Surrounded by worn chasing hammers, punches and gravers that were made by her father, jeweler Susan Brooks sat at a cluttered workbench and shaped a thin piece of sterling silver with short, precise hammer strikes.  

At one point she stopped and held up the small, square piece of silver. With eyes exaggerated fivefold by the thick lenses of a jeweler’s optivisor pulled low on her forehead, Brooks examined the emerging figure of a dark-eyed woman with long, flowing hair. 

Brooks was making a pair of earrings in her studio in West Berkeley’s Saw Tooth Building, a former window frame factory that now houses glass blowers, potters, cabinet makers and other craftsmen who earn moderate to low incomes by selling their handmade wares. 

“I’ve never been in a building with all working artisans like the Saw Tooth,” said Brooks, who moved in in 2002 after high rents forced her out of her longtime Berkeley work space. “There’s a vitality in this building that you can feel when you walk down the hallways. It’s really exciting.” 

The Saw Tooth Building at 2547 8th St. is in the boundaries of west Berkeley’s Multiple Use Light Industry District, also known as the MULI. Within the MULI is an amazing diversity of land uses, including manufacturing, warehouses, offices, bio-tech laboratories, wineries and dozens of arts and crafts studios, like the Saw Tooth Building.  

However, several planning commissioners and a group of artisans are concerned that a poor economy and rising commercial rents will spur a trend toward developing office space and converting former manufacturing space into offices, threatening the light industry and arts and crafts businesses in the area. 

On June 11, the Planning Commission will hold a public workshop on a subcommitee report on the MULI. The report was prepared by Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein, Vice Chair Gene Poschman and Commissioner John Curl. The report examines office development in the West Berkeley Plan and the zoning ordinance and the protection and enhancement of arts and crafts uses. The report also details what it describes as the “lack of implementation of the two important aspects of the West Berkeley Plan, the inventory of industrial space and the implementation and monitoring program.” 

Changing the face of the neighborhood 

Curl, part owner of a woodworking cooperative, said it’s time to evaluate whether the West Berkeley Plan, a 10-year-old document designed to guide zoning law, is being followed. He said he is concerned that the district is reaching a “tipping point toward gentrification.” 

“We want to evaluate what has happened with the implementation of the West Berkeley Plan,” he said. “We want an inventory of all the businesses in West Berkeley and once we have information about what is going on down there, we’ll be able to evaluate the plan’s effects and try to find ways to implement the West Berkeley Plan more fully.”  

Other commissioners, some elected officials and property owners are concerned that zoning restrictions are too tight and might discourage new revenue-generating businesses such as retail stores and offices.  

Commissioner Susan Wengraf said the West Berkeley Plan clearly outlined what was a fair balance between light industry, arts and crafts and office use. She added that office use in the MULI is below the recommended levels.  

“I don’t think we’re near the limit and there certainly are not a lot of businesses looking for offices in this economy,” she said. 

Mayor Tom Bates said he would like to see the West Berkeley Plan encourage more retail businesses on Gilman Street and Ashby Avenue in West Berkeley so long as the design and architecture are tasteful and light industry is also maintained. 

“I’m interested to see if there are some opportunities to make some changes and still protect artisans and light manufacturing,” Bates said. “Obviously we want to have good land use policy, but we need some additional revenue to continue to provide the services people have come to rely on.” 

Despite the warnings that the days may be numbered for light industry in West Berkeley, many artists, artisans and factories still call the area home. 

Ghanbari Design is a small custom woodworking company just opened its doors on the edge of the MULI at 725 Gilman St. They took over the former Tuttle Manufacturing Building, which had been vacant for years and fallen into disrepair. The building was formerly a hot dip galvanizing facility that thrived during Oakland’s ship building boon during the Second World War. 

Ghanbari Design, a custom furniture and design company, recently renovated the building. 

“This building is perfect for what we do,” said owner Mansour Ghanbari. “There is a lot of open space, lots of windows and great sunlight.” 

He said it was also an advantage for his business to have so many other woodworking businesses close by. “The area is just fantastic. There are so many furniture makers around here,” he said. “It’s good for business, customers can in one stop, interview a series of woodworkers. 

Home for artists 

The Durkee Building, named for the former margarine and mayonnaise factory, is a two-story, brick building at 700 Heinz St. It was converted to inexpensive live-work space in the 1970s and a community of artists soon took residence in the building. By the late 1980s, manufacturing space was in demand for bio tech laboratories that were popping up in the area and the owner wanted the artists out.  

After a long battle, during which most of the artists moved out, an agreement was reached with the owner in which he would receive tax credits in exchange for a use permit that guaranteed low rent for artists. 

The building continues to be home to painters, sculptors, architects and dancers. The studios are high-ceilinged and drafty, but they serve as valued work spaces for the artists who could not otherwise afford to live in the Bay Area. 

Sculptor Donald Torahouich said he would probably have to give up his art if he lost his studio. 

“If I lost this place, I’d have to move into an apartment in East Oakland and either throw out all this stuff or put it in storage,” he said gesturing to an array of wood and metal sculpture that dominate the workspace in his studio. 

Painters Ira and Corliss Lesser agreed. Their studio serves as work space and storage for their large canvasses. The Lessers, who have a 12-year-old daughter, said that in addition to the space, the Durkee artist community has provided invaluable support. 

“I’ve never had such good neighbors,” Corliss said. “As an artist you don’t do things in the normal way. You’ll give up buying new clothes for tubes of paint and most people don’t understand that.” 

A balancing act for diversity 

In a effort to maintain the diversity and vitality of West Berkeley — which besides the MULI also includes heavy manufacturing, residential and retail districts — a committee of over 100 community members, planning commissioners and Planning Department staff attended weekly meetings for eight years. Their goal was to create a guiding document that would shape zoning regulations and ultimately maintain a diversity of land uses. The committee has taken pains to preserve businesses that employed blue collar workers, live-work artist studios and crafts businesses, which are typically among most vulnerable in a rising commercial rental market.  

The result of their efforts was the 225-page West Berkeley Plan. After eight years of arguing, lobbying and compromise, the City Council adopted the West Berkeley Plan in 1993.  

“This plan is a remarkable both for its content and for the process which created it,” then Planning Director Gil Kelley wrote in the document’s introduction. “Its policies aim to reinforce and continue the dynamic mix of industrial, office arts and crafts, residential, retail and industrial activities in this vital district of the city.” 

However, nearly 10 years after the plan’s adoption, several Planning Commissioners are contending that some of the plan’s guidelines never made the transition to the zoning ordinance.  

They are worried that a pattern, which has played out many times before in cities like New York, Santa Monica and San Francisco, is about to occur is West Berkeley. Typically after manufacturing moves out, artists and crafts people move in to take advantage of low rents and work spaces that are easily adapted to their studio needs. Then, as the arts and crafts community begins to thrive, professional businesses are attracted to the area because of the cache the artists and crafts people bring to the neighborhood. 

Commercial rents begin to rise because professional businesses interested in office space can often pay top dollar and “these areas thus lose the very characteristics which initially made them attractive to many people,” according to Kelley’s introduction to the West Berkeley Plan.  

Adding offices to the mix 

The law office of Paul, Hanley & Harley LLP is one of several new office oriented business located in the Courtauld Building, a former paint manufacturing plant. The firm recently expanded from 20,000 square feet to 30,000. The office has a warehouse appearance with exposed conduits and heating ducts running along the high ceilings. Many of the attorneys and staff dress casually as they bustle along the hallways between small offices.  

Law Partner Dean Hanley said the west Berkeley location and the loft-style office has been a plus for their business. “Almost invariably our clients are blue collar and the industrial look helps out clients to feel at home. It doesn’t look like a downtown office,” he said. “We also have a lot of young employees who like the stores and the artist studios. We enjoy being around it.” 

He added that the firm had considered other places but they did not find any office space that was as interesting. “If we were in an industrial park, we wouldn’t want to do it,” he said. “Just office space is very boring, very blasé and almost depressing.”  

The public workshop will be held at the North Berkeley Senior Center at 7 p.m. on June 11th and is open to all interested members of the public.

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 

Celebrate Juneteenth with the Berkeley YMCA with entertainment, African fashions, storytelling with Orunamamu, and arts and crafts, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Downtown YMCA, 2001 Allston Way. 549-4524. 

So How’d You Become an Activist? A discussion with Michael Parenti, lecturer and author, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. Wheelchair accessible. 415-927-1645. 

“Berkeley Reads” Orientation for new volunteer tutors in the Berkeley Public Li- 

brary’s adult literacy program, from 10 a.m. to noon at the West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. at San Pablo. 981-6299.  

Spring Festival Performance by Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center, at 6:30 p.m. at Long- 

fellow Elementary School, 3877 Lusk Street in North Oakland, off 40th St. be- 

tween Market and MLK Blvd. Dancers and martial artists ages 3-18. $5 to $10 donation will be requested at the door. Destiny Arts Center is a non-profit organization that uses arts education to enable children and youth to develop peaceful solutions to violence and everyday conflicts. For more information call 597-1619. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berke- 

ley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 

548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 

Live Oak Park Fair from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Shattuck and Berryman. Over 115 booths with crafts and fine art, entertainment, and diverse food, in a benefit for Camp Winnarainbow and KPFA. Free shuttles from the North Berkeley BART every 20 minutes. 898-3282. www.liveoakparkfair.com 

LeConte Elementary School Yard Sale, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 2241 Russell St., just 2 blocks up from Berke- 

ley Bowl. Great gear, plants, food and beverages, and a good way to support our schools. To donate items in advance, call 649-0419. 

California Writers Club hosts the winners of the 17th Annual Fifth Grade Writing Contest at a luncheon, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Reserva- 

tions required, email cwcberk 

@earthlink.net, or visit www. 

berkeleywritersclub.org 

Peace Activist Lynn McMichaels will show slides and talk about her recent trip to Iraq at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers leads a Boundary Walk. Meet at the Reservoir, Grizzly Peak and Spruce St. at 10 a.m. 526-8001. www.BerkeleyPaths.org 

Ladybirds and Ladybugs  

We’ll collect and release as many adults and larva forms as we can find, talk about the good these beetles do, and learn about the ones who have turned to the dark side, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233, tnarea@ebparks.org 

Keeping Chickens in the City  

David Morris, chicken keeper for over 20 years, will cover the basics of raising chickens, egg production, and using chickens as part of your recycling and composting. He will also cover the laws regarding keeping chickens in the city. Class will be held at David’s chicken coop in Berkeley, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Call to pre-register and for location. $10 Ecology Center members, $15 others, no one turned away for lack of funds. 548-2220 x233, beck@ecologycenter.org 

California Native Art and Garden Show, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Visit a native plant demonstration garden created by using the plants that are native here and that you see when walking the trails of local Regional Parks. 

1096 Miller Ave., (go up Ma- 

rin Ave., right on Keeler, left on Miller.) 558-8139.  

Sick Plant Clinic UC Botanical Garden experts diagnose your plant woes the first Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. www.mip.berkeley. 

edu/garden 

History of Tilden Nature Area Walk through time to the lake and back to discover the story of the lost escudo and more, from 10 a.m. to noon in Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233, tnarea@ebparks.org 

Alternative Materials: Cob and Strawbale, a class on natural building methods, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. For information call 525-7610. 

Walk to Benefit the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation at 8:30 a.m. followed by an afternoon of entertainment, prizes and refreshments, at Cesar Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina. To register to walk or for more information call 800-241-0758, or 531- 6764. www.ccfa.org  

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour, “The Refurbished City Hall,” led by Allen Stross, 10 a.m. $5 members, $10 non-members. For reservations call 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc 

SUNDAY, JUNE 8 

Live Oak Park Fair, see listing for June 7.  

California Native Art and Garden Show, see listing for June 7.  

Faith Community Speaks Out Against State Cuts  

A community meeting at 6:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, 1640 Addison. Testimonials, youth group skits, and performance by a multi-congregational choir. Sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. For more information contact Rev. George Crespin, 843-2244. 

Dried, Salted, Potted and Pickled Learn the cultural and natural history of food preservation while tasting a variety of meats, vegetables, fruit and fish. From noon to 2 p.m. in Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for Berkeley residents, $7 for non-residents. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Rhythm Workshop: Ta Ke Ti Na, led by Zorina Wolf, a master of Ta Ke Ti Na and local drum and percussion instructor, from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Askenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $35. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Community Health Fair, with free health screenings and information, children’s activities and food, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Missionary Church of God, 1125 Allston Way. 540-6713. 

MONDAY, JUNE 9 

Public Meeting on the Ursula Sherman Village Draft Environmental Impact Re- 

port at 7 p.m. in the West Berkeley Senior Center. Written comments should be submitted to Wendy Cosin, Planning Dept., 2118 Milvia St., Berkeley 94704, before 5 p.m. Mon., July 7. 981-7402. 

Community Meeting about the Berkeley Adult School/ 

Franklin Site from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Ala Costa, 1300 Rose St. This meeting will include a presentation from the project architects. Notes from the May 5 community meeting are available online at http:// 

bas.berkeley.net 644-6130. 

F.C.C. - A Social Injustice 

Join the Coalition for a Democratic Pacifica, Stephen Dunifer of Micropower Radio and Aaron Glantz of Free Speech Radio News in a discussion on taking back our airwaves, at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Church, Cedar and Bonita. For more information call 669-1842. 

Native People of the East Bay Before the Coming of Europeans Naturalist Norm Kidder will speak about the cultures and way of life of Native People of the East Bay at 8 p.m. at the Montclair Presbyterian Church, 5701 Thornhill Rd., Oakland. 

$5 donation requested.  

655-6658. www.close-to-home.org 

Berkeley Adult School registration for Summer 2003 Semester opens today, 1222 University Ave., Mon.-Thurs. 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., Fri. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., or at http://bas.ber 

keley.net 

Berkeley CopWatch meets at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Vol- 

unteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10 

Forest Legislation and Actions, a discussion of current bills in Sacramento, sponsored by the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters at 7:30 p.m. at the rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 548-3133. 

Hiking the San Francisco Bay Area, slides and talk with author Linda Hamilton at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going 

Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 525-3565. www.ber 

keleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. B. K. Bose will speak on Yoga for Health at 10:30 a.m. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11 

World Travel: Why SARS, the Economy and War Shouldn’t Keep You at Home, a panel discussion with Bay Area travel specialists at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. $90 cash prizes. Cost is $7, $5 for students. 841-2082. 

Community Dances in Berkeley, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

Wilderness Weekends: Camping and Backpacking in the Bay Area and Beyond with Matt Heid, author of “101 Hikes in Northern California,” at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140.  

THURSDAY, JUNE 12 

Berkeley Farmer’s Market Opens on North Shattuck 

from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Elephant Pharmacy parking lot, 1607 Shattuck Ave., at Cedar, and continuing every Thursday. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Our Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, with Ann Fagan Ginger, on the new McCar- 

thyism that is sweeping the country, at 7 p.m. at the Friends’ Meetinghouse at the corner of Vine and Walnut Sts. Free, wheelchair accessible. 705-7314. 

Lawyers in the Library, at 6 p.m. in the South Branch, 1901 Russell St. 981-6260. 

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers, meets at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave. Fly tying demonstration at 6:30 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m., meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. rorlando@ 

uclink4.berkeley.edu  

ONGOING 

Technical Assistance for Non-Profits A series of free workshops hosted by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, to be held at the Alameda County Conference Center, 125 12th St., Oakland. For information call Breonna Cole at 272-6060.  

Berkeley Community Media announces the rebirth of the poetry program, “Berkeley Speaks” in June. If you are interested in being a featured artist, call 848-2288, ext. 10. 

Figure Drawing Workshop 

Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to noon, starting June 14. This class is designed to sharpen your observation skills and enhance your drawings. Bring your own dry drawing tools and good paper. In- 

structor is Carol Brighton. Cost is $150 for four sessions. Contact the Berkeley Art Center to sign up, 644-6893. 

Marine Biology Classes for students ages 10 to 13, from Tues., June 17 to Fri., June 27, 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Shorebird Nature Center, 160 University Ave., at the Marina. Cost is $90 for eight days of classes. For information call 644-8623. www.cityofberkeley.info/marina  

Educators Academy: Project WILD and Project Aquatic WILD Tues., June 14 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Tilden Na- 

ture Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $45 for Berkeley residents and $51 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. Financial assistance is available. Registration required. For information call 636-1684, or email tnarea@ 

ebparks.org 

Educators Academy: Insects and Crawling Creatures  

From Tues., June 24 - Thurs., June 26, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration is required. Cost is $100 for Berkeley residents, $110 for non-residents. Financial assistance is available. Wheelchair accessible. For information call 636-1684. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Summer Science Weeks: Insects and Plants Count butterflies, hunt bugs, and meet common plant families in California. Monday, June 30 to July 4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for ages 9 to 12, in Til- 

den Nature Area in Tilden Park. Cost is $150 for Berkeley residents, $166 for non-residents. Financial assistance available. For information call 636-1684.  

The Bay Area Shakespeare Camp for children 7-13 years of age, in a series of five, 2-week sessions beginning June 16 and ending August 22. The camp will be held at John Hinkel Park, South- 

ampton Place at Arlington Ave. The cost is $340 per session. After-care is also provided for a fee. Scholar- 

ships are available, call 981-5150 for details. To register for the camp, or for more information, please call 415-422-2222, or 800-978-PLAY. 

Alameda County Hazardous Waste Drop-Off from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 12-14 at Alameda County Household Hazardous Waste, 2100 E. 7th St., Oakland. For information on what can and cannot be dropped off, please call 1-877-STOPWASTE or visit stopwaste.org/fsrecycle.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee  

meets Monday, June 9, at  

2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 

981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

City Council meets Tuesday, June 10, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers. Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Individual Rent Adjustment/Annual General Adjustment Committee meets Wednesday, June 11, at 5:30 p.m., at 2001 Center Street, 2nd Floor, Law Library. Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Commission on Disability  

meets Wednesday, June 11, at 6:30 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center. Paul Church, 981-6342. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/disability 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets  

Thursday, June 12, at 7 p.m., in the North Berkeley Senior Center. Marianne Graham, 981-5416. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/earlychildhoodeducation 

Community Health Commission meets Thursday, June 12 at 6:45 p.m., in the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/health 

Homeless Commission meets Wednesday, June 11, at 7 p.m., in the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/homeless 

Workshop on the Protection of Arts and Crafts Uses in West Berkeley at the Planning Commission, Wednesday, June 11, at 7 p.m., in the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/planning 

Police Review Commission 

meets Wednesday, June 11, at 7:30 p.m., in the North Berkeley Senior Center. Barbara Attard, 981-4950. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/policereview 

Waterfront Commission 

meets Wednesday, June 11, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. Cliff Marchetti. 644-6376 ext. 224. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/waterfront 

Zoning Adjustments Board 

meets Thursday, June 12, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/zoning 

Two-by-Two Meeting of two City Council members and two School Board members meets Thursday, June 12, at 12:30 p.m., in the Redwood Room, 6th floor, 2180 Milvia St. 644-6147.

THE REAL PROBLEM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the Planet’s lead article on the Harrison House Adult Shelter, bad air is not the problem. Families living on the street or in crack houses is the problem.  

Boona cheema, who has spent much of her life working with these people and is aware of all the environmental issues, feels the expansion of the Harrison House facility is needed by the homeless community. If somebody out there has a better idea (land that is available for free and a neighborhood that will be receptive to providing daily services to 130 homeless individuals) we would all be thankful for them to step forward and give us an alternative.  

But if the choice is between having people live on the street or giving them a roof over their heads, I don’t think you will find many of these people—or those who provide them social services—advocating that, due to the air quality, they should continue to live on the street. 

Doug Fielding 

• 

OVERREACTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How can students be expected to deal with the mixed message sent by the co-principals at Berkeley High School? The threatened consequences for streaking may be suspension, expulsion or ... financial reward? The Bushism aside, the draconian measures suggest a serious lack of understanding of young people. And whither proportion and tradition? 

Bonnie Hughes 

• 

LOANS, NOT GIFTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

C. Osborn’s letter (Planet, May 27-29 edition) shook me up with its details that Patrick Kennedy “received $15.3 million in state money for the Gaia building” plus millions more for his other projects. So I logged onto the indicated Abag Web site and discovered to my relief that these monies were loans, not gifts. 

It may be that low-interest funds should not be available to builders of mass construction, but that is a somewhat different topic. If these loans were to be forgiven when not repaid, that would be a hot story. Is there any evidence that this is the case here in Berkeley? 

But thank you, C. Osborn, for telling us about a very interesting Web site.  

Victor Herbert 

• 

TRUE REGRET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gray Brechin must be the one crying crocodile tears (Letters to the Editor, May 30-June 2 edition) because many people truly do regret the loss of the Doyle House in downtown Berkeley. We are the citizens, merchants, historians and architectural preservationists, among others, who respect the historical and architectural merit of the Doyle family home. Mr. Brechin’s portrayal of the merit of the house is confusing since at least three experts testified that the Doyle House did indeed possess historical and architectural merit. 

Berkeley’s architectural history is not only about the wonderful and sometimes quirky architecture of well-known architects like Maybeck and Morgan. It is also about the builder-designer architecture of the working people and the history that goes along with them. What place more than Berkeley should celebrate both its urbane and inherent architecture and history? 

Mr. Brechin should know that the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) does not oppose appropriate in-fill development. BAHA does oppose wanton destruction of historic resources. BAHA sued the City of Berkeley for failing to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) when demolition looked imminent. An EIR would have explored the options available to the developer: retention, removal or reduction. Instead, after an attempt at moving the house to a nearby site, the city permitted the developer’s demolition of a building with historic merit and a lively future on another site. 

Moreover, review under CEQA concerns a variety of issues including historic and architectural. The John M. Doyle House was a good, if plain, example of Berkeley’s late 19th-century, vernacular architecture. It was also one of very few remaining in downtown. It was associated with a figure central to the incorporation of Berkeley in 1878, whose 125th anniversary the city is celebrating this year. 

BAHA chose not to appeal the court decision for reasons of good stewardship. BAHA will continue to monitor the City of Berkeley’s environmental review process. 

As for the “financial consequences” imputed to the BAHA directors, I should note that Mr. Kennedy personally threatened me with a lawsuit. Now that is a “SLAPP”—a nuisance suit against public process. 

Berkeley deserves better. 

Austene Hall 

Legal Committee Chairman 

BAHA 

• 

NOT ENOUGH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was saddened to see yet another of Berkeley’s historical buildings bite the dust. When I first moved to the city 30 years ago, I was struck by the fact that there were so few older buildings still intact. Since then awareness of the value of older buildings has grown, but evidently not enough in some cases. 

As a past member of the Environmental Commission I was also dumbfounded that a preservation commissioner who has such an obvious conflict of interest could be allowed to sit on that body. Each commissioner appointed to each commission must sign a no-conflict form stating they or their interests do not stand to benefit from any decision the commission may make; recusal is not an option. On my commission a very valued and knowledgeable individual had to leave because of just that. 

It appears that city staff does not enforce all requirements on all commissioners equally. Does Patrick Kennedy wield undue influence elsewhere? How would we know? 

Dale Smith 

• 

LEASE AMENDMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On June 10, in a tiny line item tucked into an attachment in the back of its annual budget, the Redevelopment Agency is being asked to throw away an incredible opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to low-income housing; to take advantage of new HUD tenant home ownership programs; to comply with the goals of the newly approved Housing Element; to increase the amount of housing funds available to the city; and to bring some of the security and pride of home ownership to a small, established, low-income community. This item, with no detail or description, states simply: “Oceanview Gardens Lease Amendment ... Complete June 10, 2003.” 

The 62 unit Oceanview Gardens housing development was built in 1984 on agency property by a private developer with funding from the Redevelopment Agency and CHFA. The developer was granted a 20-year lease on the land in order to allow a reasonable return on his construction and management costs; and that lease was to expire in 2004, at which time the project would revert back to the agency. The property is exempt from taxes and provides little or no benefit to the agency or the city. The PAC has been aware of the upcoming reversion of ownership for more than two years and, as recently as February and March of this year, had been requesting staff to look into the possibility of converting these units into a tenant-owned and managed limited equity coop. 

The lease amendment, if approved through this budget, would instead give the developer an additional 30-year lease on the property. Redevelopment Code requires that agency leases be adopted by resolution after a properly noticed public hearing, but neither the PAC nor the public was afforded the opportunity to discuss or comment on this long-term lease. The PAC learned of this lease extension just two weeks ago, but was told by staff that it was already a “done deal.” 

Many of Oceanview Gardens’ resident families have lived there since the project was completed in 1984. Most have been there over 10 years. They have proved their commitment and vital interest in the community and are truly major stakeholders in this project. Tenants have expressed a great interest and desire for an ownership opportunity and the chance for more self-determination, but the fear of retaliation has a very chilling effect. As with all project-based Section 8 housing, eviction means not only the loss of a home but also the loss of the ability to find new housing since the subsidized funding belongs to the developer and not to the residents. 

The agency, with no public input, is now faced with the decision to grant one corporate developer a 30-year plum; or to give an existing community a small chance at the great American dream of home ownership and the sense of belonging, the pride and the tiny bit of security that it provides. With HUD’s new Section 8 home ownership programs both the project and the community at large could benefit financially from the return of housing funds to the city instead of to the developer. The community would also reap the rewards of the immeasurable intangibles achieved when people are allowed to have a say in their own future.  

At the very least, the Agency should hold this item over for public notice and comment. Let’s hope they make the right decision. 

Rhiannon 

• 

A BERKELEY TREASURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There’s a proposal to reduce the hours of the Tool Lending Library, particularly by closing it on Thursdays. I realize that budgets are tight, but reducing the lending library’s hours will deprive Berkeley residents of this much needed and much appreciated resource. While no library should have its hours reduced, we do have a main library and four branches from which one can borrow books and reading materials.   

We have only one library which lends tools. Lines at the Tool Lending Library are already long. I understand that there have already been staff reductions. I urge you to keep the staff you now have. The main reason the Tool Lending Library is so wonderful is due to Pete, the library’s founder, and the current staff. They know about tools, they can advise you on how to get a job done, and they do an amazing job of maintaining these tools, so that every tool borrowed works, and works well.    

Without the Tool Lending Library, many Berkeley residents could not perform needed repairs. My neighbor, who is a renter, could not have borrowed the clippers to trim the bushes which block his doorway. I would not have been able to borrow the longer ladders needed to repair my gutters.  

When something breaks, you need the tool then. Do not close the library, even for one day. The Tool Lending Library is a Berkeley treasure. 

Dan Peven 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One thing which does not seem to have changed with the “new” Planet is the constant stream of hilarious word-substitutions and homophones which are not caught by spell checkers (or proofreaders).  

I like to collect these, sometimes adding commentary.  

My favorite from the “old” Planet was the article on the fruitlessness of discussing a recent school board junket, since it was a “fete accompli.”  

So far my favorite from the “new” Planet is in the review of “Under Milkwood” (with peanut butter and gobs of grape jelly?) by the “Welch” poet and sandwich fan, Dylan Thomas.  

I haven’t quite decided if these are deliberate (intellectual humor) or routine editing errors, but if the latter, remember that while some are funny, some may substantively change the leaning (sic) of the article.  

Paul Marcus  

Oakland  

• 

TITLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Chris Kavanagh, member of the Berkeley Rent Board, doesn’t get it. In an effort to explain and defend this unjust, wasteful agency he invokes the obfuscating specter of bureaucratic minutia. 

It is hardly worth responding to his misrepresentations, but it is worth noting that the Rent Board on numerous occasions hired “experts” to determine annual rent increases and then ignored the paid expert’s recommendations, approving significantly lesser rent adjustments. The Rent Board’s commitment to injustice is only outweighed by its willingness to waste public money.  

The facts are simple—rent control is unjust and unfair. 

Because rent control has no means testing (it does not consider the finances of those who receive its benefit) it grants subsidies (artificially low rent) to a random group of citizens. The granting of these subsidies tend to inflate the rent of those not lucky enough to be of this privileged class.  

There are tenants from economically advantaged backgrounds with higher incomes than the property owner(s) compelled to subsidize their rent. The enthusiastic willingness of the Rent Board to administer a system so profoundly unjust further demonstrates the moral bankruptcy at the root of this wasteful agency. 

Rent control is ineffective and counter-productive. It has resulted in the loss of rental housing units contributing to our housing shortage and increasing rents on those not of the random benefactor class. New housing is built in Berkeley only because new housing is exempt from rent control. 

Rent control has reduced the number of small scale (mom-and-pop) type landlords, causing a consolidation of ownership in the hands of large property owners who can afford to “wait out” or legally maneuver this Kafkaesque system. Essentially, rent control promotes the corporate ownership of housing. 

Rent control has created a bureaucracy intent on Orwellian record keeping and engaged in Orwellian intrusions into private lives and homes. This same bureaucracy has wasted 24 million dollars of public money and never created a single housing unit but rather created regulations discouraging the creation of housing. 

Rent control usurps the fundamental right of citizens to negotiate contracts, thus undermining the social weave created by person to person agreements—a weave crucial to the fabric of civilized life. Rent control presumes the inability of the individual to choose and negotiate and opts instead for the imposition of bureaucratic authoritarianism. It is the insulting assumption of citizen as child and government as mommy-daddy. 

As Kavanagh and his cohorts continue on their self-deluded path, imagining they are doing good, they instead do harm, not only to individuals but to the psyche of the Commons. They promote policy that creates polarity. They perpetrate injustice that erodes fundamental faith in government. They lead the assault against the creative on behalf of slothful and wasteful bureaucracy.  

If the Rent Board had any commitment to justice or common sense it would conduct one final vote—it would vote to abolish its own existence. With this Byzantine bureaucracy gone we could redirect the wasted money to a housing fund that provides subsidies to those who need it and allows the creativity of the marketplace to do the rest. 

John Koenigshofer 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I really like the Berkeley “Earth Sculptures.” 

The tuning fork is said to be in resonance with one of the vibration 

frequencies of the earth. That’s way below what we can hear, but there’s 

a little bell at the base to make a sound one can hear. Perhaps some day, 

when the Hayward Fault lets go, we’ll see the tines of the tuning fork in full vibration. 

The new sculpture is more mysterious. It looks like a pile of mud. Actually, that’s what it is. The sign says it represents (consists of?) French and German porcelin clays and Dutch ceramic stoneware. To me, it looks like a chunk of ancient earth, dating from before Berkeley land was rolled up from seabed to make our hills. The blues in it look like Serpentinite, the rock formed when clay is put under extreme pressure. 

Steve Geller 

For 26 years, the Berkeley Bowl grocery store has provided customers with a taste of everything Berkeley—organic fruit, upscale orange juice, tattooed cashiers and baggers working their way through college. Now, shoppers are getting a dash of another local flavor: labor strife.  

In the last two weeks, a small group of workers have gone public with their attempt to unionize the South Berkeley supermarket—contacting the press, talking to customers and distributing union authorization cards to the store’s roughly 250 employees. 

The union drive, opposed by management, comes at a critical time for Berkeley Bowl, which is planning to build a second store in West Berkeley on Ninth and Heinz streets next year. 

Tim Hamann, president of the Oakland-based United Food & Commercial Workers Butchers’ Union, Local 120, which will represent Berkeley Bowl workers if they decide to unionize, said the city should not approve a new project for a company that offers “substandard” wages in its existing store. 

“Why would you want a fungus like that to spread?” he asked. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said he supports the right of workers to unionize, but will not weigh the effort in any permitting decisions. 

“I’m in favor of unions but I’m not going to have it color my decision on a land use issue,” he said, adding that Berkeley Bowl has provided the city with a “wonderful service” for decades. 

In the meantime, the grocery store’s general manager Dan Kataoka said he is concerned that the publicity surrounding the unionization effort, and management’s opposition, could push away customers in a pro-union town. 

“I’m sure it’s going to have a negative influence on the store,” he said. “I just hope people recognize that there are two sides to the story.” 

Workers complain about a health care policy that requires six months of full-time work before an employee is eligible for coverage. Local unionized grocers like Safeway and Andronico’s, by contrast, offer coverage to full-time and part-time workers after a 60-day probation period. 

But employees say their main concern is pay. The Berkeley Bowl wage scale, which ranges from $7 to $19.50 per hour for non-management employees, is roughly on par with those of union grocers. But workers say that pay hikes at Berkeley Bowl are infrequent and arbitrary. 

“It’s really dictated by favoritism,” said Eric Feezell, a produce clerk who has been active in the union push.  

Store manager Larry Evans acknowledged that the wage scale is erratic and said workers deserve regular evaluations and, for those who are performing at a satisfactory level or better, consistent raises. 

“I think it does need to be a structured system,” he said. “It’s only fair.” 

Evans acknowledged that the pay scale is not the only problem at Berkeley Bowl. He said the growing interest in unionization has made it clear that management has done a poor job of communicating with workers over the years and listening to their concerns. 

“We haven’t done everything right and we recognize that,” said Evans. “We are really taking a good, hard look in the mirror.” 

But managers have made it clear that they don’t believe bringing in a union will help. In recent weeks they have distributed anti-union flyers, held meetings with employees to raise doubts about the union and, in one case, asked workers if they had signed union authorization cards, in an apparent violation of federal law which forbids coercion of employees. 

“It was our error,” said Kataoka, discussing the potential legal violation. “We blundered 100 percent.” 

Workers pushing the union are enlisting the help of high-profile local and national organizers. Last weekend, Father Bill O’Donnell of St. Joseph the Worker’s Church, who has been arrested more than 200 times for civil disobedience, distributed pamphlets to workers at the store. 

Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez, made an appearance at Berkeley Bowl Thursday, urging workers to unionize. 

“It’s kind of an anomaly to have a non-union store in Berkeley,” she said. “This is a bastion of liberalism.”  

Several customers interviewed outside Berkeley Bowl this week said they would consider boycotting the store if asked by workers. But Kevin Meyer, a cashier who is helping to organize the movement, said employees are not yet calling for a boycott. 

“I shop there,” he said. “I think it’s a great store.” 

Berkeley Bowl is not the only non-union grocer in the city. Whole Foods and North Berkeley’s Monterey Foods do not have representation either. 

Bill Andronico, president of the unionized Andronico’s, said Whole Foods has shown that a non-union shop can still satisfy workers. 

“If you have the right culture and the employees are involved, it can work,” he said. 

Jayar Pugao, a front end supervisor at Whole Foods on Telegraph Ave., said management was responsive during a recent flare-up over a change in health care coverage. 

“Once we did voice our opinions, they found a way to get us involved,” he said. 

But workers pushing for a union at Berkeley Bowl said they do not trust management to initiate change without a union in place. 

If organizers succeed in getting a union installed, it will not be the first time workers have had representation. Berkeley Bowl employees elected to join the Retail Clerks Union, which later became the United Food & Commercial Workers’ Union, Local 870, shortly after the store’s founding in 1977. But workers rejected the union in 1986. 

John Nunes, assistant to the president at Local 870, said management offered workers false promises of better wages and working conditions in the mid-eighties to coax them into dumping the union. But Kataoka said workers simply believed they could get a better deal negotiating directly with the company. 

I do not share the Daily Planet’s great hope that Phil Kamlarz will turn the Planning Department around. As budget director and deputy city manager, Kamlarz has been one of the most powerful people in Berkeley city government over the past 20 years. As such, he has had a major say not only in hiring Carol Barrett, but also in the hiring of her last four of five predecessors. The major reason planning directors do not get along with Berkeley residents and commissioners is that they come here with an agenda. In the recent past, that agenda has been to build as much and as high as possible—the neighborhoods be damned. 

It is naive to think that planning directors are hired without top city officials knowing their views on development, nor would they be as arrogant if the full weight of the city manager’s office and the City Council was not behind them. The chief planners are chosen precisely because their ideas on overbuilding and density coincide with those of the administration and City Council. 

Phil Kamlarz has known about the dismal state of the Planning Department for years. When I was on the Budget Review Commission in the mid-nineties, we’d ask Phil at every meeting when the new General Plan was coming out. It was only 12 years overdue. The answer was always “soon.” The reason the planners never produced a plan is that they were under orders to have it allow for greater densities and higher buildings than people already living here wanted. At every General Plan meeting I attended the staff repeatedly pushed for greater densities and higher buildings and the public always rejected them. 

Phil was also present when the Budget Commission attempted to reduce the size of the Planning Department and to reorganize it so the public would know what was happening before projects were presented as “done deals.” I’m not certain, but I strongly suspect Phil played a key role in persuading City Council not to make any of the recommended changes. 

So while I like Phil, and think he is very able, I strongly disagree with his approach to development. To continue to build high-rise, high density structures along so-called “transit corridors” that have no transit (AC Transit does not qualify as a modern urban transit system) the results will be disastrous. Streets will become clogged, parking will be a nightmare and police and fire services will be strained. 

If Kamlarz, City Manager Weldon Rucker, Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Linda Maio pick another development-crazed planning director happy to line the pockets of slippery developers like Patrick Kennedy, the Planning Department door will keep revolving. And if he doesn’t replace Mark Rhodes, the duplicitous insect who runs the Zoning Department (a subdivision of planning) and who specializes in keeping neighbors in the dark, then the community will continue to rise up in protest. 

What is desperately needed is a planning director who knows Berkeley, has lived here for a while, and is in touch with neighborhood and community groups. With a major city planning department at UC Berkeley, that type of person should not be too difficult to find. 

Art Goldberg

The discovery of two submerged fuel tanks beneath the Harrison House Adult Shelter in West Berkeley means another environmental problem for the city-owned property and another cleanup cost for taxpayers. 

Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS), a Berkeley-based nonprofit, operates the homeless shelter, which houses about 80 men and women. On Tuesday, City Council will review a request by BOSS executive director boona cheema to divert $119,000 in emergency service grant funds from other BOSS projects to pay for part of the cost of removing the tanks. 

City officials are planning to remove the two tanks despite a geotechnical report that recommended leaving them in place. Three contractors have submitted proposals to the Department of Public Works for removing the tanks. Their estimates range widely from $86,000 to $266,000. 

A $30,000 geotechnical report, completed in December by an Oakland-based geotechnical survey company, Kleinfelder, Inc., advised a less expensive option. This strategy, which would cost about $20,000, not including future 

monitoring, would be to abandon the underground storage tanks in place after removing any fuels, most likely diesel, in the tanks and surrounding soil. 

“Based on its lower cost, minimal impact to the building, the physical removal of residual tanks’ contents, removal of some impacted soil and reduced disruption to Harrison House residents, abandonment of the [tanks] in place would be the preferred closure alternative,” according to the report. 

However, it is city policy to remove underground storage tanks whenever possible. 

“Abandoning the tanks in place is really not an option,” said Patrick Kelch, acting director of the Department of Public Works while Director Rene Cardinaux is on vacation. “It’s city policy to remove the tanks unless it is exorbitantly more expensive than leaving them in place.” 

Another ongoing environmental problem at the Harrison Field area complicates whatever solution the city chooses. The tanks are completely submerged in a plume of groundwater contaminated with the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, or chrome 6, which originated from an engraving company three blocks to the east. To remove the tanks or abandon them in place, the city would have to pump out the contaminated water, store, analyze and treat it, then dispose of it. 

This process, as the city learned in 2001 during the construction of the Harrison Field Skate Park, can be unpredictable and expensive. Kelch said on Friday that the three contractors’ bids to remove the tanks are still being analyzed and he wasn’t sure if they included appropriate options for dealing with complications arising from the presence of contaminated groundwater. 

When the city purchased the 6.4-acre property from UC Berkeley in 2000, it was mostly undeveloped. Only the shelter structure was in place, but over the last three years, the city has developed four soccer fields that are heavily used by the Albany Berkeley Soccer Club and the popular skate park. Future plans for the site include the construction of BOSS’s Ursula Sherman Village, a multi-service homeless facility that will serve up to 130 people, mostly women and children. 

During the excavation of 8-foot bowls for the skate park, contractors struck groundwater laced with chrome 6 and had to halt construction for over a year. The city spent an additional $400,000 (not including staff time) to treat the contaminated water and redesign the skate park to prevent future exposure to the dangerous carcinogen. However, last December, just two months after the park opened to rave reviews, city workers discovered low levels of chrome 6 in two skate bowl basins after a heavy rainstorm. The Department of Parks and Waterfront immediately closed the park. Last month, City Council approved $57,000 to hire an engineer to recommend possible solutions to the ongoing problem. 

Air quality is also an environmental concern at the Harrison site. A $50,000 air quality study, part of the Ursula Sherman Village environmental impact report, detected elevated levels of particulate matter in the air, most likely from a collection of sources including nearby industry, the Berkeley Solid Waste Transfer Station and Interstate 80. Based on the study results, the city posted signs at the entrance to the soccer fields warning parents and children about possible health effects from the airborne particulates. 

The city paid UC Berkeley $2.8 million for the environmentally plagued property. However, in exchange for a substantially reduced price, the city agreed to an as-is clause, which released the university from any liability for the risks which are now being addressed.

Icons are falling at The New York Times in the wake of its Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal.  

Executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned Thursday. Both had promoted serial plagiarist Blair, ignoring a mounting pile of corrections and other warning signs. Last week, Times feature writer Rick Bragg, one of Raines’ conspicuous favorites, resigned. 

If I had the ear of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. or its new interim executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld, I’d urge them to consider these deeper issues. 

First, although Raines’ departure was overdue (he’d lost the staff’s confidence) and Boyd’s was understandable, Bragg’s is unfortunate. 

Bragg, author of the memoir “All Over But the Shoutin’,” is a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the few Times national staffers who wrote with real style. 

The offense for which he was suspended—putting his byline on a story that had been reported largely by a freelancer who received no credit—was basically Times standard operating procedure. And the Times admitted that Bragg had repeatedly asked to share bylines with his freelancers, but was told it wasn’t Times policy. 

There’s a good case for the Times to give due credit to all the writers who do its legwork, and to honestly tell its readers who’s written what they read. This should be general policy at the Times, too. Instead, the Times arbitrarily provoked one writer—one of the paper’s best—to resign over one story, because he happened to be Raines’ pal. 

I wonder where this will end. What about Verlyn Klinkenborg, the editorial writer whom Raines hired to write staggeringly slow-motion columns about bugs and flora on his upstate New York farm? Did Klinkenborg really see that leaf turn? With his own eyes? 

How do we know he didn’t leave a young stringer to stake it out for a week—sustained only by a Thermos of lukewarm apple cider—then pluck the notes from the kid’s frostbitten hand? Inquiring minds want to know. The leaf’s not talking. 

Stylists like Bragg may not win popularity contests among resentful, less able colleagues. But copy written in a distinct voice like his is black gold for a newspaper industry that’s been steadily losing younger readers. 

Second, readers are the point—and the Times isn’t really managed as if they matter. That’s the paper’s real sin, and it’s more systematic than letting one Jayson Blair run free or treating any number of Rick Braggs with arbitrary fear or disfavor. 

The Gray Lady has a history of imperious executive editors who, upon arrival, slam their “stamp” on the paper without ever addressing longstanding flaws. Raines demoralized much of the staff by promoting favorites to Page One, and by uprooting respected veterans—several of whom then quit, leaving desks short-handed and colleagues exhausted. 

The paper’s longstanding flaws are more consistent: Except for a brief experiment with writing readable leads under Max Frankel in the early nineties, loquacious writers don’t get enough editing to sharpen their reports into cohesive “stories.” Headlines remain laughably awkward and obscure. Leads are murky and baffling. The day’s most important news is often buried on unread inside pages (with an ad shoved in readers’ faces on most right pages). And despite the Times’ slow embrace of color, its front page layouts are still 19th-century relics. 

And, as Bragg’s saga shows in the extreme, the Times’ few really good “writers” don’t tend to end up on the news pages. Why does the nation’s foremost news-gathering institution produce a paper that is such a chore to read? 

Bragg will do okay: He reportedly has a million-dollar contract for his next two books. Blair’s sins and Bragg’s sacrifice may win overdue credit for the anonymous scribes who get “All the News” into the Times and other publications. 

But is the Times starting to think about us readers? Just wondering, Arthur and Joseph.

“Time served—one day!” 

An illicit cheer echoed down the 19th-floor corridor of the San Francisco federal building as the overflow crowd got word that U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer had gone easy on Ed Rosenthal. Federal prosecutors had asked for a six-and-a-half-year prison term. 

The light sentence meted out by Breyer on Wednesday, June 4, represents a personal victory for the well-known Oakland cannabis cultivator and his family and friends. A political victory could follow if Rosenthal’s felony conviction as a marijuana cultivator and conspirator gets overturned. 

Rosenthal’s attorney, Dennis Riordan, has already notified the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals that he will challenge the conviction. Riordan, who specializes in reviewing trial records for reversible errors, is convinced he found some significant ones in the Rosenthal case. 

For openers: Judge Breyer should have allowed the jury to hear that Rosenthal —who had been authorized to grow marijuana under a program created by an Oakland city ordinance—thought he was acting legally. “If the jury got to hear that,” Riordan told the Planet, “they could have decided Ed was acting in good faith and acquitted him. He was denied the right to present a mental-state defense to the jury.” 

Riordan is also challenging Breyer’s ruling that the Oakland cannabis-distribution program is invalid under federal law. The program relies on the same section of the federal Controlled Substances Act, 885(d), that entitles undercover police officers to obtain, handle and sell illicit drugs.  

Section 885(d) states that “no civil or criminal liability shall be imposed” on any state or local “authorized officer ... who shall be lawfully engaged in the enforcement of any law or municipal ordinance relating to controlled substances.” A creative Oakland lawyer named Robert Raich proposed that the wording of 885(d) could apply to city-appointed officers engaged in obtaining, handling and selling cannabis. The city attorney agreed, and Raich’s client, Jeff Jones, director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Co-op (CBC), was deputized to make the herb available to patients qualified to use it under California law. Jones assigned Rosenthal to grow clones—starter plants of known sex and quality— for distribution to such patients. 

Judge Breyer ruled in the Rosenthal case (and in a previous federal case against Jones and the Oakland CBC) that interpreting section 885(d) as protection for cannabis providers would violate the basic prohibitionist purpose of the Controlled Substances Act. Breyer repeatedly described his interpretation as “the common-sense reading of the statute.” But the Raich/Oakland reading is the literal one. “I think we have an extremely good chance of being vindicated on appeal,” said Riordan. 

During pre-trial hearings in January, when Judge Breyer ruled that the Oakland ordinance could not be cited by the defense, he expressed skepticism that Ed Rosenthal was unfamiliar with his previous ruling that section 885(d) does not protect cannabis providers. But on Tuesday —influenced perhaps by editorials in the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times—Breyer gave Rosenthal the benefit of the doubt. He based his lenient sentence on Rosenthal’s “reasonable belief” that he had been properly authorized to cultivate by the city of Oakland. 

If the 9th Appeals Court rules that 885(d) does indeed apply to city or state-ordained cannabis operations it would be like driving a tank through the Berlin wall of prohibition. Damage control would commence before cities from Arcata to San Diego start grow-ops. Attorney General John Ashcroft would 

appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Charles Breyer’s older brother, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, would have to recuse himself). Ultimately Congress might have to reword the Controlled Substances Act. And in the process, the question of marijuana’s presence on Schedule I—dangerous drugs with no medical utility—might be debated. Could get interesting. 

Rosenthal’s appeal brief will also challenge the propriety of Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan’s dialog with the grand jury that produced the initial indictment. Unlike the jurors who heard the case in January 2003, the grand jurors were aware that Rosenthal was growing for Bay Area cannabis clubs. 

The defense charges that Bevan misled the grand jurors by seeking to allay any fears that indicting Rosenthal would cut off the supply of cannabis to Californians entitled to use it medicinally. 

A final appeals issue involves Breyer’s ruling that the conduct of jurors Marney Craig and Pam Klarkowski did not constitute grounds for dismissal. Craig had asked a lawyer of her acquaintance whether she could vote her conscience if it clashed with the judge’s instructions. The lawyer-friend’s answer had been an unequivocal “No. You must obey the judge.” Craig relayed this fact to Klarkowski as they drove to court on the morning deliberations were to begin. Under the relevant federal rule of evidence, 606 (b), the improper influencing of jurors during the course of a trial can be grounds for dismissal. 

The 9th circuit is expected to take a year to a year and a half to rule on Rosenthal’s appeal. 

Riordan expects the prosecution to appeal Breyer’s “downward departure” from a mandatory-minimum sentence of six-and-a-half years. The issue would be whether Rosenthal’s status as an employer at the grow-op disqualified him from receiving such leniency. On this matter Riordan does not expect Breyer to get reversed.

A superior court judge on Tuesday suspended criminal proceedings against Ryan Lee Raper until psychiatrists determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of Berkeley transient Kevin Lee Freeman. 

Raper, 20, of Calavaras County, was charged with one count of murder for the May 9 slaying of Freeman, 55. The two men had been cellmates for less than 24 hours in Santa Rita Jail’s Behavioral Health Unit when Freeman was discovered beaten to death on the floor of the two-man cell. 

Raper is also being psychologically evaluated for a Union City case in which he is accused of an unprovoked knife attack on a stranger, according to Union City Police.  

Raper’s court appointed attorney, David Byron, said Raper will be examined by two psychiatrists and, based on their reports, the court will decide if Raper will stand trial or be sent to a mental health institution. 

“The reviews will be done in a timely fashion,” Byron said. 

Raper’s case has been assigned to the Hayward Superior Court, where he will appear before Judge Robert Kurtz on June 11. 

Freeman’s murder has triggered an administrative review of the policies and procedures for evaluating inmates for purposes of assigning cellmates, said Alameda County Sheriff Department spokesman Lt. Jim Knudsen. 

“Why those two men were in the same cell is exactly the kind of thing we’ll be looking at,” he said.

Early Thursday morning 64 local, county and federal law enforcement officers served 12 search warrants at locations throughout the Bay Area in relation to a counterfeiting ring that may be responsible for the theft of $6 million. 

The warrants were the result of a two-year, joint investigation between the Berkeley Police Department and the Homeland Security U.S. Secret Service. According to Berkeley Police spokesman Mary Kusmiss, investigators seized thousands of pieces of evidence such as pistols, assault rifles, narcotics and a large quantity of counterfeit travelers checks and personal checks.  

“Investigators also seized a great deal of personal information such as names, birth dates, social security numbers and credit card numbers,” Kusmiss said. “These were the things this particular ring used to carry out identity theft.” 

Kusmiss said two suspects, a 45-year-old Vallejo man and a 49-year-old Berkeley woman, were booked into the Berkeley jail as a result of the warrants. She said the primary goal of the warrants was to collect evidence, which will likely result in many more arrests in the coming weeks.  

Other agencies that participated in serving the warrants were the Internal Revenue Service, Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, and the Oakland, San Leandro and Hayward police departments.  

“Investigators are very pleased with the evidence they seized today,” Kusmiss said. “Identity theft is the fastest growing crime internationally and these investigations require a great deal of tedious work, a great deal of time and document analysis.” 

—John Geluardi

Before flying to Washington for my Yale class of ‘68 college reunion dinner at the White House, Lisa and I bought gifts for the Bushes. We picked up an “I love Berkeley” T-shirt for the President, complete with peace sign—he won’t get too many of those, we figured—and a book for Laura. 

In the taxi, after the thrill of telling the driver, “We’re going to the White House,” we were still wondering what to say to him, and also wondering if we were foolish to worry about it. Would he even show up? If he did, would he be there for more than 20 minutes (“Sorry, got to get on the phone to mah buddy Putin”), and would we get anywhere near him? 

Getting in to the White House was a bit like getting on a plane, but with tougher carry-on restrictions. Once inside, an aide relieved us of our gifts, which went into a large envelope, no doubt to be tested for anthrax, radioactivity or unwelcome ideology. (Will we get a thank you note?) Then we were “briefed” by a soldier in full-dress uniform: no photos in the reception line (ah—so we were going to get our 10 seconds with him, at least) and no stopping for autographs. 

Then through another door, around a corner, and ... there they were, just the two of them.  

Your first thought is that the cameras are unkind to George W. Bush: he’s much better looking in person, tanned and fit and utterly at ease. The smile and handshake are warm, he looks you in the eye, and he seems genuinely pleased to see you, even if you’re short, bearded and Berkeleyan. 

Lisa went first. 

“Oh my God,” she said. “This is so exciting: here you are!” 

“Aw,” the president told us, “it’s gonna be fun.” 

Then it was my turn.  

“When you get the T-shirt that says ‘I love Berkeley,’ that’s from us,” I said, shaking the hand. 

He laughed. Wow—I got a laugh out of him.  

“Berkeley, eh. You have any reunions in Berkeley?” 

I had no reply to that one, so it was on to Laura. We mumbled something about the novel we had brought her and we were done. 

And were we charmed? Oh yes. We didn’t cry, as another guest did, telling Dubya how proud she was of him and of our country, but we were thoroughly star-struck. 

After dinner, for a good two or three hours and without looking anything but delighted, Bush stood at the center of a pulsating throng, as people (including Lisa) elbowed their way through for another handshake, a photo, an autograph. When Lisa reached him, he took the camera from her, held it out at arm’s length and snapped a photo. “Do you think Ah cut our heads off?” he asked. (He didn’t.) 

People wanted physical contact with him, and Bush was glad to oblige: everyone got a presidential hug or a presidential arm around the shoulder. Everyone—corporate greyhounds with swept-back silver hair, frumpy or elegant wives, a rabbi with a yarmulke—had the goofy, ecstatic smile of a kid at Disneyland. (“Mommy, Mickey gave me a hug!”)  

The party was scheduled to end at 9, but Mickey seemed tireless: at 10:30, he was still going strong. Then he bounded upstairs, propelled by further applause, and vanished into the private quarters. I applauded, too—it was impossible not to—and I understood that what we said and what he said didn’t matter at all. What mattered was the handshake and the exchange of smiles and of something spoken—it could have been nonsense syllables (and nearly was).  

When the almost inconceivable power of the office is combined with affability, a kind of magic takes place. Call it charisma, call it transference, call it whatever you like. You may be nauseated by bombed civilians and cheap aircraft-carrier theatrics. You may wonder, in your cooler moments, about the missing weapons of mass destruction or grind your teeth over right-wing appointments to the federal bench. 

I defy you to resist the spell when you’re there in the White House and the magic is aimed right at you. I defy you, at that moment, not to feel and behave like a groupie. Presidential magic is a great leveler. The high and mighty I had wanted to avoid were just as eager for their hugs and photos as the humblest of us. I had feared that the reunion would leave me feeling smaller. Instead, I talked to two or three classmates I hadn’t seen for 35 years, found that we still liked each other a lot, and came away grateful and restored.  

Between the hoopla and my old friends, Lisa and I were too excited to sleep until well after midnight. While the flashbulbs were popping, she had turned to me and said, half jokingly, “Do you think we’ll have to vote for him now?” We had returned to our senses by breakfast the next morning, but we really did have fun at his party. There, at least, mah buddy George knew what he was talking about.

High-speed police chases resulting in injury and death, which have become something of an issue in Oakland over the past year, are also becoming a potentially explosive issue throughout the state of California. 

Last year, three women led police on a chase at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour on crowded Highway 101 north of San Francisco, involving several local police cars, two California Highway Patrol vehicles, a Highway Patrol motorcycle and a Highway Patrol airplane. The chase resulted in a crash with another car. The crime for which the police were chasing the women? Shoplifting.  

In Barstow, a 21-year-old man crashed his Ford Bronco into a mobile home while trying to evade police after a stop for a traffic violation. Fortunately, the residents of the mobile home escaped injury. “We can’t figure out why he ran,” a police spokesman said. “He had no warrant or DMV record. He was not drunk and the truck was not stolen.” The spokesman did not explain why, then, the police chose to chase him.  

Early this year, two people were killed and 13 injured in a rural section of San Diego County when a pickup truck flipped over while being chased at high speeds by U.S. Border Patrol agents. The agents suspected that the truck was carrying illegal immigrants.  

Some of the police pursuit actions simply defy reason. In 1997, while seeking to join a stolen auto chase, a Sacramento Police officer learned from a radio broadcast that the driver had been apprehended. Unaccountably, the officer turned off his flashing lights while continuing to race down a city street for several blocks at speeds estimated by police investigators at up to 80 miles per hour. He ultimately rammed into the car of Andy Sorgatz, killing the 50-year-old state employee. The city of Sacramento eventually agreed to a $1.75 million settlement with Sorgatz’s family.  

According to the California Highway Patrol, California law enforcement officers engaged in almost 6,000 auto pursuits in 2001, 10 percent resulting in injury collisions. Twenty-four people died in police-pursuit collisions that year, including two people described by the CHP as “others” (that is, people who were not being chased by the police). Almost 350 of those chases resulted in accident injuries to police. Statewide statistics are not yet available for 2002.  

The problem is particularly acute in Los Angeles. CNN has reported that in the three-year period from 1999 to 2001, Los Angeles averaged more than five auto crashes per week resulting from police pursuits. Earlier this year, after community outrage over several highly publicized accidents, the Los Angeles Police Commission voted for a 12-month ban on police chases of motorists solely for traffic violations.  

But such policies can simply be ignored without California cities, or California police officers, suffering any legal consequences.  

Carol Watson, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in representing victims of police misconduct, says that, “unfortunately, under California law, officers are given virtually a blanket immunity regardless of how reckless the chase may be.”  

Late last year, a California Court of Appeals “reluctantly” (in its own words) ruled that California cities that adopt a valid police chase policy are immune from liability in resulting accidents, even if the police failed to follow that policy. “[California] law in its current state simply grants a ‘get out of liability free card’ to public entities that go through the formality of adopting such a policy,” the court wrote. The court’s ruling stemmed from a Westminster police chase of a stolen van through a high school parking lot that resulted in the death of a bystander. “There is no requirement the public entity implement the [police chase] policy through training or other means,” the ruling went on. “Unfortunately, the adoption of a policy which may never be implemented is cold comfort to innocent bystanders ...” The Appeals Court urged the California Legislature to change this discrepancy in the police chase liability law.  

A Chico, Calif., couple has proposed a state law change after their 15-year-old daughter, Kristie Priano, was killed last year only weeks before U’Kendra Johnson, and following a high-speed police chase strikingly similar to the one that allegedly resulted in the death of the Oakland woman. “Kristie’s Law” would, among other things, require stricter guidelines for police pursuits in residential neighborhoods throughout California and mandate that an independent agency investigate all accidents resulting from police chases.  

Priano was killed when her family van was struck by a 15-year-old girl whose only offense was taking her mother’s car without permission. Priano’s mother, Candy, who was in the van at the time, says she believes her daughter’s death was caused by a combination of police too focused on a chase and not enough on the safety of bystanders, and with too much time on their hands in a small town.  

“I personally think that they were bored,” Candy Priano says.  

The Priano family is working with Republican state Sen. Sam Aanestad of Grass Valley, who has preserved SB982 as a reform measure on high-speed police officer pursuits. Aanestad’s office plans to meet later this year with representatives of state sheriffs, police chiefs and the CHP to craft new safety guidelines for police auto pursuits, and the Prianos hope that the results will meet their vision of “Kristie’s Law.”  

In addition, Los Angeles County state Sen. Gloria Romero has introduced legislation which would allow police immunity from lawsuits resulting from high-speed chases only if the police were following their agency’s chase guidelines.  

We’ll be watching. 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is an Oakland resident.  

Whether it’s been gone so long or always on your mind, the sound of “traditional” music is everywhere these days except on commercial radio. Then again, who listens to commercial radio? 

Berkeley’s own Freight and Salvage Coffee House, a rare and enduring stalwart on the traditional music circuit, celebrates 35 years of live acoustic music this month with a special anniversary concert featuring prodigal son Phil Marsh with the long deceased, now resurrected Cleanliness & Godliness Skiffle Band on Saturday, June 14. 

The Skiffle band performed opening night in 1968 and was a local favorite and mainstay of the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms. In their heyday, the group released five albums, including a “superstar” spoof under the nom de guerre Masked Marauders. Greil Marcus touted the album in Rolling Stone magazine. Joining the original Skiffle band members are a veritable hootenanny’s worth of renowned musicians, renegades, mystery guests and other ne’er do wells such as Bruce Barthol, Darryl Henriques, Arthur Holden, Marc Silber, “Dynamite” Annie Johnston and Will Scarlett—promising to turn this into the traditional music event of the season. 

Inadvertently begun back in 1968 as a local clubhouse for friends of Nancy Owens, the Freight, as it’s affectionately called, immediately evolved into an unprofitable music venue. No money meant that everything that needed to be done had to be done by volunteers, a condition formalized by a conversion to nonprofit status in 1983.  

Current executive director and chief bottle washer Steve Baker recalled those times:  

“In 1983 the group of people involved in the club at that time wanted to transform the Freight, whatever it was, into a nonprofit organization, a traditional music organization. A friend of mine asked me if I knew anything about non-profit organizations and how they worked. I knew quite a lot actually,” Baker said. “I’d written some books on the subject and I was working for what’s now called California Lawyers for the Arts. I did the incorporating work and ended up being on the board of directors and here I am. I’m responsible for the entire operation. I’m one of four full-time employees. On the nuts and bolts level I edit the calendar, I oversee the finances, I do the booking. Also, I talk to all the agents and performers and cut the deals. But I’ve done just about everything. It helps me to get the end result that I want.” 

Today the Freight is the performance venue for the Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music. 

“We define traditional music as music that’s rooted in and expressive of many of the varieties of cultural and social, ethnic and regional cultures that exist in the world,” said Baker. “It’s a window into another culture. It’s the living, growing product of a culture, not the calcified culture of a century ago or whatever. It’s an on-going process, which connects it with the folk process — the transmission of the oral tradition of art and music, the transmission of a culture from generation to generation. It’s the window that we all have into our own culture and into someone else’s culture.” 

As is only appropriate for a now middle-aged venue, the Freight has grown up.  

“Twenty years ago we were in an 80-seat store front around the corner,” Baker said. “Today we’re in a 220-seat theater. We had a mailing list of less than a thousand when I first got involved in this operation. Today our mailing list is pretty close to 10,000. These are 10,000 very current names of people who haven’t moved, or people who tell us when they move, of people who support the organization. About a third of the people on that list are members, people who have paid dues or made some sort of contribution in the last three years. So it’s grown. It’s a broader demographic, if you want to use that word. The age demographic is broader. I’ve got a daughter who recently graduated from college and I see her friends here now. I see them signing up on the mailing list. I think we’ve expanded the demographics all the way around.” 

Not content with simple survival, the society recently purchased two adjoining buildings (formerly an automotive garage and the current home of the Capoeira Café) in Berkeley’s downtown Arts District in addition to its current home at 1111 Addison St. The organization plans to move into the new 400-plus-seat theater in 2006, after completing a $4.5 million renovation.  

Despite its lack of exposure on commercial radio, traditional music is enjoying growing popularity. 

“It goes in cycles but I think there’s always been a great deal of interest in this music,” Baker said. “Sometimes there are different aspects of it that are more prevalent than others, but I think the interest is deeply rooted, in this society, in this country, and it’s been deeply rooted for decades. It’s always been there.” 

The Freight & Salvage Coffee House is located at 1111 Addison St. in Berkeley. Phone number is 510-548-1761 or e-mail info@freightandsalvage.org. The Freight & Salvage Web site is located at http://www.thefreight.org/.

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 

FILM 

“The Battle of Algiers,” a film about the uprising of the Algerian people against French colonialists in the 1960’s, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. All events are free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Nicholas Ray: “Party Girl” at 7:30 p.m. and “Hot Blood” at 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808.www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon Series, “Mars Revealed,” with Conrad Jung, lecturer, Chabot Space and Science Center. Luncheon 11:45 a.m. $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925, 665-9020. 

Haiku: A Critical Look at an Ancient Form, with Gabe Winer, creator of the Haiku Wall at Berkeley High; Gar- 

ry Gay, president, Haiku Poets of Northern California; and Ry Belville, translator of Nakahara Chuya, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, third floor Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge Ave. 981-6121. 

Poets Melody Lacina and Laura Horn at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Marguerite Sprague de- 

scribes the rise and fall of a California mining town in “Bodie’s Gold” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble, Combos and Lab band perform at 7 p.m. in the Little Theater, 1920 Allston Way. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students, seniors and BHS staff, available at the door. 548-8026. www.berkeleyhighjazz.org 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 2 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

Berkeley Edge Fest The music of Terry Riley at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Mike Olmos Quartet, with trumpeters Mike Olmos and Noel Jewkes, bassist Em- 

manuel Vaughn-Lee and drummer Jeff Mars at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Anthony Jeffries and his All Stars, blues band at Rountree’s, 2618 San Pablo Ave. 663-0440. 

Pandeiros do Brasil with Karana and Dandara and the Ginga Brasil Dance Troupe at 9:30 p.m., with Brazilian dance lesson at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Bill Horvitz Band, an experimental jazz trio, performs at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart perform roots country originals at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Weary Boys and PBR Street Gang perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Voces por la Paz, a Concert for Peace, celebrating La Peña’s 28th Anniversary, with Latin American, Afro-Cuban, Chicano and folk music at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Himsa, Beneath the Ashes, The Answer, With Passion, The Harms perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 

Pro Arts East Bay Open Studios 2003 June 7-8, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For list of participating studios go to www.pro 

artsgallery.org/ebos2003 

CHILDREN 

David Thom Band introduces children to bluegrass music and instruments, at 1 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $5-$10 sliding scale, children and students accompanying adults are free. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Oliver’s Urban Twist, a performance by Walden School, set in 1970’s New York, at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Also on Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12, available at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 2 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

FILM 

Superfest XXIII Interna- 

tional Media Festival on Disabilities From 1 to 5p.m., at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. Call 845-5576 for schedule or www.madknight.com/cdt. 

Nicholas Ray: “Wind Across the Everglades” at 4:30 and 8:55 p.m. and “The True Story of Jesse James” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Banned in Berkeley,” a film by five disabled women artists on their sexuality and relationships, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. All events are free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition presents an open poetry reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at 1527 Virginia St., off of Sacramento St., one block east of the North Berkeley BART station. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

Norman Fischer discusses “Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody's Books. 845-7852. ww.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chanticleer performs at 8 p.m. at the First Congrega- 

tional Church, 2345 Chan- 

ning Way. Tickets are $22-$37. 415-392-4400. www.chanticleer.org 

Trinity Chamber Concerts 

Esfir Ross, solo piano, performs Mozart, Brahms and Chopin at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Sug- 

gested donation of $12 general, $8 students, seniors or disabled. 549-3864. 

Berkeley Edge Fest The music of John Adams and Ingram Marshall at 6 p.m., and musicians and composers Steve Lacy, George Lewis and David Wessell at 9 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 

Tickets are $22 for each performance. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Pacific Mozart performs a cappella jazz and pop at 7:30 p.m. at the Crowden School, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $20 general, $15 seniors and students available from 415-705-0848. www.pacificmozart.org 

Indian Classical Music will be performed at 5 p.m. at St. Johns Presbyterian Church,  

2727 College Ave. Tickets are $25-$35 available from  

925-828-6127. www.harmoni- 

ventures.com 

Kotoja performs at 9:30 p.m., with a dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Patrice Pike and Shelley Doty perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

A. J. Roach performs Ap- 

palachian music at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Ponte las Pilas celebrate the style and defiance of the Zoot Suiter, and dance to Dr. Loco’s Rocking Jalapeña Band at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Oak, Ash and Thorn perform a cappella with a Bri- 

tish Isles flavor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 in ad- 

vance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Hellbillies, Iron Lung, The Profits, Face Down in Shit, Case of Emergency perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 8 

CHILDREN 

Family Classics: “Fantastic Voyage” at 2 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Winds Across the Bay, the East Bay's youth wind ensemble, celebrates its 10th anniversary with a performance of works by Giu- 

seppi Verdi, Nicholas Rim- 

sky-Korsakov, Johan deMeij and Joseph Willcox Jenkins, at 2 p.m. at the Dean Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. Tickets are $9 at the door or by calling 925-943-SHOW.  

Oliver’s Urban Twist, a performance by Walden School, see listing for June 7. 

FILM 

Vera Chytilová: “Prefab Stories” at 5:30 p.m. and “Wolf Chalet” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Superfest XXIII Interna- 

tional Media Festival on Disabilities, screening of award winners, from 1 to 5p.m., at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. Reception with filmmakers from 6 to 7 p.m. For schedule, call 845-5576. www.madknight.com/cdt. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Unbound and Under Covers” Experiments in visual writing, reception for the artists, at 2 p.m. at the Ber- 

keley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Poets Clive Matson and Marc Hofstadter at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Drum Workshop every Sunday with Wade Peterson. Beginners at 11 a.m., experienced at 12:30 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15 - $25, advanced registration is encouraged. 533-5111.  

Berkeley Edge Fest A tribute to Lou Harrison, featuring Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and musicians performing on the gamelan at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall. Tickets are $22. 642.9988. 

Baroque Chorale Guild performs a variety of music from Europe at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing, at Dana. Tickets are $22 general, $17 students and seniors. 650-969-4095. www.bcg.org 

Oakland Civic Orchestra presents “In Light and Shadow,” with works by Albinoni, Gabrieli and Beethoven at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. in Oakland. The concert is free. 238-3896. 

Transmission Trio and Patrick Cress’s Telepathy perform unconventional jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. 649-8744. www.thejazz- 

house.org 

Vox Populi performs songs of love and desire at 4 p.m. in Gallery A of the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Dann Zinn Band performs a blend of processed and original jazz and world music at the Jazzschool at 4:30 p.m. 

Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Carol Fran, Carmen Getit, Wendy DeWitt and Sue Palmer, Queens of the Boogie Woogie perform at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, JUNE 9 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bob Cushman shares stories of his sister, Barbara Cush- 

man Rowell, and her husband, Galen Rowell, in “Flying South: A Pilot’s Inner Journey” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Maureen Murdock discusses her new book “Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “Confessions of a Sociopath” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sherman Alexie, chronicler of the Native American experience, presents “Ten Little Indians” at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are free with the purchase of the book, available in both Cody’s Bookstores. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Cynthia Kaufman addresses the growing number of people who are unhappy with the status quo in her new book “Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Deborah Day explains the use of poetry to educate in her book “Mindful Messages: Healing Thoughts for the Hip Hop Descendants from the Motherland” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sol Americano and The Mara Connection, in a benefit performance for the non-profit Center for Educational Research and Development at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jimmy Bruno, John Palme and Carol Denney offer an evening of song artistry at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freight-andsalvage.org 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11 

FILM 

I Found it at the Movies: “All the Hitchcock You Can Repeat” at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Scoop Nisker returns at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761 www.freight-andsalvage.org 

Kevin Sweeny discusses his new book “Father Figures: A Boy Goes Searching” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Bridget Connelly discusses her memoire, “Forgetting Ireland,” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Laila Halaby, daughter of a Jordanian and an American, discusses the difficulty of growing up in two cultures in her new novel, “West of the Jordan,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

peAktimes, a performance project mixing today’s news with experimental music and dance at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $5-$10 sliding scale. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

NC Blues Connection at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Already Dead, Astral Realm, Puddingstone, Scribe perform punk and rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Juan Diego Flórez, tenor, performs at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

La Peña Recital with students from Rafael Manriquez’ Latin American Music Ensembles and Josh Jones’ Latin Jazz Ensembles at 7 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

THURSDAY, JUNE 12 

FILM 

Nicholas Ray: “We Can’t Go Home Again” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Target Iraq: What the News Media is not Telling You,” with Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Isabel Allende describes her exile from her homeland in her new book “My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile,” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Noah Levine discusses his transformation from a skateboarding punk in Santa Cruz in his memoire “Dharma Punx,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert Downtown with the Lynn Bobby Band at the Berkeley BART Station. Seating available. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Assoc. 549-2230. 

Jackie Greene, folk and blues prodigy, performs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jesse Legé with Sauce Piquante at 8:30 p.m., with a Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hannah Marcus, The Oblivion Seeker and Ultra Lash at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

AT THE THEATER 

Black Repertory Group “A Peep Under The Hood !”  

A comedy about a family in conflict over control of their autodealership. Written by Bay Area native Bobby Clements. June 6 at 8 p.m. June 7 at 2:30 and 8 p.m., June 8 at 2:30 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $17 at the door, or $15 in advance. At 3201 Adeline St., 1/2 block south of the Asby BART station. 652-2120, 685-7180.  

Transparent Theater “Night and Day,” a world premiere stage adaptation by Tom Clyde. Until June 8, Thurs. - Sat., 8 p.m. $20. Sun, 7 p.m. pay what you can. 1901 Ashby Ave. 883-0305. www.transparenttheater.org

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 

FILM 

“The Battle of Algiers,” a film about the uprising of the Algerian people against French colonialists in the 1960’s, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. All events are free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Nicholas Ray: “Party Girl” at 7:30 p.m. and “Hot Blood” at 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808.www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon Series, “Mars Revealed,” with Conrad Jung, lecturer, Chabot Space and Science Center. Luncheon 11:45 a.m. $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925, 665-9020. 

Haiku: A Critical Look at an Ancient Form, with Gabe Winer, creator of the Haiku Wall at Berkeley High; Gar- 

ry Gay, president, Haiku Poets of Northern California; and Ry Belville, translator of Nakahara Chuya, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, third floor Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge Ave. 981-6121. 

Poets Melody Lacina and Laura Horn at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Marguerite Sprague de- 

scribes the rise and fall of a California mining town in “Bodie’s Gold” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble, Combos and Lab band perform at 7 p.m. in the Little Theater, 1920 Allston Way. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students, seniors and BHS staff, available at the door. 548-8026. www.berkeleyhighjazz.org 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 2 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

Berkeley Edge Fest The music of Terry Riley at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Mike Olmos Quartet, with trumpeters Mike Olmos and Noel Jewkes, bassist Em- 

manuel Vaughn-Lee and drummer Jeff Mars at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Anthony Jeffries and his All Stars, blues band at Rountree’s, 2618 San Pablo Ave. 663-0440. 

Pandeiros do Brasil with Karana and Dandara and the Ginga Brasil Dance Troupe at 9:30 p.m., with Brazilian dance lesson at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Bill Horvitz Band, an experimental jazz trio, performs at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart perform roots country originals at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Weary Boys and PBR Street Gang perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Voces por la Paz, a Concert for Peace, celebrating La Peña’s 28th Anniversary, with Latin American, Afro-Cuban, Chicano and folk music at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Himsa, Beneath the Ashes, The Answer, With Passion, The Harms perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 

Pro Arts East Bay Open Studios 2003 June 7-8, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For list of participating studios go to www.pro 

artsgallery.org/ebos2003 

CHILDREN 

David Thom Band introduces children to bluegrass music and instruments, at 1 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $5-$10 sliding scale, children and students accompanying adults are free. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Oliver’s Urban Twist, a performance by Walden School, set in 1970’s New York, at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Also on Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12, available at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 2 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

FILM 

Superfest XXIII Interna- 

tional Media Festival on Disabilities From 1 to 5p.m., at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. Call 845-5576 for schedule or www.madknight.com/cdt. 

Nicholas Ray: “Wind Across the Everglades” at 4:30 and 8:55 p.m. and “The True Story of Jesse James” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Banned in Berkeley,” a film by five disabled women artists on their sexuality and relationships, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. All events are free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition presents an open poetry reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at 1527 Virginia St., off of Sacramento St., one block east of the North Berkeley BART station. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

Norman Fischer discusses “Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody's Books. 845-7852. ww.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chanticleer performs at 8 p.m. at the First Congrega- 

tional Church, 2345 Chan- 

ning Way. Tickets are $22-$37. 415-392-4400. www.chanticleer.org 

Trinity Chamber Concerts 

Esfir Ross, solo piano, performs Mozart, Brahms and Chopin at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Sug- 

gested donation of $12 general, $8 students, seniors or disabled. 549-3864. 

Berkeley Edge Fest The music of John Adams and Ingram Marshall at 6 p.m., and musicians and composers Steve Lacy, George Lewis and David Wessell at 9 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 

Tickets are $22 for each performance. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Pacific Mozart performs a cappella jazz and pop at 7:30 p.m. at the Crowden School, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $20 general, $15 seniors and students available from 415-705-0848. www.pacificmozart.org 

Indian Classical Music will be performed at 5 p.m. at St. Johns Presbyterian Church,  

2727 College Ave. Tickets are $25-$35 available from  

925-828-6127. www.harmoni- 

ventures.com 

Kotoja performs at 9:30 p.m., with a dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Patrice Pike and Shelley Doty perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

A. J. Roach performs Ap- 

palachian music at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Ponte las Pilas celebrate the style and defiance of the Zoot Suiter, and dance to Dr. Loco’s Rocking Jalapeña Band at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Oak, Ash and Thorn perform a cappella with a Bri- 

tish Isles flavor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 in ad- 

vance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Hellbillies, Iron Lung, The Profits, Face Down in Shit, Case of Emergency perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 8 

CHILDREN 

Family Classics: “Fantastic Voyage” at 2 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Winds Across the Bay, the East Bay's youth wind ensemble, celebrates its 10th anniversary with a performance of works by Giu- 

seppi Verdi, Nicholas Rim- 

sky-Korsakov, Johan deMeij and Joseph Willcox Jenkins, at 2 p.m. at the Dean Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. Tickets are $9 at the door or by calling 925-943-SHOW.  

Oliver’s Urban Twist, a performance by Walden School, see listing for June 7. 

FILM 

Vera Chytilová: “Prefab Stories” at 5:30 p.m. and “Wolf Chalet” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Superfest XXIII Interna- 

tional Media Festival on Disabilities, screening of award winners, from 1 to 5p.m., at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. Reception with filmmakers from 6 to 7 p.m. For schedule, call 845-5576. www.madknight.com/cdt. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Unbound and Under Covers” Experiments in visual writing, reception for the artists, at 2 p.m. at the Ber- 

keley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Poets Clive Matson and Marc Hofstadter at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Drum Workshop every Sunday with Wade Peterson. Beginners at 11 a.m., experienced at 12:30 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15 - $25, advanced registration is encouraged. 533-5111.  

Berkeley Edge Fest A tribute to Lou Harrison, featuring Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and musicians performing on the gamelan at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall. Tickets are $22. 642.9988. 

Baroque Chorale Guild performs a variety of music from Europe at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing, at Dana. Tickets are $22 general, $17 students and seniors. 650-969-4095. www.bcg.org 

Oakland Civic Orchestra presents “In Light and Shadow,” with works by Albinoni, Gabrieli and Beethoven at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. in Oakland. The concert is free. 238-3896. 

Transmission Trio and Patrick Cress’s Telepathy perform unconventional jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. 649-8744. www.thejazz- 

house.org 

Vox Populi performs songs of love and desire at 4 p.m. in Gallery A of the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Dann Zinn Band performs a blend of processed and original jazz and world music at the Jazzschool at 4:30 p.m. 

Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Carol Fran, Carmen Getit, Wendy DeWitt and Sue Palmer, Queens of the Boogie Woogie perform at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, JUNE 9 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bob Cushman shares stories of his sister, Barbara Cush- 

man Rowell, and her husband, Galen Rowell, in “Flying South: A Pilot’s Inner Journey” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Maureen Murdock discusses her new book “Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “Confessions of a Sociopath” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sherman Alexie, chronicler of the Native American experience, presents “Ten Little Indians” at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are free with the purchase of the book, available in both Cody’s Bookstores. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Cynthia Kaufman addresses the growing number of people who are unhappy with the status quo in her new book “Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Deborah Day explains the use of poetry to educate in her book “Mindful Messages: Healing Thoughts for the Hip Hop Descendants from the Motherland” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sol Americano and The Mara Connection, in a benefit performance for the non-profit Center for Educational Research and Development at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jimmy Bruno, John Palme and Carol Denney offer an evening of song artistry at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freight-andsalvage.org 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11 

FILM 

I Found it at the Movies: “All the Hitchcock You Can Repeat” at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Scoop Nisker returns at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761 www.freight-andsalvage.org 

Kevin Sweeny discusses his new book “Father Figures: A Boy Goes Searching” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Bridget Connelly discusses her memoire, “Forgetting Ireland,” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Laila Halaby, daughter of a Jordanian and an American, discusses the difficulty of growing up in two cultures in her new novel, “West of the Jordan,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

peAktimes, a performance project mixing today’s news with experimental music and dance at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $5-$10 sliding scale. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

NC Blues Connection at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Already Dead, Astral Realm, Puddingstone, Scribe perform punk and rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Juan Diego Flórez, tenor, performs at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

La Peña Recital with students from Rafael Manriquez’ Latin American Music Ensembles and Josh Jones’ Latin Jazz Ensembles at 7 p.m. at La Pena Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

THURSDAY, JUNE 12 

FILM 

Nicholas Ray: “We Can’t Go Home Again” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Target Iraq: What the News Media is not Telling You,” with Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Isabel Allende describes her exile from her homeland in her new book “My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile,” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Noah Levine discusses his transformation from a skateboarding punk in Santa Cruz in his memoire “Dharma Punx,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert Downtown with the Lynn Bobby Band at the Berkeley BART Station. Seating available. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Assoc. 549-2230. 

Jackie Greene, folk and blues prodigy, performs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jesse Legé with Sauce Piquante at 8:30 p.m., with a Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hannah Marcus, The Oblivion Seeker and Ultra Lash at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

AT THE THEATER 

Black Repertory Group “A Peep Under The Hood !”  

A comedy about a family in conflict over control of their autodealership. Written by Bay Area native Bobby Clements. June 6 at 8 p.m. June 7 at 2:30 and 8 p.m., June 8 at 2:30 and 5 p.m. Tickets are $17 at the door, or $15 in advance. At 3201 Adeline St., 1/2 block south of the Asby BART station. 652-2120, 685-7180.  

Transparent Theater “Night and Day,” a world premiere stage adaptation by Tom Clyde. Until June 8, Thurs. - Sat., 8 p.m. $20. Sun, 7 p.m. pay what you can. 1901 Ashby Ave. 883-0305. www.transparenttheater.org

On Tuesday, June 10, PBS Channel 9 will air “Daddy & Papa,” a film by Oakland independent filmmaker Johnny Symons. I caught up with Johnny and his partner William at their comfortable craftsman bungalow a few blocks from the Daily Planet office. Actually, I did more than catch up with them. I weeded their garden. (Like most wildly successful writers in the Bay Area, I do a little gardening, babysitting, housecleaning and light hauling on the side.)  

And believe me, their garden needed tending. Johnny and William have been too busy lately to pay much attention to their yard. They are the parents of two rambunctious little boys, Zach and Kenyon, and Johnny’s film is getting lots of national and international attention.  

In fact, while I was wrestling with the wild blackberry vines in their backyard, Johnny was showing “Daddy & Papa” at a film festival in Denmark and William was at his full-time job as director of policy, administration and program development for the Berkeley Public Health Department. Johnny’s mother and stepfather, Susie Symons and John Glick, were visiting from Michigan and watching over Zach (almost four) and Kenyon (18 months). 

After pulling weeds for seven hours I got a chance to watch “Daddy & Papa.” It’s a warm, heartfelt documentary that explores the personal, cultural and political ramifications of gay men making the decision to become dads. “Daddy & Papa” follows four gay male families and examines the issues they face: marriage and divorce, the legalities of gay parenthood, surrogacy and interracial adoption. It also highlights the ways in which their households resemble more traditional families: sleepless nights, soccer games, messy bedrooms, picnics, homework and non-stop togetherness. And it underlines the additional challenges that gay dads encounter including conservatives who regard them as the antithesis of family, antipathy from parts of the gay community and discrimination from the law. (In 2000 Utah and Mississippi joined Florida in banning gay adoption.)  

Kelly Wallace is a 38-year-old single white gay man who lives in the Castro district of San Francisco. In 1998 he adopted a pair of biracial brothers, ages two and three, from the foster care system. Over 500,000 children are currently in foster care; one-fifth of them are awaiting adoption. The majority of these are children of color and labeled “hard to place.” Kelly is open and honest about his desire for a family, and also painfully candid about the difficulties of raising two boys alone in a neighborhood that is not family-oriented.  

Doug Houghton is a nurse in Miami and a classical pianist. He first met Oscar, a homeless, abandoned African-American boy five years ago when Oscar visited his out-patient clinic. Shortly thereafter Doug became Oscar’s legal guardian and, at the invitation of the ACLU, he joined a lawsuit to sue the state of Florida and legally establish his parental rights. In “Daddy & Papa,” eight-year old Oscar tries with difficulty to explain what it’s like not to have a mother and to have a father who is single and white.  

Phillip Himburg and Jim Ballantine arranged with Phillip’s high school sweetheart, Cathy Smith, to have a child. The result is Fanny Ballantine-Himburg, an adorable, precocious little girl who wrestles a decade later with the break-up of her fathers and the complexity of adjusting to their new partners. Fanny’s biggest problem is not that her fathers are gay, but that they are divorced.  

Filmmaker Johnny and his partner, William, are also profiled in the film, which shows them dealing with a lot of bureaucratic and emotional baggage. William complains about the adoption process to his partner’s camera: “It was tedious. I mean, they have to ask you every question about every aspect of your life. All straight people have to do is fuck and they get a kid. We have to be grilled. It’s ridiculous!” Zachary’s foster mom, Dora Dean Bradley, an active member of Oakland’s Mingleton Temple of God in Christ Church, had difficulty accepting Johnny and William’s sexual orientation and was, at first, reluctant to give nine-month-old Zachary to the gay couple. 

Through interviews, on-location shooting around the country, archival footage and photos and personal narrative, “Daddy & Papa” uncovers the struggles, challenges and triumphs of gay fathers and their children. A backyard with weeds three feet high and in desperate need of a lawnmower are predictable side effects of being the kind of busy, devoted, extraordinary activist-parents William and Johnny are.  

“Daddy & Papa,” hosted by Angela Bassett on the weekly series Independent Lens, airs locally on Tuesday, June 10, on Channel 9 at 10 p.m.. For a complete list of national viewing go to the Web site: www.daddyandpapa.com.

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley. 

On Thursday, June 5th, our concert series opens with Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut performing some of the best in R & B, with a splash of jazz and a solid helping of the blues. Soulful Strut appears regularly at many Bay Area nightspots such Enricos Sidewalk Café and Restaurant. 

On Thursday, July 31st, our concert series closes with SoVoSó, a highly visual and imaginative a capella ensemble that sings a compelling mix of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, world, pop, and improvisational music. The ensemble is made up of former members of Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra, and McFerrin says, “SoVoSó is tight, soulful, and a whole lotta fun.” 

This event is easily accessible by transit and there is one hour free parking daily from 9 am to 5 pm in Center Street Garage. Seating will be available. 

For a complete schedule of entertainers for the Downtown Berkeley Summer Noon Concerts 2003 visit the Downtown Berkeley Association website at www.downtownberkeley.org 

A proposal to build a multi-service homeless complex in West Berkeley has stirred debate over whether it is appropriate to build housing for the poor in an area with known environmental problems.  

The Berkeley-based nonprofit Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS) is proposing a $4.5 million project called the Ursula Sherman Village on the city-owned property near the Albany border. The village— which will be adjacent to the existing Harrison House Adult Shelter, also operated by BOSS—will consist of four buildings totaling 21,000 square feet. The project, slated for completion by 2006, would provide much needed housing, medical care, education facilities and job training for about 130 men, women and children who would stay at the facility for up to two years.  

  A recently released draft environmental impact report (DEIR) has raised concerns about elevated levels of particulate matter in the area. Particulate matter is small, airborne pieces of liquid or solid matter that come from a variety of sources and is known to aggravate respiratory conditions such as asthma, which state medical officials say is common among the East Bay’s poor.  

The poor air quality at the site is one of three environmental problems that have arisen since the city purchased the 6.4-acre site from UC Berkeley in 2000. The city has already spent more than $400,000 to mitigate a contaminated water problem and most recently the city discovered two fuel tanks underneath the Harrison House Adult Shelter, which could cost as much as $266,000 to remove.  

Community Environmental Advisory Commissioner LA Wood has been an outspoken critic of development at the site. Referring to a 19-month-long air study that showed levels of airborne particulate matter exceeding state and federal standards, Wood said building transitional housing for the poor at the location brings up issues of environmental justice.  

“The air is compromised down there and when you bring in people who are at high risk for respiratory illness and other health problems, it creates a very, very undesirable situation,” he said. “I think the project is greatly needed but I can’t support it in that location.” 

BOSS Executive Director boona cheema said there are measures BOSS can take to help offset the poor air quality such as locating clients with active respiratory problems at the McKinnley House in central Berkeley. 

Cheema said that signs will be posted around the complex warning residents and workers about the poor air quality and potential for respiratory problems. She said the city is taking steps to reduce the release of particulate matter from the Berkeley Solid Waste Transfer Station, which is immediately west of the proposed housing site.  

“But really what this comes down to is that there will be much less risk at Ursula Sherman Village for families than there is living on the street or in crack houses,” cheema said.  

Housing Director Stephen Barton said developing transitional housing in West Berkeley’s industrial area is a question of priorities.  

“I think the question is can you mitigate [the air problems] enough so it’s responsible to let people live there knowing they otherwise may not have an option,” he said. “We have to be realistic, yes it’s a less than ideal environment, but on the other hand people living on the streets is certainly less than ideal.” 

A public meeting on the project’s DEIR will be held June 9 at the West Berkeley Senior Center at 7 p.m. The Zoning Adjustments Board will conduct a public hearing on the project on June 26 in Old City Hall at 7 p.m. The DEIR is also available for review at the Central Library and on the Web at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/current/default.htm 

In addition, information about the 19-month air study can be found at http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/parks/parkspages/HarrisonAirQuality.html

TUESDAY, JUNE 3 

March and Rally to Protect the Safety Net A community mobilization to protect basic services for the poor and homeless. Gather at 10 a.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 685 14th St., Oak- 

land. For information call boona or Janny at 649-1930. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise, and creative arts and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Auditions for Young People’s Symphony will be held for musicians ages 12 to 21 on June 3, 4, 6 and 7. 849-9776. www.ypsomusic.org 

Discussion on “Language and Literature,” open to all from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. Cost is $1, bring light snacks or drinks to share. 527-5332. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4 

South Berkeley Mural Project Community members in South Berkeley are coming together to create a neighborhood mural on the side of the Grove Liquor Store on the corner of Ashby Ave and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Meetings are held every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios at 1923 Ashby Ave. For further information on ways to get involved please call 644-2204. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam, with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave. $90 cash prizes. Cost is $7 at the door, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082. 

Community Dances in Berkeley, traditional English and American dances, 8 p.m. every Wednesday, $9. 7 p.m. first Sunday, $10. Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. 233-5065. www.bacds.org 

THURSDAY, JUNE 5 

Opening Day for Berkeley Farmer’s Market on North Shattuck, from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Elephant Pharmacy parking lot, 1607 Shattuck Ave., at Cedar, and continuing every Thursday. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Berkeley Reads” Orientation for new volunteer tutors in the Berkeley Public Library’s adult literacy program, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. at San Pablo. For more information call 981-6299.  

Lawyers in the Library at 6 p.m. at the North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM, holds public meetings for all interested people first and third Thursdays, 7 p.m. at the Long Haul Info Shop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 595-0190.  

Embracing Diversity Films presents “Being Gay: Coming Out in the 21st Century” at 7 p.m. in the Little Thea- 

ter, Albany High School, 603 Key Route Blvd., between Portland and Thousand Oaks. A facilitated discussion follows. Appropriate for middle and high school students. Admission is free.  

Best Summer Camping and Hiking Adventures in Northern California Join Tom Stienstra, outdoor writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and award-winning guidebook author, for a slide presentation on the best camping, hiking and fishing opportunities this summer in the northern part of our state. At 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140.  

Susan Alcorn, author of “We’re in the Mountains, Not Over the Hill,” talks about women and wilderness travel, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose. 843-3533. 

Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, all night study from 7 p.m. to dawn. Over 40 rabbis and scholars will be teaching. All ages welcome. Berkeley Richmond Jewish Commu-nity Center, 1414 Walnut St. 925-979-1998. 

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 

Celebrate Juneteenth with the Berkeley YMCA, with entertainment, African fashions, storytelling with Orunamamu, arts and crafts, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Downtown YMCA, 2001 Allston Way. 549-4524. 

So How’d You Become an Activist? With Michael Parenti at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. Wheelchair accessible. 415-927-1645. 

“Berkeley Reads” Orientation for new volunteer tutors in the Berkeley Public Library’s adult literacy program, from 10 a.m. to noon at the West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. at San Pablo. For more information call 981-6299.  

Spring Festival Performance by Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center, at 6:30 p.m. at  

Longfellow Elementary School, 3877 Lusk Street in North Oakland, off 40th Street between Market and Martin Luther King Blvd. Dancers and martial artists ages 3-18. $5 to $10 donation will be requested at the door. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Destiny Arts Center is a non-profit organization that uses arts education and violence prevention to enable children and youth to develop peaceful solutions to violence and everyday conflicts. For more information call 597-1619. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berke- 

ley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 

548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 

Live Oak Park Fair from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Shattuck and Berryman. Over 115 booths with crafts and fine art, entertainment, and diverse food, in a benefit for Camp Winnarainbow and KPFA. Free shuttles from the North Berkeley BART every 20 minutes. 898-3282. www.liveoakparkfair.com 

LeConte Elementary School Yard Sale, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 2241 Russell St., just 2 blocks up from Berke- 

ley Bowl. Great gear, plants, food and beverages, and a good way to support our schools. To donate items in advance, call 649-0419. 

California Writers Club hosts the winners of the 17th Annual Fifth Grade Writing Contest at a luncheon, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Reserva- 

tions required, email cwcberk 

@earthlink.net, or visit www. 

berkeleywritersclub.org 

Peace Activist Lynn McMichaels will show slides and talk about her recent trip to Iraq at 7:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers leads a Boundary Walk. Meet at the Reservoir, Grizzly Peak and Spruce St. at 10 a.m. 526-8001. 

Ladybirds and Ladybugs  

We’ll collect and release as many adults and larva forms as we can find and talk about the good these beetles do, and learn about the ones who have turned to the dark side, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233, tnarea@ebparks.org 

Keeping Chickens in the City  

David Morris, chicken keeper for over 20 years, will cover the basics of raising chickens, egg production, and using chickens as part of your recycling and composting. He will also cover the laws regarding keeping chickens in the city. Class will be held at David’s chicken coop in Berkeley, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Call to pre-register and for location. $10 Ecology Center members, $15 others, no one turned away for lack of funds. 548-2220 x233, beck@ecologycenter.org 

California Native Art and Garden Show, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Visit a native plant demonstration garden created by using the plants that are native here and that you see when walking the trails of Wildcat, Tilden, Claremont Canyon, Sibley, Huckleberry, Roberts, Redwood and Chabot Regional Parks. 

Rellim Reed Terrace, 1096 Miller Ave. 558-8139.  

Sick Plant Clinic UC Botanical Garden experts diagnose your plant woes the first Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. www.mip.berkeley. 

edu/garden 

History of Tilden Nature Area Walk through time to the lake and back to discover the story of the lost escudo and more, from 10 a.m. to noon in Tilden Nature Area. 525-2233, tnarea@ebparks.org 

Alternative Materials: Cob and Strawbale, a class on two natural building methods, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. For information call 525-7610. 

Walk to Benefit the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation at 8:30 a.m. followed by an afternoon of entertainment, prizes and refreshments. At Cesar Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina. To register to walk or for more information call 800-241-0758, or 531- 6764. www.ccfa.org  

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour, “The Refurbished City Hall,” led by Allen Stross, 10 a.m. $5 members, $10 non-members. For reservations call 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc 

SUNDAY, JUNE 8 

Live Oak Park Fair, see listing for June 7.  

Faith Community Speaks Out Against State Cuts, community meeting at 6:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, 1640 Addison. Testimonials, youth group skits, and performance by a multi-congregational choir. Sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. For more information contact Rev. George Crespin, 843-2244.  

California Native Art and Garden Show, see listing for June 7.  

Dried, Salted, Potted and Pickled Learn the cultural and natural history of food preservation while tasting a variety of meats, vegetables, fruit and fish. From noon to 2 p.m. in Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for Berkeley residents, $7 for non-residents. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Rhythm Workshop: Ta Ke Ti Na, led by Zorina Wolf, a master of Ta Ke Ti Na and local drum and percussion instructor. From 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Askenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $35. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Community Health Fair, with free health screenings and information, children’s activities and food, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Missionary Church of God, 1125 Allston Way. 540-6713. 

ONGOING 

Technical Assistance for Non-Profits A series of free workshops hosted by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, to be held at the Alameda County Conference Center, at 125 12th St., Oakland. For information or to register, please call Breonna Cole at 272-6060.  

Berkeley Community Media announces the rebirth of the poetry program, “Berkeley Speaks” in June. If you are interested in being a featured artist, call 848-2288, ext. 10. 

Figure Drawing Workshop 

The Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park hosts a four week figure drawing workshop on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to noon, starting June 14. This class is designed as a drawing intensive to sharpen your observation skills and enhance your drawings. Bring your own dry drawing tools and good paper. Model is provided. Instructor is Carol Brighton. Cost is $150 for all four sessions. Contact the Berkeley Art Center to sign up, 644-6893. 

Marine Biology Classes for students age 10 to 13, from Tuesday, June 17 to Friday, June 27, 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Shorebird Nature Center, 160 University Ave, at the Marina. Cost is $90 for eight days of classes. For information call 644-8623. www.cityofberkeley.info/marina.  

Educators Academy: Insects and Crawling Creatures  

Readily available in the field and easy to keep in the classroom, insects are everywhere! You will discover the world of insects and their relatives by visiting several Regional Parks where you will collect, observe and release insects. You will learn new ideas for kindergarten through 5th grade classes and outdoor activities. You will love insects when this class is over...guaranteed! Tues., June 24 - Thurs., June 26, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Regis- 

tration is required. Cost is $100 for Berkeley residents, $110 for non-residents. Financial assistance is available. Wheelchair accessible. For information call 636-1684. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Educators Academy: Project WILD and Project Aquatic WILD From awareness to responsive action, Project WILD and Project Aquatic WILD are designed to help educators teach about wild- 

life and the environment through stimulating, hands-on activities. Participants will receive curriculum guides for kindergarten through 12th grades, as well as sample activities and supplemental resources. From Tues., June 24 to Thurs., June 26, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $45 for Berkeley residents and $51 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. Fi- 

nancial assistance is available. Registration is re- 

quired. For information call 636-1684, or email tnarea@ 

ebparks.org 

Summer Science Weeks: Insects and Plants Count butterflies, hunt bugs, and meet common plant families in California. Monday, June 30 to July 4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for ages 9 to 12, in Tilden Nature Area in Tilden Park. Cost is $150 for Berkeley residents, $166 for non-residents. Financial assistance available for low-income families. For information call 636-1684.  

The Bay Area Shakespeare Camp offers a theatrical experience for children 7-13 years of age covering casting, staging, costuming, and performing, in a series of five, 2-week sessions beginning June 16 and ending August 22. Sponsored by the Bay Area Shakespeare Camp and the Oakland East Bay Shakespeare Festival, in cooperation with the City of Berkeley Parks Recreation & Waterfront Department. The camp will be held at John Hinkel Park, Southampton Place at Arlington Ave. The cost is $340 per session. Ad- 

ditional after-care is also provided for a fee. Scholar- 

ships are available for eligible participants in City of Berkeley Recreation Programs. Call 981-5150 for scholarship details. To register for the camp, or for more information, please call 415-422-2222, or 800-978-PLAY. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Meeting on the City Budget The public is invited to learn more about the budget deficit and plans to address the issue, on June 5, at 7 p.m., at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. For information call 981-CITY.  

Council Agenda Committee  

meets Monday, June 9, at  

2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 

981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wednesday, June 4, at 7:30 p.m., in the  

North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruby Primus, 981-5160.www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/women 

Fire Safety Commission meets Wednesday, June 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. David Orth, 981-5502. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/firesafety 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thursday, June 5, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Housing Advisory Commission, Public Hearing on Allocation of Housing Trust Funds on Thursday, June 5, at 7:30 p.m., in the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/housing 

Public Works Commission 

meets Thursday, June 5, at 7 p.m., in the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

School Board meets Wednesday, June 4, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Queen Graham 644-6147 or Mark Coplan 644-6320.

That loud whooshing sound you heard rising all over Berkeley last Thursday afternoon was the collective sigh of relief when citizens learned that Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz is going to try to straighten out the Planning Department. Phil (everyone is on a first name basis with him) is one of the best-liked, and also (and not always the same thing) one of the most respected people in the city administration. His sharp pencil has saved the city budget in ways that seemed miraculous for years, though this year might be more of a challenge. 

For the last few years, it’s seemed that planning for the future of Berkeley has been in the hands of graduates of the Robert Moses School of Public Policy. For those of you too young to remember Robert Moses, he was New York City’s planning tsar from 1933 to 1959. He tried to reconstruct New York City in an imperial style with lots of concrete and highways, and his contempt for citizens who disagreed with him was legendary. 

Phil Kamlarz doesn’t have a degree in planning at all, which is probably a good thing. He might, for example, start his job by actually reading the description of the duty of the department’s Advance Planning Division, which is printed on the city’s Web site: “… assisting the  

Berkeley community in its efforts to plan for the city’s physical, cultural, environmental and socio-economic future.” Note that word “assisting.” It’s not “controlling” or even “guiding.” Ever since they laid out the streets in the Berkeley hills to follow the contours of the land instead of destroying them, members of the community have traditionally taken the lead in planning Berkeley’s future. 

Talleyrand said “war is too important to be left to the generals.” Similarly, planning for the future of Berkeley has always been considered too important to be left to the planning professionals. The same Web description says that the Planning Commission “oversees and reviews the planning process and planning issues.” It doesn’t say “carries out the plans made by staff” or even “endorses plans made by staff after the fact.” It clearly says “oversees.” 

When Carol Barrett, the departing planning director, arrived in Berkeley, planning commissioners had just finished a mammoth two-year effort to update the city’s General Plan. They started out with a draft which had been essentially dictated by former City Manager James Keene. At many lengthy public hearings they took testimony from hundreds of citizens, and re-wrote the plan from top to bottom to reflect this input. The cooperation of planner Andrew Thomas, who takes the old-fashioned title of “public servant” seriously, was key to the success of the process. But Thomas was hired as a consultant, and after the plan was finished he moved on to another city. Barrett, on the other hand, was uncomfortable from the beginning with Berkeley-style civic discourse. On her way out the door, it seems that she’s still trying to spin the Chronicle’s ever-gullible columnist Chip Johnson to blame the civilians for her failings. 

Phil Kamlarz has always gotten along with civilians. He’s needed to work cooperatively with them on election campaigns to fund civic projects like library improvements. Besides his sharp pencil, his eyes are sharp enough that he’s always known what was going on in city government. 

A classic cartoon shows The Little King standing on his balcony, looking out over a crowd of angry peasants. “Sire,” says his vizier, “The people are revolting!” Says the king imperiously, “Get a new people!” Phil Kamlarz has been around Berkeley long enough to know that he’s not going to get a new people, so he’s learned how to get along with the people we have. Maybe he can teach the Planning Department how to do it. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet.

TUESDAY, JUNE 3 

FILM 

The Inquiring Camera: “The American Egypt” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www. 

bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

James Weinstein, founder and longtime editor of the Socialist Review, discusses “The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Andy Clark, Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University, discusses his new book, “Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Zabava! Izvorno and Rumen Shopov and Friends at 8:30 p.m., with a Balkan dance lesson at 7:30 p.m., at Ash- 

kenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4 

FILM 

I Found it at the Movies: “Made in Hollywood” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sidney Blumenthal, advisor to President Clinton from 1997 to 2001, provides a behind the scenes narrative of “The Clinton Wars” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Writers Group discusses “How to Write for the New Age Market” with author Richard Webster at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

Leon Wofsy reads from his new book, “At 80: An old bird’s eye view of the year following September 11, 2001,” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bluegrass Homecoming, in celebration of the Freight’s 35th Anniversary, with Bluegrass Intentions, Dix Bruce and Jim Nunally, High Country, the Kathy Kallick Band, Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, and True Blue at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ignit, Green Hell, Caps-X, Parkside Drive perform punk rock at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Tom Rigney and Flambeau at 8:30 p.m., with a Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THURSDAY, JUNE 5 

FILM 

Antero Alli: “Under a Shipwrecked Moon” Finnish-born, Berkeley-based filmmaker presents his personal film of family and memories at 9 p.m. at 21 Grand, 449-B 23rd St., near Telegraph, Oakland. 464-4640. 

Vera Chytilová: “Fruit of Paradise” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Gallery Talk with Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson explor-ing art’s ability to provide insights into contemporary global issues, at 12:15 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-1412. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

David Halberstam tells the story of four great ballplayers, their friendship and transition to older age in “The Teammates” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Simon Wood talks about his new thriller “Accidents Waiting to Happen” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Noon Concert Downtown 

Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut at the Berkeley BART Station. Seating available. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Assoc. 549-2230. 

Berkeley Edge Fest  

The music of Edmund Cam- 

pion and Cindy Cox, with texts and concepts by poet John Campion, featuring the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 6:30 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

Rachel Garlin performs contemporary folk at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Brian Joseph in Concert performs politically-conscious urban folk music at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568.  

George Pedersen and His Pretty Good Band and Sons of Emperor Norton at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Erika Luckett and Ellis sing at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$10 sliding scale. 649-8744. www.thejazz- 

house.org 

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 

FILM 

“The Battle of Algiers,” a film about the uprising of the Algerian people against French colonialists in the 1960’s, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheel- 

chair accessible. All events are free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Nicholas Ray: “Party Girl” at 7:30 p.m. and “Hot Blood” at 9:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808.www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon Series, “Mars Revealed,” with Conrad Jung, lecturer, Chabot Space and Science Center. Luncheon 11:45 a.m. $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925, 665-9020. 

Haiku: A Critical Look at an Ancient Form, with Gabe Winer, creator of the Haiku Wall at Berkeley High; Gar- 

ry Gay, president, Haiku Poets of Northern California; and Ry Belville, translator of Nakahara Chuya, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, third floor Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge Ave. 981-6121. 

Poets Melody Lacina and Laura Horn at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Marguerite Sprague de- 

scribes the rise and fall of a California mining town in “Bodie’s Gold” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 1730 Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble, Combos and Lab band perform at 7 p.m. in the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, 1920 Allston Way. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students, seniors and BHS staff, available at the door. 548-8026. www.berkeleyhighjazz.org 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 2 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

Berkeley Edge Fest The music of Terry Riley at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Mike Olmos Quartet, with trumpeters Mike Olmos and Noel Jewkes, bassist Em- 

manuel Vaughn-Lee and drummer Jeff Mars at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazz- 

school.com 

Anthony Jeffries and his All Stars, blues band at Rountree’s, 2618 San Pablo Ave. 663-0440. 

Pandeiros do Brasil with Karana and Dandara and the Ginga Brasil Dance Troupe at 9:30 p.m., with Brazilian dance lesson at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Bill Horvitz Band, an experimental jazz trio, performs at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $10. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart perform roots country originals at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Weary Boys and PBR Street Gang perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Voces por la Paz, a Concert for Peace, celebrating La Peña’s 28th Anniversary, with Latin American, Afro-Cuban, Chicano and folk music at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Himsa, Beneath the Ashes, The Answer, With Passion, The Harms perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 7 

Pro Arts East Bay Open Studios 2003 June 7-8, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For list of participating studios go to www.pro 

artsgallery.org/ebos2003 

CHILDREN 

David Thom Band introduces children to bluegrass music and instruments, at 1 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $5-$10 sliding scale, children and students accompanying adults are free. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Oliver’s Urban Twist, a performance by Walden School, set in 1970’s New York with dancing, singing and laughter, at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Also on Sun. at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12, available at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

New Age Academy Benefit Performance featuring both student and professional artists, at 2 p.m. at 2921 Adeline St. 848-4664. 

FILM 

Superfest XXIII Interna- 

tional Media Festival on Disabilities From 1 to 5p.m., at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. Screening of award winners. Call 845-5576 for schedule or www.madknight.com/cdt. 

Nicholas Ray: “Wind Across the Everglades” at 4:30 and 8:55 p.m. and “The True Story of Jesse James” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students; $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth; $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Banned in Berkeley,” a film by five disabled women artists on their sexuality and relationships, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul. 3124 Shattuck Ave. Wheelchair accessible. All events are free. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition presents an open poetry reading from 3 to 5 p.m. on the front lawn of 1527 Vir- 

ginia St., Berkeley, off of Sacramento St., one block east of the North Berkeley BART station. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

Norman Fischer discusses “Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody's Books. 845-7852. ww.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chanticleer performs at 8 p.m. at the First Congrega- 

tional Church, 2345 Chan- 

ning Way. Tickets are $22-$37. 415-392-4400. www.chanticleer.org 

Trinity Chamber Concerts 

Esfir Ross, solo piano, performs Mozart, Brahms and Chopin at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Sug- 

gested donation of $12 general, $8 students, seniors or disabled. 549-3864. 

Berkeley Edge Fest The music of John Adams and Ingram Marshall at 6 p.m., and musicians and composers Steve Lacy, George Lewis and David Wessell at 9 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 

Tickets are $22 for each performance. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Kotoja performs at 9:30 p.m., with a dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m., at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Patrice Pike and Shelley Doty perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

A. J. Roach performs Ap- 

palachian music at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $6-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Ponte las Pilas celebrate the style and defiance of the Zoot Suiter, and dance to Dr. Loco’s Rocking Jalapeña Band at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Oak, Ash and Thorn perform a cappella with a British Isles flavor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $16.50 advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Hellbillies, Iron Lung, The Profits, Face Down in Shit, Case of Emergency perform at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 8 

CHILDREN 

Family Classics: “Fantastic Voyage” at 2 p.m. Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Winds Across the Bay, the East Bay's youth wind ensemble, celebrates its 10th anniversary with a performance by current and past members of works by Giu- 

seppi Verdi, Nicholas Rim- 

sky-Korsakov, Johan deMeij and Joseph Willcox Jenkins, at 2 p.m. at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. Tickets are $9 at the door or by calling 925-943-SHOW.  

FILM 

Vera Chytilová: “Prefab Stories” at 5:30 p.m. and “Wolf Chalet” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4 members, UC students, $5 UC faculty, staff, seniors, disabled, youth, $8 adults. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Superfest XXIII Interna- 

tional Media Festival on Disabilities, screening of award winners, from 1 to 5p.m., at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. Reception with filmmakers from 6 to 7 p.m. For schedule, call 845-5576. www.madknight.com/cdt. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Unbound and Under Covers” Experiments in visual writing, reception for the artists, at 2 p.m. at the Ber- 

keley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Poets Clive Matson and Marc Hofstadter at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

African Drum Workshop every Sunday with Wade Peterson. Beginners from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., experienced from 12:30 to 2 p.m., at The Jazz House. Cost is $15 - $25, advanced registration is encouraged. 533-5111.  

Berkeley Edge Fest  

A tribute to Lou Harrison, featuring Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and musicians performing on the gamelan at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall. Tickets are $22. 642.9988. 

Baroque Chorale Guild performs a variety of music from Europe in a Bon Voyage concert prior to their tour to Tuscany in July, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing, at Dana. Tickets are $22 general, $17 students and seniors. 650-969-4095. www.bcg.org 

Oakland Civic Orchestra, under the direction of Martha Stoddard, presents “In Light and Shadow,” with works by Albinoni, Gabrieli and Beethoven at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. in Oakland. The concert is free. 238-3896. 

Transmission Trio and Patrick Cress’s Telepathy perform unconventional jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. 649-8744. www.thejazz- 

house.org 

Vox Populi performs songs of love and desire at 4 p.m. in Gallery A of the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Dann Zinn Band performs a blend of processed and original jazz and world music at the Jazzschool at 4:30 p.m. 

Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Carol Fran, Carmen Getit, Wendy DeWitt and Sue Palmer, Queens of the Boogie Woogie perform at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

AT THE THEATER 

Berkeley Repertory Theater 

“The Guys,” by Anne Nelson, directed by Robert Egan. An exploration of loss and redemption in the aftermath of 9/11. Runs until July 5, Tues. - Sun., call for starting times. Tickets are $42-$54. The Roda Theater, 2016 Addison St. 647-2918. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

California Shakespeare  

Theater opens May 31 with “Julius Caesar.” Bruns Amphitheater, off Highway 24 in Orinda. Please call for dates and times 548-9666. www.calshakes.org  

Shotgun Players presents 

“under milk wood,” a play for voices by Dylan Thomas, exploring the characters in a fishing town in Wales. At Eighth Street Studio, 2525 8th St., through June 22, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Tickets are $18 adults, $12 children and seniors, $10 on Thursdays. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Transparent Theater 

Virginia Woolf's “Night and Day,” a stage adaptation by Tom Clyde, concerning the loves and careers of a group of young people in London in 1910. Through June 8, Thurs. - Sat., 8 p.m. Tickets are $20. Sun., 7 p.m. pay what you can. 1901 Ashby Ave. 883-0305. www.transparenttheater.org

As the school year draws to a close, dozens of members of the Berkeley High School class of 2003 are preparing to take part in a tradition less formal but just as storied as the classic rites of prom and commencement.  

Before the year is over, some graduating seniors will run naked through the crowded Berkeley High courtyard in the annual “Senior Streak” during the school’s lunch period. The tradition, which most seniors said would happen during the next week, is intended as a final act of rebellion after a year that typically features several senior class pranks. 

Although the origins of the ritual are unknown, Berkeley High biology teacher Alex Panasenko, who has taught at the high school for over 30 years, said the streak has been happening at least since he began his career at Berkeley High. 

For the second year, Berkeley administrators are trying to end the streak. 

Last year several seniors who were identified while running were suspended from school for one day. Berkeley High co-principal Mary Ann Valles said only a few participants were suspended because it was difficult for administrators to recognize individual students. Many streaking seniors wear masks, and little else, during the sprint across the quad. 

Valles said that students identified during this year’s run would be subject to consequences including suspension, expulsion, financial remuneration and/or exclusion from senior prom. 

“We will suspend anyone we can identify,” she said. “We’ll consider further consequences on a case-by-case basis after that.” 

In the weekly letter from co-principals Valles and Laura Leventer on Monday, June 2, parents were urged to encourage their children not to streak or stage other pranks. 

“It is completely inappropriate, in a year of serious budget crisis, for us to focus our time, staff resources and money cleaning up after or monitoring such events,” the memo read. “Every year a student who is streaking gets injured from falling down.” 

Last year, Berkeley High senior Sam Shonkoff injured his ankle when he fell while running through the courtyard. Shonkoff was not suspended, but participated in graduation on crutches. 

Panasenko said that Leventer and Valles, who began serving as co-principals in November 2001, were the first principals he remembered that had suspended students who participated in the streak. He said although most former administrators had threatened disciplinary action, they had not followed through. 

Philip Chan, a 2002 graduate—now a freshman at Carleton College—who was suspended after last year’s senior streak, said he did not think that streak participants should be subject to disciplinary action. 

“It’s tradition, and it’s fun, and there’s nothing really wrong with it,” Chan said. “Running naked is not that big of a deal, so suspending kids seems a little ridiculous.” 

This year, many seniors said they planned to streak despite last year’s suspensions and this year’s threats. One student, who wished to remain anonymous, said the likelihood of being caught was small. 

“Last year they got three kids out of 40 or 50,” he said. “I’m a fast runner; they’re not going to see who I am.” 

Other students expressed resentment that the co-principals are attempting to stifle a tradition that is older than the seniors themselves. 

“My dad graduated from Berkeley High, and he streaked in 1968,” one senior said. “I don’t buy the argument that people are offended by us running naked and that it disrupts the learning environment.” 

Most students and administrators agreed that, despite the warnings, the annual event would likely continue. 

“I do expect we’ll see it happen this year,” Valles said.

URBAN SPACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the story “Five Story Complex Set for Edge of Downtown” (May 16-18 edition):  

I can’t even begin to imagine the uproar that would be caused if someone proposed to tear down a 190-unit building to replace it with a Kragen Auto Parts. Patrick Kennedy is proposing the opposite, and yet it seems that for John Kenyon the glass will be forever half-empty. Writing in a city that has the luxury of having one of the few thriving downtowns in the United States, your correspondent exhibits a peculiarly suburban mentality, as evidenced by statements such as the “five-floor cliff of stores and apartments sited right up against the Martin Luther King, Jr. Way sidewalk.” You have only to go to Fillmore Street in San Francisco to appreciate what great urban spaces this scale of development can create. 

Yann Taylor 

Field Paoli Architects 

San Francisco 

• 

3045 SHATTUCK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for your article on my neighborhood’s struggle to get a public hearing on 3045 Shattuck Ave. I would like to offer a couple of clarifications. 

It’s true that neighbors’ complaints about the project date back to last June, when Christina Sun demolished the basement, but our campaign to get a hearing didn’t start until two months ago, when the remaining portion of the house was jacked up to the third-floor level. Prior to that, no one in the neighborhood had a clue that the building was going to be raised more than two feet, that its footprint would be expanded or that the backyard would be paved over for use as a parking lot. Sun’s original permit described only replacing the foundation and building out part of the basement as living space, retaining one of the two existing garage spaces. 

Jill Peterson, a former tenant of Sun’s at 3045 Shattuck, told the Zoning Adjustments Board that Sun told her she wanted to turn it into a “dorm-like situation.” The article mistakenly characterizes that as my description of the project. I describe the project as a six- to 10-bedroom, four-bath group living accommodation designed to be easily converted into two separate flats. 

Robert Lauriston 

• 

DILEMMA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

David and Lisa Sundelson have more than one dilemma with their trip to join the Yale reunion, but first, I hope that David met his friend Betty at the picket line at the Claremont. Doesn’t he know that there is a labor dispute going on there? 

Second, if he and the Missus are going to pay $300 for their White House picnic, do they know where that money is going? One might be too polite to ask, but just because it’s in the front yard doesn’t mean that the White House isn’t being used for shady purposes again. 

And third, what should Lisa wear? A nicely tailored pink dress might be just the thing! David could borrow a tasteful matching tie from Kriss ... 

Edith M Hallberg 

• 

RE-ELECT GORE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Numerous letters to the Daily Planet offering suggestions to the Democratic Party on who might be a good candidate to beat President Bush in 2004 underscore the Progressive community’s concerns that as the media portrays it, Bush is unbeatable. 

One seriously developing possibility for the Democrats to think about is that Al Gore, with grass-roots support, could be persuaded to reconsider running. With this end in mind, on Flag Day, June 14, there is going to be a huge Al Gore support rally in an amphitheater in Nashville, Tenn., where he now lives. People are coming from all over the country. Senators Byrd, Harkin and Kennedy are planned speakers and people will be sending e-mails and carrying placards bearing the names and faces of those who cannot travel to Tennessee. 

It has been rumored in political circles that Al Gore abruptly dropped out of the 2004 presidential race not because he’d lost the will to run again but because the leadership in the DNC and DLC offered him lukewarm support for a re-election bid when he denounced Bush’s Iraq policy in San Francisco at the Commonwealth Club on Sept. 23, 2002, before any current Democratic candidate denounced Bush’s Iraq war. 

Eric Alterman, a prominent media scholar, in his widely regarded new book “What Liberal Media,” goes into great detail about how the conservative right—with the cooperation of the major media—character assassinated Al Gore to the extent that even some Democrats thought he ran a poor race. 

In fact, with only a fraction of the millions the Republicans had and the media stacked against him, Al Gore got more votes in 2000 than nearly any Democratic candidate in history. It is not widely reported, but right now Al Gore is way ahead of any of the nine current Democratic candidates in both New Hampshire and Iowa. And he’s far and away ahead in CNN polls as still the most winnable candidate against Bush. 

Al Gore is the only truly “presidential” Democratic candidate who can put in question Bush’s legitimacy as Karl Rove’s carefully crafted commander in chief. 

Democrats need to come up with a stunning out-of-the-box, under-the-radar strategy if they hope to defeat a vastly right-wing funded, post-911 George Bush. The Democrats’ restoring Al Gore to his rightful place as the leader of the Democratic Party would really cause the White House to go on the defensive. 

As Eric Alterman says in his book: “Annoy the Media: Re-elect Al Gore.” 

Maureen Farrell

At a groundbreaking ceremony last week for what will be the second largest building on the UC Berkeley campus, Gov. Gray Davis poured out praises for the imminent construction of the Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility. 

The 285,000-square-foot building is expected to be a hub of biomedical research and innovation that will house state-of-the-art laboratories and bring together scientists from multiple fields to tackle health problems using an interdisciplinary approach and new technologies. 

“Out of this building will come new ideas, new industry and groundbreaking medical cures,” said Davis, speaking minutes before the ceremonial groundbreaking, which took place Friday afternoon at the former site of the old Stanley facility, located at the northeast section of campus on Gayley Road across from the Greek Theater. “The research that comes out of this facility will literally cure diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, will literally create new jobs, new industry and push back the frontiers of science and keep California on the cutting edge of science innovation.” 

But not everyone is enthusiastic about the development, which will expand the old Stanley building by four and a half times. The project incited public criticism when it was initially proposed three years ago as part of a larger UC Berkeley plan to seismically retrofit, modernize and develop the buildings in its northeast quadrant. That project, called the Northeast Quadrant Science Center, includes plans to replace nearby Davis Hall, a 38,000-square-foot building located south of Hearst Avenue, with a 145,000-square-foot building that would be the future home of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). The northeast quadrant plan also proposes the removal of the nearby lower Hearst parking structure, which has tennis courts and a skateboard park on its top tier, to make room for a 150-space parking lot.  

Residents have said the northeast quadrant plan will exacerbate traffic congestion and parking problems. They also worry about the project’s proximity to the Hayward Fault line. 

The main occupants of the facility will be the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, or QB3. The institute, a joint program between UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz, is one of four that the governor helped to create three years ago under his California Institutes for Science and Innovation project (Cal-ISI). Davis said the goal of the project, which relies on both state and private dollars, is to spur innovation that would replicate the success of Silicon Valley and spark economic growth throughout the state. 

The new Stanley building will also be the home of the university’s department of engineering and provide some facilities to CITRIS, another of the four institutes created under Cal-ISI. CITRIS researchers are developing such things as micromechanical “flying insects” that could some day conduct surveillance, and inexpensive electronic sensors that help firefighters locate people in burning buildings. The facility will also house the west coast’s only 900-megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, a device that helps reveal the structure of proteins. 

The new facility, which will replace the old 67,000-square-foot building, is expected to cost $162 million and is slated for completion in January 2006. The project will consist of eight above-ground floors and three underground stories and will include a 300-seat auditorium, 40 research and teaching laboratories, a multi-media classroom and a cafe. 

Davis said the new facility would not have been possible without the efforts of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl, who in 2000 launched the Health Science Initiative, a project that aims to modernize and reorganize health sciences research on the campus. At the ceremony Berdahl said, “Future generations will benefit from the far-sighted plan,” and praised Davis for helping his project come to fruition. “This is what it really means to be an education governor,” he said. 

Jim Sharp, who lives on LeConte street about two blocks from the project site, has been the most outspoken critics of the plan. He said the university’s environmental impact report (EIR) was insufficient because it lumped several major developments, including the Stanley project and the Davis North project, into one document. “They swept the Stanley development into one very large EIR document so that it got about as much review as a very small project might normally get,” he said, adding that citizens have very little say in university development projects in general. “The EIR process is pretty much pro forma,” he said. 

“The most citizens can do is wave their hands a little bit. The city of Berkeley did almost nothing. They pretty much sat on their hands and that’s what they have been doing for the last 10 years,” which he said has put him and his neighbors in an “industrial blight zone.” 

Sharp said the Stanley project represents a dangerous trend in university development. “The biggest concern we see is UC morphing into an industrial park rather than as a place to educate students,” he said. “We have seen more emphasis on research and development with private industry ... A private firm, instead of building an industrial park in the Silicon Valley, can take advantage of the public space and cheaper labor that the university provides.”  

UC Berkeley spokesman Robert Sanders rejected the notion that the university is sacrificing academic integrity for commercial interests and said the new facility simply enables the University to continue the research it is already doing. “There aren’t any industry labs here, we are not bringing in industry,” he said. “These buildings are meant to continue the research we are already doing but we need new infrastructure that allows us to do modern research.” 

He said the facility will help “fuel the high tech and biotech industry” but emphasized that the university is “not interested in the product. We are interested in the knowledge.” Sanders added that the labs will be primarily occupied by students, and that industry “will not steer our research.” 

When I was growing up, there was a popular bumper sticker, seen mostly on the back of old VW vans, that said: “What if there was a war and nobody came?”  

I am reminded of that bumper sticker now, in light of this administration’s unprecedented attack on civil liberties. What if our basic rights were taken away and no one noticed? What if our system of checks and balances was destroyed and everyone remained convinced it was happening to someone else?  

Under current legislation, if you are “suspected” of terrorist activity, you can be picked up and held indefinitely, without charges and without access to a lawyer. If your loved ones call to find out where you are or if you are okay, they will be told nothing.  

And, if currently proposed legislation—PATRIOT Act II—passes, you may no longer even be a citizen. Under PATRIOT II, if you attend a legal protest sponsored by an organization the government has listed as “terrorist,” you may be deported and your citizenship revoked. This is true even if you are only suspected of terrorist activity and nothing has been proven. 

The attack on civil liberties hasn’t been subtle; rather it has erred on the side of being so extreme as to seem surreal. Some of the lowlights include:  

• The USA PATRIOT Act creates a new crime of “domestic terrorism”—defined so broadly as to include civil disobedience and other nonviolent forms of resistance. The PATRIOT Act also greatly reduces free speech and privacy, allowing for Internet and library surveillance and eliminating the need for warrants before searching video or music store records. 

• The new Homeland Security Department, whose massive reorganization of more than 22 different federal agencies includes a beefed-up immigration office, renamed the Bureau of Border and Transportation Security, with a focus on catching immigrant violations and keeping people outside of U.S. borders.  

• Total Information Awareness (TIA), recently renamed “Terrorist Information Awareness,” which hopes to predict terrorist actions by analyzing such transactions as passport applications, visas, work permits, driver’s licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, arrests or reports of suspicious activities. TIA would make financial, education, medical and housing records, as well as biometric identification databases based on fingerprints, irises, facial shapes and even how a person walks available to U.S. agents. 

If all this weren’t enough, currently proposed legislation would increase the PATRIOT Act’s powers. The Center for Public Integrity lists the full provisions of the act, which include, beside the deportation of citizens who are suspected of consorting with or supporting terrorists:  

• Immunity from liability for law enforcement engaging in spying operations against the American people; 

• Immunity from liability for businesses and employees that report “suspected terrorists” to the federal government, no matter how unfounded, racist or malicious the tip may be. 

Furthermore, PATRIOT II explicitly allows the indefinite detention of citizens, incommunicado, without charges, and without releasing their names to their own family members. And unlike PATRIOT Act I, which expires in 2004 unless it passes another majority vote, PATRIOT Act II never expires and removes the expiration date on PATRIOT I.  

According to a Washington Post report, the Government Accounting Office has found that the majority of people prosecuted under new antiterrorism security measures were pursued for reasons unrelated to terrorism, including credit card fraud and drug violations. “Many of [the] terrorism powers were actually being asked for as a way of increasing the government’s authority in other areas,” said ACLU’s Tim Edgar in the report.  

One of the reasons that the response to aggressive Homeland Security Measures has been muted is that, so far, the primary targets of “homeland security” have been immigrants, Arab-Americans and South Asian-Americans.  

Tirien Steinbach, a lawyer at Berkeley’s East Bay Community Law Center who works with indigent clients, says she’s noted an increase in harassment of her clients since passage of the act. “It’s not the policies themselves,” she says, “but the climate of repression that lets law enforcement feel as if they can get away with anything these days.”  

She sees her clients, and immigrant groups that have come under attack, as canaries in the coal mine—a warning signal that others should heed. “Everyone thinks it only happens to some other kind of people,” she says, “and by the time they realize the extent of the repression, it will be too late.”  

Mac Scott, of the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI), agrees. “The effects on immigrant communities has been devastating,” he says. “So many people have had family members deported, detained, or—at the very least—interrogated.” 

Because of that increased repression, some members of immigrant communities have been wary of organizing for fear of being targeted for harassment. 

“We have to work as a coalition,” says Tram Nguyen of Colorlines, a quarterly focused on race and public policy. “Communities are under such attack that they have to speak out. 

This recognition has also created an unusual alliance of libertarians, progressives and conservatives. In part, the criticism from the right comes from those who remember a time when a base of conservatism supposedly stood for small government, less bureaucracy and more individual liberty.  

One of the largest indicators of the new alliances forming in support of civil liberties and the biggest victory for rights advocates has been the success of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in encouraging communities to pass resolutions and ordinances repudiating the PATRIOT Act and reaffirming the Bill of Rights. Since the passage of the PATRIOT Act in October 2001, over 100 cities, towns and counties, including Baltimore, Md., Castle Valley, Utah, and Detroit, Mich., and two states (Alaska and Hawaii) have passed resolutions opposing the legislation and reaffirming the importance of basic civil liberties.  

Bill of Rights advocates see the upcoming fights over PATRIOT Act II and Terrorist Information Awareness as well as the 2004 presidential election as key places to let legislators know that their stand on civil liberties issues will be carefully watched.  

We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that it is only “other people’s” liberties that are at stake. Our own government threatens our collective liberty far more than do outside sources. The response, as the Bill of Rights Defense Committees have shown, is to use our rights or lose them. Our right to think and speak for ourselves, without fear of spying neighbors, surveillance cameras or retaliation, is gravely threatened and only our collective and coordinated resistance will stop that threat.  

Rachel Neumann is the rights and liberties editor of AlterNet.

A San Pablo woman was arrested and charged with felony drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter after a man was killed when she drove into his stopped car on Interstate 80 near the Ashby interchange. 

Nigussi Boru, 35, an Ethiopian man who lived in San Leandro, died from injuries sustained when his car was struck.  

Boru was a driving a 1992 Mitsubishi westbound on Interstate 80 when he rear ended a 23-San Jose man who was driving a 1998 Saturn. The Saturn spun completely around and Boru’s car came to a stop after hitting the Saturn a second time.  

Moments after Boru’s car had come to a standstill in the number three lane, the San Pablo woman, 30, crashed into his car at a high rate of speed without braking.  

Boru was rushed to Highland Hospital where he was pronounced dead.  

The suspect was also taken to Highland Hospital and treated for minor injuries before being booked into the Berkeley jail for felony drunken driving and vehicular manslaughter.  

The San Jose man was also treated for minor injuries.  

—Daily Planet staff 

and Bay City News reports

In the interests of understanding, if not influencing, an odd set of proposals for our neighborhood emanating from the “Office of Transportation,” my neighbors and I attended the South Oceanview neighborhood traffic management meeting held Tuesday, May 27, and enjoyed a most entertaining presentation. 

My theory would be that the little maps and models are far too fun to noodle with, and that’s how arguably educated city officials end up presenting a little neighborhood meeting with obvious nonsense having no sense of the predictable response.  

It took only about a polite half-hour for one of my neighbors to point out that the traffic circle “furniture” being promoted to us was, well, ugly. Unsightly, I think the planners call it. If the premise afloat was to “enhance” and “upgrade” the neighborhood’s sense of identity, well, shouldn’t these things just be thrown in the bay? We have plenty of indigenous blight without having to host the depressing rubberized traffic-flow dreamscape of some planner who probably hails from out of town.  

I kept trying to visualize the circle-things covered with our neighborhood’s particular style of graffiti, just for accuracy’s sake, and since less graffiti fits on a stop sign, I asked if simple stop signs weren’t a more sensible alternative.  

“People don’t stop at stop signs,” he explained patiently. That was my favorite, since I missed the memo and I’ve been stopping at stop signs all over town. People who don’t get enough gossip about me can add that one to the mix. He added that stop-sign stopping (which nobody does) creates pollution for the homeowners nearby, an enlightened moment for the planner whose original suggestion was to strip all the parking from commercial streets to “enhance traffic flow,” carefully crafting six, rather than four, lanes of heaving, sweating, polluting vehicles-worth of toxicity for those of us who live there.  

Don’t get me wrong, I love these meetings. I love watching the impassive officials’ faces when they’re forced to listen to the guy with a five-year-old, a six-year-old and a two-year-old talk about how his driveway is right next to the raceway created the last time the planners felt it was time to get out their models and maps.  

My neighbors are the best antidote to the visionary trance that must settle over city hall from time to time, and they do a lot of laughing, which is probably the best, most enlightened response to its inherent comedy. Where else can you keep a straight face while you ask if there’s a technical difference between a vehicle that does “cookies” versus “doughnuts”? The planners perhaps can make an educated guess, but it’s your neighbors who really know.  

Carol Denney is a Berkeley resident and a frequent contributor to the Planet’s Editorial Pages.

Time stopped Monday at exactly 8 a.m. 

The four clocks atop UC Berkeley’s Sather Tower, better known as the Campanile, ground to a halt before most summer school students even rolled out of bed, kicking off a month-long restoration project on the Berkeley icon. 

The Campanile, completed in 1914, has not seen an overhaul of its clocks, facing north, south, east and west, for several decades, according to Eric Ellisen, manager of the university’s facilities renewal program.  

This year, time caught up with the tower. The clocks consistently fell behind and the gears and bearings in the west face virtually froze in place, Ellisen said.  

But however unreliable they may have been, students said the timepieces served an important function. 

“I like to joke on tours that [the Campanile] provides students with a pretty good gauge for how late they are,” said Woody Hartman, a UC Berkeley junior and tour guide at the 307-foot tower, which provides a bird’s eye view of the city from the observation deck. 

UC Berkeley will spend $25,000 to clean and restore all four of the internal clock mechanisms on the tower and provide a complete overhaul for the troubled west face. 

Ellisen said the west clock makeover was prompted, in part, by encouragement from high places. 

“It happens that the west face faces the chancellor’s office,” Ellisen said. “We get daily calls—‘hey the clock is a minute off.’” 

The highlight of the restoration project will come June 16, when Pacifica-based steeplejack Jim Phalan plans to rappel down the west side of Sather Tower, unbolt the clock’s 8-foot hour hand and 12-foot minute hand and hoist them to the upper deck for repainting. With the hands out of the way, technicians will get a closer look at the bearings and gears. 

“We have no idea what we’re going to find,” said Ellisen, noting that there is very little documentation on the clocks. 

Ellisen said he has several campus machine shops at the ready to repair any broken parts or build new ones for the 89-year-old timepieces. 

“You’re not going to find any off-the-shelf parts,” he said. 

The university will cordon off a small portion of the esplanade below while Phalan, whose father worked on the tower for decades before him, scales the Campanile. But the tower will remain open, as it will throughout the restoration process. 

The Campanile’s bells will continue to toll on the hour, every hour, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.  

Revamping the timepieces will be the last step in an $800,000 Campanile restoration project which has included lighting work, replacement of the fire-alarm system and an overhaul of the elevator. 

At 8 a.m. Monday the clock’s wooden hands, made of sitka spruce, were spun backward to indicate 6:30, where they will stay until the restoration is complete, Ellisen said, because “we thought it was an attractive location.” 

UC Berkeley freshman Christina Byron, in town for summer classes, said she doesn’t expect to be distracted this month by the Campanile’s frozen clocks. 

“It’s always off anyway,” she said.

For four days this weekend, Cal Performances and UC Berkeley’s music department celebrate contemporary music and give it a push forward with the first biennial Edge Fest. 

The festival, which includes five concerts at Hertz Hall and two free events, has been several years in the making. 

“The idea was to develop a modern music festival that would alternate with Berkeley’s biennial early music festival,” explains festival co-curator and Berkeley faculty member David Wessel.  

The festival focuses on several of America’s most original composers, who are noted for incorporating non-Western music and electronics into their music, collaboration with artists in other mediums, and unorthodox approaches to composition. Several featured artists have strong ties to the Bay Area and to Berkeley. 

The opening program on Thursday, June 5, features music by UC Berkeley faculty members Edmund Campion and Cindy Cox. Campion’s works feature two collaborations with his brother, poet John Campion, and incorporate state-of-the-art electronic music techniques. Cox’s music will be performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and she will perform in the world premiere of her Hierosgamos: Studies in Harmony and Resonance, a tour-de-force for solo piano. 

Friday’s program features the music of Terry Riley. Celebrated as the founder of musical minimalism, Riley also incorporates Indian classical music and jazz into his work. The program includes his first performance in more than 30 years of “A Rainbow in Curved Air,” a work for electronic keyboard, and his premiere of Baghdad Highway, for solo piano, written in response to the war in Iraq. 

The concert will be preceded by a free showing of “Terry Riley’s Musical Rainbow” in Wheeler Auditorium at 5 p.m. 

The festival will present two concerts on Saturday. The 6 p.m. program features music by Ingram Marshall and famed Berkeley composer John Adams. In one of the pieces by Adams, the composer himself will conduct students from Berkeley’s Crowden School. Marshall, known for his meditative scores influenced by studies of Indonesian music, will make a rare appearance as performer in his Fragility Cycles. 

At 9 p.m. on Saturday, Wessel will perform using live electronics in tandem with George Lewis and Steve Lacy, both recipients of the Macarthur Foundation’s coveted “genius” award. Lewis is a virtuoso trombonist and innovator in electronic music, while soprano saxophonist Lacy is a major jazz figure. The trio will test the limits of improvisation, performing with computer music programs that respond spontaneously to the live musicians.  

The festival concludes on Sunday at 3 p.m. with a tribute to composer Lou Harrison. Harrison, who died in February at age 85, was probably the single most important figure in opening contemporary classical music to the influence of non-Western music, particularly that of the Indonesian gamelan ensemble. He selected five recent gamelan pieces to receive their world premieres in this program before his death. The tribute concert will span 60 years of his creative output. The music will be performed by several artists with whom he worked closely: pianist and festival co-curator Sarah Cahill, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant trio, and Gamelan Si Betty, the ensemble he helped build, along with a group performing his groundbreaking works for percussion ensemble. Cahill will lead a free panel on Harrison’s music at 1 p.m. in Morrison Hall. 

All concerts are at Hertz Hall on the UC campus. Tickets are $22, or all five concerts for $88. Student discounts are available. Tickets are available at the Cal Performances box office at Zellerbach Hall, at (510)642-9988, at the Web site www.calperfs.berkeley.edu, or at the door.

Award offered in murder case 

The Berkeley Police are offering a $15,000 reward for any information about the murder of Mario Deshawn Mills, 20, in the 1400 block of Derby on May 20. Police spokesman Mary Kusmiss said investigators are seeking the public’s help.  

“The most important thing we want to convey is that we really need the help of the community because detectives have no leads,” she said. “Right now there are no specific suspects or a motive.” 

The coroner confirmed that Mills died of gunshot wounds but police are not saying how many times he was shot or the caliber of weapon.  

City Council has approved rewards of $15,000 in all unsolved murder investigations. The city manager approved the reward for information related to the Mills case on Wednesday.  

Police are asking anyone with information about this case to call (510) 981-5741. 

Homemade fireworks 

Police responded to citizen reports of fireworks at Golden Gate Fields at 2 a.m. on May 31. Officers determined the fireworks had been set off at the Berkeley Marina and conducted a search of the area.  

They spotted three men walking along the shoreline, one of whom tried to ditch a duffle bag. The officers detained the three suspects and, upon searching the duffel bag, discovered 25 homemade explosive devices and five homemade rocket-type engines.  

Given the apparent volatility of the devices, officers called in the bomb squad to secure the suspected explosives. The three men, none of whom were from Berkeley, were arrested and charged with unlawful possession of fireworks.  

Early morning drug bust 

At 7 a.m. on May 29, Berkeley’s special investigative narcotics officers served a search warrant on a suspected drug dealers apartment in the 2700 block of Sacramento Street.  

Police discovered 11 grams of rock cocaine, 21 grams of marijuana and packaging materials such as a scale, baggies and razors. A man and woman, both 43 years old, were arrested for the suspected possession of crack cocaine and marijuana for sale. Just six days earlier, the male suspect had completed federal parole requirements stemming from a previous conviction for possession of crack cocaine. 

DVD robbery 

On Wednesday two men, 21 and 22, were arrested and booked for robbery and possession of stolen property. Officers discovered three stolen DVD VCR combination units in the suspects’ car after a chase. The electronics, allegedly stolen from Radio Shack at 2500 Shattuck Ave., were valued at $130 each. A fourth box in the car was empty. There was, however, a DVD VCR unit from a previous robbery of a Radio Shack in El Cerrito discovered in the suspects’ car. 

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A San Pablo woman was arrested and charged with felony drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter after a man was killed when she drove into his stopped car on Interstate 80 near the Ashby interchange. 

The victim is Nigussi Boru, 35, an Ethiopian man who lived in San Leandro.  

Boru was a driving a 1992 Mitsubishi westbound on Interstate 80 when he rear ended a 23-San Jose man who was driving a 1998 Saturn. The Saturn spun completely around and Boru’s car came to a stop after hitting the Saturn a second time.  

Moments after Boru’s car had come to a standstill in the number three lane, the San Pablo woman, 30, crashed into his car at a high rate of speed without braking.  

Boru was rushed to Highland Hospital where he was pronounced dead.  

The suspect was also taken to Highland Hospital and treated for minor injuries before being booked into the Berkeley jail for felony drunken driving and vehicular manslaughter.  

The San Jose man was also treated for minor injuries.  

- Daily Planet staff and Bay City News reports 

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley. 

On Thursday, June 5th, our concert series opens with Rhonda Benin and Soulful Strut performing some of the best in R & B, with a splash of jazz and a solid helping of the blues. Soulful Strut appears regularly at many Bay Area nightspots such Enricos Sidewalk Café and Restaurant. 

On Thursday, July 31st, our concert series closes with SoVoSó, a highly visual and imaginative a capella ensemble that sings a compelling mix of jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, world, pop, and improvisational music. The ensemble is made up of former members of Bobby McFerrin’s Voicestra, and McFerrin says, “SoVoSó is tight, soulful, and a whole lotta fun.” 

This event is easily accessible by transit and there is one hour free parking daily from 9 am to 5 pm in Center Street Garage. Seating will be available. 

For a complete schedule of entertainers for the Downtown Berkeley Summer Noon Concerts 2003 visit the Downtown Berkeley Association website at www.downtownberkeley 

Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto now has an organic option. 

On Thursday, local farmers and neighbors celebrated the opening of the North Berkeley Farmers’ Market, the city’s third and the first to feature only organic products. The new market will be held Thursdays in the parking lot of the Elephant Pharmacy at Shattuck Avenue and Cedar Street, an area organizers said was well-suited to host a farmers’ market. 

“The community in this area has been very supportive,” said Penny Leff, the manager of the farmers’ markets division of the Ecology Center. “Their enthusiasm has been encouraging.” 

The market, like its predecessors, will emphasize fresh produce from Northern California farms. At Thursday’s opening, many farmers brought seasonal fruit including peaches, strawberries and nectarines, and several tables featured Swiss chard, kale, arugula and other greens. Next week’s market will feature a fresh fish stand as well.  

The farmers’ market is the product of a partnership between the Ecology Center, Elephant Pharmacy and the North Shattuck Neighborhood Association. Elephant Pharmacy plans to donate its parking lot to the event each week, and has created fliers and advertisements in its newsletters to promote the market.  

“The market is a good way to let people know we’re here for the community,” Elephant Pharmacy founder and chairman Stuart Skorman said. “Plus, it brings more business to Elephant Pharmacy and to the businesses in the neighborhood.” 

The new market is smaller than the other two — at Derby Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way on Tuesdays and at Center Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way on Saturdays.  

Because of space constraints in the North Shattuck area, the new market is limited to between 15 and 20 stands. Skorman said that although the location is small, it provides a unique opportunity for organic farmers to sell their products.  

Elephant Pharmacy recently created an organic foods section within its store, and Skorman said that the farmers’ market creates a more visible organic presence in the area. 

The newest market will operate each Thursday in June as a four-week trial basis. At a public hearing on Thursday, June 12, the Zoning Adjustments Board will determine the impact of the market on the surrounding neighborhood and decide if it can remain in the parking lot on a weekly basis. 

“Hopefully it won’t mess up the parking situation on Thursdays,” Leff said. “If it doesn’t we should be good to go on a permanent basis.” 

The neighbors who turned out for opening day said they were grateful for the area market because of the convenience and the organic offerings. 

“More organic options are always good,” said area resident Tom Nettles. “Plus, this is within walking distance for anyone who lives in North Berkeley. It’s great to have.” 

You can’t win ‘em all. 

California Shakespeare Theater’s production of William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” doesn’t quite make the grade they’ve led us to expect from their work. A general air of awkwardness pervades the action, rather like those awful “mixers” where everyone is trying very hard to behave as if they’re really interested in one another, when what they actually want to do is go home.  

This doesn’t mean there aren’t some good performances. If the overall production had lived up to the standards set by the stage design, costuming, sound and lighting effects, this would be a hands-down winner. John Coyne’s background is stunning. About a third of the huge gray space is dominated by a profile of the flower-crowned Caesar. It sets the mood for the significance and horror of the unfolding tragedy.  

Equally appropriate and creative are Emmy Award winner Katherine Roth’s costumes which reach for a sense of timelessness through a somber-toned blend of modern suits and toga-like draperies. Michael Chybowski, 1999 Obie Award winner for sustained excellence, has designed lighting that is flawless. 

What is largely missing in this production, and most strikingly so in the crowd scenes, is a sense of ensemble. It is almost as if each actor is out there working it out for himself. (The brief appearances of the two actresses are so rudimentary that it seems perfectly accurate to refer to the cast members as “him.”) There are some fine individual performances, but that’s the problem: they’re individual. This is a play about the interplay between individuals and the world—Caesar’s assassination is an act of political policy, based on the belief that his future career would be destructive to Rome. At that time and for this play, Rome was the world. 

Cal Shakes (as the company dubs itself) has divided this production into two acts: the first centered upon the conspiracy and assassination of Julius Caesar; the second, upon the subsequent chaos. 

Caesar (L. Peter Callender) is drawn as a smooth-talking politician, a superb manipulator of crowds, always playing to the watchful eyes he can expect wherever he appears in public. 

Brutus, perhaps the most interesting of all the characters, is well played by T. Edward Webster. His ambivalence toward the assassination and complex feelings for Caesar are acted straightforwardly, an interpretation which provides important balance to the production.  

Cassius, the initiator of the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, also deserves to be noted. He is loathsome, an agitator and manipulator whose motivation for the assassination is more personal than political: he bears old grudges that he masks with loftier motives. In this production, the actor, James Carpenter, presents him as lacking redeeming characteristics. 

All in all, this production is a curious mixture: Genius playwright, terrific staging, erratic acting.