With Bay Area schools starting to reopen this week, the anxiety surrounding swine flu has started to ebb, Alameda County public health officials said Wednesday, May 6. -more-

Malcolm X Elementary School reopened Wednesday after a two-day closure due to swine flu concerns. -more-

There’s no stopping JaQuia Bolden. This B-Tech senior is going to college. -more-

With considerably less rancor than two weeks ago, when it squabbled late into the night without taking a vote, the Berkeley City Council Tuesday night unanimously approved moving forward with its ambitious Climate Action Plan (CAP), designed to serve as a roadmap to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city. -more-

If Safeway representatives thought fresh carrots and celery sticks would appease the disgruntled crowd at the Claremont Hotel Wednesday, April 29, they were wrong. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday, April 29, to provide as much as 1,900 additional square feet of land to build a pool that’s comparable in size to the existing Berkeley High School warm water pool, if the need arises. -more-

With their Downtown Area Plan off to the City Council and revisions of West Berkeley zoning already under way, planning commissioners are taking up the long-delayed Southside Plan. -more-

The state Department of Education announced Monday, May 4, that the Berkeley Unified School District will receive more than $1.6 million for 2009-2010 for services related to disabled and poor children. Of this $1 million is regular Title I funding. with the balance coming from stimulus funding . -more-

Berkeley High School’s third Athletic Hall of Fame ceremony honored 24 former athletes Saturday, May 2, through a celebration that honored both the past and the present. -more-

In February of this year, the California Legislature came to a compromise agreement between Democratic and Republican lawmakers in order to balance the state budget. As part of that compromise, several budget-related propositions were put on the May 19 special election ballot for voters to decide. This article concentrates on two of the major propositions: 1A and 1B. -more-

18-year-old murdered in South Berkeley -more-

A couple of years ago I bought this black shirt and pants I’m wearing for $2—my first black outfit. A.O. Sachs, my friend, who always said, “Call me A.O., the Alpha & the Omega,” whose body recently passed from us, commented at our weekly gathering in this North Berkeley Senior Center’s Lunch Room before the Living Philosophers Group which meets upstairs in Room C from 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., every Friday, “You’re dressed rather somberly this morning.” “You think so?” I replied. “I don’t see it that way. Black is a compliment of light—you can’t have one without the other.” “Perhaps,” I continued, “wearing black is a joyous celebration of life: guilt free, without a loss of self due to the loss of another, not lurking in the night to take advantage, not pedaling sins, no evil, but to call attention to the dance of shadow and light, an affirmation of the process of living-being in this universe, whatever that is. A point of view thing, I guess.” “Shall we dance?” says I. With a big grin, A.O. comes back, “Yes. ‘Shall we dance, ta da, da, da,’” (to the tune in The King and I) breaking into song along with Henry Bers (the sing-along dude here at the Senior Center). Now, this was not unusual for Henry and A.O. to do those Friday mornings; they both knew the words to quite a few songs, along with a general joining in by the coffee, tea, juice and buns crowd in the early light of the day. -more-

CLIMATE ACTION PLAN -more-

As Berkeley tackles major planning issues this year, let’s note very well some things voters said last November about historic preservation. In Berkeley preservation-minded voters decisively rejected Measure LL. And like-minded San Franciscans approved that city’s Proposition J—by a quite similar decisive margin. -more-

First and foremost, a Berkeley Climate Action Plan should be a community effort. It should not be a top-down mandate for recommendations that might be effective in other areas, but make little sense and might actually be counterproductive in Berkeley’s unusually mild climate. -more-

Berkeley Public Library recently invited library users to supply “ideas on what has worked and not worked in our current system,” so we decided to systematically test it. -more-

Many families in the Bay Area’s large adoption community have challenged the Berkeley Public Library Foundation’s (BPLF) current “Adopt a Book” fundraising campaign slogan. We are deeply disturbed by this unfortunate choice of words. And while we recognize that the usage was unwitting and not intentionally hurtful, we are disappointed that the foundation has ignored our requests to remove the word “adopt” and replace it with an inoffensive yet equally effective one, such as “sponsor” or “read.” -more-

Can we criticize the Catholic Church without having our faith and loyalty called into question? -more-

For nine years now, plans have been in the works to bring a Bay Area water ferry service to the Berkeley-Albany shoreline. The state-created Water Emergency Transportation Agency (WETA) is responsible for developing, and operating this regional ferry system. -more-

There are strange things done -more-

Tangled webs -more-

In the wake of the defection of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter from the Republican Party to the Democrats, along with what most people are predicting is the ultimate seating of Al Franken as the U.S. senator from Minnesota, combined with the high polling numbers of President Barack Obama and the low national polling numbers of Republicans, national Democrats are feeling exceptionally giddy these days. -more-

We’ve been spending a lot of time with the peregrines lately, thanks to the folks at the Santa Cruz Predatory Research Group who operate the nest camera. This year the downtown San Francisco peregrines have chosen to nest on the PG&E building instead of the underpinnings of the Bay Bridge. Three of the four eggs hatched a couple of weeks ago, and Dapper Dan and Diamond Lil are busy feeding a trio of increasingly large and voracious chicks. -more-

Risk aversion varies from person to person. Some are comfortable on motorcycles while others prefer to walk. Some skydive or walk tightropes between buildings and still others, inexplicably, choose to remodel the only bath in their house. -more-

As Impact Theatre recently turned 13, the company is celebrating the awkward coming of age with Puberty, a compendium of original dreams and nightmares in sketch form. Wet dreams and scatological nightmares, to some extent. But they call it Puberty; you’re forewarned. More refined forms of crudity, like the burlesk flavor—and dances—of previous editions of Impact Briefs, have been removed like facial hair. But they’ll probably grow back. -more-

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra, founded 74 years ago in Berkeley, will perform its spring concert this Saturday at First Congregational Church. The orchestra, celebrating conductor David Ramadanoff’s 20th season at the helm, will perform Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo, Indiana composer Jim Beckel’s Musica Mobilis for Brass Choir, and selections from Prokofiev’s Rome and Juliet Suites I and II. -more-

As part of their Shakespeare Super Intensive—the whole canon in staged readings over the next months—Subterranean Shakespeare is presenting Hamlet, directed by Stanley Spenger and featuring Patrick Alparone as the Melancholy Prince, for one night only. 7 p.m. Monday, May 11, at the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. $8. Tickets at the door, open at 6:30 p.m. Next up: The Merchant of Venice, May 18. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from ‘Audacity of Hope,” chapter seven of Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. For a profile of Waldman, see the Daily Planet’s April 30 edition. -more-

Berkeley Symphony concertmaster Franklyn D’Antonio, a student of Jascha Heifetz, formerly with both the Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, has founded a new chamber group, the Eidolon String Quartet. D’Antonio is first violin; Noah Strick, Berkeley Symphony’s assistant concertmaster, second violin; Clare Twohy, who teaches at Crowden School, on viola; and Gianna Abandolo, who teaches at UC Berkeley and Mills, cello. On Saturday night, the group will perform their inaugural concert, playing the music of local composers, including pieces by Crowden School teachers Twohy, Alexis Alrich, Clark Suprynowicz (whose work has also been played by Berkeley Symphony and Berkeley Opera), and Michael Kaulkin of the San Francisco Conservatory. 8 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in the Dalby Room at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. $15. -more-

If you missed Mark Arax’s appearance at Black Oak Books Wednesday, you have a few more chances to catch him at other venues around the Bay Area. Arax has traveled up and down California, and his recent work, West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, portrays the personalities and communities he discovers. His essays cover the inner-city strife in the south, to the immigrant families living on the edge in central California, to the hidden marijuana fields in the north—even an essay on Berkeley. -more-