Providing health, nutritious, organic food to children in the Berkeley public schools is a noble and worthy goal, but it’s also a costly one, the school board was reminded this week. -more-
Anyone strolling past a school playground roundabout lunchtime is quite familiar with the great debates that permeate early school life: -more-
The opinion piece by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) scientist Howard Matis (May 2) is not accurate regarding what occurred at the Alameda County Board of Education meeting (April 25) when they agreed to review their decision to advise parents and schools about the radioactive contamination at the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) museum. -more-
The St. Mary’s High track team continued its leisurely stroll through the Alameda-Contra Costa Athletic League schedule on Thursday afternoon, taking first place in 10 of 14 events on both the boys’ and girls’ sides to win the respective meets, 123-43 and 128-53, over its closest competition, El Cerrito. The Panthers’ effort also yielded comfortable victories over Albany and Salesian at the quad-meet. -more-
Rotarians will gather on the USS Hornet on Saturday night to do what they do best – raise money to help people around the world. -more-
Having already addressed its void in the frontcourt with the spring signing of Gabriel Hughes and Saulius Kuzminskas, the Cal men’s basketball team went to work on the backcourt Friday, announcing the signing of Alhambra High guard Michael Lawson. -more-
An armed robbery was reported about 11 p.m. Thursday by a woman who was accosted by a gunman as she sat in her car in the 2300 block of Woolsey Street. -more-
Berkeley High track and field coach Darrell Hampton couldn’t decide which was more important between today’s East Bay Athletic League qualifiers and the Sacramento Meet of Champions. So he’s bringing his ’Jackets to both. -more-
A bomb threat at 7:30 p.m. Thursday forced the occupants of a drug rehabilitation program on Scenic Avenue to evacuate the building they occupy. -more-
Scores of Berkeleyans will travel to Sacramento on Monday for a rally promoting an increase on state spending for public schools. -more-
SAN FRANCISCO – As part of its “Absurdist Season 2000,” San Francisco’s iconoclastic Exit Theater, located in the heart of the Tenderloin, opened the world premiere Tuesday of East Bay playwright/actor Dan Carbone’s energetic but disappointing farce “Salvador Dali Talks to the Animals in the Heaven on Top of Heaven.” -more-
OK, so maybe predicting a win over league punching bag Granada doesn’t exactly make Berkeley High boys volleyball coach Justin Caraway Nostradamus. But after seeing the way his ’Jackets dominated the Matadors in a four-game victory at Donahue Gym on Thursday, the coach’s more presumptuous prophecy of picking up a postseason bid is beginning to look less and less crazy. -more-
“...The window is busted, and the landlord ain’t home/And Butch joined the army, yeah that’s where he’s been/And the jackhammer’s diggin’ up the sidewalks again...” -more-
Albert Lau’s letter in your May 4th edition misses the point. TransAction proposes to construct a new development, which will contain not only much needed housing for downtown, but also replacement of the existing parking, plus additional parking. We are very aware that the interim disruption is a major inconvenience for downtown visitors, and are working hard to put programs in place to mitigate the inconvenience. The existing structure is incapable of supporting additional weight load. We cannot simply build apartments on top of the existing structure, but rather must build a new structure as a platform for new housing. The city and DBA (Downtown Berkeley Association) were very concerned about the county’s courthouse plan, because that plan did not provide for a re-creation of the existing parking. TransAction’s proposal does provide for the recreation of the existing parking. Thus, but for the temporary, but very real, inconvenience, the downtown and the city will be better off with the new development. -more-
Berkeley High pitcher Lillia Bermeo allowed just two hits and one earned run in five innings in a fantastic outing against East Bay Athletic League rival Monte Vista on Thursday. But thanks to her own squad’s offense, she couldn’t have pitched a complete game if she wanted to. -more-
A 22-year-old Oakland man was arrested Monday evening in connection with a strong-arm robbery on Prospect Avenue at Dwight Way. -more-
Yesterday afternoon (Tuesday), our neighborhood experienced a crisis when one of my neighbors could not find his 6-year-old child who had been playing in the backyard of their home. The incident ended on a happy note when, an hour and a half later, the child returned from a trip to the grocery store with his mother. It turned out to have been a matter of missed communications between the parents. Nonetheless, the response of the police in that hour and a half made me proud to live in a city like Berkeley that can call on the incredible professionalism of its police force in an emergency. -more-
Three weeks after hiring Santa Clara’s Caren Horstmeyer to replace Marianne Stanley as head coach, the Cal women’s basketball program has named two assistant coaches for the 2000-2001 season. -more-
Bayer Corporation’s Berkeley site is the first in North America to meet one of the most rigorous international environmental standards in the world, company officials announced this week. -more-
As part of Berkeley’s Earth Day events, hundreds of people joined the pledge to take specific steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These pledges now total more than 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide and other gases that will be taken out of our atmosphere. That was a good beginning, but we all have a way to go. Greenhouse gases are causing the earth to warm. As the earth warms unusual climate events happen, as evidenced by massive flooding and devastating mudslides in some parts of the world and severe droughts and raging fires in others. The rain forests are in distress and island nations, existing as they do at sea level, watch in horror as the oceans warm and rise a little more each year. Severe climatic changes represent a real threat to our way of life and to the world’s water and food supplies. -more-
A 10-year-old boy allegedly brandished a pocket knife at a 9-year-old girl in the hallway of LeConte Elementary School on April 26. The girl’s mother reported the incident on Tuesday of this week. -more-
The Berkeley-Albany YMCA will host its 60th Annual Community Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday morning at H’s Lordships Restaurant at the Berkeley Marina. -more-
The sculpture of an eagle, worth $800 according to its owner, was stolen from the front yard of a home in the 2800 block of Webster Street. -more-
The recent resolution passed by the Alameda County Board of Education seems to have caught Lawrence Hall of Science and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab officials off-guard, in its straightforward, no-nonsense advisory to Alameda County schools to suspend field trips to the Lawrence Hall of Science. Children could be put in danger, the Board of Education advised, by radiation releases in the form of tritium from the stack of the National Tritium Labeling Facility, located adjacent to the Hall of Science. -more-
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco’s unusual and innovative Word for Word theater company takes classic and contemporary works of fiction – not drama – and performs them on stage as theater pieces. -more-
The St. Mary’s baseball team has been hearing the stories about Piedmont High pitcher Matt Shartsis all year, but until Wednesday afternoon, it was all second-hand information. -more-
Your March 27 article “Downtown Apartments in the Works (by Marilyn Claessens) illustrated perfectly greed exhibited by a developer and lack of thorough consideration by Berkeley’s city government. -more-
The Berkeley High boys volleyball team kicks off a three-game season of sorts this evening, hosting East Bay Athletic League rival Granada in its 2000 home finale at Donahue Gym. The 5 p.m. showdown marks the first of three must-win game for the Yellowjackets, who hope to contend for an at-large berth at North Coast Section, if they can win at least two out of the next three, against the Matadors, Foothill and California High. -more-
The public will get the opportunity to walk around Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory this weekend during the site’s first open house since the fall of 1997. -more-
It has come to my attention that the Berkeley school board is about to consider the placing of a maintenance parcel tax on the fall ballot. Meanwhile, our teachers are campaigning for an equitable salary schedule, our parents and students are supporting well-developed programs to prevent retentions, and our high school campus seems to be under siege. All of these issues are of immediate concern to our community. It seems that they must first be solved before we embark on other less significant projects. -more-
I still protest the oversized antenna tower in McKinley Street. -more-
A federal appeals court in San Francisco has upheld a lower court ruling that allowed the merger of Alta Bates and Summit medical centers. -more-
I want to thank you for your excellent coverage of the Berkeley Arts Festival and to respond to Polly Armstrong’s May 1 Perspective piece. I, too, question the attack on the manager’s report. It is the report that should be scrutinized not the kind of paper it is printed on. -more-
The big new traveling exhibition now at UC’s Berkeley Art Museum, “China: Fifty Years inside the People’s Republic,” is in the first place a sweeping range of documentation, and is co-sponsored by the School of Journalism, where the dean is Orville Schell, a China specialist. But it is displayed in an art museum and the photographs are mostly grouped by the individual photographers, so we are invited to consider them as works of art, as visual expressions that go beyond normal reportage. -more-
You could say that the Berkeley High softball team got a “victry” against Amador Valley on Tuesday afternoon. That is, the ’Jackets may well have scored a victory, if they hadn’t been missing an “o.” -more-
Plans by the historic Claremont Hotel to add 90 additional guest rooms have ignited a reaction from neighborhood groups concerned about increased traffic. -more-
I was disheartened to read Monday’s opinion article, “Affordable Housing Projects Threatening to Metastasize.” Mr. Walter Wood’s misrepresentation of affordable housing development is based on uninformed assumptions. -more-
Alameda-Contra Costa Athletic League golf powerhouse Alameda already had the league’s lone North Coast Section team berth secured going into Monday’s ACCAL championship tournament at the Chuck Corica Golf Complex. But with three at-large individual berths up for grabs, the afternoon was hardly meaningless for the second-place St. Mary’s boys golf team. -more-
Rick Young has been doing some long-term parking – without the benefit of an automobile. -more-
Sometimes the “field” part of track and field can be overlooked in favor of the more glamorous sprint and hurdles events. But without star thrower Kamaiya Warren, who virtually guarantees the Panthers two first-place finishes in every dual meet, St. Mary’s High’s ultra-successful girls track team would not be the same high-scoring threat to the NCS title it figures to be later this month. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District should examine an alternative option for the East Campus playing fields project. -more-
Representatives from the city, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Shorebird Nature Center broke ground Saturday on an energy-efficient, straw-bale, 860-square-foot building. -more-
A major earthquake along the Hayward Fault could force the closure of UC Berkeley for a year, resulting in the loss of 8,900 jobs, $680 million in personal income and $861 million in sales during that period. -more-
After much sound and fury, the Alameda County Education Board saw through the tactics of the “Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste” and gave the Lawrence Hall of Science a clean bill of health. The Superintendent of Public Schools announced on the county web page that she will send her son to the Hall during the summer. -more-
Berkeley’s Shotgun Players opened an intriguing and often mystifying production of English feminist playwright Caryl Churchill’s dark, dense, difficult, and at times gruesome play “The Skriker” Saturday at Julia Morgan Theater. -more-
The Berkeley High girls sprint relay team’s weekend trip to Philadelphia for the prestigious Penn Relays was plenty educational. But even in the heart of American Revolutionary history, with the city’s abundance of historical landmarks, it was the actual track meet that proved to be most enlightening. -more-
He’s the pet at Fire Station No. 5 and the firefighters love him, but he’s a lot more than a cheery pal who rides the truck with his buddies. Dylan is a disaster search dog, trained to find people trapped under rubble. -more-
More than five years ago I was approached by the first director of a proposed “Berkeley Free Folk Festival” and asked to recommend potential workshop spaces for the event, which I was happy to do. I explained the necessity of using fully accessible locations, since the event was to be partially funded by public money, to a self-appointed director whose initial response was, “People in wheelchairs don’t play the guitar.” -more-
For 83 percent of the Berkeley High boys golf team, the 2000 season ended with Monday’s eight-place finish at the East Bay Athletic League championship tournament at Oakridge Golf Course. -more-
A 63-year-old man was attacked and beaten on the street around 8 p.m. Sunday in the 1300 block of Channing Way. -more-
It was a most unusual day indeed. -more-
Residents, merchants and shoppers and people commuting via College Avenue are due for big changes next month as the street’s repaving project enters an expected three-month construction period. -more-
Residents and merchants in the neighborhood near 1719 University Avenue (the former Kelley Moore Paint store) are seeking a cure for the latest in an unprecedented wave of high-density housing projects. -more-
Classes weren’t in session, but the halls were buzzing all day Saturday at the City of Franklin Microsociety Magnet School. -more-
It was with considerable disappointment that I read Daily Planet reporter Judith Scherr’s gossip column in Tuesday’s paper (April 25). I and many others had hoped that the Daily Planet was going to be a real paper with serious, objective reporting about the myriad activities going on in Berkeley. You had such a promising beginning with mature reports, which really served to inform. Lately it has seemed that the paper has developed a point of view which is that things are rotten in Berkeley and everyone is trying to get away with something. A report on an interesting and exciting UC-sponsored panel of thoughtful, intelligent people who get things done in Berkeley, discussing their hopes and concerns for Berkeley’s future, was reported in a denigrating and derogatory way. An attempt on the part of the city staff to inform Berkeley residents about many interesting things going on in Berkeley, through an annual report mailed to every address in town, was dismissed as costing $30,000 to create and mail city-wide, and as having a few typographical errors. (I noticed that the distasteful gossip column had many such errors itself.) What about the content of the report and how about interviewing some of the “non-regulars” about what they thought of the report? -more-
Berkeley residents and city departments have vowed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than 2 million pounds as part of an Earth Day pledge to help the environment. -more-
Berkeley High rugger Joanna Hoch scored all three tries for the BHS/Piedmont contingent in Saturday’s match at Fielding Field in Berkeley, but the more experienced Oakridge squad had the offensive consistency to prevail, 25-15. -more-
Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring Testing Datestring -more-
If it were up to the Zoning Adjustment Board, Kragen Auto Parts would shut its doors forever at California Street and University Avenue. -more-
Two burglaries Wednesday took place in small cottages here in Berkeley. -more-
