A street memorial complete with flowers, incense and emotional messages has been set up near the spot where Berkeley police shot and killed a mountain lion last week after they were unable to chase it out of a residential neighborhood. -more-

City police and University of California at Berkeley police are joining forces in the name of improving public safety at night in Berkeley’s Southside neighborhoods and after home football games, the university announced last week. -more-

It’s not too easy to find, but the Berkeley City Clerk’s website now lists all candidates’ statements and other information, along with some pretty bad photos, here. Since the city form limits candidate statements to a rather small number of words (and often, of course, weasel words) they don’t tell you much. That’s why the Planet is starting an Election Section this week, to give candidates (and ballot measure commentators) ample room to make themselves perfectly clear. -more-

Here's the lineup in the contested Berkeley races, with links to the candidate information on the city clerk's site.: -more-

Innocent Man on Death Row; Religious Communities Support Tolerance; More Firing, More Pay for CEOs; Celebrating the Demise of the BDP; Goodbye and Good Riddance; KPFA; Tea Party Racism; -more-

On Saturday, September 11, a Florida minister, Terry Jones, together with 50 of his followers, is planning an act of religious hatred and intolerance, the public burning of copies of the Qur'an (the Muslim holy scriptures containing the words of the prophet Muhammad). This hateful act has been widely condemned around the world, and reminds many of us of the infamous burning of Jewish books by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages (most existing copies of the Talmud were burnt in the 13th century) and of the burning of all Jewish books in Germany under Nazi rule in the 1930s. Thank God both the Church and Germany have evolved a long way since those infamous acts!!! So now we have some extremist Protestants doing this (and of course most Christians reject this kind of hatred, just as most American Moslems reject the hatred spread by some Muslim extremists in the Middle East), and leaders of the Republican Party are declining to condemn them, according to media reports today Sept. 8th. -more-

When World Dove Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones announced his plans for a “Koran” conflagration, every other low-rent, back-pocket preacher in the Great American Boondocks took heart. A compliant media had let it be known that just the right blend of religious intolerance mixed with a pyrotechnic photo-op was a guaranteed gate-pass to national broadcast celebrity. -more-

Last month the Los Angeles Times reported that the 38,000, largely impoverished city of Bell, CA, paid its city manager $787,000 and its police chief $457,000. CNN videoed citizens who were “Mad as Hell”. State Attorney-General Jerry Brown descended, suggesting laws may have been broken. And CALPERS, the public employee pension administrator, launched an investigation. As it turns out, the salaries were only the tip of the iceberg. The perks and pensions added up to double the numbers above. What does Bell have to do with Berkeley? As it turns out, we have a lot in common. -more-

Pacific Steel Casting Company (PSC) is still emitting toxic pollution into our air. Some community members are still feeling nauseous, getting headaches, having difficulty breathing, and experiencing asthma attacks when the pollution from Pacific Steel Casting Company is in the air. -more-

Latest issue of the Pepper Spray Times. -more-

A couple of decades ago, diabetes was an unusual disease associated with people who were very skinny and who apparently were born with a genetic defect. In the 1980’s, type I diabetes was the most common, and its cousin, brought on in part by poor and excessive diet, had not yet proliferated to engulf a large portion of the population. -more-

To the Board of Directors of the Ecology Center:
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While the Middle East—indeed, the world—is riveted by the on-going crisis around Iran’s nuclear program, the most immediate danger of a war may be on Israel’s border with Lebanon: “Exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous” was how the Independent’s Robert Fisk described it last month. -more-

Republican panic about the size of the Federal deficit is wildly inconsistent with their plea to continue Bush-era tax cuts for the rich. Nonetheless they keep harping on both themes. It’s emblematic of Republican faith-based politics; they believe -more-

Recent news about the contraction of the economy confirmed what many of us have suspected: the recession has morphed into a depression. Given that so many Americans are dejected and angry, how do Liberals turn this moment into an opportunity? -more-

Culture : Noun. The word "culture" is commonly used to refer to the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group, which suggests the possibility of a senior culture. -more-

If you want to see how things really go in the rehearsal of a play, go see Trouble in Mind at the Aurora Theatre playing through September 26. It’s about rehearsals for a Broadway play in 1955. It is unnervingly realistic in its portrayal of the clash of egos and artistic differences, older actors offering unsolicited advice to new actors, the conundrum of submitting to the arbitrary vision of an overbearing director, and actors who are always “on” and whose main frame of reference is their own needy situation. -more-

Just opened on Labor Day weekend: TheatreFirst's production of Jane Martin's Anton in Show Business, directed by Michael Storm, with Josie Alvarez, Megan Briggs, Beth Deitchman, Amaka Izuki, Phoebe Moyer, Shannon Veon Kase and Dekyi Ronge portraying the tribulations of a trio of actresses essaying an ill-fated staging of Chekhov's Three Sisters. Through September 26. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8; Sundays at 2. Marion Green Theatre (north side of Fox Theatre, 18th Street, Oakland Uptown). $15-$30. Marion Green Theatre (north side of Fox Theatre), 18th. St, Uptown Oakland. 430-5085; theatrefirst.com -more-

I don’t have much padding back there, so, even with a pillow, to keep me sitting in the park on a concrete step in John Hinkel Park for 2 ½ hours, the play has got to be good. -more-

"Aha! Motivation—that's the thing!" When an interracial cast of actors assembles to rehearse a message melodrama about a lynching, the play helmed by a brusque director who implores—or orders—them to "please forget your old methods of work and follow me," seeking "the firm texture of truth ... I want truth. what is truth? Truth is whatever you can bring yourself to believe." -more-

Swinging plumb lines as Poor Clares twirl in their white habits like celestial bodies ... Galileo studying the suddenly rough surface of the moon through his spy-glass: "This instrument shows us nothing but Truth!" ... Dancing a kind of planetary Ring-Around-The-Rosy, the great physicist and his daughters fall, laughing at their made-up nursery rhyme ... "Papa! What happened in Rome?"—"I had to make promises ... "

Three committed actors—Michael McCamish (whose engaging Twobird was staged by Maria Lexa's Sun & Moon Ensemble at historic South Berkeley Community Church a year and a half ago), Simone Bloch and Valentina Emeri (who both performed with Sun & Moon)—portray Galileo and his two daughters, who become sisters in the Order of Poor Ladies, in an unusual telling of the experimentalist's discoveries and censure by the Inquisition. Galileo's Daughters, written, directed and stage designed by Giulio Perrone, formerly associate artistic director of Dell'Arte International in Blue Lake, near Eureka (one of the finest American schools for performance), is now playing Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8, Sundays at 5 through September 19 at the Berkeley City Club, 2515 Durant. $12-$25 sliding scale. 648-4030; infernotheatre.org -more-

More than 2.4 million Americans are expected to lose their homes to a foreclosure this year, with the number of new Bay Area foreclosure filings rising dramatically over the summer. The fallout from the subprime lending scandal is continuing, but there is help. -more-

According to author and restoration consultant Jane Powell, there’s no such thing as architectural purity, and Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood contains many examples of houses which don’t fit perfectly into a given architectural style. On Sunday, September 26, 2010, from 1:00 to 5:30 p.m., Oakland Heritage Alliance presents their annual house tour, A Slice of Rockridge, featuring the triangle of land bordered by College Avenue, Chabot Road, Highway 24, and the Berkeley border, and featuring houses as varied as a 1913 house by Bernard Maybeck, a 19^th century Victorian, and a house that was once part of Pagoda Hill, the flamboyant estate built by J. Ross Brown in the late 1800’s. -more-