Celebrating Art & Community frp, 2 to 6 p.m., followed by Artist-in-Residence Reception from 6 tp 8 p.m. at 1260 7th St., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Niloufer Ichaporia introduces delicacies from “My Bombay Ckitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Mozart, Mendelssohn & Brahms” with Tom Rose, calrinet, Darcy Rindt, viola, and Lynn Schugren, piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St.. Tickets are $18-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Iris Dement at 8 p.m. at The Thrust Stage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Stephen Taylor-Ramirez, Fontain’s M.U.S.E., The Simple Things at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Beyond Walls, Beyond Wars with Georges Lamman, presented by the Arab Cultural Initiative at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dana Kemp’s Gateswingers Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Central Perk, 10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito. 558-7375.  

Eric Swinderman Quartet In Pursuit of Sound at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Sukhawat Ali Khan Band, The Wingin It Experience at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Del Rey & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Diablo’s Dust, Fernando Tarango at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Izabella, Cas Lucas, Mattt Lucas at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886.  

Dangerous Rhythm with Tim Fox at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473.  

The Ravines at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Royal Hawaiian Serenaders at 9 p.m. at Temple Bar Tiki Bar & Grill, 984 University Ave. 548-9888. 

Rock ‘N’ Roll Adventure Kids at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Bitches Brew at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 9 

THEATER 

Kung Pao Kosher Comedy “A Muslim, A Mormon, and A Jew Walk into A Bar” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“graham + erikson”A sculpture and photography exhibit at the Addison St. Windows, 2018 Addison St. Sidewalk reception at 3 p.m. 981-7533. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nathaniel Tarn and H.C. ten Berge read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Conversations on Art “Art and Memory: An Intergenerational Conversation with Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett at 2 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tessa Loehwig & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Evening for the Buffalo featuring Mike Mease and Phoenix & Afterbuffalo. Presentation at 7:30 p.m., show at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Skinny String Gals at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged with The Stairwell Sisters at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“They Called Me Mayer July” Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust opens at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., and runs to Jan. 13. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Robert Reich reads from his new book “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations requested. 559-9500. 

Peter Neumeyer discusses children’s literature and his new book “The Annotated Charlotte’s Web” at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Actors Reading Writers “Dream a Little Dream” stories by Lawrence Block, Thomas Meehan and James Thurber at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Brent Cunningham, Bill Luoma and Cynthia Sailers read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Buford Buntin at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nada Lewis, French cafe music, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Conjunto Karabali at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 11 

THEATER 

Lynn Manning “Weights” A one-man show of narrative and poetry on Mnning’s experiences as a blind man, at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Sponsored by UCB’s Disability Studies Program and Institute for Regional Development. Tickets are $15-$25. 925-798-1300.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash An Open Reading for Peace at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Celine Parrenas Shimizu author of “Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Daniel Cassidy describes “How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bethany & Rufus at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. w 

Carioca, Brazilian guitariat, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

New Works by Carol Dalton and Emily Payne opens at the Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St., upstairs. 549-1018. 

“Wall Writings” A photographic investigation of abandonned buildings by Michelle Nye. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at The Light Room Gallery, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jazz Masters Concert with Danny Caron, blues guitarist, at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Kevin Yu, cello and Chen Chen, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Ravi Abcarian Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Obeyjah and Buxter Hooten, benefit for Berkeley Television, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Pellejo Seco at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Brass Liberation Orchestra, Lloyd Family Players, Gamelon X, March Fourth Marching Band at 8 p.m. at Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell St., Oakland. All ages. Cost is $8-$15.  

Kids and Hearts at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

John Lester, Michael Manring at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Chuchito Valdez at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 13 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention Panel discussion with Donna Ray Norton, Rich Hartness, Lee Stripling at 11:30 a.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. www.BerkeleyOldTimeMusic.org 

“The Port Chicago Mutiny” by Robert L. Allen Presentation, film clip and Q & A with author at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books 2425 Channing Way at Telegraph, under the Sather Gate Parking Garage. 848-1196. 

Peter Thomson describes “Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Donna Ray Norton, Rich Hartness & Frineds, Todalo Shakers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Linda Zuliaca & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Chris Jones at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Hiroshima at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

NADA LEWIS PLAYS 

Nada Lewis will play the accordian at 7 p.m. Monday at Le Bateau Ivre. The evening will feature two sets of French tunes, Parisian cafe melodies, valse musette gems, and perhaps a few central European pieces. This is music for dinner or something light, a family gathering, a glass of wine with friends, a sweet dance, or coffee and dessert at the end of your day. No cover charge. Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. www.lebateauivre.net.

Under a suspended crocodile in the parlor of a country home which resembles a ship’s salon, with walls covered in primitive masks and scimitars, a female servant (Lynne Soffer as Nurse Guinness) is sympathizing with a newly arrived, ungreeted—perhaps forgotten--guest: “Since she’s forgotten all about it, it will be a pleasant surprise for her to see you!” 

This is just the first arrival in a madcap stream of entrances: obviously eccentric denizens, past and present, and visitors to what the neglected (and seemingly normal) young lady, Ellie Dunn (Allison Jean White), later dubs Heartbreak House, after her only flirtation with high romance is revealed as just another compulsive interlude of wishful seduction by the husband, Hector Hushabye (Stephen Caffrey), of her hostess, Heshione (Michelle Morain). 

But the seemingly normal young woman, her brusque older intended husband (David Chandler as “Captain of Industry” Boss Mangan) and even a prepossessing burglar (Chris Ayles) will all be revealed as eccentrics themselves before the strange menage (and all of eccentro-centric England) gets derailed from its elaborate (and very comic) round of games, self-explanations and handwringing by a worldwide crisis greater by far than any of their own provincial, self-imposed wrangles in Bernard Shaw’s inverted comic masterwork, which opens Berkeley Rep’s 40th anniversary season. 

The panoply of strange customers who set up shop in the home of irascible Capt. Shotover (Michael Winters), who “sold his soul to the devil in Zanzibar,” seems to establish a square root of not-so-Goethean elective affinities, at first one with another, then hilariously multiplying. Each character alternately seems to feel and explain, at great, glib length, attraction to and/or repulsion for the others, one by one.  

This doesn’t include the game of animal magnetism practiced by Ella over Boss Mangan, nor the recognition or revelation of identities and past relationships, which kick off with an open, if neatly sidestepped, secret: the return home, after a quarter century among colonial rulers, of the younger of “the demonic sisters,” Ariadne, now Lady Utterword (Susan Wilder), trailed by her ne’er-do-well flautist brother-in-law, Randall (Michael Ray Wisely).  

“Young people understand nowadays a soul is an expensive thing to keep, more expensive than a motorcar,” says the Captain. But this Manichean socialist, holding forth on the more-than-class differences of “our seed and theirs,” sits at his drafting table making his quickly dissipated fortune inventing clever new armaments for mass slaughter. 

The cast is well up to a long evening’s comedy, especially the Shotover family—Captain and demon daughters—and the burglar who intends to be caught in the act. Chris Ayles’ entrance in the role picks up the pace and opens up the humor considerably.  

But director Les Waters has staged the play as a version of a later, more cinematic convention: screwball comedy. This skews the timing of Shaw’s marvelous lines and overloads (and slows down) what should be a satire with a zany, schtick-laden treatment of a cooly stylized stagepiece of great originality. 

Though the program mentions critical awareness of Shaw’s playing off Chekhov, there’s no sense of his parody, even burlesque, of the cult of Russian plays and novels—or of Oscar Wilde and Aestheticism, for that matter—which flourished among the would-be Bohemians of England’s Georgian middle class.  

Shaw, in his own way, covered similar ground as poet Ezra Pound did in his “Moeurs Contemporains” and novelist Ford Madox Ford did in some of the character and milieu studies in his Parade’s End quaternity of novels. All blasted the involuted English ego in its game of hide-and-seek, fiddling very artistically while Rome burned. Ford Madox Ford wrote in the ‘20s how he—and so many others—discounted the crises leading up to The Great War, so sure were they that the Labour Party, the Socialists in France, German Social Democrats, and independents generally would prevent a war. The house of cards rapidly fell, and many artists and poets were the first to fall in the carnage that followed. 

The program notes also make an unconvincing argument for the “surrealism” of Shaw’s charming, smarmy grotesques. What’s missed, both in the notes and too often on stage, is the hyper-self-aware quality actors of Shaw’s plays ideally adopt toward the characters they portray, one reason Bertolt Brecht acclaimed the Irish master of the English stage as genius and role model. 

As usual, The Rep’s production is sumptuous—Annie Smart’s set, Anna Oliver’s costumes, Alexander Nichols’ lighting, and the sound design and original music by Obadiah Eaves add up to a diverting, spectacular picture of the period—too much so. It’s more a setting for Galsworthy than for Shaw, a confection worthy of Masterpiece Theatre, complete with wigs. 

“How is this all going to end?” says one of the characters. Not with a whimper, but a bang, contradicting the Captain’s admonition, “I say let the heart break in silence” ... a dourly funny line after all the talk, all the fuss and nonsense of this bunch chasing their own tails.  

The Rep’s production does provoke occasional bursts of laughter at the spirited antics of the actors and at Shaw’s ingenious text, a bitter rebound off the wall of conventional comedy, but its stylization of laughter and reflection are mainly ignored. 

Contributed photo. Susan Wilder and Lynne Soffer in Heartbreak House, Shaw’s comedic masterpiece staged by Obie-winner Les Waters for Berkeley Rep’s 40th birthday. 

Heartbreak House 

The Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. 

throught Oct. 14 

647-2900 

www.berkeleyrep.org

Cal Performances has started a rush ticket program for community members. For select performances, Cal Performances offers UC Berkeley student, faculty and staff, senior and community rush tickets. Rush tickets are announced two hours prior to a performance and are available in person only at the ticket office beginning one hour before the performance; quantities may be limited. Rush ticket sales are limited to one ticket per person; all sales are cash only. Rush ticket prices are $10 for UC Berkeley students; $15 for UC Berkeley faculty and staff (UCB ID required) and seniors age 65 or older; and $20 for all other community members. Information is available at 642-9988 (press 2 for the rush hotline) two hours prior to a performance only.

A hundred years ago, a sizable population of refugees from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire made the East Bay its permanent home. Among the new arrivals were many Italian families, a good number of whom settled in West Berkeley. 

One shrewd capitalist immediately recognized in this new demographic trend a business opportunity that was too good to pass up. His name was Simone Marengo, and he was an old-timer, having been a West Berkeley homeowner since 1891 or ’92. 

A debonair figure, his stocky 5’2” frame invariably clad in a custom-made three-piece suit and a homburg hat on his head, Marengo (1867–1941) was a man of substance and authority, later to become known as West Berkeley’s unofficial mayor. 

He learned capitalism the hard way. Born in the Cuneo province of Piemonte in northern Italy, Simone completed only the third grade of elementary school before his father apprenticed him to a baker, where he slaved carrying immense sacks of flour. His conscription to the army was a welcome release from years of back-breaking labor, but halfway through his mandatory year of service, Simone’s father died. Aged 20, the young man had to provide for his mother, three sisters, and younger brother. America beckoned, and the family sailed to New York. 

Arriving in San Francisco in 1888, Simone began as a window washer. Before long, he had figured out that the road to affluence could be considerably shortened if he let others do the work. As a window-cleaning contractor, he prospered. By 1892—a mere four years after his arrival in the Bay Area—Simone was listed on the Alameda County assessor’s rolls as the owner of a house at 2216 Sixth St. in West Berkeley. 

The Marengo house was a spacious two-story Victorian with a well and a windmill in the rear. In this house, Simone and Natalina Marengo reared six children, five of whom survived to adulthood. In 1906 their extended San Francisco family found refuge in and around this house, as the Army erected a tent village on the adjacent open land. 

That year, Simone’s holdings in the assessor’s rolls still consisted of the one lot on which his house stood. By 1907, however, he was the owner of three houses on the 2200 block of Sixth St. and a lot at 2215 Fifth. 

One can only conclude that Marengo saw the growth potential of Berkeley and capitalized on it without delay. His San Francisco business having burned out, he devised a new stream of income in his own neighborhood. The two other houses on Sixth St. were rented to newcomers. For the empty lot on Fifth Street, he had a grander idea: the new population had to eat—why not manufacture pasta? 

On April 20, 1907, the Oakland Tribune printed a photo of the just-opened West Berkeley Macaroni Factory, a two-story building with a false front, shiplap siding, and rows of windows on front and sides. The accompanying story revealed that the factory’s construction had begun the previous November and that it covered an area of 46 ft. x 60 ft. and was equipped with the latest “improved” machinery. “The firm,” announced the Tribune, “has been doing business in Oakland and Berkeley for 19 years. S. Morengo [sic], the manager, is a baker by trade and sells to retail and wholesale companies 5,000 pounds daily. The establishment manufactures all kinds of paste and employs fifteen skilled workmen.” 

Whether the firm existed at all prior to the 1907 opening of the factory remains to be discovered. In his prior 15 or 16 years as a Berkeley resident, Simone never manufactured pasta. He was variously listed as a laborer, window cleaner, or house cleaner. In 1896, he operated a general merchandise store on the corner of 7th St. and Bristol (now Hearst Avenue). His chief associate and successor in the macaroni factory was Peter “Papa Pete” Costamagna, a San Francisco storekeeper a few years older than Marengo who had arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1880s. The skilled workers were new immigrants from Italy. Most likely, the firm’s résumé was a yarn that Marengo fed the newspaper for effect and credibility. 

According to his son Carlo, who still lives in West Berkeley, Simone Marengo was an articulate man with almost no trace of Italian accent. He was a natural promoter, even visiting local schools to tout the nutritional benefits of pasta. Costamagna, who settled at 728 Allston Way, was listed in the 1907 directory as “helper” and the following year as “driver, S. Marengo.” In 1921, Marengo and Costamagna would become in-laws as the former’s son married the latter’s step-daughter. 

Like many entrepreneurs, Marengo was more interested in creating the business than in running it. In 1908, Costamagna took over as manager, and a year later, he brought in Giuseppe Bertolè, a pasta maker recently arrived from Italy, who lived at Costamagna’s house. The business became known as Costamagna & Bertolè, and Marengo’s role was reduced to that of landlord. 

The firm’s stationery listed the types of pasta manufactured: “maccaroni [sic], spaghetti, vermicelli, tagliarini, mustaciolli [sic], ditalini, riginette, lasagnette, lasagne, stars, barley and all kinds of fine paste.” 

In 1914, Giovanni Coppa came in as co-owner, and the firm incorporated as West Berkeley Macaroni Company. Eventually “Papa Pete” retired, and the company continued under the ownership of Bertolè and Coppa. 

Meanwhile, Marengo wasn’t sitting idle. Through his eldest sister and her husband, he discovered investment opportunities in Redding, CA and began doing business there in 1906. Among his acquisitions were buildings, lots, and ranch land. 

The most notorious of his Redding properties was the Palm Hotel at 510 Division St.—a two-story structure with a saloon on the ground floor and rooms arranged in a row along a balcony above. This establishment catered to the miners who would come into town after long stints in the nearby gold and copper mines. Behind the hotel lived a troupe of prostitutes—in 1910 there were 10, three of whom were French and none Italian—who were available to the hotel’s clients, apparently as independent operators. Marengo derived his income—often in gold dust—by supplying accommodations, food, and oceans of beer. 

On the hotel’s permanent staff was Mrs. Marengo’s brother, Thomas Olivieri. The Marengos’ two eldest sons, Victor and George, served stints as barkeepers. Around 1918, the hotel burned down, with suspicion of arson falling on a disgruntled prostitute who had been evicted by Simone. Carlo Marengo says that his father replaced the hotel with a brick building, which he leased to the local Buick agency. 

Back in Berkeley, the Bertolè & Coppa pasta factory came to an end in the mid-1920s. Coppa retired, and Bertolè, who continued making pasta, moved to Oakland. For a while, the building was occupied by a company calling itself Radio Food Products, but the health department closed the operation because the boiler tanks had rusted. In the late 1920s, the building was used by a chemical works. Having been expanded in the rear years ago, the structure was now clad in wood shingles. 

During the Depression, the former macaroni factory stood empty, and many of its windows were broken. Simone Marengo finally leased it to the Nursery Cans and Containers Co., which obtained defective food cans from nearby canneries—like the Heinz factory on San Pablo Avenue—and recycled them for potting plants. 

Even during the hard times, Marengo knew how to cope. He allowed his tenants to remain in their houses even if they could pay no rent, figuring it would be better for the houses to be occupied. In his back yard, he grew vegetables and chickens for the family table. He made his own wine in the cellar, annually buying a ton and a half of grapes for the purpose. After repeatedly crushing the grapes for every last drop, the leftovers were fed to the chickens. 

Always a bon vivant, Marengo frequently entertained family and friends at gatherings where wine and song abounded. His closest friend was John A. Carbone, the “Orchid King,” whose large flower nursery was located on Fifth Street, directly behind the Marengo house. 

Following Simone’s death, his heirs disposed of his various properties. The former macaroni factory was sold in 1948 to the Berkeley Pump Co., which removed the windows on the side walls and stuccoed the exterior. 

Of the various Marengo properties on the block, the macaroni factory is the only survivor. In 1991, the building was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark, Structure of Merit. It was restored in 1994 and serves as the office of an environmental consulting firm. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson  

The Berkeley Macaroni Factory at 2215 Fifth St.

Watering plants in containers is both easier and harder than it seems. Everyone has a vice about this, generally a tendency to either overwater or underwater. (If your tendency either way is impossible to reform, you might consider underwater plants. Go on over to Albany Aquarium on San Pablo Avenue just north of Solano and have a look at some nicely planted tanks first.) 

Overwatering does not mean adding too much water at one time; it means watering too frequently. If your planting mix and pot together have decent drainage, any excess water will run through and the plant’s roots will get access to the air they need in due time.  

If you water too often, though, roots will stay soggy and ultimately rot and/or drown. Fungi are pretty much ubiquitous and will show up in even “sterile” (usually just pasteurized, which is quite good enough) potting mixes because their little bitty spores are part of house and general urban dust.  

In fact, if you want to give yourself the heebie-jeebies, do a bit of research about what’s floating around us all the time. You’ll never trim your nose hairs again. Ever think about where the rubber is going as tires are wearing out? Uh-huh, you’re soaking in it. And spores of all sorts, mineral particulates, industrial outfall, pollen, little bits of dead bugs et alii, dander, shed skin cells, the excretions of dust mites which live on those shed skin cells… Dust mite allergies are partly allergies to the dung of those dust mites. You’re inhaling bug poo! No wonder you’re sneezing! 

But I digress. (And I’m allergic.) Some fungi are a necessary part of life for many plants. The magic phrase is “mycorrhizal association.” Most container plants, though, aren’t mycorrhizal associates. If you have a plant of local origin in a pot and it needs a boost, you might try a tablespoon or two of the earth from which it sprang, what the heck. 

A plant that’s succumbing to the ills of overwatering will look rather as if it needs more water: leaves drooping, bits yellowing or browning off. If it actually falls over, give it a respectful burial in the compost because chances are it’s rotted right through at the root crown.  

Stick your finger in the plant’s soil mix, if you want to know anything about its water. If it’s damp and the plant’s drooping, worry. I don’t mean the surface; get down to a knuckle or two below the top. If it stinks, also big trouble: stagnant water. Unpot the plant, gently shake off some of the wet soil, and repot with some new dry soil. Then vow to change your ways. 

Even succulents need water in pots, but they’re most susceptible to overwatering. Again, stick that finger in. If your plant has spines or points or vegetable fangs, keep a scrap of cardstock handy to shield yourself. If that doesn’t work, consider investing a few bucks in a soil water indicator; you can probe painlessly and watch the meter.  

Resource: Plant sales at Merritt College on Saturdays: Sept. 15, Oct. 13, Nov. 17, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. See www.merrittlandhort.com for updated plant lists.  

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

Everybody has a little internal list of least favorite ways to die. Some of these are rational, but mostly they’re derived from some fantasy, childhood experience or errant datum we’ve chanced upon. Perhaps we were children and heard an awful story. Maybe we encountered saw someone killed in a movie—lots of those, aren’t there?! Perhaps it was simply a story related by a friend. Regardless of the source we all have these.  

I think these fears extend into injuries as well and not just to the finality of death. I know that, for myself, certain kinds of sickness are nearly unbearable while others, and these may be the dread of another, are sort of no big deal. For example (am I grossing you out yet?) I have little fear of bleeding, having cut myself about a thousand times and sometimes rather severely. It might be a carpenter thing. Those of us who have built houses and handled tools are fairly accustomed to sucking our own blood while we wait for a promised coagulation. 

While I do not fear a death by blood loss nearly so much as numerous other fates, I am much aware that it is a common way to leave the humanosphere. In the late 1970’s deaths caused by glass lacerations were so common that the Consumer Product Safety Commission created a series of heavy guidelines that continue and grow today.  

What was happening was mostly one of two things. People were either walking through glass patio doors (OW!!) or striking and breaking shower doors or enclosures (OW again!). Blood loss can kill you in minutes if the damage is sufficient. The carotid (neck) or femoral (leg) arteries, when sliced, can bleed out in five minutes. Basically this means that you simply do not have the time to get adequate medical help. Again, sorry. This is so awful to discuss but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s important; mostly because there are real answers and valuable actions that CAN be taken. 

The glass industry, much aware of these issues (who gets sued, after all?) began in the early 1960s to produce shower and patio doors of a relatively new material called tempered glass. The easiest way to think of tempering is to visualize a vandalized car. Those funny little squarish pebbles of glass that litter the ground are the remains of tempered glass. Tempered glass, invented by the Austrian chemist, Rudolph Seiden (b.1900), is made by heating one side of a sheet of heat-strengthened glass to a higher temperature than the other and then cooling it very rapidly. This creates a tension between the two faces of glass that forces it to crack perpendicular to the plane of the glass, rather than in sharp shards that can cut through my sensitive and incredibly important body. Breaking perpendicular to the surface of the glass creates little squarish pebbles and, while these may cause abrasion, will spare us the nastier experience when we strike and break a sheet of glass. Danke schön, Herr Seiden! 

Let’s talk about patio sliding glass doors just a bit. I feel as though the greatest danger with these is where there is a distant objective that acts as an incentive to speed. Let’s say you have a swimming pool surrounded by happy people and clam dip twenty feet from the door and a good twelve or fourteen feet of room to cross toward the door leading to the pool. Now, let’s say that the door is clean and there’s nothing to alert one to the presence of the glass. You might, as many before you have done, assume that door is open. You see, it looks almost the same open or closed if the glass is clean. You might then be walking at 5 mph by the time you hit the glass. Some just walk right through and this, of course, it usually tragic. 

If you have a non-tempered sliding glass door please consider replacing it with a new one. These days you can’t buy anything BUT tempered glass doors unless you buy something used. If you’re really strapped for funds, there are two alternatives. The first is to put a safety film on the glass. These films are commonly available and help limit the nature of the breakage. The film is essentially a sheet of strong sticky plastic that holds the shards of glass together and prevents deep laceration. A very cheap alternative is to put stickers on the glass door so as to alert the potential victim to the fact that the door is present. This is a better but bad choice (all you parent know about these choices, right?). The point is that any action is better than none but given the concern level, replacement is the wise choice. 

So how do you know if you have a non-tempered glass door? Tempered glass nearly always bears a tempering mark or “bug” in one corner of the glass, usually at the bottom. The mark is sort of a glass tattoo, heat fused onto the glass and somewhat translucent. You may have to wash the door to find the mark. Well, HAVE you washed the sliding glass door in the last five years? If the door has no discernable mark, it is extremely likely that this door is low strength glass and dangerous. By the way, these same marks are used on all forms of tempered glass and you’ll recognize them as being similar to the ones seen on your car windows. 

Aside from breaking in such a mannerly and genteel fashion, tempered glass is also less likely to break at all, being roughly 4-6 times the strength of common glass. Laminated glass is another form of safety glass but less desirable than tempered due to the fact that it will still crack sharply and grab little flaps of skin (sorry) as one bounces off the plastic-reinforced sheet. Wired safety glass is a much older form and again, while safer than common float glass, can still do tremendous harm when compared with our beloved tempered glass. 

Shower doors are another major concern and have been the subject of the building codes for about 30 years. While no one is making anyone remove older ones, it has been impossible to buy a new untempered shower door or enclosure since the 1970s. Again, tempered ones have been available since the early 60’s but enforcement has taken time to catch up with manufacturer wisdom. What all this means is that you may still have a shower enclosure that can kill or injure someone who does nothing more malicious than swing around, elbows out, and smack the door.  

Today, none of the glass in a bathing area below 5’ and none of the glass in either an enclosure or a shower door may be non-safety type. This includes windows in the shower or bathing area as well as mirrors. Some special exceptions are made for art glass. 

The more we learn about the danger of glass in our houses, the more extensive the list of uses or places where we want to use safety glass grows. Here are a few of the other places we want to be looking out for: 

Windows that nearly reach the ground are vulnerable to kicking, rolling objects and children at play. Most codes today demand that where glass is within 18” of the ground, it should be tempered.  

Where glass is in any kind of door, including those multi-lite “French” doors, it should also be tempered. Again, unless you buy an old used door, you just can’t find a non-tempered “French” door. Nobody makes ‘em. 

Glass that is within about two feet of a door (sidelites) should be tempered due to the shock of a slammed door. Many a marital dispute has ended with the crash of such a window (followed by that most absurd of proclamations, “See what you made me do?”). 

Mirrored sliding closet doors (how I hate having to see myself that much) are not required to be tempered in most communities but must be adhered to a backing that prevents those nasty pieces from coming free. Nonetheless, you can buy these in tempered glass and this gets my vote. 

These are the traditional areas that we in the home inspection business have been looking at for decades- but wait, there’s more! Now the building codes are asking us to look at all glass in the walking path. If you can walk within three feet of any large glass pane (>9 s.f.) that is close to floor level (>18”) and at least three feet high, the new codes are asking that this be make of tempered safety glass. My guess is that we’re just a few years away from ALL of our windows being made of safety glass. It may seem like a pain but in the long run, we’ll look back in disbelief that we ever lived so blithely with such treachery. 

The code is also speaking to glass used in railings as well and thank Buddha! What crazier place than a stair railing might you use glass? Actually, I think glass is very cool and love it in all these odd places but I feel a lot better about that platform-heeled mom in short-shorts and a tee as she walks down the glassed-in stairway knowing that when the worst case occurs and she losses her footing, that the paramedics will spend most of their time complimenting her voluntary piercings and no time treating the involuntary ones. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 7 

“Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change” A documentary of Bloody Sunday in 1965, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the WOrker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free. 482-1062. 

“War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” Film screening and discussion with Normon Soloman at 8 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Circular Migration of Labor” with Rosalio Muñoz, chair, CPUSA Subcommittee on Immigration at 7 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $5. 251-1120. ncalview@igc.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente Offices, Harrison Building, Room 8-K, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 8 

East Bay AIDS Walk from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Lake Merritt, Bellevue and Grand Aves. To register see www.eastbayaidswalk.kintera.org 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of Rocks, Parks and Neighborhoods of North Berkeley from 10 a.m. to noon. Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society and the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Cost is $10. To register and for meeting place call 848-0181. 

Open The Farm Meet and greet the animals at the Little Farm in Tilden Park as you help the farmer with morning chores, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. 525-2233. 

Reptile Rap Meet our resident snake and turtle friends with an interactive talk for the whole family, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Sierra Club Grassroots Organizing Workshop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2530 San Pablo Ave. RSVP to 848-0800, ext. 307. 

Recycle Your Electronics Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the El Cerrito Dept. of Motor Vehicles, 6400 Manila Ave. Items accepted are computer monitors, computers, televisions, VCR and DVD players, toner cartridges, printers, fax machines, telephone equipment, cell phones and MP3 players. Sponsored by the City of El Cerrito. For information call 1-888-832-9839. www.unwaste.com 

Restoration Workday on the Banks of San Pablo Creek from 9:30 a.m. to noon at 4191 Appian Way, El Sobrante. For information call 665-3538. 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Montclair Village Meet at 1 p.m. at Montclair Branch Public Library, 1687 Mountain Blvd. for a gently sloping walk. 763-9218.  

Salud! A Celebration of Latino Art, Health and Community with health information, visual art and live music, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. 601-4040. www.wcrc.org 

The Crucible’s Fall Open House from 2 to 6 p.m. followed by Artist-in-Residence reception at 1260 7th Street, Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

Fall Bloomimng Perennials & Shrubs at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. off 7th St. 644-2351. 

“Interested in Becoming a Foster Parent?” Information and training from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. RSVP to 925-370-1990. 

“The Art of Narration in Television and Radio Ads” with Paul Rowan at Dramatically Speaking, at 9 a.m., 1950 Franklin St., Room 2C, Oakland. Free, but please RSVP. ID required to get into building. 581-8675. Lunni8@aol.com 

East Bay Baby Fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. 540-7210. www.eastbaybabyfair.com 

Common Agenda, a local alliance of some 20 organizations in the Bay Area meets at 2 p.m. at the Peace Action Office, 2800 Adeline St. at Stuart. 524-6071. 

Auditions for Soli Deo Gloria from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church, 1323 Central Ave., Alameda. For infromation call 888-734-7664. www.sdgloria.org 

Careers in Travel a full day class at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Cost is $10. RSVP to 981-2931.  

Luna Kids Dance Open House and creative dance class from 1 to 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. 644-3629. 

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

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 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 9 

Solano Stroll “Going Green - It’s Easy” with a parade, entertainment, food, information booths, and more from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Solano Ave. in Albany and Berkeley. info@solanostroll.org 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Broadway Auto Row Meet at 10 a.m. at 28th and Broadway, the tip of the Flatiron Building. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Huston Smith “Three Outstanding Experiences of My Life” at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

The Red Oak Victory Ship Pancake Breakfast from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on board the ship, in Richmond harbor off Canal Blvd. Cost is $6, children under 5 free. 237-2933. 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “The Asquiths & Woods” by Peter Wood at 10:30 a.m. at 132 Montwood Way, Oakland. For information call 527-7118. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to keep your bike in excellent working condition through safety inspections, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

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 

MONDAY, SEPT. 10 

The 9/11 Truth Film Festival Films include “Hijacking Catastrophe,” “The Reflecting Pool,” “Zeitgeist,” “Let's Get Empirical,” “9/11: Press for Truth,” and “9/11 Mysteries” from 1 to 10 p.m. Mon. and Tues. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. 

Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning Workshop for six consecutive Mon. eves. from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Berkeley Adult School, 1701 San Pablo Ave. Pre-registraion encouraged. 644-6130. http://bas.berkeley.net  

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra rehearsals begin for Puccini's Messa di Gloria at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-registration strongly recommended. www.bcco.org  

Children’s Dance Program begins with classes in creative movement and ballet at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. at Gilman. For details call 233-5550. animamundi@jps.net 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting at 7 p.m. at Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Ave. 642-3255.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 11 

Emergency & Disaster Preparedness Workshop for People with Disabilities at 10:30 a.m. at West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St. Sponsored by the Center for Independent Living and the West Berkeley Senior Center. All are welcome. 841-4776, 981-5180. 

The 9/11 Truth Film Festival showing “Hijacking Catastrophe,” “The Reflecting Pool,” “Zeitgeist,” “Let's Get Empirical,” “9/11: Press for Truth,” and “9/11 Mysteries” from 1 to 10 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. 

“War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” A documentary at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Confluence, Confusion, or Catastrophe: Prospects for Ending the Delta Stalemate” with John Cain, director of restoration programs of the Natural Heritage Institute at 5:15 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 112, UC Campus. 642-2666. 

Food and Farming Film “Harvest of Shame” on dislocation in agricultural landscapes, sprawl, immigration and crisis, with panelists Christopher Cook (author, Diet for a Dead Planet); Ann Lopez (Farmworkers Journey); Jason Mark (farmer, journalist), Carey Knecht (Greenbelt Alliance) at 6:40 p.m. at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street at Arch. www.agrariana.org 

Womansong, PeaceSong An evening of participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly, 2345 Channing Way, at Dana. Donation $15-$20. 525-7082. betsy@betsyrosemusic.org 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets to discuss BSEP Changes, WASC Plan, Update on UC Approved Courses and other issues at 4:15 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater. 644-4803. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

“How to Realize Helping Others is Helping Yourself” A public teaching with Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Master Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche at 7 p.m. at Upaya Center for Wellbeing, 478 Santa Clara Ave., Suite 200, Oakland. Suggested donation $20. 525-5292.  

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. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Baby-friendly Book Club meets to discuss “Little Earthquakes” by Jennifer Weiner at 10 a.m. at Kensington Library. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12 

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. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Healthy Aging Fair with health screenings and health and wellness information for seniors, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Centennial HAll, 22292 Foothill Blvd., Hayward. Sponsored by the Alameda County Commission on Aging. 577-3532. 

Students United For Peace shows the documentary “Berkeley in the Sixties” by Mark Kitchell at 7 p.m. in Evans Room 60, UC Campus. 848-8320. 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“Voices from Puerto Rico and Hawaii” Women resisting militarism at 6:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Todd Gilens on “Endangered Species” of urban activity, at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium  

Recording African American Stories Add your voice to the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment, at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. For appointment call 228-3207. 

Center for Buddhist Education presents Rev. Ken Yamada at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton. Cost is $15. 809-1460. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 13 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Lebanon, A Year Later” Lecture and slideshow by Zeina Zaatari on the aftermath of Israel’s War on Lebanon and the sectarian dilemma at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donations accepted. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Climate Change and Health” at 6:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Hosted by the Community Health Commission. 981-5437.  

“What is a Podcast and How Can it be Used in an Educational Environment?” with Mojdeh Emdadian at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

East Bay Mac Users Group meets to discuss Word Processor Shoot Out: A Comparison of Options at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Kaiser Center, 2nd floor lobby, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Free Diabetes Screening Come find out if you might have diabetes with our free screening test and make sure not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand, from 8:45 to noon at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Sept. 10, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Sept. 10, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5510.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Mon., Sept. 10, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410.  

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 11, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Sept. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Sept. 12, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

CCA Photography Retrospective Works by recent graduates as well as faculty opens at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., at 25th St., Richmond. 620-6772.  

FILM 

“Please Vote for Me” A documentary by Weijun Chen on fifth-graders in China at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 100 Oak St., Oakland. Free. 326-1440.  

Devotional Cinema: Films by Dorsky and Ozu with Nathaniel Dorsky at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Kirp describes “The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

John Aubrey Douglass discusses “The Conditions For Admission: Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gerard Landry & the Lariats at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Duke Robillard, blues guitarist, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 5 

FILM 

“Ankur” with filmmaker Shyam Benegal at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Khalil Bendib introduces “Mission Accomplished: Wicked Cartoons by America’s Most Wanted Cartoonist” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Zachary Schomburg and Lily Brown read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jazz Masters Concert with Cow Bop, jazz goes Western, at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Michael Seth Orland, solo piano at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Ben Flint Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

The Mighty Diamonds, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Jamie Davis at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.  

Groove.org at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 6 

FILM 

“Shorts by Lindsay Anderson” at 5:30 p.m. and “Bhumika” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Brenda Hillman reads her poetry at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Ruthann Lum McCunn reads from her novel “God of Luck” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Mary Gordon reads from “Circling My Mother: A Memoir” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Eric Yates & Friends, Americana, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Jamie Laval with Ashley Broder, Celtic violinist and mandolin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Marmadou & Vanessa Sidibe Music Mali at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Beltaine’s Fire, Boudica, Greenbridge at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Otro Mundo at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

Kenny Burrell & The Jazz Heritage All-stars at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 7 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Urinetown, The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 6. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Hysteria” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Sept. 30. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Black Repertory Group “Secret War” Fri.-Sun. at 2:30 and 8 p.m., Gala Sept. 15. Tickets are $25-$35. 652-2120. www.BlackRepertoryGroup.com 

Impact Theatre “Sleepy” opens at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. and runs to Oct. 13. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “The Shadow Box” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. matinees, at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. This show is not recommended for children. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Sept. 16. Tickets are$23-$36. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Heading North: Journey to Atacama Desert, Chile” Photographs by Thea Bellos. Artist reception at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“The Sacred in the Mundane” works by Pauletta M. Chanco. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

“Down There” New Work by Ayako Higo and Meadow Presley at 7 p.m. at Front Gallery, 35 Grand Ave., Oakland. 444-1900. 

“Distractions” Works by Janelle Renée. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at The Gallery at Lavezzo Designs, 5751 Horton St., Emeryville. 428-2384. 

FILM 

“War Made Easy” narrated by Sean Penn at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Zubeidaa” with filmmaker Shyam Benegal, at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Sunset Cinema: “Mighty Warriors of Comedy” about an Asian American sketch comedy group from San Francisco, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

“Great Wall of Oakland” Prjected video and improvisational music at 8:30 p.m. on Grand Ave., just west of Broadway. www.aoklandculturalarts.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

Jim Ryan & Friends at 8 p.m. at Free-Jazz Fridays at the Jazz House, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 415-846-9432. 

E.W. Wainwright’s Tribute to Elvin Jones at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Iris Dement at 8 p.m. at The Thrust Stage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Baha and Sam Coble at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Sleepyboy Moe, The Slow Poisoner, L. Cooper at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Du Uy Quintet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Cari Lee & the Saddle-ites at 9 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810.  

MDC 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. 

Kenny Burrell & The Jazz Heritage All-stars at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 8 

CHILDREN  

“The Panchatantra: Animal Lessons from India” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “The Three Musketeers” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkle Park, Southampton Ave., off The Arlington, through Sept. 9. Free. 841-6500. 

EXHIBITIONS 

The Crucible’s Fall Open House Celebrating Art & Community frp, 2 to 6 p.m., followed by Artist-in-Residence Reception from 6 tp 8 p.m. at 1260 7th St., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Niloufer Ichaporia introduces delicacies from “My Bombay Ckitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Mozart, Mendelssohn & Brahms” with Tom Rose, calrinet, Darcy Rindt, viola, and Lynn Schugren, piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St.. Tickets are $18-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Iris Dement at 8 p.m. at The Thrust Stage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Stephen Taylor-Ramirez, Fontain’s M.U.S.E., The Simple Things at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Beyond Walls, Beyond Wars with Georges Lamman, presented by the Arab Cultural Initiative at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dana Kemp’s Gateswingers Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Central Perk, 10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito. 558-7375.  

Eric Swinderman Quartet In Pursuit of Sound at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Sukhawat Ali Khan Band, The Wingin It Experience at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Del Rey & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Diablo’s Dust, Fernando Tarango at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Izabella, Cas Lucas, Mattt Lucas at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Dangerous Rhythm with Tim Fox at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Ravines at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Royal Hawaiian Serenaders at 9 p.m. at Temple Bar Tiki Bar & Grill, 984 University Ave. 548-9888. 

Rock ‘N’ Roll Adventure Kids at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Bitches Brew at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 9 

THEATER 

Kung Pao Kosher Comedy “A Muslim, A Mormon, and A Jew Walk into A Bar” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“graham + erikson”A sculpture and photography exhibit at the Addison St. Windows, 2018 Addison St. Sidewalk reception at 3 p.m. 981-7533. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nathaniel Tarn and H.C. ten Berge read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Conversations on Art “Art and Memory: An Intergenerational Conversation with Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett at 2 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tessa Loehwig & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Evening for the Buffalo featuring Mike Mease and Phoenix & Afterbuffalo. Presentation at 7:30 p.m., show at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Skinny String Gals at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged with The Stairwell Sisters at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“They Called Me Mayer July” Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust opens at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., and runs to Jan. 13. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

“Wall Writings” A photographic investigation of abandonned buildings by Michelle Nye opens at The Light Room Gallery, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Robert Reich reads from his new book “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations requested. 559-9500. 

Peter Neumeyer discusses children’s literature and his new book “The Annotated Charlotte’s Web” at 7 p.m. at Kendington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Actors Reading Writers “Dream a Little Dream” stories by Lawrence Block, Thomas Meehan and James Thurber at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Brent Cunningham, Bill Luoma and Cynthia Sailers read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Buford Buntin at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nada Lewis, French cafe music, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Conjunto Karabali at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

At the top of the hill for the Solano Stroll, C.Z. and the Bon Vivants will be pumping out Zydeco and Cajun music for listening and dancing. It’s the third time the popular group will do the Stroll, and as fiddler Catherine Matovich said, “It’s been more fun every time—and nicer up there at the top. People can dance, then go into Andronico’s for something to drink, to keep from passing out!” 

Matovich talked about the musical and ethnic backgrounds of the quintet’s players. 

“Four out of five of us have no business playing this music, if you go by ethnicity,” she said. “Marty Jara, our guitarist, is Mexican, a fabulous dancer, known in L. A.; Tim Orr, the drummer’s from Massachusetts, whose family probably came over on the Mayflower; I’ve never asked Elaine Herrick what her background is, but a woman playing bass with Cajun, Latin and Jazz groups is suspect, anyway, right? and I’m Montenegran, classically trained, having played for symphonies, string quartets and backing people on tour like Neil Diamond and Olivia Newton-John! That leaves Andrew [Carriere], who’s Creole from Lake Charles, our accordion player. Andrew’s father, Bebe, was a famous Creole fiddle player in Louisiana. There’s a video of him playing in the 70s, not that long ago, but a different world. Some people follow us just to hear Andrew sing in the old patois.” 

Andrew Carriere turned 70 last Friday, and spoke from his East Oakland home about where he came from and moving to the Bay Area in 1972, taking up his instrument here. “About 80 percent of my people were musicians in Louisiana. The old people back home were kind of strict. They wouldn’t let me play accordion, said, ‘You’re going to break it!’ When I was eight or nine years old, I used to watch them. I knew how to sing that stuff, and after I moved here, say sometime in ‘73, I grabbed my cousin’s accordion ... it was a right-handed instrument, and I’m left-handed!  

“After a while, he let me get on stage,” Carriere said, “and people liked my style, mixing up Cajun music with Zydeco, which is mostly a faster two-step. People love that stuff. Finally, he wouldn’t let me up, ’til people asked for me—then only let me sing! I bought me an accordion, maybe in ‘83. In ‘95, my cousin, who was music representative of the California Cajun Orchestra, died of a bad heart, and I took over for him. I had to study real hard, get busy ... but it didn’t take me long!” 

Carriere plays regularly with the Bon Vivants and works with other groups occasionally. “Everybody hires me to go ‘way up and down somewhere for weddings.” He’ll sit in with his friend, Gerard Landry Sept. 4 at Ashkenaz, and on the 5th will play with the Creole Belles from 6:30-8 p.m. at Albany Memorial Park. 

“Andrew’s the type of person who’d get along with the president of the United States and with ditch diggers,” said Matovich. 

She spoke about playing Cajun music and Zydeco, and how the group got its start. “I got started late in this sort of music. I was used to the classical scene, all the music written out on charts. I wasn’t used to playing by ear, That was a big learning curve for me. Andrew doesn’t play the music by rules; he’s heard it from birth. It’s not a formula. He keeps us on our toes, lots of times throwing out a song we don’t know: ‘Come on!’  

“The group came about as an accident, and was originally an all-girl group called The Cajun Babes. My day job was with the California Symphony, and then heard Tom Rigney, fiddler who used to play with Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band. I went up on stage and said, “You’ll teach me!” In 2003, for Mardi Gras in Alameda, I found a bassist in a jazz bar and told him I was trying to put together a group, and he said his girl friend could help—so it was Elaine who found almost everyone. Then our accordionist had a baby, and Andrew was suggested. We had to change the name, and did it by democratic process. There were five of us, and it took eight months!” 

For the Solano Stroll, Matovich said there will be “a few special guests sitting in, who are under four feet tall—I’ll leave it like that as a teaser. She put in a last word and a couple anecdotes about playing the music. “It’s really simple roots music, and I appreciate it for that, in a different way than symphonies. Something about the beat; maybe close to the human heartbeat. I’ll see the huge delight on the faces of children of three or four years old hearing it, as if they’re saying, ‘Let me out of the stroller! I’ve got to rock!’ 

“One time, Andrew, Marty and I were playing up on a mountain at 7 a.m. for a bicycle marathon—and Andrew was having a party! I admire that; he’s the real deal. Another time, the three of us were busking on Solano—and George Cleve walks by! I’ve been under his baton in symphonies and operas—and his double take was worth everything! ‘What are you doing?’ he said—and I said, ‘I’m playing music for quarters. What are you doing today?’ And he laughed.” 

C.Z. and the Bon Vivants will perform at the Solano Stroll on Sunday. 

The only way to beat this thing ... is to leave nothing behind, nothing unsaid, nothing undone—use it all up! (But I’m scared to death!)” 

So says Brian (Jim Fye), a self-styled “self-satisfied, admittedly bad writer,” author of (among other atrocities), “four autobiographies, each one under a different name,” to his boozy, partygirl ex-wife Beverly (Dana Zook), who has almost come to blows with Brian’s doting boyfriend, ex-hustler Mark (Ben Ortega), in the hospice cottage where Brian’s living out his last days—not exactly in double connubial bliss, but in a funny way, near enough—as the center panel in the triptych of moribund cottagers and their loved ones, in Michael Cristofer’s The Shadow Box, splendidly staged by director Phoebe Moyer at the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond. 

The Shadow Box is very probably the best of a genre that came in with the ’70s, preceded a little by hits like Brian’s Song, meditations and milieu dramas on mortality, often very sentimental—if not maudlin—mostly pushing carpe diem to the middle-class limit of self-discovery. 

The Shadow Box differs from the cliche considerably, even if it has weathered a little as time goes on, due to its superior mostly non-, even anti-sentimental script—and its abundance of comic and satiric features, which offset any sense of brooding that could accumulate like weepy humidity. 

Cristofer is maybe more familiar (though not by name) to audiences as a screenwriter; the stage sharpened his ear for dialogue and that unusual taste for the satiric. Hordes of viewers (as most have, if at all, seen it on video after it was “untimely ripped” from the big screen) might excoriate him for his work on the movie version of Bonfire of the Vanities—but some think it the best film satire of the ’80s and its Reaganomics attitudes and fake Frank Capra film hits, in no little part due to its scenario, deliberately crossgrain to the popular Tom Wolfe book and its racy dialogue.  

It’s that sense of capturing the atmospherics, real or imagined, of an era that conditions The Shadow Box, its backgrounds, its characters and their stories—though, with that said, Phoebe Moyer (herself a fine actor) has used this “of its time” quality without comment or overhang (or hangover—excepting Beverly’s), concentrating intensively on the theme and script with her cast to bring off a coup of ensemble playing, true to the play’s intended end, unusual for a community theater, even such a solid, group-oriented production house as the Masquers. 

And, as par for the usual Masquers course, she’s been ably assisted by Tammy Berlin’s costume design, John Hull’s set, Rob (alias “Bill”) Bradshaw’s lights, Jerry Telfer’s sound and Margaret Paradis’ props. 

The scenes and vignettes are increasingly syncopated as the play progresses, and the dialogue of the three groups begins to skillfully overlap, making yet another element in a story that’s developed from bits and pieces of conversation and memories told to another—and interviews delivered to the audience, where The Interviewer (Elizabeth Smith) sits by the side, watching the play as well.  

The families are a mix. Besides the humorously louche grouping of Brian’s bunch, to stage right (and opening the play) is a literally regular Joe (Dale Camden), welcoming his reticent wife Maggie (Elizabeth Williams) and (like Brian as writer, admittedly bad guitarist-singer) son Steve (Joshua Huston) to the cottage (which Maggie won’t enter), only to discover Steve hasn’t learned of his terminal diagnosis.  

To the left is a sodden mother-daughter act: bitter, salty (and blind) Felicity (Christine Macomber) and her downtrodden offspring Agnes (Kristine Anne Lowry)—who hides a secret from her strangely vulnerable “tough case” mother. 

Cristofer breaks with convention by putting the comical milieu at center stage, but it’s a coup that makes the play come alive, defying the ravages of time and taste as its characters aspire to do. It also enables Fye and Zook to perform a comic rave-up as a very funny and truly odd ex-couple, while Ortega (also a standup comic) expertly deadpans as “straight” man. 

The overlapping dialogue is finally fulfilled in its syncopation with a chorus of the full cast addressing the audience, or life itself, in broken, almost ecstatic phrases that approximate a tone poem. 

THE SHADOW BOX 

Through Sept. 29 at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org. 

Although you wouldn’t expect a book about metabolic ecology to be a page-turner, I found John Whitfield’s recent In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature engrossing. Whitfield, a British science journalist, explains how metabolism relates to size, volume, and surface area. Along the way, he looks at why bats outlive mice, whether humans are allotted a fixed number of heartbeats in their lifetime (astronaut Neil Armstrong said that if that was true, he was damned if he was going to waste any of his jogging), and the tragic fate of Tusko the elephant. 

Tusko, a bull Asian elephant at the Oklahoma City zoo, was the recipient of the largest hit of LSD ever administered to a living organism—297 milligrams, right in the rump, back in 1962. Psychiatrist L. Jolyon West was trying to induce musth, a state of apparent derangement to which male elephants are prone during the breeding season. West and his associates calculated the dose by extrapolating in linear fashion from the amount required to make a cat hallucinate. 

It was too much, of course. Tusko staggered despite his mate Judy’s attempts to support him, trumpeted, collapsed on his side, and began having seizures. He was pronounced dead an hour and 40 minutes later. Scale matters. The results were published in the prestigious journal Science, with the following summation: “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD—a finding which may prove to be valuable in elephant-control work in Africa.” 

Size isn’t the only variable affecting metabolism. Some creatures are able to bank their internal fires during periods of extreme cold or heat and scarce resources, living on stored body fat: aestivating ground squirrels, hibernating bears, those male emperor penguins guarding their eggs through the Antarctic winter. It’s a risky strategy. Once fat levels fall below 10 percent of body mass, the animal has to burn its own protein—effectively digesting itself.  

Snakes, like other living reptiles, were known to keep their thermostats set lower than mammals or birds (the dinosaurs may have been different). But it was unclear until recently how they endured periods of food deprivation. As you will have noticed if you’ve ever handled a snake—something I would recommend, although not necessarily in a spiritual context—snakes don’t have much fat on them.  

To explore that question, Marshall McCue, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas, worked with captive ball pythons, rat snakes, and western diamondback rattlesnakes. The reptiles, in cages that constrained their activity, were kept at a constant 80.6 degrees F, limiting their body temperatures. They were deprived of food for up to 168 days while McCue recorded their oxygen consumption. Snakes were sacrificed at various set points during the experiment and their fat and protein levels measured; McCue went through a lot of snakes during this project. 

The snakes were able to lower their resting metabolic demands by up to 72 percent. “It would seem that their pilot light, which we already thought to be as low as possible, can actually go much lower,” McCue told a reporter for Nature. Their fat levels fell to 5 percent, which would have doomed most other vertebrates.  

And they accomplished this without going dormant. They stayed alert enough to attempt to bite their handlers; if a tasty rat had been offered, they would have been right on it. Some even managed to grow while starving.  

The rat snakes began to break down protein sooner than the rattlers or pythons, which makes ecological sense. Rat snakes are active pursuit predators; the others are ambush predators, more likely to experience significant lag time between meals. But the fact that snakes from three diverse lineages, including the relatively underived (it’s bad form to say “primitive”) pythons, share the ability suggests it’s an ancient trait in this group of reptiles. 

McCue uses an economic metaphor: the snakes reduce energy demand by lowering their metabolic rate and cope with the supply side by frugal use of their fat reserves. Just how they do this remains uncertain: maybe by reducing the density of mitochondria—the energy-generating powerhouses of the cells—in liver, heart, and other highly active tissues. 

All this may explain how snakes lucked out at the end of the Cretaceous, when some combination of extraterrestrial impact and volcanism killed off the dominant reptile groups—the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, the great sea dragons. With whole ecosystems trashed and food webs disrupted, being able to just shut down for a few months would have had enormous survival value.  

According to McCue, the snake study may have practical spinoffs in monitoring nutritional success—more than can be said for the experiment that left the unfortunate Tusko a martyr to science.  

Photograh by Ron Sullivan. A gopher snake relaxing between meals near the Richmond shoreline.  

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees. 

Department of Corrections: the photograph of the California clapper rail accompanying my Arrowhead Marsh article was taken by Ron Sullivan.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 4 

Special Session of the City Council to discuss UC’s athletic center at the Oak Grove at 5 p.m. at Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 981-6903. 

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 Wildcat Canyon. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Introduction to International Folk Dance at 7:45 p.m. at Live Oak Park, 1201 Shattuck Avenue, Live Oak Park. Dance classes continue for 8 weeks. Cost is $30. 528-9168. www.berkeleyfolkdancers.yahoo.org  

Birding Class on Migrating Shorebirds, Tues. evenings in Sept., with Sat. field trips. Cost is $60. To register call 843-2222. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

“America: From Freedom to Fascism” A film on the erosion of civil liberties, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Climate Change, Empowerment, and Despair“ A presentation by Rainforest Information Centre, Rainforest Action Network, and Pachamama Alliance, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center 2530 San Pablo Ave. www.climate.net.au  

“What Happened to the Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville High School Seniors Who Did Not Pass the Exit Exam in 2006 and 2007?” Brown bag lunch with Helene Lecar at noon at Albany Library, at Marin and Masonic Aves., Albany. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters. 843-8824. 

“Nature and Nurture: The Challenge for Adoptees” a six-week class on Tues. from 7 to 9 p.m. at Albany High School, 655 Key Route Blvd. Cost is $50. To register call 559-6580. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Please Vote for Me” A documentary by Weijun Chen on fifth-graders in China at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 100 Oak St., Oakland. Free. 326-1440.  

Free Diabetes Screening Come find out if you might have diabetes with our free screening test and make sure not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand, from 8:45 to noon at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

Free Sewing Class for Youth at Sew Your Own, from 3 to 6 p.m. at Bolivar Drive, Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Tuesday Documentaries at 7 p.m. at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Donation of $5 benefits the Berkeley Food and Housing Project. 665-0305. 

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. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. Open bicycle repair lab where participants may use our tools as well as receive help with their own repairs free of charge. Waterside Workshops, 84 Bolivar Drive, Aquatic Park. 644-2577. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 5 

Stone Pillars of Northbrae Walking Tour Learn about the history of one of Berkeley’s most park-full neighborhoods through its scores of stone pillars. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of North Berkeley Library, on the Alameda near Hopkins St. 524-2383. www.berkeleypaths.org/events/wedwalks.htm 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

“Inventing Human Rights” with Lynn Hunt, Prof. of History, UCLA, at 2 p.m. at Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Campus. 643-9670. http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/publicworld.shtml 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon in Oakland. Advanced sign-up is required. 594-5165.  

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Auditions at 4 p.m. at the Crowden School. For information on what to prepare and to make an appointment call 849-988. 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Paul Groth on “Bodies and Storefronts: Orchestrating Dances of Desire” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

Recording African American Stories Add your voice to the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History, Wed. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment, at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, through Sept. 12. For appointment call 228-3207. 

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 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 6 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 7 to 8 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

The Princess Project - East Bay Open House from 6 to 8 p.m. at Youth Uprising, 8711 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Come help Bay Area girls feel confident and special; help organize a volunteer-run effort to distribute free prom dresses and accessories. 846-5271. 

El Sabor de Fruitvale from 3 to 7 p.m. at Fruitvale Transit Village, Fruitvale BART station, with music, fresh produce and children’s activities. 535-6900. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 7 

“Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change” A documentary of Bloody Sunday in 1965, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the WOrker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free. 482-1062. 

“War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” Film screening and discussion with Normon Soloman at 8 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Circular Migration of Labor” with Rosalio Muñoz, chair, CPUSA Subcommittee on Immigration at 7 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $5. 251-1120. ncalview@igc.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente Offices, Harrison Building, Room 8-K, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 8 

East Bay AIDS Walk from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Lake Merritt, Bellevue and Grand Aves. To register see www.eastbayaidswalk.kintera.org 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of Rocks, Parks and Neighborhoods of North Berkeley from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10, season pass is $30. To register and for meeting place call 848-0181. 

Open The Farm Meet and greet the animals at the Little Farm in Tilden Park as you help the farmer with morning chores, from 9 to 10:30 a.m.. 525-2233. 

Reptile Rap Meet our resident snake and turtle friends with an interactive talk for the whole family, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Sierra Club Grassroots Organizing Workshop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2530 San Pablo Ave. RSVP to 848-0800, ext. 307. 

Recycle Your Electronics Sat. and Sun. from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the El Cerrito Dept. of Motro Vehicles, 6400 Manila Ave. Items accepted are computer monitors, computers, televisions, VCR and DVD players, toner cartridges, printers, fax machines, telephone equipment, cell phones and MP3 players. Sponsored by the City of El Cerrito. For infomation call 1-888-832-9839. www.unwaste.com 

Restoration Workday on the Banks of San Pablo Creek from 9:30 a.m. to noon at 4191 Appian Way, El Sobrante. For information call 665-3538. 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Montclair Village Meet at 1 p.m. at Montclair Branch Public Library, 1687 Mountain Blvd. for a gently sloping walk. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Salud! A Celebration of Latino Art, Health and Community with health information, visual art and live music, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. 601-4040. www.wcrc.org 

The Crucible’s Fall Open House from 2 to 6 p.m. followed by Artist-in-Residence reception at 1260 7th Street, Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

Fall Bloomimng Perennials & Shrubs at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. off 7th St. 644-2351. 

“Interested in Becoming a Foster Parent?” Information and training from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. RSVP to 925-370-1990. 

“The Art of Narration in Television and Radio Ads” with Paul Rowan at Dramatically Speaking, at 9 a.m., 1950 Franklin St., Room 2C, Oakland. Free, but please RSVP. ID required to get into building. 581-8675. Lunni8@aol.com 

East Bay Baby Fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. 540-7210. www.eastbaybabyfair.com 

Common Agenda, a local alliance of some 20 organizations in the Bay Area meets at 2 p.m. at the Peace Action Office, 2800 Adeline St. at Stuart. 524-6071. 

Auditions for Soli Deo Gloria from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church, 1323 Central Ave., Alameda. For infromation call 888-734-7664. www.sdgloria.org 

Careers in Travel a full day class at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Cost is $10. RSVP to 981-2931.  

Luna Kids Dance Open House and creative dance class from 1 to 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. 644-3629. 

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

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 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 9 

Solano Stroll “Going Green - It’s Easy” with entertainment, food, information booths, and more from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Solano Ave. in Albany and Berkeley. info@solanostroll.org 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Broadway Auto Row Meet at 10 a.m. at 28th and Broadway, the tip of the Flatiron Building. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Huston Smith “Three Outstanding Experiences of My Life” at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

The Red Oak Victory Ship Pancake Breakfast from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on board the ship, in Richmond harbor off Canal Blvd. Cost is $6, children under 5 free. 237-2933. 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “The Asquiths & Woods” by Peter Wood at 10:30 a.m. at 132 Montwood Way, Oakland. For information call 527-7118. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to keep your bike in excellent working condition through safety inspections, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Sew Your Own Open Studio from 5 to 9 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Drive, Aquatic Park. Our workshop has industrial and domestic machines and tools which you can come learn to use or work on your own projects in a social setting. Cost is $3 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.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 

MONDAY, SEPT. 10 

The 9/11 Truth Film Festival Films include “Hijacking Catastrophe,” “The Reflecting Pool,” “Zeitgeist,” “Let's Get Empirical,” “9/11: Press for Truth,” and “9/11 Mysteries” from 1 to 10 p.m. Mon. and Tues. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. 

Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning Workshop for six consequtive Mon. eves. from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Berkeley Adult School, 1701 San Pablo Ave. Pre-registraion encouraged. 644-6130. http://bas.berkeley.net  

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra rehearsals begin for Puccini's Messa di Gloria at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-registration strongly recommended. www.bcco.org  

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

People's Park Community Advisory Board meeting at 7 p.m. at Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Ave. 642-3255.  

Free Sewing Class for Youth at Sew Your Own, from 3 to 6 p.m. at Bolivar Drive, Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Special Session of the City Council to discuss UC’s athletic center at the Oak Grove at 5 p.m. at Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 981-6903. 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Sept. 5 , at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 5, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Sept. 5, at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 6, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs. Sept. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.