A group of students and activists has taken over Wheeler Hall at the University of California at Berkeley this evening following a vote by a University of California Board of Regent committee earlier today supporting a tuition increase.  

The group of at least 100 students plans to stay in the campus building until the regents agree to drop the tuition increase plan, according to Ronald Cruz, an attorney for the activist group By Any Means Necessary.  

The committee voted 7-2 today in favor of a tuition hike of as much as 5 percent annually for the next five years today despite opposition from figures including Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

Students also protested at the meeting at the University of California at San Francisco's Mission Bay campus today, linking arms and attempting to block UC regents from entering the meeting.  

University police arrested one protester who allegedly broke a glass door to the building. The protester's name was not immediately being released. 

The full board is scheduled to vote on the tuition hike proposal bundled inside the complete UC budget on Thursday. 

Newsom and UC student regent Sadia Saifuddin cast the two dissenting votes this afternoon. 

Following the vote, Saifuddin said students are feeling that the priorities of the state are not representing their interests or that of Californians. 

She said she wants to see the state have incremental increases in its funding higher education. 

Saifuddin said a new statewide proposition might be needed to raise funding for higher education. She suggested an oil severance tax, but said she was open to discussing other possible funding sources. 

Following today's vote, Newsom said he believes the university's costs need to be reduced. 

Newsom said he supports Brown's proposal that the governor shared with the UC regents and the public today, which would create a new subcommittee to develop proposals to reduce the university's costs while increasing quality and access. 

Brown suggested that the new subcommittee consider five major initiatives, including identification of pathways for undergraduate students to complete their degrees in under three years, instead of four. 

Brown's other initiatives include implementation of more consistent requirements for undergraduate majors, offering a wide range of online courses, giving credits through non-classroom activities such as work experience and delineating campus-specific specialization, as well as cross-campus collaborations. 

"The Governor is not calling for the University of Phoenix," Newsom said, explaining that Brown doesn't want to turn the university into an online school, but is instead advocating for the UC system to look for new ways to reach students on a larger scale, as demand for entrance to the UC system increases. 

UC president Janet Napolitano proposed the tuition increase earlier this month. 

Napolitano said the university's revenue issue was a result of public disinvestments, not university budget allocations. She said unless the state increased its funding for the universities, a tuition hike was the only foreseeable option. 

Under the tuition increase, a 5 percent hike would raise tuition for in-state students by $612 to $12,804 in the 2015-16 school year, according to Napolitano's office. Tuition for out-of-state students would increase by more than $1,700 to about $36,820. 

Following Napolitano's comments, the crowd chanted, "Hey ho, Napolitano has got to go." 

During a public comment session, students and members of the public urged the regents not to pass the financial burden onto students and their families.  

Instead, many UC staffers and students suggested cutting the salaries of top executives and to stop relying on temporary and contracted workers, which they said cost the university millions of dollars each year. 

UC executive vice president Nathan Brostrom said that the 30 percent of UC students who will be impacted by the tuition increase can afford it since they come from families with incomes above $75,000 per year. 

He said low- and middle-income families would get additional support under the new plan and that more than half of students would continue to pay no tuition at all. 

Proponents of the long-term stability plan, which include the tuition hike, said it is integral to the stability and vitality of the UC system. Other proponents of the plan argued that regents have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure the strength of the university and that without further investment from the state, this was their only choice. 

 

 

Copyright © 2014 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. 

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The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) will hold its 40th Anniversary Celebration on Sunday, 23 November 2014, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm.

Join us as we mark 40 years of preservation advocacy, education, and activism.

We welcome the entire community to this free event, which also celebrates the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance and the many struggles to preserve the heritage and texture of Berkeley. 

BAHA founders and leaders speaking will include Carl Bunch, Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny, Austene Hall, Trish Hawthorne, Stephanie Manning, and Daniella Thompson. 

We will honor the late Sara Holmes Boutelle, author of the groundbreaking volume Julia Morgan, Architect. Neale McGoldrick, Ms. Boutelle’s research associate, will speak, as will members of her family. 

A reception will follow in the Fireside Room. Reserve your seat[s] by e-mail baha@berkeleyheritage.com, or call (510) 841-2242. 

Sunday, 23 November 2014 

2 pm – 4 pm  

First Church of Christ, Scientist
2619 Dwight Way, Berkeley 

Free Admission 

See the BAHA events calendar for program details: http://berkeleyheritage.com/calendar.html 

 

Contact: baha@berkeleyheritage.com 

 

Local filmmaker and activist Todd Darling has made a delightful, instructive and inspiring film about people power, food and land rights, and the accelerating privatization of the University of California. Occupy the Farm is a real-life, live-action political tract in which Ground Zero is the Gill Tract—once the largest expanse of open agricultural land in the East Bay. The film's run at the UA Theatres has been extended for a second week. It will be screening several times a day through November 20. If you can't catch it on the big screen be sure to look for it on DVD. 

 

Occupy the Farm quickly makes the point that UC's founding mission—as a public, land-grant educational resource for the citizens of the state—has become corrupted by an expanding corporate agenda. Only a fragment of the 104 acres of farmland acquired in 1928 remains as open space. With half of the original Gill Tract land now occupied by University Village, a determined struggle has been raging over the fate of 20 contested acres located west of San Pablo Avenue on the El Cerrito-Richmond border. 

Local residents, university graduates and young activist farmers (may of the Occupiers turn out to be "all of the above") want the land preserved as a public resource, dedicated to raising food and raising consciousness about human ties to the land. 

The Gill Tract contains "some of the best soil in the East Bay," says Occupy The Farm (OTF) spokesperson (and Cal student) Lesley Haddock. "If it was used for food production, it could serve people all over the East Bay, people who don't have access to clean, non-GMO food." The University's Capital Projects (read: "real estate and commercial development") program wants to sell the land to private developers who would build a housing complex, a big-box supermarket and parking for 11,000 cars a day. 

(In an attempt to appease back-to-the-land advocates, UC announced the store would be a Whole Foods outlet. As Albany resident and retired UC electrical engineer Ed Fields put it: "I thought it was outrageous… to bring in corporate natural food trucked halfway across the country.") 

Land for People or Profit? 

Farming the land was once an integral part of the university's founding charter to teach and expand the skills of agriculture. That land-based ethic remains prominently engraved on the face of UC's Hilgard Hall: "To Rescue for Human Society the Native Values of Rural Life." 

In the Sixties, residents of University Village were able to farm a portion of the Tract to produce food for personal consumption. In the 1990, UC instituted an annual farming fee of $10 for Village residents. 

Since 1997, UC has been besieged by community activists—and by members of its own academic team—to drop plans for commercial development and dedicate the land to the pursuit of agroecology and "food sovereignty." After 16 frustrating years of UC administrative stonewalling, the community decided to act. Activists first occupied the land on April 22, 2012— Earth Day—and were violently evicted by the police. 

On May 11, 2013, the activists returned to the land and embarked on a more organized and effective occupation. During the weeks that followed, they managed to plant thousands of vegetable seedlings. After being routed from the land once again, they returned to the fenced-in farm months later, broke through the locked gates and harvested several tons of fresh squash, tomatoes and other produce that they donated to the community. 

The activists we meet onscreen in Occupy the Farm are impressive lot. To a man-and-a-woman, they are idealistic, dedicated, visionary, eloquent, well organized and charismatically indomitable. 

The New FSM: The Free Squash Movement 

These mostly young revolutionaries are activists in the finest sense of the Free Speech Movement. Like the students of the FSM, they stood up against an implacable institution and forced indifferent administrators to reconsider where they wanted to stand on the fulcrum that teeters between Private Power and Peoples' Rights. 

As Occupy the Farm documents, the Free Squash Movement activists did not plunge willy-nilly into a fanciful short-term escapade of rebellion. Recalling earlier attempts to save the Gill Tract from development, the activists knew what they were up against. Like the student organizers of the FSM, they were dogged and strategic: they planned ahead. Months before they carried their spades and hoes onto the Gill Tract, they had arranged with an organic farmer in Santa Cruz to grow 15,000 seedlings they hoped to plant in the university's soil. 

Before undertaking action they built up a wide base of support. They reached out to the off-campus community. They were willing to put in long hours hashing out strategy and goals. They operated by consensus. They were willing to get their hands dirty. 

"We challenged every [environmental impact review], challenged the zoning," retired teacher and Occupier Jackie Hermes-Fletcher recalls. "We fought really hard. We worked with Berkeley students, we got supporters elected to the City Council, we got the school district to pass a resolution." And the Occupiers filed two lawsuits, bringing UC's development engines to a screeching halt. 

"Whose Farm? Our Farm!" 

On the day of the planned occupation, a large crowd of occupiers arrived fully equipped with banners, leaflets, gardening tools, hoses and wheelbarrows. Some even showed up pushing gas-powered roto-tillers. In the first day on the land they weeded, turned over and planted an acre with rows of bright green seedlings. When the University shut off all water to the site on the third day of the occupation, the upstart farmers turned to their friends in neighborhood. Scores of homeowners responded by turning on their faucets to help fill 3,000-gallon water tanks that were driven to the site by pickup trucks. 

When the University blockaded the entrance used to deliver the water to the crops, the occupiers responded by decanting the water into hundreds of plastic containers that were laboriously hefted over the wire fencing and lugged to the rows of thirsty plants. 

The Occupiers are almost saintly in their response to the water shut-off. One young Richmond volunteer remarks how "the University's action forced us… No, not 'forced' … challenged us to find new solutions." Another occupier rolls up her sleeves and notes that the shut-off forced an entire First-World neighborhood to discover an experience that is a fundamental daily experience for 80 percent of the planet's people: "Hauling water." 

The police response begins almost pleasantly, with calm and often smiling officers urging the trespassing farmers to "please vacate the land." At one point, a younger security guard blocking at the main gate, raises his uniformed fist in a clenched salute of solidarity. "These are really great people," he tells the camera. 

Inevitably, the Establishment turns to the Dark Side and we are confronted with the familiar spectacle of a battalion of armed-for-war Robocops lined up to crackdown on a few dozen unarmed, peace-loving visionaries. (As a bonus, we also get to revisit videotapes of the police brutality inflicted on Occupy protesters—including students and some faculty members—on the steps of Sproul Hall.) 

One of Occupy the Farm's many sit-up-in-your-seat-and-cheer moments comes after the police have occupied the land. With armed cops deployed on the vacated farmland, the dispossessed farmers are forced to watch their seedlings withering away under the sun. Until one young man clambers over the chain-link fence and begs to have a large plastic water-jug passed over the fence. 

Off he goes, racing down one row after another, pouring water over the greens as the cops try to cut him off. Finally out of water, he makes a beeline for the fence and scrambles over the top to the safety of the sidewalk with the police just a few steps behind him. 

The Rise of the Corporate University 

Not every member of the community was comfortable with the occupation. At one of the public meetings with local residents, Darling's camera captures one neighbor who objects to the activists' tactics. "You can't just go around breaking the law," he argues. "What if I decided I wanted to go into my neighbor's yard and plant a garden?" 

At first, this sounds like a reasonable complaint but, on reflection, the criticism is misdirected. This wasn't an instance of one neighbor acting alone to encroach upon the territory of another homeowner. Instead, it was a case of a large community—a band of "landless" individuals united by the collective goal of challenging a powerful land-owning hierarchy. And (as often happens) "the law," in this case, was written to protect the physical assets of the propertied class, not the rights of individuals or the aspirations of the community. 

Occupy the Farm underscores the commercial nature of the modern University by including interviews with of several UC administrators whose work focuses not on education but rather on "Capital Projects." From collaborations with the Pentagon to build atomic weapons to billion-dollar contacts that have opened the campus to corporate behemoths like Bechtle and Monsanto, the modern university has become precisely the corporate handmaiden that the FMS's Mario Savio railed against. 

As governmental support for vital social services has withered over the years, it's not just healthcare, Social Security, and Post Office buildings that are at risk. Public universities and community colleges have been slowly starved of funds and driven into the clutches of the market economy. Driven to replace lost public funding with corporate donations, entire buildings have been installed on the UC campus to conduct the business of Fortune 500 corporations. Outside corporations now greatly influence the nature and direction of academic research. In 1998, UC announced a $25 million deal with Novartis to launch a program in agricultural biotechnology. (Not exactly a manifestation of the "Native Values of Rural Life.") And, in exchange for $500 million over ten years, the UC Regents welcomed BP (formerly British Petroleum) to establish an Energy Biosciences Institute on the Berkeley campus. The San Francisco Chronicle hailed this is as “by far the largest alliance ever between industry and academia.” 

Epilogue 

By the end of the film, OTF has managed to win some concessions from the University. The land has been transferred from the University's Capital Projects division and placed under the supervision of the College of Natural Resources. The administration had to back-paddle further after an OTF letter-writing campaign convinced Whole Foods to disassociate itself from the plan to pave over fertile farmlands with a parking lot. The University is still determined pave over the southern portion of the Tract and remains on track to develop the northern portion. (UC has announced a potential replacement for Whole Foods. As a result, there is now a campaign to convince the Sprouts food chain not to build a new store on the Tract's remaining open space. (See www.BoycottSprouts.com.) 

Meanwhile, a portion of the land on the northern end of the Tract remains open to public farming and is currently under cultivation. UC Professor of Agroecology Miguel Altieri argues that expanding farming at the Gill Tract—and in vacant lots throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties—could "make a huge difference in solving food security problems in low-income neighborhoods of the East Bay." In Cuba, 30 percent of Havana's food is grown in the city's neighborhood gardens. The Bay Area, by contrast, imports 3,000 tons of food each day—food that travels an average distance of 1,000 miles. 

A 2009 report identified 1,200 acres of vacant public land in Oakland. According to OTF: "If only half of this land were cultivated using intensive ecological farming methods that we are testing at Gill Tract, we estimate that these 'commons' could contribute about 15,000 tons of vegetables to the local food system." That's enough vegetables to feed 150,000 people for a year. 

Altieri hopes to turn 1.5 acres of the Gill Tract into a living lab for urban farming that would educate and employ local youth and he is working to implement a Berkeley Food Institute that would help speed the transition from "industrialized, consolidated, homogenized" food systems to organic farming systems that are sustainable, diverse and just. 

The Occupiers' goal remains unchanged: A 20-acre public farm that serves as both a working farm that produces free fresh food for local communities and as a research hub to promote the transition to the creation of local, low-impact sustainable food systems. 

"This film documents the beginning of a new phase of struggle for public access to the Gill Tract," says Occupier Lesley Haddock. "We hope that this premiere will inspire more people in our community to join the effort to stop this development and for others to take action in their own neighborhoods to reclaim land for public benefit." 

For More Information: occupythefarm.org

Firefighters extinguished a two-alarm fire that displaced at least seven people from a residence in Berkeley this morning, the city's fire chief said. 

The fire was reported at 5:06 a.m. at 1802 Bonita Ave. near Delaware Street and was knocked down an hour later, Berkeley Fire Chief Gil Dong said. 

American Red Cross officials were at the scene this morning to assist the displaced residents, Dong said. 

He said fire investigators are trying to determine the cause and origin of the fire, which damaged the attic and roof of the building.

An 18-year-old man was charged Friday with multiple felonies including murder, robbery, rape, attempted carjacking and elder abuse in connection with the death of a 72-year-old woman stabbed during an attempted carjacking in Berkeley.  

Kamau Jawhar Berlin appeared in court Friday and was charged with five felony counts including felony murder, attempted second degree robbery, attempted carjacking with a deadly weapon, attempted forcible rape and elder abuse resulting in death.  

Berlin was initially arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and attempted carjacking on Sept. 19 following the stabbing of Emeryville resident Nancy Jo McClellan in the area of Russell and Otis streets around 4:30 p.m. that day.  

McClellan died of her injuries on Oct. 8, according to police. 

Police said arriving officers saw a man fleeing the area who matched the suspect description given by callers and were able to detain him in the 2900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way after a foot pursuit. The suspect later was identified as Berlin.  

A 17-year-old Oakland boy who pleaded no contest to setting another teen's skirt on fire on an AC Transit bus last November was sentenced today to seven years in state prison, according to the Alameda District Attorney's Office. 

Richard Thomas, who is being prosecuted as an adult, was found guilty of felony assault and inflicting great bodily injury following an attack on 19-year-old Luke "Sasha" Fleischman on Nov. 4, 2013.  

Fleischman, who was named Luke at birth but doesn't identify as either male or female, suffered second- and third-degree burns after Thomas used a lighter to set Fleischman's clothing on fire.  

Fleischman was sleeping in the back of an AC Transit bus traveling near MacArthur Boulevard and Ardley Avenue in Oakland at around 5:20 p.m. on Nov. 4 when the incident occurred. 

Fleischman was treated at the burn unit at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco for three weeks. He was released the day before Thanksgiving and returned to his classes at Berkeley's Maybeck High School the following week.  

Thomas's defense attorney William DuBois characterized the act as a prank that got out of control, and has said the defendant was "mortified" when Fleischman became engulfed in flames. 

On March 6, Thomas waived his right to have a preliminary hearing in the case. Security footage from the AC Transit bus made it clear that Thomas was the person who set Fleischman on fire, defense lawyers said. 

Thomas was initially charged with mayhem and hate crimes, but those charges were dropped in a plea bargain in October.  

Alameda County District Attorney Teresa Drenick said Thomas would return to court 90 days from today to receive an evaluation regarding his custody conduct at the Division of Juvenile Justice.  

If he is fully engaging in the programs and services offered and is behaving with good conduct, there would be an additional review of his conduct in July 2015, right before his 18th birthday, Drenick said. 

At that time, Thomas will be eligible for a reduced sentence if he can demonstrate good progress in the programs and services offered. Drenick said the Department of Juvenile Justice will have the discretion to house Thomas for the remainder of his sentence if they believe he is amenable to their services.

United States Postal Service workers in the Bay Area are speaking out today against looming cutbacks, processing center closings and cuts in service. 

Postal workers in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose are holding rallies today to protest the Jan. 5 changes. 

Alan Menjivar, a postal worker for 31 years and a lead organizer for today's American Postal Workers Union rally in San Francisco, said the proposed cutbacks, the closure of 82 processing centers nationwide and the elimination of overnight delivery service will be devastating for workers and for customers who rely on getting their mail. 

"By cutting back, we are going to lose 15,000 jobs," Menjivar said. "We are sending a message to the (USPS) Board of Governors we are not happy with what's going on." 

About 100 people are expected at the San Francisco rally, which is going on from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Fox Plaza at 1390 Market St. 

An Oakland protest is also planned from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the processing and distribution center at 1675 Seventh St.  

Protestors will rally in San Jose from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at City Hall at 200 E. Santa Clara St. 

Gus Ruiz, a spokesman for the USPS, said the proposed cutbacks are necessary if the agency wants to remain viable in the future. 

"We are making the necessary decisions to stay in business," Ruiz said. "We need to adapt to meet changing needs." 

Ruiz said the USPS is positioning itself to better respond to the growth in parcel deliveries that come from areas like online shopping. 

He said the agency doesn't need as many processing centers due to overall decreases in mail volume. 

The postal workers union has argued the closing of the centers and lower service standards such as delayed delivery times for mail will create a domino effect that will degrade the service. 

The USPS today announced a $5.5 billion loss in the 2014 fiscal year despite a $569 million increase in operating revenue. 

The net loss is largely due to the prefunding of the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund to the tune of $5.7 billion, according to a USPS release. 

The retiree health benefit prefunding is required by law. 

The USPS has seen an annual net loss for eight consecutive years. 

"The legally mandated $5.7 billion requirement for the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund contributed to our continuing losses," USPS Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Joseph Corbett said in the release. "Due to lack of sufficient cash, we were forced to default on the $5.7 billion prepayment, underscoring the need for legislative change." 

The USPS Board of Governors also announced today the Feb. 1 retirement of Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe. 

Megan Brennan, the current chief operating officer will succeed Donahoe as the 74th Postmaster General and CEO.

Note: With a little help from our friends, a number of typos in this hastily published piece have now been corrected. We are very grateful to Rob Wrenn for leaping into the breach so that readers could get the election results as early as possible, and for sticking with the lengthy count.

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With all the absentee and provisional ballots now counted in Alameda County, Lori Droste finished ahead of George Beier by just 16 votes, 2072 votes to 2056 votes, or 50.19% to 49.81%.16 votes is a large enough margin that there is little chance that a recount would change the outcome.

Since she fell short of 50%, ranked choice voting determined the outcome. Beier was more popular than Droste among those who gave their first choice vote to Alvarez Cohen, but not by enough to overcome her lead in first choice votes.

Alameda County has until December 2 to certify the results of the election.

Turnout

Turnout in Berkeley was the lowest of the last 35 years. Only 39,092 ballots were cast this year, compared to 60,559 in 2012 and 49,099 in 2010. The previous low was 41,363 in 2002, and the voting age population has certainly grown in the last dozen years. 

 

Countywide, ballots cast amounted to 45.04% of registered voters. In Berkeley, only about 50% of registered voters cast ballots. In every previous election since Berkeley local elections were moved from April of odd-numbered years and consolidated with November elections, at least 55% of registered voters had cast ballots. 

You have to go back to 1979, when Gus Newport was elected mayor, to find an election with a smaller number of votes cast. 

Turnout in Districts 4 and 7 was particularly low. In District 7 only 1786 votes were cast, though the number of votes counted after Election Day was more than double those reported election night; in District 4 3652 votes were cast. 

The population of District 7 south of the UC campus, is about 86% student-aged residents. District 4, which includes downtown and the neighborhoods to the north and east, is a majority tenant district with a significant student population. Student voters stayed away from the polls in droves. In two precincts east of Piedmont Ave. between Dwight Way and International House only 33 votes total were cast at the polls on election day. 

Turnout was also down in District 1 compared to 2010 and 2006 but not as drastically as in Districts 4 and 7. In District 8, 4964 votes were cast, the smallest number in at least the last 20 years, despite the fact that higher turnout precincts were added to District 8 and low turnout student precincts were removed as part of the redistricting process. 

District 8 

Lori Droste, chair of Berkeley's Commission on the Status of Women and a member of the Housing Advisory Commission, was endorsed by (among others) Assembly member Nancy Skinner and by Councilmembers Maio, Capitelli and Moore. George Beier was endorsed by Councilmembers Moore (dual), Wengraf and Arreguin, and also by the Berkeley Democratic Club and Assembly member Nancy Skinner (dual). Mike Alvarez Cohen was endorsed by outgoing council member Wozniak, by Mayor Tom Bates, and by Councilmembers Wengraf and Capitelli (dual). Jacquelyn McCormick was endorsed by Council member Arreguin (dual) and Anderson. 

Droste received more campaign contributions than any of the other candidates in District 8. She had raised about $35,000 compared to about $21,600 for Beier and $28,000 for Alvarez Cohen who came in third. 

Other Races 

As previously reported, 18-year incumbent Kriss Worthington has retained his District 7 seat despite the changes to District 7 boundaries resulting from redistricting. Worthington was outspent by Barry, who was endorsed by Mayor Bates and his allies on the City Council. 

Incumbent Julie Sinai lost her seat on the School Board, while incumbents Josh Daniels and Karen Hemphill were re-elected. Newcomer Ty Alper was the top vote getter. Sinai was appointed to the board last year to fill the seat of Leah Wilson, who resigned. 

In District 1, 22-year incumbent Linda Maio won re-election by a comfortable margin.The final count gives her 54.5% to 40.6% for Alejandro Soto-Vigil, a Rent Board commissioner, who has also worked as an aide to councilmember Kriss Worthington. This is the first time since the 1994 election that Maio has received less than 60% of the vote. Soto-Vigil won two of twelve precincts, one of them west of San Pablo. 

Unofficial Berkeley Final Results 

Note: undervotes (aka blank votes) are people who cast ballots but did not vote in the election in question. 

City Council District 1 

Linda Maio 3038 54.6% 

Alejandro Soto-Vigil 2270 40.8% 

Merrillee Mitchell 256 4.6% 

undervotes 530 

 

City Council District 4 

Jesse Arreguin 2473 100% 

undervotes 1175 

 

City Council District 7 

Kriss Worthington 833 55.4% 

Sean Barry 670 44.6% 

undervotes 281 

 

City Council District 8 First Choice votes 

Lori Droste 1318 29.2% 

George Beier 1198 26.5% 

Mike Alvarez Cohen 1165 25.8% 

undervotes 429 

 

School Board 

Ty Alper 20,379 

Josh Daniels 19,340 

Karen Hemphill 16,731 

Julie Sinai 16,207 

Norman Harrison 3,6779 

 

Measure D Soda Tax 

Yes 29,540 76.2% 

No 9243 23.8% 

 

Measure F Parcel Tax for Parks 

(two-thirds vote required for passage) 

Yes 27,573 75.0% 

No 9151 24.9% 

 

Measure P Corporations are not persons 

Yes 30,703 84.7% 

No 5,559 15.33% 

 

Measure Q Right to Request Part Time Work - Advisory 

Yes 27,347 78.8% 

No 7,363 21.2 

 

Measure R Downtown zoning 

Yes 9,345 25.9% 

No 26,726 74.1% 

 

Measure S Redistricting 

Yes 21,240 63.8% 

No 12,048 36.2% 

 

 

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Dear Friends of Ponderosa Pine,

(November 11, 2014)—I regret to say that our good friend and activist Pondo was laid to final rest November 10 @ 5am in Loja, Ecuador. He died from kidney failure among a few other complications. His health had been failing in the recent months and it came to its peaceful final closure.

Myself and a few other close friends were with him in his final hours to send him off with love and support. He died very peacefully with no pain and no painkillers. His last moments were very peaceful with many smiles from us and from him. He was not afraid and was sent away from this body easily.

Please let us share a moment and send him our blessings to wherever he has been sent to for his next mission. All the best to all his friends and family who cared much for our friend Pondo. This will be the last message from this address.

Kind regards,

Chris

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Remembering a Memorable Environmental Activist

By Gar Smith / Friends of the Earth; Editor Emeritus, Earth Island Journal

The message from Ponderosa Pine's "Double Helix Office in the Global South White House" was not unexpected but it still hit with the force of a majestic redwood falling in the forest.

I had heard of Keith Lampe (aka Ponderosa Pine, aka Ro-Non-So-Te, aka Transition President of the Government of the USA in Exile) long before I had the pleasure of getting to know him as a friend and a colleague.

It was in 1969, as a staffer at the Berkeley Barb, that I first began reading Keith's unique self-syndicated fortnightly column, Earth Read-Out. It was the first "environmental column" to appear in the so-called Underground Press (or anywhere else, for that matter).

I eventually encountered Keith as few years later—appropriately enough, during an All Species Day Parade in San Francisco.

Spotting a fellow who stood out from the rest of the crowd, I was moved to ask: "Might you be Ponderosa Pine?" It was an easy guess on my part. The fellow I was talking to seemed to be the only marcher who was barefoot. He was certainly the only one dressed in an outfit fashioned entirely from tree bark. With a beaming smile and mischievous eyes peeking out between strips of tree-gleanings, he looked like a walking elm, both deciduous and impish.

Keith Lampe had a one-of-a-kind career arc—from reporter to soldier to activist to media mentor to social critic, philosopher, eco-guru, musical pioneer and much more. 

 

From Randolph Hearst to Allen Ginsberg 

In 1950, at the young age of 18, Keith scored a job as reporter for the Detroit Free Press. By 1957, he was based in Paris covering NATO as a correspondent for the Hearst empire's International News Service (INS). As he once recalled, "every time my byline appeared in the newspaper anywhere on the planet, a clipping of it was rushed to me by diplomatic pouch in order to feed my ego and keep me obedient to [Hearst's] right-wing corporate values." 

Recognizing early that fame was an "ignominious" trap, Keith left INS and began freelancing. He devised the habit of writing under a number of pseudonyms so that "whenever one of them started showing up in corporate media too frequently, I could always slip into something more comfortable." 

In 1964, while hiking through Scandinavia on his third globe-hopping journey, Keith learned of the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Grabbing a flight back to the States, he showed up at the door of the Student Nonviolent Organizing Committee in New York. He signed on to register voters in Mississippi and wound up working with Francis "Mitch" Mitchell, who was filling in for Julian Bond handling SNCC's press relations. 

Keith became aware of global warming early, when Allen Ginsberg (whom he had met in Kolkata in 1962) passed along Gregory Bateson's warning that, within a few decades, the polar icecaps would begin to melt and continents would be flooded. 

In late '65, during the Vietnam War, Keith co-founded Veterans and Reservists to End the War in Vietnam. (He had served as an Army officer during the Korean War, acting as an artillery forward observer.) In 1966, he was part of a team of anti-war veterans who lit up America's TV screens by publically setting fire to their discharge papers, service metals and campaign ribbons. 

An Arresting Presence 

Keith was no slouch when it came to activism. He regularly scolded Berkeley's Dave Brower (the legendary founder of Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute) for never having gone to jail as part of a pro-Earth protest. 

Pondo's first arrest came in the Sixties when he was busted in front of Dow Chemical's New York Office for protesting the company's "obscene manufacture of napalm." 

Over the next two years, he was arrested twice during Stop the Draft Week demonstrationss, jailed following a protest at an Army Induction Center and handcuffed for attempting to delay the departure of a Vietnam-bound Navy destroyer berthed in the Hudson River. 

In September 1967, Keith was part of a group arrested in the Senate Gallery for tossing antiwar leaflets onto a chamber full of Washington politicians. A month later, Pondo was busted for protesting the war at the Pentagon—along with Norman Mailer, Noam Chomsky, Terry Southern and fellow Yippies, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Stew Albert. 

In 1987, Pondo was tossed into jail for protesting the World Bank's plans to subsidize the construction of a large highway through the heart of the Amazon rainforest. 

Naturally, Keith was on the ground in Chicago for the 1968 demonstrations in the streets outside the Democratic Party's nominating convention. He subsequently learned the New York City police had compiled a 40-page dossier on his activist history and provided it to the Chicago cops. The report identified him as "an especially dangerous leader" because he encouraged the rabble to disobey convention. Actually, Pondo pointed out, all he was saying was: "Do your own thing." 

In 2000, Pondo, Bill McKibben, Granny D, and 30 others were arrested in the White House Rotunda for demanding campaign-finance reform. 

Coasting West 

It was in 1968 that Keith, along with wife Judy and daughter Issa, left Manhattan and relocated to Berkeley. It was only a matter of months before he joined with poet/activist Gary Snyder and others to risk arrest for taking a principled stand in defense of Nature. This time it was a matter of throwing his body "upon the gears and upon the wheels . . . upon the levers" to blockade a logging truck—or, in Pondo's more evocative translation, blocking "a truck carrying redwood corpses from a nearby tree-slaughter site." This radical act, many argue, marked the beginning of the modern US environmental movement. 

In 1969, Keith gravitated to Woodstock, a transformative Counter Cultural event where, as Paul Krasner recalls, "Hippies became freaks. Negros became blacks. Girls became women. Richard Alpert became Baba Ram Dass. Hugh Romney became Wavy Gravy. . . . Yippie organizer Keith Lampe became Pondorosa Pine, and his girlfriend became Olive Tree." 

Over the next decade-plus, Pondo was arrested numerous times for putting his body between the bulldozers and the redwoods. In 1991, Pondo responded to the bombing of Baghdad by founding the US Pro-Democracy Movement. He turned down an offer to have his collected environmental essays turned into a book when his publisher refused to pay extra to print the book on tree-free paper. 

Looking back upon his long history of activism, it is easy to believe Pondo's estimation that he was likely responsible for "co-founding more movements and sub-movements than anyone else in Home Planet history." 

A frequent resident of Chang Mai, Thailand, during the 80's, Pondo eventually settled in a beautiful mountain retreat in southern Ecuador. From his "Double Helix Office in the Global South White House," Pondo kept in touch by sending out daily dispatches of environmental news and opinion under the banner "A Day in the Life." These daily compendiums of global news regularly ran anywhere from a half-megabyte to 1.5 megabytes or more. 

In September 2012, health problems compelled Pondo to dial back a bit. He revised his publishing schedule to one humongous dispatch every other day. His last edition of Day in the Life weighed in at a modest 238 kilobytes but it still managed to include more than 180 articles, ranging from reflections on the ebola virus, to climate engineering, attacks on free speech, labor protests in Rome, the militarizing of America's police, America's human rights abuses, the demonstration of a "self-running free energy device" and the threat of Artificial Intelligence. 

Pondo lead off this final dispatch with his traditional introduction—a spontaneous exposition of his current concerns, observations, criticisms and prescriptions, by turns humorous and cranky. 

But this one was different. Pondo knew he was dying and he wanted to share the moment with his many friends, fellow activists and readers around the globe. 

Here is the introduction to Pondo's final dispatch: 

Volunteers for Planetary Climate Action (VPCA) 

Resolving the Atmospheric Emergency 

October 31, 2014 

Dear Sentinel Friends and Colleagues, 

. . . I've been severely ill for more than four weeks now. Especially difficult have been frequent episodes of convulsive/spasmatic coughing shaking the inside of my body quite painfully. My main problem has been my lungs, which constantly fill with phlegm and when added to severe emphysema and asthma cause quite a problem. 

I've had two mainstream doctors up here to my mountain retreat but they've been unable to improve my condition. So Tuesday I asked for a visit from a local shaman whom I've known for a few years now and for whom I have great respect. What he said is quite interesting. 

Here's one of his most memorable lines: "Too much compassion for plants and animals causes a lung problem." 

He said his father had been like this—and had died a month ago at age 72. Then he said quite recently he'd also had a lung problem and just a couple days ago he'd gone to the local hospital for a chest X-ray—and it showed his lungs were clean. He even pulled out the X-ray and showed it to me. 

So what I think we should take from this is that a much higher percentage of our current illnesses than we think are psychosomatic (or neurosomatic) rather than simply somatic. For example, we may think we're sick from toxic chemtrails residues when actually we're sick from these plus the neural stress resulting from having to absorb the info that those controlling us are so evil that they perpetrate chemtrails. 

Certainly the news of these past four weeks has been more horrendous than that of any similar period I can remember. One of my most aware readers commented a few days ago that "Hell has come to earth". 

I've had information sickness several times before but always mildly: two or three days of deep fatigue, then back to okay again. 

In any case, yesterday morning my housemate came up to my second-floor room just as I was waking and said: "I'm scared. I think you are dying." 

That same thought had occurred to me just the day before as I wondered how I was going to make it through this at 83 if my friend's father had been taken out by the same malaise at 72. 

On the positive side, it's certainly a respectable cause of death: Natural World Hyperconcern (NWH). 

And I've already arranged for my death to instigate at least one more really good party. Forty-nine days following it, there'll be a Bardo Party for me at the Bolinas (CA) Community Center with excellent live music and excellent potluck food. Yeah, at least my death will have some value. 

In recent years I've several times pointed out that there are a variety of daily practices which can gradually strengthen the nervous system so that gradually folks can absorb more bummer info before being sickened by it. I'll paste one of these directly below. You can get into it by yourself merely by imitating what you hear in the accompanying audios and/or videos. I've been practicing it for nearly forty-four years now. It's not a panacea but it's quite helpful and also it enhances average mood. 

Power to the Flora,  

Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te, Ponderosa Pine 

Volunteer 

PS: NYC graffiti a few decades ago: 

"Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down." 

--- --- --- 

Pondo on The Rights of Mother Earth 

 

(April 20, 2010)—Info and commentary on the auspicious World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by Keith Lampe aka Ponderosa Pine, a founder of the US environmental movement in 1969. 

--- --- --- 

Some Offerings Selected from Pondo's Website 

http://www.flyingsnail.com/Scrapbook/Keith_Lampe.html 

Sing along with Pondo as he riffs on Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tamborine Man." 

Pondo's Innovative Eastern/Western-Music-Mix  

With Peter Rowan's "Break My Heart Again" 

 

(November 12, 2012)—It's a new musical genre combining the intense pleasure of a great Occidental tune and the neural benefit of a well-practiced Oriental mantra. The current singer—selected randomly from a line-up of DLBHs (Dirty Little Barefoot Hippies) busted for being elated without a permit—is so-called Pondo. 

If you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, please help us spread the word about this new music. In most regions of our planet these days, there are quite a few folks adept at one or more mantras. We urgently hope they'll start getting it together with local musicians able to appreciate how much can be added to the presentation of Western tunes by Eastern background vocalists. Indeed, let ten thousand E&W bands bloom. 

Vocal Energy Health (VEH) 

Keith Lampe (Ponderosa Pine), Vocals and Doug Adamz, Tibetan Bell
With VEH, after a few sessions of imitating these sounds, one can start doing them alone or—even better—with others creating an effective practice that requires no gear. 

Part One: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevesone.mp3
Part Two: http://www.flyingsnail.com/Podcast/pinevestwo.mp3 

The Yippie Movie Page 

Here is a direct link to 1968 movie, Yippie for Pigasus, produced by Ed Sanders and Narrated by Keith Lampe: 

http://yippiegirl.com/_Media/yippiemovie-mp4_300kbps.mp4 

Note: In 1968, the Yippies nominated a pig (named "Pigasus") as their presidential candidate. During the Yippies' 1972 campaign, a Rock ran for President and Roll ran for Vice President. Dinner rolls were brought to the rallies. The Yippies followed up with the Birthday Party's "Nobody for President" campaign. Started in 1975, it continues today. "Out of all choices for President, Nobody is perfect!" 

--- --- --- 

Live from Vilcabamba:  

Pondo in Ecuador 

VilcabambaTV, Ecuador 

 

(October 24, 2009) – Pondo, aka Keith Lampe, venerable hippie activist and yogin. He has a famous daily newsletter about world news. One of the main characters of Vilcabamba. Distributed by Tubemogul. 

Dear Friends and Colleagues, Today's installment from my issue number two of Earth Read-Out (ERO) at the end of May '69 gives us an opportunity to understand how much more confidence people had in themselves then than now. 

For example, do AFT [American Federation of Teachers] locals talk now the way they talked then? Or do high-ranking UC officials talk now the way Robert Greenway (all honor to his name) talked then? Or does the despicable Washington Post ever play a positive role at rallies as it did at this one? 

And this information is critically important today—especially for our last hope, the campus generation. It helps all of us grok that in fact we've been enormously dumbed-down and intimidated. Given the intense uncompromising integrity of this teach-in, it's quite easy to understand why the MIAC (Military/Industrial/Academic Complex) thought it necessary, a year later, to murder four peaceful students at Kent State, then make a point of not punishing the murderers. They needed strong writing on the wall: 

"We'll kill you whenever we wish and nobody's gonna stop us." 

Please note that you can learn hardly anything about this immensely important stuff in the twerpy-hustler Limited Hangout "alternate" histories of Howard Zinn and Carolyn Baker. . . . 

Keith Lampe aka Pondo. Volunteer and Complete Unknown  

--- ---  

Earth Read-Out: On People's Park 

by keith lampe
(May 29, 1969)—About 2000 persons attended—off and on—a six-hour teach-in on "Ecology and Politics in America," May 28 on the UC Berkeley campus. 

Idea was to relate the People's Park issue to broader questions of planetary survival. A lot of language under a hot sun—but hopefully the thing will get made into a book to help people past the old politics and into a root politics of ecology. 

Sponsors were American Federation of Teachers locals 1474 and 1795. Their 

leaflet for the occasion put it succinctly where it's at: 

"The battle for a people's park in Berkeley has raised questions that go far beyond the immediate objects of public attention. They are questions about the quality of our lives, about the deterioration of the environment and about the propriety and legitimacy of the uses to which we put our land.  

"The questions raised by this issue reach into two worlds at once: the world of power, politics and the institutional shape of American society on the one hand, and the world of ecology, conservation and the biological shape of our environment on the other. . . . 

"It is not at all ironic that officers of the law uproot shrubbery in order to preserve the peace. It is the way of the world! Trees are anarchic concrete and asphalt are orderly and tractable. Defoliation is Civilization! 

"Our cities are increasingly unlivable. The ghettos are anathema to any form of human existence. Our back country is no retreat: today's forest is tomorrow's Disneyland. Our rivers are industrial sewers, our lakes are all future resorts, our wildlife are commercial resources. 

"The history of America is a history of hostility and conquest. We have constituted ourselves socially and politically to conquer and transform nature. We measure 'progress' in casualties, human and environmental, in bodies of men or board-feet of lumber. 

"Ecology and politics are no longer separate or separable issues. . . ." 

Biggest mind-blow of the day came from Robert Greenway, vice president for academic planning at UC Santa Cruz. Greenway's contract isn't to be renewed because he's acting up—and the UC regents got a court order forbidding him to make speeches because he's "inflammatory." 

Greenway told his audience: "We have to go down to People's Park Friday with our women, children and neighbors and we have to say we're going to pull up the fence—gently—and then say to the National Guard: 'Go ahead and shoot.'" Greenway said the fight for People's Park is part of a larger fight for physical and psychic space: "We must take every shred of university land that's not already built and make it a park." 

He invited everybody down to Santa Cruz "where we have 3000 acres for dancing and singing and holding each other—and it would take them a year to fence it." 

Prof. Sim van der Ryn, a member of the UC Berkeley Chancellor's Committee on Environment, explained why we often have heavily polluted air in the Bay Area, even during early morning hours: the air-pollution surveillance bureaucrats do only a 9-to-5 thing, so most of the biggest industries release their poisons after dark or in early morning. Van der Ryn reminded everybody that DDT is killing enormous numbers of crabs on the West Coast, that high concentrations of DDT have been found even in High Sierra lakes—and that lots of people get busted for LSD, but nobody for DDT. 

Dr. Tom Bodenheimer warned that . . . the concentrations of CS gas on the Berkeley campus are probably still so great that "next time it rains it'll be like a gas attack." [Ed. Note: He refers here to the spraying of gaseous toxins onto innocent students by the infamous US military during the campus protests that followed the police attack on People's Park.] . . . . 

Barry Weisberg, of the Bay Area Institute, said 95% of all freshwater on the planet is being used faster than it's being replaced. He said Amerika constitutes only 7% of the world's population—but is presently consuming about 70% of the world's resources. 

Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who was busted several weeks ago trying to stop Army engineers from wrecking Tamalpais Creek in the name of flood control, equated the creek with People's Park: 'Each little blade of grass is important." Wolf von Eckhart, architectural critic of the Washington Post, sent a wire saying, "The city belongs to the people." Folksinger Malvina Reynolds sang "God Bless the Grass." Paul Goodman sent a wire from New York expressing outrage at "the vandalism committed by the authorities." Jane Jacobs sent a wire from New York saying universities traditionally have used parks as a cover-story for land grabs in order to "lull lazy liberals." To those battling for People's Park she said, "be brave but be careful: against armor and sadism your weapon must be ingenuity. . . ." 

Forester Don Harkins urged street people to spend some time in the wilderness. He said he knew that some street people thought the wilderness was counterrevolutionary—"but they'll pull a lot of power into themselves by getting out there." He offered to teach street people how to move through snow and storms in mountains. 

Poet Gary Snyder said we must "recover gut knowledge of our relationship to nature" through which "nature becomes the supernatural." He called for establishment of an "Earth People's Park because nations and corporations are not going to do anything because it calls for renunciation instead of profit and growth." He said the Soviet Union, China, Amerika and Europe all are equally culpable. Of the Amerikan scene, he said: "The materialistic, exploitative, white-western mentality swept across the continent east to west, destroying the passenger pigeon, the bison, the Indian and the topsoil till finally it came right up to the Pacific and polluted the offshore waters there. 

"Now it is time for us symbolically to become Indians—people of this land—and take Amerika back from west to east. People's Park is the first little piece of liberated territory in Amerika and I hope we keep going and take the whole thing."

The fault lines along the [read from left to right] Radical/Progressive/Liberal/Moderate/Conservative/Reactionary axis are opening wider as the left works on the response to global warming. The Public Comment section of today’s Planet gives witness to the widespread controversy over whether building massive highrises in already urbanized areas will actually prevent the environmental destruction caused by sprawl and the attendant climate change caused by automobile commuting. Some say yes, but others think that turning comfortable old cities into concrete canyons will result in further suburbanization when growing families decide that they want homes where they can garden and can’t find them in cities.

That’s approximately what Berkeley’s Measure R was about, though few voters in last week’s election understood it. The trouble with using zoning law to enforce public policy is that zoning ordinances must be very complex in order to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, which makes zoning a poor candidate for an initiative. It’s a truism that when voters don’t understand a ballot measure they just vote No, and Measure R was—perhaps inevitably—impossible for the lay reader to disentangle. This is not the fault of the drafters—if they can be blamed for anything, it’s having too generous a view of the intelligence of the Berkeley electorate.

If it were legal, it might have been a whole lot easier to pass a ballot statement worded simply “the policies proposed in the original Measure R as adopted shall now be enforced as a matter of law.” And the real question still hangs in the air: Can we build our way out of climate change? What’s the progressive answer to that one? 

In my youth, when I was doggedly working in electoral politics, trying to persuade voters in Michigan to reject racial discrimination and oppose the Vietnam war, some of my best friends were busy founding SDS. For them “liberal” was a term of scorn, derisively hurled at the end of evenings fueled by cheap wine and cigarette smoke of both flavors. Politics, they thought, was certainly not local and not liberal: radical or occasionally progressive, but liberal never. 

That was a good half-century ago, but it seems that not much has changed in political discourse since then. Or maybe it has. In some quarters, liberals and progressives are now seen as identical. 

The pundit-wannabe who edits the East Bay’s last surviving alt-weekly provided a good example in the current issue of how confused you can get . His election wrap-up is headed East Bay Progressives Dominated the Election --Liberals won nearly every political contest in Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond on November 4. And so did the candidates and measures endorsed by the Express. 

Well, yes, if you define progressive as cheering for bigger building everywhere, and think liberals and progressives are synonymous, the fantasy-baseball Prog/Lib Party won it all.  

Linda Maio, who won in Berkeley’s District 1 (though by a smaller margin than she’d gotten in the previous 20-some years she’d been in office) was identified as the “liberal” candidate in the Express’s pre-election endorsement piece: “Maio, a liberal who is a strong supporter of smart growth and of creating a dense downtown, is the clear choice in her race.”  

Some commenters were not so sure.  

Said Margarita Lacabe: “..you might be right if you don't include respect for human rights and civil liberties to be part of your definition of ‘progressive’. I do, and in such sense… Maio [fails]. Maio was a big supporter of Berkeley's Sit-Lie ordinance, which attempted to further criminalize homelessness.” 

Editor Robert Gammon’s responsive to a similar comment: 

“I have to disagree with you on the Linda Maio race. Her opponent Alejandro Soto-Vigil strongly backed the most regressive measure on the Berkeley ballot -- Measure R -- this year.

“Moreover, Maio, by any reasonable definition, is a progressive.” 

Gammon, and people like him, seem to be proposing a new litmus test for who’s a progressive: do you support developers?  

But what would be “a reasonable definition” of progressive which doesn’t include respect for human rights? Can you be a progressive without being a liberal? What does that even mean? 

This is one of the rare instances where Wikipedia fails us. “Progressive” is defined as “ an adjectival form of progress” which it reports is used in a whole laundry list of disparate names and concepts: everything from a rock band to a sect of the Seventh Day Adventist church. 

So then, what’s “progress”, you might ask? Is any and all change “progress”? 

Maybe Wikipedia is right: “progressive” doesn’t mean much. 

San Franciscans with impeccable progressive credentials said no, when they voted for Proposition B, a clear, straightforward measure which stops inappropriate skyscrapers on their waterfront. Will it be progress to let well-wired builders grab most sites in downtown Berkeley for buildings which don’t meet strict environmental standards and provide no affordable housing for working families? 

Here’s the Express again: “Measure R, which environmentalists said would have ruined Berkeley's attempts to create a vibrant downtown, lost big…”.  

But the Sierra Club, usually considered environmentalist, declined to endorse a No vote on R, and many of its members welcome the strict green building standards and other environmental benefits which R would have mandated.  

Is “a more vibrant downtown” more important than a Green downtown? Is it progress, for example, to allow downtown bars to stay open later without getting permits, one of the anti-R talking points, or just a way to put more money in the pockets of the bar owners? 

One of my earliest memories from my St. Louis childhood, probably from the time I was just learning to read, was big billboards which said “Progress or Decay—St. Louis must choose.” I now know this was during the administration of Democratic Mayor Joseph Darst (full disclosure: a family friend, though I was too young to know him). 

From Wikipedia: “Darst was elected mayor of St. Louis in April 1949. Darst was a proponent of urban renewal through slum clearance and the construction of large scale affordable public housing. This approach to urban renewal has been criticized by later generations of urban planners and theorists such as Jane Jacobs. During Darst's time as Mayor, approximately 700 public housing units were completed. When he left office, an additional 17,000 units were under construction and 4,000 were in the planning stages.” 

Sounds like progress, right? Joe Darst meant well. 

But an enormous number of African-Americans were evicted when their “slum” homes were demolished, and that public housing became the notorious Pruitt-Igoe skyscraper complex, eventually blown up when it became unmanageable and crime-ridden. The displaced residents moved north to the suburban fringe—and many of their descendants ended up in the Ferguson area, in the news lately for not-good reasons. 

(For an excellent analysis of how all this happened, see The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles, by Berkeley Law Professor Richard Rothstein ). 

All change is not progress. In Berkeley as in St. Louis, what looks like progress might actually be decay in sheep’s clothing. 

If downtown Berkeley becomes a luxury dorm for San Francisco techies, or glamourous condo pieds a terre for oligarchs from the international 1% and their UC student offspring, that will not be progress. 

My Elmwood neighbor Professor Brad DeLong, an authentic pundit, recently hosted a discussion of this complicated topic on his widely read blog, to which I contributed more than my share of hot air. Rather than reiterate the whole thing here, why don’t you just read it? And while you’re at it, read some of the other interesting stuff he highlights. In fact, you should bookmark his blog for your frequent edification. 

 

 

 

The most intelligent analysis I've seen of Citizens United--clearly, the readers don't understand it however: 

Op-ed: Berkeley overrules Citizens United!

We received this letter on Sunday morning:

Of course, all mail is capture by the United States of America. But I'm curious. Why are you providing the address of each of your readers to every other reader, to the controllers of the bots of those readers who happen to have an infected computer, and to the spammers the controllers sell addresses to?

Cordially, Joaquin

Answer: I hit the wrong button when I sent reminder letters to our list of subscribers by Gmail. Mistakes are made. This service is worth what you pay for it (free). Our doughty staff of 1.5 sometimes falls down on the job. If anyone out there is an expert on mass mailing software they're welcome volunteer to help.

 

Dan O'Neill

 

A person might be stoned for heresy in Berkeley if they were to question belief in global warming. But, as a decades long, left leaning, KPFA listening and sponsoring, commuter bike riding, composting, plastic avoiding, bring your own cloth grocery bag environmental activist, I am seeing too much hypocrisy and closed minded smugness, and a lack of critical thinking on the part of those who I have always thought of as my people. I have come to the conclusion that those with liberal roots like me, have been sent on a fools errand, sucked into an unquestioning group-think and religiosity by a well-funded corporatized environmental establishment, that is scaring us into accepting top-down, pre-prescribed faux solutions that have never had public input and are designed to enrich bankers, diminish the rights of ordinary people, and funnel us into a controlled technocratic society. We hear plenty of talk about lowering parts per million of carbon while basic principles of environmentalism are violated, such as, don’t pollute, do no harm, local control, conservation, recycle, reuse, live simply, less technology, not more. The Democratic left has been hijacked and infiltrated, our ideals and beliefs distorted and twisted into a disciplinary social agenda, which demonizes rank and file humanity, and deflects responsibility away from the real perpetrators of the destruction of our natural world. 

Al Gore, the man charged with popularizing the global warming theory, uses 20 times the energy of the average person in just one of his multi-million dollar homes, yet his ”carbon footprint” is never put under a spot light. Few remember how as Vice President he used his “Earth in the Balance” environmental cred to stump for passage of NAFTA and Free Trade policies, which started the environmental race to the bottom and the wholesale giving away of local power over land and laws to multinational corporations. Now Gore is investing with partners like Goldman Sachs in carbon trading schemes, espousing the self-enriching solution to a problem he defines. It would seem subscribers to the theory of global warming never question the designation of CO2, as the root of our environmental problems and its convenient, consequent value as a global taxable trading currency founded on the commodification of nature and a newly invented “right to pollute”. This unverifiable system run by bankers will accelerate, not slow, the pillaging of the planet. 

It is my observation that all aspects of the left alternative media from the progressive weeklies to KPFA radio, are conducting the environmental wing of the global war on terror, never missing an opportunity to frighten and guilt trip us that we will cause “game over for the planet” if we don’t vote for “climate change legislation”, aka, carbon taxes and carbon trading, and support “smart growth” policies. We are schooled that only crazy right-wingers could possibly question the “settled science” and the “settled” remedies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is always cited as the trusted go-to body of expertise, even though their integrity was discredited with the “Climategate” scandal based on leaked emails, in which head scientists at the IPCC, Michael Mann of Penn State and Phil Jones of East Anglia University discussed doctoring the data on the “hockey stick” graph created by Mann, and punishing scientists and scientific journals that print contradictory evidence to the theory of global warming.  

So many are now feeding at the trough of climate change disaster capitalism that a rational open debate is almost impossible. City councils throughout the land are curiously all subscribing to the same developer, banker- enriching, land-grabbing policies of “smart growth”. Unelected, unaccountable regional boards, made up of selected local officials, along with corporations and non governmental organizations are drawing up dictatorial regional plans for growth that supercede city governments, depriving citizens of the right to affect their own local land use policy. In the name of climate change remediation, we are told we must pack more people into smaller areas of land, as our towns are being transformed into mega Manhattanized cities with tall multi-unit apartment buildings that take our sunlight, and ultimately our connection to the land and nature. Old buildings, neighborhoods, and communities are wastefully being torn down and made over to fit the vision of elite ideologue urban planners. In the upheaval, small local independent businesses are lost and replaced with national chains. This is not protection of nature, but a transfer of wealth, power, property ownership, and autonomy of cities, towns and rural areas, away from ordinary citizens.  

Today’s "environmentalists" are working towards increased government and corporate control and surveillance over our lives through bio-hazardous technology, ie. smart grid and smart meters, with no regard for thousands of independent scientific studies proving that digital microwave radiation damages biology. Instead of a call to decentralize, simplify and conserve, citizens worldwide are being forced to apply “smart” meters to their homes, even as they are complaining of heart palpitations, extreme fatigue, mental confusion, sleeplessness, headaches, ear ringing, dizziness and more. A technology is neither “green” nor “sustainable” if it’s byproduct harms humans, insects, plants and animals. This unseen pollution from smart meters and smart grid infrastructure is increasing exponentially with no objections from official environmentalists. Unlike the old meters, smart meters use energy to power themselves 24/7. They are only advantageous to a centralized corporate model of energy control. 

Most shockingly, the left, who claim to have the corner on environmental stewardship, are the ones giving credence to geoengineering-solar radiation management, (the spraying of chemical nanoparticle pollution, such as aluminum oxide and sulphur dioxide via jet aircraft into the atmosphere in order to block the sun), as a solution for global warming. On May 9, 2013, the Earth Island Institute sponsored a debate cavalierly dubbed, “Hack the Sky?” at the Brower Center in Berkeley CA. The purported adversaries were Stanford geoengineer, Ken Caldiera, and so called “ethicist”, Clive Hamilton, who belongs to the same geoengineering promoting, Solar Radiation Management Governance Group with Caldiera and other geoengineers. That very morning the two “debaters” made an appearance on liberal KALW’s “Your Call”. A few months later the apprentices on Progressive radio KPFA”s “Full Circle” hosted the same performance duo. Why are environmental groups and left media putting on rigged debates legitimizing and normalizing a preposterous technology, which poisons and desecrates nature, and can only cause irreparable harm, when they should be screaming warnings from the rafters that scientists are recklessly playing God with our world. These left media outlets are unconscionably frightening their following into accepting what amounts to nothing less than the corporate scientific intervention into our natural weather and climate systems.  

The environmental establishment chooses to ignore a whole area of inquiry relevant and crucial to the climate change equation; that of scientific, military, university, and governmental, (NASA and NOAA) experimentation with our atmosphere and weather, which has been going on for many decades. The book “Angels Don’t Play This HAARP” by Nick Begich and Jeanne Manning, documents the history of military experimentation with the earth’s atmosphere, and chronicles the development (including twelve patents) of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project, (HAARP), a field of giant antennas which can boil the upper atmosphere with a focused steerable billion watt electromagnetic beam, sending electromagnetic waves back onto a target on earth, causing changes in the jet stream and weather. The Department of Defense and their military contractors operate outside of all laws that protect the environment. 

Ironically, the climate change activists of today are listening to and trusting the very moneyed, powerful entities who have brought us to the brink of ecological collapse and forced us into fossil fuel dependency, for diagnosis and treatment of our environmental calamities. The Rockefellers, one of the biggest funders and grant givers to the current environmental “movement”, have throughout the decades, used their wealth and influence derived from BIG OIL to remain in control of energy. They financed Prohibition in the 1920s and '30s to keep farmers from making their own alcohol fuel, and worked to criminalize hemp, from which fuel was made. They killed the electric car and the municipal electric railways and influenced our government to suppress more than 5000 energy technology patents, which have potential to end our energy crisis. 

The rhetoric we hear of creating economic and environmental equity among people and nations, rings hollow when you realize that the environmental establishment is being bought and commandeered by the richest fat cats in the world, who have the inordinate means to create equity overnight, and to stop their destructive environmental practices, if that were their true purpose. Instead they are financing and manufacturing a phony grassroots campaign to pin the blame for environmental devastation on the “everyman” who is living in a world choreographed by the corporate financial elite. Their message is that the future of the planet is impossible unless we the little people submit to the measures outlined by them. They have frightened, panicked, and demoralized the very people who would be fighting them with every breath into being the enforcement arm for their vision of our future. Fear of climate change is being manipulated to get the left to aid in the stealing of citizen rights and the corporatization of our local government, land, business, nature and weather.  

While the environmentalists are stuck on climate change, the nuclear accidents, toxic spills, pesticide contamination, deep sea oil drilling, fracking, tree cutting, electromagnetic radiation, introduction into the ecosystem of new dangerous technological compounds and organisms like GMOS, synthetic biology, nanoparticles, the geoengineering of our skies, destructive war and weapons, and much more, continue unabated. 

Now left wing pundits like The Nation’s, Mark Hertsgaard, tell us to be impressed, that the big time financial fleecers and scammers, “Hank” Paulsen, hedgefund billionaire, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg have come on board with climate change, as if they haven’t always been. The War On Climate Change has gone publicly mainstream as the likes of BP, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Dow Chemical bankrolled the “Peoples” climate march in New York City in Sept. 2014. 

No. It is way past time for the left to question where blind belief in billionaire, banker funded environmentalism is taking us

Editor's Note: When we referred to "formerly", we meant 15 or more years ago.

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“In the city of Santa Cruz, the “Democratic Party” hacks endorsed the right wing slate, and since it was an at-large election conservatives now control this formerly progressive council. “ – Berkeley Daily Planet editorial, November 07, 2014

Setting aside whether Santa Cruz’s previous city council majority, which casually criminalized sleeping, can be appropriately called “progressive”, the election isn’t really confusing at all. Political parties are simply being treated as the relatively meaningless entities they have become. When “green” is interpreted as dense, open-space-free high-rise development and “progressive” includes efforts to criminalize poverty, many voters prefer, understandably, to call themselves independent of any party affiliation. 

Slate politics and big money can still sink a grassroots effort like Measure R, but the real story is the record-breaking absence of eligible voters who voted – even in Richmond. If all the whiners who didn’t vote in this election had turned out at the polls, we would be living in a very different world. 

I personally wish people would focus a lot less on who gets into office, and more on making sure our citizenry is educated, focused, aware of the way buzzwords can be used to deceive, knowledgeable about the issues and capable of parsing the false choices elections often present. Any candidate of any stripe who finds himself or herself representing a focused, educated, and alert electorate has a very different job to do than one whose only pressure comes from the local developer.

Every day in every way our policy makers can figure out methods for getting low income families the medical, economical and intellectual help they need to change their low status to better. But our laws and policies suggest instead that proper people to protect are the millionaires. Furthermore, the rich control our media. We hardly hear anything about the challenges facing poor people in America. 

The midterm elections are the proof of the tactic of denying poor people a voice in our democracy. Can we find a way to go door-to-door to check residency and give free identification cards to all those poor, elderly and sick who cannot go through the process of acquiring identity cards for themselves? We are losing our status as a democratic country where our poor people to have the right to life and opportunity.

Every few weeks the local papers publish another weepy story about the Bay Bridge bike lane, its costs and delays. But the answer for the west side bike path is right under our noses, or rather, right under the road bed. Bridge authorities feed the media estimates approaching half a billion dollars, a price tag that guarantees it won't be built in my lifetime. 

Yet, I will ride to San Francisco from my home in Oakland someday, and unless the motoring public gives up a lane, the only good answer is to hang the bike path underneath the roadbed in an industrial sized catwalk, like a theater flyloft, built from high tech lightweight modular materials. Though my first choice would be a ribbon pathway high above the upper deck flying through the towers, I've decided the under the roadbed is the only real answer. 

Besides being economical and fast, this design has other advantages; no exhaust fumes in your face like the east side, protection from the rain and wind, the pathway deck could be perforated steel so you could see the water below, and the whole thing could be wrapped in artistic cyclone fencing to prevent littering and suicide. The need for wind fairings or deck replacement disappear. 

They'll argue that the shipping channel would be obstructed, but there is plenty of room in he superstructure and unless the Port of Oakland buys more monster cranes from China, finding ten feet of headroom would be easy. Even a boxy tube attached alongside the lower deck on the north side is better than any current design. 

I must address a few side issues; coupling bikes with service vehicles is a very, very bad idea, anyone who endorses the cantilevered design is agreeing to have the path closed any time the bridge district needs it closed. That local bike coalitions agreed to roadbed replacement as part of the project is a huge fail, it justifies the half billion dollar price scare. Plus, the "cantilevered" plan will not hold crowds during major events like the Blue Angels or America's Cup. 

My idea is the cheapest, the easiest to build and would overcome Bridge authority and bike-hater intransigence. Instead of ten years for a faulty cantilevered path, we could have this one in two. 

(I would also like to point out that my plan does not harm the architectural beauty of this great bridge).

The headlines say it all...not even close. "Pundits missed election tidal wave, " "How did pollsters miss GOP tsunami?" The pollsters were not askew in their predictions, they just didn't take into account how the Republicans rigged the election, by gerrymandering (redrawing) voting districts around the country, so they favored Republican politicians. That simple and easily verifiable. 

How could the media have missed this Republican election tactic? Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie and his crew did it in plain sight. 

It wasn't money, negative ads and Super Pacs that gave Republicans out of proportion victories against all odds, it was the GOP's gerrymandering voting districts. This was another case of Republican election dirty tricks and it will happen again next election if nothing is done.

I urge Senator Dianne Feinstein (D. CA) to expedite the release of the Senate Torture Report before she loses her position as Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). Once the Republicans take over the Committee, I fear the Torture Report will never see the light of day or if it does, it will be so heavily redacted by the CIA as to render it of little use to the public. The Torture Report has been approved for public release. The public has a right to know. 

President Barack Obama has acknowledged that "we tortured some folks."  

The $40 million investigation began in 2009 and resulted in a 6,300-page report with a 430-page executive summary of its findings. Reportedly, the SSCI Torture Report found that the CIA misled Congress, the Justice Department, and President George W. Bush about the "effectiveness" of torture methods such as waterboarding, shackling in painful positions, and slamming detainees against walls. The report also reportedly found that those abuses did not help locate Osama bin Laden or thwart any terrorist plots, and were in fact counterproductive. 

The Republicans refused to participate in the investigation and will issue a separate report claiming the investigation was not fairly conducted. The CIA is also expected to issue a separate report. 

In August, an interagency declassification review delivered a version with about 15 percent of the words redacted by the CIA. Ever since, Senator Feinstein has been negotiating to remove some of the redactions. 

In addition to the SSCI torture report, there is a CIA response to the SSCI Torture Report defending the agency's actions. A third report, commissioned by former CIA Director Leon Panetta, is reportedly consistent with the SSCI Torture Report findings, but contradicts the CIA’s response to the Torture Report. it is not clear whether these reports will be released. 

There is no legitimate reason why the Torture Report should not be released now. I look forward to seeing what our government has done in my name. 

One hundred sixty eight years ago this past July, two British warships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—sailed north into Baffin Bay, bound on a mission to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It would be the last that the 19^th century world would see of Sir John Franklin and his 128 crewmembers.

But the Arctic that swallowed the 1845 Franklin expedition is disappearing, its vast ice sheets thinning, its frozen straits thawing. And once again, ships are headed north, not on voyages of discovery—the northern passages across Canada and Russia are well known today—but to stake a claim in the globe’s last great race for resources and trade routes. How that contest plays out has much to do with the flawed legacies of World War II, which may go a long way toward determining whether the arctic will become a theater of cooperation or yet another dangerous friction point. In the words of former NATO commander, U.S. Admiral James G. Stavridis, an “icy slope toward a zone of competition, or worse, a zone of conflict.”

There is a great deal at stake. 

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds 13 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent of its natural gas. There are also significant coal and iron ore deposits. As the ice retreats, new fishing zones are opening up, and, most importantly, shipping routes that trim thousands of miles off of voyages, saving enormous amounts of time and money. Expanding trade will stimulate shipbuilding, the opening of new ports, and economic growth, especially in East Asia. 

Traffic in the Northern Sea Route across Russia—formerly known as the Northeast Passage and the easiest to traverse— is still modest but on the uptick. The route has seen an increase in shipping, from four vessels in 2010 to 71 in 2013, and, for the first time in history, a Liquid Natural Gas Tanker, the, made the trip. On a run from Hammerfest Ob River, Norway, to Tobata, Japan, the ship took only nine days to traverse the passage, cutting almost half the distance off the normal route through the Suez Canal. 

Which is not to say that the Northern Sea Passage is a stroll in the garden. The Arctic may be retreating, but it is still a dangerous and stormy place, not far removed from the conditions that killed Franklin and his men. A lack of detailed maps is an ongoing problem, and most ships require the help of expensive icebreakers. But for the first time, specially reinforced tankers are making the run on their own. 

Tensions in the region arise from two sources: squabbles among the border states—Norway, Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark (representing Greenland), Finland, Iceland, and Sweden—over who owns what, and efforts by non-polar countries—China, India, the European Union and Japan—that want access. The conflicts range from serious to somewhat silly. In the latter category was the 2007 planting of a small Russian flag on the sea-bed beneath the North Pole by private explorer Artur Chillingarov, a stunt that even the Moscow government dismissed as theatrics. 

But the Russians do lay claim to a vast section of the North Pole, based on their interpretation of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Seas that allows countries to claim ownership if an area is part of a country’s continental shelf. Moscow argues that the huge Lemonosov Ridge, which divides the Arctic Ocean into two basins and runs under the Pole, originates in Russia. Canada and Denmark also claim the ridge as well. 

Canada’s organized an expedition this past summer to find out what really happened to Franklin and his two ships. The search was a success—one of the ships was found in Victoria Straits—but the goal was political not archaeological: Ottawa is using the find to lay claim to the Northwest Passage. 

Copenhagen and Ottawa are at loggerheads over Hans Island, located between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. The occupation of the tiny rock by the Canadian military has generated a “Free Hans Island” campaign in Denmark. 

The U.S. has been trying to stake out terrain as well, though it is constrained by the fact that Washington has not signed the Law of the Seas Convention. However, the U.S. has locked horns with Ottawa over the Beaufort Sea, and the Pentagon released its first “Arctic Strategy” study. The U.S. maintains 27,000 military personnel in the region, not including regular patrols by nuclear submarines. 

The Russians and Canadians have ramped up their military presence in the region, and Norway carried out yearly military exercises—“Arctic Cold Response”—involving up to 16,000 troops, many of them NATO units. 

But you don’t have to be next to the ice to want to be a player. China may be a thousand miles from the nearest ice floe, but as the second largest economy in the world, it has no intention of being left out in the cold. This past summer the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon made the Northern Sea Passage run, and Beijing has elbowed its way into being a Permanent Observer on the Arctic Council. The latter, formed in 1996, consists of the border states, plus the indigenous people that populate the vast frozen area. Japan and South Korea are also observers. 

And herein lies the problem. 

Tensions are currently high in East and South Asia because of issues deliberately left unresolved by the 1952 Treaty of San Francisco that ended WW II. As Canadian researcher Kimie Hara recently discovered, the U.S. designed the Treaty to have a certain amount of “manageable instability” built into it by leaving certain territorial issues unresolved. The tensions that those issues generate make it easier for the U.S. to maintain a robust military presence in the region. Thus, China and Japan are involved in a dangerous dispute over the uninhibited islands in the East China Sea—called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan—because the 1952 Treaty did not designate which country had sovereignty. If it came to a military confrontation, the U.S. is bound by treaty to support Japan. 

Similar tensions exist between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands, between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles islands, and between China, Vietnam, and Taiwan over the Spratly and Paracel islands. Brunei and Malaysa also have claims that overlap with China. Any ships traversing the East and South China seas on the way north will find themselves in the middle of several nasty territorial disputes. 

In theory, the potential of the Arctic routes should pressure the various parties to reach an amicable resolution of their differences, but things are complicated these days. 

Russia has indicated it would like to resolve the Northern Territories/Kuriles issue, and initial talks appeared to be making progress. But then in July, Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia over its annexation of the Crimea and the Ukraine crisis, and negotiations have gone into the freezer. 

Moscow just signed off on a $400 billion oil and gas deal with Beijing and is looking to increase trade with China as a way to ease the impact of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. At least for the present, China and Russia are allies and trade partners, and both would like to see a diminished role for the U.S. in Asia. That wish, of course, runs counter to Washington’s growing military footprint in the region, the so-called “Asia pivot.” 

The tensions have even generated some good old-fashioned paranoia. When a Chinese tycoon tried to buy land in northern Norway, one local newspaper claimed it was a plot, calling the entrepreneur “a straw man for the Chinese Communist Party.” 

The Arctic may be cold, but the politics surrounding it are pretty hot. 

At the same time, the international tools to resolve such disputes currently exist. A starting place is the Law of the Seas Convention and a commitment to put international law over national interests. The Chinese have a good case for sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyus, and Japan has solid grounds for reclaiming most of the Southern Kuriles. Korea would likely prevail in the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and China would have to back off some of its extravagant claims in the South China Sea. 

For all the potential for conflict, there is a solid basis for cooperation in the Arctic. Russian and Norway have divided up the Barents Sea, and Russia, Norway, the U.S. and Britain are cooperating on nuclear waste problems in the Kola Peninsula and Arkhangelsk. There are common environmental issues. The Arctic is a delicate place, easy to damage, slow to heal. 

As Aqqaluk Lynge, chair of the indigenous Inuit Circumpolar Council says, “We do not want a return to the Cold War.” 

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Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedge.wordpress.com or middleempireseries.wordpress.com. 

 

 

 

There’s a rough consensus about why Democrats were pulverized in the midterm elections: losing Democratic candidates didn’t have a succinct positive message. To understand this problem, it’s informative to dissect the campaigns of three incumbent Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2014: Al Franken, Jeanne Shaheen, and Mark Udall. 

If you were their Republican opponent – Mike McFadden in Minnesota, Scott Brown in New Hampshire, and Cory Gardiner in Colorado – you had a relatively simple message: “My opponent votes with Barack Obama 99 percent of the time; a vote for my opponent is a vote for President Obama.” The Republican’s objective was to capitalize on Obama’s unpopularity in order to turn out their base and suppress other voters. (Before the election it was well established that Republicans were more enthusiastic about the midterm election than were Democrats.) 

In Minnesota the Republican strategy meant that Mike McFadden had to fire up the GOP base (roughly 46 percent of the electorate) and keep Democrats (roughly 53 percent) from supporting Franken. This didn’t happen: Franken retained his 53 percent while McFadden got only 43 percent. (However, the Minnesota House flipped from Democratic control to Republican). 

At the beginning of the election season, many people thought that Al Franken’s Minnesota Senate seat was in peril. But Franken ended up winning because he didn’t run away from President Obama. He supported the President on some issues (healthcare) and disagreed with him on others (response to ISIS). Most important, Franken had a succinct positive message: “Fighting for Minnesota Jobs.” In the process Franken borrowed a great line used by the late Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone ”We all do better when we all do better.” 

The story in New Hampshire is similar to that of Minnesota but the voting demographics were more difficult: 27 percent Democrat, 30 percent Republican, and 43 percent undeclared. To win, either Jeanne Shaheen or Scott Brown had to retain their base and pick up undeclared voters. Shaheen prevailed, winning 52 percent of the vote, by holding her base (96 percent) and picking off 51 percent of undeclared voters. (By the way, in New Hampshire more registered Democrats voted than did registered Republicans.) 

Shaheen characterized herself as an independent politician fighting for New Hampshire jobs. “Jeanne‘s leadership brings people together around common sense solutions, breaking gridlock to get things done.” During a debate with Scott Brown, Shaheen was asked if she approved of the job Barack Obama was doing; she responded, “In some ways I approve, and some things I don't approve.” 

Like Al Franken, Jeanne Shaheen depicted herself as a job creator. (In addition, Shaheen ran an extremely effective ad linking her opponent, Scott Brown, to job outsourcing.) 

The demographics in Colorado are similar to those in New Hampshire: 31 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican and 36 percent unaffiliated. The Republican candidate Cory Gardiner defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Udall by 2.5 percentage points (50 thousand votes) because he held his base (93 percent) and carried the unaffiliated vote (50 percent). (Udall lost even though Democrats had a better turnout than they did in the 2010 midterm election.) 

Of these three incumbent Senators, Mark Udall made the greatest effort to distance himself from President Obama – in July, Udall skipped a Denver fundraiser for his campaign featuring Obama. 

Nonetheless, most observers agree that Mark Udall lost in Colorado because he didn’t run a positive campaign focusing on jobs and the economy. Instead, the thrust of the Democrat’s campaign was to paint his opponent as too extreme. 

Cory Gardner has been lying to Colorado about his extreme agenda. He tells Coloradans one thing now, but he spent his career doing the exact opposite. In Congress, Gardner continues to sponsor a personhood bill that would ban common forms of birth control and outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.

Udall’s reelection strategy caused the DENVER POST to decry the Democrat’s “obnoxious, one-issue campaign” and to endorse Gardiner. On election night one Udall supporter admitted, “I voted for [Udall]…[But] I don’t think it was a positive campaign and that was upsetting.” 

 

In these three states, Republicans accused the Democratic incumbent of voting with Obama “99 percent of the time.” (It was the standard GOP barb wherever a Democratic incumbent was involved.) Franken and Shaheen finessed this tactic, but Udall didn’t. In each state there were anti-incumbent ads heavily funded by Republican dark money groups – Colorado was the second most expensive Senate race at $94M and New Hampshire was the eighth most expensive at $47M. Nonetheless, looking back on these three races, it seems that Franken and Shaheen won because they had a succinct positive message and Udall didn’t. In Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Colorado, Democrats turned out. What decided the races in New Hampshire and Colorado were the votes of independents. In Colorado they weren’t moved by Udall’s negative campaign. 

Looking forward to 2016, what happened in Colorado serves as an important lesson for Democrats. Winning Democratic candidates must have a succinct positive message. 

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Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net 

 

Aside from the "war on drugs" begun as far back as Richard Nixon and in spite of its hypocrisy as well as its draconianism, I do not believe that illegal drugs, alcohol, and appetite suppressants are good for persons with mental illness.  

I have seen persons with mental illness being destroyed by drugs. One of the less than picturesque aspects of this is the loss of teeth. I have seen someone to my knowledge much younger than I who looks like a ninety year old person. That person was missing her teeth, and her face was shriveled up like a prune. And I believe that woman is in her thirties or forties.  

There ought to be no moral judgment in connection with this. Addiction to drugs doesn't automatically make a person depraved. Unfortunately, the court system hasn't discovered this yet.  

For someone with mental illness, narcotics and alcohol are more of a temptation because of the built-in misery brought about by the illness and the medication side-effects. I knew someone who had severe depression, which was not adequately abated by medication, and that person was addicted to methamphetamine for a long time. (That person eventually got into recovery and had become stabilized in later years, to the best of my knowledge.)  

People do recover, and must recover if they are not to be killed in slow or fast decline caused by these habits.  

If someone has a mental illness, it is much harder for them to get off of substances. This is because the narcotic is partly addressing the original problem created by the mental illness.  

I am not going to preach to the millions of people who use drugs and who do not have a problem with it. It seems odd that one would automatically curse illegal drugs that make you feel good in favor of those created by the multibillion dollar drug companies that make you feel like crap.  

Prescription drugs have caused numerous deaths, especially when they are combined with alcohol. Just because something is manufactured by a government approved corporation and is not illegal doesn’t make it automatically safe to take.  

However, marijuana isn't good for people with schizophrenia because it can increase paranoia and other symptoms. Marijuana, being to some extent a "psychedelic," can really worsen symptoms of psychosis.  

Nationwide, there has been a surge of addiction to prescription painkillers mainly among the general public. This situation is eating away at people's lives and has severe economic consequences.  

Thus, just because a drug is a prescription drug, it doesn't automatically make it a "good" drug. That said, in my experience I am much better off taking the medications prescribed than I would be if I were to take street drugs. I have a good psychiatrist, who, like many doctors, is conscious of the potential for drug abuse.  

A person with mental illness, or anyone for that matter, must be very careful what he or she is ingesting and should not automatically assume that it is safe because a physician or psychiatrist is prescribing it.  

Concerning drug addiction, just as with the dreaded tobacco habit, you are better off not trying it in the first place--you cannot safely anticipate that you are "strong enough" to overcome an addiction.  

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As always, my books are for sale on Amazon, including but not limited to "Instructions for Dealing with Schizophrenia; a Self-Help Manual." And coming within the next six months, I have an exciting new book manuscript in the works.  

 

Some more thoughts on the 2014 Oakland mayoral election before we move into the Mayor Libby Schaaf era:

Congratulations to Ms. Schaaf, not only for her victory, but also for running a campaign that did not bend the rules or outright cheat to win, at least as far as I can see. I'll probably have more to say about that campaign at a later time, but for now that's enough and-in my thinking-a lot.

Congratulations, as well, to Mayor Jean Quan for the graciousness she showed in defeat. Unlike former State Senator Don Perata, who continues to publicly pout about the results of the 2010 mayoral election, Ms. Quan did not make excuses for her defeat or put the blame on ranked choice voting. That, along with the mayor's decision to join Ms. Schaaf in a joint post-election press conference, will go along way towards assuaging the bitterness among her followers that inevitably results from a hard-fought election contest. 

Ms. Quan's public pledge of cooperation in the transition from the Quan Administration to the Schaaf Administration will be good for Oakland government and, therefore, good for Oakland as a whole. We have seen how the refusal of Republicans and conservatives to accept the presidency of Barak Obama has paralyzed the national government and, in turn, prevented it from passing needed legislation that in previous years would have gotten bi-bartisan support. We should fight like hell for our principles and policies, without a doubt but we should also be wise enough to work out compromises where such compromises do not violate those principles, and can do the most good for the many. 

Contrast Ms. Quan's post-election attitude and actions with Governor Jerry Brown, who took the public records of the Oakland mayoral office with him when he left City Hall in 2007, forcing then-Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums have to start virtually from scratch at the start of his term and setting him back months in getting a handle on the governing of the city. 

As much as anything else, Ms. Quan's actions immediately following her defeat show both her character and how much she cares for Oakland and its future. Let's hope that-after a suitable period of rest-she can find suitable activities to benefit both herself and the city. 

In stark contrast, for me, the biggest disappointment of the mayoral election was Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan-not in her defeat or the way she reacted to her defeat, but in the way she handled-or failed to handle-the allegations raised against her of campaign finance improprieties. 

In case you missed it, Matt Artz of the Bay Area News Group (Tribune and Contra Costa Times) reported in late June allegations that Ms. Kaplan illegally siphoned funds from a ballot measure committee under her control to help finance her runs for mayor in 2010 and 2014 ("Kaplan Kills Scrutinized Independent Campaign Fund" Contra Costa Times June 21, 2014 [http://www.contracostatimes.com/east-county-times/ci_26010907/kaplan-kills-scrutinized-independent-campaign-fund]). 

While I stress that these remain unproven allegations only, both the sources and the reporting on them appear credible, at the very least. Credible enough to merit independent investigation. Such investigation is pending. 

Meanwhile, after both mayoral candidates Dan Siegel and Joe Tuman raised the issue at an early October debate at the Montclair Presbyterian Church, Ms. Kaplan denied the allegations, saying that she had already addressed them "many times before." 

If the Councilmember did, it was news to me, as I had been attending most of the mayoral debates and monitoring the news accounts of the campaign, and hadn't heard her speak to the issue personally until the Montclair debate. Ms. Kaplan did send out her campaign manager, Jason Overman, to speak for her and answer the allegations when they were first raised by Mr. Artz in June, but this was serious enough to warrant the Councilmember's reply herself, not that of an aide. 

The heart of the allegations were that campaign consultants hired for the ballot measure committee actually worked, instead, on Ms. Kaplan's two mayoral campaigns. There was, therefore, an easy way to refute the allegations and put them to rest for all time. Ms. Kaplan could have produced the relevant time sheets that showed exactly what the consultants in question worked on at the time they were being paid to work on the ballot measures. 

One can come up with no reason why she would not produce such employee records if they would have exonerated her, as that would have immediately put the allegations to rest. Ms. Kaplan's failure to produce such records either shows that the allegations were, in fact, true, or else her campaign and the ballot measure committee were guilty of such shoddy bookkeeping in keeping track of its employees that they could not prove who was working on what. Either way, the failure to produce the employee records didn't look good for someone aspiring to be the mayor of Oakland, and that may have played some part in dropping Ms. Kaplan from a leader in the polls to defeat at the ballot box. 

Ms. Kaplan's actions-and inactions-in this matter are particularly disappointing because early in her political career, she campaigned as a "clean government" advocate who looked like she might work to end Oakland's long-standing practices of political corruption. That seems a lost part of her portfolio and resumé now, no matter what happens in the future. In fact, the unanswered allegations alone were what allowed Councilmember Schaaf to sieze the "clean government" issue from Ms. Kaplan, and what probably led directly to the East Bay Express endorsement of Ms. Schaaf over Ms. Kaplan, an action which certainly contributed to Ms. Kaplan's defeat. 

Two election oversight organizations-the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the Oakland Public Ethics Commission-are currently investigating the Kaplan campaign allegations. Unless both of them clear Ms. Kaplan unequivocally, look for the issue to come up again when she is up for re-election in two years as Oakland's At-Large City Councilmember. This is not going to go away quietly. 

Finally, the story of the 2014 Oakland mayoral race was not just about the major players who came in one-two-and-three, but also about the "other" candidates who had no discernable chance of winning, but had other reasons for running. 

The biggest and most pleasant surprise in the race was former Occupy Oakland media person Jason "Shake" Anderson. In an unintended ironic take on his nickname, Mr. Anderson was decidedly shakey in his first debate appearances, nervous and fumbling in his presentations and often inarticulate in his arguments. But he learned and grew during the campaign, so much so that by October, he was confident enough to suggest at more than one forum that he respected the achievements of Libby Schaaf and other opponents so much that he would gladly hire them in his administration after he won the election. I still don't know enough about Mr. Anderson's politics or qualifications to make an adequate judgment, but he's certainly shown the promise to make major contributions to Oakland, should he choose to do so in the future. 

At the other end of the spectrum, there are some people who thought the oddest candidate in the Oakland mayoral race was Peter Liu. I'm not one of them. There are folks who say outrageous things just to get your attention in order to say what they really have on their minds. Mr. Liu seemed to say outrageous things just so he could get our attention in order to say even more outrageous things. I won't repeat any of them, since that only seems to encourage him. Mr. Liu gained notriety only because we chose to take note of him. Maybe if we ignore him, he'll simply go away. Meantime, if that's all it takes to keep Oakland amused, I'm going to start to sell tickets to watch the fellow who turns whirling-dirvish circles in his tracks while begging for money in the median at International and 82nd. 

Meantime, fortunately, the public already seemed to generally ignore the other folks from Occupy Oakland to "run" a dog for mayor in the 2014 race. Like many things about Occupy, I fail to see the point they were trying to make. If it was to make a joke out of Oakland's selection of our next city leader, it didn't succeed. But maybe the Occupy Oakland folks were trying to do something entirely different. Perhaps it takes someone younger than me or smarter-or both-to understand. 

One of the odder campaigns run was by Oakland business executive Ken Houston, and that has carried over into the off-season. This week Heather Ehmke, Houston's campaign manager, wrote a Facebook post blasting the fund-raising activities of Mr. Houston's opponents. 

"Here are the campaign funds raised by the so-called top 2014 mayoral candidates per East Bay Express," Ms. Ehmke wrote. "Libby Schaaf, $442,248. Jean Quan, $419,285. Bryan Parker, $392,902. Joe Tuman, $266,615. Dan Siegel, $206,784. Ruby Courtney [sic] $150,555. And 14th place 'lower-tier' candidate Saied Karamooz, $401,000. Ken Houston raised $0. Why are Oaklanders beholden to the ones who spend the most money? We must stop voting like sheep!" 

Ms. Ehmke knows all of these campaign finance figures from the opposing camps because the East Bay Express was able to get them from the individual candidate campaign finance reports filed with the Oakland City Clerk's office. 

But would you care to guess which of the eight candidates Ms. Ehmke listed did not file a single campaign finance report with the Clerk's office? That's right. Her candidate, Ken Houston. 

We're left having to take Ms. Ehmke's word that Mr. Houston raised no money for his mayoral campaign. But how is that possible? 

We know Mr. Houston spent money on his campaign, as he did such things as operate a website, drive around to campaign events, and hand out cases of bottled water to Oakland residents. Even if all of this activity was made possible by from non-monetary contributions, it still was supposed to be listed on the finance report. So if Mr. Houston raised $0, as Ms. Ehmke contends, what was spent on his campaign, and how was it paid for? 

Finally, in answer to one of Ms. Ehmke's charges-and this is really finally for the time being-Mr. Karamooz loaned his campaign $400,000, spent $2,600, total, on his campaign, and paid the remainder back to himself after the election was over. He ended up contributing some of the smartest, and most memorable, observations of the debate, including the one where he accused his opponents of being "coin-operated politicians." Ms. Ehmke and Mr. Houston could learn a lot from Mr. Karamooz about how to make your point in a campaign without making a yourself into an object of ridicule. 

Anyways, that's enough for now. More, later.

What a preposterous, prolonged, pretentious pile-up of portentous poppycock! Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's latest movie, is visually spellbinding, resolutely inconsistent, exasperatingly illogical, and ultimately unsatisfying. Here is the plot in an astronautshell: The Earth is a goner but a heroic pilot and Intergalactic Escape Hatch will save humanity. Wormholes and technology to the rescue!  

 

Wired magazine offers the following synopsis: "The story . . . is set in a dystopian near future when crops have failed and humanity is on the verge of extinction. A former astronaut gets recruited for one last flight, a desperate attempt to reach other star systems where humans can once again thrive." 

The basic premise of Nolan's three-hour enterprise is so disturbing that it could give rise to a new term: misterranic ("Earth-hating")—a film based on the unsettling premise that Terra, planet Earth, deserves to be a target for ridicule. 

Here are a few of the misterranic quotes taken from the film and its attendant publicity posters: 

"Mankind was born on the Earth. We were never meant to die here." 

"This world's a tragedy. It's been telling us to leave for a while." 

"Your daughter's generation will be the last to survive on Earth." 

"We've forgotten who we are: explorers, pioneers—not caretakers." 

"We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it." 

"We used to look up at the stars. Now we look down at the dirt." 

"We'll find a way. We always have." 

"We are explorers. It's in our blood." 

"We're still pioneers. We've barely begun."  

"Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us for our destiny lies above us." 

"Mankind's next step will be our greatest." 

"Empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight." 

In the director's memorable 2000 masterpiece, Memento, much of the film's intellectual pleasure derives from the retrospective untangling of an intricate time-line entwined in an ingenious plot. In Momento's wormhole of amnesia and recollection, the maelstroms of dismembered memories all tie together—eventually. It's a jigsaw puzzle where—with time, effort, and due diligence—everything all fits together. 

With Interstellar, however, viewers may stumble away from the experience feeling the same kind of frustration that accompanies an attempt to assemble a piece of living room furniture purchased from IKEA. 

Warning: Spoiler Alerts  

Matthew McConaughey stars as a Gary-Cooper-like former NASA space pilot named, well, "Cooper." His ten-year-old daughter, Murphy, is a strong-willed math prodigy who insists her upstairs bedroom is haunted by a poltergeist. Why? Because one entire wall of Murph's bedroom is filled with a floor-to-ceiling array of books and, every now and then, a book or two will mysteriously pop off the shelves and crash to the floor. In her notebook, Murph sketches patterns of the spaces created by the displaced books. Her notes resemble binary code. 

Cooper, who is trying to cut it as a corn farmer in a world where every other crop has failed and the days of corn (and all Earthly farming) are numbered, sees nothing in his future but the looming clouds of apocalyptic dust storms. Until, that is, he stares into Murph's sketchbook. 

"Binary codes!" he exclaims, "These are coordinates!" 

Grabbing a handy map, Cooper uses the coded coordinates to draw a circle around the location in the middle of nowhere and sets out with in the middle of the night to discover what lies at the end of the encrypted poltergram. 

What he discovers is a hidden underground NASA rocket base. By an amazing coincidence, it's being run by one of Cooper's old buds from NASA, Professor Brand (Michael Caine). Why is the base hidden in the middle of nowhere? Because the government is trying to hide evidence of a budget-busting operation that the public believes was shut down years ago. (As if a rocket launch is something that could be hidden from public view.) For some reason, teachers at Murph's school are now instructing their pupils that there never was a space program and the US landing on the moon was a staged hoax designed to trick the Russians into bankrupting themselves by building competing space rockets! 

Security forces at the hidden NASA base naturally want to know how Cooper and Murph managed to find thieir secret operation. Dad and daughter are at a loss. They mumble something about gravitational force fields. Fortunately (not to mention, improbably) NASA just happens to have interstellar rocket sitting on its launch pad in the next room, raring to go. All they need is a pilot. Brand kicks the plot along by telling Cooper (and the audience): "You were the best pilot we ever had. Get out there and save the world." 

(We now interrupt this review for a consistency question. If Prof. Brand needed a pilot and he knew Cooper was "the best," why didn't he try to reach Cooper with a phone or email? Instead, Brand and NASA sit around and wait for Cooper's daughter to provide her father with an encrypted message that could only be divined by tracing the pattern of missing books and studying lines of sand piled on the bedroom floor.) 

One thing is certain: Cooper must be "the best pilot" NASA ever had because Nolan shows him hopping into the commander's seat and taking off without any briefing on the mission and no training in the operation of a never-before-flown spacecraft. 

Cooper has signed up for what could be a one-way mission (There is a Plan A and a Plan B.) Under one of the plans, the astronauts save the human race by populating a barren (but human-friendly) planet with a human community re-created from several metal barrels filled with fertilized human eggs cryogenically frozen to survive years of space travel. 

(Consistency question: It is unexplained how the astronauts might carry these thousands of frozen ovum to conception since the brave quartet that crews the mission includes only one woman—and Anne Hathaway's character, Amelia Brand (she's the professor's daughter), seems incapable of maintaining much of a romantic interest, let alone serving as a literal Earth Mother, charged with deploying the mission's only available womb to repopulate an entire surrogate planet.) 

The fifth member of the interstellar crew is a computerized robot—one of the most poorly conceived, unconvincing and uncharismatic machines ever to appear in a sci-fi flick. The robot, CASE, is a thick, walking slab with a voice so unremarkable that it is often difficult to distinguish when it is a crewmember speaking or whether it is the robot. The only sure way to determine that it is the robot speaking is the screen that serves as the robot's face. It resembles the screen on 1982 Commodore 64 home computer—a blank square that fills up with typed white letters whenever the robot needs to say something. (But wait! There's really no need to type the message on the screen because it has already been spoken!) 

Somehow the same inexplicable but plot-handy force that told Cooper to hone in on NASA's hidden space-cave (a force referred to throughout as 'They" or "Them") also has revealed to NASA the existence of a wormhole that makes it possible for rockets to take a shortcut through intergalactic space and explore 12 potential replacement planets on the flipside of the known galaxy. 

Our daring astronauts blast off on their mission with full knowledge that—as they travel in close proximity to the black hole—time will be distorted by gravity and they will age slower than the families they left behind on Earth. 

Even deep in space, a single one-hour exploratory mission on the surface of a watery planet will register as decades for the single astronaut left behind on the mother ship. So, when the expeditionary team returns to the mother-craft, their colleague greets them as an old man. 

The time-shift angle plays out to great emotional advantage when Cooper watches a series of long-delayed recorded messages sent by his children back on Earth. Cooper sobs as he watches his children age before his eyes, from one message to the next. 

Once through the wormhole, adventures on a prospective Brave New Planet ensue. Unfortunately, the chosen planet turns out to be cold and inhospitable, owing to an unexpected betrayal by a previous astronaut. At this point, Nolan inserts a completely unnecessary 20-minute subplot involving an explorer named Dr. Mann (an uncredited Matt Damon in a compelling, villainous cameo). If nothing else, the subplot allows the audience to watch two space-suited astronauts battle one another mano-a-mano over the surface of a semi-frozen planet. 

There is an explosion (always a good way to kick the plot along): The return to Earth is endangered. Cooper makes a noble gesture that seems suicidal. He plunges toward his doom inside the black hole but, just as his spaceship disintegrates around him, he is rescued by an array of Hollywood special effects. Surrounded by flashing CGI lights and calamitous sound effects, Cooper finds himself drifting in space. Suddenly, without explanation, he begins to plunge down a Cosmic Elevator Shaft until he comes to rest in a fifth-dimensional viewing gallery that allows him to peer into his ten-year-old daughter's bedroom. Caught behind the "haunted" cryptographic bookshelf, Cooper tries to get Murph's attention. (Actually, thanks to the simultaneity of the relativistic time-gravitational continuum, there are now two Murph's: the ten-year-old version and a 23-year-old version. Both show up in the bedroom as Cooper bangs and shouts only inches away—um, relatively speaking.) 

Is Cooper banging his fists in hopes of gaining Murph's attention by dislodging some books? (Cool revelation: That would mean that Murph's "poltergeist" was actually her father reaching out from another dimension!) Dislodging some books could produce a "binary declaration" that would signal Coop's presence and perhaps make it possible for Murph to decode the message and free Cooper to leap through the confines of his multi-dimensional clothes closet and throw himself into her arms. This really appears as a possibility, since Nolan shows us a close-up of several volumes of Murph's books being jostled from their position by Cooper's hammering fists. But no…. 

You can forget all about that binary-code-hidden-in-the-bookshelves plot device. For some reason, the 23-year-old version of Murph now intuits that it is not the bookshelf that is the key to her father's whereabouts, but the wristwatch that he gave her on the night of his departure for space. Plucking the wristwatch from its perch on the enchanted bookshelf, Murph notices that the secondhand is moving erratically, jumping forward and backwards abruptly. Being a math prodigy, she quickly concludes that the secondhand is clicking out messages in Morse code! Nolan fails to show us how Cooper, on his side of the dimensional wall, manages to pull off this tick-tocky magic trick. 

Armed with this new information, Murph hops in the family pick up and drives all night to the hidden NASA bunker (where she is now employed as an assistant to Professor Brand). Rushing into what looks like high school science classroom, Murph approaches a blackboard—a frikin' 20^th century blackboard!—covered with portentous-looking equations. She swipes a wet cloth over the blackboard and begins scrolling a new line of notations. 

By the next morning—algebra-cadabra!—her work at the chalkboard done, Murph is seen charging down NASA's corridors with a fistful of paper printouts that she starts throwing into the air while crowing that she has made a major discovery. 

In the meantime, Cooper has been inexplicably released from his fifth-dimensional chamber of horrors and deposited alone back in space—inexplicably orbiting somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn. 

Fortunately for Cooper, "Murphy's Law," (or whatever it was that his daughter churned out on those flying scraps of paper) has somehow alerted NASA to the location of Cooper's orbiting body. Coordinates! Again! 

As a result we see, in the following order: (1) A close-up of Cooper's somnolent face, eyes closed as he circles in lonesome orbit and (2) A close-up of Cooper's face as he wakes safe and sound in a hospital bed where a smiling doctor tells him (and I quote): "You've had a close call." 

Cooper has landed in a hospital bed at "Cooper Station," a colony of refugee humans surviving inside a small artificial planetoid floating near the rings of Saturn. 

Cooper's reunion with his daughter is scripted to be Poignant Plus. Although Cooper still appears to be in his 30s, he is pointedly reminded that he is actually 120 in Earth-years before he is invited to visit his daughter, who has been shipped in for a visit. Murph appears on her deathbed, outfitted with gray hair, wrinkles and a breathing tube. Three generations of watchful relatives move aside as Cooper approaches and kneels at Murph's side. They share an exchange of emotional pleasantries that ends when Murph observes: "No parent should have to watch their child die." So, instead of staying at his daughter's side in the final moments of her life, Cooper takes this as an invitation to leave. The rest of the relatives remain, encircling the bed and hiding Murph from view as she prepares for her own one-way interstellar journey. 

And what happens with planet Earth? Danged if I know. The last we see of it, a grown-up Murph is hugging her brother and celebrating the discovery that her dad's watch has been sending messages in Morse code. Her brother, meanwhile, is presiding over the mass torching of the family's doomed corn crops. 

The best I can determine is that life on Planet Earth ceased to exist and the only thing left of the human community is the outpost of solitary survivors inhabiting Cooper Station. 

There is no explanation as to how Cooper Station survives—how it sources its food, where it obtains its energy—but everyone looks well dressed, well fed and pleased with himself or herself. This ersatz Earth also happens to have a thriving manufacturing base that mainly turns out single-person spacecraft. Which is convenient, because one member of Cooper's doomed crew, Amelia Brand, is still wasting away, abandoned and alone on an empty planet (conveniently one with breathable atmosphere) and Cooper seems to be the only one in the film who is aware of her predicament. Grabbing a space helmet and a bag of snacks, Coop hotwires a rocket (the gas tank is conveniently topped off for a long trip through a wormhole) and jets off—presumably to save the spaced-out damsel. 

And that, I swear, is how the opus ends. 

Please write me if you've got a clearer idea on what this film was all about. 

Bonus Review: More Spoilers! 

Here is a companion review from Chris Stuckmann, a self-described fan who has watched Interstellar three times. 

 

"A character is a ghost that remains in the theater after you turn out the lights." 

So Christophe Lemaire of Théâtre de la Ville, assistant director for 'Six Characters in Search of an Author' and a founding member of the company, answered the question, But what is a character? ... that came up after his conversation in the Alumni House with Shannon Jackson, director of UCB's Arts Research, that preceded the second and final performance of the Pirandello modern classic--a response from the Company's own ruminations on the definitions, the meanings peculiar to this great play ... 

And from its opening moments, when a close-knit band of quaintly-dressed non-actors interrupts the beginnings of a rehearsal of Pirandello's 'The Rules of the Game' ("not a very good play," Pirandello wrote as a self-satiric note in the script of its penetrating younger sibling) by appearing suddenly onstage--a bare stage, unadorned, but with the visible lumber and sewing machines responsible for its coming adornment--and demanding they see an author, that they get some help to stage their own tragedy, a sordid family drama (or in Freud's sense, Family Romance)--the divide between theater and life, artistic fiction and what people tell each other (and think) of themselves and others is crossed and recrossed, the boundaries blurred, made distinct again, then collapsing before a dry or jubilant remark brings the mundane world back into focus, even in a professional theater, even with a living story acted out by its sufferers of inconstancy, incest, neglect, madness, accidental death and suicide.  

"What is it you want?" they are asked when they announce themselves as characters in search of an author for their story. "To live!" replies the Father, their stolid spokesman. 

So begins an intricate but quickly-traveled elaboration, both theatrical and narrative, of the travails of both characters and actors, winding through the labyrinth of incident and representation, of character and professional personality. And at points, all the apparatus of the theater, dedicated to fleshing out dreams--enormous shadows cast, the foliage of trees lowered from the flies--are put into service for the reenactment of this nightmare, a nightmare for which even the facts are in contention between the seemingly stolid, but self-serving and romanticizing Father and the sarcastic, emotional Step-Daughter, arguing out the meaning of it all and how it can be shown every step of the way, while some of the others--the Son, for instance--step back, evade ...  

'Six Characters ... ' is a phenomenal play, almost modern Baroque in its complexity and sense of asymmetrical motifs, first staged in Rome in 1921--though it receives a stormy reception, with the author himself escaping out a side entrance, it soon became an international sensation. "Along with 'Waiting for Godot,' the iconic play of the 20th Century," enthused playwright James Keller, in the audience at Zellerbach Hall.  

Like 'Godot,' it's in many ways an unusual, "serious" comedy, a shaggy dog story, ending where it began, but never ending, cyclical, aggravated and aggravating. Someone mentioned it as very catholic--and Pirandello entered the world in Sicily with his baptism, later confirmation. Here again it's very Baroque, its "M.O." explainable by a fragment by that Baroque scientist, religious thinker, humorist and critic of representational art, Blaise Pascal: "The Agony of Christ lasts till the End of Time." (The characters in Pirandello's play say: Authors die, we live on.") 

Pirandello, originally a storyteller in prose fiction and a poet, famously defined humor before ever writing a play as "a sense of the opposite ... What you find instead of what you expect to find"--and in 'Six Characters ... ' that's a constant: an actress bursting into tears as the characters hoot her effort to "be" one of them onstage; the aloof director playing all the parts, including the Step-Daughter, adorned with a scarf; the characters themselves living--not rehearsing or acting out--their tragedy for the umpty-umph time, affecting, shocking and strangely familiar, in the sense of a book or a well-rehearsed memory. 

(Nicola Chiaromonte, in a fine essay on Pirandello and Humor, asked what transformation takes place in this kind of reflective art that sees The Opposite, not negating the apparent ... and himself reflects that it directly invo9lves the artist--author, director, actor--as a kind of commentator, ruminator, observer as well, perhaps as participant--a kind of "empty or unpopulated soul," from the sense of ancient personae, the empty masks that delineated the "characters" in classical tragedy and comedy--a witness to a story or play in the making ... ) 

And after the characters have finished their display of living tragedy, the director complains that there's no way to keep rehearsing. "Another wasted day!" Then Théâtre de la Ville stages a tableau of their own, something worthy of a Bernini or a dumb show in a Jacobean masque: Gigantic shadows of the Father with his hat, the Step-Daughter and others of the characters on a drape suspended on the empty forestage, out of which comes the Step-Daughter, catching the end of the cloth, playing with it as she poses, distorting the shadows into further grotesques, sounding her sarcastic laugh ... a final, framing salute to what Lemaire called, before the show, the magic of the theater.

Last weekend saw a very rich musical program at the First Congregational Church, with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Julian Wachner conducting, playing Bach, Handel and Telemann, with countertenor Andreas Scholl singing arias from Handel's Giulio Cesara and Rodelinda as well as the Bach Cantata No. 170, "Vernügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust." 

Wachner, following his San Francisco Opera debut with Handel's Partenope, which featured countertenor David Daniel, a favorite with Philharmonia Baroque listeners, made his Philharmonia debut with grace and humor, acquitting well the various orchestral pieces--Bach's Sinfonia from Cantata No. 42, Telemann's Concerto in F major for Violin, Oboe & Two Horns, as well as the prodigious First Brandenburg Concerto at the end of the program, which featured a half dozen winds and the violino piccolo.  

Wachner repeatedly brought the audience's attention to the excellent soloists, having horn player R. J. Kelley demonstrate the properties and style of his ancient instrument, different from the modern French horn in many ways, with some comments by Kelley ("There're very few people in the world who have mastered this valveless instrument," said Wachner of Kelley), and led the group in achieving a very bright, upbeat orchestral sound on a beautiful late Fall Sunday afternoon.  

He also commented on the music of both Brandenburg No. 1 and the Telemann Concerto, hoping to erase the possible sense that the more traditional Telemann was chosen merely as foil for the Bach: "It's quite a wonderful piece ... the Bach's still shocking, though!" 

Scholler's singing was brilliant, crystalline, sparkling and pointed, with charm and clarity of tone, and an occasional wistful or plaintive edge, quite different than that famous "melancholy" of Daniel. On the Bach Cantata, he showed a great sense of fluidity and continuity To repeated callbacks by the enthusiastic audience, he gave as encore an affecting rendition of Handel's "Ombra Mai Fu." 

Both singer and conductor are also composers--Wachner a very modern artist, Scholl more modest, known for his music to Deutsche Grammophon audiobooks of Hans Christian Andersen stories.  

It was a wonderful match of orchestra, guest conductor and guest artist, a satisfying afternoon.

Cal Performances brought from Paris a production of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author staged by Théâtre de la Ville-Paris under the direction of Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota. Opening on Friday, November 7, in Zellerbach Hall, this French-language production (with English supertitles) brought to life – and I mean this in several senses of the words – this extraordinary adventure in modern theatre. Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, which incited a riot when first performed in Rome in 1921, is now credited with revolutionizing the theatre as it had been handed down from classical times, and inaugurating a modern, challengingly different notion of theatre. 

As the play starts, we see a bare stage, peopled here and there by actors re-laxing before beginning a rehearsal. Some exchange small talk; others silently read their parts. A Neapolitan song is heard in the background, though it is not clear where the music comes from. When the director enters, he immediately takes charge and commands his troops, almost in military fashion, to obey his every order. We will rehearse, he says, Act II of Luigi Pirandello’s play La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game. When one actor asks a question, the director angrily replies, “Is it my fault if the French won’t send us any more good comedies, and we’re reduced to putting on Pirandello’s works, where nobody understands anything and where the author plays the fool with us all?”  

The ironic self-referential impact of this opening is still astonishing nearly a century after the play’s premiere. If it has any predecessor in Italian – or European -- drama, it would be in the two 16^th century plays, La Mandragola and Clizia, by Flor-entine Renaissance political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. There is indeed a strong thread uniting Machiavelli and Pirandello. Both men dared to apply a hard-edged reason to the discourse of everyday affairs; and both were reviled by their contemp-oraries for what was perceived as cynicism. For all their commitment to reason, however, neither Machiavelli nor Pirandello could ever be accused of neglecting the passions that animate men in their everyday affairs. Machiavelli, in his late play, Clizia, chides himself, as an older man, for his infatuation with the young actress who plays the lead role in his play. In similar fashion, Pirandello, in Six Characters, has the Father utter the words, “What misery, what wretchedness is that of the man who is alone and disdains debasing liaisons. Not old enough to do without women, and not young enough to go and look for one without shame.” 

Here, in a nutshell, is the drama of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Or at least this is the drama affecting the six characters, who consist of a Father, Mother and four children, two of whom – a Step-Daughter and a Son – are grown-up young adults. Led by the Father, these six characters intrude on the director’s rehearsal of Pirandello’s play La Règle du Jeu; and they insist that, as characters cast adrift by their author, who neglected to develop them beyond impressive beginning scenes, they have a passionate drama to unfold before the public. At first, the director considers them mad and tries to throw them out so he can get on with the rehearsal. However, as the Father explains the predicament that haunts them as characters in search of an author, the director becomes hooked, as it were, and decides to hear them out.  

The crux of the matter, as the father tells it, is that after many years of marriage, he tired of his wife. Noticing that she got on better with a young man he hired as his secretary than with himself, the Father invited them to go off together, which they did. Meanwhile, the Father and Mother’s baby son had been sent to live with a wet nurse in the country. When the boy was weaned, he came to live with his father, hardly knowing his mother, who now started a new family. Eventually, the Mother and the former secretary moved to another city, and the Father lost track of them. Later, when the secretary died, the Mother returned to the city where the Father lived. But she did not contact him. Being in need of money, she took a job sewing gowns for Madame Pace. This Madame Pace, however, enlisted the Mother’s young adult daughter – the Father’s Step-Daughter – to work as a prostitute in the back of her millinery shop. The Father, unaware that his ex-wife and children were back in town, went to Madame Pace’s shop for sex, and, as fate would have it, he came close, very close, to having sex, albeit un-knowingly, with his Step-Daughter. Only the sudden intrusion, by chance, of the Mother interrupted this ‘primal scene’. 

As played by the actors of Théâtre de la Ville, everything revolves around this ‘primal scene’. The Father, admirably played by Hugues Quester, is a man tormented by this cruel twist of fate, and he rebels against this one sordid moment being made to ‘characterize’ his entire life. The Step-Daughter, flirtatiously played by Valérie Dashwood, reviles the Father for his near-incest; and she also reviles her half-brother, the Son, played by Stéphane Krähenbühl, for his standoffish insistence that he is not involved in any of this and wants nothing to do with a Mother he hardly ever knew. The Mother, played by Sarah Karbasnikoff, blames the Father for everything and desperately craves affection from the Son who refuses to acknowledge her. The two young children – a teenage boy, played by Walter N’guyen, and a girl, played by Anna Spycher – are either traumatized by things they can’t understand or, in the girl’s case, are simply too young to have a sense of what happened. In the end, these two young ones become the true victims of this passion-filled drama. 

The director, energetically played by Alain Libolt, tries to make sense of this drama of six characters who seek an author. But in the end he simply complains that he has wasted a day that should have been occupied by a rehearsal. The director, in short, fails to comprehend Pirandello’s complex juxtaposition of illusion and reality, not in the play he begins rehearsing but in this play – Six Characters in Search of an Author.  

Performed in French with English supertitles, this production of Six Characters might have benefited from being given in Zellerbach’s smaller Playhouse rather than in the main auditorium. Some of the spoken dialogue was hard to catch in cavernous Zellerbach Hall; and in this wordy play the supertitles came and went so quickly it was often hard to keep up with the words. However, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota’s directing made the action visually interesting. When the characters re-enact their ‘primal scene’ behind a screen in Madame Pace’s shop, the Father is literally caught with his pants down. Further, Demarcy-Mota’s use of occasional shadows on a screen, brilliantly illuminated by lighting designer Yves Collet, effectively brought out Pirandello’s complex interrelationship of illusion and reality. This was gripping theatre at its very best.

On hearing Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, Emperor Joseph of Austria memorably told Mozart, “Too many notes.” Well, someone who heard Gioachino Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola/Cinderella might well have said to Rossini, “Too many crescendos.” The crescendo, let it be said, is Rossini’s favorite trick. And he does it well. Rossini begins a theme softly and slowly, then gradually builds up the volume and rhythm to the point where all the singers plus the full orchestra are at full speed and maximum sound to close in a rousing climax. The problem is, however, that in Cenerentola nearly every musical number is given the crescendo treatment. Thus, every musical number begins to sound like every other musical number. Enough already. Too much of a good thing gets awfully tedious. 

In this San Francisco Opera production of Rossini’s Cenerentola there are quite a few good things and a fair amount of tedium. In the title role, French mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes, making her debut here, is good but not exceptional. Her lower register does not project well, though her top notes have plenty of power. On the whole, however, Deshayes gave a creditable performance at the opening matinee of Cenerentola on Sunday, November 9. As Cinderella’s step-sisters, soprano Maria Valdes as Clorinda and Zanda Švěde as Tisbe camped up their roles outrageously, much to the delight of the audience, and they sang capably, though their singing often got lost in the camping and vamping.  

Generally, the male singers in this production outshone the females. Tenor René Barbera was a convincing Don Remiro, the prince who falls for Cinderella almost at first sight when, in disguise, he visits the home of Don Magnifico and his daughters. René Barbera’s head tones produced somewhat sharp-edged high notes, but in general he was a sympathetic and vocally secure Don Remiro. Spanish bass-baritone Carlos Chausson ably sang the role of Don Magnifico, who combines in his character pomposity, buffoonery, and, in his treatment of his daughter, Cinderella, outright wickedness. Mexican-American baritone Efraín Solis was excellent as Dandini, the prince’s valet who swaps roles with his master and enjoys all the perks he gets in the process. Outshining all the other singers was Christian Van Horn as Alidoro, the prince’s mentor, who, in this production, is a kind of eminence grise who from the shadows makes everything happen. Van Horn’s powerful lower register was most impressive.  

This production followed the original design of the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who introduced this staging back in 1969 when San Francisco Opera belatedly offered its first-ever performance of Rossini’s Cenerentola. Gregory Fortner stepped in as director of this 2014 restaging of Cenerentola and was responsible for the exaggerated camping and vamping. Veteran Spanish conductor Jesús Lopez-Cobos led the orchestra with quick tempos throughout and a rousing interpretation of this opera’s wonderful overture.  

Among the vocal highlights of this Cenerentola was the duet “Un soave non so che” between the disguised prince and Cinderella, when they both feel the first pangs of love for one another. René Barbera and Karine Deshayes sang this lilting duet with great sweetness. Two other highlights were Dandini’s amused detach-ment in the aria “Come un’ape ne’ giorni d’aprile,” where he relishes the perks that come with his royal disguise, sung engagingly by Efraín Solis, and Dandini’s coy prolongation of the suspense in his buffo duet with an all too eager Don Magnifico in Act II, “Un segreto d’importanza.” Finally, Karine Deshayes made her finest im-pression in Cinderella’s closing aria, “Nacqui all’affanno,” where the lowly step-sister now become princess of the realm forgives her father and sisters for their ill treat-ment of her. Thus we have a fairy-tale ending, penned by librettist Jacopo Ferrari and set to music by Gioachino Rossini, to one of the world’s great fairy-tales. If this opera’s a bit too fluffy, campy and schmaltzy, well, what do you expect from a fairy tale? 

--This weekend, Cal Performances is featuring two performances of an acclaimed production from the Barbizon in London of Benjamin Britten's opera 'Curlew River--a Parable for Church Performance,' based on the spare forms of medieval Japanese Noh theater and its tragic play 'Sumidagawa,' about a madwoman both acting out madness and consumed with grief at a ferry crossing, classical Japanese Gagaku rhythms and Medieval European Christian Mystery Plays. Noted Britten interpreter Ian Bostridge performs the Madwoman, the music and chorus supplied by the Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices. Friday at 8, Saturday at 2, Zellerbach Hall, UC campus near Telegraph Avenue & Bancroft Way.$30-$90 (discounts available). calperformnces.org; 642-9988. 

--Goat Hall Productions is premiering a new operatic cabaret production this weekend, 'Little Weill Women'--the sisters from Louisa May Alcott's story abandoned penniless on a Chicago streetcorner, meeting some enterprising, hardluck women, with music & song from the Brecht/Weill canon. Directed by Goat Hall's intrepid founder, Harriet March Page, with Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano, and singers Kathleen Barnes, Shelbey Casalena, Kat Cornelius, Marney Margules, Erin McAdams, Paige Patrick, Talia Trozzo & Jessica Wan. Saturday at 8, Sunday at 2, Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Connie Barbour Room, 1606 Bonita at Cedar. $20, $15 students/seniors, Cabaret tables $25/seat (Cabaret tables online sales only). http://www.goathall.org  

--Trio Mod--Maquette Kuper, flute; Omari Tau, baritone; Deborah Pittman, clarinet/Indian flute (& guest artist, pianist I-Hui Chen)--will perform Three Spirituals for baitone, flute & clarinet, arranged by Tau; Eight Bohemian Sketches for flute, clarinet & piano by Karel Husa; Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91, by Brahms, for baritone, clarinet & piano; the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria arranged for Native American flute, alto flute & baritone by Pittman; Peter in the Hood (from Prokofieff's Peter & the Wolf); Rhapsody in a Blue Mod, arranged from Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (both arranged by Pittman for baritone, flute & clarinet) and a new composition composed and performed by Tau, With a Little Help From Our Friends. Chen will perform with the Trio on the Brahms and Husa pieces. The program includes pieces with spoken word and audience participation. A complimentary wine and cheese reception will follow, with opportunities to meet and speak with the artists. 8 p. m. Tuesday, November 18, at the Berkeley City Club Ballroom, 2315 Durant Avenue, near Dana. $25, free for high school students, post-high school students $12.50. 525-5211; www.berkeleychamberperform.org

--"I think it was Tolstoy who said that all great stories start with either a man going on a journey or a stranger coming to town ... " 

A young man (Seton Brown) sitting on a folded-out Hide-a-Bed, putting on his shoe, looks up with surprise and anguish as an older, bearded man (Julian Lopez-Morillas) standing by him offers him a gun ... That's the opening tableau in the premeire Jonathan Spector's often engrossing new play, 'In From the Cold,' now playing at Live Oak Theater through the 23rd. 

'In From the Cold' is about Alex's return to the family home from Japan at the urging of his father (the bearded Howard--aka Ivan--first seen by Alex, gun proffered), who's concerned about his safety. Howard ("Howard Johnson," a kind of Witness Protection Program type of name, in this case, complete with Russian accent)was, it seems, a Soviet defector who supplied US intelligence with information, and maybe more than just information. Spooks (played by David Sinaiko) show up through the sliding glass door of the basement rec room where Alex is staying, along with Alex's high school buddy Damian (Harold Pierce), now a manager at Chili's ... Meanwhile, Alex is a substitute teacher at their old high school, where he meets Carrie (Sarah Moser), his late brother's ex-girlfriend, another teacher, and spends his classtime lecturing--or herding--his teenage charges through his own, movie-filtered version of recent American History. 

Spector, co-artistic director of Just Theater, remarked that he found out that one of the major spies of the Cold War had lived, pseudonymously, across the street from Spector's suburban high school, and that they'd met a few times. He also mentioned his ongoing interest as a playwright in people caught in great moments of historical change--and their entanglement in normal, day-to-day living. 

And his play follows that alternating scenario, weaving together the global and the local in a funny, if sometimes malign sense, following out a truism of Cold War politics: "We'd like to fight the Russians, but we can't, so why not fight these other guys over there ... " If the upshot of Howard's paranoia reflects on the old, wry saw "Even paranoids have true enemies," it's also self-fulfilling: someone always shows up to fill the job opening. 

Christine Young's tight direction orchestrates a motivated ensemble to bring out the best in a funny and thoughtful kind of moral comedy. Everybody's fine, but Sarah Moser should be singled out for her splendid, nuanced characterization of the sometimes wayward Carrie, who pursues Alex as "kind of the Road Not Taken," the reminder of his dead brother she'd broken up with in late adolescence, the kind of nostalgia that floats over the younger characters. (Pursuant to her pursuing, she also manages a very funny walk to the bathroom after a literally hysterical scene, trying to square things with Alex in his basement abode.) Seton Brown deserves mention, too, for fleshing out what could've been a kind of aging ingenue-straight man role, playing the script well, which gradually shows how much more Alex sees than he lets on. 'In From the Cold' is a solid success for Just Theater.  

Thursdays at 7, Fridays-saturdays at 8, Sundays at 5 through November 23, Live Oak Theater 1301 Shattuck at Berryman in Live Oak Park. $15-$25. 214-3780; justtheater.org 

--A confusion of media clips, of voices from broadcasts, speeches ... A psychiatrist, Andrew Peric (Dan Hiatt) is ushered into a palatial reception room by a security man (Adrian Roberts as Gabriel)--he's a native white Zimbabwe doctor, scion of farmers, a farmer himself, alongside his practice ... 

Peric's been engaged to treat Robert Mugabe (L. Peter Callendar), President of the Republic, because--as his much-younger second wife, former secretary Grace (Leontyne Mbele-Mbong) tells the psych, "The President's behaving very strangely right now ... " It appears Mugabe's been afflicted by the apparition of a ngozi, the spirit of a vengeful, unpropitiated dead person, according to Mugabe's Shona tribe and Peric's been summoned as not only the best psychiatrist in the country, but for his interest in African native religions.  

But Grace Mugabe--who, nettled, tells Peric at one point that she is not used to hearing her husband referred to as "a case"--wants something else--the promise that the doctor will extract a promise from his patient, giving the wife and their children freedom to leave the presidential palace. "I'm here purely in a professional capacity," Peric protests, a disclaimer that will be often repeated. "And what in Zimbabwe do you think is pure?" is Grace's riposte.  

And then Mugabe enters, by quick turns as capricious as many a CEO in his mood shifts, showing just under the glaze and sometimes charm of the national leader and hero the boyish expression, seemingly, of every conflicting thought, emotion, including his deceptive, burgeoning self-confidence ... "To the disappointment of my enemies, death has apparently misplaced my address." 

So Peric enters the labyrinth of his conversations with Mugabe--and the hall of mirrors of African Liberation and post-colonial history--as Mugabe one moment seems talkative, open, eager to share information, the next proving uneasy, vindictive ... 

British playwright--former actor-performance poet--Fraser Grace's play, which seems when described to be yet another two-hander at best playing with character study and a media-and-psychologically compressed "overview" of recent history, turns out itself to be something of a hall of mirrors. It's the type of play that does descend into melodrama, in some ways ending by telling the audience what it already knows (from the news), intimating that human nature's always the same, history's the same old dirty business, except when it's a celebration of that same humanity--but 'Breakfast ... ' is able, almost through sleight of hand, to give quick, sideways glimpses into something of the contradictory public and domestic social life of southern Africa in the throes of trying to wrest itself from European dominance, to find itself in the modern world. 

A fine cast works an intelligent script well together, a real ensemble. Dan Hiatt, maybe known to audiences more as an accomplished comic actor, puts in one of his very best performances as the slightly reserved, professionally committed, but patriotic--and to which idea of a homeland?--Peric. Ditto Peter Callendar, who delineates the mercurial, sometimes charismatic Mugabe with his usual skill--and more. Both Leontyne Mbele-Mbong and Adrian Roberts distinguish themselves in what at first appear to be side roles--they take the opportunity afforded to make real characters out of Mugabe's enterprising younger wife, of his deadpan security man. 

And John Tracy's direction, too, is the best I've seen, his longtime interest in technics beautifully subsumed into the rhythms of the text as played out, expanding on them as well. It's an unusually thoughtful work among the plays staged over the past few years by Aurora.  

Tuesdays at 7, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2 & 7, Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison near Shattuck. $32-$50, Half-off tickets available for those under 35, students and groups. 843-4822; aroratheatre.org 

(Putting together the two plays above is, in part, my way of featuring a couple of just-opened, ongoing productions that show in different ways--one a comedy, the other a drama--the upbeat side, the viability of a type of play that I often criticize negatively, common fare along with other more amorphous styles derived from sitcoms and sketch comedy in our professional theaters as well as independent ones. These two are notable successes in their genres--and well worth seeing, both thoughtful and very entertaining.)

Just as the Pacific Film Archive opens the latest installment in their ongoing Jean-Luc Godard retrospective--and 'Prenom Carmen'--1983, script by Anne-Marie Mieville, featuring Maruschka Detmers, plays Saturday night at 6:30), the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael will be presenting the West Coast exclusive premiere of Godard's latest: 'Goodbye to Language' in 3-D, through next Thursday, at the Center in downtown San Rafael, just off Highway 101.  

It promises to be another great salvo from the endlessly productive, shape-shifting yet (under it all) extraordinarily consistent Monsieur Godard. If your sense of his work ends with the 70s, you owe it to yourself to discover an artist greater than the one who surfaced with a bang around 1960--one who's built on that tour-de-force reputation with brilliance, never standing still.  

Friday through Sunday, 4:45, 7; Monday through next Thursday, 7. Rafael Smith Film Center, 1118 Fourth Street--about 7 blocks from the Central San Rafael exit, 5 blocks from the Golden Gate Transit Center--San Rafael. (415) 441-1222; rafaelfilm.cafilm.org/goodbye-to-language; Pacific Film Archive: bampfa.berkeley.org/filmseries/