The disability community won a victory Tuesday when the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission ruled that the McDonald’s in Berkeley, on University and Shattuck avenues, discriminated against three of its disabled employees when it fired them from work last year. -more-

Weatherford BMW said this week that it has not finalized lease agreements for renovations and new construction at its current 735 Ashby Ave.-750 Potter St. dealership location in Berkeley, although the Berkeley City Council approved about $500,000 dollars in building permit fee waivers for the project earlier this month. -more-

A day-long conference held this past Saturday on the UC campus addressed the California public education crisis. In late afternoon of the same day, about 200 students, workers, and community activists visited UC President Mark Yudof’s house in the Oakland hills. On the hillside below his residence, the protesters built a mock cemetery, in keeping with Yudof’s recent comparison of the university to a cemetery.  -more-

Neighbors and tenants of Berkeley’s Hillside School say they are determined to do what it takes to save the 80-year-old architectural landmark. -more-

The Berkeley Unified School District plans to demolish its seismically unsafe maintenance facility at 1707 Russell-1720 Oregon streets in South Berkeley and build new, smaller buildings on the site. -more-

Berkeley once again dipped into U.S. foreign policy Tuesday when its City Council passed a resolution asking the Obama administration to withdraw troops and private armed contractors from Afghanistan. -more-

In 2007, Fatimah Simmons was attending rallies and fundraisers around New York City for the man she hoped would become her country’s next president. When the presidential campaign was in full swing, she spent hours every week encouraging people to register to vote. And in 2008—largely due to support like hers—President Obama was elected to office. -more-

High Winds Slow Bay Bridge Repairs, No -more-

Our dear friend Harold Mark Murphree died in his sleep in the early morning of Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009, at the age of 60, after a night of warm banter with close friends. We are all deeply grieved at this profound loss. -more-

On Tuesday I attended a memorial service at Congregation Beth El for my good friend and neighbor, Seymour Fromer. Seymour passed away Sunday, Oct. 25 at age 87 after a lengthy illness.  -more-

This last week has been a demonstration in living color of why California is called the Golden State. We spent four days, more time than we’ve been able to afford for a long time, at the family farm in the Santa Cruz mountains. The persimmons are almost ripe, and yet there are still tomatoes to be picked in the garden. -more-

The West Berkeley Plan, created through a democratic community process and adopted unanimously by the City in 1993, has kept the area stable and affordable over the last two decades, facilitating the thriving of over 320 industrial production, distribution, and repair businesses—most small to mid-scale—7,500 living wage jobs, and almost 250 art and craft studios with around 1,000 artists and artisans. Another 7,500 West Berkeley jobs are thriving in private, government and University-related professional and scientific services, as well as a variety of office and retail uses. This is a mix that has worked well, but all the stakeholders agree that the time is now ripe for some judicious fine tuning. In particular the city identified six large sites which formerly housed manufacturing as “development opportunity sites,” and a spirited debate has flared over how best to facilitate their reuse. More about that later. -more-

The ongoing debate about toxic emissions in northwest Berkeley and their health impacts may be closer to resolve with the advent of a project that will collect blood samples during the next several months. This community effort is funded by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation to provide a better understanding of the toxic impacts from the area’s poor air quality. The principal focus of this study centers on those who live, work, and attend schools and childcare facilities downwind from Pacific Steel Casting, a local foundry and Berkeley’s biggest air polluter. -more-

There is an old adage that says: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” The Regents and the state legislature have been following this model for years: reacting to budget cuts by raising fees has only brought more budget cuts. These fee increases have only been met with more state budget cuts and cannot be a solution for the problem of accelerated state divestment from higher education. Higher education is in a crisis; if we keep trying old solutions, we’ll stay stuck in this crisis with the same old problems.   -more-

The City of Richmond, troubled by low revenue and high crime and unemployment and hoping to balance its budget, wants to partner with a distant Native American tribe to build a huge casino on Point Molate. Not only is gambling a bad way to balance the budget, the casino industry is predatory, deceptive and addictive.  -more-

California school districts, like the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), are separate from other local jurisdictions, like the City of Berkeley. Our locally elected BUSD school board is accountable and responsible for setting educational policies, funding, and oversight for Berkeley’s K-12 public schools. Therefore, it is surprising that the BUSD school board has handed over its responsibility for setting the educational vision for the school district to the self-appointed, non-elected 2020 Vision Planning Team.  -more-

There used to be stacks of a board game called “Calopoly”—a local version of Monopoly—in souvenir shops and toy stores near the UC campus. It’s not available any longer; the manufacturers apparently lost their license to market it. But don’t worry, in case you missed it the first time, you’re going to get a second chance to play—or, more accurately, watch a game being played—this time in real life on a giant gameboard that some Berkeley citizens quaintly refer to as our “downtown.” UC and the City Council will be the only real players at the table. However, this being Berkeley, it’s important to preserve the illusion of democratic participation, so local residents will be allowed to place a token historic property on the board from time to time, or sneak in a few little trees and a bench—just as long as they do not impede any major development plans. -more-

I stopped by, late, over to the “For a Safe Town” event at Verdese Carter Park on 98th and Bancroft last weekend. Who, after all, can resist when they’re serving free Everett & Jones barbecue in your neighborhood? -more-

CARSULAE, ITALY—The Via Flaminia emerges from a hillside—literally—and climbs up a gentle hill toward a ruined forum. Like all Roman roads, it was well built, considerably more so than the modern ones jammed with trucks and cars that crisscross the Umbrian countryside. The large limestone slabs that surface it are still rutted with the wheels of ox carts on their way to Ariminum on the Adriatic. -more-

On Oct. 19, the University of California’s Real Estate Services Group issued a request for proposals for the purchase and relocation of one or both of the historic residential structures known as 2241 and 2243 College Ave., located on the central campus in an area slated for future development. -more-

I am an avowed architecture snob. This is not a requirement for being in the home inspection business. It’s just a little extra service I like to be able to offer my clients. All kidding aside, I really am a design snob and am fairly unapologetic about it. There it is. -more-

UC forest pathologist Matteo Garbelotto’s Sudden Oak Death workshops are open to professionals and “homeowners”—unpaid tree companions?—alike. Garbelotto said, “As much as we work with the professionals, some people can’t afford a professional. I looked into the law. Almost everybody believes landowners can do it themselves. Tree-care professionals were not too upset. I got a sense the community was coming together to solve the problem.” -more-

THURSDAY, OCT. 29 -more-

“I can’t believe you’d use that ugly, demeaning term, biological!” snaps Jess (Kendra Lee Oberhauser)—“a walking case of nurture over nature” and the white-clad bride-to-be—at her mentor and self-adopted mother, Gender Studies Department Chair Dede (Gwen Loeb), who is, in fact, her biological mother. Dropping the ugly term again, Dede lets her own first-generation feminist Mom (Jan Zvaifler) have it: “You forgot to mention, biology is unfair!” -more-

There have been movies about waitresses and grocery check-out clerks; now, finally, that overlooked retail figure, the bagger, is represented in Ready, Set, Bag!—a new documentary by Oren Jacob of Piedmont, Chief Technical Officer at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, his wife Justine and a few colleagues from Pixar, set to have its world premiere next Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Elmwood on College Ave. near Ashby, and 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Cerrito, on San Pablo in El Cerrito. -more-

Before a backdrop painting of hills with a few houses and a road in the distance, nine Shaker women file out, greet the audience with a bright chorale and set about confessing their sins to each other: “I slept late last Thursday” ... “I was angry at the hens” ... “I was prideful of my new apron”—a lot of confessions of the tiniest peccadillos open As It Is in Heaven, Arlene Hutton’s play, at Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. -more-

“No man’s worth losing your brain over.” The only one who doesn’t lose it, though, in the course of William Bivins’ The Afterlife of the Mind, put on by Virago Theatre Company at the Ashby Stage, is Harry, famous (and terminally ill) philosopher, who is all brain—literally. -more-

Abstract painting has been with us for about a century. At times it has descended into mere decoration or design or “color-field” painting with its thesis that painting addresses only the eye. Abstract painting, however, even more than figuration can communicate what philosophers have called the Sublime. -more-

Halloween has gone from Trick-or-Treat to Superstore, apple bobbing to Exotic Erotic. -more-