Extra

New: Area-wide Suspect Search by Berkeley Police on July 27, 2015

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin
Wednesday July 29, 2015 - 01:05:00 PM

The following letter was sent to Dee Williams-Ridley,Interim City Manager,City of Berkeley.

Dear Ms. Williams-Ridley:

I am writing to inquire about the armed robbery that occurred at 2450 Sacramento Street on Monday, July 27, 2015, and the subsequent area-wide search by the Berkeley Police Department and what appear to be other agencies, resulting in the closure of major streets, a door-to-door search, and the use of military-style uniforms, armaments and vehicles.

While the robbery took place in Council District 2, it was directly across the street from my district, and the following area-wide search resulted in the closure of streets and properties searched in District 4.

As the elected representative of Council District 4, I received numerous reports from constituents expressing concern over the nature and scale of the police response. While I very much appreciate the rapid response and determination by our Berkeley Police to apprehend a potentially dangerous suspect, this incident raises questions of whether the response was proportional to the crime, particularly considering the resources expended and the impacts on the surrounding community. I understand that this is not the first time BPD has responded to a pursuit of a suspect with officers dressed in military-type uniforms and with guns drawn in neighborhoods. -more-


New: Large Oil Slick Observed Off California Coast Near Santa Barbara Highlights Offshore Drilling Risk

Steve Jones Media Specialist, Oceans Program Center for Biological Diversity
Wednesday July 29, 2015 - 04:00:00 PM

GOLETA, Calif.— Emergency officials are responding to a two-mile oil sheen off the California coast near the town of Goleta in Santa Barbara County. The slick extends to Platform Holly, an offshore drilling platform. -more-


Press Release: Derry should be twinned with Berkeley - Ó hEára

From sinnfein press
Tuesday July 28, 2015 - 08:58:00 PM

Sinn Féin's Gearóid Ó hEára has suggested Derry should be twinned with the US city of Berkeley in California. -more-


Berkeley's New Management Team Begins Work

Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Tuesday July 28, 2015 - 05:20:00 PM

Berkeley has a new interim city manager, a new interim deputy city manager and a new interim fire chief. -more-


Press Release: University of California Releases Annual Payroll Report

From Kate Moser, UCB Office of the President
Tuesday July 28, 2015 - 10:39:00 AM

The University of California has released its annual report on systemwide employee compensation for calendar year 2014. The report is available at https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/. UC annually discloses employee payroll information as part of its commitment to transparency and public accountability. -more-


Updated: Police Seek Suspect in Berkeley Armed Robbery

Scott Morris (BCN)
Monday July 27, 2015 - 12:46:00 PM

Police searched a Berkeley neighborhood for hours for a suspect who robbed a laundromat this morning but concluded the search without making an arrest, according to police. -more-


Whistle Blowing Rally for Whistle Blower Workers at Berkeley Public Library -- public requests guarantees against punitive action for library workers (Public Comment)

Pat Mullan
Sunday July 26, 2015 - 11:05:00 PM

Rampant weeding decimates public library book collection

Blowing loud whistles and raising colorful signs, library users and members of the public will gather on the steps of the Central Berkeley Public Library to support brave library employees.

WHEN: TUESDAY, JULY 28th, 11:30 AM

WHERE: Central Berkeley Public Library, Front Steps
2090 Kittredge at Shattuck, downtown Berkeley


The public requests an absolute guarantee against punitive action for any library worker who’s participated in the Board of Library Trustees meetings, or in meeting with the library director, Jeff Scott. -more-


Berkeley Botanical Garden Busiest in 12 Years as Trudy the Corpse Flower Blooms

Keith Burbank (BCN)
Sunday July 26, 2015 - 08:47:00 PM

Trudy the Titan Arum bloomed today at the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, garden officials said.

Trudy is a tropical plant and "one of the world's largest and rarest flowering structures," according to the garden's website. It's also known as the Corpse Flower.

Trudy opened a little Saturday evening at about 6 p.m. and was flowering more at about 9 p.m. when garden officials left for the day, associate director for visitors services Jonathan Goodrich said. -more-


New: Irish Families Thank Berkeley

Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Monday July 27, 2015 - 02:28:00 PM

Family members of four students from Ireland who were injured in a balcony collapse in Berkeley that killed six other people last month issued a statement today thanking those who have helped them since the incident. -more-


Berkeley Woman Wins SF Marathon for the 3rd Time

Keith Burbank (BCN)
Sunday July 26, 2015 - 08:45:00 PM

A Berkeley woman today won the women's division of The San Francisco Marathon for the third consecutive time, race officials said. -more-



Public Comment

New: Housing the Homeless

Carol Denney
Tuesday July 28, 2015 - 10:34:00 AM

"we can not transfer people out... " - Thomas Lord

Thomas Lord would benefit by reading the most recent study of San Francisco's homeless/street population, who are indeed from San Francisco. And if he takes a closer look at Berkeley's policies he would discover that our community has for years been "transfer(ing) people out" in a variety of ways. All it takes is the current city council majority's dedication to providing a severely inadequate number shelter beds, low-income housing, and case management money for voucher placement, which has been the case for decades. This is not because Berkeley doesn't have the money. This is because Berkeley's city council majority doesn't want poor people here, preferring to build high-end condos. -more-


Medicaid & Medicare: Facts In Brief

Harry Brill
Friday July 24, 2015 - 10:03:00 AM

Medicaid is the nation's largest health insurer. About 70 million low income Americans are its beneficiaries compared to about 50 million who are covered by Medicare. In California, Medi-Cal, which is what the State calls its Medicaid program, has over 12 million members, which is more than twice the number of California residents who are enrolled in Medicare. Medi-Cal recipients include, incidentally, many small business owners and those who are self-employed. -more-


Obituaries

David Allen Baker, 1942-2015
The Legacy of an Urban Environmentalist

Sharon Hudson
Friday July 24, 2015 - 10:15:00 AM

Community leader and neighborhood activist David Allen Baker, 72, died on July 8, 2015, after a long and difficult illness.

David will be missed, not only by his personal friends, but also by all Berkeleyans who have benefitted and continue to benefit from his efforts. David was one of a dwindling handful of neighborhood stewards in the north end of Willard Neighborhood, between Dwight Way and Derby Street. Whatever remains of that neighborhood’s charm and livability is in large part due to David’s efforts.

David was a man of brilliant energy who had studied English literature, but whose primary passion was science, especially astronomy, evolutionary biology, and ecology. Charismatic and inspiring, contrary and cantankerous, David was also sociable, compassionate, and generous in both spirit and in deed. Although his life was far from easy, he determined to meet every day with joyous spontaneity. He loved nature, especially the star-gazing in the Pinnacles, and I fondly remember our rambling camping trips through Mendocino and Monterey Counties.

David bought his beloved Victorian house on Parker Street in the 1960s. For decades he looked after the local common spaces and even the properties of nearby absentee landlords. He viewed the urban landscape, no matter how damaged, as an ecosystem worth protecting. Though fully aware that it was city policy to let students ruin his and other neighborhoods around campus, he looked after his student neighbors with grandfatherly affection. However, he brazenly confronted anyone who impinged on others’ rights in the arenas of noise and light pollution, vandalism, and other blights. -more-


Editorial

Can Berkeley Remain El Dorado?

Becky O'Malley
Friday July 24, 2015 - 09:56:00 AM

A churlish commenter on Berkeleyside.com, posting under the pseudonym of Shutter, said of Tracey Taylor’s Storify coverage of the “Why Berkeley” event at the new Book, Inc. location: “With all due respect, a series of reposted tweets is a poor substitute for a well-written article.”

I couldn’t disagree more.

This technique, which allowed many photos and a sentence or two from a baker’s dozen of 5 minute speakers, was the ideal representation of the “Berkeley Lite” tone of the feel-good event. The room was packed with Berkeleyans of the older generation, many of whom I know and like, and regardless of political views everyone seemed to have a good time. Berkeley has always loved bookstore chats, ever since Fred and Pat Cody started them sometime in the last millennium.

It was not the time or place for naysayers. Though I recognized plenty of chronic critics in the room, they kept their quibbles to themselves. Panel members with a couple of exceptions limited their comments to gentle reminiscences on the announced theme of “Why Berkeley?”—mostly how they got here and why they stayed. By and large, a love fest.

Presiding over all was genial elder Malcolm Margolin, of the Heyday Books publishing company. Sadly perhaps, I got the most interesting part of my education in the ever-cynical Cal French Department, way back in the day before the school expropriated the name “Berkeley”, so I was irresistibly reminded of a favorite character in a book on my reading list, memorialized thus by Leonard Bernstein: -more-


The Editor's Back Fence


Columns

New: DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE:Ukraine: To The Edge?

Conn Hallinan
Wednesday July 29, 2015 - 01:49:00 PM

“If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia. And if you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.”

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. Chair U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff

“This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power. There is a high probability that he will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO’s Article 5.”

Anders Fogh Rassmussen, former Head of NATO

It is not just defense secretaries and generals employing language that conjure up the ghosts of the past. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used a “Munich” analogy in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a common New York Times description of Russia is “revanchist.” These two terms take the Ukraine crisis back to 1938, when fascist Germany menaced the world.

Yet comparing the civil war in the Ukraine to the Cold War—let alone Europe on the eve of World War II—has little basis in fact. Yes, Russia is certainly aiding insurgents in eastern Ukraine, but there is no evidence that Moscow is threatening the Baltics, or even the rest of Ukraine. Indeed, it is the West that has been steadily marching east over the past decade, recruiting one former Russian ally or republic after another into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Nor did the Russians start this crisis. -more-


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Preventing Relapses

Jack Bragen
Friday July 24, 2015 - 10:10:00 AM

For persons with a severe mental illness, it is helpful to recognize symptoms early, and to steer clear of a relapse before it happens, rather than allowing the illness to sneak up on us. If we are undertreated or overstressed, symptoms can occur and judgment can become compromised. This can then lead to becoming "noncompliant" because insight has been obliterated by symptoms. -more-


THE PUBLIC EYE:Hillary Clinton’s Economic Plan

Bob Burnett
Thursday July 23, 2015 - 06:16:00 PM

It’s the responsibility of a presidential frontrunner to set the terms of the debate. On July 13th, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton did this in a New York city speech, describing her plans to address economic inequality and related concerns. -more-


ECLECTIC RANT: The Nuclear Agreement with Iran is Good for the J.S.

Ralph E. Stone
Thursday July 23, 2015 - 06:18:00 PM

On July 14th, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia reached an agreement with Iran to “to limit Tehran’s nuclear ability in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.” In reality, the negotiations were less about curbing nuclear proliferation and more about international trade and U.S. prestige. On balance, this Iran nuclear agreement is realistic, pragmatic and, on balance, good for the U.S. -more-


Arts & Events

New: Alban Berg’s LULU at An Abandoned Train Station

Reviewed by James Roy MacBean
Sunday July 26, 2015 - 11:03:00 AM

West Edge Opera’s Music Director, Jonathan Khuner, has close family ties to the music of Alban Berg. Jonathan’s father was a string player who launched an international career when he performed in the première of Berg’s Lyric Suite Quartet in Germany in 1927. Later, Jonathan says he debated with his father over the respective merits of Berg’s two operas, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). Judging from the passion for Lulu showed by Jonathan Khuner in bringing this difficult opera to West Edge Opera, I think he clearly prefers Lulu to Wozzeck.

This is a preference I wholeheartedly share. I have now seen Lulu five times, and it never fails to make a positive impression. Wozzeck, on the other hand, can drive me up the wall, as it did in a Vienna Staatsoper production I saw in Berlin in 1987. Since that time, I have assiduously avoided Wozzeck. However, when West Edge Opera scheduled Berg’s Lulu for performance in an abandoned train station in Oakland, I made sure to attend the opening night show, on Saturday, July 25. I was not disappointed. -more-


Barber of Seville: Opera Buffa in Mendocino Music Festival's Big Tent

Ken Bullock
Friday July 24, 2015 - 07:18:00 PM

Every year, the Mendocino Music Festival--finishing this weekend its 29th season of a panoply of musical styles, from classical and contemporary orchestral pieces to big band, from jazz vocals and choral groups to international folk and popular music---stages an opera, inviting the public to the afternoon rehearsals leading up to a single evening presentation, this year producing Rossini's comic masterpiece, 'The Barber of Seville,' preceded by a lecture given by stage director and baritone Eugene Brancoveanu, who also sang the title role of the rascally barber Figaro. -more-


Around & About: Theater--Closing Shows of a Rare Staging of Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline;' 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with a Russian Theater Director

Ken Bullock
Friday July 24, 2015 - 07:17:00 PM

--One of the rarer of Shakespearean plays is in its last weekend: 'The Tragedy Cymbeline, King of Britain,' produced as early as 1611, is onstage for four more shows--two on Sunday--outdoors under the stars (and a Sunday matinee) at Forest Meadows Amphitheater, Dominican University in San Rafael, the home of Marin Shakespeare, whose artistic director Robert Currier directs a cast featuring Paul Abbott as in the title role.

With all the trimmings--a secret wedding, a young woman disguised as a man, a young hero visited by the ghost of his father--'Cymbeline' sounds at times like a compendium, too, of The Bard's plays of various genres, tragic, comic, romantic ... Indeed, academics have long argued over whether it's a Tragedy, as titled, or a Romance, like The Winter's Tale, which it in some ways resembles. -more-


Irrational Man

Reviewed by Gar Smith
Friday July 24, 2015 - 10:07:00 AM

Woody Allen's Irrational Man is a mildly amusing film (arguably without a single major laugh line) that revisits the director's familiar neurotic landscapes through the filter of Abe Lucas, a depressed, alcoholic philosophy professor. Once a famous author (and equally famous as a womanizer), Abe is now reduced to bouncing between jobs at second-tier universities. In the first scene, he's barreling down a narrow country road to the music of "The In Crowd" with one hand on the wheel and the other hand on a whiskey flask. (Here's an odd take-away from the film: Have you ever noticed how "The In Crowd" resembles the gospel standard, "Wade in the Water"?)

In his first meeting with the administrators at a leafy northeastern college, Abe (mumbled to perfection by Joaquin Phoenix in his patented meta-Brando mode) can barely offer one-word grunts to the effusing academics eager to sing his praises. But, although he's ill at ease and monosyllabic in social settings, when he's in the classroom, he is in his element—discussing and dissing existentialism with an ease and panache that leaves his young students spellbound.

Abe is unusual character. On one hand he is presented as a world-weary professor and, at the same time, a disillusioned social activist who has reportedly spent time trying to save the world's poor in foreign lands and also toke time to comfort the victims of Hurricane Rita in the waterlogged precincts of New Orleans.

It's not enough that Abe can find no comfort in Heidegger or Kant, his social activism has also convinced him that engaging in small acts of altruism to solve big problems is also a useless waste of time. Existence in empty; life is meaningless; Woody Allen is in the house. -more-


Back Stories

Opinion

Editorials

Can Berkeley Remain El Dorado? 07-24-2015

The Editor's Back Fence

Updated: Click on These Links 07-23-2015

Public Comment

New: Housing the Homeless Carol Denney 07-28-2015

Medicaid & Medicare: Facts In Brief Harry Brill 07-24-2015

News

New: Area-wide Suspect Search by Berkeley Police on July 27, 2015 Councilmember Jesse Arreguin 07-29-2015

New: Large Oil Slick Observed Off California Coast Near Santa Barbara Highlights Offshore Drilling Risk Steve Jones Media Specialist, Oceans Program Center for Biological Diversity 07-29-2015

Press Release: Derry should be twinned with Berkeley - Ó hEára From sinnfein press 07-28-2015

Berkeley's New Management Team Begins Work Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN) 07-28-2015

Press Release: University of California Releases Annual Payroll Report From Kate Moser, UCB Office of the President 07-28-2015

Updated: Police Seek Suspect in Berkeley Armed Robbery Scott Morris (BCN) 07-27-2015

Whistle Blowing Rally for Whistle Blower Workers at Berkeley Public Library -- public requests guarantees against punitive action for library workers (Public Comment) Pat Mullan 07-26-2015

Berkeley Botanical Garden Busiest in 12 Years as Trudy the Corpse Flower Blooms Keith Burbank (BCN) 07-26-2015

New: Irish Families Thank Berkeley Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN) 07-27-2015

Berkeley Woman Wins SF Marathon for the 3rd Time Keith Burbank (BCN) 07-26-2015

David Allen Baker, 1942-2015
The Legacy of an Urban Environmentalist
Sharon Hudson 07-24-2015

Columns

New: DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE:Ukraine: To The Edge? Conn Hallinan 07-29-2015

ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Preventing Relapses Jack Bragen 07-24-2015

THE PUBLIC EYE:Hillary Clinton’s Economic Plan Bob Burnett 07-23-2015

ECLECTIC RANT: The Nuclear Agreement with Iran is Good for the J.S. Ralph E. Stone 07-23-2015

Arts & Events

New: Alban Berg’s LULU at An Abandoned Train Station Reviewed by James Roy MacBean 07-26-2015

Barber of Seville: Opera Buffa in Mendocino Music Festival's Big Tent Ken Bullock 07-24-2015

Around & About: Theater--Closing Shows of a Rare Staging of Shakespeare's 'Cymbeline;' 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with a Russian Theater Director Ken Bullock 07-24-2015

Irrational Man Reviewed by Gar Smith 07-24-2015