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Kala Institute celebrates its 35th anniversary with RE:CON-FIGURE. Pictured here is an installation from the exhibit, Randy Hussong’s Holy Mother of God That’s a Lot of Baseballs! (2008). See story under Arts & Entertainment.
Kala Institute celebrates its 35th anniversary with RE:CON-FIGURE. Pictured here is an installation from the exhibit, Randy Hussong’s Holy Mother of God That’s a Lot of Baseballs! (2008). See story under Arts & Entertainment.
 

News

Berkeley High Decides Not to Charge for First Two Graduation Tickets

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Monday April 27, 2009 - 03:21:00 PM

Berkeley High School announced Friday it will not charge for each student’s first two tickets to this year’s graduation ceremony the Greek Theater. 

The Daily Planet reported April 23 that the school had decided to charge $10 each for the first two tickets and $15 for every additional ticket, a departure from its earlier custom of giving out two free tickets to every graduating senior and charging $5 for each additional ticket. 

Berkeley Unified District officials and members of Berkeley High’s Associated Student Body had attributed the hike in ticket prices to increased expenses for the ceremony, estimated to be more than $100,000 this year. Some parents criticized the change in ticket prices, saying they could not afford the increase amid the economic downturn. 

Others pointed to Oakland’s public high schools, which have a much smaller budget for graduation ceremonies and do not charge for tickets, though the Oakland Unified School District does restricts the number of tickets per student depending on the ceremony’s venue. 

An April 24 e-mail message, Berkeley High School administration informed the school community that each senior will receive two free tickets for the June 12 ceremony at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater. 

“After that,” the brief note said, “seniors may purchase as many additional tickets as they want for $15 each.” 

It went on to explain that, “due to the cost of holding the ceremony at the Greek Theater—Berkeley High’s graduation venue for over four decades—the student leadership, working with the administration, had initially decided that there would be no free tickets. Yesterday the administration decided to increase the amount budgeted for the ceremony in order to ensure that each student receives the initial two tickets at no cost.” 

District spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Planet Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp had stepped in to make the decision. 

“When the discussion came up, probably prompted by the Planet article, he intervened and said the school would find a way to do the first two tickets for free,” he said. “He said they had found more money in the General Fund.” 

Calls to Principal Slemp and Vice Principal Vernon Walton were not returned before press time. 

Last year the Greek Theater charged Berkeley High a little over $19,000 for the venue, including university police, security, parking and staff. 

Coplan said the school spent additional money toward other expenses, such as $10,000 for the sound equipment, rental furniture and chairs, a truckload of bottled water, and overtime for safety officers and teachers. 

“If you had it at Berkeley High and not the Greek, you could probably cut the expenses down by half,” he said. “But if we had it at Berkeley High, we’d probably have to limit each student to three tickets, whereas at the Greek Theater, we can have more than 7,000 guests. 

Not everyone, however, is happy about the school’s decision to give out two tickets for free and still charge $15 for the rest. 

“That’s not fair,” said Guin Irvine, the mother of a Berkeley High senior. “They just didn’t do proper planning. If they had brought it to the parents before, maybe something could have been done. They should have talked to parents before asking the students what they want. Of course young people will say ‘I want to have my graduation at the Greek.’ But it’s the parents who are paying for the ticket—I know people who are almost losing their job.”


7,000 Greet Dalai Lama at Greek Theater

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Monday April 27, 2009 - 04:33:00 PM
More than 7,000 people packed the Greek Theater Saturday afternoon to watch His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, give a speech on “Peace Through Compassion.”
Arnab Bose
More than 7,000 people packed the Greek Theater Saturday afternoon to watch His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, give a speech on “Peace Through Compassion.”
Actress and American Himalayan Foundation boardmember Sharon Stone joined UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau in introducing the Dalai Lama.
Arnab Bose
Actress and American Himalayan Foundation boardmember Sharon Stone joined UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau in introducing the Dalai Lama.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama received a rock star welcome at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater Saturday, his third visit to the campus since taking over as the head and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people in 1937 at the age of 2. 

Toddlers, teenagers, students, retired UC Berkeley professors and visitors from as far away as New Zealand braved the afternoon heat for a chance to see the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion. Sponsored by the American Himalayan Foundation and the Blum Center for Developing Economies, the speech, “Peace Through Compassion,” touched upon world affairs as well as issues closer to home.  

Wearing his signature red and yellow robes, the exiled leader, who lives in India, sat cross-legged on a beige armchair, imparting words of wisdom and humor, as well as a touch of the mundane. In the span of an hour, the Dalai Lama talked about Buddhism, his gall bladder operation, his fear of caterpillars, his preference for flying business class (“first class is too luxurious”) and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 

The Dalai Lama said that while he was growing up in Tibet, his people saw America as the “champion of democracy, liberty and freedom.” But he said that sometimes, in spite of America having a worthwhile goal, “the method is not always so realistic.” 

“In order to understand reality, we need a holistic approach,” he said, later praising American citizens’ for their desire for peace. “Today peace cannot be achieved through prayer. We must achieve peace through ourselves—through non violence,” he said. 

While speaking about President George W. Bush’s foreign policies, the Dalai Lama said he disagreed with some of them, but liked the former president on a personal level. 

“I love him as a human being—very straightforward, very sweet. But not a great leader or political person,” he said. 

Addressing the audience’s younger demographic, he said, “You are the real people, you are the source of hope. Time will always be moving; if you want to waste time that’s up to you.” 

He stressed the importance of compassion for a healthy and stress-free life. 

“In every sphere of life, affection is very important,” he said. Caring for others, the Dalai Lama said, has enabled him to remain young at heart. Recalling the words of a scientist he met in New York, he said, “Persons who use the words 'I,' 'me,' 'myself' have greater risk of heart attack...Too much thinking of oneself—'I, I, I'—will lead to more health problems. Think of others—that will help you feel better.” 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and actress Sharon Stone, who also sits on the board of directors for the American Himalayan Foundation, introduced the Dalai Lama Saturday. Birgeneau also presented UC Regent Richard Blum, the founder and chair of the Himalayan foundation, with the Berkeley Medal, the university’s highest honor, for his contributions to social welfare. 

In a lighter moment, Blum joked about his own possible history of reincarnation. 

“I don’t know what I was in my last life,” Blum said, “but clearly there was a problem, because I ended up being an investment banker.” 


Zoning Law Changes, Condos Face Planning Commissioners

By Richard Brenneman
Monday April 27, 2009 - 02:50:00 PM

While Berkeley planning commissioners have scheduled only one decisive action for Wednesday night’s meeting, they’ll be setting a hearing to decide on potentially controversial amendments to city’s zoning code. The package of zoning changes, dubbed “Zoning Amendments to Encourage Economic Development in Downtown,” comes in the wake of the commission’s approval of their own rewrite of the Downtown Area Plan. 

Commissioners rewrote the document produced over a two-year span by the 21-member Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), significantly expanding the size of new buildings allowed and the areas where they can be built. 

Commissioners also removed many of the requirements DAPAC adopted to make developers fund civic improvements in exchange for taller buildings. DAPAC had imposed the requirements in exchange for allowing a higher skyline than many members said they would have otherwise allowed. 

The one decisive action on the agenda for the meeting is a vote on the tract map for the 175-unit condominium project now rising at 700 University Ave. 

The commission will also receive a report on revisions by city staff to the long-delayed Southside Plan, which will govern development south of the UC Berkeley campus. 

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


Cost of Oakland Unified’s High School Graduation Tickets: $0

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday April 24, 2009 - 10:26:00 PM

Despite budget constraints, Oakland Unified will stick with the school district's tradition of not charging for high school graduation tickets this year, district officials said Thursday. 

The Planet reported Thursday that some parents and relatives of Berkeley High School seniors were upset that BHS had raised ticket prices for the June 12 graduation ceremony at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater to meet increased expenses, estimated this year to be more than $100,000. 

This year, funding cuts and other economic uncertainties have drained the school’s budget, leaving it with little money to host a big celebration. Thus, the school decided to charge $10 for the first two tickets and $15 for every additional ticket. Until last year, the first two tickets were free and every ticket thereafter cost $5. 

Some parents said they would not be able to afford the new price during these bleak economic times. 

Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan said student leaders at the school had made the decision to charge more money for the tickets in order to maintain a 40-year tradition of accepting diplomas on the stage of the Greek. 

Oakland Unified School District spokesperson Troy Flint said Oakland public high schools had never charged for tickets to a graduation event. 

“It’s a momentous occasion for a lot of people, and we like to have as many people attend as possible,” he said. 

Flint said the district limits the number of tickets for each student. Students receive between six and 10 tickets, depending on the size of the school and the venue. 

Last year Berkeley High paid $19,109 to UC Berkeley for using the Greek Theater, including $900 for the facility, $4,000 for event staff, $9,942 for UC police and other miscellaneous expenses, according to numbers provided by university staff. The university increased this year's charges by 3 to 4 percent, which they attributed to wage negotiations with workers. 

Berkeley High spends additional money on sound equipment, Berkeley Police Department security services, diploma covers and inserts and other miscellaneous expenses, but school officials did not return the Planet's calls regarding what expenses account for the remainder of the $100,000.  

Oakland Unified’s three big high schools—Oakland High, Oakland Tech and Skyline—pay $10,000 each to rent the Paramount Theater for graduation. 

“It’s steep, but paid for by the schools,” said OUSD Network Executive Officer Alison McDonald in an e-mail to the Planet. The Paramount’s fee includes ushers and security. 

Flint said that in the past, the district used to pick up the tab for the venue, but for the last few years the money has come out of individual school budgets. 

“The principal reserves money from the school’s budget every spring,” Flint said. 

Oakland Unified picks up the cost of diplomas and diploma covers for the district’s 25 high schools, Flint said, as well as printing expenses for tickets for the three big schools, which comes to about $30,000. 

The total number of students in the senior graduating class of Oakland's three big schools is 963. Berkeley High has around 800 students graduating this year. 

McDonald said that many of the smaller high schools in Oakland Unified, such as Mandela, Media, Architecture, Life and Metwest, rent the auditorium at Holy Names College for about $1,600. 

Some smaller schools also use spaces for free. Dewey and Far West will use the auditorium at Oakland Tech this year. Last year they went to Oakland High. 

McDonald said she didn’t know how much the Mormon Temple or Laney College were charging for graduation events, but that the Oakland schools tried their best to keep costs reasonable. 

  

The Planet’s story on Berkeley High’s graduation ticket prices is 

here

 


Safeway to Unveil New Plans for College Avenue Store

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 08:32:00 AM

Safeway will unveil the latest design for its College Avenue store at a public meeting at the Claremont Hotel Wednesday, April 29. 

The grocery chain’s proposal to remodel and expand the 25,000-square-foot '60s-era store has met with fierce opposition from neighbors since the plan was first announced in July, 2007. 

Area residents complained that the new supermarket would take business away from the neighborhood's small, locally owned shops, several of which specialize in the products and services Safeway wants to introduce in its expanded operation. 

Other concerns included traffic, congestion and the overall scale of the project, which critics said would lessen or destroy the Claremont neighborhood's small-town charm. 

However, Safeway officials have pressed on with their plans, part of a nationwide effort to revamp stores by introducing full-service meat and fish counters, florists, and organic produce, among other services and products. 

Safeway hosted a number of community and stakeholder meetings to address criticisms and concerns regarding the College Avenue store, none of which led to a resolution. 

After trying out two different architecture firms, the company brought in local architect Ken Lowney, who the company said would be more sensitive to neighborhood concerns. Lowney met with a group of local architects last month to discuss the project and get feedback. 

In a recent e-mail to neighbors, Elisabeth Jewel, of Aroner, Jewel and Ellis, the political consultants hired by Safeway to coordinate community outreach, said Safeway will show “updated and modified plans” for a new store and retail space at next week’s meeting. 

She called the new building a “new, light-filled, energy-efficient building with lots of free parking for everyone.” Jewel did not return calls for comment Thursday. 

Susan Shawl, of Concerned Neighbors of College Avenue Safeway, accused the supermarket chain of pulling a fast one. 

“We don’t know diddly about the meeting, except for what’s on the website,” she said. “I expect they are going to wine and dine everybody a bit and really just show the drawings. I don’t think they are going to give us a chance to comment. In the past they have been so not interested in listening to people, or allowing much communication. We have absolutely no idea about what’s going to happen at the meeting—they have been very close-mouthed.” 

Esperanza Greenwood, director of public affairs and government relations for Safeway’s Northern California division, did not return calls for comment Thursday. 

Safeway plans to submit a formal application to the City of Oakland to begin the entitlement process after the meeting. 

“Our fear is they are going to go to the planning commission without taking in comment from the community who have been involved all along,” Shawl said. 

She said neighbors weren’t necessarily opposed to an upgrade, but wanted to see a smaller store than the one proposed, and one which would not cause traffic problems. 

“We have enough congestion there already,” Shawl said. 

The Safeway on College website says the new building will have accompanying shops, something Rockridge Community Planning Council Chair Stu Flashman said his organization had mixed feelings about. 

“If there weren’t small shops there already, it would be different,” he said. “But with more shops, can you think of the traffic it’s going to generate?” 

Flashman said the Rockridge Community Planning Council was still concerned about the project. 

“We still haven’t seen anything to indicate it’s going to be small,” he said. “At the last stakeholders’ meeting, Safeway told us they considered 50,000 square feet to be the bottom line. I don’t think they have changed that perspective. But I’ll be at the meeting to find out.” 

Safeway will display the new drawings and architectural renderings for the College Avenue neighborhood store from 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, April 29, at the Claremont Hotel. 

  


City Rebuts Chronicle’s Climate Plan Article

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:08:00 PM

While Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and City Manager Phil Kamlarz were hitting back swiftly against a recent San Francisco Chronicle article that the officials say mischaracterized the city’s proposed Climate Action Plan (CAP), Councilmember Linda Maio, a veteran Bates ally on the council, was indicating that some of the Chronicle’s concerns may have actually been prompted by suggestive language in the plan itself. 

The City Council took its first look at the most recent draft of the CAP at Tuesday night’s regular meeting.  

On Saturday, April 18, the San Francisco Chronicle printed a front-page story on the council’s upcoming CAP debate, saying that energy standards upgrades mandated by the plan could cost individual Berkeley homeowners “upward of $33,800.” 

“Within the next few years,” the Chronicle article said, “the city is likely to mandate that all homes meet strict energy standards. In many cases this would mean new double-paned windows, insulation in the attic, walls and floors, a new white roof that reflects heat, a forced-air furnace and high-efficiency appliances.” 

The article prompted a flurry of letters to councilmembers, the mayor, and the Daily Planet from Berkeley homeowners concerned that the estimated cost that was characterized as the CAP’s “mandates” could price them out of their homes. (See Page 11.) 

In a letter to the Chronicle released to the public Sunday, April 19, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates took issue with the article’s contention that Berkeley homeowners “would be forced to do extensive energy retrofit work on their homes. While it is true that Berkeley does require energy audits at the time of sale or when extensive remodeling takes place, and requires wrapping water heaters and caulking windows and doors,” the mayor wrote, “no one is required to do expensive work. It is usually in people’s best economic interest to make these upgrades to their home, and they are quickly paid back through energy savings. Berkeley has required these energy audits since 1989 and is now considering upgrading the requirements of the audit. It will also establish strong green building standards for new construction.” 

In a letter sent Monday to Mayor Bates and members of the Berkeley City Council, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that, contrary to the Chronicle article’s contention, the Climate Action Plan contains no mandates, only energy efficiency goals, with the details “to be developed through a collaborative process with the community and subject, ultimately, to the City Council’s review and consideration.”  

Kamlarz said that the Chronicle’s report of mandated homeowner costs of upwards of $33,800 to meet the city’s energy standards was “false,” saying that such a cost would “contradict one of the fundamental goals of the CAP—to lower the cost of energy upgrades in homes and businesses.” 

“In the beginning,” the Chronicle article said, “the city will offer incentives, such as rebates and financial assistance, for homeowners to comply. But within a few years, the city will start imposing penalties for those who don’t meet the standards, said Timothy Burroughs, the city’s climate action coordinator.” 

In his letter to Bates and the council, Kamlarz said that it was “inaccurate” for the article to say that “the city would start imposing penalties within a few years for those who do not meet the energy standard.” Kamlarz said “the CAP does not recommend imposing penalties” but, instead, “emphasizes the need for incentives to encourage the installation of these types of improvements.” 

Kamlarz also wrote that the Chronicle’s claim that compliance with the city’s energy standard would require extensive home renovations was “misleading.” “While staff may recommend some types of cost-effective energy efficiency improvements,” the city manager said, “those will not include replacement of roofs or single-pane windows that are not otherwise being replaced, as that would not be a cost-effective improvement.” The full text of Kamlarz’s letter is online at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

But during Tuesday night’s council debate on the proposed Climate Action Plan, Councilmember Maio suggested replacing language in the CAP that could be construed as authorizing expensive homeowner energy-saving mandates. 

At issue were three separate lines in the CAP that suggested such mandates as a possible alternative city strategy. 

In one section, the CAP said that to reach targeted energy efficiency residence goals, the city “could set a date by which all residential buildings must be in compliance with local energy standards.” In another, the CAP suggested one “implementing action” for home energy efficiency was “establishing a date certain by which all residential units must adhere to the standard.” Another “implementing action” said the efficiency standard could be reached “by establishing a date certain by which all [residential] units must adhere to the standard.” 

While none of these suggestions would be legally binding even if they were included in a finally passed CAP, and they could go in effect only if future City Councils passed measures to implement them, the CAP is intended as a guideline for city action, and inclusion of such mandates opens the door for their possible implementation. 

At Tuesday’s meeting, Councilmember Kriss Worthington called the provisions “clumsy wording,” and Maio offered revisions taking out the mentions of residential mandates and substituting non-mandated goals and benchmarks. 

“We went back over the last couple of days and looked over the plan itself,” Maio said, “and some of the provisions were pieced together because the newspaper needed a headline … [but the article’s publication] gave us the chance to clarify the language, and that’s a good thing.” 


City Council Meeting Ends Without Vote on Climate Action Plan

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:09:00 PM

A tired and decidedly testy Berkeley City Council worked into the early morning hours of Earth Day Wednesday morning before abandoning efforts to move forward with the city’s proposed Climate Action Plan (CAP). 

Following the meeting, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates refused to characterize the delay as a setback, calling it a “blip” and predicting that the council will soon approve the plan. 

Consideration of the CAP will now go back to the Council Agenda Committee April 27, with the likelihood that the committee will schedule the item for consideration at the council’s May 5 meeting. 

The council is considering an ambitious, 139-page plan that would set guidelines for greenhouse gas emission reductions in the city over the next 10 years. Tuesday night’s council deliberation was supposed to be the first step in sending the plan through the environmental review process under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and back to the council for final consideration and possible approval on May 19. But on Tuesday night, the council simply ran out of time. 

With a packed agenda that included a lengthy public hearing on proposed city grants to community organizations, as well as a long line of citizens to speak on the CAP itself, the council did not begin its own deliberations on CAP until 11:30 p.m. The council twice voted to extend the meeting past the mandatory 11 p.m. adjournment time, once to midnight, and again to 12:15. 

Mayor Bates tried to rush the council to move the CAP forward and approve the environmental review process, accusing Councilmember Jesse Arreguín of filibustering to prevent immediate passage, and conducting a heated exchange with Councilmember Susan Wengraf when she attempted to have the council consider her concerns about some of the CAP provisions. The last moments of the meeting devolved into confusion, with two motions being voted on simultaneously—one to sever certain sections of the CAP at Arreguín’s request, the other to extend the meeting past 12:15—while several councilmembers talked at the same time, and some stood up in disgust and began gathering their things and putting on their coats in preparation to leave. One councilmember, Max Anderson, simply walked off the council dais and left the meeting several minutes before it eventually ended. 

Arreguín, Wengraf, and Councilmember Kriss Worthington all indicated that, while they were in favor of eventual approval of the CAP, they had provisions they wanted to be included in the CAP before it was submitted for review under CEQA, while Bates said he felt there would have been time enough to put in those provisions after the environmental review process was finished, when the CAP will be brought back to the council. 

Meanwhile, a second issue that had expected to draw fire at Tuesday’s council went through with hardly a whisper. 

By unanimous vote, the council approved a process that could end up in a 20 percent increase in the city’s refuse collection fees, raising collection rates for the average 32-gallon can by $4.52 per month to $27.10. 

Approval of the collection fee increase will be conducted under the “majority protest” provision under California Proposition 218, in which ballots will be sent out to all individuals and businesses owning property where refuse is collected in Berkeley. Property owners can either send back their votes by mail or bring them in, in person, through the July 7 date upon which the council will hold a public hearing on the increase. A majority of the total number of such property owners in the city—not just a majority who actually send back ballots—must vote “no” on the increase in order for the proposed increase to be defeated. 

To the concerns expressed by Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Worthington that the fee increase not overburden low-income residents, city staff members said that they will be proposing a low-income waste fee subsidy program to come out of the city’s general fund. Staff said that program will operate much like an existing subsidy program set up for disabled and elderly residents, in which more than 700 city property owners participate. 

City staff members said that the waste fee proposed increase ballots will be ready to be mailed out to city property owners by the second week in May. 

No public speakers spoke to the proposed fee increase when it came before the City Council Tuesday night. 

 


Berkeley High Raises Graduation Ticket Prices

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:06:00 PM

There will be no free seats at the Berkeley High School graduation this year. 

An increase in graduation ceremony expenses—estimated to run in excess of $100,000 this year—left the school with no other choice but to start charging $10 for the first two tickets and $15 for every additional ticket.  

Last year the school gave out the first two tickets for free and charged $5 for every additional ticket. 

But this year the gloomy economic scenario coupled with budget cuts, layoffs and dwindling funds at Berkeley High made it impossible to give out free tickets and still stage a big ceremony. Berkeley High has held its graduation ceremonies at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater for more than four decades. 

“It’s going to be more expensive than last year,” Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan said. “And Berkeley High doesn’t have enough in its budget. Costs are continuing to rise and the district is facing a $3 million deficit. Every year it’s the same question—‘can we afford to do it?’ The only way we could afford to do it at the Greek Theater is to charge for it.”  

The school, Coplan said, was cutting back on all sorts of expenses to save money. 

“They had the Winter Ball on campus this year instead of at an outside venue,” he said. 

Coplan said the decision to introduce the new rates had been made by the senior student leadership at Berkeley High to uphold the age-old tradition of walking on the Greek Theater stage to receive their diplomas. 

“Berkeley High School is not doing this—the seniors made a decision to do the graduation at the Greek Theater and charge for it,” he said, adding that students had explored the possibility of holding the event at the Community Theater or the high school’s football field.  

Nichelle Pete, vice president of Berkeley High School’s Associated Student Body and member of the 2009 Graduation Committee, said she had voted for the ticket price increase. 

“We have a tradition to hold our graduation at the Greek Theater, and I want to uphold that tradition,” said Pete, a graduating senior. “With all the various budget cuts, it came to our attention that we couldn’t afford to keep the ticket prices so low. At first we were willing to have the graduation in the Community Theater, but then we realized that not as many people would fit, and each student would have to be limited to bring a certain amount of people. We really didn’t think that the senior class families would like it if there was a limit.” 

Pete attributed similar problems to the use of the football field. 

“Finally we came to the conclusion that that we could spend money and raise ticket prices at the Greek or spend money and limit the students to the Community Theater,” she said. 

Coplan said that $20 for the first two tickets was quite reasonable. 

“It’s not like it’s an arm and a leg,” he said. “It’s $20 for the first two tickets, not $85. If parents have a problem paying it, I am sure Berkeley High will deal with it.” 

However, not all parents feel they can afford the price hike. 

The parent of a graduating senior who wanted to remain anonymous because she worked for the school district said she found it outrageous. 

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “We senior parents understand that the cost of things have gone up but this is outrageous. We are all going through a hard time right now, and to charge parents to see their children graduate is unbelievable. If I don’t have the money will they tell me I can’t see my daughter graduate?” 

The parent said that she would like to see the high school charge exactly the same as last year. 

“I understand that the economy is under major stress, but we also understand that every event at Berkeley High costs money and it just so happens that there isn’t enough to continue the way it was,” Pete explained. “I apologize to the families who cannot afford to buy all the tickets they may need—including me—but like any business we must stay logical and out of debt. This milestone will help underclassmen to see where they will need the most funding and how they will be able to make good decisions for the entire student body.” 

Berkeley Board of Education Director John Selawsky backed the students’ decision. 

“Yes, other high schools do it for much less but I think we should continue at the Greek Theater,” he said. “It’s a great venue and a great place to graduate—the stage of a world-renowned university. But that place is not cheap.” 

Managed by UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, the William Randolph Hearst Greek Theater on Gayley Road has hosted such dignitaries as President Theodore Roosevelt and the Dalai Lama, who will speak there again Saturday, April 25. 

The amphitheater-like venue, with its views of the bay, can seat 8,500 people and is packed to the brim during Berkeley High graduation festivities. 

Charley Locke, a junior at Berkeley High, said she believed parents should be able to watch their child’s graduation for free. 

“A key element of public school is providing access to things like this for all families,” she said. 

Calls to Berkeley High School Principal Jim Slemp and Vice Principal Vernon Walton for comment were not returned. 

Iris Grace, parent of another senior, said she was a little disappointed with the news. 

“It wasn’t so much about charging for the extra tickets,” she said. “We have been doing a lot to get our children through school. To hold us hostage like this is wrong. They did not ask parents before doing it. I would have like to have a say in it.” 

Grace said she was alerted about the change in a senior activities packet sent to 12th graders in March. 

“I heard that the Greek Theater was charging more money, but when you start doing the numbers on potential revenue from the ticket sales, you can’t see the theater charging that kind of money,” she said. 

The notice from the school also said that students who have difficulty buying tickets could contact their counselor. 

With at least 800 students graduating this year, the school is set to make about $16,000 from selling the first two tickets alone. 

Cal Performances charges Berkeley High $19,109 for use of the Greek Theater, which includes $900 for the facility, $4,000 for event staff, $9,942 for UC police and other miscellaneous expenses, according to 2008 figures provided by management. 

Berkeley High Parent, Teacher and Student Association President Mark van Krieken, suggested that, given the tough economic situation the school district was facing, the university, as part of being a “good neighbor” could decrease rental costs. 

Douglas Warrick, general manager of Cal Performances, said UC Berkeley was already being a good neighbor by extending “family prices” to Berkeley High School that are usually available only to UC campuses. 

Nine hundred dollars is the same amount Cal Performances charges for departmental graduation events at the Greek. For any other high school, Warrick said, it would be double the amount, and for popular music events, tens of thousands of dollars.  

“Costs have only gone up 3 to 5 percent this year,” he said. “And that’s primarily because of recent negotiations with university employees about their cost of living. We are doing our part as good neighbors to work with Berkeley High to cut costs as much as possible.” 

Warrick said that graduation performances by Berkeley High’s renowned jazz band require state-of-the-art equipment, which needs expert handling by special staff, adding to the expenses. 

“Then there’s their rehearsal schedule, setting up sound and theatrical equipment and cleaning, which takes up a lot of time,” he said. “The costs really depend on how long they use the facility for.” 

The university, Warrick said, had absolutely no say in ticket prices. 

Van Krieken suggested that perhaps the high school could look at a sliding scale for the tickets. 

“It’s a big event, everybody wants to bring their family,” he said. “But on the other hand, the high school is also in a tough spot.” 

Hayden Plant, who will graduate this year, said he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. 

“It’s a very minor amount,” he said. “People should stop complaining. It’s not a big deal. I don’t know why it matters—Berkeley High graduation is a joke anyway.” 

Those interested in helping with ticket prices can make a donation to the Berkeley High School graduation fund or buy extra tickets for those in need. For more information, contact the school at 644-6120. 

This version of the story corrects an error published in the print edition, which misstated the year from which the figures for the Greek Theater were taken. The costs for Berkeley High's use of the theater are from 2008.


West Berkeley Air Monitoring Results Released

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:10:00 PM

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District last week released the results of the air monitoring it carried out near West Berkeley's Pacific Steel Casting last year.  

The study, carried out over a one-year period, says West Berkeley residents are not exposed to increased cancer or other health risks due to air quality.  

In an April 14 letter to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, air district Executive Officer Jack Broadbent said the study found that, “for the year 2008, West Berkeley air quality met all of the applicable state and national ambient-air-quality standards, with the exception of the 24-hour national PM2.5 standard and the very stringent annual state PM standards, similar to most other Bay Area locations.”  

The Environmental Protection Agency describes PM2.5 as fine particles unhealthy to breathe and associated with premature mortality and other serious health effects.  

Broadbent’s letter identified secondary ammonium nitrate and wood smoke as the primary causes of elevated PM2.5 levels in the Bay Area. He said secondary ammonium nitrate forms in the atmosphere and is primarily a result of nitrogen oxide emissions from “mobile sources and other types of fossil-fuel combustion.” Wood smoke emissions, Broad- bent said, were being addressed through the air district’s recently adopted law regarding wood-burning devices.  

The analysis also shows air quality in West Berkeley to be well below all of the acute and chronic “reference exposure levels”—the “concentration at or below which no adverse non-cancer health effects are anticipated in the general human population”—established by the state EPA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.  

“I’m deeply relieved that the comprehensive study found that West Berkeley residents are not exposed to increased cancer or other health risks,” Bates said in a statement Friday afternoon.  

Calls to the mayor’s office for further comment were not returned by press time.  

Air district officials analyzed a year’s worth of data from an air-monitoring station located at the Picante restaurant parking lot at Sixth and Camelia streets. The results were compared with statewide air-quality measurements.  

Several environmental groups and community members called the air district’s report misleading, explaining that it did not address their concerns in a comprehensive manner.  

“The air district needs a reality check and to improve their science,” said Andrew Galpern, a West Berkeley resident advocating for cleaner air. “They need to visit the neighborhood, test the air and the strange dust that settles on the homes downwind, and conduct a health survey to find out who’s getting sick and how often. I’m glad Mayor Bates is ‘deeply relieved’ with the results. The problem is, he and his family don’t live here ... we do, and the air still stinks.”  

Pear Michaels, a founding member of Mothers and Others for Measuring Metals in the Air, questioned the authenticity of the Picante monitor data.  

“The fact that it collects heavy metals once every sixth day on a schedule known in advance to Pacific Steel Casting is problematic,” she said. “Should they wish to limit their operations on that day, they may do so and effectively control the data.”  

Pacific Steel spokesperson Elisabeth Jewel said company officials did not know which days the data were collected.  

“Our production schedule is based on customer orders only,” she said. “We have no idea when they are doing it. It’s determined by air district staff members.”  

The analysis will be forwarded to the Alameda County Health Department and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment for review and comment.  

Local environmental activists had asked the air district to place the monitor near Pacific Steel at Second and Gilman streets to investigate the steel plant’s emissions.  

Area residents have complained for years about a burned-copper-like smell from the foundry. Pacific Steel responded by installing odor absorption systems in its plants.  

A recent report by USA Today, which placed three West Berkeley schools in the top 1 percent nationwide for poor outdoor air quality, led many community members to point to Pacific Steel as the source of the problem.  

“The bottom line is that the air quality meets federal and state standards,” Jewel said. “Singling out Pacific Steel as a contributor to unhealthy air at school sites is clearly wrong. If these are the results two blocks from the plant, then clearly Pacific Steel is not contributing to unhealthy air quality more than a mile from the plant at the school sites.”  

Jewel attributed noxious emissions to wood smoke and to diesel particulate from the freeway.  

“The air district’s analysis is grossly misleading, because it did not take into account the correlation of nickel and manganese with iron, as well as factors such as wind direction and weather condition,” said Denny Larson of Global Community Monitor. “At this point the public has lost total confidence in the air district’s approach to the problem.”  

The air district’s assessment of the data says that although the average concentration of manganese at the parking lot is higher than at other monitoring sites, a fact the district attributes to its proximity to Pacific Steel, the levels were well below reference exposure levels adopted by the EPA.  

“Manganese levels are way under any level that could cause health effects, even among sensitive populations,” Jewel said.  

The air district also compared Pacific Steel’s Health Risk Assessment results for the Sixth and Camelia location with the monitoring results, finding them consistent.  

“If the Health Risk Assessment is correct and the pollution controls installed at Pacific Steel are 99.5 percent effective, then the community should not be smelling such strong, acute releases of emissions as they are,” Michaels said. “West Berkeley has one of the highest rates for childhood asthma and hospitalization in the nation. We need these serious issues publicized and addressed.”  

Broadbent said district staff were exploring the idea of continuing the monitoring at the Picante parking lot through 2009.  

“While the monitoring results are encouraging, air district staff will continue to explore opportunities to further reduce odorous and toxic pollutant emissions in the West Berkeley area by continuing our compliance and enforcement efforts and by working with Pacific Steel Casting and other facilities to identify potential emission reduction options,” Broadbent said.  


Departed City Manager Leaves Big Mess in Alameda

By John Geluardi, Special to the Planet: a report funded by the Spot.us community
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:10:00 PM

Nearly two months after Alameda City Manager Debra Kurita resigned, the island city is still trying to sound the depths of the financial crisis caused by her falsely inflated budgets. 

Kurita quietly left her job Feb. 26 with little more than a one-paragraph public statement, which was posted on the city’s website. What Kurita did not mention in her statement was that she decided to resign after three intense, closed-session meetings to discuss her job performance. At issue was the city’s 2008–2009 budget, which suddenly turned up at least $2.1 million short. 

Councilmembers have been tight lipped about what was discussed during those meetings, but it’s safe to assume there was a lot of conversation about Kurita’s questionable accounting skills. 

The unexpected budget shortage, coupled with revenue losses due to a nationwide economic downturn, put the city into a financial crisis. In addition, the city may be on the hook for $30 million in lawsuits over the sale of Alameda Power & Telecom and the 2005 death of Dr. Zehra Attari, who inadvertently drove into the estuary on a cold, rainy night because the city had not properly posted warning signage at a boat ramp at the end of Grand Street. 

“This was on top of an already grim situation,” said Councilmember Frank Matarrese. “There’s going to be real impacts. We’re going to be cutting services and it’s going to hurt.” 

The council has not yet identified which services will be cut and whether there will be any layoffs of city employees. 

The problem occurred when Kurita failed to account for rapidly increasing worker’s compensation costs. Alameda’s workers’ compensation claims had been rising by half a million dollars annually for the last three years, and each year Kurita failed to increase projections to compensate for the increases. As a result, the city’s general fund gave a false impression of financial health. 

It is uncertain whether Kurita deliberately doctored the budgets to make it appear there was more money in the general fund or if it was simply a colossal blunder. Kurita did not return several calls from the Daily Planet to explain what happened. 

Interim City Manager Anne Marie Gallant said it is more important to solve the city’s financial problems then it is to cast blame. “There are a lot of urban legends about what happened, but the situation is a fact, and we need to fix it,” she said. 

However, some in Alameda are upset that Kurita, to whom the city paid an $180,000 annual salary, was able to leave the city with six months’ worth of pay and full benefits. 

“It’s disgusting,” said David Howard, chair of the watchdog Alameda Community Group. “It sounds like she was hiding information and misleading the council. Why should she be rewarded for that?” 

Deputy City Attorney Terri Highsmith said Kurita was guaranteed the severance pay and benefits according to her contract with the city. “It was a standard contract,” Highsmith said. “It’s common for city managers to have such contracts, because there is a high turnover in that position,” Highsmith said. “She is guaranteed six months’ salary and benefits unless she is fired.” 

The severance deal was a little hard to take, and there may be some policy changes that would prevent similar situations in the future, said Matarrese. “Alameda honors its contracts, and it will continue to do so,” he said. “But I don’t know if we will be making contracts like that in the future.


Parents Complain About BHS Scheduling Committee

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:17:00 PM

Some Berkeley High School parents are complaining about the lack of information they have received about a new committee charged with planning the second phase of a new organizational design for Berkeley High. 

In a letter sent out to 2,700 Berkeley High families last week, the school’s Parent, Teacher and Student Association President Mark van Krieken said that there was “no communication with or input from the PTSA in the process of involving parents or with any other parent group that the district or the PTSA were aware of” regarding the new committee. 

Known as the scheduling committee, the group is supposed to be crafting a new schedule for the high school, as directed by the Berkeley Board of Education when it approved the redesign plan in February. One aim of the plan, among others, is to close the achievement gap at the high school. 

A large number of parents spoke at the February public meeting, and some said then that they were disappointed by the lack of transparency in the process. 

Others said they were supporting the plan with the hope that the next stage of the redesign process would be done with a significant increase in transparency, communication, and involvement of the parent community.  

At that time, with guidance from District Superintendent Bill Huyett, the board approved changes to the original version of the redesign, including the implementation of late-start Mondays for professional development of teachers in the fall of 2009, “regularly scheduled” advisory programs in the fall of 2010, development of a new schedule, which will provide benefits such as “additional offerings, academic support, personalization and better student and teacher working conditions,” and development of a new small school which would start in the fall of 2010 or 2011.  

Huyett recommended that, rather than adopt a block schedule right away, the board should support the creation of a different schedule from the current six-period model, to help incorporate more courses annually and to provide time on a regularly scheduled basis for advisory programs and academic support. 

The board approved Huyett’s recommendation and asked that the high school and the district work together over the next six months to figure out a schedule and a funding model, as well as negotiate contract issues with the Berkeley Federation of Teachers before Feb. 1, 2010. 

The new schedule is not expected to be in place until the 2010-11 school year. 

Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp did not return calls for comment. Huyett told the Planet that the committee had been formed in order to plan out a viable process for communication with parents. 

“It’s primarily a staff committee,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the same process is going to be used as the last time. We will ask for public comment.” 

The committee had its first meeting April 15. 

“Without a nominating or election process, there is no way of knowing whether the various viewpoints of the parent community are represented on the committee,” van Krieken said in his letter. “There has been no communication by the Berkeley High administration with the parent community informing them of the creation of the new committee, its makeup or mission, a schedule of meetings, a timeline for goals, or any acknowledgment that a process will be put in place for keeping the community informed or involved.” 

Van Krieken said the new committee members—including two parents, two students, five teachers, the superintendent and Slemp—had been handpicked by the principal. The PTSA president told the Planet that names of committee members had not yet been made public. 

“There are no parents of color on the new committee, so there is no representation on the committee by parents whose community’s needs the committee aims to address,” he said. 

“The Berkeley High administration likes to work in secrecy,” van Krieken said. “When they started the last redesign committee, we knew nothing about it. A lot of parents and teachers were divisive and bitter. This is just a repeat.” 

He said he had called up the superintendent after hearing rumors about it. 

“And lo and behold, he told me it was indeed going on,” he said. “How you can do something like this without involving the parent community is beyond me.” 

Margit Roos-Collins, another parent at Berkeley High, said she hoped the high school would involve more parents. 

“The only way to bring along the community in building momentum for a particular change is to actually bring them along, offer opportunities for some to sit at the table and for all to attend and listen and speak during public comment,” she said. 

“Given the passionate level of community interest in how we instruct our children and in what we expect of them, it would strongly behoove the school to create a venue in which all interested parents and teachers could connect and band together to work on aspects of this challenge and divide up the work.”  

Peggy Smith, another parent, said she was not surprised by the decision. 

“The handwriting was on the wall for how this might move forward in the worst possible fashion, but I really thought someone from the district would intervene and not let it happen again, and insist that this phase be more inclusive and in compliance,” she said in an e-mail to the Planet. “So far, my worst fantasies are proving true.”  

Berkeley Board of Education Director John Selawsky said he understood the parents’ concerns. 

“I share some of the concerns,” he said. “The superintendent is part of the committee to monitor and hold people accountable. That said, Jim is the principal of the high school. He gets to choose his committee to some degree. And if not Jim, then who?” 

Van Krieken also said that according to Slemp, the committee’s meetings would be closed to the Berkeley High community. 

“I hope that’s not the case,” Selawsky said. “I hope the meetings will be open and posted and that people can make comments. I plan to discuss this with the superintendent. Maybe these are just rumors going on.”


School Board Tells City to Proceed With Pools Plan

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:04:00 PM

The Berkeley Board of Education voted unanimously on April 15 to ask the city to proceed with an environmental review of the citywide pools master plan.  

The board also affirmed the Berkeley Unified School District’s willingness to host the warm water pool—located at Berkeley High School’s Old Gym—at the West Campus, the former site of the Berkeley Adult School.  

Berkeley Unified collaborated with the city last year to assess the aquatic needs of the community and construct a new warm pool. Under Berkeley High School’s South of Bancroft Master Plan, the landmarked Old Gym and the warm pool inside it will be demolished in June 2011. The joint project also sought to fund renovations or other improvements necessary for Berkeley’s outdoor community pool centers and to outline options for new pools.  

An aquatic task force formed last fall incorporated extensive community input to create the master plan, comprising of a preferred option and two alternatives.  

“Community involvement was one of our strengths,” task force member Madelyn Stelmach—who also sits on the city’s Commission on Disability—told the board. “We went out of our way to do that.”  

Stelmach said the task force strove to serve the aquatic needs of the entire community amid a tough economic climate, funding constraints and a variety of opinions.  

Task force member Seth Goddard added that the limited land the district was offering for the West Campus pools was a further challenge.  

The plan favored by the group seeks to construct a new 25-yard by 25-meter outdoor competition pool and renovate the locker rooms at King Middle School, removing the existing instructional and dive pools for $4.8 million.  

It will renovate the aging instructional pool and locker rooms at Willard Middle School and convert the dive pool into a children’s play pool with waterslides for $4 million.  

West Campus will have a new 2,790-square-foot, 92-degree indoor warm water pool and a 3,510-square-foot indoor recreational pool, costing around $20.3 million. The existing lap pool will be destroyed.  

Describing West Campus as the master plan’s “focal point,” Goddard said the investment would have a positive influence on the surrounding neighborhood, one of the poorer and more disadvantaged parts of Berkeley.  

The overall price tag for all three projects is nearly $30 million, with operational costs ranging between $945,000 and $1.2 million—numbers that are much higher than current budgets.  

Goddard attributed this increase to the fact that, under the new plan, the school district would no longer be paying utility bills for the warm pool. Instead, the city would be covering all costs.  

Currently the district pays utility bills for the warm water pool and covers part of the cost for the West Campus pool. The city covers the rest of the costs for the West Campus pool and all the expenses of King and Willard pools.  

The two alternative plans suggested by the task force reduce the West Campus warm water pool to nearly half the size proposed in the preferred plan and eliminate the new recreational pool.  

The first alternative talks about repairing the existing West Campus lap pool and operating it at the current hours. The second alternative proposes fixing the pool, but shelves plans to run it until funding becomes available.  

Construction costs for the two alternatives range between $18 million and $16 million.  

Operational costs for both options still run higher than current expenses, with the second proposal, at only $15,000 above present-day costs, turning out to be the least expensive of the three options.  

JoAnn Cook, a task force member, told the board that the smaller warm pool suggested in the alternatives would not benefit its users.  

“We did a good job of designing the preferred plan and had good input from community groups, but it is a bit expensive,” she said. “We were pushed to develop alternative plans that would come in on a lower figure, and that’s where we went off. There isn’t any way that a 14,000-square-foot pool will be adequate for our programs,” she said. “Once it’s built, keep in mind, we can’t change that.”  

School Board Director John Selawsky expressed some reservations about the exorbitant construction costs.  

He said the original goal of the district and the city had been the replacement of the warm pool and possible construction of new pools.  

“It’s grown to a much larger animal than the warm water pool,” he said. “Parts of this is a mistake—in this economy, it is a mistake. We will have a hard time convincing voters to support the plan.”  

The city is considering putting the pools on the June ballot for next year.  

Selawsky said he would “gladly support moving the warm water pool to West Campus” but asked the task force to scale back on the rest of the plan.  

Goddard informed the board that the deteriorating condition of the Willard pool made its renovation extremely important.  

Huyett reminded the board that the school district had only a marginal interest in the pools.  

“Most of the decision making will be done by the city,” he said. “We accept having the warm pool at West Campus, but this is not really our ballgame. We as a board have said consistently that we don’t want to take responsibility for designing or operating the pools. We don’t want to be the decision maker on what goes on in the property. We are just leasing the land to the city.”  

The council is expected to vote May 5 on whether to ask city officials to move ahead with the environmental review.


Berkeley High Plans Safety Overhaul

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:12:00 PM

Berkeley High School officials plan to ramp up safety and security measures as a result of multiple written complaints from members of the school’s Safety Committee earlier this year.  

In an April 3 letter to the committee, district Manager of Student Welfare and Attendance Javier Mendieta said then-acting Principal Maggie Heredia-Peltz had responded to various safety issues in the complaints, and presented specific resolutions that she said Berkeley High administration and staff will follow up on.  

The issues include better communication with students and parents regarding crime, greater visibility for school safety staff, increased number of resources officers and improved incident-reporting practices.  

Don Morgan, a parent and member of the Safety Committee, said several of the issues addressed by Heredia-Peltz were included in an updated version of Berkeley High’s safety plan approved by the School Governance Council April 14 and scheduled to be taken up by the Berkeley Board of Education in May.  

The school, Heredia-Peltz said in her response, will begin notifying parents and staff via email or through the Parent, Teacher and Student Association newsletter of “violent crime incidents on campus, during lunch or after school,” as recommended by the Safety Committee.  

“Instead of having to deal with rumors, everybody has the right information,” PTSA President Mark van Krieken said. “People can relax more when they get information like that. Before, we’d have to get in touch with the Police Department and school authorities, and even then people would try to run information down.”  

Some high school parents said they had found the two alerts sent out by Heredia-Peltz in February helpful. The alerts concerned a possible gun incident on campus and a minor fire alarm.  

“Whether these improvements will continue under Principal Slemp or not, we will have to wait and see,” Morgan said.  

Margit Roos-Collins, another parent and Safety Committee member, said she hopes the school makes the alerts a permanent feature.  

“It’s dumb not to,” she said.  

District Superintendent Bill Huyett called the alerts a “good practice,” adding that he supported the school’s response to the complaints.  

“Some of these things can be put into effect immediately,” he said.  

Neither Heredia-Peltz nor Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp—who is back on the job after a medical leave—returned calls for comment.  

Heredia-Peltz also said Berkeley High was exploring recommendations by the Safety Committee to have the school’s safety officers wear easily identifiable uniforms, which would help tell them apart from criminals, but the matter would have to be negotiated with the union first.  

“It will help everybody know who the safety officers are—if they are part of the problem or adults trying to help,” van Krieken said.  

Huyett said that both the Safety Committee and the Berkeley Police Department had made a request for the uniforms.  

In response to the committee’s call for additional school resource officers who would work with Berkeley police to address crime, Heredia-Peltz said the school was working with the Berkeley Police Department to coordinate services when Officer Mitch Collins, the current school resource officer, is unavailable. Collins works at the school four days a week.  

A school resource officer is a Berkeley police officer assigned to Berkeley High to advise students who witness or are victimized in a campus crime.  

Huyett explained that while additional resources might not be possible this year given the district’s budget deficit, there was money from safety grants for new uniforms.  

“I am extremely happy they are moving forward with it,” said Roos-Collins. “I just hope they don’t spend the money signing off on uniforms before consulting with the Police Department.”  

The school will also implement a more prominent incident-reporting program which will allow people to confidentially report incidents immediately in case they fear retribution. Morgan said students would be able to fill out forms easily available at the front desk to complain about thefts, fights, bullying and harassment.  

The administration, he said, would have to lay out clear plans about how they implemented “stop cards”—a card filled out by safety officers when they encountered nonstudents.  

“What is not clear to us is what happens with the stop cards, what is the procedure stop cards are part of,” he said. “The language provided by the administration is very vague when it comes to the legal requirements issuing restraining orders. That was something committee members were interested in pursuing this year but were not able to get around to.”  

The updated version of the safety plan aims to reduce robberies and thefts by 20 percent.  

The school reported a large number of strong-arm robberies in and around Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park last fall. Morgan said that although the string of robberies was curtailed by arrests, thefts continue to occur around campus.  

The committee also hopes to decrease physical and verbal altercations by 20 percent and cut back on drug and alcohol use by 10 percent. Survey results from the 2008 California Healthy Kids Survey show self-reported drug and alcohol use at Berkeley High to be twice the national average.  

The school also plans to craft a more comprehensive disaster plan to deal with earthquakes and other natural disasters.  

Roos-Collins said that although the high school had carried out the number of fire and earthquake drills required by state law, it was still working on finalizing a disaster plan.  

“The school has always had an emergency plan, but it ended with evacuation,” she said. “We never had a disaster plan—something we need when neither the Fire Department nor Police Department will come to our help. The Safety Committee is working on a disaster plan, but we still have a long way to go.”  

Morgan said he hoped Berkeley High would also adopt a more open and transparent approach to improve the membership process for the Safety Committee.  

“There have been issues about who should represent parents, which has caused the meetings to not achieve the kind of success we anticipated,” he said. “Some members have resigned after being frustrated at the speed we were making progress. We want to welcome as many parents and teachers as possible.”  

The committee currently has five to six parents, at least one teacher and several administrators, including Heredia-Peltz and Dean of Students Alejandro Ramos, who serves as chair. 


Students, Parents Thank School Board For Preserving Bilingual Program

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:05:00 PM
Riha Bhattacharjee
              Angelica Perez talks with Franklin State Preschool and Parent Nursery students Isabella Perez and Amalia Flores at Wednesday night’s Berkeley Board of Education meeting, just before they joined with many other students and parents in thanking the School Board for preserving the school’s half-day Spanish bilingual program.
Riya Bhattacharjee
Riha Bhattacharjee Angelica Perez talks with Franklin State Preschool and Parent Nursery students Isabella Perez and Amalia Flores at Wednesday night’s Berkeley Board of Education meeting, just before they joined with many other students and parents in thanking the School Board for preserving the school’s half-day Spanish bilingual program.

A large number of parents and students from Franklin State Preschool and Parent Nursery showed up at the Berkeley Board of Education meeting April 15 to thank the district for not changing the school’s half-day Spanish bilingual program.  

Parents were concerned that the program might be threatened by the state’s recent decision to integrate its preschool and parent nursery program with the Early Childhood Education program.  

District Superintendent Bill Huyett assured them Tuesday that the changes at the state level would not affect the program or how it was delivered. “We fully understand that the program at Franklin serves families differently from our other preschool programs, and we do not want to change that,” Huyett said in a letter to parents. “We still have to work out some of the details at the district level, but, from the perspective of students and parents, the transition will be seamless.”  

Franklin’s half-day bilingual program, which is said to be the only one of its kind in the East Bay, has helped children from low-income families for the past  

50 years. 

 


Planners Take Final Vote On Downtown Plan Rewrite

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:11:00 PM

Planning commissioners voted 7-2 Wednesday, April 15, to approve their taller, denser rewrite of the plan that will guide the development of downtown Berkeley for the next 20 years. 

With the plan for downtown Berkeley out of the way, commissioner and non-profit housing developer Teresa Clarke said the city should now make similar moves to pave the way for major housing projects near the North Berkeley and Ashby BART stations. 

“What are we going to do to get more tall buildings near BART in North and South Berkeley?” asked Clarke after the vote. She compared neighbors who call taller buildings neighborhood-ruining “catastrophes” to critics of affordable housing projects who first say “the sky is falling,” then later hail the projects as “wonderful.” 

While several of the seven commissioners who supported their revisions described the result as an affirmation of the original plan drafted over the course of two years by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), commissioner and former DAPAC member Gene Poschman said the rewrite had gutted DAPAC’s vision. 

City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, who attended Wednesday night’s meeting and several other commission sessions, agreed. 

“I have very serious concerns about the plan the commission has adopted,” he said. “It is not representative of the plan DAPAC adopted by a 17–4 vote, and which came out of two years of intense debates and concerns. Not only has the commission decoupled DAPAC’s requirement of green features and affordable housing requirements to build high-rises, but they have significantly expanded the area where high rises can be built, which will create serious problems for neighbors.” 

It is up to the City Council to decide the plan’s final shape, though the possible parameters have been defined by the already completed environmental impact report (EIR), which is based on the commission’s expanded development parameters, and not the lower skyline approved by DAPAC. 

While the majority of DAPAC members came from outside the development community, six of the commission’s nine members have drawn their paychecks from the building sectors, including three private sector planners (Chair David Stoloff, Victoria Eisen and Clarke), two architects (James Samuels and James Novosel) and an attorney who represents developers (Vice Chair Harry Pollack). 

They were joined in their vote for the plan by Larry Gurley, a college mathematics professor. 

The two opposing votes came from retired professor Poschman—Arreguin’s appointee—and Patti Dacey, a private investigator picked by Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

The plan, whatever its final form, results from the confluence of two powerful forces: the expansion plans of the University of California and the mandates of regional government in the form of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). 

The immediate impetus for the plan was the settlement agreement ending a city lawsuit challenging the university’s Long Range Development Plan 2020, which calls for the school to build 850,000 square feet of off-campus buildings in the heart of downtown Berkeley. 

In exchange for dropping the suit, the city accepted mitigation payments to offset impacts of the building on city services and to help pay for the costs of creating a new downtown plan to accommodate the growth, giving the university an equal say in approving the ultimate draft. 

The May 25, 2005, agreement mandated City Council approval of the final draft within 48 months, calling for reductions in mitigation payments by $15,000 for every month of delay. City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks told commissioners earlier this month that the university may agree to a brief delay to allow the City Council more time to iron out details of the final draft. 

ABAG’s role came from its mandate that Berkeley be willing to build more than 2,700 new residential housing units by 2014, and refusal could result in the loss of some state and federal funds administered through the regional agency. 

Marks told DAPAC members that the city wanted to allocate most of the units to the downtown area, since opposition from other neighborhoods could prove insurmountable. 

While the DAPAC majority held that the new housing could be accommodated without recourse to a significant number of high-rises, the committee compromised by allowing limited numbers of taller buildings in exchange for affordable housing “in-lieu” funds and payments to provide public and environmental amenities. 

Samuels and others from the commission majority said the requirements had been rendered moot by the economic crash and the pressing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But Juliet Lamont, a former DAPAC member and Sierra Club activist, told commissioners earlier this month that the environmental organization backs the DAPAC plan as the greener of the two documents. 

 

Comments 

Before commissioners began their discussion of the final draft, several audience members offered their own comments, including downtown Berkeley’s leading private sector developer, Patrick Kennedy. 

While the commission had already eliminated many of DAPAC’s would-be requirements for high-rise development, Kennedy said even more reductions were needed if the city center was to become anything other than “a fright show,” a “graveyard” peopled by doorway-sleeping drunks. 

“I’ve been trying to rent commercial space on Center Street for two years, and I haven’t had a single inquiry from a retailer,” he said. 

While Kennedy said he backed the commission’s elimination of additional payments for green amenities, he said the city needed to go further by eliminating all development fees currently charged, 

Property taxes alone would suffice, he said, citing the $484,988 in property taxes and business license fees less paid last year by the Gaia Building, a structure built by Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests and subsequently sold to Chicago real estate investor Sam Zell’s Equity Residential. 

“Downtown is on life support,” Kennedy said, and only new housing construction will save it, a view echoed by another retired developer, Dorothy Walker, formerly of UC Berkeley’s capital projects department.  

But architect Novosel, who later voted for the plan, said, “I actually like the downtown.” 

Another developer echoed Kennedy’s views. “Our downtown is really deteriorating,” said Ali Kashani, whose latest partner is the city’s former Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades.  

 


School District to Receive Stabilization Funds

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:12:00 PM

The U.S. Department of Education on April 17 approved $4.9 billion in funds for California’s public schools over the next two years, which will help prevent teacher layoffs and improve student achievement.  

California was the first state to benefit from the State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, part of the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, State Board of Education President Ted Mitchell and State Superintendent of Schools Jack O’Connell applied for the funds a week ago.  

Both Schwarzenegger and O’Connell urged school districts to apply for their share of funds immediately. School districts and other local educational agencies will be able to apply for the funds online.  

Berkeley Unified School District officials have not announced how much the district will apply for, or how much they expect the district to receive.  

District spokesperson Mark Coplan said Berkeley Unified would need to receive a pin number from the state before it could apply for the funds online. 

“We are still waiting for that,” he said Wednesday, April 22, before the Planet went to press. 

District Superintendent Bill Huyett told the Planet in an April 8 interview that the state stabilization funds would help offset the district’s $8 million budget deficit and prevent layoffs.  

The district handed out 130 layoff notices to teachers in March but rescinded most of them. The total number of layoff notices is now down to 25, said district spokesperson Coplan.


BUSD Sends Out Pink Slips to Classified Employees

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:12:00 PM

The Berkeley Unified School District sent out at least 62 pink slips to classified employees on April 16 to offset cuts to state public education funding, district officials said.  

On April 15, the Berkeley Board of Education voted unanimously to approve the cuts, which will take place at the end of the current school year.  

The district is required to notify classified employees 45 days in advance of their last working day.  

Berkeley Council of Classified Employees President Paula Philips told the Daily Planet that the district sent out 57 layoff notices to her bargaining unit, including paraprofessionals working in classrooms, office technical staff, secretaries, clerks and accountants in business services and others.  

Philips said that some members of Local 39, the union for stationary engineers working in Berkeley’s public schools, would also receive the notices.  

“It’s a disruption to their lives,” Philips said of the layoffs. “It’s a morale buster. There’s a lot of uncertainty. They want to know if they will get unemployment over the summer, if they are entitled to unemployment and if they will be called back by the district.”  

District officials said they would be doing their best to rescind the layoffs.  

However, Superintendent Bill Huyett remarked that the worst was not over yet, because more classified jobs might be slashed in the future.  

Philips said 11 classified employees at the Berkeley Adult School—including clerks, budget analysts and computer technicians—would have their work hours and months per year reduced, since the adult education program was planning to move from a 12-month schedule to a 10- or 11-month schedule next year to offset a $1 million budget deficit.  

The board will approve the schedule change at a later date.


Police Blotter

By Ali Winston
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:04:00 PM

Man shatters window, arrested 

A homeless man was arrested on Wednesday evening after shattering the window of a University Avenue restaurant. Charles Shapiro, 51, vandalized the storefront window of the Ramen House shortly before midnight, using a white ceramic mug to break through the glass. He was detained by a citizen until Berkeley police arrived on the scene. Shapiro is charged with vandalism, being drunk in public, and a probation violation. 

 

Car burglar arrested 

On Wednesday evening Berkeley police arrested a 23-year-old Albany man for a suspected auto burglary. Around 5:14 a.m., police received a report on an auto burglary in progress in the 900 block of Shattuck Avenue. Officers detained Yared Tsegaye, an Albany resident, and recovered a cellphone reported stolen by the owner of the burglarized car. Tsegaye was arrested and charged with petty theft. He was already on probation for a prior theft arrest.  

 

Held up at gunpoint 

A man and woman were robbed at gunpoint on Cedar Avenue and Oxford Street Thursday evening. Around 11:30 p.m., two young men wearing dark clothing, one of them wielding a semiautomatic handgun, approached the couple. The man handed over his wallet to the armed suspect. His companion was punched in the face by the second suspect, knocking her to the ground. The assailants fled westbound on Cedar 

 

Drive-by robbery 

A man was robbed on Wednesday night by a crew driving around in a light-colored Toyota Camry. The man was walking alone on the 2400 block of California Street near Channing Way when he noticed a four-door sedan tailing him. The car passed him, parked and a young man wearing dark clothing jumped out. The young man ran towards the pedestrian, chasing him into the middle of the street. The robber grabbed the man’s right arm and ripped off his backpack. An accomplice, who was described as standing 5’6”, of thin build and wearing a light T-shirt, got out of the car but hopped back in as the first attacker ran back with the bag. The late 1980s model Camry, either a silver or white color, drove off in an unknown direction. 

 

Attempted sexual assault 

At approximately 4 a.m. Wednesday, April 22, in the 1100 block of Hearst Avenue, a woman awoke to find a burlgar standing over her, demanding that she perform a sex act. The suspect—a 5’8’’ African-American in his early to mid-20s, of medium to athletic build‚ wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt—had entered the apartment through an unlocked window and fled when the woman screamed.


Mexican Army Implicated in Latest Juarez Murder

By José Luis Sierra New America Media
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:03:00 PM

JUAREZ, Mexico—On Easter Sunday in Juarez, children awoke with the dream of finding Easter eggs. But adults had a different kind of worry. 

Along with the challenges of a depressed economy, many are praying for peace and the return of some sense of normalcy. This town that used to be known for its nightlife and as a stopover on the way to “el otro lado” (the other side) is now the site of daily executions, security checkpoints, and constant patrolling by military and federal police. 

“I think President [Felipe] Calderón had no idea who he was dealing with,” said Carlos Acosta, nervous about giving a short interview to a member of a foreign press. “He declared this war against the drug traffickers, and never thought about the fact that they are entrenched in his own government.” Local news reported that more than 100 federal police officers are currently under investigation under suspicion of collaborating with drug cartels or being involved in civil rights violations. 

Even the military, lauded by Calderón as a show of force, is suspected of being involved in a practice defined here as “levantones”—picking up and dumping their victims in isolated areas. 

The Mexican Army denies these allegations, but witnesses who are afraid to give their names for fear of retaliation say the military is responsible for the latest victim, a 21-year-old man arrested last Tuesday and found dead on Friday in a deserted area south of the city limits. 

The case is being investigated by the local city attorney’s office, but will probably stay in limbo. In Juarez, where there are thousands of unsolved cases, most prosecutors quit or are replaced after a while, and investigations have to start over, if they continue at all. 

Family members of the victim, identified as Javier Eduardo Rosales, told the press Friday that they plan to press charges against the military and file a claim with the local human rights commission. However, like thousands of families affected by drug violence, they said that they are afraid of retaliation by authorities. At least some relatives of the victim are moving to the neighboring city of El Paso, Texas, for security reasons. 

According to the forensic report, the young man died of a blow to the neck. The report also revealed that the victim was tortured. Sergio Fernandez, a friend of the victim who was picked up in the same operation, revealed that after being tortured, the two men were allowed to escape, but his friend was badly injured and could not make the long walk back to the city. After covering him up with some pieces of cardboard, Fernandez managed to reach his house and get help from friends and family members to come back and recover the body. 

Margarita Rosales, the victim’s mother, said that she doesn’t expect her son’s murder to be fully explained by the military or any other authority. Now, she adds, she fears for the safety of the rest of her family. 

“Nothing is going to bring back my son. I need to take care of the rest of the family too,” said Rosales, who later admitted that she had already received threats, although she couldn’t identify the sources. 

So far, the military has denied any involvement in the crime, but after hundreds of similar reports, some residents of Juarez are skeptical. 

“They can’t be trusted. I don’t care how may tests they’ve passed,” said Mario Loya, a local lawyer who changed his business from defending taxpayers to presenting claims against authorities for human rights abuses. 

 

‘Narco Feds’ 

Federal and local authorities are trying to defend their name by conducting undercover investigations of their own personnel, as they continue their daily patrolling of the city. On Monday, one day after they arrested a top commander for alleged involvement in drug trafficking, more than 100 officers were quietly dispatched back to Mexico City, under rumors that they were involved in illegal activities. 

Pedro Gutierrez Lopez, a military general in charge of federal military operations, said Monday that his forces are constantly being screened as they check the background of all of the officers involved. Gutierrez Lopez was referring to the case of Masiel Aldana Portugal, one of four federal agents charged with attempting to keep more than 40 pounds of marijuana that had been confiscated from local drug dealers. The general declined to elaborate but conceded that Aldana Portugal had a criminal record related to drug possession and forged documents dating back to 2004. 

“There are a lot of false claims against members of our force. However, we investigate any allegations against our troops,” he told the local press.


Opinion

Editorials

Getting the Right Thing Done

By Becky O’Malley
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM

This space doesn’t usually take requests, but when my 94-year-old mother calls up and insists, it’s hard to say no. What she wanted when she called last week is not hard to come up with, after all: a forthright denunciation of the Obama administration’s apparent plan to let the torturers and their instigators off the hook. Thinking people everywhere (I’m one of them) have rushed to their keyboards to do their best to make sure the current government doesn’t get away with letting their predecessors get off scot free. MoveOn is on their case to make sure they don’t forget.  

With that amount of pressure, it’s not surprising that by Tuesday there were rumors that President Obama has already started to waffle. While he says he doesn’t want to go after the low-level CIA guys who were “only following orders” (no, of course he didn’t use that phrase), he didn’t rule out investigation and prosecution of their bosses in the Bush administration.  

In the air somewhere last week was an anecdote about Franklin Roosevelt and E. Phillip Randolph. Mrs. Roosevelt, an ardent early proponent of civil rights, was friends with Randolph, head of the pioneering Sleeping Car Porters union, and she set him up to have dinner with her husband to lobby for integration of the armed forces. As the story goes, the president said he supported integration but he couldn’t do it voluntarily. “You’ll have to make me,” he’s supposed to have said. It’s rumored that this story is a favorite of President Obama’s. So I guess we’ll have to make him do the right thing. 

How to do that? I queried my friend the law professor, who directed my attention to Justice Frank Murphy’s dissent in the Manila war crimes trial of Japanese general Yamashita. That trial allowed substantial departures from the laws of evidence and other due process safeguards, and Murphy said he feared future repercussions:  

“In my opinion, such a procedure is unworthy of the traditions of our people or of the immense sacrifices that they have made to advance the common ideals of mankind. The high feelings of the moment doubtless will be satisfied. But in the sober afterglow will come the realization of the boundless and dangerous implications of the procedure sanctioned today. No one in a position of command in an army, from sergeant to general, can escape those implications. Indeed, the fate of some future President of the United States and his chiefs of staff and military advisers may well have been sealed by this decision. But even more significant will be the hatred and ill-will growing out of the application of this unprecedented procedure. That has been the inevitable effect of every method of punishment disregarding the element of personal culpability. The effect in this instance, unfortunately, will be magnified infinitely, for here we are dealing with the rights of man on an international level. To subject an enemy belligerent to an unfair trial, to charge him with an unrecognized crime, or to vent on him our retributive emotions only antagonizes the enemy nation and hinders the reconciliation necessary to a peaceful world…. 

“War breeds atrocities. From the earliest conflicts of recorded history to the global struggles of modern times inhumanities, lust and pillage have been the inevitable by-products of man's resort to force and arms. Unfortunately, such despicable acts have a dangerous tendency to call forth primitive impulses of vengeance and retaliation among the victimized peoples. The satisfaction of such impulses in turn breeds resentment and fresh tension. Thus does the spiral of cruelty and hatred grow.” 

My teacher friend pointed out that nothing in the national horror about the World Trade Center bombing justified the Bush administration’s tossing prisoners into Guantanamo without due process or torturing them in violation of international law. He said that “there are two lessons here: we should not sacrifice procedure in dealing with our hateful adversaries; but we should still call them to task on substance. Yoo et al perpetrated substantive violations of international law, in our view. They should be given the fair opportunity to rebut that, but not be exonerated from the duty to be held accountable.”  

Who will bell the cat—who will hold them accountable? Is it the responsibility of Yoo’s two employers, the University of California and Chapman College, to remove him from his teaching positions because he’s a war criminal? Or should the U.S. Department of Justice appoint a special prosecutor to charge and convict Yoo and his boss, Jay Bybee, who’s now sitting on the bench of the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco? Congress can impeach Bybee—on Sunday the New York Times said they should do so. Should Obama start the ball rolling now, or wait for Congress to investigate? There’s a whole menu of good choices, but someone needs to do something, and soon. 

My friend and neighbor Louis de Groot has been kept busy this month telling groups of young people about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, as Holocaust Awareness Day has gradually expanded into Holocaust Awareness month. He talks, still shaking his head in wonder, about the Dutch family who took him in when he was 13—“the same age as Anne Frank”—and hid him from the Nazis until the war was over.  

They didn’t have to do it, he says. They didn’t even think it was any big thing, just the right thing to do, and why shouldn’t they just do the right thing?  

I used to tell my kids that if there’s trouble and no one seems to be in charge, you are. We’re all in charge now of helping Barack Obama and the Congress, whom we elected, to do the right thing, to prosecute the officials who planned and perpetrated torture in our name. Since Obama has strongly hinted that he’s waiting for us to give him a push in the right direction, let’s just do it. No big deal, just do it. 

 

 


Cartoons

Going Up

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 11:42:00 PM


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:26:00 PM

SATIRE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As much as I’m delighted that Mr. Russell took note of my earlier letter, “banning all guns,” I must clue him into this: it was a satire! The “turning in family members” failed to tip him off? The “return to the nurturing, pre-gun society” raised no flag of irony? 

I’d have thought this was a newsprint, elbow-to-the-ribs, “Get it?” 

Jeffrey L. Suits 

Kensington 

 

• 

BRUCE SNYDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Obituaries of local sports figures aren’t a Daily Planet specialty, but I’d like to convey my sorrow on the death from cancer of former Cal football head coach Bruce Snyder. While Cal, the price of its recent gridiron fortunes, and expansion of its home venue annoy many of the paper’s readers, including me, Snyder was a decent man and a class act who didn’t require all the Pepto-Bismol he could drink as a clause in his contract. 

Even so, he arrived out of somewhere and quickly built a nationally ranked “program” (a horrid word). His great team of ‘91 finished as high as no. 7 in the polls. In an epic contest played in Memorial Stadium on a miserably hot Saturday, that squad came within a hair of knocking off eventual national co-champ Washington. The next day saw the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm. Some years later, he took no. 2-ranked Arizona State to the Rose Bowl, a trip denied Cal since ‘59, when our dear mayor played for the Bears. 

Hail and farewell, Bruce Snyder.  

Phil Allen 

 

• 

KUDOS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If I weren’t on such a tight budget I’d donate some money to the Daily Planet. The paper is refreshing and above all GOOD. I would especially like to commend Mr. Allen-Taylor for his thoughtful columns on Oakland. I’m glad he hasn’t joined the baying pack of Dellums-bashing junkyard dogs. 

David Bolaños 

• 

MY LIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have in my hand a list of 47 McCarthyists in the Republican Party. 

Ove Ofteness 

 

• 

JUSTIFIED FEAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What does it say about our government when it allows criminal acts to go unpunished? To me it says that those governing officials have no moral sense and therefore have no right to expect us to do what’s right.  

Ever since Jan. 21, Obama’s first day in office, I’ve been holding my breath. That breath was knocked out of me when I read that those responsible for torturing their fellow human beings would not be prosecuted. 

I desperately hoped Obama would lead us out of hellholes created by his predecessor. I deeply feared that the job might be too much for such a young, inexperienced chief. 

It now appears that my tion and fear were justified.  

To my mind, torture itself is not as grievous as the crime of the attorney general who refuses to prosecute it.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

 

• 

JUSTIFYING MURDER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In 1619 a Dutch ship brought the first 20 African slaves to Virginia. By the American Revolution this nation held over 560,000 slaves. More than a third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence which declared the self evident proposition that “all men were created equal,” were slave owners. Four of the first five presidents of the United States were slave owners. By the Civil War this nation held more than four million slaves. By the end of the Civil War, when slavery was destroyed, many states of the union began a system of legal discrimination and oppression known as segregation. For nearly a hundred years after the death of slavery, most African-Americans could not vote and were kept in second class citizenship through both a system of “law” and the threats of white economic, legal, and physical violence. This did not seriously begin to change until the 1960s. 

All of which, apparently, to some of your columnists and readers, seems in some way to “justify” the murder by Lovelle Mixon of four Oakland police officers. It is wrong and crazy and suicidal to sanction or “understand” the killing of police in a society already plagued by too much violence and crime. It is insane. To justify in any way the killing of police is to condemn your own children to an ongoing nightmare. 

Help me here—how would Martin Luther King have felt about the mass murder of police? 

Michael Steinberg 

 

• 

REFUSE RATES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is this city serious about again raising refuse rates? Why are we to be punished by higher rates when we diligently manage our households to consume less and less while our city’s management intends to consume more of our resources? Our refuse bills have gone up every year! They should be going down! Ya Basta! Its just another sneaky rip-off of community people! 

Instead of passing by the need to audit the management of the Refuse Division to downsize, we are bombarded with the zero waste goal which we are already practicing at home.  

Why not cut back on staff and equipment hours for the same quantity of waste? The waste stream to the landfill has gone down, hasn’t it? The Refuse Division budget must decrease.  

Many of us are conservative in our shopping, doing reuse, recycle, repair and restore, grow our food, do composting contributing less and less for the goal of zero waste to the land fill. 

In this cooler climate, why not ask city leaders to give homeowners an option for pick ups every other week? And cut back on the plant debris pick ups to every other week?  

I recall that former Councilmember Betty Olds commented on 32-gallon and even larger refuse bins in her neighborhood that had hardly anything in them and encouraged us to downsize to use the 13-gallon bins, the smallest.  

If you don’t fill your 32-gallon bin, when you next pay your bill at the Finance Office, try a formal request for a 13-gallon bin. (Of late, the city’s refuse website has removed the list of costs and sizes). Ask for a list of prices and sizes.  

An example, for a 13-gallon bin, my around the block neighbor (a family of four) pays $9.39 a month ($28.18 quarterly) compared to 32 gallon bin at $22.58 a month—($67.74 quarterly) per the cost as reported in the Planet April 16. 

The little green compost bins the city gave out are cute, but require using scarce water to clean them as they don’t have liners and the liners we can find do not fit their shape. They also do not close tightly, thus smell and come apart. It is not smart for the city to charge us so the city can replace them. People can buy cheap ones at Ikea that have cheap liners and are designed to not smell. 

Anamaria Sanchez Romero 

 

• 

SMALL SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The charges made against teachers of small schools at BHS by three people of the science department have been widely contested in the past few weeks. I want to add my voice to those parents and members of the public that have contested such charges.  

I am the mother of an ex-CAS student. Names such as Ms. Rasiah, Oliver Aguirre, Bill Pratt, Dana Moran, Rick Ayers, and a long list of other dedicated teachers come to my mind, and I pity the three teachers that have acted with such a lack of professionalism and, what is worse, seem to not have a grasp or sense of what they are, where they are, and what they do. Berkeley High School is an educational institution, and as such, it has its administrators and organisms to deal with the internal issues there may arise. Why would these three people tarnish colleagues publicly? What are they expecting the people of Berkeley to do about it?  

Behind symbols like CAS and AHA and CPA, behind BHS at large, there are people, professionals with different perspectives on what education is and how it should best be provided to an overwhelmingly large number of teenage kids with, what may be considered, overwhelmingly diverse backgrounds. As a high school teacher of many years, I can’t imagine airing in front of a community of tens of thousands of people and in the form of accusing colleagues of malpractice all the frustrations and anxieties that we as educators may have. What transpires through the accusations of those three teachers is a sense of frustration and impotence. Let us not look for culprits in our own colleagues. Or, if we do, let us look for solutions in the realm of the organisms provided. We are all trying to make education work. 

I would like to end by saying that we all have a story to tell about our kids’ teachers at BHS. Mine is one of great respect for the teachers of CAS in particular, and for all the teachers of BHS in general, that try to do the best they can with the instruments they have. 

Victoria de la Paz Párraga Tello 

 

• 

RESPONSE TO JOE EATON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is in response to Joe Eaton’s column about me. 

Though my open letter was a passionate disagreement with his position, it was legitimate. I apologize for making him so angry, but it was unfair of him to use his column to insult me with his sarcastic remarks and distortions, as if I were alone in my complaint about the meadow. 

It is Mr. Eaton who is in “willful ignorance” in ignoring the many others who are “discontent” with what has happened there, and as part of a community paper he should be aware of this fact. 

Once again he evades the main point of my letters which is that the meadow is public land and, yes, contrary to what he says, the public is virtually “locked out” of it, except for an ugly narrow fenced-in trail that hardly anyone ever uses except as a short cut. 

This lockout is the work of individuals whom, again contrary to what he states, I did name. They are those who run the Park District and Citizens for Eastshore Park. 

Because Mr. Eaton ignores my main point I have to repeat it: the so-called Eastshore Park is not a true park but a restricted area. Since it is almost the size of the UC Berkeley campus, to fence the public out of it in order to protect it from an occasional disobedient dog-walker is not only draconian but unjust. 

With a creative landscape design there could be more than enough room to have protected areas for wildlife and for people to enjoy it. 

It is clear from Mr. Eaton’s column that he didn’t enjoy the meadow when it was free and open to the community, but plenty of others did, and he is wrong to ignore this fact. 

The word “restore” means to “bring back,” and by ignoring this definition he forces me again to repeat that the meadow was originally a dump that became a wilderness. It is not a restoration that is happening there but an attempt to develop a wetland. 

I am not, contrary to what he implies, against a wetland. I am against the fence, and as part of a community newspaper Mr. Eaton does a disservice to the community by taking sides and supporting it. 

Due to his distortions and evasions I must repeat that those in power have taken over a public land and indifferent to the entire community they have turned it into a kind of private garden for their own special interests. 

I love wildlife as much as anyone and I have nothing against its protection, but if the meadow is to belong to only those with a special agenda while locking everyone else out, then this should be stated. 

Clearly the loss of a free and open meadow doesn’t matter to them nor to Mr. Eaton. But it does matter to many others, and it is more than an insult for him to ignore this fact. 

In reply to Christopher Fisher’s list of birds, those same birds were present before the clear-cut and the fence, and some, like the finches and blackbirds, in greater number. 

Pete Najarian 

 

• 

PEOPLE’S PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Despite Paul Sawyer’s use of the royal “we” in his April 16 commentary, “The Untold History of People’s Park: The Untold Revolution,” he does not speak for me, particularly in his last paragraph. 

When I was invited to the Founder’s Forum via an e-mail from Terri Compost, she stated that the forum would be a chance to discuss memories of creating the People’s Park, past and present, and of old acquaintances saying hello. 

I will answer questions at the Founder’s Forum in an unmoderated way about the joyous, largely apolitical creation of the People’s Park (except for the political veneer of the so-called leaders, starting back with Stu Albert’s Robin Hood Berkeley Barb announcement and continuing with the attempted hijacking of the Founder’s Forum agenda by the overly-exuberant Paul) as the direct inspiration of Earth Day exactly one year later, and its historical primacy as the first wave of the modern communitarian ecology movement, ahead of the opening of the Berkeley Ecology Center, ahead of the EPA, and after Rachel Carson. 

Please come to the Founder’s Forum to hear the other untold story about the creation of People’s Park: the one by and about the women and barefoot servants who came and went, as Bob Dylan said in “All Along the Watchtower.”  

Wendy Schlesinger 

 

• 

ABSOLVING CRIMINALS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his response to my essay, “Notes From the Occupied Territories: Black America and the Police,” one Daily Planet reader informed me that my commentary contained classic elements of the Stockholm Syndrome, and Marty Price raised serious doubts about my assertion that half the prison population in the United States comprises blacks. 

The figure relating to the current U.S. prison population can be found in the Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics reports. In its 2005 report the Department of Justice said the U.S. black prison population “was approaching” 50 percent of the total. Furthermore this is a figure our mutual friend Angela Davis uses in her frequent writings and speeches advocating abolition. 

The figure relating to the incarceration of free blacks during the era of slavery I took from President Jimmy Carter’s former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Claude Anderson’s edition of Powernomics, wherein he cites the incarceration rate of blacks in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the early 19th century. 

Jean Damu 

 

• 

LUKE SONG 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does the name Luke Song ring a bell? This would be the very talented and prolific South Korean designer who created the spectacular hat worn by singer Aretha Franklin at the Obama inauguration on January 20, 2009. What a glorious hat it was —gray wool felt, bow-tied with Swarovski crystals on the bow. A long time customer, Franklin came to Song asking for something to go with a coat she had picked out for the occasion. 

Minutes after Aretha had finished her rousing rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” Song’s phones started ringing and by the next afternoon hundreds of hats had been sold all around the country and even overseas. The designer, who specializes in bold, statement-making church hats for African-American women, will not make an exact duplicate of the hat, but is selling a near replica for $179. 

East Bay residents will have the privilege of meeting Song this coming Friday, April 24 at noon, when he visits the Berkeley Hat Company, located at 2510 Telegraph Ave. The store’s owners, Carol Lipnick and Ed Dougherty, are eight-year customers of Mr. Song’s Millinery, a family-owned business in Detroit. According to Carol, the media attention to Aretha’s hat has breathed “new life” into the hat as a fashion statement. And the New York Times, in a March story, reports that more than 5,000 versions of a spring version of the famous hat have been sold. 

If you haven’t visited the Berkeley Hat Company, you’ll be awed by this unique store, the largest in the Bay Area, with hundreds of styles and brands in stock. So do drop in this Friday noon and meet the very talented, personable Luke Song. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

40TH ANNIVERSARY GIFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At about 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, April 21, four or five workers from the city’s Department of Public Works valiantly removed the villainous free clothing box from People’s Park. A UC Berkeley think tank had conclusively proved that the People’s Park free clothing box was not only the true cause of global warming, but had also been irreparably polluting the groundwater of this community with its high-level nuclear research, and other technologies that it has been eager to market without proper testing. 

The workers were escorted by Berkeley police officers, supervised by Sergeant Kenney. 

Resident of Oakland Stephen Brady was arrested and charged with misdemeanor obstruction. I found it extremely edifying to see the Tom Bates administration organizing so effectively to combat the corruption that has permeated the highest levels of our community. Not to mention prohibiting that dastardly environmental polluter, the People’s Park Free Clothing Box, from continuing its reign of environmental destruction. 

Arthur Fonseca 

 

• 

VIOLENT, TRAGIC DEATHS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been appalled to read the cheers for the death of Lovelle Mixon OR the death of the police officers. Every violent death is horrible: Oscar Grant, the baby seals, the numerous victims and perpetrators of school, family, work, and other murder-suicides; the poor dupes who kill and die for the Empire thinking that they’re defending their country; the few Israelis and the many Palestinians; all other victims of genocides.... 

I saw some of my lefty-peacenik-anti-death penalty friends celebrating the death of police in several instances, and I’m horrified. Some people see my peace symbol as an antique, a souvenir. I tell them that while there’s war and killing, it’s very, very current. 

When violence ends, it will be a keepsake. 

Ruth Bird 

 

• 

AMAZING PLACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I went to the April 22 Berkeley City Council meeting to see if I could snag some of that Obama stimulus package money for Savo Island Cooperative Homes, the South Berkeley housing project where I live. And as I sat there for over two hours while waiting my turn to ask for money to repair my home, I was forced to listen to speaker after speaker, all of them asking the council for money. And after listening to all these speakers describe all kinds of projects geared to make people’s lives better and realizing how many of these helpful and wonderful projects are funded by our city, it suddenly hit me. Berkeley is truly an amazing place.  

Some of the worthwhile groups helped out by our city are a foster agency called A Better Way, Lifelong Medical Care (they fixed my teeth!), the Berkeley High School Bio-tech program, Berkeley Boosters police athletic league for kids, Strawberry Creek Lodge senior housing, BOSS assistance programs for the homeless, an Alzheimer’s center, a program to help deaf children, I forget what all else.  

If you had sat there for over two hours, you would have been amazed too. 

Earlier this week, I had gone to a People’s Park anniversary event, and had thought to myself, “Those days are long gone. Berkeley just isn’t like that any more.” But after listening to all the wonderful people speaking up for their wonderful groups that help all sorts of people here in Berkeley, I suddenly realized that Berkeley hasn’t changed all that much after all. 

Berkeley is still a wonderful, caring place—a place that takes great pains to make sure that those in need are taken care of and that we Do The Right Thing. I was very proud of my city tonight. 

Jane Stillwater 

 

• 

APRIL 21 COUNCIL MEETING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Clearly Mayor Bates was running a game. Not football, this was the April 21 Berkeley City Council meeting. Fifty-four consent items, three public hearings, two EIRs, and a 5 p.m. final City Pools Workshop--enough important items for weeks of meetings! 

So naturally there was no room in City Council Chambers for most of the public, and three each friendly firemen and policemen barred the entrances so at least 100 residents went home when told they could not go in and speak, which was untrue and probably not legal. 

The mayor was protecting his Climate Action Plan (CAP) from proper public scrutiny and comment by jamming the agenda. Bates clearly did not want his Big Development, Big Transit, Big Brother Climate Action Plan subjected to real public process. 

His timing was excellent for passing this plan for environmental review just after midnight, with councilmembers exhausted from seven hours of meeting, and only a few minutes for discussion. Most media had gone home. 

Livable Berkeley was there in force, the Friends of BRT, Dorothy Walker, former UC property development manager—folks for which the big development ideal is often like Manhattan, and BRT is a tool for a redevelopment. 

But paving our earth is not saving it; instead overdevelopment is destroying our urban forest, wetlands, and our oceans which naturally remove carbon gases from the air, cooling earth, and creating fresh oxygen. 

This Climate Action Plan is significantly different from previous drafts, and was made available to the greater public only last Thursday with the City Council agenda. No time, no workshop, no public hearing, although the public could comment for one minute if they were there, for this last most important item.  

At 12:10 a.m., Councilmember Maio made the motion for the Climate Action Plan to undergo environmental review. 

Merrilie Mitchell 

 

• 

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I urge people to write a letter to President Obama, urging him to support the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted two years ago by the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This declaration will recognize the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain their institutions, cultures and traditions. 

It also recognizes their identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues. Plus, it will prohibit discrimination against them and promotes their full and effective participation in matters that concern them. During former President Bush’s tenure, the United States joined with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as the only four countries that voted against it. 

In conclusion, I hope that people will write a letter to President Obama urging him to support the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

 

• 

CEO SALARIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bob Burnett, in his recentPublic Eye column, is furious about CEO salaries. He fully agrees with the “widespread anger about colossal CEO salaries.” Bob says that “in 2008, the average CEO’s salary was more than 300 times that of an average worker.” That is true if you include stock options in a CEO’s salary. 

Bob Burnett is a hypocrite, but a lucky one. He is a very wealthy man because he once was a Cisco Systems vice president, just about as close to a CEO as you can be. Bob retired in 1992 with a huge number of Cisco stock options. By 2000, when Cisco was the most valuable company in the world, these stock options had increased in value by more than a 100 times. None of this increase was due to Bob’s hard work or brilliance. 

Now that Bob is very wealthy, he can cast stones at other CEOs. I’m sure that he has rationalized why he deserves his wealth, but they don’t. 

Leo Hansen 

 


Story in San Francisco Chronicle Regarding Climate Action Plan

By Phil Kamlarz
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:19:00 PM

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the complete text of the city manager's letter to the City Council regarding the San Francisco Chronicle's article about the Climate Action Plan. 

 

April 20, 2009 

To: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council 

From: Phil Kamlarz, City Manager 

Subject: Story in San Francisco Chronicle Regarding Climate Action Plan 

 

The focus of a San Francisco Chronicle story this past Saturday (“Hot debate ahead on Berkeley’s energy plans”) is a single section of the draft Berkeley Climate Action Plan (CAP) devoted to building energy efficiency. The Council will be discussing the Plan in its entirety at its meeting tomorrow night.  

In 2006, Measure G set a goal of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. The purpose of the draft Climate Action Plan is to serve as a guide for setting the community on a path to achieve that goal. Among many GHG reduction strategies, the draft Plan recommends strategies for improving energy efficiency in existing Berkeley homes (see p. 49, Goal #2). Energy use in residential buildings accounts for about 25 percent of Berkeley’s community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To ensure that Berkeley stays on course to achieve the 80 percent GHG reduction target established by Measure G, the draft CAP recommends an interim target of a 35 percent reduction by 2020. Improving energy efficiency in buildings is essential to achieving that target. Unfortunately, the newspaper story mischaracterized some of the ideas set forth in the Plan as possible ways to meet that goal. 

Adoption of the CAP will set goals and identify the types of actions necessary to meet those goals. The Plan makes no requirements or mandates on its own. The recommendations included in it require Council approval separate from the CAP’s adoption. No specific set of improvements are currently proposed, and will not be until there is an opportunity for extensive public involvement.  

Since 1989, Berkeley has required energy audits and energy improvements in residential buildings at time of sale and when extensive renovation or remodeling occurs. The current ordinance has a limit on expenditures at 0.75% of a home’s sale price. The draft CAP recommends enhancing the requirements in order to further improve energy efficiency. The CAP recommends collaborating with local energy service providers, community stakeholders, and local governments in the region to establish an energy standard that would apply to existing residential buildings (p. 51, first bullet). The standard would target a certain level of home energy efficiency and would provide guidance on applying a consistent and thorough approach to analyzing home energy use and making energy efficiency improvements.  

In 2013, staff will evaluate the community’s progress toward its GHG reduction goal consistent with Measure G and, based on that progress, staff could potentially recommend that the City Council adopt requirements for all homes to have an energy audit to identify the most cost-effective energy efficiency improvements. Subsequently, if the audit requirements do not result in voluntary improvements over time, the Council could consider other options. Whatever measures are considered must result in substantial reductions in costs related to gas and electricity usage. Cost-effectiveness and the availability of incentives and financing will be key criteria. Any suggested requirements would be subject to substantial public review and comment, as well as in-depth consideration by the City Council and appropriate City Commissions. 

The article mischaracterized the recommendations in the CAP in several ways, including: 

1. The article implies that the City will force residents to comply with energy standards “in the next few years.” This is not accurate. Rather, the CAP states that energy standards need to be developed through a collaborative process with the community and subject ultimately, to the City Council’s review and consideration.  

2. The article states that in many cases, compliance with the City’s energy standard would require new double-paned windows, insulation, a new white roof that reflects heat, a forced air furnace, and high-efficiency appliances. This is misleading. While staff may recommend some types of cost-effective energy efficiency improvements, those will not include replacement of roofs or single pane windows that are not otherwise being replaced, as that would be not a cost-effective improvement.  

3. The article states that all homes will be mandated to pay upwards of $33,800 to meet the City’s energy standards. This is false. Moreover this assertion contradicts one of the fundamental goals of the CAP — to lower the cost of energy upgrades in homes and businesses. 

4. The article states that within a few years, the City will start imposing penalties for those who do not meet the energy standard. This is again inaccurate. The CAP offers a series of options that the City could use to achieve compliance with a local energy standard. The CAP does not recommend imposing penalties; rather, the CAP emphasizes the need for incentives to encourage the installation of these types of improvements.  

Berkeley has established an ambitious goal by way of the approval of Measure G. That goal will require not only investment in the energy efficiency of our building stock, but also improving access to public transportation, increasing reliance on renewable energy sources, meeting our Zero Waste goals, and developing a robust network of local food producers. Energy efficiency in buildings is a part of the overall solution to the challenges presented by climate change. 


Entrenched in Bus Rapid Transit

By Joseph Stubbs
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:53:00 PM

As I read the letters criticizing Russ Tilleman’s alternative idea to BRT, it occurs to me that, whether his idea is good or feasible or not, the notion of making it difficult to drive on Telegraph is precisely what BRT advocates are fighting for. It may be helpful to discuss this from a strategic point of view because this is, in its distilled form, the primary bone of contention. And make no mistake, the operative word here is “hamper,” not “calm” as AC Transit language implies, for there is nothing calm about traffic that is hampered. 

Advocates believe, and have argued many times, that the manufactured congestion of traffic in combination with faster bus service will cause enough people to switch from driving to bus riding so that the congestion issue will abate itself over time. Opponents believe that this will not work and that, in addition to congestion on Telegraph, negative impacts will extend into surrounding neighborhoods that are currently calm and peaceful. Existing merchants (especially those without a dedicated parking lot) generally oppose the idea, predicting that it will cause them to lose auto-based patronage and harm their business. 

My own opinion? I think that AC Transit has already acknowledged internally and confidentially that this particular BRT idea is not going to work, but they are pursuing it anyway because it is a major capital project for them, which qualifies them for various local, state and federal funding that represents an investment in the success of AC Transit by these various agencies—and that is a special currency all its own. I also think that this project is being aggressively pursued by the mayor and others because it brings money in at all levels, immediate consultation money from AC Transit, and eventually development moneys related to enormous developer incentives that the dedicated lanes and bus stop “stations” trigger eligibility for. At the street level, I believe that there will be a large spike in congestion on Telegraph when construction begins and almost immediately drivers will adapt by finding different routes to their destinations. I think this will cause a redistribution of traffic which will have greatest impact points such as Ashby at College, the Ashby/Tunnel/Claremont intersection, Alcatraz at Adeline, Claremont at College and all of Haste between Telegraph and MLK. Ultimately an increase in congestion will find an equilibrium that distributes the load evenly between a two-lane Telegraph and all these other points such that these other areas will have permanently denser traffic (it will not switch back). To mitigate parking loss around bus stop islands, new parking meters will appear down residential side streets. which will constrict parking for residents in those areas. I also believe that ridership on the new bus line will increase modestly, but not appreciably until more UC-based commuter demand is created by future new development along the route. 

But what is most important is what you think. This is a “go” project, and unless more people get involved in making their opinions heard on this issue then it is going to happen. There is too much at stake for those supporting this project to acknowledge either that it may be a bad idea for Telegraph, or that the aspect of lane removal could even possibly be eliminated from the plan. It may be just as effective to focus on the primary plausible transportation target (commuters to and from UC) and work with UC to develop partially or fully subsidized monthly bus passes. But such suggestions hardly matter now. Polarized opinions are entrenched on this issue, and it is time for those who have remained silent to step up to the plate. Decisionmakers need to know how you feel, and this includes state and federal funding agencies which do not make it their policy to fund unwanted projects.  

 

Joseph Stubbs lives in Berkeley’s southside.


Readers Sound Off on Proposed Climate Action Plan

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:52:00 PM

EDITOR’S NOTE: These letters were received before the April 22 City Council meeting. City Manager Phil Kamlarz’s response to the San Francisco Chronicle article about the Climate Action Plan is posted on our website, www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

 

 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read the San Francisco Chronicle with deep alarm. Upcoming Berkeley plans to require new residential energy compliance are an outrage. Not only do they amount to the formation of an unacceptable Nanny City Government, they amount to an unprecedented invasion of individual liberty and an incredible level of misguided shortsightedness. 

The city must know better than we do how we should live our lives. Although I have detailed my house with love, care, environmental thought and code compliance, it is now time to rip it apart in the name of energy conservation.  

This is no small thing. Proper replacement dual pane windows for my house will cost at least $40,000. You see, my house was built in 1928—well before dual glazing existed. The windows, their scale and decorative mullions, are distinctive details in the building’s design. Replacing them in a historically appropriate way will require new custom built windows. If you think that my cost is high you should speak to some of our fellow neighbors. I know of one 1,800-square-foot house where new windows came to $100,000.  

But this is not all that the city wants. The city also wants all heaters, dishwashers, ovens, water heaters and roofs meet new energy compliance levels. Has the City studied how much land fill and pollution will be created by throwing out relatively new equipment and materials in favor of slightly more efficient equipment? A real life cycle study will easily show a significant net environmental loss. It’s time for Berkeley to realize that the city is once more trying to dupe everyone with the prospect of “good things.” 

That Berkeley is now considering such measures is especially galling. As jobs leave many stranded without pensions and life savings, Berkeley wants to add misery. I shudder to think what this so-called energy saving plan reveals of the city’s soul. 

Berkeley’s political process has become—like much of America—a terrible joke. I no longer trust or respect a city that has become— fairly—a laughing stock to many. The road to hell is paved with good intentions... how many more should we fund? 

Jon Alff 

 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If the City Council thinks it can take my Wedgewood stove, they had damn well better be prepared to call up the National Guard. 

R. E. Baldwin 

 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley enjoys the most moderate climate in the United States. Any midwestern city of this size consumes several times as much energy as we do. To impose Draconian energy constraints on this city is nothing more than political grandstanding. Many of us who live in old houses are old people. Our old appliances will wear out and be replaced. As we die off, our houses will be sold and remodeled to meet energy codes. Until then, we should be allowed to enjoy what comfort our houses provide, without economic disruption. 

Few Berkeley houses have air conditioning—we don’t need it—but most do have some form of heating. So it would be more rational to favor dark roofs over white ones. It would be really rational to leave our roofs alone until they need replacement. 

My old stucco house won’t win any architectural awards. Its only visual features are the well-crafted windows with small multi-panes above larger panes. I take care to keep them protected and close-fitting. I like them. If I’m forced to rip them out and replace them with aluminum or vinyl-framed windows, I’ll be a very angry man. 

The City Council says they will assist us with the cost of these modifications. But how can they do that? Berkeley has no money—they can’t even pave our streets. Ah, yes! They’ll just tax and fine our neighbors who happen to have some money and give it to those of us who are poor. Now where have we heard ideas like that before? 

I’ve been a progressive liberal all my life, and I never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but those who make up the City Council—buffoons, cranks and crones, political misfits—imagine that they are taking Berkeley on a Great Leap Forward (with all the destructiveness that implies), but I say that they are trying to rule Berkeley like a gang of old radical commies, and I say to hell with all of them. 

Jerry Landis 

 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Looks like Berkeley, in the middle of a world-wide deflationary depression—with “real” California unemployment at around 12-15 percent—wants to mandate all residents to comply with energy-savings rules that could cost a resident up to $33,000! Plus, they are going to have the Crocs Gestapo inspect all homes to enforce it! 

That’s around three years of state college savings (which was probably lost during the bank/government-inspired crash anyway). 

There are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea: 

• People need to save, not have their money stolen by government... again. 

• Air-tight homes create mildew and mold issues. 

• Homes have the most polluted air you breathe—especially when sealed up. Average home air is akin to Los Angeles air on a bad day. Think offgassing, bathrooms, cooking, detergents and so on. 

• It’s Berkeley, not Siberia. How cold does it get? Not very. 

• A small group of people are pushing for this mandate, at the expense of taxpayers. 

• The Zoning Adjustments Board is so used to raking in piles of fees in the last 15 years that they need a new angle on the resident. 

• A white roof does the exact opposite of what they want it to do in the winter—it prevents heat storage! Berkeley residents don’t have air conditioners in the summer! It averages 75 degrees! So it doesn’t do anything for the average house. 

• Everyone else does this using tax incentives when it works with their timeline. 

• The economy alone has reduced energy consumption by millions of barrels already. 

I’m all for energy reductions. It works fine when you already have your house torn up for remodeling or upgrades. For a whole host of people this is absurd and a direct hit on the resident during the worst economic times in 100 years. 

Justin Lee 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is all well and fine to want to do everything to cut greenhouse gases and it is another thing to demand eco-purity from the people of Berkeley. The coming proposals by the City Council to demand that every house in Berkeley measure up to the highest green standards of a new home is financially impossible and if enforced will cause the huge number of inhabitants on fixed incomes to have to move. I know that it is impossible for me to ever rebuild my home to accommodate double-paned windows. I simply will never have the $50,000 it would require. How much of this is ideological fanaticism and how much is it another grab for more revenue from permits? I am appalled at the citizens who naively voted for this, thinking in Berkeley an “advisory” vote wouldn’t turn into the real thing. 

Carol Valk 

 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The proposal before the City Council from the Climate Action Team is Draconian and is way beyond what I, as a homeowner in Berkeley, am willing to have imposed upon me. I don’t get rid of things until they are beyond repair. I thought that was being green.  

I love my old Wedgewood and rescued it from layers of grease and neglect when I purchased my Berkeley Bungalow. I wouldn’t think of giving it up. It is what makes my kitchen homey and wonderful—never mind the double oven and six burners. Do you want me to spend thousands of dollars to get some new ugly monster and then throw this one in the dump, even though it still functions well? 

One of my favorite things about my sweet house is the original wavy handmade glass that is still in most of my windows. Does the council think I want to get rid of that to put in ugly double-pane, factory-produced windows? I personally like having some air in my house. Haven’t they heard of sick building syndrome from buildings that are so locked down that no air gets in or out? 

And we just put a new roof on. It isn’t white. Maybe I could paint it. I don’t think the landfill needs another roof. 

Every one of us wants to do what we can to help with the greening of our cities and we all want to reduce our carbon footprint. But let our stuff wear out, then we can replace it with the new stuff. Councilmembers, don’t force me to spend money I don’t have for items that I don’t want or need. Don’t make Berkeley into some cookie-cutter ugly city. That’s not why we came here. 

Lisa Bullwinkel 

 


Measure G’s Plan to Fail

By Matthew Taylor
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:55:00 PM

Measure G is a plan to fail. According to the latest climate science, its goal of an 80 percent greenhouse gas emission (GGE) cut by 2050 will be much too little and far too late. Berkeley City Council and the Energy Commission should act immediately to order a comprehensive reassessment of the targets. 

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away—the year 2004 of the common era on Earth—climate scientists thought an 80 percent cut in GGEs by 2050 would be sufficient to stave off the worst effects of global warming. Policies crafted based on those targets were, at one point, logical and defensible. But by the time Berkeleyans voted on Measure G in November 2006, climate scientists had already demonstrated those goals to be thoroughly inadequate. In his book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, respected British journalist George Monbiot reported far more aggressive targets: a 90 percent global cut would be needed by 2030, including 94 percent in the U.S. 

And that was before NASA scientist James Hansen’s latest paper blew the doors off the bus last fall. According to his calculations, we’ve already passed the safe point for greenhouse gas concentrations. Currently, Earth’s atmosphere is choked up with 387 parts per million of greenhouse gases. It was previously assumed we could stabilize at 450 and keep the worst-case scenarios at bay. Hansen’s report shows we not only need to stop rising, but also we need to drop down to 350 parts per million if we want to have even a chance to stop catastrophic sea level rise and all of the other doomsday scenarios we’ve been reading about on the Chronicle’s front page the past two years. 

So how will we get back to 350 parts per million? No one knows. The science behind the 350 target is so new that no one has calculated what percentage cut will be needed and by what date, claims Kelly Blynn of 350.org, Bill McKibben’s new advocacy group that’s trying to get the goal of 350 parts per million on the global agenda. 

But what seems certain is that the cut must be greater than 100 percent. Yes, you read that correctly. Since we’ve already passed the safe point, not only will we have to comprehensively decarbonize the world’s industrial infrastructure, but we will also have to reforest now-denuded parts of the earth and find ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Whereas previously we thought we could get away with just slowing the machine down, now we have to both bring the machine to a halt and send it into reverse—the machine being industrial civilization’s fossil-fuel-burning and ecosystem-destroying infrastructure. The deadline will certainly be no later than 2030, and perhaps much sooner. 

Why the deadline? As Monbiot explains in his book, global warming can be understood as a series of dominoes. Once human-caused greenhouse gas emissions pass a certain threshold, the first in a long series of climatic dominoes will tip over. For example, the Siberian permafrost will melt (a process already begun), releasing billions of tons of methane, a gas that is 30 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon. With all the extra methane in the atmosphere, the planet will warm further, causing another ecological system to collapse, releasing yet more greenhouse gases. Once the dominoes start to fall, global warming will proceed regardless of human activity. At our current level of 387 parts per million, the first domino could tip at any time, and it may already be too late. 

So the whole point is to reduce GG concentrations to the safe level of 350 before the first domino tips. This is why doing something about global warming without doing enough is the equivalent of doing nothing. If we do something without doing enough—which is precisely what virtually every politician in the United States wants to do, from President Obama down to Mayor Bates—we will still push over the dominoes. Coastal regions will flood, hundreds of millions will become refugees, and vast areas of formerly lush greenery will turn into deserts. Some scientists predict a mass die-off similar to the Permian, when 95 percent of species perished. 

If we must strive for seemingly unrealistic goals like a greater than 100 percent cut in GGEs by 2030 or earlier, why even try? And why should Berkeley make such an effort when our state and nation are also setting inadequate goals? 

Berkeley is a model to the rest of California, the U.S., and by extension, the world. Later this year, global leaders will convene in Copenhagen to negotiate a new global warming compact, which climate activists agree is the last chance for the world to set meaningful targets before the dominoes fall. If Berkeley commits to the cuts necessary to get to 350 parts per million on a time frame dictated by the science, not by politics, our honorable Congresswoman Barbara Lee will pay attention. Lee has an excellent relationship with President Obama, who has established the same inadequate goal as the City of Berkeley: 80 percent by 2050. If we want the president’s view to change, in the words of Gandhi, we must be the change we want to see in the world. 

If the City Council and the Energy Commission refuse to take the necessary action to revise Measure G’s targets, citizens should introduce a new ballot measure with revised targets based on 350.org and the latest climate science. The point of Berkeley’s climate action plan should not be to appear green and win an award. The point should be to stop global warming, which in its current configuration, the plan will never help to accomplish. 

A final note. I highly recommend Monbiot’s book Heat and his columns at Monbiot.com under the Climate Change category. I don’t agree with everything he says; he’s far too open to nuclear power. But his words are a useful starting point for discussion. Especially note his comments on the irremediable problem of airplane travel and the way carbon offsets distract from meaningful action. 

 

Matthew Taylor is writing a book about the Memorial Oak Grove tree-sit.


Clarity from a Recent Graduate

By Noa Wotton
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:56:00 PM

As a recent Berkeley High School graduate and grateful alum of one of Berkeley High’s “small school” programs (CAS), I feel obliged to clarify a few points of recent controversy.  

First, I was pushed harder academically in my small school classes than I was in many of the AP classes I took outside of my small school. The fifteen-page research papers I wrote in my CAS core classes prepared me more than adequately for the rigor of college coursework at the top-ranked university I now attend. The verbal communication and critical thinking skills I developed in my CAS class discussions have enabled me to participate actively in college classrooms in ways that many of my prep-school-educated peers are only beginning to learn. And the close relationships I developed with my small-school teachers taught me how to communicate effectively with professors and employers. 

Despite Berkeley’s diversity, most of my friends went through Berkeley High taking classes that were racially and socio-economically homogeneous. In CAS, my classes reflected the demographics of my school and city. Spending four years with a group of individuals from such a wide range of backgrounds challenged me to constantly reconsider my opinions, exposed me to voices and perspectives I would otherwise never have heard, and instilled in me a commitment to serve all of the co-inhabitants of our global community. 

In her March 11 Express article, “Separate and Unequal at Berkeley’s Small Schools,” Rachel Swan questions whether small schools are addressing racial problems, “or just making them worse.” It is clear from her writing that Swan has neither visited a CAS classroom nor spoken seriously with students of small schools. We have a long way to go, and racial dynamics in small-school classes are anything but perfect, but placing students from different backgrounds together in a supportive environment and inviting them to talk, write, and think about the world around them is a first step. In CAS, I had discussions on a weekly basis that most adults I know would be too scared to get into. My small school gave me a network of friends who don’t all look like me, who don’t all have the same interests as me, and who lead an incredibly diverse set of lives. In a society where social groups are so fragmented and insulated from each other, this has been a great gift for me personally—I have trouble imagining that it could be a negative thing for Berkeley and for our world. 

In one of the many confused passages in her article, Swan cites the fact that five Community Partnerships Academy (CPA) seniors could not pass the California State Exit Exam “despite having enough credits to graduate” as evidence of academic laxity in small schools. If these students had been treated fairly, she argues, they would have never made it so far. Setting aside the fact that Academic Choice students fail the exit exam as well, Swan’s “evidence” actually illustrates one strength of small schools—their ability to provide an excellent education even for students who struggle with standardized tests. My sister was one of those CPA seniors who had to retake the exit exam; her dyslexia makes such tasks extremely challenging. And yet, thanks in part to the personalized support she found in her small school, she was able to succeed in her classes and is now doing well at a four-year college. It was my joy to see her come home from school every day motivated to tackle the academic work which, before she joined CPA, had caused her to despair. Is Swan suggesting that we disband small schools so that students like my sister, who struggle with standardized tests but have the potential to succeed, will be “weeded out” before reaching the exit exam? 

The capacity of the small-school model to teach a demanding curriculum while facilitating personal growth in a diverse community made Berkeley High ideal for me; I was inspired by my experience in CAS to become a teacher myself. And spending four years in classrooms that actually reflect the demographics of Berkeley has deepened my loyalty to and love for the town that raised me. So, with luck, I hope to be back at Berkeley High someday, teaching our next generation. As we make decisions that will shape the BHS I’d like to return to, let us recognize the incredible good that small schools are continuing to bring our youth. 

The small schools at Berkeley High today are not perfect. But they are absolutely a step in the right direction. I am grateful to the critics who have voiced their concerns regarding Berkeley High’s present arrangement—let’s figure out how we can make it work better. It is important, for one, that we redesigned the lottery system so that programs like CAS can continue to reflect Berkeley’s diversity, as they have in the past. 

 

My college career, my professional career, and my life have been profoundly shaped for the better by my small school education at Berkeley High. When I work with youth, and watch the strengths of that education ripple into their lives through me, I feel its significance even more intimately. We all want what’s best for our children; I’m writing as a recent Berkeley High graduate to testify that small schools are good for our children. We need to be critical, and we need to uncompromising in our standards, but we need to go forward with these models. 

 

Noa Wotton graduated from Berkeley High School in 2006.


Columns

Dispatches From the Edge: Georgian Plots; Fury in Asia

By Conn Hallinan
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:01:00 PM

Georgian plot?  

At the bottom of the recent demonstrations that have packed the capital city of Tbilisi with tens of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is an investigation by the European Union (EU) as to who started last summer’s war between Georgia and Russia. According to a report in the German newspaper Der Spiegel, “A secret document may prove that the Georgian president had planned a war of aggression in South Ossetia.” 

The Russians charge that Georgian troops launched a surprise attack on South Ossetia last Aug. 7, while Saakashvili claims that Georgia was merely defending itself from an invasion by 150 Russian tanks through the Roki Tunnel connecting South Ossetia with North Ossetia. The latter is part of Russia. 

But an investigation by the EU has uncovered “Order No. 2,” dated Aug. 7, that says Georgia was not defending itself but acting to “reestablish constitutional order” in South Ossetia. The EU is closely examining an Aug. 7 television interview in which Georgian Gen. Mamuka Kurashjvili used just those words. President Saakashvili announced Aug. 8 that “Most of South Ossetia’s territory is liberated.” He did not claim that Georgia was acting in “self-defense” until Aug. 11. By that time, Russian troops had driven the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia and were within 31 miles of Tbilisi. The war lasted five days. 

The general’s remarks, reports Der Spiegel, “indicate that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was not repelling ‘Russian aggression,’ as he continues to claim to this day, but was planning a war of aggression.” 

The EU commission questioned the Russian deputy head of the general staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, who said that the Russians had intercepted Order No. 2, and that it indeed contained the phrase about reestablishing constitutional order. “If the order, which Russian intelligence intercepted, is authentic, it would prove that Saakashvili lied,” says Der Spiegel.  

The investigation found that Georgia had massed 12,000 troops and 75 tanks on the South Ossetian border for the Aug. 7 attack. The Russian tanks did not transit the tunnel until Aug. 8. While the commission is also critical of the Russians for meddling in South Ossetia and not preventing South Ossetians from destroying some Georgian villages, “the EU investigation seems to be more of a problem for Tbilisi than for Moscow,” according to Der Spiegel. 

The Georgians refuse to turn over Order No. 2 to the commission, claiming it is a state secret. And Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili charges that the investigation is being funded by Russian gas giant Gazprom. The commissioners, who reject the charges, are Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini and former German ambassador to Georgia Uwe Schramm. Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer advises the commission. 

“More and more former allies of Saakashvili are now blaming the authoritarian president for the war and calling for his resignation,” says Der Spiegel. Indeed, Nino Burjanadze, who helped lead the revolution that put Saakashvili into office, and Irakli Alasania, former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations, are leading the opposition demonstrations. 

So far, Saakashvili has not unleashed the police as he did in breaking up similar rallies in 2007, but he arrested 10 opposition members on the eve of the current demonstrations, accusing them of planning a violent overthrow of the government. The charge is based on a secret tape that records a man identified as a “coordinator” for Burjanadze’s Democratic Movement-United Georgia Party saying that the former speaker is planning to provoke violence. Burjanadze denies knowing the so-called “coordinator” and says he has no position of authority in her organization.  

Saakashvili, who came to power in 2003, says he has no intention of resigning and will finish out his term in 2013. But demonstrators say they will not disperse until he steps down and calls an early election. 

The beleaguered president says he is willing to negotiate with the opposition. However, most of the people camped out in front of the Parliament say that the call for “talks” is a ploy. “He says things like this only for the U.S. and Europe,” farmer Amiran Tsertskhladze told the New York Times, “but no one here believes he really wants dialogue.” 

Sobering thought for the week: Only the opposition of Germany and France kept the Bush administration from adding Georgia to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) back in 2007. While the Obama administration is not currently pushing for Georgia to join the alliance, the country’s membership is still on the agenda. Had Georgia been a NATO member during the Russia-Georgia War, it would have triggered Article 5 of the treaty requiring member states to come to Georgia’s aid—and NATO might have been snookered into a war with Russia.  

 

Asian storm 

According to a lot of mainstream thinking, Asia is weathering the current economic meltdown. “Asians are taking the economic collapse far more calmly than many in the West,” writes David Pilling, Asian editor for the Financial Times. The region he says, “brims with confidence that its time has come,” and it is operating under the assumption that, “when the dust settles, wealth and power will have edged decisively east.” 

Pilling may be right about the rise of the east, but things are not nearly as rosy as he paints them, and there are restless clouds on the horizon. 

“As goods pile up on wharves from Bangkok to Shanghai, and workers are laid off in record numbers, people in East Asia are beginning to realize they aren’t only experiencing an economic downturn but living through the end of an era,” says Walden Bello, a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South, president of the Freedom From Debt Coalition, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. 

The current crisis is due to the global crisis of capitalism, but most Asian economies are particularly hard hit because they bought into a scheme by the World Bank back in the 1970s. The plan was to raise living standards without redistributing wealth—thus challenging local elites—by turning countries like South Korea and Taiwan into exporting machines, where economic growth would lift the poor out of poverty. 

At the same time, the United States was pressuring Japan to revalue its currency to make Tokyo’s products more costly, in order to cut the trade gap between the two nations. Japan complied, but its domestic labor costs increased as a result. To keep its status as the world’s top exporter, Tokyo began pouring tens of billions into the rest of Asia to take advantage of low wages in places like China and Vietnam. The strategy was to produce low-cost goods, and ship them to Japan, then Europe and the United States. “This was industrial policy and planning on a grand scale,” says Bello, “managed jointly by the Japanese government and the corporations.” 

The export machine did indeed raise living standards all over Asia, but it ran on the endless appetite of U.S. and European consumers. As long as Americans could get easy credit—and they could, as long as China and Japan bought up hundreds of billions of U.S. Treasury bonds—everything was hunky-dory.  

Until the housing bubble popped, and the bottom fell out of the credit market. The fallout has been catastrophic: “China’s growth in 2008 fell to 9 percent, from 11 percent a year earlier. Japan is now in deep recession … South Korea, the hardest hit of Asia’s economies so far, has seen its currency collapse by some 30 percent relative to the dollar. Southeast Asia’s growth in 2009 will likely be half of that in 2008,” says Bello. 

Although economic growth did alleviate some poverty, the gap between haves and have-nots actually expanded over the last decade. Between 2000 and 2006 Asia grew at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world, but, as the Financial Times points out, that hardly meant the end of penury. 

“Many of the people in the region were still suffering from serious poverty. More than one billion people, representing almost 62 percent of the region’s labor force, were still working in the ‘informal economy.’ Some 900 million were living on less than $2 a day. The International Labor Organization found that 308 million of these people were living in extreme poverty—less than $1 per day. 

According to Bello, some 20 million Chinese have lost their jobs in just the last few months, and there are no industries to soak up the growing army of the unemployed. The economic crisis has also forced millions of Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers to return home to markets that high unemployment drove them to flee. 

Rising poverty rates and joblessness are already leading to protests in Vietnam, and “Korea, with its tradition of militant labor and peasant protest, is a ticking time bomb,” says Bello. 

In the Financial Times, Pilling writes, “Asians are stoical…nor have the people yet turned with a vengeance on incompetent politicians or negligent regulators.” 

You wouldn’t want to put a lot of money on that stoicism to endure.


Attacks On Oakland’s Black Culture Spread to Other Ethnicities

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:02:00 PM

Let’s call this one of Oakland’s teaching moments. For many years, both in this column and in its previous incarnation, the Oakland Unwrapped column for the old Urbanview newspaper, I’ve been talking about the more or less systematic minimizing of the presence and effect of African-American culture in Oakland. I don’t believe this is the result of some great conspiracy or secret plan of action written down in detail somewhere, more a confluence of various interests that have come together to push things towards the same end, that of pushing African-American cultural activities out of the city. Or, more correctly, African-American cultural activities that are operated and controlled by African-Americans themselves. 

Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, closed. Sweet Jimmy’s, closed. The Oak Tree, in Jack London Square, which got accused of encouraging “a sideshow of a sideshow” in the street outside its doors, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. The Bird Cage on Telegraph, which tried to bring in hip hop acts in its last days. The Carijama Festival, shut down. Official Oakland now endorses and embraces the dying black music form of blues now that it is a weak echo of its feisty and exuberant youth, while the blues of the new millennium—hip hop—is actively discouraged by Oakland officials and Oakland police from being showcased at large venues in the flats of East and West and North Oakland where it ought to flourish. 

And so I noted, with interest, an item in the Picks column of the entertainment section of last week’s East Bay Express: 

“Famed Bay Area jazz club Yoshi’s is upping its … street cred. With two venues now, the club caters as much to the grown and sexy R&B crowd as to the jazz purists who would otherwise be at home listening to their Don Cherry Pandora stations. Now Yoshi’s is ready for its inaugural hip-hop show, featuring Mos Def…” 

Let’s stop for a moment, and get some things straight. 

I am a great fan of Yoshi’s, despite the little mixup with their 10-year anniversary CD, and think they have been a tremendous cultural asset to Oakland’s downtown. The last show I went to there was last weekend—the magnificent and unparalleled Rachelle Ferrell in concert unplugged—and there is not another venue in the area with the sound system to handle her. I am glad that they are moving into hip-hop as well. 

But I suppose it’s a legacy of my old socialist training—as well as the echo of the anger coming down through the years from my slaverytime ancestors—that I carry the belief that the ones first and foremost to benefit from a creation ought to be the creators themselves. And the young African-Americans (and Latinos) of Oakland, spitting out rhymes as they walk International or MLK or beat out rhythms on the seat backs of the AC Transit buses as they ride, are the creators of hip hop, creating and re-creating as they go about their lives, and they’re not likely to make it to a Mos Def Yoshi’s show, even if they were Mos Def fans. 

This slowly increasing sanitizing of Oakland’s culture—call it a gradual lightening of the city’s diversity shade—has primarily had its effect on African-American cultural activities. But that may have suddenly changed. 

Last week, the Oakland Post reported that “there will not be a Cinco de Mayo parade or a Dia De Los Muertos Festival in Oakland this year. Also in jeopardy are the annual Black Cowboys Parade and the next Chinatown Street Festival.” 

“At issue,” the Post article says, “is the requirement by the Oakland Police Department that those who want to hold events must bear the full cost of security, mostly police overtime, in order to qualify for permits. The cost and number of police is determined by the OPD Special Events Unit.” 

According to the Post, organizers of Cinco de Mayo, which blocks off several International Boulevard streets in the Fruitvale for the event, paid $37,000 for OPD security last year, with the city picking up the rest of the tab. This year, the article said, OPD is asking for $80,000 for the same event, with no city help to be forthcoming. 

November’s Dia de los Muertos, also in the Fruitvale, has already been canceled, according to the Post article, and the annual Chinatown festival, which brought 100,000 people into a 10-block area in that community last August, could also go by the wayside. 

This is absolutely devastating. These annual events are part of what makes Oakland, well, Oakland. 

The squeeze on the Dia, Cinco, Black Cowboy, and Chinatown affairs has nothing to do with police disapproving of these festivals—which are highly popular and well-attended—but may simply be the result of a combination of Oakland’s budget problems caused by the economic downturn and the Dellums administration crackdown on what was once runaway and out-of-control police overtime cost. Overtime was a big perk for police officers, and there have been charges that police officials have been using their control over event security to try to make some of that money up. Keep that in the back of your mind. We’ll have to get into that issue in more detail another time. 

But couple the drying up of city support for the popular, ethnic festivals—all neighborhood-based except for the Black Cowboy Parade—and Oakland’s lavish spending on the renovation of the Fox Oakland Theater. The Fox renovation was part of the eight-year program under the Jerry Brown administration to create a brand new neighborhood from scratch in downtown and uptown Oakland—to attract new residents from outside who had to be enticed to come and live in the city—while neglecting the city’s many existing neighborhoods. Much of the city money that went to the Fox creation and the massive uptown Forest City development project probably couldn’t have been saved for use in supporting the community festivals, but money is money, and cities have a way of shifting these things around in such a way that had Oakland not paid so much attention to uptown during the Brown years, the city would not have faced the prospect of losing the heart of its diverse soul. 

Coupled together, we could easily see the day when Oakland’s black, brown, and yellow cultural events are available only at upscale prices from the gilded chairs of the renovated Fox while the actual ethnic cultural centers themselves are only a dim and dead memory, in the same way that today’s San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf is only a faux, tourist-trap replica of an area that once was home to a lively and alive fisherman’s culture. 

Little was done or said outside of African-American circles during all the years African-American cultural events and centers were under attack in Oakland. Perhaps now that the danger has spread to the larger ethnic community, there will be a joint effort to save what are uniquely Oakland institutions, and all of them, before they disappear. 

Anyways… 

Any prolonged discussion of the March 21 MacArthur shootings—such as we’ve been having over the past month—cannot be complete without some mention of the ghastly and entirely inappropriate way former state Sen. Don Perata attempted to politically exploit it. We have often criticized Mr. Perata for various actions, with good cause. But his response to the MacArthur shootings is a particular low, even for the former senator. 

In a March 31 column (“Dellums’ Presence As Risky As His Performance”), San Francisco Chronicle East Bay columnist Chip Johnson—a longtime Perata booster—wrote that Mr. Perata “said the events [surrounding the March 21 shootings and its aftermath] have persuaded him [Mr. Perata] to run for mayor in 2010. ‘I wasn’t trying to be coy (on a mayoral run), but this just galvanized it for me because you just can’t stand there and do nothing,’ Mr. Johnson quoted Mr. Perata as saying. ‘People know what I’ve done to ban assault weapons and other things I’ve done, so they ought to know that I’m running for mayor.’” 

The next day, Kelly Rayburn of the Oakland Tribune reported on the Perata mayoral run announcement, writing that “the 10-year state senator had hinted for months he was considering a run but said he finalized his decision after attending the funeral service for four Oakland police officers Friday.” It was at the funeral services that the Oakland Police Officers Association—and almost certainly others—orchestrated the move to prevent Mr. Dellums from speaking. 

If there is anyone in Oakland surprised that Mr. Perata is going to run for mayor of the city—unless a longtime federal corruption investigation halts his plans—then that person has simply not been paying attention. Mr. Perata has been making his intentions plain not just for months, as Ms. Rayburn indicated, but for years. 

Given that background, for Mr. Perata to assert that he made up his mind because of the circumstances surrounding the MacArthur shootings and the police deaths plays upon a citywide tragedy for personal political gain, and plays us as if Oakland residents are rubes and fools who cannot see through the charade. Does anyone honestly believe that Mr. Perata would not have run for mayor of Oakland if the four officers had not gotten killed? 

If one ever wonders why I have never supported Mr. Perata—and why I take every opportunity to criticize his actions—it is because I believe Mr. Perata’s interests are only in his own advancement and gain, and not for the welfare or betterment of those of us he is supposed to represent. Just as he has in so many other instances, Mr. Perata showed no concern over the real causes of the MacArthur shootings and how those underlying problems might be solved, only in how he might exploit a tragic situation to further his own cause. Shameful, y’all. Shameful. 

I hope I have made myself plain enough.


Green Neighbors: Down the Twisty Primrose Path

By Ron Sullivan
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM
One thing leads to another. Start messing with your curb strip and the next thing you know you’re up to your neck in food and flowers. Don Mahoney’s garden, Richmond.
Ron Sullivan
One thing leads to another. Start messing with your curb strip and the next thing you know you’re up to your neck in food and flowers. Don Mahoney’s garden, Richmond.

Over the past few years I’ve had the privilege of meeting with some real geeks.  

I speak as a geek myself, of course. We have ways of signaling to each other, involving mutual delight. You know you’re in the company of a geek when she presents you with some odd, obscure, newly discovered or just key fact in the manner of a golden retriever handing over a freshly fetched duck. “Just look at that!” says the attitude. “Isn’t that pretty?” 

There are geeks for everything under the sun, of course, and for everything beyond. You want a taste, go hang around the various science blogs run by Seed and Discover magazines. But gardening and its sister passions seem somehow to lay out a depth and breadth of geekhood, a fractal pattern of such distractive and absorptive power at so many levels, that one is tempted to call it foundational.  

I’ve met people who started out playing with pollen as a hobby, when some favorite plant got overwhelmed by bugs or disease and no resistant varieties existed in the trade. There’s a gorgeous small-flowered climbing fuchsia that resists fuchsia mites now and just happens to be a gorgeous and different plant, just for example, and the marine biologist who bred it has quite the dry-land sideline and fame in several circles now.  

I’ve met a couple of guys who keep caterpillars in big jars on the bookshelves; one of them schleps those around to schools and events and explains what’s really going on with butterflies and how to start seeing it and how to keep it going. Sometimes a caterpillar or two gets wily and ambitious, and escapes those net-covered jars to pupate under a diningroom chair or on the curtains. So the house has absolutely unique décor that includes a golden-touched monarch chrysalis on a cabinet, and sometimes, unpredictably, hatched-out butterflies flying about.  

That’s my kind of housekeeping! 

Some of us flit from distraction to obsession like so many fickle butterflies. I visited a breeder of Pacific Coast Hybrid irises who also has some fancy shrub monkeyflowers in an astounding range of rosy colors for so small a patch, and oh incidentally breeds alpine plants and carnivorous plants (and is managing to keep specimens of our native cobra lily thriving, which I can tell you isn’t easy without your own fen) and chorus frogs and killifish. And has a day job. 

Joe and I got into this mess ourselves starting with birds. We knew that the way to learn in the field is to attach oneself to the nearest gray-haired birder like a limpet and pay attention. When someone said, “There’s the warbler, in the middle of the manzanita,” we had to learn that too, and one thing led to another and now we’re carrying on in Latin-derived epithets half the time. Half the neighbors think we’re talking dirty. 

Come to think of it, we are. The best part is: There’s no end in sight.


About the House: Kicking the Tires

By Matt Cantor
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM
Though they looked just fine to the naked eye, these tiles were barely attached
Though they looked just fine to the naked eye, these tiles were barely attached

As an inspector, there are certain phrases that catch my ear and cause me to run some little macros that I’ve been cognitively building over these many years looking at houses. One of them is some version of, “The sellers did all this work for themselves and were planning on living here for many years.”  

OK. Maybe so, maybe not. It’s sort of a set-up to say that. It’s kind of like saying, “If we’d known some suckers were buying the house, we’d have remodeled with spit and glue, but since we were planning to live here for many years to come, we decided to have the work properly done.” I don’t know. Maybe I’m over the top but it just seems to me that it shouldn’t matter and it’s overstating just a bit. Nonetheless, I did have cause to confirm my distrust of such statements this week. 

The house was largely pretty solid, having been built in the years just after World War II in a somewhat unimaginative but very reliable El Cerrito neighborhood. This era produced good solid workmanship, great foundations and spacious lots. It’s also home to those great huge garages that we wood-workers always salivate over. The original work was good, but as I looked at the interior and places where recent upgrades had been done (the ones done just for themselves, mine you) I found a couple of pretty sorry items. The worst was a bathroom counter that had obviously been tiled very recently and with the very worst possible preparation.  

When I entered the bathroom, I looked at the tile counter and it didn’t look quite right. Sometimes it’s hard to specify, but there are any of a hundred reasons that this might be true in a case such as this, and it implored me to thump. Now thumping is an art and should not be attempted by the careless or the angry. Do not thump wantonly or capriciously. Thump only as one who is seeking exact details, as one might swirl a glass of wine prior to smelling. 

When I thumped I heard a hollow sound, as if a void were present below the tile. This was a bad sound. I thumped some more, but far less than would be expected to produce any sort of damage. I thumped as though I were tenderizing meat, as one emphasizing a point. The sounds continued to be bad and it looked as if the tile were moving. The wood backing was bouncing far too much. Virtually no bounce should be possible once tile is installed over an appropriate backing. 

Then the edges began to loosen. Initially, I was taken aback. This shouldn’t happen. I had been preparing to write items of concern down on my pad (“This tile may not be properly installed and may have a shorter then typical…” Uh oh). I called in my client and pointed out my discovery. I asked her to tug lightly on the edge of another tile. Four came off in her hands. Clearly, these were not going to survive the first month or two of life in her possession before they started to come off. Any playful activity (no suggestions here) or an accidental bump onto the edge of the counter was going to reveal this and probably quite soon. 

This raises questions as to what sort of testing is reasonable when examining a house one is preparing to acquire. Is it appropriate to kick tires and, if so, to what extent? There is, of course, no easy answer but before I attempt one, here’s another story. 

Many years ago, when I was far newer to my current profession, I found myself, one day, as I have many times since, down on my butt in front of a kitchen sink cabinet investigating the contents thereof. Behind me stood my clients (a young couple), two realtors (one for each side of the deal) and at least one or two more friends or relatives. In short, an audience. Drawing focus to my subject, I pointed to the sink trap (that funny shaped piece that runs from the sink drain to the cabinet wall) and began to wax didactic about the advanced corrosion on the trap. “Here,” I pointed, and stuck my thumb right through it’s filmy shell, water dribbling down my hand and onto the floor. 

OK. Did I break it or did I reveal that it was no longer competent? As in the prior case, it’s clear that, like some sort of booby-trap, it might have been a matter of days into new ownership before the newlyweds found themselves with either a leaky trap or a broken countertop, depending on which story we’re talking about. When do you want to know? Before you buy or after? It’s clear to me that I want to find out anything I possibly can prior to sale, and that pulling on this and rapping on that, within very judicious limits, is very important. A concrete wall should not crumble when tapped with a hammer and a plastic waste line should not pull apart when two parts are grasped and torqued with moderate force. If one does not do these things, one does not learn important—nay, vital—details about houses. 

My clients in both these cases were very happy to learn of these things. And though these findings sometimes make sellers unhappy, the cost of repair prior to sale is often less than the price of retribution afterwards. The more a buyer knows, the better for everyone. 

It’s astonishing how many brand-new countertops aren’t secured; how many dishwashers aren’t screwed into place; and how many dishwashers leak when we run them. I’m not suggesting there is malice in any of these things. Not at all. People are often stressed and harried when the sale is under way. The owner of the tiled counter may have no idea that the worker did such a poor job (though I’m pretty sure that this was the low-low bidder or simply a laborer from off the street) and besides, who looks at traps under sinks? 

The house with the tiled counter had a number of other similar troubles, and it was pretty clear that, if permits were ever obtained, the house was subjected to only the most insubstantial of inspections from the municipality. In short, one should never rely on that alone. It was claimed in this case that permits had been obtained for all the work, and this is often a claim that turns out to be untrue or of mixed truth. Permits may have been obtained for A but not for B or C. Permits may have been obtained but not followed by a full array of inspections. Even when permits were obtained, and for the exact claimed items, they may not have been adequate. Codes are not a guarantee of good workmanship. They simply establish that certain metrics have been applied and certain milestones passed. Work can be pretty awful regardless of having met the code. 

If you’re looking at houses, remember that far too many have piles of goop and paint brushed out over stains, rotten soft wood, rusty metal and formerly leaking foundation walls. Carpets are often installed over formerly damp basement floors, and various remodeling efforts are often well below the standards demanded by the code and by better builders. Again, these are rarely cases of malicious malfeasance, but simply the day-to-day acts of imperfect humans doing the best they can under the circumstances. Our ideas of best practice rarely rule the day, and to everyone’s detriment, I’m not in charge of the world. 

 

ASK MATT 

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


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:56:00 PM

THURSDAY, APRIL 23 

CHILDREN 

Julie Crabtree, author of “Discovering Pig Magic” and winner of the 2008 Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature at 3 p.m. in the Children’s Room of the Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Lyric Escape: Paintings by Lawrence Ferlinghetti” Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Exhibition runs through May 10. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

“Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet” Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Mystery Made Manifest” Works by Susan Duhan Felix. Opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Badè Museum, 1798 Scenic Ave. 848-0528. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

People’s Park 40th Anniversary “People’s Voice Poetry” with poets Al Young, Julia Vinograd, John Oliver Simon, Alta, HD Moe, Kirk Lumpkin, Paradise, Christian, Arnie Passman, and more at 7 p.m. at Caffe Mediterraneum, 2475 Telegraph. 390-0830. www.peoplespark.org 

Holloway Poetry Series with Ariana Reines at 6:30 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC campus. http://holloway.english.berkeley.edu 

David Weingarten and Lucia Howard give a slide show and discuss “Ranch Houses: Living the Dream” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Cheo Tyehimba on “Like Loving Backward: Stories” at 6:30 p.m. at Marcus Bookstore, 3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. Seating limited, Please RSVP to 652-2344. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Dance, Butterfly Bones at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054.  

Ronny Cox at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Kelly Park & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Tippy Canoe and Mikie Lee Prasad, Madame Pamita and her Parlour of Wonders at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Speak the Music, beatboxing at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568.  

Adrian Gormley Jazz Ensemble at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

FRIDAY, APRIL 24 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Luv” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through May 23. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Arts Research Center “The Botany of Desire” theatrical adaptation of Michael Pollan’s book at 5:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC campus. Discussion with artists and author following performance. Free, but tickets required. 642-9988. 

Aurora Theatre “Miss Julie” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., at 2081 Addison St. to May 10. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley High School Drama “Double Digits” Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Florence Schwimley Little Theater, 1930 Allston Way, through May 2. Tickets are $6-$12. 

Berkeley Rep “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” at Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St. through May 15. Tickets are $33-$71. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Black Repertory Group “Mrs. Streeter” Fri. at 8 .m., Sat. at 2:30 and 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through April 25. Tickets are $15-$20. 925-812-2787. www.blackrepertorygroup.com 

Brookside Rep “Basha Rubenchek from Minsk, Comrade of Petaluma” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, through May 3. Tickets are $19-$24. www.BrooksideRep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Saint Joan” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through May 10. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Masquers Playhouse “The Last Five Years” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through May 2. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Shotgun Players “Skylight” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., though April 26. Tickets are $25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

TheatreFIRST “Old Times” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way, through April 25. Tickets are $23-$28. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Kala’s 35th Anniversary & Grand Opening Celebration at 5:30 p.m. with a preview of the re:con-figure exhibition, the celebration will include live music, performances. RSVP to 841-7000. www.kala.org 

“The Art of Amusement” with artists and artwork on amusement, at 6 p.m. at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach, 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Art show is free, but $10-$15 for entire museum. 232-4264, ext. 25. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Larry Fink “Night at the Met” The photographer will discuss his latest book at 7 p.m. at UCB Graduate School of Journalism, 105 Northgate Hall, Hearst and Euclid. Tickets are $10. Reception at 6 p.m. The photographer will also hold a workshop on Sat. www.fotovision.org.  

Jerelle Kraus on “All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t): Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Bookstore, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 

“Creativity in the Face of Climate Change” A symposium at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“And Counting ...” with artist Nigel Poor on how to document life and what is worthy of preservation, at 7:30 p.m. at JFK Univ. Berkeley Campus, 2956 San Pablo Ave., 2nd flr. 647-2047. 

Shawna Yang Ryan reads from her book about Chinese immigrants in a small California town in 1928, “Water Ghosts” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friday Noon Concert, with Dept. of Music students at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

En Pointe Youth Dance Company “Impulse” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2460 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“Dance Anywhere” with Levi Toney, Sonja Dale and Tammy Cheney at noon at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Ave. Free. danceanywhere.org 

“The Cooking Show: Dance, Music, and Soupmaking” Fri. and Sat. at 7 and 9 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Cost is $10, no one turned away for lack of funds. www.thecookingshowoakland.blogspot.com 

Berkeley Dance Project 2009 “Equal Footing” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through April 26., at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC campus. Tickets are $10-$15. 642-8827. tdps.berkeley.edu 

Marimba Pacifica, Funky Nixons, Wire Graffiti in a People’s Park 40th Anniversary Celebration at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Suggested donation $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

An Evening of Korean Art Songs at 7:30 p.m. at Pro Arts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. Cost is $12-$18. 868-0695. proartsgallery.org 

Quetzal at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tamar Sella at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Frankye Kelly & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Krista Detor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Red Meat, Tremoloco, Rick Shea at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

R&B Fridays featuring Bobby Tinsely at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $20. 839-6169. 

The P-PL at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Curtis Bumpy at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 

CHILDREN  

Songs of Earth and Spirit A family concert in celebration of Earth Day with Betsy Rose at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. Please bring seeds for planting. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jean Paul Valjean “Short Attention Span Circus” Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Alice in Wonderland” a circus adaptation Sat. at 2 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 4:30 p.m., at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., TIckets are $14-$18. 296-4433. activeartstheatre.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Squeak Carnwath: Painting is no Ordinary Object” exhibition opens and runs through Aug. 23, at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Steel Life” Works by David Wayrynen. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at MC Artworks, 10344 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 375-9235. www.mcartworksgallery.com 

“A Rare Alchemy” Pinhole photography by S. McGrath Ryan, Glass sculptures of David Ruth. Closing party at 6 p.m. at FLOAT Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place #116, Oakland. 535-1702. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Adam Mansbach reads from “End of the Jews” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

En Pointe Youth Dance Company “Impulse” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2460 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“The Cooking Show: Dance, Music, and Soupmaking” at 7 and 9 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Cost is $10, no one turned away for lack of funds. www.thecookingshowoakland.blogspot.com 

The Temescal String Quartet “Muss Es Sein? Es Muss Sein!” at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Javanese Shadow Play with Gamelan Sari Raras at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Tickets are $5-$15. 642-9988.  

Pacific Boychoir Academy with Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $20. 652-4722. www.pacificboychoiracademy.org 

“Piano, Poetry, Jazz and Lyrics” with Raymond Nat Turner and Tammy Lynne Hall at 3 p.m. in the third flr. Community Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

Pete Yellin All-Stars at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Mayne Smith with Johnny Harper at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

Sashamon, reggae, ska, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

The Venzuelan Music Project with Jackeline Rago at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $16-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $48.50-$49.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org  

Wakefield Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373.  

Dgiin at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Unreal Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Socket at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 26 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. 642-0808.  

“5 Takes” Photographs by Fraser Bonnell, Eric Kaufman-Cohen, Cathy Lozano, Martha Snider and Ted Williams opens at Photolab, 2235 Fifth St. 644-1400. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“The Miracle of the Negro Spiritual” Lecture and song with Lucy Kitchen Chorale at 2 p.m at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway, Oakland. Donations accepted. 444-3555. 

University Wind Ensemble at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Tickets are $5-$15. 642-9988.  

Chamber Music Sundaes, with members of the SF Symphony and friends at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door are $20-$25. 415-753-2792.  

Karen Blixt & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Café Bellie at 5:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Le Jazz Hot at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Tim Eriksen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, APRIL 27 

FILM 

“Waking Life” with lecture by Robert Sharf at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Aurora Script Club examines Strindberg and Albee at 7:30 p.m. at Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. Free. 843-4822.  

Poetry Express open mic theme night on “freedom” celebrating South Africa’s Freedom Day holiday with members of Committee on South African Solidarity at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Classical at the Freight at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $8.50-$9.50. 548-1761.  

TUESDAY, APRIL 28 

EXHIBITIONS 

28th Annual Quilt Show at Berkeley Public Library featuring miniature quilts on display at the Central Library, 2090 Kittredge, from April 28 - May 11. Visitors can take the self-guided tour, using a catalog describing each entry. 981-6241. berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kent Lightfoot and Otis Parrish discuss their new book “California Indians and Their Environment” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

Summer Brenner and Gary Phillips read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

André Thierry & Zydeco Magic 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.  

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29 

FILM 

“Persepolis” with lecture by Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

Independent Filmmakers Screening Night Bring your 5 - 10 minute shorts & selects to screen every Wed. at 6:30 p.m. at Café of the Dead, 3208 Grand Ave., next to the Grand Lake Theater. Oakland. 931-7945.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Greenwood Common: Living Modern” with Waverly Lowell at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. berkeleyheritage.com 

Jerelle Kraus in Conversation with Peter Selz on her new book “All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t): Inside the New York Times Op-Ed Page” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

Diana Block on “Arm the Spirit” her memoir about living a decade underground at 7 p.m. at the AK Press warehouse, 674-A 23rd. St., Oakland. 208-1700.  

rTessa Fontaine, Allison De Lauer and Kristen Tracy ead at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with new music by the composers in the graduate composition seminar at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

“Meaning in Beethoven’s ‘Grosse Fuge’” A concert performance and discussion with The St. Lawrence String Quartet and NPR’s Rob Kapilow at 5:30 p.m. at MSRI, 17 Gauss Way, near the intersection of Centennial Dr. & Grizzly Peak Blvd. Free. 642-0143. 

Babshad at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054.  

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

James Whiton at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Matt Heulitt Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Think Green” Opening reception at 4 p.m. at City of Berkeley Planning Dept., 2120 Milvia St., 2nd flr. Art on loan from Expressions Gallery. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Clive Matson will read from his collection of poetry, “Mainline to the Heart” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Poetry Flash with Lynne Knight and Carolyn Miller at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Andrew M. Shanken reads from his new book, “194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front” at 7 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 4th St. RSVP to vikateicher@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sergei Podobedov, pianist and Alison Lopatin-Podobedov, soprano at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste. Tickets are $20. 415-990-3851. 

Little Wolf & the Hellcats at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing/blues dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tim O’Brien at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Misner and Smith, Pamela Parker, Steve Taylor-Ramirez at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Cuba Hurricane Benefit: End the Blockade at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Sheppard’s Krook at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, MAY 1 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Luv” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through May 23. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Miss Julie” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., at 2081 Addison St. to May 10. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley High School Drama “Double Digits” Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m. at Florence Schwimley Little Theater, 1930 Allston Way. Tickets are $6-$12. 

Berkeley Rep “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” at Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St. through May 15. Tickets are $33-$71. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Brookside Rep “Basha Rubenchek from Minsk, Comrade of Petaluma” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, through May 3. Tickets are $19-$24. www.BrooksideRep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Saint Joan” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through May 10. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “Impact Briefs: Puberty” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through June 6. Tickets are $10-$17. impacttheatre.com 

“Free Land” solo performance by Ariel Luckey, Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Masquers Playhouse “The Last Five Years” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through May 2. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Re:con-figure” Inaugural exhibition and reception from 6 to 9 p.m. in Kala’s new galleries at 2990 San Pablo Ave. Exhibition runs to June 27. 841-7000. www.kala.org 

“En Plein Air: California Landscapes by James Brosnahan” Reception and Benefit for Options Recovery Services at 6 p.m. at St. Clements Episcopal Church, 2837 Claremont Blvd. 666-9552, ext. 125. www.optionsrecovery.org 

“Eternal Sky: Reviving the Art of Mongol Zurag” An exhibition featuring the the work of artist and calligrapher Narmandakh Tsultem, through July 15, 2009 IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor. 642-2809. ieas.berkeley.edu 

“Earth Days” Works by Tyrell Collins, Ralph Singer, and John Wood. Reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 Twenty-fifth St., Oakland. oakopolis@gmail.com 

“Nature Morte” Small images of pressed flowers by Naomi Weissman at Garage Gallery, 3110 Wheeler St. www.berkeleyoutlet.com 

“Death is Easy, Comedy is Hard” Group show of humorous art. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Red Door Gallery and Collective, 416 26th St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to May 31. 374-0444. reddoorgalleryandcollective.com 

WCCUSD Annual Student Art Show Reception and award ceremony at 5 p.m. at The Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave. at 25th St., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

“Mindful Light” Photographic images by Gary Wilson. Reception at 5 p.m. at The Gallery @ Lavezzo Designs, 5751 Horton St., Emeryville. 428-2384. 

“Intimate Observer” paintings and drawings by Jill McLennan and “Speed and Ecstasy” paintings and pastel drawings by Jamie Morgan. Opening reception at 6 p.m. Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., at Broadway, Oakland. Exhibit runs through May 30. 701-4620. 

“Tempered Fragility” New work by Reem Rahim. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 655-9019. 

FILM 

“Notorius” at 7 p.m. at the Paramount, 2025 Broadway. Tickets are $5. Box office opens at 6 p.m.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chamber Orchestra, members of the University Symphony Orchestra at noon at Hertz Hall, UC campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Sylvia Nakkach in Concert at 8 p.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $15-$25. 486-8700. www.rudramandir.com 

The Literary Groove of Jazz Weekend at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

“I Like My Bike Night” with Antioquia, Carne Cruda at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8 iwth bike, $13 without. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Suzy Thompson & Del Rey at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Papmalo, Amygdala, Hijack, Mooska at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Kymberly Jackson at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Fishbone, Bangdata, Monkey at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15-20. 548-1159.  

SATURDAY, MAY 2 

CHILDREN  

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Alice in Wonderland” a circus adaptation Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 4:30 p.m., at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., TIckets are $14-$18. 296-4433. activeartstheatre.org 

Lori & RJ/Cotton Candy Express Music Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Young Americans” Mills College MFA Exhibition. Opening Reception at 7 p.m. at Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Exhibition runs to May 31. 430-2164. www.mills.edu/museum 

THEATER 

Stone Soup Improv Comedy at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7-$10. www.stonesoupimprov.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry in Tribute to Ferlinghetti at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Tickets are $12-$15. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading from 3 to 5 pm. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Concerto Festival Concert with winners of Concerto Competition from the Preparatory Music Dept. at 4 p.m. in the Regents’ Theater in Valley Center for the Performing Arts, Holy Names University campus, Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10. 436-1224. 

Masankho Banda, African storyteller and drummer, along with intergenerational dancer and singer Soyinka Rahim at 10 a.m. at InterPlayce, 2273 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. www.bayareandw.org 

Music for Flute, Harp and Flute Choir Gail Edwards and Anna Maria Mendieta with the SFSU Flute Choir at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Spirit of Africa A concert of dance-drumming from West Africa at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Tickets are $5-$15. 642-9988. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

Mystic Roots Band, Lakay and Mystic Man at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Battle of the Salsa Bands at 7:30 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way Cost is $20. Benefit for Project Peace East Bay. www.projectpeaceeastbay.org  

Sotaque Baiano at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

The Ditty Bops at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Michael Zilber’s Billy Collins Project at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Beep with Michael Coleman at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Icarus Jones Collective at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Grateful Dead Jams with Live Dead and The Dead Guise Acoustic at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Sotaque Baiano at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

SUNDAY, MAY 3 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Above Ground” Works by Jacqueline Neuwirth Krayna. Reception at 4 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, FOyer Gallery, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. 524-9283. 

Jamie Erfurdt Art Gallery Art Opening from 2 to 6 p.m. at 1966 University Ave. at Milvia. 421-2912. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Art and the Creative Process” with Squeak Carnwath and Carrie Lederer at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org/tickets 

Poetry Flash with Carol Moldaw, Julia B. Levine, Ruth L. Schwartz at 3 p.m. at Diesel, 5433 College Ave., Oakland. 653-9965. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Vox Dilecti “Coronation Anthems” at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $18-$25. www.sfcitychorus.org 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra performs Dvorak’s “Stabat Mater” at 4:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Donations appreciated. www.bcco.org 

California Bach Society “From Tallis to Tavener” 300 years of British choral music, at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way, at Ellsworth. Tickets are $10-$30. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.org 

Tribute to John Coltrane: “Giant Steps” to a “Love Supreme” performed by studetns from Music 116B at 8:30 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 642-4864. 

Bay Area Girls Rock Showcase at 7 p.m. at the Starry Plough Pub, 3101 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Cypress String Quartet at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Tickets are $46. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Grupo Falso Baiano with Ana Carbatti at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

George Brooks’ Double Moiré at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Bob Franke at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org


Kala Institute Celebrates 30th Anniversary in Expanded Facility

By Peter Selz Special to the Planet
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:31:00 PM
Kala Institute celebrates its 35th anniversary with RE:CON-FIGURE. Pictured here is an installation from the exhibit, Randy Hussong’s Holy Mother of God That’s a Lot of Baseballs! (2008). See story under Arts & Entertainment.
Kala Institute celebrates its 35th anniversary with RE:CON-FIGURE. Pictured here is an installation from the exhibit, Randy Hussong’s Holy Mother of God That’s a Lot of Baseballs! (2008). See story under Arts & Entertainment.
Untitled (2009), by Midori Harima.
Untitled (2009), by Midori Harima.

Founded 35 years ago in Paris by artists Archana Horsting, coming from California, and Yuzo Nakano, from Japan, the Kala Art Institute has succeeded beyond their early expectations. Originally a print workshop, it has grown to be a very special place for the production of art in all media, including photography, book arts, video, three-dimensional work and digital processes. By providing professional working facilities in a unique creative environment, it has attracted artists from this country and abroad. Kala provides both established and emerging artists with opportunities to develop and exhibit traditional, as well as cutting-edge artwork and serves as a forum for international dialogue between artists engaged in creative innovation and exploration. 

As time went on, the institute’s facilities became too small to entertain all the demands of the place and a new additional 6,700-square-foot area has been acquired, located around the corner from the old space, which will be maintained as is. The new space is the main entrance of the grand, historic former Heinz Factory building on San Pablo Avenue. This new space provides a highly visible and easily accessible street-level entrance to a fine exhibition space for a 2,000-square-foot Kala Gallery. In addition to showing work produced by artists working in the institute, the gallery now can reach out to the broader art world. Kala is able to re-establish its long pioneering history of presenting installation and performance art. The new space will also provide additional work space for artists, a Print and Media Study Center, a conference room, a classroom equipped with a printing press, a staff office and storage.  

The grand opening of the new facilities takes place Friday, April 24, with a celebration for supporters of Kala’s new facilities. Along with a preview of an exhibition entitled Re:Con-Figure, the celebration will include live music performances, wine, appetizers and vodka-tasting. Mayor Tom Bates will cut the ribbon, and Larry Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, is honorary chair for this event.  

“This is a great moment,” says Kate Elertsen, chair of Kala’s 35th anniversary celebration. “For 35 years, Kala has nurtured a community of both local and international artists who are phenomenal. The opening of an expanded facility is a great sign of appreciation for such an amazing community.” 

The special opening will be followed May 1 with a free reception, open to the public, for the Re:Con-Figure artists from 6 to 9 p.m. This inaugural show will run through June 27. 


Contra Costa Theatre Stages Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan’

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:28:00 PM

The young steward to Squire Robert de Baudricourt, military commander in Champagne, sloughs off his master’s inferences as to why there are no eggs in the henhouse at the beginning of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, staged by David Bogdonoff with a cast of 17 at El Cerrito’s Contra Costa Civic Theatre. No one would steal the eggs, the steward asserts; the hens won’t lay because the area is under a spell. Then, he mentions, “The Girl from Lorraine is at the door.” 

The Squire wonders why she hasn’t been sent away: “Are you telling me you’re afraid of her?” 

“Sir, she is so positive!” 

The Maid is, in the play Shaw authored in 1923, three years after Joan of Arc was finally canonized, a positive and very colloquial daughter of the common folk, who butts in among her social superiors to win them over to her crusade to lift the siege of Orleans with the help of God, crown the challenged and despised Dauphin as king, and chase the English out of France. 

This she does, with the sometimes puzzled enthusiasm of the Great Men she enlists. The hens of Champagne even begin to lay again! 

But though it’s easy to accept a saint’s gifts, and later to be grateful for them, it’s difficult to have someone like Joan around. She must think herself superior; she’s stubborn! All the resentments come out, all the class and gender antagonisms along with them. After she’s gone, her memory can be cherished—but who’d want such a being back among us again? 

All this, as Shaw adroitly points out in dialogue between a churchman and a noble warrior, happens in the days before Feudal Man thought of himself as French or English rather than being from his town or village, subject of his local lord and the Church of Christendom. Joan’s revolt from convention is one of the first symptoms of what—for want of better terms—these worthy gentleman agree to call “nationalism” and “Protestantism.” 

The remarkable solitariness of Joan—played with marvelous bluff directness and energy by Kate Culbertson—is accented by virtue of the fact that it’s the only female role in the play. Indeed, one of the principal articles of accusation against her at her trial for heresy is that she will not dress like a woman but as a man, a soldier. Her reply is blunt and clear: If I hadn’t, being always among soldiers in battle, or guarded by them in prison, how would they have treated me? 

(In like manner, she answers the accusation that “her voices” aren’t those of saints in heaven but those of her own imagination with: How else does God make us hear his wishes?) 

Among the men, it’s fair to mention Joe Fitzgerald as the Squire (and, later, the Inquisitor), who helps the action take off with his sanguine “opening act,” showing in good humor what Joan is up against and how she leverages it.  

Bruce Moody (who notes he carried a spear on Broadway when the great Siobhan McKenna portrayed Joan) is a sly, feline Archbishop of Rheims; Misha Madison plays the younger, scorned Dauphin Charles (“Charley” to Joan) as a querulous salamander, later, after having been “made a man” by The Maid, a model of a modern king and commander, a real CEO. 

Wayne Johnson does a comic turn as the spirit, in a dream, of the English Soldier who hands Joan a simple cross of sticks at the stake, saved for one night every year. 

Shaw can be seen as a link between Oscar Wilde and Bertolt Brecht in putting actors onstage who can cast off their specific characterizations for a moment, to become spokespersons—whether orators or wits—who enunciate a point of view for an age, a class, or a type. Here, you see it a little in Joan’s uncanny, too-sharp reality, which transcends time and place, and in the overly familiar, anachronistic sameness of the men of affairs whom she shakes out of their torpor to do great things. And who then, in their pettiness, can’t or won’t protect her, delivering her up to her even more “impartial” accusers. 

 

SAINT JOAN 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through May 10 at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. $11-18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org.


Pacific Boychoir Teams Up With Marcus Shelby Orchestra

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:30:00 PM

The Pacific Boychoir, Oakland’s only professional all-male youth choir, will perform with the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra in an unusual program of material this weekend. The performance takes place at 7 p.m., Friday, April 24, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, and at 7 p.m., Saturday, April 25, at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church 

The 55-voice choir will join the Shelby orchestra and vocalist Faye Carol in a program consisting of Shelby’s Harriet Tubman oratorio, spirituals, and—in honor of his 100th birthday on April 29—compositions by jazz great Duke Ellington. 

“It’s something new; I haven’t heard of a collaboration like this before,” remarked Kevin Fox, founding artistic director of the Pacific Boychoir. “It’s partly because of my interest in American spirituals; our choir performs them on almost every tour here and in Europe, and we’ve recorded them, to show our American heritage. We do Bach, Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Haydn ... we try to think of something American, too—and what’s more American than jazz? I did a little playing in a jazz band as a kid, here in the Bay Area.” 

Fox was put in touch with Marcus Shelby. “I said, ‘Here’s a vague idea,’ having to do with Ellington. His orchestra can do all that stuff. The boys in the choir have a lot of energy in their sound; there’s a lot of energy in a big band—and that’s what his orchestra is. It should be exciting to work together.” 

It took about two years “to figure out exactly what to do, to put it together. There’re the pieces from Marcus’ Harriet Tubman oratorio. We took a couple of songs and changed the vocal part around for the choir. Christopher Kula, our associate director, arranged Duke’s ‘Come Sunday’ for eight-part choir and rhythm section, and ‘On a Turquoise Cloud’ ... there’s a Dixieland piece in our repertoire Marcus made band parts for. And the Strayhorn arrangement of ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’ is definitely different! There’s no choir in the original. We pulled out the sax part and put the vocal section in the choir part, added an improv section, with the choir trading 4’s with the band ... The curiosity factor alone makes it worth coming to!” 

Fox commented on working with Shelby and his orchestra: “Thinking of Ellington’s [1965] Sacred Concerts at Grace Cathedral, we wanted the choir with jazz instruments. Both are really known for having a particular sound. And Marcus is great, not just as an advocate of performing jazz but in educating the kids. For a lot of our guys, it was the first time they heard music like this. Their experience of American music is mostly pop, the spirituals and maybe some Samuel Barber we’ve sung. Marcus arranged ‘Go Down Moses’—older than Ellington, yet newer, in this form; it shows how well jazz reflects American music. I really enjoyed helping the boys make sense of this. We’ve transcribed blues scales in theory class, but they haven’t seen these chord symbols much—and to see the added notes, the funky rhythms, some figured bass—fun for me to watch them learn the language of jazz.” 

Fox has been involved with boy choirs since age 8 and was proctor of the American Boychoir School in Princeton. Friends of Negro Spirituals made him a Heritage Keeper two years ago. He founded the Pacific Boychoir in 1998 with six boys; there are now more than 140 involved in six different sections, including several performing choirs, a beginners’ group, and an ensemble for boys whose voices are changing. In 2004, an Academy day middle school was founded, the only full-time boys’ chorus school on the West Coast, now located on Alcatraz Avenue in North Oakland. The after-school program is for boys 8 to 18 from around the Bay Area. 

The Pacific Boychoir has performed with the Berkeley Symphony, the UC Davis Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, including on their Grammy-winning recording of Mahler’s Third. Besides performing on tour nationally and internationally, and with other boys’ choruses from around the world, such as the Vienna Boys’ Choir, the Pacific Boychoir has performed at home games of the Giants, A’s, Raiders and Warriors. “We’re one of the few groups around that can do the Canadian National Anthem,” remarked Fox after an Expo’s game. 

 

The Pacific Boychoir Academy Dean Pamela Weimer has announced that the organization is holding a talent search to find up to two boys who will be entering the fourth grade next year (September 2009). Winners of the May 2 audition will be offered full scholarships to attend the Pacific Boychoir Academy’s Day School (grades 4–8) for five years. More information can be obtained at www.pacificboychoir.org or by calling Weimer’s office at 652-4722. 

 

The Pacific Boychoir with the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, featuring Faye Carol. 7 p.m., Friday, April 24, at Grace Cathedral, 1100 California St., San Francisco; 7 p.m. Saturday, April 25, at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, 345 Channing Way. $20. 652-4722. www.pacificboychoir.org


Berkeley Art Center Exhibits Paintings by Ferlinghetti

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:30:00 PM

Lyric Escape, paintings by San Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, most of them done over the past decade, are on exhibit at the Berkeley Art Center through May 10 with an opening reception tonight (Thurday) from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. 

“It’s great timing,” said Suzanne Tan, the center’s executive director. “He’s just turned 90, has been in the news a lot. It’s a very concentrated show, four paintings alone from 2009. Very evocative, very much a look back on his life. I think they’re transcendent, triumphant—yet at the same time reflective.” 

Ferlinghetti’s statement for the exhibit reads: “Faced with the dominant technocratic materialist consciousness of America today, many become Luddites, Buddhists, vegans, psychics, exotic mystics, dopers, psychedelic visionaries, or just retreat into their shells. Painters and poets have available to them the lyric escape—pure lyricism, in paint or words, pure light untainted by pollution, environmental or political. Rejecting political expression as a creative medium, in this group of paintings, I am indulging in the lyric escape.” 

During the run of the Ferlinghetti exhibition, there will be a co-benefit poetry reading with Poetry Flash, the free magazine and website of poetry events and criticism in the Bay Area and beyond. Poetry Flash’s Richard Silberg will MC the benefit at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, May 2. The event will feature readers like Jack and Adele Foley of KPFA and a film by Christopher Felver, whose documentary Ferlinghetti will be shown at 6:30, May 6, at Pacific Film Archive as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Other guests for the benefit have yet to be announced. 

Suzanne Tan—who has directed the Richmond Art Center, served as development director for Berkeley’s Kala Institute, and worked with both the Museum of Craft and Folk Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—took the reins as the Berkeley Art Center’s executive director in February. Her predecessor, a friend of Ferlinghetti’s, originated the idea of an exhibition of the poet’s artwork. Under Tan, a brand new website has been put in place, updated throughout the month, and programs have been reviewed and clarified in an effort “to be engaging, to reach out to the immediate community in Berkeley and to surrounding communities, to increase visibility of the center as Berkeley’s intimate place to go for an experience in the arts, in the visual arts, literature, music... Few places explore that interrelationship in an intimate way, and here there’s such intimacy in its history, in the setting. There’s no sense of exclusiveness. The center has a lot of good will. It’s very dear to those who know it; the place touches them emotionally.” 

The seven-sided structure, on Codornices Creek across from Live Oak Park, has “features you can’t find anywhere else,” Tan commented. “It has wonderful acoustics. It’s a lovely, special place with great potential.” 

To start realizing that potential, Tan and her staff have begun to develop new and more diverse sources for funding and new outreach. “It used to be a part of the city. After Proposition 13, it was closed for a year. The city still does support the center to a certain extent, “and we’re very appreciative.” But the center must raise the majority of its own funding.  

Tan also spoke about increasing the Berkeley Art Center’s visibility. “It has strong links to the neighborhood. People live and do business around here. I first began to love this neighborhood, within walking distance of the center, when I was traveling on the Arlington between North Berkeley and the Richmond Art Center, just over the border from El Cerrito, with my daughter, who was born at Alta Bates. We’re total foodies and love the values and priorities of the neighborhood and the city. I want the center to be a reflection of what goes on around it, for the city to be proud of the center.” 

To that end, the center has been working with the North Berkeley Merchants’ Association, “the ACCI and other organizations, to create linkages.” New means of social networking and e-mail messaging on programs are being contemplated as well. An extension of center hours until 7 p.m. is planned for the summer, in consideration of the Farmers’ Market. And “we’ll try to offer classes in the future.” 

Tan mentioned that the center’s board of directors is small, at present, and said the center “needs volunteers, new board members. We need to harness the energy of people in the current economic situation. There’s a strength right now, like starting with a blank slate. The center has been perceived, sometimes, as being apart, but it’s just a few steps away. And it just needs to be tended to, and a little bit of reinvention, to realize its potential for benefiting the lives of citizens in Berkeley and beyond.” 

 

LYRIC ESCAPE 

Paintings by Lawrence Ferlighetti. Opening reception Thursday 5:30-7:30 p.m., April 23. Free admission. Poetry Flash Co-Benefit, Saturday, May 2, with poets reading, film, refreshments: $12-15. , Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

 


Moving Pictures: Cassavetes and Rossellini

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:33:00 PM

The rough-hewn art of John Cassavetes 

John Cassavetes’ Shadows speeds and skips along like its jazz score, with the hip, street-savvy spirit of structured improvisation. Images and plot points are strung together like loose, individual notes that gradually cohere into rhythm and melody and refrain.  

Criterion has released restored prints of Shadows (1959) and Faces (1968) in stand-alone editions. The two films were previously available only as part of a larger box set of Cassavetes’ films. 

Shadows (1959), Cassavetes’ first film as a director, was an experimental, anti-Hollywood film. Shot on the cheap on Actors’ Studio sets and on location in the streets of New York, the film essentially launched the American independent film movement with its gritty, do-it-yourself aesthetic.  

With its low-budget production values—rough-hewn, high-contrast photography and an often out-of-sync soundtrack—the film was surely a challenge to the eyes and ears of the era’s moviegoers. And really, it still is.Shadows is unapologetically ragged, by both design and necessity, it’s homemade aesthetic lending it an aura of authenticity in comparison with the slick Hollywood entertainments in which Cassavetes the actor labored to finance the work of Cassavetes the director. 

Cassavetes was dissatisfied with his first completed version. It was too loose, too fractured, so he rewrote and re-shot portions of the film and followed with a second version that gave greater shape to the work.  

The story concerns the relationships and activities of a trio of African-American siblings, touching on many issues, from family to friendship to love to race. 

In a sense, the film represents a return to the earliest days of the motion picture, when filmmakers shot on location, under the open sun and on open terrain—a time when budgets were small and equipment more primitive. With Shadows, Cassavetes recaptured the spirit of adventure that suffuses the work of cinema’s pioneers. Thus, what is often cited as the birth of independent cinema is more akin to a rebirth—one of many that the art form has undergone and continues to undergo, as each generation manages to find its own way of stripping away the layers of artifice to delve deeper into the medium, to rediscover the simple, elemental power of what is still essentially the art of photographing the human face. 

 

Criterion. $29.95 each. www.criterion.com. 

 

The past comes alive in Rossellini’s history films 

When Roberto Rossellini set aside fictional narratives for educational films, he immersed himself in the world of history and knowledge. But his goal was not to teach in the pedantic sense. Rossellini wanted to give the viewer a more complete experience, to imbue his studies of historical figures with the essence of life in the times in which they lived. 

Criterion has released three of the Italian director’s films—Cartesius, Blaise Pascal, and The Art of the Medici—as part of a boxed set, Rossellini’s History Films. It is the 14th volume in the company’s Eclipse series, spotlighting overlooked films in inexpensive, pared-down editions that feature restored prints and thoughtful essays, but no supplemental features. 

Cartesius (1974) tracks the life and life’s work of Descartes in his relentless pursuit of reason and science over emotion, faith and perception. Descartes is always wandering, always leaving one place for another. He arrives in a town, takes in its culture, and soon tires of it, moving on to another place with different people, different customs, different perspectives. It seems that half the scenes begin with someone telling Descartes how glad they are to meet and talk with him, and asking how long he’ll stay. The answer is always some version of, “Not long, I’m afraid. Tomorrow I set out for....” 

Rossellini depicts Descartes as driven yet somehow lifeless. He has little expression and little joy, and indeed little companionship to offer to others, beyond intellectual discussions of scientific theories. He rarely partakes of the life around him but instead spends much of his time retreating into solitude after repeatedly thrusting his head into the spotlight. His life is an endless quest for empirical evidence, and, though Rossellini finds much to admire in that, he highlights the toll it takes on Descartes, crippling the philospher-scientist with a lack of love and grace.  

In the end, Descartes comes to a solemn conclusion: “Science has prevented me from living.” 

Though Blaise Pascal (1972) was made before Cartesius, it serves as something of an antidote to the later film. Pascal, too, is in search of reason and logic, but he is also searching for something more, something higher than facts, something not so much to believe as to believe in. He feels his quest for the hard truth of science is empty without a faith to encompass it.  

Rossellini even stages a (fictional) confrontation between the two men, where Pascal questions the older Descartes after a lecture. It is a study in contrasts, as the earnest Pascal embodies youth and grace and love as he challenges and rebuts the cold, stolid facts of the seemingly depleted older man. 

Rossellini’s history films were made for television, not for the big-screen experience of the theater. And that fact, combined with their subject matter and an emphasis on education rather than entertainment, makes for films that are more expository than cinematic, consisting primarily of conversations and dialogue as opposed to action.  

Blaise Pascal and Cartesius employ virtually the same score, an evocative if mysterious tolling of chimes that at times sounds like the ambient noise of church bells filling each scene. And, when each philospher-scientist begins one of his many monologues, a quiet, creeping, almost chilling minimalist theme sets in, as though to cue the viewer that a key intellectual argument is being made. You can almost see classrooms of students hurriedly taking out their notepads at Ros-sellini’s signal. 

 

Criterion. $59.95. www.criterion.com. 

 


Around the East Bay: 'Alice in Wonderland'

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:14:00 PM

Active Arts for Young Audiences has teamed up with the San Francisco Circus Center for an intriguing and fun circus version of Alice in Wonderland. 2 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. 296-4433. activeartstheatre.org. 

 


Around the East Bay: 'Old Times' Held Over

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:15:00 PM

TheatreFIRST's excellent production of Harold Pinter's OLD TIMES—with Peter Callendar, Julia McNeal and Zehra Berkman—is being held over, running Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Addison. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.org.


About the House: Kicking the Tires

By Matt Cantor
Thursday April 23, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM
Though they looked just fine to the naked eye, these tiles were barely attached
Though they looked just fine to the naked eye, these tiles were barely attached

As an inspector, there are certain phrases that catch my ear and cause me to run some little macros that I’ve been cognitively building over these many years looking at houses. One of them is some version of, “The sellers did all this work for themselves and were planning on living here for many years.”  

OK. Maybe so, maybe not. It’s sort of a set-up to say that. It’s kind of like saying, “If we’d known some suckers were buying the house, we’d have remodeled with spit and glue, but since we were planning to live here for many years to come, we decided to have the work properly done.” I don’t know. Maybe I’m over the top but it just seems to me that it shouldn’t matter and it’s overstating just a bit. Nonetheless, I did have cause to confirm my distrust of such statements this week. 

The house was largely pretty solid, having been built in the years just after World War II in a somewhat unimaginative but very reliable El Cerrito neighborhood. This era produced good solid workmanship, great foundations and spacious lots. It’s also home to those great huge garages that we wood-workers always salivate over. The original work was good, but as I looked at the interior and places where recent upgrades had been done (the ones done just for themselves, mine you) I found a couple of pretty sorry items. The worst was a bathroom counter that had obviously been tiled very recently and with the very worst possible preparation.  

When I entered the bathroom, I looked at the tile counter and it didn’t look quite right. Sometimes it’s hard to specify, but there are any of a hundred reasons that this might be true in a case such as this, and it implored me to thump. Now thumping is an art and should not be attempted by the careless or the angry. Do not thump wantonly or capriciously. Thump only as one who is seeking exact details, as one might swirl a glass of wine prior to smelling. 

When I thumped I heard a hollow sound, as if a void were present below the tile. This was a bad sound. I thumped some more, but far less than would be expected to produce any sort of damage. I thumped as though I were tenderizing meat, as one emphasizing a point. The sounds continued to be bad and it looked as if the tile were moving. The wood backing was bouncing far too much. Virtually no bounce should be possible once tile is installed over an appropriate backing. 

Then the edges began to loosen. Initially, I was taken aback. This shouldn’t happen. I had been preparing to write items of concern down on my pad (“This tile may not be properly installed and may have a shorter then typical…” Uh oh). I called in my client and pointed out my discovery. I asked her to tug lightly on the edge of another tile. Four came off in her hands. Clearly, these were not going to survive the first month or two of life in her possession before they started to come off. Any playful activity (no suggestions here) or an accidental bump onto the edge of the counter was going to reveal this and probably quite soon. 

This raises questions as to what sort of testing is reasonable when examining a house one is preparing to acquire. Is it appropriate to kick tires and, if so, to what extent? There is, of course, no easy answer but before I attempt one, here’s another story. 

Many years ago, when I was far newer to my current profession, I found myself, one day, as I have many times since, down on my butt in front of a kitchen sink cabinet investigating the contents thereof. Behind me stood my clients (a young couple), two realtors (one for each side of the deal) and at least one or two more friends or relatives. In short, an audience. Drawing focus to my subject, I pointed to the sink trap (that funny shaped piece that runs from the sink drain to the cabinet wall) and began to wax didactic about the advanced corrosion on the trap. “Here,” I pointed, and stuck my thumb right through it’s filmy shell, water dribbling down my hand and onto the floor. 

OK. Did I break it or did I reveal that it was no longer competent? As in the prior case, it’s clear that, like some sort of booby-trap, it might have been a matter of days into new ownership before the newlyweds found themselves with either a leaky trap or a broken countertop, depending on which story we’re talking about. When do you want to know? Before you buy or after? It’s clear to me that I want to find out anything I possibly can prior to sale, and that pulling on this and rapping on that, within very judicious limits, is very important. A concrete wall should not crumble when tapped with a hammer and a plastic waste line should not pull apart when two parts are grasped and torqued with moderate force. If one does not do these things, one does not learn important—nay, vital—details about houses. 

My clients in both these cases were very happy to learn of these things. And though these findings sometimes make sellers unhappy, the cost of repair prior to sale is often less than the price of retribution afterwards. The more a buyer knows, the better for everyone. 

It’s astonishing how many brand-new countertops aren’t secured; how many dishwashers aren’t screwed into place; and how many dishwashers leak when we run them. I’m not suggesting there is malice in any of these things. Not at all. People are often stressed and harried when the sale is under way. The owner of the tiled counter may have no idea that the worker did such a poor job (though I’m pretty sure that this was the low-low bidder or simply a laborer from off the street) and besides, who looks at traps under sinks? 

The house with the tiled counter had a number of other similar troubles, and it was pretty clear that, if permits were ever obtained, the house was subjected to only the most insubstantial of inspections from the municipality. In short, one should never rely on that alone. It was claimed in this case that permits had been obtained for all the work, and this is often a claim that turns out to be untrue or of mixed truth. Permits may have been obtained for A but not for B or C. Permits may have been obtained but not followed by a full array of inspections. Even when permits were obtained, and for the exact claimed items, they may not have been adequate. Codes are not a guarantee of good workmanship. They simply establish that certain metrics have been applied and certain milestones passed. Work can be pretty awful regardless of having met the code. 

If you’re looking at houses, remember that far too many have piles of goop and paint brushed out over stains, rotten soft wood, rusty metal and formerly leaking foundation walls. Carpets are often installed over formerly damp basement floors, and various remodeling efforts are often well below the standards demanded by the code and by better builders. Again, these are rarely cases of malicious malfeasance, but simply the day-to-day acts of imperfect humans doing the best they can under the circumstances. Our ideas of best practice rarely rule the day, and to everyone’s detriment, I’m not in charge of the world. 

 

ASK MATT 

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


Community Calendar

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 07:01:00 PM

THURSDAY, APRIL 23 

Earth Week Activities at Berkeley City College Merrian Fuller and Timothy Burrows on Renewable Energy at 12:15 p.m. in the BCC Auditorium, 2050 Center St. http://vistawww.peralta.edu/ 

People’s Park 40th Anniversary “People’s Voice Poetry” with poets Al Young, Julia Vinograd, John Oliver Simon, Alta, HD Moe, Kirk Lumpkin, Paradise, Christian, Arnie Passman, and more, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Mediterraneum, 2475 Telegraph. 390-0830. www.peoplespark.org 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will learn about wildflowers from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Prefab Green” with Michelle Kaufmann at 7:30 p.m. at Builder’s Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

“Straightlaced” A film with unscripted high school youth from around the country speaking candidly about harmful pressures caused by rigid gender roles and homophobia at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave. Oakland. Benefits MetWest High School and the Straightlaced educational campaign. Tickets are $10-$30 (sliding scale) and available online at www.groundspark.org 

Sulak Sivaraksa Buddhist social activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee at 7:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC campus. funiehsu@berkeley.edu 

LiveTalk@CPS with Prof. Ron Hassner “Religion and Counterinsurgency” at 7 p.m. at College Prepatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway. Tickets are $5-$15 at the door. www.college-prep.org/livetalk 

“Project Joy: Healing and Strengthening our Children through Play” with a showing of the documentary “A Break in the Clouds” at 7 p.m. at the Greenlining Institute, 1918 University Ave., 2nd flr. www.projectjoy.com 

College Admissions and Career Planning Information Sponsored by UC Berkeley Extension, at 5:30 p.m. at 1995 University Ave. To reserve a space call 642-4111. 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford at noon to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

“Revolutionary Love and Martial Non-violence” with Buddhist leader Sulak Sivaraksa at 7:30 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC campus. Free. 

Buddhist Class on Shikan Meditation at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar at Bonita. http://caltendai.org 

FRIDAY, APRIL 24 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kevin Ambrogi, former volunteer, Nature Elephant Camp, Chiang Mai, Thailand, on “The Elephant in Thailand’s Culture: The Legend and the Reality.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 524-7468.  

People’s Park 40th Anniversary “Founders Forum” with the Park’s original creators: Wendy Schlesinger, Michael Delacour, Frank Bardacke, Sim Van der Ryn and others, with poetry and music, at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Suggested donation $15. 390-0830. www.peoplespark.org 

“Consuming Kids” A documentary on the pervasive and pernicious effects of children's advertising on the health and well-being of children at 7 p.m. at 101 Morgan Hall, UC campus. Screening followed by discussion. Sponsored by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. www.commercialfreechildhood.org 

Luke Song, Creator of Aretha’s Hat at noon at Berkeley Hat Company, 2510 Telegraph Ave. 549-2955. 

“How to Belive in God: Whether You Believe in Religion or Not” with author Clark Strand at 7 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. Free, donation accepted. 809-1460. www.cbe-bca.org 

Xican@ Love and the New Familia: Gender, Sexuality, and Alliance A conference sponsored by Encuentro Xican@ and Noche de Flor y Canto from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the Tilden Room, MLK Student Union (Encuentro), UC campus. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., in the Maude Fife Room, 300 Wheeler (Flor y Canto), UC campus. Free. 710-1975. 

Dance Around the Pacific School of Religion Campus, 1798 Scenic Ave. from noon to 12:30 p.m. in celebration of National Dance Week. Everyone is welcome to join. 

Lunar Lounge Express A night of interactive exhibits, telescope viewing, and live music from 7 to 11 p.m. at Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $15-$20. www.chabotspace.org 

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 

Berkeley Earth Day with cultural performances, activities, community information booths, food and crafts, from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park, MLK and Allston.  

Swap Your Old Floor Lamp for a new energy saving version, free at Berkeley Earth Day! Do you have a tall halogen floor lamp in your home? These lamps waste electricity, and are dangerous: they can overheat and start fires. Bring along your old 300-watt halogen floor lamp with your PG&E bill to Berkeley Earth Day, and Rising Sun Energy Center will give you a new fluorescent version of the same light quality and brightness, for free. For more information call 665-1501. 

Community Clean-up and Barbeque Work on projects to beautify the James Kenney neighborhood, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at James Kenney Recreation Center, 1720 Eighth St. 981-6650. 

“How To Be An Informed Citizen” Informational displays on local water resources, food supply, energy needs and consumption the Atrium of Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. 

The New School of Berkeley International Family Fair and raffle with games and activities for children, live entertainment and food, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Bonita St. between Cedar and Virginia. 548-9165. 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre in El Cerrito Preview Party to announce the shows for the 50th season, introduce their directors, and reveal further celebration plans. Tickets are $20. www.ccct.org 

Women’s Multicultural Leadership Conference for women and multicultural communities, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at UCB’s Life Sciences Building, to activate and train women to become leaders in work, media, and politics. For admission and more information see www.engageher.org 

Benjamin Jealous, National President of the NAACP speaks on his vision for the organization as it celebrates its 100th anniversary, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th, Oakland. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Establishing a Home Culinary Herb Garden Learn how to cultivate, fertilize, plant and tend a productive annual herb garden and how to incorporate plantings of perennial herbs into your backyard landscape. Herb plants started by the students of King Middle School will be offered for sale to participants in this class. From 2 to 4 p.m. To register, contact Kyle Cornforth, Program Coordinator at kyle@chezpanissefoundation.org 

Vegetarian Cooking Class: Hearty Homestyle Italian from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $55, plus $5 food and material fee. Advance registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

“Flow: For Love of Water” Documentary by French filmmaker Irena Salinas on why corporations control our most precious resource and what is being done, what we can do, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 495-5132. www.bfuu.org 

“The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century” with Sulak Sivaraksa at 10:15 a.m. at Berkeley Zen Center, 1933 Russell St. 

Peace and Freedom Party on the Six Budget Propositions Discussion at 2 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, Adeline & Alcatraz. 845-4360. 

Golden Gate Sacred Harp Singing School from 1 to 4 p.m. at All Saints Episcopal Chapel, 2451 Ridge Rd. Donation $10 requested. 451-6299.  

Oakland Free Dance Festival featuring 27 free introductory one hour social dance classes in four rooms from 1 to 7 p.m. at Oakland Veterans Hall, 200 Grand Ave., Oakland. www.bayareandw.org 

Monthly Go Tournament Come play or watch the world’s oldest board game, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Suite 290, Oakland. Registration opens at 9 a.m. www.bayareago.org 

Preschool Storytime, including crafts and finger plays at 11 a.m. at The Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

Beginning Internet Class “All About Email” at 10 a.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Free, but call to sign up 526-7512. 

Volunteer Training for Circle of Care, a program of the East Bay Agency for Children in Oakland. For more information email Shoshana at Shoshana@ebac.org wwww.ebac.org 

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 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 26 

People’s Park 40th Anniversary “People’s Park 40th Anniversary Concert” noon till dusk in People’s Park with performances by Jonathan Richman, Terry Garthwaite and Family, Shelley Doty, Country Joe, Wavy Gravy, Phoenix, All Nations Singers, Nefer Tem Belly Dance, Carol Denney, “IS” from Berkeley High and more! Also children’s activities and food. 390-0830. www.peoplespark.org 

Save Strawberry Canyon 5 Mile Fun Run at 9 a.m. in Strawberry Canyon. Participation donation is $15. For informarion email savestrawberrycanyon@gmail.com  

Albany Spring Art & Music Festival from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Memorial Park on 1325 Portland Ave. There will be music by Jimbo Trout and the FishPeople, puppet shows, art and craft booths, poetry, food, low cost bike tune ups, chalk art and much more. 

Help Restore the Berkeley Meadow with Friends of Five Creeks by removing invasives and restoring habitat. Meet at 10 a.m. at the north side of University Ave., opposite Sea Breeze market. Tools, gloves and snacks provided. Dress for all weather, in clothes that can get dirty. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Secret Gardens of the East Bay A self-guided tour from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to benefit Park Day School. Tickets are $45. A Village Marketplace will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Park Day School, 370 43rd St., at Shafter, Oakland. To register for the tour call 653-0317, ext. 103. www.SecretGardenTour.org 

Message of Peace and Reconciliation for Israelis and Palestinians with Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Palestinian physician whose three daughters and a niece were killed and a fourth daughter seriously injured in Gaza on January 16 at 7 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave. Piedmont.  

A Tribute to Rev: Celebrating the Life of Ron Stallings at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $12 at the door. 849-2568. 

“Four Legends of Feminism: Gloria Steinem, Dolores Huerta, Aileen Hernandez, and Yuri Kochiyama” interviewed as part of Engage Her’s Multicultural Women’s Leadership Conference at 7 p.m. in the Life Sciences Auditorium, UC campus. Tickets are $25. www.engageher.org 

Salsa Dancing in the Stacks Celebrate National Dance Week with salsa lesson from Gale Robinson, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Historic Lobby, 2nd flr of the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. All skill levels welcome. 981-6241. 

Medicinal Plants of the Bay Area: A Bioregional Exploration from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Huckleberry Botanical Preserve, Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Make sure to bring water, snacks/lunch, hat/sunscreen, a notebook, and a camera. Cost is $25. To register call 428-1810. 

Oakland Aviation Museum Open Cockpit Day with docent guided tours of the Short Solent Flying Boat featured in the movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark are available all day from noon to 4 p.m. at 8252 Earhart Rd., Bldg. 621, Historic North Field, Oakland Intl. Airport. Cost is $5-$9. 638-7100. www.oaklandaviationmuseum.org 

Mad Hot Klezmer Dance Party Lessons at 7 p.m., dance party at 8 pm. at JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $5-$20. 848-0237. www.klezcalifornia.org  

“An Eco-Materialist Critique of Historical Materialism” with Craig Collins from 10 a.m. to noon at the Niebyl Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. 595-7417.  

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to maintain your bike in excellent working condition, from 11 a.m. to noon at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children 5 and over welcome with parent or guardian. www.cal-sailing.org 

Personal Theology Seminars with John McNally on “How Studying Near Death Experiences Has Benefitted and Informed my Spiritual Life” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Dharma Publishing staff on “The Great Guru Padmasambhava” at 3:30 p.m. and Arnaud Maitland on “Cultivating the Essential Link of Devotion” at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 27 

“UC Democracy Stakeholder Panel” Democratizing the UC Regents discussed by student leaders, union members, faculty, nonprofits and other stakeholders, at 6 p.m. at 101 Morgan Hall, UC campus. www.ucdemocracy.org 

People’s 60th Anniversary Party for KPFA at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalist Church, corner Cedar and Bonita. Sponsored by Coalition for a democratic Pacifica. 

Kensington Book Club meets to discuss “What is the What” by Dave Eggers at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

“Neighborhood Public Radio: 1/4 Watt Pure Power” at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UCB. Sponsored by Berkeley Center for New Media/Art Techonology & Culture Colloquium. 642-0635.  

Community Yoga Class 10 a.m. at James Kenney Parks and Rec. Center at Virginia and 8th. Seniors and beginners welcome. Cost is $6. 207-4501. 

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one counseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment call 981-6148.  

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group, for people 60 years and over, meets at 9:45 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany. Cost is $3.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Volunteers needed. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 28 

Alice Walker: “The Siege of Gaza Is An Attack on the Common Heart” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/62274 

“Growing Sustainability in a Low-Carbon World” Speaker series sponsored by Inst. for Urban and Regional Development at 5:15 at Wurster Hall, UC campus. http://iurd.berkeley.edu 

Hillside Club Book Lust Salon meets to discuss works by George MacDonald Fraser at 7:30 p.m. at 2286 Cedar St. Non-member donation $5. 845-4870. www.hillsideclub.org/booklust 

El Cerrito Democratic Club “The Current Financial Crisis” A workshop with Eileen Raphael from Just Economics at 6:30 p.m. in Fellowship Hall, El Cerrito United Methodist Church, 6830 Stockton Ave., at Richmond Ave., El Cerrito. Pizza and light refreshments at 6 p.m. for $4. 527-5953. 

Documentary Film Club “March of the Penguins” How emperor penguins endure the coldest place on earth to mate and hatch their young at 6:30 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. Free. 620-6566. 

Introduction to Dance for Parkinson’s Disease This dance class is geared toward those affected by Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers and friends, with live music with Rudy Apffel, at 10:30 a.m. at Danspace, 473 Hudson Street, Oakland. www.bayareandw.org 

Volunteer Training for Circle of Care, a program of East Bay Agency for Children in Oakland. Email Shoshana at Shoshana@ebac.org for more information. 531-7551 ext. 195.  

PC Users Meeting at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. meldancing@comcast.net 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda.548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Bridge for beginners from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m., all others 12:30 to 4 p.m. Sing-A-Long at 2:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Free Meditation Class Tues and Thurs. at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, 2nd flr., 1606 Bonita Ave. 931-7742. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Ceramics Class Learn hand building techniques to make decorative and functional items, Tues. at 9:30 a.m. at St. John's Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, materials and firing charges only. 525-5497. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29 

Safeway on College Community Meeting See the updated plans for the Safeway store at College and Claremont at 7 p.m. at the Claremont Hotel, Tunnel Rd. www.safewayoncollege.com 

“Mongolia: On the Eve of Modernity” A panel discussion on Mongolia prior to the era of Soviet domination, during the empire of the Qing, at 4 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor. Free. 642-2809. ieas.berkeley.edu 

“Siberia’s Lake Baikal” A slideshow with residents from Berkeley’s sister city, Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, at 5 p.m. at the David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way. Sponsored by the Cneter for Safe Energy. 883-1177. 

“The Invisible Forest” with the filmmaker Antero Alli in person at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Baja Road Trip” with Trevor Cralle, at 6 p.m. at West Auditorium, Oakland Main Library, 125 14th St. at Oak. 238-3136. 

Confused by Computers? Novice computer users can get one-on-one assistance from noon to 1:45 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. Sign up for an appointment at the reference desk or call 526-3720 ext. 5. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Berkeley CopWatch Drop-in office hours from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

THURSDAY, APRIL 30 

UCB Entrepreneurs Forum: Finalists of the Business Plan Competition at 6 p.m. at Anderson Auditorium and the Bank of America Forum, Haas School of Business, 2220 Piedmont Ave. 642-4255. www.entrepreneurship.berkeley.edu 

“Girls Rock!” screening and director Q&A at 7:15 p.m. at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College Ave. Cost is $10-$15. www.bayareagirlsrockcamp.org 

Volunteer Training for Circle of Care, a program of East Bay Agency for Children in Oakland. Email Shoshana at Shoshana@ebac.org for more information. 531-7551 ext. 195. wwww.ebac.org 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Thurs. at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Buddhist Class on Shikan Meditation at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar at Bonita. http://caltendai.org 

FRIDAY, MAY 1 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip to Jewel Lake in Tilden Park Meet at 8:30 a.m. at the parking lot at the north end of Central Park Dr. for a one-mile, two-hour-plus stroll through this lush riparian area. Breeding birds are returning, and we should be treated to some wonderful bird song. Leader Phila Rogers 848-9156. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

“Torture and Popular Culture” with members of the Bay Area Religious Campaign Against Torture on how the post-9/11 US media frame the use of torture through writings and TV shows like “24” and uncover the truth about its effectiveness at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison. Free. 704-8859. 

“Climate Change Mitigation: Considering Lifestyle Options in Europe and the US” a workshop from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in 223 Moses Hall, UC campus. Hosted by the European Union Center. 643-4558. eucenter.berkeley.edu 

Celebration of 60 years of KPFA on Workers Day with a potluck at 6 p.m. and music, speakers and films at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 848-4124. www.bfuu.org 

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. www.circledancing.com 

Tian Gong Open House Celebration with Master Tian Ying at 5:30 p.m. at Tian Gong International Foundation, 830 Bancroft Way, Lotus Room 114. 883-192. tgif@tiangong.org 

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. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, MAY 2 

7th annual Hidden Gems of Berkeley Ride and Walk Visit the unique and vernacular treasures in and grassroots’ greening initiatives around Central Berkeley. Ride and walk start at 10 a.m. at the Civic Center fountain. Bring lunch and water. The event is family friendly, over the age of 10. Updated Hidden Gems of Berkeley maps will be available for a nominal fee. www.bpfp.org 

Berkeley Historical Society Spring Walking Tour “The Northern End of the Santa Fe Right-of-Way” led by Bebo Turman, from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For reservations and starting point call 848-0181. 

Annual California Wildflower Show from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts. Presented in collaboration with the California Native Plant Society. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org/tickets 

Flowers in May Hike Join a three-mile up and down hike from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Briones Regional Park, Bear Creek Staging Area. for information call 544-3265. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Bring Back the Native Garden Tour On Sat. and Sun., visit 50 pesticide-free gardens that conserve water and provide habitat for wildlife. Registration required. www. 

bringingbackthenatives.net 

“Urban Farming Basics: Grow Your Own Food” With Willow Rosenthal of City Slicker Farms from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. A second class will take place on May 9, outdoors in Berkeley. Cost is $10-$15. 548-2220, ext. 239. 

“Art from the Heart” Art by individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and related dimentias to be auctioned in a fundraiser and celebration for Alzheimer’s Services of the East Bay at 6:30 p.m. in the Rotunda Building, 300 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Tickets are $50-$100. 644-8282. 

“Día de Los Niños/Día de Los Libros” from noon to 3 p.m. at Cesar Chávez Park in Oakland with diverse performance groups, storytellers, literacy-related arts activities, and a free book for each child in attendance. Sponsored by KQED. 

“Not Just Change But Justice” a conference on U.S. trade policy and its impacts on food, land and immigration with David Bacon speaking on NAFTA and Pierre LaBossiere and Delvis Fernandez comparing Haiti and Cuba, from 1 to 6 p.m. at 110 Barrows Hall, near Telegraph & Bancroft, UC Berkeley campus. 525-5497. info@nacla.org  

Bay Area Community Land Trust Bus Tour of Elder Co-ops and Senior Cohousing communities in Berkeley and Davis. Tickets are $40 for members, $60 for others. For information call 841-5307. 

Designing with Succulents Learn how to use these beautiful and low water plants in your landscape at 10 a.m. at at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Annual Junktique Sale and Fundraiser from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., Point Richmond. Lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Donations taken Tues. 6 to 9 p.m. and Wed. & Sat. 10 a.m. to noon. 236-0527. 

Friends of Roman Cats and Feeding Ferals Local Promotion Slideshow about feral cat spay/neuter programs in Italy, at 2 p.m. at RabbitEARS, 377 Colusa Ave, Kensington. 525-6155. 

Beginning Internet Class “Useful Web Sites” at 10 a.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Free, but call to sign up 526-7512. 

Preschool Storytime, including crafts and finger plays at 11 a.m. at The Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

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 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MAY 3 

“Maybeck Country: Hillside Houses of the Early- and Mid-20th Century” Berkeley Architectural Heritage’s 34th Annual Spring House Tour from 1 to 5 p.m. Tickets are $30-$40. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park Meet at 8 a.m. by Arlington Clubhouse on Arlington Ave. in El Cerrito, next to tennis courts between Brewster Drive and Thors Day Road. We'll drive to trailhead on Rifle Range Road, then walk a hilly transect of the canyon to bird brushlands, oak woodlands, riparian areas, and grasslands. Five-mile hike led by Malcolm Sproul for the 29th year. Bring lunch and liquids. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

Annual California Wildflower Show from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts. Presented in collaboration with the California Native Plant Society. Cost is $5-$8. www.museumca.org/tickets 

Little Farm Goat Hike Join a short hike with the goats as we explore the historic connections between humans and our ungulate friends at 11 a.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. For ages 6 and up. Children, please bring your adults along. 544-3265. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Tilden’s Pipes: Portholes to the Past Crisscrossing Tilden Park steel pipes hide under trails, go through bushes and cross creeks. Explore the historic network of waterways on this four-mile hike along Wildcat Creek, from 2 to 5 p.m. For meeting place call 544-3265. tnarea@ebparks.org 

“Gardening without Invasives: Protecting wildlands and waterways from invasive plants” with Christiana Conser of PlantRight at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at The Watershed Nursery, 601-A Canal Blvd., Richmond. 234-2222. www.thewatershednursery.com 

“Maya of the Quiet Strength” Documentary about the Berkeley disability activist at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalist Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $10. 841-4824. 

Soul Sanctuary Dance Weekly Family-Friendly Freestyle Dance for children, teens and adults from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. www.bayareandw.org 

Dance-a-Rama Free Open Studio performances in celebration of National Dance Week, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Eighth Street Artists’ Center, 2525 Eighth St.  

Berkeley Rep Family Series “Story Builders” from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Recommended for age four and up. Free, but bring a book to donate to a school library. 647-2973. 

Cinco De Mayo At Playland Celebrate Mexican and Latino contributions to the world of fun, Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Playland, 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 232-4264 ext. 25. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Personal Theology Seminars with Endre Nagy on “Religious Tradition as Freedom for Individual Theology” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “Ancient Wisdom: Modern Application” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., April 23, at 5 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5217.  

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., April 27, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., April 27, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5158.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., April 29, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning