Berkeley Unified is about to go where no school district has gone before. Come Tuesday the district will seek to wean itself from state dependency and embark on a mission to turn school funding upside down. -more-
Heading into the earliest fire season in recent memory in the wake of three increasingly dangerous years, Berkeley firefighters have good reason to worry. -more-
When Dan Casey came to Berkeley last month to visit his ailing father, he discovered that the Board of Education had delivered a death sentence to the Vera Casey Center, the pioneering day care program his mother established 32 years ago at Berkeley High to provide support for school-aged mothers and care for their babies. -more-
Sam Huntington rides again! -more-
Two mammoth battles highlight tonight’s (Tuesday, June 2) City Council meeting. -more-
Shooting Victim Gives Cops Silent Treatment -more-
Baseball season is in full swing and my friend Laurie is once again worried about her relationship with her boyfriend, Mark. He has satellite hook-up and a television or radio in every room of his house so that he can listen to and watch games after work and all through the weekend. When he gardens and barbecues in his backyard he carries a transistor radio with him, and he wears a walkman while he jogs. On his drive to work he listens to KNBR in his car, and on his desk in his cubicle he has a small radio that he keeps tuned to KFRC. CBS Sportsline is bookmarked on his computer so that he gets up-to-the-minute scores on games not broadcasted locally. -more-
For me, awaiting the new city budget is a lot like waiting to read the book based on the lousy movie. The really awful part is that I had the same feeling watching a spark ignite the worn gas line in my ’75 bug, and again after W’s Sept. 12 speech. Disastrous aftermaths often develop from similar avoidable beginnings; there are remarkable parallels between the war against terrorism and Berkeley’s war against the budget crisis. -more-
In recent contributions to an e-mail discussion of University Avenue zoning reforms among city officials, staff, and interested citizens, Planning Commissioner Tim Perry (Councilmember Margaret Breland’s appointee) blamed Berkeley’s “public culture” for the anger and intemperate remarks directed at staff during last week’s Planning Commission hearing. Saying that he’s “convinced staff does their best to treat the community and housing producers (a.k.a. ‘developers’) equally,” Perry called for neighbors to treat staff with more respect. -more-
The most dramatic story in Ben Bagdikian’s life was not his role in obtaining, publishing, and reporting on the Pentagon Papers in 1971. It was a story he was not able to report (until his 1995 memoir Double Vision) because he was too young—10 days old in 1920—when his parents and four sisters fled Marash, Armenia, on foot, climbing over snow-covered mountains to escape the Turks during a great Armenian genocide. -more-
The Giorgi Gallery on Claremont is currently showing an exhibit of Evelyn Glaubman’s work from 1990-2000. Evelyn Glaubman is Vista College’s—and Berkeley’s—premiere art teacher and has more devoted students than the Pope has bishops. One other thing to note about the artist when viewing this show is that she is a tiny, diminutive person who creates BIG WORK! The Giorgi’s walls are barely big enough to contain it and each piece needs a much larger space. -more-
You can’t take anything for granted anymore. Hummingbirds, for instance—like the Bay Area’s permanent-resident Anna’s, spring-nesting Allen’s, and migrant rufous. There are about 340 living species of these small, hyperactive, nectar-feeding birds, and they’re all found in the Western Hemisphere. Their greatest diversity is in the Central American and northern South American tropics, leading biologists to conclude that the family evolved there before colonizing the temperate regions. Hummingbirds were always thought to be as American as succotash, or ceviche. -more-
Though Berkeley Police Tuesday were trumpeting the arrest of a former Black Panther as a key figure in Berkeley’s first cop killing, by the next morning the tone was considerably less triumphant. -more-
Ready or not, here come new zoning regulations for University Avenue. -more-
The City Council Tuesday breathed new life into a proposed Longs Drugs store downtown, but warned the national retailer that it wouldn’t get the alcohol permit it’s demanding unless it yielded to city demands for a substantial produce department and strict limits on the sale of beer and wine. -more-
A major residential and biotech research complex proposed for the Richmond waterfront has pitted a coalition of activists and neighbors against a developer who offers a healthy boost to the city’s stricken tax base. -more-
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl is on his way out. But according to UC officials, the university has still not chosen his replacement. -more-
The Berkeley Fire Department kicks off the start of its 100th birthday festivities with a Saturday open house at Station No. 6, 999 Cedar St. -more-
SAN FRANCISCO—“Accident or intentional?” asks the front page headline in El Bohemio News, a local Spanish-language weekly, about a deadly Honduran prison fire. The photo shows tattooed dead bodies lining a yard with police officers in blue jeans standing above them. -more-
President Bush implied that Iraq would be “free and self-governing” in his speech before the Army War College on May 24, 2004. But the speech is a thin fabric of insubstantial promises. None of the points are new, and all of the implied efforts have failed to date. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District named Glenston Thompson as its new Deputy Superintendent Tuesday. -more-
There may be a new revolution brewing in the Bay Area, but this time it’s taking place not in the streets but in the laboratories. Advocates of stem cell research suggest that we stand at the threshold of biomedical breakthroughs that may transform modern medicine. At the forefront of this effort are universities like Stanford and UCSF, and local companies like Geron. Stem cells hold promise for curing such devastating illnesses as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, juvenile diabetes, MS, ALS, paralysis, and some forms of cancer and heart disease. -more-
I couldn’t agree more with Max Anderson’s assessment of the ongoing national and local political sophistry (“Rent Board Chair Chides Control Foe’s ‘Rant,’” Daily Planet, May 25-27). His own contentious diatribe is a prime example of the same sophistry he so deliciously condemns. He takes John Koenigshofer to task for supposedly misleading that he is a “...landlord and realtor who works out of George Oram’s firm, one of Berkeley’s largest real estate interests.” Mr. Anderson wisecracks facetiously that “...perhaps modesty prevented Mr. Koenigshofer...” from such a revealing label. If Mr. Anderson were not so inept in his own “... Ashcroftesque invasion of privacy...” he would have revealed that Mr. Koenigshofer and this writer organized and held the first public call for Richard Nixon’s impeachment, in of all places, Yorba Linda, Cal. He would have revealed that Mr. Koenigshofer holds a degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University, that he is an artist of considerable depth, a fabulous poet and an engaging storyteller. Mr. Anderson would have also revealed that Mr. Koenigshofer forsook an internship at A.C.T. as a playwright to attend to his dying mother. That he requires a hip replacement from decades of fence building, landscape construction and gardening that gave him the courage to purchase his first project with a couple of credit cards and an unflagging endurance. Perhaps Mr. Anderson’s own physicality and ailments is derived from his longtime position as “...chair of the Rent Stabilization Board,” or other supine endeavors. -more-
University Avenue is the most important traffic corridor in Berkeley. As such, decisions about its development should not be controlled by the opinions of highly vocal minorities with vested interests in the outcome of these decisions. Berkeley currently has an opportunity to make plans that will benefit all of its citizens, not just those individuals who are directly and immediately impacted by development along University Avenue. For these reasons, I urge the citizens of Berkeley to contact the Planning Commission, and urge them to adopt the recommendations of the University Avenue Strategic Plan. -more-
As a medical cannabis patient (quadriplegic) fortunate enough to have a doctor’s recommendation for the past five years, I feel compelled to comment on recent developments in our community regarding the cultivation and dispensing of medical marijuana. On April 27 our City Council unfortunately tabled proposed amendments to the previous 2001 medical cannabis initiative. Their lack of decision has prompted a voter initiative drive and the rights of patients like myself have been overlooked and ill-served. I believe this process can be avoided with reconsideration by the Berkeley City Council. -more-
The Traveling Jewish Theatre has come to Berkeley’s Julia Morgan Theater, bringing along with it Dybbuk—which is one chunk of a play—and two gifted actors. In the course of the evening Karine Koret and Keith Davis successfully play roles that run from a nice young couple happily celebrating the Sabbath together, to ones embodying possession by supernatural and terrifying spirits. In between they each portray a dazzling variety of ages and characters as well as an enormous emotional range. It is a very impressive pair of performances. -more-
Legumes are such an important partner of grains as a source of complete protein that one wonders how Europeans managed before the advent of foods from America. Although every continent seems to have indigenous legumes and pulses, Europe has only one bean, the fava or broad bean, Vicia faba. Historians have documented an increase in human populations in Europe after the arrival of beans from the Americas. These beans are often called French, having been introduced into Europe by French explorers in Canada. -more-
The exterminator receives a call to return to the scene of recent work. Upon arrival, he is confronted by the angry customer. -more-
Casual conversations with strangers can be more revealing than stories on the nightly news. A Berkeley friend, a motherly lady in her fifties, started chatting with her seatmate on a bus a couple of weeks ago. He was an army officer, a personnel specialist in a big infantry unit down South somewhere. He said his job is dealing with “bereavements”—supporting families of service people who have died on duty. My friend, who comes from a military family herself, was shocked at what he told her: that in the last few months, out of every 100 deaths he’s worked on, 14 have been suicides. That’s not an official Army statistic, he emphasized, just his estimate, but in his opinion, based on about 20 years experience in the military, the suicide rate has gone up dramatically since the Iraq invasion. -more-
The next Berkeley City Council race should be shaping up right about now. The first of a series of important dates for potential candidates is today, May 28. This is the first day to take out petitions to file as a candidate without paying a fee. Ordinarily, a candidate running for local office in the City of Berkeley is required to pay a filing fee of $150 at the time he or she takes out nomination papers. However, instead of paying all or part of the fee, a candidate can get signatures of support from up to 150 Berkeley registered voters. Each valid signature reduces the filing fee by $1. The city clerk’s office at City Hall (2180 Milvia St.) has the petition forms, which must be filed at least 15 days prior to the close of the nomination period, which closes Friday, August 6. Candidates who pay the fee can wait until then to file, though they also must collect some signatures to be eligible. The city clerk’s office has ample information on all this in the form of a pamphlet and on the city’s website. -more-
