Features

Power outage lasts four hours  

for some residents 

A power outage early Monday morning left 3,000 South Berkeley and Oakland residents without electricity for two hours and another 500 without power for four hours. 

Staci Homrig, of Pacific Gas & Electric, said the outage was caused by a downed powerline and started at 6:30 a.m. Most people had their power restored by 8:30 a.m., but about 500 were left without power until 10:45 a.m. 

David Brower Day  

celebration Saturday 

The first annual David Brower Day will be celebrated Saturday, honoring the Berkeley native credited with making nature conservation a political issue. 

Sponsored by Earth Island Institute, the city, the Ecology Center, and KPFA Radio, an outdoor festival will take place from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way. The free event will include an Eco-Restoration Decathlon, live music, story telling, an Environmental Action Fair, Sustainable Crafts Market, and organic and vegetarian food. 

At 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Lee Stetson will perform The Spirit of John Muir in the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, just south of the park. A special screening of In the Light of Reverence by the Sacred Land Film Project will take place at 3:30 p.m. followed with a panel of speakers. 

Co-founder of the League of Conservation Voters and founder of Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute, Bower led campaigns that resulted in the creation of nine national parks and seashores. He has been credited with ensuring a Grand Canyon free of dams and many national forest preservations, and was an instrumental part of the Sierra Club in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Host families needed for adult foreign exchange students 

Language Studies International is looking for host families for its foreign adult students. The English school for foreign students has a homestay option to allow the students to experience life with American families during their program. 

Due in part to the housing crisis, the school has been unable to find hosts for all of the 800 - 1,000 students who attend each year, according to a letter from Steven Franklin, Registrar and Accommodations Coordinator for LSI. 

Hosts of all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to participate, including singles. Hosts are paid $182.50 per week to provide breakfast, dinner and a private room to a foreign student, and can choose a short-term (two - four weeks) or a yearlong stay.  

The host can live anywhere in the East Bay as long as the student can easily commute to downtown Berkeley. For more information or to apply to host a student for the peak period from mid-July through September, call LSI at 841-4695.