The Alameda County Registrar of Voters has counted more vote by mail ballots. As of the update posted Friday at 4:38 p.m., District 2 incumbent Darryl Moore’s share of first choice votes had slipped slightly from 40.1% to 39.8%. Nanci Armstrong-Temple, in third place, gained slightly going from 28.9% to 29.5% and Cheryl Davila, in second place, slipped a bit from 31.0% to 30.6%. Cheryl leads Nanci for second place by only 49 votes.

In the ranked choice vote tabulation, Cheryl Davila leads Darryl Moore by 67 votes, 2200 to 2133, up from 42 votes in the election night tabulation. It’s not known how many ballots were cast in District 2, but, at a guess, based on turnout in previous elections, perhaps a third or a bit more of the outstanding ballots were counted today. Tabulation is here: http://www.acgov.org/rov/rcv/results/230/rcvresults_6868.htm

Incumbent District 2 council member Darryl Moore is well short of 50% of first choice votes, so an allocation of second choice votes of the candidate in third place has to be done. That’s currently Nanci Armstong-Temple.

That could change as more votes are counted. This remains a tight race that is too close to call. Berkeleyside reports that the Registrar of Voters is planning more updates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of next week.

Mayoral candidate Jesse Arreguin, District 3 Council Candidate Ben Bartlett, and District 5 Council candidate Sophie Hahn still have commanding leads over their opponents. Both Arreguin and Capitelli gained slightly in today’s count at the expense of the other six mayoral candidates. -more-

Berkeley police said they are looking for a man who allegedly pulled a gun on security guards in the parking lot at the eastern Berkeley Bowl grocery store Thursday night. -more-

(In the aftermath of the November 8 Trumpslide, here is a bit of hopeful news from the California Clean Money Campaign (CCMC). The following is an edited version of the content in the recent 14-page CCMC report, "Big Money, Big Ideas: Which Side Are You On?") -more-

From: James Kelly <jkelly4745@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 7:31 AM
To: unsubscribe@berkeleydailyplanet.com


This a very Trashy. Site. I am very tired of the Sick Ugly Left Wing
news media like your site I hope and pray that the democrats will
Lose in every election until they get their act right. The Clintons should never have been elected. I am proud that Trump. Won
You and your type are UNAMERICAN

Sent from my iPad. From. James. Kelly -more-

Dear Mr. Trump,

I am an immigrant Muslim woman from Indonesia. You might ban people like me from entering the Unites States, but I will not protest on the streets angry or cursing on you. Instead I will pray for you. I pray may God guide your heart and mind to be a just leader of our beloved country. My religion, Islam, teaches me to be obedient and respect the state’s laws. Islam teaches me that a true leader is the one who can treat everyone with justice, compassion and love. -more-

Already there have been reams of article attempting to answer the question why voters found Trump more appealing than Hillary. The problem, however, is that if we ask the wrong questions we will come up with the wrong answer. Both candidates for good reasons were not popular candidates. But Hillary was less unpopular. After all, she won a majority of the popular vote. It was certainly not an overwhelming majority. But had she ran for office in many other countries, she would have won the election. -more-

Most of the planet is mired in disbelief, aghast at the thought of Donald Trump ascending to the White House throne. How can it be that voters would pass the baton from the first African-American president to one supported by the Ku Klux Klan, calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, proposing a total ban on all Muslims entering the United States, mocked his opponents and the disabled? How can it be that such man escaped serious charges for assaulting more than a dozen women and boasted of such assaults? How did Melania Trump, escape deportation or a jail term by violating the law by earning modeling jobs before she became a lawful resident (AP & NYT report). -more-

The morning after the election I had a doctor’s appointment. The doctor recommended an over-the-counter medication to me, so I went to the nearest CVS to pick some up. A pharmacist with a heavy Chinese accent helped me find the best and least expensive generic, which I took up to the cashier, a young brown-skinned woman in a hijab. After paying she said the usual, “Have a nice day.” I said, “I’m trying to.” We looked at each other, and she said, “I almost cried.” Then I went out to the car and cried until I could compose myself and drive home. . -more-

As everyone now knows, on Tuesday, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the office of the President of the United States. What started out as a joke has turned into a real life nightmare; one that will not allow those who feel as I do, to wake up from this horrible dream. I can and cannot see how this has happened, but I won't go into that. -more-

Republicans have created a monster and on November 8th he was unleashed on the entire nation. What are progressives going to do about this? -more-

The voters of the U.S. have made their wishes known, and in about two months, barring the unforeseen, Donald Trump will take office as our President. Many people are terrified about this. However, I believe we shouldn't panic and that we should hope for the best. -more-

The voters have chosen Donald Trump, a failed businessman with no government or military experience as our next president. We cannot rely on polls anymore. While most polls showed the popular vote to be closing, they had Clinton getting the 270 electoral college votes. -more-

Mongolia is famous for its sweeping deserts, its snowcapped mountains, its vast blue skies, the generosity of its people, the round tents of its nomadic herders (yurt-like structures called "gers"), and the beautiful round faces of its children. But now there's something new to marvel at.

Step aside, Ghengis Kahn, Mongolia has a new hero. Her name is Aisholpan and she's 13 years old. The men in her family have been eagle hunters for 12 generations but Aisholpan is the first female to take up this "manly art." As she is quick to insist: "If a boy can do something, girls can do it as well." And, to the filmmakers'—and filmgoers'—great fortune, she goes on to prove it. In spades.

Bear in mind, we aren't talking parakeets here. Golden eagles are huge creatures weighing up to 15 pounds and equipped with wings that can span six-feet and carry the sharp-taloned predator screaming through the air at 190 miles-per-hour.

Otto Bell's astonishingly beautiful film tells Aisholpan's story with all the big screen magnificence of a Hollywood blockbuster. If this were a Disney film, the upcoming holiday season would be awash with Aisholpan dolls, guaranteed.

-more-

'Our Enemies' by Yussef El Guindi, a Golden Thread production, at Thick House

Golden Thread, the San Francisco-based theater company which is the first American company to focus on plays from or about the Middle East, is inaugurating its celebration of its 20th anniversary by staging the West Coast premiere of Egyptian American playwright Yussef El Guindi's satiric comedy, 'Our Enemies'--and this's the show's last weekend at the Thick House, 1695--18th Street near Connecticut, on Potrero Hill in San Francisco--info at goldenthread.org.. -more-

Orson Welles, among others, declared that Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece wouldn't have existed if there had been a Queen Lear ...

Playwright James Keller--a veteran of many productions at the Magic Theatre in the 80s--has continued his prolific career writing plays about the lives of older people, staging them with his troupe Poor Players.

Keller's latest in that vein is in a way like an improvised take off Shakespeare as a contemporary chamber piece, a character study of an aging headstrong woman suffering through a Lear-like loss of autonomy when her daughters confront her with their belief she has dementia and a plan to warehouse her in a care facility, bringing her ire down on them. -more-

Hailed as the “Queen of the Baroque Violin,” English violinist Rachel Podger returned to the Bay Area to lead a series of concerts with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. I caught the Friday evening concert at Herbst Hall in San Francisco. The program chosen by Ms. Podger was an interesting one, featuring some lesser-known works as well as a few chestnuts. Opening the concert was the Ouverture No. 6 in G minor by Francesco Maria Veracini. This, of course, is one of the lesser-known works. Veracini, a native of Florence, performed throughout Europe as a violinist in the early 18^th century. Younger than Antonio Vivaldi, Veracini made his reputation as a violin virtuoso. Reportedly, Giuseppe Tartini, himself a great violinist and an influential teacher of violin, once heard Veracini perform and was so taken with Veracini’s style that Tartini sequestered himself in Ancona until he had mastered a new technique. -more-

The Notorious Silent Film That Caused an Outcry

In the run-up to the SF Silent Film Festival in December, the folks at the Alamo Drafthouse cinema offered to help the SFSFF celebrate the centennial of the New Mission Theatre by hosting "A SILENT NIGHT at the ALAMO," a selection of silent era classics. The event begins this Saturday, November 12, when the infamous Diary of a Lost Girl (Germany, 1929, 113 minutes) screens at the Alamo from 7-9PM.

G.W. Pabst's 1929 masterpiece stars the luminescent Louise Brooks, who also starred in Pabst's 1928 Pandora's Box. Both films caused a furor upon their release owing to depictions of sexual themes and indictments of bourgeois hypocrisy. But those very qualities have ensured Diary—and its star, Louise Brooks—of a place in cinema history. As Henri Langlois, once wrote in Cinémathèque Française: "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks."

The film will be accompanied by live music courtesy of The Musical Art Quintet, performing an original score by Sascha Jacobsen. -more-

In San Francisco Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Aida, which opened Saturday, November 5, two outstanding women singers, soprano Leah Crocetto as Aida and mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk as Amneris, overcame the drawbacks of a dismal staging by trendy Los Angeles-based artistic designer Marquis Duriel Lewis, who goes by the pseudonym Retna. Director Francesca Zambello tried to make the best of this ill-conceived staging, and Zambello at least managed to inspire the notoriously statue-like Leah Crocetto to move around a bit and throw herself into a credibly dramatic interpretation of the role of Aida. With her sheer physical bulk, Crocetto’s Aida will never be the paragon of feminine beauty extolled by her lover Radames. But to her credit, Ms. Crocetto, who has never sounded better than here as Aida, also gave her very best dramatic performance thus far in her young career. -more-