A youth was shot dead and witnesses said another was wounded in broad daylight Monday at the corner of Adeline and and Harmon streets, the third murder in South Berkeley in the past month. 

Berkeley Police spokesperson Joe Okies reported that a male died of multiple gunshot wounds shortly after 2 p.m., but would not confirm witness testimony that another male, also believed to be a teenager, was shot and rushed to Highland Hospital.  

Okies said police were searching for the gunman who he described only as a black male. He expected to receive more information on the murder from detectives as the investigation progresses. The county coroner’s office was not releasing the murder victim’s name when the Daily Planet went to press. 

Sam Dykes, an Adeline Street merchant, said he was looking out his window at around 2:15 p.m. and saw five youth gesticulating to each other on the northeastern corner of Adeline and Harmon when “one kid on a bike pulled out a 38 [caliber revolver] and used six shots.”  

The gunman fled on his bike south on Adeline, Dykes said, while two others fled on foot, one running north on Adeline and the other running east on Harmon. 

Racing to the murder scene, Dykes said both the boy lying dead beside a bicycle and the victim “scampering” around from a bullet wound that appeared to have struck the side of his stomach were teenagers. 

“They couldn’t have even started shaving yet,” he said. Dykes added he had seen both victims previously on Adeline. 

Monday’s murder comes just two weeks after Samuel Anderson, 64, was gunned down Sunday evening in his apartment at 1820 Alcatraz Ave. Two weeks prior, Mario “Tip-Toe” Jackson died after a gunman opened fire as he stood in the driveway adjacent to the 1317 Ashby Ave. apartment building where his grandmother lives. 

The murders—Berkeley’s first three of 2004—have refueled community concerns that a North Oakland-South Berkeley turf battle is heating up.  

“This stuff is always reactionary. It never ends,” said South Berkeley resident Rebecca Renfro who works on the corner of Adeline and Fairview and was among about two dozen onlookers at the murder scene. 

Last year Oakland and Berkeley police chalked up a series of shootings, including a daylight gunfire exchange at Sacramento Street and Ashby Avenue, to a battle between rival Berkeley and Oakland factions. 

Okies said it was too early in the investigations to draw any connection between the recent murders or to conclude that a cross-city battle has re-ignited. 

“No one has said anything to suggest there’s a turf war,” he said. 

With four and a half months left in the year murders are still down in Berkeley, where five murders were recorded in 2003, seven in 2002. The city’s death toll has now passed 2001’s single homicide..

In the realm of strange political bedfellows, pairing off a massive petroleum firm with a gaggle of environmental activists has to rank as one of the oddest couplings ever. 

But that’s precisely what’s happening in Richmond, where Chevron and four East Bay environmentalists shared a wind-swept podium on Point Orient on Saturday, when the petro producer rolled out its offer to buy the adjacent Point Molate. 

Also on hand, though not on the platform, was James Levine, the Berkeley developer who hopes to thwart the oil giant and erect an enormous four-hotel gambling resort and shopping center on the Richmond site.  

Neither Chevron nor Levine were in attendance 24 hours later when most of the same environmentalists addressed a standing room only crowd that filled the Albany Community Center Saturday for the second of two East Bay casino-related meetings held within a 27-hour stretch. 

The Albany session focused on another prime piece of East Bay waterfront, Golden Gate Fields, where Magna Corporation wants to erect its own gigantic shopping complex and hopes to install a 3,000-slot-machine “racino” should California voters approve measures on the November ballot. 

While only one political figure—Richmond City Councilmember Tom Butt—attended the Point Molate Session, the Albany meeting featured Assemblymember Loni Hancock along with five of that city’s six City Council candidates, with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmember Kriss Worthington watching from the audience. 

The proposal for the big retail complex and casino just across from city limits is grounds for concern in a Berkeley where vacant storefronts line the main thoroughfares. 

Of the two issues, the struggle over the fate of the former Navy fuel depot on Point Molate promises to generate the most immediate heat. 

While representatives of the Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Save the Bay and Citizens for the East Bay State Park didn’t give formal endorsements to Chevron’s Point Molate proposal, they made no secret that they much preferred it to Levine’s grander schemes. 

Bob Doyle, assistant regional manager for the East Bay Regional Parks District, urged the city to give “due consideration” to Chevron’s proposal for the site. 

Robert Cheasty, a leader of Citizens for the Eastshore State Park, echoed Doyle’s plea, urging the city to adopt a course that would give Richmond “the kind of world class park this community deserves.” 

“Point Molate. . .should not be sold to a private developer without” adequate review, said the Sierra Club’s Norman LaForce, urging the city to “stop this fire sale of public land.” 

Arthur Feinstein of the Audubon Society urged the city “to step back and take a look” at both offers before approving the casino option. 

Rounding out the environmental slate was Berkeley’s Sylvia McLaughlin, who co-founded Save the Bay four decades ago. 

Chevron’s proposal calls for extending the Bay Trail hiking and biking path along the waterfront and the eventual transfer of most of the site to the East Bay Regional Park District for a shoreline park. 

“At the refinery, we call it a buffer,” said Dean O’Hair, external affairs manager for the Richmond refinery. “We want to keep the refinery secure as a vital part of the nation’s energy system in the West.” 

But for cash-strapped Richmond city officials, the Levine plan has to look a lot more interesting than Chevron’s. 

The reason: While Chevron promises $34 million over a couple of decades, Levine is dangling a carrot he says will give the city over $400 million in the same period. 

While Chevron’s proposal offers a $5 million down payment with the balance to be paid out over the years, Levine is offering a $30 million down payment, with another $20 million paid over 10 to 20 years.  

The Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomo Indians, selected to run the site, would also pay the city between $10 million to $20 million a year in lieu of taxes that would otherwise be lost to the municipality because the site would become sovereign tribal land. 

Levine’s Emeryville-based Upstream Investments has already shelled out $750,000 for exclusive negotiating rights on the parcel, and until those expire at the end of September, the Richmond City Council is legally barred from considering Chevron’s offer, said Councilmember Tom Butt after the press conference. 

Upstream plans to invest $500 million on the site itself, which would feature four hotels, a 200,000-square-foot casino in the old Winehaven winery, a Las Vegas-style showroom, a 300,000-square-foot retail mall with 85 stores and eateries, with promises of on-site jobs for 2,000 workers and 3,000 additional secondary jobs for workers in local businesses supplying the project. 

“We’ll be meeting with local churches to form linkages for hiring from within the community. They will be sending us people they believe will make good, reliable workers,” Levine said. 

Levine said his plans would include an extension of the Bay Trail through the property, and said construction would be limited to the 100 acres of the site which have already been developed. 

Levine’s is one of two casinos currently in the early stages of development for Richmond. The second proposal, sited on unincorporated land in North Richmond, calls for another 3,000-slot-machine gambling palace. 

Both developers have targeted their pitches to the city’s African American population, gaining considerable support by doing so. 

An avid fan of both projects who testified in favor of the North Richmond project at a Bureau of Indian Affairs-sponsored meeting on Aug. 4 offered pointed questions to Chevron’s representative at Friday’s press conference. 

“Once the city put out the property for development, why didn’t you step up?” he asked Chevron’s O’Hair. “I’m interested in people who don’t have access to the park, people who look like me.” 

Asked his name by a reporter after the meeting, he said, “My name in Mud, M-U-D. That’s all I mean to these people.” But at the meeting on the North Richmond casino, he identified himself as Ted Stevens. 

Also on hand for the press conference was Sallie Melendez, a lobbyist and public relations manager for Zell & Associates—which reportedly represents Levine’s project. In questions she posed to O’Hair, she managed to tout the casino project as a source of jobs for the city. 

The rival firm of Singer Associates, which staged the Point Molate gathering, also represents the North Richmond casino as well as the consortium planning to build a high density Richmond waterfront Campus Bay residential complex—which has drawn considerable heat from some of the same groups who shared the platform with Chevron Friday. 

Richmond Councilmember Butt said after the press conference that his biggest concern with Chevron’s proposal was its lack of specificity. 

He also faulted the company’s failure to respond when the city issued a request for plans for the site last year. “We got six credible proposals, but Chevron neglected to respond. We selected Upstream, and about the same time Chevron suggested ‘We might give you a couple of million.’ 

“Right now, all we have is a proposal to make a proposal.” 

The other potential monkey wrench in Levine’s plans was raised by O’Hair, who said “the Department of Homeland Security is concerned about large numbers of people having access to buffer areas near strategic facilities” and suggested that casinos were a particular cause for concern. 

Levine—who has retained former Clinton administration Secretary of Defense Richard Cohen to assist with the project—said “DHS has indicated it’s not their intent to impose a buffer.” 

But with a White House known for inseparable ties with the oil industry, the question remains open. 

The big variable in Albany is the November ballot, which will determine whether or not the state allows “racinos,” as the gambling trade dubs race tracks with slot machines on site. 

While early polling shows California voters strongly opposed to the notion of track casinos, the fate of an 800,000-square-foot waterfront mega-mall proposal for a little used race track on the site may ultimately hinge on the vote of Albany residents. 

Magna Entertainment Corp., the Canadian firm which owns the racing concessions at tracks across the country, including Golden Gate and Bay Meadows in Northern California and Santa Anita in Southern California, operates its own racino division and would be ready to jump if California voters approved Proposition 68 in November. 

That measure offers Indian casinos a simple choice: either all 53 gambling tribes agree to pay 2.5 percent of their casino revenues to the state or race tracks and card rooms would be allowed to install a total of 30,000 slot machines statewide. 

As the operator of three major tracks, Magna would be one of the biggest beneficiaries. 

“Given the number of proposals for enacting gambling, we could become the most heavily impacted region in the West other than Las Vegas,” Loni Hancock told the Albany gathering Saturday. “This is probably not a place we want to go.” 

The good news for Albany, she said, “is that the race track is a private entity, not a sovereign nation,” as are the tribes developing the other three casinos in the immediate area, two in Richmond and one in San Pablo. 

Hancock also expressed concern that the shopping malls planned for Point Molate and Gold Gate Fields “could do great damage” to merchants along Solano Avenue and Fourth Street in Berkeley. “I was sorry to hear that we have impact already from the El Cerrito Mall,” she said. 

Robert Cheasty opened Saturday’s packed meeting in the Community Center with a Power Point presentation of alternatives for the site. Then the Sierra Club’s Norman LaForce floated the organization’s own plans for the race track site, contrasting Magna’s proposal with the club’s proposal for a much smaller 325,000-square-foot hotel and shopping area—which would also include ball fields at the base of Gilman Street. 

The race track complex was notably absent from the rendering that flashed on the screen, replaced by restored marshland. 

James Carter, executive director of the Albany Chamber of Commerce, said both he and the chamber’s president are opposed to the mall, and said he expects the chamber will vote formal opposition at its meeting Wednesday. 

“There’s already too many malls, and they hurt small businesses,” he said. 

Five of the six candidates running for City Council seats in November appeared near the end of the session, when they were asked to state their positions on the Sierra Club proposal. 

While Richard Cross, Farid Javandel, Robert Lieber and Brian Parker all offered endorsements of the plan, Alan Riffer charged that the plan included development on wetlands, “and I find it hard to believe that even with the Bush administration the Army Corps of Engineers would approve it.” 

LaForce vigorously denied Riffer’s claim. 

After the meeting ended, Riffer said he remained open to the Magna plan. “We’ve got to think about what’s best for Albany and the region,” he said. “Fortunately, the final decision will be up to the city.” 

The missing candidate, Jewel Okawashi, is favorably disposed to Magna’s plan, Parker said.›

Here’s how one city councilmember described her fellow Green Party member running in the District 5 council race. 

“He’s so much more than a punk rocker. He’s kind of like a John Kennedy.” 

Now Councilmember Dona Spring never knew Jack Kennedy. She never served with Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy wasn’t her friend. So how can she talk about Jesse Blackman Townley, 33, in the same breath as JFK? 

“He’s kind of got that hope of the future,” she said. “He’s energetic and very civic minded. It’s wonderful that Berkeley is getting a new generation of leaders to emerge.” 

A visit to Townley’s home on Sunday, where the candidate hosted Green Party supporters, conjured up instead images of the only man younger than JFK to preside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the bi g game hunter Teddy Roosevelt.  

Mounted on the walls and sprawled on shelves are the heads of deer, moose and even a jackalope, all courtesy of Townley’s wife, Jane, an aspiring taxidermist. Townley, a vegetarian and punk rock singer, takes responsibility only for the collection of over a thousand records in their living room. 

Rhetorically Townley evokes a more contemporary commander-in-chief. He says he’s a “pragmatic progressive” and a uniter, not a divider. 

“I’m interested in working with people to find realistic solutions to the city’s problems,” he said. 

While he remains true to the Green Party’s support of ecological innovation and rent control, many of the positions Townley laid out in an interview Sunday were decidedly middle of the road. 

H e favored new housing development on transit corridors, but he ridiculed some buildings for towering over adjacent neighborhoods and chastised the city for backroom planning that keeps neighbors in the dark on new projects. 

“A lot of people would be fine with many of these developments if they knew about it at a reasonable time,” he said. 

Although he favors installing bike lanes on Shattuck and University avenues, he opposes the further loss of downtown parking spaces. “We can’t ignore the people who ca n’t ride bicycles and we can’t keep building assuming that public transportation is going to fill the gaps,” he said. 

On an issue of particular concern to District 5 voters, Townley wants a grand coalition to review the city’s creek ordinance and he call ed on the council to suspend one section which he says would prohibit home owners living beside a culverted creek from rebuilding their homes after a natural disaster. 

And even though he hasn’t taken a position on the city’s four tax hike measures on the November ballot, Townley, a renter, said the city can’t look just to homeowners to raise needed revenue. 

How his carefully calibrated positions play in homeowner-heavy District 5 remains to be seen. The district, which covers the lower section of the North Berkeley hills from Vine Street to the Upper Solano Avenue shopping district, has traditionally voted for mainstream Democratic candidates. 

Endorsements from Councilmember Spring and other Greens, including School Board President John Selawsky and former San Francisco mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez might not prove persuasive in a district that sent former mayor Shirley Dean to the City Council four times and in 2000 backed Miriam Hawley, who isn’t seeking reelection. 

Conventional wisdom has Townley placing third behind his older and more established competitors, Laurie Capitelli, a Zoning Adjustment Board Commissioner and Barbara Gilbert, a former aide to Shirley Dean. Capitelli has already netted $13,000 in contributions, roughly double Townley’s tally. 

Capitelli, endorsed by Mayor Tom Bates, councilmembers Linda Maio, Gordon Wozniak and Hawley, Planning Commissioners Harry Pollack, David Stoloff and Tim Perry and Landmark Preservation Commission member Carrie Olson, has secured the backing of a substantial part of Berkeley’s political establishment, both “moderates” and “progressives.” Gilbert expects to draw support from neighborhood groups. So who comprises Townley’s base? 

“Everybody else,” he answered.  

After 15 years of service to the local indie music scene, he hopes to attract younger residents into Berkeley politics while still appealing to the rank-and-file voter. His landlord was among his supporters at a Sunday gathering. 

“I’m very much in touch with different parts of society n ot being represented,” he said. 

Although Townley might be the alternative choice in District 5, his story is quintessentially Berkeley, with a punk twist.  

Raised in Philadelphia, Townley moved to Berkeley at age 18 to join its activist and emerging punk rock scenes. If elected, he may well be the only councilmember who has performed at the Warfield in San Francisco, where last year his band, The Frisk, opened for punk rock icons Rancid. 

A trained emergency medical technician, Townley drove a paratransit vehicle for years and worked his way up to executive director of Easy Does It, a paratransit nonprofit that employs 30 people.  

Townley now works for Alternative Tentacles, a progressive record label and still sits on the executive boards of Easy Does It and 924 Gilman, a punk club that caters to teenagers and doesn’t serve alcohol. 

It was in his capacity as secretary of the punk club that Townley determined the City Council needed someone of his ilk.  

In 1999 police inexplicably started cracking down on the club. For six months, Townley said he and other club leaders weren’t told why they were suddenly being policed so rigidly, until finally they learned a neighboring company, DiCon Fiberoptics, had complained to the city’s Office of Eco nomic Development. 

The club contacted DiCon and settled the matter, but the experience left its mark on Townley. 

“It was clear that some people in the city had no conception of who we were or the services we provided. Someone had to step up and fill tha t gap,” he said.  

Townley promised to quit his other pursuits if elected to the City Council, but if the vote doesn’t break his way, he will remain actively involved for years to come. 

“My goal in life isn’t to be on the City Council,” he said. “My goal is to serve my community.” 

Making a weekend campaign stop in Berkeley, Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb asked party faithful not to judge him on his showing in November. 

“Our goal this election is to nurture the Green Party at the local level and build capacity,” he told roughly 15 supporters at the home of Jesse Townley, a Green Party candidate for Berkeley City Council. Earlier in the day he addressed a few dozen supporters at a fundraiser at Berkeley’s Cafe de la Paz. 

Berkeley should be the poster child for Cobb’s pitch. Berkeley Greens, already outnumber Republicans, number more than 4,800 (nearly seven percent of registered voters), and boast five elected representatives, including City Councilmember Dona Spring, School Board President John Selawsky and Rent Board commissioners Howard Chong, Chris Kavanagh and Selma Spector. 

But if 2004 is the year to bolster the ranks of Green officeholders, other cities are going to have to pick up Berkeley’s slack. 

Besides Townley, only Selawsky, who is seeking reelection, is running as an active member of the local Green Party. District 3 candidate Jeffrey Benefiel has told party leaders that he’s a registered Green, but they haven’t had prior contact with him. 

In 2002, the Greens ran five candidates in city elections and the only one to lose, L. A. Wood, was defeated by Spring. 

“There is disappointment that we aren’t running many candidates,” Commissioner Chong said in a Monday interview. “A lot of people active in the Green Party don’t seem interested in holding political office.”  

“This was a difficult year to recruit,” said Bob Marsh, treasurer of the Alameda County Green Party. “It’s not easy to find someone to run for City Council in particular.” 

Spring, however, wasn’t bothered by the lack of candidates this year. 

“People’s politics are more important than their party,” she said. “Ultimately you have to base your support on a record of experience. 

Spring is backing Democrat Max Anderson over Benefiel in District 3. Her willingness to cross party lines is typical of local Greens. Chong, who two years ago helped persuade Mayor Tom Bates, a Democrat, to run for office, has not yet endorsed Townley. Selawsky has signed the ballot argument opposing a citywide measure to decriminalize prostitution, which the Green Party has officially endorsed. 

Lack of party discipline is rooted in the Greens’ political culture, Chong said. “People are passionate and work on whatever they feel like so it’s hard to keep them under control.” 

For Berkeley Greens, perhaps more important than any local candidate this November is a ballot measure to publicly finance city campaigns. If Berkeley voters pass the proposal and Alameda County allows for instant runoff voting, approved by Berkeley voters in March, party leaders hope it will build momentum to initiate the reforms statewide. 

“That would really level the playing field,” Selawsky said. “In Berkeley we can run candidates and win elections. On the state and national levels, that’s another story.” 

Cobb has no delusions of leading the Greens to victory in 2004. As he tours the country, he’s urging party members in swing states to vote Green locally, but giving them carte blanche to support John Kerry for president. 

However he said that California, where polls show Kerry ahead by a comfortable margin, is a different story. 

“Any [California Green] who votes for Kerry is wasting his vote,” Cobb told supporters. He labeled Kerry “a corporatist military sellout,” but added he was far preferable to President Bush. 

Cobb, a 1993 graduate of the University of Houston Law School, quit his law practice in 2000 to manage Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign in Texas. He has since moved to Humboldt County and in June won the Green Party nomination after Nader announced he would not represent the party in 2004. 

Aside from strengthening the Green Party base, Cobb has also struggled to emerge from his former boss’s formidable shadow.  

He said he encounters many Greens at rallies who announce their intention to vote for the former Green standard bearer, but argued he was assuming Nader’s legacy of creating a viable alternative to the two major parties. 

“Ralph will do what he will, but the Green Party will continue to build on Nov. 3,” Cobb said.›

Last June, Berkeley Property Owners Association President Michael Wilson said emphatically that his group did not plan on running a pro-landlord slate for the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board in this November’s election. 

True to Wilson’s word, no pro-landlord candidate filed by last Wednesday’s extended deadline for four seats up for grabs in the nine-member board, ensuring that the Rent Board will continue the tenant/progressive leaning that has been present for the past six years. 

Instead, the filings were dominated by a slate of four candidates—Eleanor Walden, Jason Overman, Jesse Arreguin, and Jack Harrison—nominated by an informal gathering of progressives last June. There is also one additional non-slate candidate—a Boalt Hall law student—who wants to establish better relations between landlords and tenants. 

In addition to administering and evaluating Berkeley’s residential rent-related programs, the Rent Stabilization Board sets rent ceilings, makes rent adjustments, conducts administrative hearings, and issues rules and regulations regarding residential rent in the city. 

Retired patient health advocate Eleanor Walden, an Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party Central Committee member, is running for re-election. She was elected by the Rent Board members last February to complete the term of Commissioner Matthew Siegel. Stating that “decent housing should be a right, just as health care and education should be a right,” Walden says that “Berkeley has tried to live up to those values, but we run a hard race against corporate landlords and subservient politicians.” She promised to “enforce and expand our city’s protections against illegal evictions and unreasonable rent increases.” 

Jason Overman, director of Associated Students of the University of California Tenants’ Rights, calls high rents the cause of a continuing “housing crisis” in Berkeley. He called rent control “the most effective affordable housing program in history [which is] needed now more than ever” and pledged to expand affordable housing “not as [a] passive legislator, but as [an] engaged civic activist working to empower the disenfranchised.” 

Berkeley Housing Commissioner Jesse Arreguin also cited rent control as essential in Berkeley, and called “unjust evictions” and tenants being “forced into unlivable housing and fac[ing] problems such as mold, lack of proper heating and ventilation and roof leaks” as significant problems in the city. He said “strengthen[ing] tenants rights” was a key element of his platform. 

Labor attorney Jack Harrison says he “know[s] first hand how difficult it is for people who have reduced means due to disability to secure decent, safe, affordable and accessible places to live,” and says that additional residential rental problems have surfaced recently in Berkeley “in light of what the state has imposed on us in eliminating rent control on single family homes and imposing vacancy rent decontrol.” He called for support for “tenant’s rights to replace roommates and Section 8 tenants to be able to live in Berkeley.” 

UC law student Seth Morris, the lone non-affiliated candidate in the Rent Board race, said affordable housing was an important element in his campaign, with “reasonable rent ceilings and well-managed rent control.” Morris also said he wanted to “unify the rental community with a progressive educational campaign aimed at expanding access to its services through clinics, weekend workshops, and evening office hours.” Among other notables, Morris lists Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Betty Olds, once a pro-landlord rent board member herself, as references in his nomination papers.

Czeslaw Milosz, in his 1953 groundbreaking book The Captive Mind, spelled out the many subtle and insidious mind-control methods he said Soviet communists used to attempt to dominate countries handed over to Josef Stalin after World War II.  

In so doing, he helped ensure the ultimate liberation of his native Lithuania and his second home country, Poland. In Poland, his books provided almost a laundry list of pitfalls to avoid for Poles who had survived five years of Nazi terror only to be held captive i n a different but alien way by the “liberators” from Josef Stalin.  

Milosz died Saturday at his home in Krakow at the age of 93. Since 1960, he had taught at the University of California at Berkeley. He retired in 1978 at the age of 67 but continued to teach. When he received the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, he cut short celebrations to teach his undergraduate course on Dostoevsky. 

In some Eastern European countries controlled by the Soviets, the totalitarian techniques of control described by Milosz took root. That was not the case in Poland. Nikita Khrushchev despaired of making Poland an obedient communist province, saying it was as unlikely as saddling a cow.  

Milosz came of age in a sophisticated, multi-cultural Vilnius, Lithuania, whi ch when he was born was part of Tsarist Russia along with Poland, Latvia and Estonia. By World War One, Lithuania was partly absorbed into a newly reconstituted free Poland. He studied law, continued his studies in Paris and before the Nazis invaded Polan d in 1939 he had published two volumes of avant-garde verse and translated French poetry into Polish. He wrote for the Polish underground publications for the five years the Nazis occupied Poland. 

Afterward, he stayed put rather than emigrating and had a n inside look at state socialism. He gave it a try himself, as a self-described leftist with no strong political affinities but a dislike of “the right-wing groups whose platform consisted chiefly of anti-Semitism.” He said later that he had felt that “only men true to a socialist program would be capable of abolishing the injustices of the past and rebuilding the economy of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.” 

From 1945 until 1951, he was a freelance writer in Poland, a cultural attaché at the Polish embassy first in Washington and later in Paris. And then he bolted, admitting defeat in his attempts to maintain some semblance of freedom of thought within state socialism. It was, he recalled in a 1981 post-Nobel Prize updated version of Captive Mind, “a revolt of the stomach.”  

He set to work on exposes of Stalin’s totalitarianism. In the 1981 update of Captive Mind, after winning the Nobel Prize, Milosz reflected on how his concerns got short shrift from French intellectuals who “resented thei r country’s dependence upon American help and placed their hopes in a new world in the East, ruled by a leader of incomparable wisdom and virtue—Stalin.” He said he and Albert Camus, another critic of Stalin, were vilified and ostracized and his book when published “displeased practically everybody.”  

Captive Mind and a thinly disguised novel about the co-option of intellectuals by the Soviet Communists, The Seizure of Power, became underground best sellers behind the Iron Curtain, however. They provided case studies of what was happening and gave sustenance to dissidents. 

The Nobel judges honored Milosz as Polish dissidents were making a key move. In 1980, Gdansk shipyard electrician Lech Walesa was leading a Solidarity workers’ strike against the Comm unist rulers of Poland. After Walesa won concessions from the central government to establish a free union movement at the shipyard, half of the adult population rushed to join hastily organized Solidarity chapters at workforces across the country, including in universities and hospitals and government offices.  

With Soviet troops gathering on the border, the Polish Communist prime minister declared martial law and outlawed Solidarity. By 1989, however, with the country in economic collapse, talks began between the Polish communists and Walesa, leading to the first partly free elections in mid-1989 which were overwhelmingly won by Solidarity and led to a peaceful turnover of power to the Solidarity activists. Walesa later won his own Nobel Prize and serv ed a controversial five-year stint as president. 

A Gdansk monument to Solidarity today heralds three key figures in Poland’s revolution: Milosz, Walesa and Pope John Paul II. Milosz was a towering presence in Poland in its first decade of freedom. He nev er took any formal political role but while commuting there from Berkeley he regularly made time for formal and informal meetings with students and professors both in Krakow and in Warsaw.  

He did write bluntly about Poland’s chaotic politics, however, i ncluding articles in U.S. political - literary outlets warning against too much religion in politics at the time when the religious right wing of the Catholic Church pushed for a dominant role in ruling Poland. He also remained outspoken about anti-Semiti sm, including in poetry readings and speeches at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. 

And he kept on writing poetry. His latest poems would be published in the national Catholic newspaper based in Krakow, Tygodnik Powszechny. For 20 years, until a ye ar ago, he and UC Berkeley professor Robert Hass would meet every Monday morning to translate the poems into English. 

“He was one of the towering poets of the 20th century,” Hass said. 

Peggy Simpson spent 10 years as a freelance reporter based in Polan d, covering democracy and economic transition. 

›

Some 200 friends and relatives gathered on Sunday afternoon in the auditorium of the International House to commemorate Dr. Wendell Lipscomb, the 84-year-old Berkeley native and African-American physician and former Tuskegee Airmen flight instructor who died last May in a downtown Berkeley automobile accident. 

The memorial ended with a slideshow of photographs from various points in Dr. Lipscomb’s life. There were World War II era images of a handsome, dashing young man in a flight suit, snapshots from various world travels, and one memorable image in a near-legendary green Jaguar XKE that Lipscomb drove at more-than-legendary speeds, the familiar sight of which brought sighs and murmurs of recognition from the crowd. The slideshow flickered past to the taped accompaniment of Dr. Lipscomb himself, singing “Jacob’s Ladder,” “Shenandoah,” and songs in Italian and French in a clear voice while he strummed the melody on a guitar. 

But the highlight of the afternoon was the brief testimonies by several speakers—a few of them who claimed Lipscomb as either their surrogate father or actual stepfather. What emerged was the portrait of an earthy, multifaceted man, a “glorious human being” whose enormous love of people and “enormous appetite for knowledge and experience” left lasting impressions on everyone he came in contact with. 

“He never let the racial thing get him down-I never did figure that out about him,” said Emmett Rice, a longtime friend who knew Lipscomb at Tuskegee during World War II as well as when both of them lived at the International House in the late ‘40s. “I carry those [racial] scars around with me to this day. Almost all of us did. But Wendell didn’t. That was the remarkable thing about him. He always focused on ways around the obstacles—not on the obstacles themselves.” 

Kathryn Raphael, Lipscomb’s step-daughter through his marriage to his second wife, Ellen Gunther, recalled the tragedy that ensued when Lipscomb contracted throat cancer and could no longer sing. “I remember—before that—how he had this incredible voice,” Raphael said. “He played the guitar, and later, the mandolin. At Christmastime he sang Handel’s Messiah-he would go out caroling with groups of singers.” 

Others recalled Lipscomb as a fixture at dining room tables around Berkeley—so welcome a guest in his later years in several households that he could let himself in and help himself to food at the refrigerator, entertain everyone with some new song he had heard or new skill he had learned, then nap at the table while the talk ranged around him. 

“Sometimes—with his eyes still closed—he’d make a witty comment when the conversation took a turn that was interesting for him,” said John Hanscom, who spoke with a brown Eeyore doll plopped in front of him—a long-treasured gift, he said, from his “Uncle Lippy” while Hanscom was an infant. 

Craig Woolridge, who described himself as Lipscomb’s godson, also mentioned Lipscomb’s throat cancer as a defining memory of the doctor’s spirit. “He was diagnosed 10 years ago with a less than favorable outcome,” Woolridge said. “But he had more things to explore, and he’d be damned if a death sentence would get in his way.” 

Another surrogate son, Chris Lawrence, talked of a harrowing ride across Alameda at speeds approaching 160 mph in Lipscomb’s Jaguar, which he described as “12 cylinders rolled up in a rocket. The steering wheel was just a formality. We entered a state of calmness that heretofore I could never imagine. Wendell seemed perfectly natural in this state. He was not constrained by gravity. He looked to the horizon as if he were thinking that if we had enough takeoff room, he could just continue on up. It was all about up with Wendell.” 

International House Executive Director Joe Lurie, who became close to Lipscomb during the years the doctor served on the I-House board of directors, described Lipscomb as “the master of saying things in a short way that had enormous meaning. I asked him one time how it was living at the I-House in the ‘40s, and he told me of an East Indian man he met there. The man had recently come to the United States, and hadn’t met any African-Americans before. And one day, Wendell said this man turned to him and said, ‘I didn’t know.’ That was Wendell’s way of saying that this East Indian man had never heard of African-Americans who studied medicine or spoke multiple languages… And that was Wendell’s life. Changing people’s perceptions-turning incidents of ‘I didn’t know’ to ‘now I know.’”

“How did you hook up with the Scrabblettes?” asked my friend Laura. She had just given each of the ‘Lettes a large bag of personal hygiene products. Laura’s husband, Rob, works for a consumer products company. Her Walnut Creek garage is filled with boxes of free samples. The Scrabblettes were so delighted with their bags of goodies that they threatened to rent a U-Haul, back it into Laura’s driveway, and fill it with more free stuff. Laura had instantly become their friend.  

“One of the Scrabblettes sent me a kind e-mail,” I said. “Then she wrote to the newspaper and defended my character against critics who said I was insensitive, racist and clueless. She purposely left out a defense against the clueless criticism because she feels I need to work on that aspect of my personality.”  

“Well,” said Laura, “I’d love to have friends like them. I mean, I do have friends, just not any that will set me straight.”  

“If you want to be set straight, Laura, all you have to do is join the Scrabblettes for an afternoon game of Scrabble.” 

Laura took up my offer. One day when Bipsy was out of town participating in an Elder Hostel program, Laura filled in as a substitute. But it turned out that Laura was not such a hot Scrabble player. She used words that started with the letter S, she but didn’t utilize them in conjunction with making an intersecting word plural. She squandered her blanks, and she didn’t know any helpful words like xi (the fourteenth letter in the Greek alphabet), or zo, (another word for zoo). The Scrabblettes have memorized every obscure two- and three- letter word in the dictionary. Clever two-letter word usage garners great respect among the ‘Lettes.  

But Laura made up for her lack of Scrabble expertise by being enthusiastic, and by passing out large tubes of hand cream and toothpaste during the second game. “You can come anytime,” said Rose. “I could especially use some more of that face scrub.” 

I was worried about first impressions three years ago when I was invited to play with the Scrabblettes. I called my friend Corrie for advice. “What should I do?” I asked.  

“Do you want to be invited back?” quizzed Corrie.  

“Yes,” I said. “At least I think I want to be invited back. It depends on how badly they beat me.”  

“Do you know how many games you’re going to play?” she asked.  

“Two,” I answered. “Lunch first, dessert during the first game, coffee during the second.” 

“Look,” said Corrie, thinking quickly. “You need to come in last in the first game, so they don’t feel threatened. But then you need to do better than last place in the second game so that they don’t think they’re wasting time playing with you.” Corrie paused for a moment. “Don’t come in first,” she added. “Aim for second place.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.  

“And another thing,” added Corrie. “You need to take them something good to eat. Never underestimate the power of food when it comes to board games. Bring something elegant, thoughtful and sweet, but not too sweet. Too many calories and they’ll suspect you’re up to no good. But not too sour or you’ll leave a bad taste in their mouths. I’m guessing that the Scrabblettes are not short on taste buds or memory cells.” 

“Okay,” I said.  

“Report back to me after the games,” instructed Corrie. “I want to know how you made out.’ 

The following day I went to Louise’s West Berkeley home, an old, graceful, two-story house with a hot tub and a large, beautiful garden in the sunny backyard. I had no trouble losing the first game. But it was a real effort to finish second in the next. I called Corrie when I got home.  

“I did what you said,” I shouted. “And they’ve invited me back!”  

“Good,” said Corrie. “Now see what you can do about getting me invited next time.” ›

SNEAKY LEGISLATION? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Terry Cochrell (Letters, Daily Planet, Aug. 13-16), attempting to cast Maudelle Shirek’s failure to submit enough signatures to appear on the ballot in a sinister light, describes the change in nomination procedures for City Council races as “sneaky legislation.” 

On Nov. 11, 2003, Ms. Shirek voted with the City Council majority to place Measure J on the March 2004 primary ballot. The summary that appeared on the ballot began, “Shall the Charter of the City of Berkeley be amended to require that candidates for council office be nominated by voters registered in the applicable council district ...” and 62 percent of Berkeley voters said “yes.” Can legislation get less sneaky than that? 

Robert Lauriston 

• 

GENTRIFIED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I hate to sound like William Safire, but Jaqueline DeBose misuses the language with her phrases “gentrified left wing conspiracy” and “the gentrified left” (“Signature Snafu Knocks Councilmember Shirek Off November Ballot,” Daily Planet, Aug. 10-12). Since gentry refers to a class of people, in the current and local context home owners, the adjective “gentrified” refers to places impacted, changed, or improved by the gentry such as streets and neighborhoods. A conspiracy cannot be gentrified, nor can the left and its wing. “Berkeley’s left-wing gentry” would be the proper term, and not one of abuse, we would hope. 

Toni Mester 

• 

WILLARD GARDEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Unified School District has hired contractors to do work in the beautiful flower beds of Willard. The work was to be on the edges of the garden, but the contractor is using a large John Deere tractor, driving around in the garden beds, killing all the flowers and plants in its way, pulling out plants. The tractor is driving across the roots of trees, imperiling the survivial of the trees. The heavy tractor is compacting the soil—which has taken 12 years to build. Another week of this and the garden will be destroyed. Half of it has already been reduced to bare dirt and dust. And sadly, it’s our tax dollars which is being spent to do this. 

The north plot is basically emptied out. There’s a row of roses in the front, and a few trees, but it’s barren behind it all. Stop by and look—it’s horrible. 

Please call and ask BUSD to stop this destruction. Ask them to get that tractor out of the garden! 

Yolanda Huang  

• 

INVASIVE PESTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to expand briefly on a comment made by Professors Gutierrez and Altieri (“Reflections on Berkeley-Novartis Report,” Daily Planet, Aug.10-12). Invasive pest species cause hundreds of millions in losses in California alone. It turns out that over 100 exotic species enter the United States each year. Many fail to establish, but at least three or four find suitable homes and multiply to pest levels—many serious. (Take weeds for example: Approximately one-half of the major weeds in the U.S. were introduced from other lands.)  

This ongoing influx of foreign pests would be formidable if it weren’t for the fact that most have co-evolved natural enemies that hold them in balance in their native areas. Biological control practitioners search out these natural enemies, test them for safety of release, and then place them in areas where their hosts have become pests. This is a familiar story to many of your readers, but often overlooked is the fact that nature provides this pest control service free. This is the type of public service that UC Berkeley excelled at its Gill Tract location (corner, Marin and San Pablo Avenues) from the mid 1940’s until recent years. The balance sheet on these efforts is measured annually in multi-millions of dollars in pest control savings to the California public both directly (farmers) and indirectly (less pesticide pollution). Although these organisms are not be sold for profit, they enhance California’s bottom line. 

As you might guess, these natural enemies are a key element in integrated pest management efforts, so critical to the sustainable food production programs we hear so much about.  

Lloyd Andres 

• 

POLICE BLOTTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Apparently readers who find the Police Blotter insensitive have one point, Richard Brenneman sometimes makes light of serious street crime. Maybe he will take a hint from one of the finest editors working in the U.S. today, Kevin L. Hoover of the Arcata Eye, who writes the police log with his sensitivities intact. 

Hank Chapot 

›

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for publishing Sarah Norr’s excellent article on the San Francisco Chronicle’s quiet purge of its liberal staffers, most recently demoting letters page editor William Pates after a media watchdog group revealed that he ha d given $400 to the Kerry campaign although, as Norr points out, George Hearst gave $30,000 to Republican candidates without losing his job as chair of Hearst Corporation. Americans are today far more ignorant of how those who own the mass media determine what they know than when Upton Sinclair published his classic The Brass Check over 80 years ago. 

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the documentary Outfoxed that those who claim loudest to be journalistically fair and balanced can afford to be quite the opposite since they own the pulpit. Shaping public thought depends more on those views excluded than on those that are openly expressed. Former Republican hatchet man David Brock explains the means by which political discourse has been de liberately shunted to the extreme right by limiting liberal and excluding left voices altogether in his recent book The Republican Noise Machine. 

In my own book, Imperial San Francisco, I analyzed the ways in which three local dynasties used leading news papers to aggrandize their own fortunes and power—the Hearsts’ San Francisco Examiner, the deYoungs’ San Francisco Chronicle, and the Spreckels’ San Francisco Call (the best of the lot, and killed by its colluding rivals in 1913.) As the Hearst Corporatio n was engaging in some fancy secret “horsetrading” to acquire the Chronicle and kill its old flagship Examiner, it promised to give the Bay Area a world-class newspaper, an action which would have been a historic first for that company. Though the Chron i s by no means as crummy a product as those newspapers to whose terrified editors William Randolph Hearst sent memos from San Simeon instructing how he wanted the news slanted—even as he was syndicating the likes of Hitler, Goering, and Mussolini—it’s beco ming obvious by the roster of those silenced and stories demoted that omission is becoming a subtle tool there, as when a humane voice like Stephanie Salter’s is put on permanent leave while the likes of Debra Saunders and Ken Garcia continue to vent thei r diseased spleens like the old Hearst pit bull Westbrook Pegler, or when news of environmental catastrophe is relegated to blurbs at the back of Saturday’s sports page while junk like the Peterson murder case consumes front page acreage month after month. 

I’ve been in the field long enough to know that journalists with mortgages and health care needs soon get the message from on high by watching the fate of their colleagues, thereby learning to write the kind of “fair and balanced” material that Hearst and Rupert Murdoch expect of their employees. Ursula K. LeGuin called this form of self-censorship the Stalin in the soul, which increasingly overcasts the Chronicle and those of us who depend upon it for our news. 

Mr. Allen-Taylor’s recent article regarding community citizens buying cell phones for their beat officers reveals more about his prejudices about law enforcement than about uneven access to the police. Cell phone use is just one more tool to help solve local problems, not a substitute for any level of traditional police service. Further, responsibility for communication between the police and the community they serve is a two-way street, and only effective when both sides are active participants. 

It is understandable that Mr. Allen-Taylor longs for a simpler time, when individual officers had the luxury of time and limited responsibilities, and could reasonably expect to be able to meet and greet each resident in their district by name. Peace officers working in an environment with little, if any, violent crime, and a much smaller resident population, can do that. By contrast, current beat assignments involve responsibility for densely-populated urban communities, and cover geographical areas too extensive to cover on foot. A typical work day has any given beat officer racing from one location to another, in response to serious, life-threatening incidents. Given the logistical problems of being forced (to try and) be everywhere at once, and be everything to everybody, they are to be congratulated for making the best of whatever resources are available to them. If they find a cell phone handy for improving access to the most up-to-the-minute information, then I am happy they have them. 

It is true that not everyone knows their beat officers equally well. There is a wide range of personal involvement on the part of community members, from fully-involved down to the marginally aware. While those who choose minimal contact with the police have the right to expect an equal response to real needs for solid police services, such as access via dispatch to address actual crimes in progress, they cannot complain about a failure to connect on a personal level if they don’t do their part. 

I am particularly offended by the libelous assertion that “the Oakland Police Department plays favorites in whom it responds to.” By any notion of what a modern police department is supposed to “respond to,” there is of necessity a hierarchy of importance. The decision to send one or more officers to the site of a requested call for service is based on the likelihood that a human life is at stake. Whether or not dispatch sends out one officer or several, and how quickly, depends on the seriousness of the call, as well as the availability of personnel to send. The quality and speed of the response has nothing to do with who is calling, or how familiar they are with their own beat officer. 

Neither do patrol officers “respond to” neighborhood residents calling for help in preference to their assigned calls. Should that ever happen, it would be a clear case of negligence, and should be reported immediately. I have never heard of anything of the sort occurring. Instead, those officers who carry cell phones with them while working (regardless of who paid for them), use the phones to provide a direct source for gathering information. Local residents have the best, most current information about what is going on in their neighborhoods. By passing it on directly to the officer driving their streets, they extend the effectiveness of that officer. No officer with a cell phone ever responds to a voicemail message, much less answering the phone directly, if there are any other matters pending. Communications with dispatch are always the higher priority. 

In a time of budget cutbacks, when (on average) 35 beat officers patrol the streets of Oakland, and stretched staffing means that workloads are doubled up, we ought to be supportive of any officer working as efficiently as possible. The effect of better-informed officers means that they can help to prevent crime, not just respond after the fact. That makes everyone safer, even those who choose limited contact with the police. 

I also take exception to the author’s assertion that participation in community meetings makes “their jobs infinitely easier.” Many officers attend these meetings on their days off, and/or when they are not on duty, out of a sense of personal dedication to the community they serve. We are only too lucky that we have officers willing to go so far beyond the call of duty, to better get to know their area and those neighbors working to help fix the problems, instead of causing them. 

Sam Herbert is South Berkeley resident.›

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s column about Oakland Police and cell phones: I agree, not a good idea, and also isn’t there a thing called public accountability? If only certain members of society have instant access to the police, then only certain members will get “service”. And as a homeless person, I dread the idea even more. It’s bad enough the way it is. A couple years ago, I was taking a nap on the UC Berkeley campus, when two cops came up to me and wrote me a ticket for “lodging.” (I was resting on a piece of cardboard, not bothering anybody, in a relatively out-of-the-way place on lower Sproul Plaza.) I will never forget what the cops told me there; they said that someone had called them because I made them (the person who called) feel uncomfortable! I ended up getting banned from campus for two years for that horrible crime. 

When I read stuff like this, I just wonder what some people are thinking. It’s already enough of a police state for people like me, and I bet this will just make it worse for people who still go through what I just described. 

If Berkeley wants to “clean up it’s streets,” they ought to hire some homeless people, give them brooms, grass clippers...and let them make some money (market rate!) by cleaning Shattuck Avenue (among other places). It looks filthy.  

Let’s get real, people. Hire me! 

Last week I arrived at 2812 Hillegass to see a beautiful redwood tree had been cut, ground into sawdust, and loaded onto a truck. I and two neighbors were the only persons there apart from the workmen. My guess is that the tree was at least 40 years old. How is it that we have an ordinance in this town that prohibits cutting of live oaks, but doesn’t prohibit the cutting of redwood trees? I know of several other cases of cutting of old redwoods. 

More disturbing is that no laws protect us from city government pork barrel practices of destroying mature healthy trees and replacing them with saplings just to grant contracts to favored companies. Why are they clear cutting 98 trees at the Berkeley Marina for a bicycle path without bothering to consider alternatives that go around the trees? 

The marina clear cut is a make work project that will waste public funds clear cutting dozens of mature healthy trees and replacing them with pathetic saplings. The city manager loves these projects because it allows them to use public funds to enrich favored private companies that profit from urban redesign work. With all the serious economic problems our city faces why does the city waste money removing mature healthy trees? In July the Berkeley City Council approved almost $300,000 in tree removal contracts to one company without any discussion. I estimate $100,000 of that money is being spent removing mature healthy trees, and the contract is overly generous in the amount being paid for removal of those trees that need to be removed. Not only that, but in the event the contractor does shoddy work the city should be able to terminate the contract before spending $300,000. Why didn’t anyone on council ask about that? 

Fortunately, this November we have a chance to vote for Measure S and rein in wasteful spending on make-work projects like the Marina clear-cut. Measure S will make it more difficult to remove mature, healthy public trees, will allow a Board to raise private funds so we can plant more trees and create parks without raising taxes, and will prevent pork barrel spending by requiring proposed tree care contracts to be reviewed by a tree board to prevent wasteful spending. I urge people to vote for Measure S, the Berkeley Public Tree Act, in order to stop pork barrel tree removal schemes that allow companies to line their pockets with our tax dollars while removing perfectly healthy public trees. 

Peter Schorer is a Berkeley resident.›

Two generations ago many architects, designers, and their patrons were throwing out the traditional rulebooks and conventions and venturing into new territory. Sleek buildings and vehicles appeared, matched with equally avant-garde clothing, appliances, furniture, music and art. It was the height of the Deco or Moderne era. 

On Sunday, Aug. 29, locals will have a rare opportunity to step into an outstanding architectural product of that time, a unique Berkeley home from the age of Hollywood movie spectacles, swank Manhattan penthouses, and “streamline” décor.  

The J.W. “Call Me Joe” Harris House at 2300 LeConte Ave. can be viewed from basement to balcony during “An Afternoon of Art Deco Glamour,” a special 3-6 p.m. open house, hosted by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA).  

Billie Jean Harris D’Anna, daughter of the original owner and a resident of the house as a child, is scheduled to attend, along with prominent architectural historian and Art Deco Society co-founder Michael Crowe. Well-known author Jane Powell will also be on hand to talk about the house. Refreshments will be served. 

From the 1920s through the ‘40s a number of important institutional and commercial buildings in Berkeley were built in the Art Deco or Moderne architectural styles. Prominent survivors include the Community Theatre, Central Library, and United Artists Theatre. However, only a few Moderne residences were constructed in Berkeley, and the Harris House is among the best. 

If you’ve driven, walked, or bicycled up Hearst Avenue from Oxford with the UC campus on your right, you’re probably familiar with the three-story house that’s seemingly all curves, standing on a small triangular lot where LeConte descends to meet Hearst. 

Step inside at the Aug. 29 event and you can easily imagine Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing in the mirror-lined living room, or Claude Rains wreathed in shadow and cigarette smoke awaiting some mysterious assignation on the curving second floor balcony. 

The Harris House is a three-bedroom, two-bath, family home, not a mansion. It’s the architectural character of the house that makes it opulent, particularly on the inside. The event is a one-time opportunity to see that interior. 

There’s hardly a room that’s conventionally square or rectangular. From breakfast nook to basement nearly every area has at least one curved wall.  

The living room is entered from a two-story triangular atrium with an elegant staircase. A second staircase sweeps regally from the entrance lobby to the lowest level. The living room seems like a stage set with inset fluorescent light panels framing a mirrored fireplace fronted by a black marble hearth resembling a half moon in eclipse.  

No fewer than 240 glass blocks are built into the living room walls, and the room flows into a curved, glassed-in, conservatory flooded with daylight.  

Upstairs, the master bedroom is oriented to face double doors opening onto a curved balcony like the bridge of a ship, running along the whole projecting front of the second floor.  

Period features from the 1930s remain throughout the house, all meticulously maintained and refurbished by the family of the current owner. They include inset light fixtures and an “all electric kitchen” with original burners that fold up against the wall when not in use and a top-loading 1930s dishwasher. 

Tropical hardwoods panel the octagonal formal dining room where one corner wall opens to reveal a “secret” bar cabinet with glass shelves and mirrored sides. Aluminum details adorn the house, from the fireplace screen to the sinuous staircase rails. 

The master bathroom is walled with beige marble, with the floor painted to match. A second bath is covered—floor, walls, ceiling—with original tilework and has a circular mirror that pulls back to reveal a medicine cabinet shaped like a ship’s porthole.  

The house is currently unfurnished and between renters, and the owners generously offered to make it available for the BAHA event. 

Berkeley architect John B. Anthony designed the Harris House in 1936 as a family home for Joseph W. Harris, a successful local merchant called a “human dynamo” by the Berkeley Daily Gazette.  

Raised in Brooklyn, Harris served in the Navy, worked in his father’s business, and moved to Berkeley in 1923 where he opened a tiny shop on Shattuck Avenue.  

By 1939 he had expanded the store to cover much of the 2000 block of Shattuck Square where the Kaplan building now stands just across from the BART station. The “House of Harris” sold a wide array of men’s and boy’s clothing and specialty items like Boy Scout uniforms.  

Sleekly replete, like Harris’s home, with curved corners and hundreds of glass blocks, the three story commercial building proclaimed his slogan, “Call Me Joe” in an enormous lighted marquee that was said to be visible from North Oakland. 

“Berkeley has been swell to me,” Harris told an interviewer in 1939. He was 42 at the time and his portrait adorned a special eight-page section of the Berkeley Daily Gazette that celebrated the enlargement of his business. He was a “large property owner here and in Oakland” the Gazette said, and his name was familiar throughout the East Bay and beyond. 

Today, it’s probable that only Berkeley old timers remember the House of Harris. But the elegant 1936 family home of “Call Me Joe” remains, and still draws the eye and admiring attention. 

Steven Finacom is a regular contributor to the Daily Planet and a member of the board of directors of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

›

UC Berkeley Senior Natalie Coughlin won Olympic gold in the 100-meter backstroke Monday. The Concord native, who already owned the world record in the event, has a shot at two more gold medals when she competes in the 100 meter Freestyle and the 4X100 meter Freestyle relay. 

2

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17 

FILM 

Time’s Shadow: “Ruins” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Black Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Film Festival opens at 6 p.m. at the Parkway Speakeasy, 1834 Park Blvd. and runs through Aug. 22. 814-2400. www.apeb.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Hamsa Lila at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Richard M. Krawczyk discusses his new book “Financial Aerobics” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

King David String Ensemble, comprised of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union, at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $15-$20 available from 925-798-1300.  

Dick Conte Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jazz House Jam, hosted by Darrell Green and Geechy Taylor, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

George Cables with Gary Bartz, Eric Revis and Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Wed. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazz- 

school at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18 

THEATER 

“John Muir’s Mountain Days,” a musical, to Aug. 29 at the Alhambra Performing Arts Center, 150 E St., Martinez. Call for show times and reservations, 925-798-1300.  

www.willowstheatre.org  

FILM 

Exploit-O-Scope: “Dementia 13” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Oakland Open Stage with poets and playwrites including Marc Bathmuthi Joseph, Aya De Leon, and Hanifah Walidah at 8 p.m. at The Oakland Box. Cost is $10. 

www.openstagefest.com 

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise Freejahlove at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik, featuring Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jules Broussard, Ned Boynton and Bing Nathan at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Zydeco Flames at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Zydeco dance lesson with Diana Castillo at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ben Adams Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Bearfoot, youthful bluegrass ensemble from Colorado, 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 

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Ducksan Distones play straight ahead jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15 sliding scale.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Past and Present Connection” an exhibition featuring local print artists and selected artists with disabilities. Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at Niad Art Center, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

“Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture” An exhibition of Tapa from Tonga and the Pacific Islands. Gallery tour at 5 p.m. and documentary screening at 6:30 p.m. Through Sept. 7 at the Craft and Cultural Art Gallery, State of California Office Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 

“Elements of the Garden” sculpture by Trent Burkett. Reception from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1111 Broadway.  

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “The Leopard” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Ulin discusses earthquakes in “The Myth of Solid Ground” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers Bert Glick and Randy Fingland at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Open Stage with the new music of Hanifah Walidah, Tim’m West and Nonameka at 8 p.m. at Oaklandish, Jack London Square. Cost is $10. www.openstagefest.com  

The Dunes at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Phil Marsh, original and traditional 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 

7th Direction, Saul Kaye Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Brian Kane at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Aaron Novick plays jazz originals at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15 sliding scale. www.thejazzhouse.com 

The James Affair at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Ron Carter Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazz Mine, string swing jazz quartet, at 6:30 p.m. at King Tsin Chinese Restaurant, 1699 Solano Ave. www.jazzmine.net 

Circlesinging Workshop with David Worm of SoVoSó from 7 to 9 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, Oakland. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. Resevations suggested. 444-8511, ext. 15. www.artsfirstoakland.org 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Bohemian Berkeley 1890 - 1925” exhibit extended until September 19 at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. Open Thurs. - Sat. 1 to 4 p.m. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “White Nights” at 7 p.m. and “The Stranger” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

Alameda Civic Light Opera “Bye Bye Birdie,” directed by Frederick L. Chacon. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. to Aug. 22. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave. in Alameda. Tickets are $23-$25. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Butoh & Action Theater Performances at 8:30 p.m. Fri. and Sat., also Aug. 27 and 28 at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, Oakland, near MacArthur BART. Tickets are $15-$20. 601-7494. www.temescalartscenter.org  

California Shakespeare Theater, “The Importance of Being Ernest” Tues.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m. at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, through Sept. 3. Tickets are $13-$32. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org  

Shotgun Players “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. in John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave., until Aug 29. 841-6500. wwwshotgunplayers.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

30th Anniversary Celebration at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, in honor of The American Society for Eastern Arts, featuring Aniruddha Knight, Bharatanatyam dancer at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $20-$25 and are available from 925-798-1300. 

Sequoia Concerts “A Concert of Mainly Contemporaries” with William Bouton, violin, and Leonore Hall, piano, at 7:45 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$25. 415-342-6151, www.sequoiaconcerts.com  

Bay Area Classical Harmonies performs Mozart’s C Minor Mass at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland, Tickets $10-15 available from 866-233-9892. www.berkeleybach.org  

The Dayna Stephens Sextet at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Palenque, CD release celebration at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tchiya Amet at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Sourdough Slim and the Saddle Pals, the last of the vaudeville cowboys, 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 

Pamela Z and Shoko Hikage, with Jesse Quattro, Moe Staiano and Vicky Grossi in an evening of experimental and avant garde music, a benefit for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 449B 23rd St., Oakland. Cost is $7-$70 sliding scale, no one turned away. Presented by Fire Museum. 415-273-4681. 

Pit of Fashion Orchestra with Peter Barshay at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

DJ & Brook, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Pistola, Research and Development, 3 Piece Combo at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $12. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Killing the Dream, Blue Monday, Verse, The Answer 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. 

The Katie Jay Band at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Dynamic plays jazz-funk at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Barbary Coast by Night Join maestro Omar for an evening of authentic music and food from Algeria. Every Sat. at 7 p.m. at Cafe Raphael’s, 10064 San Pablo Ave. El Cerrito. 525-4227. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21 

CHILDREN 

Kids on the Block Puppet Show promoting acceptance and understanding of physical and cultural differences at 2 p.m. at the Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave., lower level. Sug- 

gested donation $3. Children under 3 free. 549-1564. 

THEATER 

Breaking Ground Collective, “Blood Wedding” at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $5, and reservations can be made toll free at 1-877-519-3300. 

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “vaghe stelle dell’orsa” at 7 p.m., and “Conversation Piece” at 9:05 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson introduce their latest science fiction “Dune: The Battle of Corrin” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MIUSIC AND DANCE 

New Millennium Strings will feature works of Franck, Berlioz, Ravel and Rapf at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $10-$15, children under 12 free. 528-4633. www.newmillenniumstrings.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies performs Mozart’s C Minor Mass, at 7:30 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave. Kensington. Tickets $10-15. 866-233-9892. www.berkeleybach.org 

Oakland East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus at 8 p.m. at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, 3534 Lakeshore Ave. 800-706-2389. www.oebgmc.org 

Houston Jones Country Rock and Blues Band plays a benefit for BOSS’s homeless programs at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro Opera Theater, 2001 Broadway, Oakland, Cost is $15 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 649-1930. 

The Frisky Frolics, Tin Pan Alley troubadours at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

Swanee: The Stephen Foster Story, with Joe Weed, Marti Kendall, Katie Kendall-Weed and Marty Atkinson, 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 

Orquesta la Moderna Tradición at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ambrose Akinmusire Project at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

California Brazil All-Star Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Damon Zick and Friends at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15. www.thejazzhouse.org 

Fred Randolph Jazz Trio at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Spanish Enchantments with Flamenco music and dance at 9 p.m. at Downtown. A special supper club event, reservations required. 649-3810.  

Jerry Kelly, singer, songwriter at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Swingueria Baiana at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Will Bernard and Motherbug at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Modern Machines, Period Three, Love Songs, Max Fischer 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. 

Anton Schwartz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22 

CHILDREN  

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Open Heart Surgery: Seeing the Truth: A Memorial” reception for the artists, Annamarta Dostourian, Andrew Juris and Laura DuBois at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Box, 1928 Telegraph Ave. 451-1932. www.oaklandbox.com  

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “White Nights” at 5:30 p.m. and “The Stranger” at 7:35 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

International Women’s Writing Guild celebrates summer with Opal Palmer-Adisa and Earthlyn Marselean Manuel at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Millennium Strings will feature works of Franck, Berlioz, Ravel and Rapf at 3 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington, Kensington. Tickets are $10-$15, children under 12 free. 528-4633. www.newmillenniumstrings.org 

Flamenco Open Stage with Stephanie Niera at 7:30 p.m. Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

www.ashkenaz.com 

Slammin’ an all-body band that comines a cappella singing with beat boxing and body music at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Acme Observatory presents Rothbaum, Drake, Bruckmann and Stackpole at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $10. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Bev Grant, activist, feminist singer-songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Americana Unplugged: Homespun Rowdy at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

MONDAY, AUGUST 23 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express Tribute to Dixi Cohn from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Africando at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Tues. Cost is $26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

ô

We’re getting a bit of fall color already, especially in the row of smallish honey locusts on Cedar Street between MLK and Sacramento. There are a few of their golden brethren around the corner, too, and more scattered around town and in people’s yards. This is a nice, easy tree if you want light shade and a little drought tolerance. It’s often one of the first trees to go deciduous here, but it seems everyone’s putting the fall colors on early this year.  

Gleditsia triacanthos gets its genus name from an 18th century director of the Berlin Botanic Garden, Johann Gottleib Gleditsch, and its species name from its usual habit of bearing triple thorns. The ones planted here—specimens of one of several tame cultivars—have only rudimentary thorns, but you can see some at the joints of the ziggyzag twigs.  

Aside from “honey locust” G. triacanthos gets called “black locust” (one of at least two trees with that common name) and thorny locust; three-thorned acacia (it’s not an acacia either.); “honeyshucks”; “sweet locust”; or “Confederate pintree”—because those long thin thorns were supposedly used to pin ragged uniforms together in the late years of the Civil War. It’s native to the eastern United (nevertheless) States, where, in the wild, its thorns can be formidable indeed, reportedly growing a foot long sometimes. They appear in frightening fierce clusters on the trunks, too, not just the twigs.  

Amid all that armament is a curious, spectacular seedpod. Look at the Cedar Street trees—especially at the ones that are staying green longest—and you’ll see lots of flat, foot-long pods, extravagantly wavy. These are the reason for the “honey” and “sweet” parts of the English name—and maybe even the “locust,” as a nod to John the Baptist, who lived on locusts and honey, and to the carob tree, called “St. John’s bread.” They’re sweet—they make so much sugar that there have been serious proposals to grow groves of the tree instead of sugarcane.  

The wild honey locust is obviously protecting itself against something, and just as obviously trying to attract something. These might be the same things, if Connie Barlow’s thesis in her book The Ghosts of Evolution is correct.  

The original distribution of honey locust is not on the upper Midwest prairie, but in the forested East and South. But that big fruit, the spiral pod, is too much of a mouthful for your average rabbit or squirrel; it begs for a big herbivore to eat the sweet pod and disperse the tough seeds inside to places beyond their parents’ reach. But just about the only herbivores big enough, with the right chewing equipment, would be bison and elk, and those have a more northwestern range than honey locust. (Deer are browsers, and like more tender fare.) The seed is incredibly hard to break and scarify, too, and most won’t sprout without being treated very roughly. Early, rather fanciful explanations of the function of the pod—that it rolled away in the wind, breaking open and flinging seeds as it went—stumble on this part of the seeds’ needs.  

Barlow proposes that several North American species—honey locust, Osage orange, Kentucky coffetree for example—“remember” the mastodons. Not only mastodons, but horses, too—that line did originate here, but like camels and maned lions, spread to other continents and died out in its hometown. Horses and cattle still find locust pods compellingly tasty; they have sugars, fats, and proteins enough to make them quite nutritious. Other dispersal agents served in the interim, but cattle have spread wild honey locust to a wider range since Europeans came.  

Big herbivores often bash tree trunks, or gnaw them to eat sweet inner bark—and that can kill a tree; hence those fierce thorn clusters. The ancestors of that double file of pretty golden trees on Cedar Street may well have equipped themselves to fine-tune the behavior of animal neighbors and commensals who had long vanished from the continent thousands of years before streets—and street trees—were invented. 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17 

Mini-Rangers An afternoon of nature study for ages 8 to 12. Dress to get dirty, bring a healthy snack to share. At Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 525-2233. 

African Affairs Benefit Brunch with Patrick Hayford, the United Nations’ Director of African Affairs in the office of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at noon at House of UNITY in Eastmont Town Center, 7200 Bancroft Ave. #209, Oakland. Minimum contribution of $25 requested for the brunch; also there will be a free 7:00 p.m. public event. Sponsored by AFSC’s African Initiative, Aseya Africa and others. www.afsc.org 

Contemporary Political Election Issues, a discussion with Millie Barsh at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

“What is Ahead for Venezuela?” with Lisa Sullivan who hosted the 2004 Marin Interfaith Task Force Delegation to Caracas, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar. 528-5403. 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Sts. from 3 to 7 p.m. This is a project of Spiral Gardens. 843-1307. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush on Tuesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP if you can join us. 415-336 8736. dan@redefeatbush.com 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18 

An Evening with Arundhati Roy, David Barsamian, Amy Goodman and Boots Riley, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Community Theater, 1930 Allston Way at Milvia. (wheelchair access, ASL provided). Supported by Global Exchange & Mother Jones Magazine. Tickets are $21, available from Cody’s or www.cityboxoffice.com 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday, rain or shine, at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat. 548-9840. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/wallkingtours 

“Dr. Strangelove” a film adaptation of Peter George’s thriller “Red Alert” at 7:30 p.m. at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, donations are welcome. 393-5685. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. For information call Robert Flammia 524-3765. 

Fun with Acting Class every Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome, no experience necessary.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19 

“Who Owns Water?” Protecting the world’s water from corporate takeover. Join us for a discussion with Juliette Beck and John Gibler of Public Citizen’s Water for All Campaign, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Safe Boating Class on “Boating Skills and Seamanship” offered by the US Coast Guard Auxiliary begins today and runs for 13 weeks, on Thurs evenings from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the US Coast Guard Air Station, San Francisco International Airport. A $50 fee covers textbook and certificate. For reservations please contact Wayne Wattson at 650-755-9739. 

Circlesinging Workshop with David Worm of SoVoSó from 7 to 9 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, Oakland. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. Resevations suggested. 444-8511, ext. 15. www.artsfirstoakland.org 

Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, a group for gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgenders over the age of 55, catered lunch at 12:30 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue, Oakland. 667-9655. 

Mills College Open House for the graduate program in Interdisciplinary Computer Science from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Program open to women and men with a talent and interest in computing, and a bachelor's degree in another field. Financial assistance available. Mills College is located on the MacArthur exit of 580 East. 415-336-4466. http://ics.mills.edu 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20 

“Oscar in the Wild: Camping with Cal Shakes” from 5 p.m. to Sat. 10 a.m. at the Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. Cost is $28-$35. Performance tickets sold separately. To register call 548-9666. 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema on Washington St., between 9th and 10th Sts. Music at 5 p.m., and film, “Tootsie” at 8 p.m. Bring your own chairs and blankets. Sponsored by the City of Oakland and the Old Oakland Historic District. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

“Manhattan” A Woody Allen film at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21 

Plant Nursery Work Party from 9 a.m. to noon Join the Richmond Bayshore Stewards to restore a tidal marsh and improve wildlife habitat on the south Richmond shoreline along the Bay Trail. We will be working in the native plant nursery on the UC Richmond Field Station building plant tables, and doing nursery work. Tools, gloves and snacks provided. Please pre-register so we can send directions. Youth under 18 years need signed permission from a parent or guardian so please contact us for a waiver in advance. Sponsored by The Watershed Project (formerly Aquatic Outreach Institute). To register or for more information, contact Elizabeth O’Shea, 231-9566 or Elizabeth@thewatershedproject.org 

Berkeley’s Front Row Festival from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Addison St. and Shattuck Ave., with arts acrafts, gourmet foods, children’s activities and entertainment. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association.  

Temescal Street Fair from noon to 6 p.m. on Telegraph Ave. between 48th and 51st St., with live music, entertainment for children, food and craft booths. 

Late Summer Color with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Sushi for the More Adventurous A hands-on opportunity to make and taste exotic varieties of sushi for youth and adults. Parent participation required for childen age 8-12. From 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $29-$44. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Richmond Boulevard from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Meet at the pergola, Croxton Ave. and Richmond Blvd. Cost is $5 for OHA members, $10 for nonmembers. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Prebyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/ 

wallkingtours 

Angel Island Kayak Overnight with Save the Bay. We will paddle our kayaks to a secluded beach, cook our meals and sleep in a restored Victorian, learn about the rich history of the island. From 9:30 a.m. Sat. to 4:30 p.m. Sun. Cost is $129-$139. For more information or to register call 452-9261. www.savesfbay.org.  

Neighborhood Coffee at 9 a.m. at Cafe Expresso Roma, 1549 Hopkins St. Sponsored by Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations. www.berkeleycna.com 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 9:15 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Conference Room, 1st Floor, 2727 College Ave. www.berkeleycna.com 

“Attica” a 1975 documentary of the three-day prison uprising at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

“Spirituality in Daily Life” by Arnaud Maitland at 3 p.m. at Dharma Publishing, 1910 San Pablo Ave. Suggested donation for the lecture is $10. 548-5407. 

Tibetan Text Preservation Project A fundraiser from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Dharma Publishing, 1910 San Pablo Ave. 548-5407. 

Berkeley Youth Orchestra Auditions from 10:30 a.m. to noon. To schedule an audition or to find out more about the orchestra see www.byoweb.org 

“The Wisdom of Chakras” from 7 to 9 p.m. at Change Makers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. 655-2405. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22 

Friends of Strawberry Creek and Greens at Work Anniversary Celebration at 1 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. For information call Jane Kelly at 845-7549, 528-3949. 

Berkeley’s Front Row Festival from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Addison St. and Shattuck Ave., with arts acrafts, gourmet foods, children’s activities and entertainment. Sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association.  

Nature Exploration for Toddlers in the meadows, around the pond and on the trails of Tilden. From 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Late Summer Ponds Capture and release nymphs and naiads, backswimmers and boatmen from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. For youth and families. 525-2233. 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Rockridge Arts and Crafts from 10 a.m. to noon. Meet at the pillars on the corner of Broadway and Rockridge Blvd. Cost is $5 for OHA members, $10 for nonmembers. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

“Accomplishments and Future of the UN” with Chris O’Sullivan, UN historian, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Road, Kensington. 525-0302.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Palzang on “Vairochana: Awakened master of Ancient Tibet” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

“Buddha is Here Now” with Prof. Akira Omine, Osaka University, at 9:45 a.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Temple, 2121 Channing Way. Donation $10. 415-776-5600, ext. 24.  

MONDAY, AUGUST 23 

Friends of Strawberry Creek Meeting with City Storm Water Program Engineer Lorin Jensen on creek, culverts, flooding issues from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Central Berkeley Public Library Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St.  

Restoration and Monitoring of Watercourses A class with Steve Cochrane, a naturalist with Friends of the SF Estuary and the San Francisco Estuary Project. Class meets Mondays 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. and on 3 Sundays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. At Lake Merritt College, Oakland. Cost is $38. To register call 434-3840 or ecomerritt@sbcglobal.net. Enroll online at www.peralta.cc.ca.us with class code M0488 and course #EMART 048NG. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. 524-9122. 

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthening at 1:15 p.m. every Monday at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

Iyengar Yoga on Mondays from from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $12. 528-9909. gay@yogagarden.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

ONGOING 

Free Summer Lunch Programs are offered to youth age 18 and under at various sites in Berkeley, Mon. - Fri. 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. until Aug. 20. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley Health Dept. 981-5351.  

This Land is Your Land Day Camp Weekly sessions to Aug. 27 for children ages 5-12, at Roberts Regional Park in Oakland and at Tilden Park in Berkeley. Science and nature studies with art, music, hiking, swimming, and outdoor games. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cost is $245 per week. 581-3739. www.sarahscience.com 

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Aug. 18, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Labor meets Wed., Aug. 18, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Delfina M. Geiken, 644-6085. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/labor 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Aug. 19, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/designreview  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Aug. 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/transportation 

Solid Waste Management Commission Mon., Aug. 23, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Becky Dowdakin, 981-6357. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwasteô

After a hectic period that began with the announcement of veteran Councilmember Maudelle Shirek’s disqualification for the November ballot, the filing deadline for candidates in the fall Berkeley City Council election closed with some minor shakeups, the non-appearance of one potential major candidate, and some interesting, competitive races developing. 

Several reporters and political officeholders hung around City Hall at the close of filing on Wednesday evening to see if former mayor Shirley Dean might opt to attempt to reclaim her old District 5 City Council seat, now being vacated by Councilmember Miriam “Mim” Hawley. Dean didn’t show, ending months-long speculation that she might use the District 5 seat as a steppingstone for a rematch race against Tom Bates, the man who removed her from the mayor’s office in the 2002 elections. 

That left District 3 as the most talked about—and still somewhat uncertain—council race. 

Before Shirek failed to make the November ballot because her campaign failed to obtain the proper nominating signatures, she was being challenged by Rent Stabilization Board Chair Maxwell Anderson and jeweler and political newcomer Jeffrey Benefiel. 

On the Monday following Shirek’s Friday evening disqualification, two more candidates quickly took out nominating papers— housing developer James Peterson and neighborhood organizer Laura Menard. Peterson ran an unsuccessful race against Shirek four years ago. On Wednesday of this week, the last day for qualifying, a fifth potential candidate also took out papers—boutique owner Helen Davis. 

But between Monday and Wednesday Peterson changed his mind, opting not to turn in his nominating papers, and instead filed for the Peralta Community College District Board. Davis turned in her papers to the City Clerk’s office just at close of business on Wednesday evening, but was disqualified herself after city workers determined that she did not have the 20 necessary nominating signatures of voters registered in the district. It was a somewhat embarrassing failure for a candidate who entered the race only after the widely publicized disqualification of the incumbent for the same offense. 

That left Anderson, Benefiel, and Menard officially in the race for the District 3 Council seat. And, unofficially, Councilmember Shirek herself. 

Berkeley political circles were rife with widespread rumors this week that Shirek was huddled with advisors, considering running for her old seat as a write-in candidate. Shirek did not return telephone calls from the Daily Planet concerning this possibility. 

State election law allows a write-in candidate to submit a candidate’s statement and nomination papers beginning 57 days before the election, which means a formal decision on a possible Shirek write-in might be held off until the first or second week in September. 

Meanwhile, with her candidacy only a few hours old, Menard was making her own political fumbles. In her candidate statement filed with the City Clerk’s office, she said that she was “endorsed by almost every neighborhood group in the district.” That would have been a remarkable coup, given that Menard had only announced her candidacy after Shirek was bounced from the ballot, and most of the neighborhood groups hadn’t even met in the few days that had passed since that stunning development. Menard later qualified her assertion, saying that several representatives of neighborhood groups (Ralph Adams of the 62nd Street Neighborhood Association, Laurie Bright of the Council of Neighborhood Associations, Robin Wright and Sam Herbert of the South Berkeley Crime Prevention Council, Karl Reeh of the LeConte Neighborhood Association, and Frankie Lee Fraser of the San Pablo Park Neighborhood Association) had signed her nomination papers, but only as individuals, not in any official capacity. Menard did say that the Alcatraz Avenue Neighborhood Association had a meeting Monday night and “they’re on board,” but she later called back and said that she’d received misinformation, and the group had not yet formally made a decision on the District 3 race. 

Menard did cite one prominent city political heavyweight in her campaign statement: former mayor Shirley Dean. With Mayor Bates listed as a reference in Max Anderson’s statement, that may set the District 3 race up as a revival of the old moderate-progressive political battles that once dominated Berkeley politics.  

Menard, who lists membership in the South Berkeley Crime Prevention Council, Budgetwatch, and the Berkeley High Safety Committee as her record of community service, said in a telephone interview that she saw three issues as the most important in the upcoming race: crime, commercial development, and school-city cooperation. “We need to follow up on the commitment from the Berkeley Police Department to implement an effective community-involved policing plan,” she said. “We need to restore the health and vitality of the commercial districts along Shattuck, Adeline, Alcatraz, and Sacramento streets. And we need to further refine the coordination of services between the school district and this community. In the after school hours, we have a lot of potential to coordinate the kinds of services kids need.” 

She said her main difference with opponent Max Anderson was that, “I’m an independent individual who’s focused on practical, doable remedies. I’m not interested in the political machinery.” 

Asked the same question, Anderson said that the difference between him and Menard was that, “I take a very comprehensive view of community building. I don’t rely exclusively on a military solution to our problems. I think there’s enough evidence around the world that strict military or police solutions only deal with the tip of the iceberg. If we don’t pay some attention to real prevention, instead of just reacting, we’ll be reacting in perpetuity.” 

A former member of the Planning Commission and the Charter Review Commission, Anderson said he couldn’t name individual issues as “most important” in this race. “Most issues are interrelated,” he explained. “Even if you’re talking about crime—with two homicides in the last couple of weeks, that’s gotten everybody’s attention. But we have to look at the underlying causes. We have the health disparities in the community. We need approaches that are inclusive to people that live in the community. We need an arts district, as well as a more vigorous economic activity in our commercial corridor. And it’s time to put something together for young people in this community, whether it’s arts or jobs or recreational activities.” 

Anderson said that he was not going to change his attitude towards the race now that Shirek—at least for the present—was not an opponent. 

“I’m going to put my best foot forward and run a very aggressive campaign,” he said. “I’m not going to proceed as if there are no opponents now. I don’t see it as a cakewalk in any way, shape or form. I’m hoping that the sad incident of the circumstances surrounding how Maudelle was not able to qualify can be converted into an opportunity for all of us to unify and work towards the goals that many of us share in South Berkeley.” 

Benefiel appeared to still be formulating his political platform. In his nominating papers, he said simply that “while my personal opinions make up my personality they are always subservient to the opinions of the residents of District 3.” Asked if he had been endorsed by any neighborhood groups—as Menard had claimed—he said that no, he hadn’t, but if any of them called him, he would ask them. 

In the remaining Berkeley races whose nomination periods closed on Wednesday evening: 

In Council District 2, Peralta Community College Board Trustee Darryl Moore will compete with political newcomer Sharon Anne Kidd—a public relations executive—for the seat being vacated by Councilmember Margaret Breland. 

Council District 5—vacated by outgoing Councilmember Miriam “Mim” Hawley—will be contested by Zoning Commissioner Laurie Capitelli, former Mayoral Aide Barbara Gilbert, and sales manager Jesse Townley. 

Eleanor Walden is the only incumbent opting to compete for four open seats on Berkeley’s Rent Stabilization Board. Walden was appointed to that position in February of this year to complete the term of Matthew Jay Siegel. Four other candidates—Housing Commissioner Jesse Arreguin, attorney Jack Harris, Boalt Law School student Seth Morris, and Tenants Rights Director Jason Overman—are also running for seats on the board.

Bay Area environmental groups have teamed up with petro-giant Chevron to launch a new proposal that could spell trouble for a Berkeley developer’s plans to install a massive casino and hotel complex on Richmond’s Point Molate. 

A press conference scheduled for 10 this morning (Friday, Aug, 13) at the Point Molate Shoreline will unveil plans to buy the site from the City of Richmond and preserve it as open space and wildlife habitant in partnership with the East Bay Regional Park District. 

“The idea of a casino complex that would dwarf the waterfront is the worst of all possibilities,” said Robert Cheasty, leader of Citizens for the Eastshore State Park, one of the organizers of this morning’s gathering. 

Others include the Berkeley’s Sierra Club activist Norman LaForce, Save the Bay co-founder Sylvia McLaughlin, Golden Gate Audubon Society Executive Director Arthur Feinstein, East Bay Regional Park District Assistant Regional Manager Bob Doyle and Chevron Richmond Refinery Regional Director Dean O’Hair. 

“We’re all sympathetic to the needs of the City of Richmond,” Cheasty said, “I was mayor of Albany, and I know what cities are facing these days. But we can do a lot better than a casino.” 

The Richmond City Council had planned to meet Tuesday to approve a deal with casino project developer Upstream Investments, headed by Berkeley toxic waste site cleanup expert Jim Levine, founder of Levine Fricke. 

Richmond City Councilmember Tom Butt sent out an e-mail Wednesday night advising that “I have it on credible authority that the. . .council vote on the sale of Point Molate” would be delayed at least another week because of difficulties in drafting the accord. 

Cheasty said Chevron is “serious as a heart attack” about buying the property, “a jewel of a place,” with the ultimate intention of opening almost the entire western half of the peninsula for the Eastshore park and the Bayshore Trail. 

“While environmental organizations don’t usually take a position on casinos, Chevron would offer the city enough money to get out of their financial difficulties” while preserving a magnificent piece of land, Cheasty said. 

“I don’t know of a single environmental group that endorses the casino proposal,” he said. “What kind of message are we sending our children when a city sees gambling as a way out of all their problems?” 

Cheasty’s organization and the Sierra Club are sponsoring a second meeting from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marine Ave. 

Besides the Point Molate Proposal, Rep. Barbara Lee, Assemblymember Loni Hancock and Albany City Council candidates will discuss Prop. 68, the statewide ballot issue scheduled for the November election that would permit up to 3,000 slot machines at each racetrack—more than can be found in any Las Vegas casino. 

Also on the agenda will be a local ballot measure that would impose a $12-a-year-tax in cities along the San Pablo corridor to support parks along the shoreline.  

The newest revolution to emerge from Berkeley may seem quieter—even geekier—than those surrounding People’s Park and the Free Speech Movement, but its architects hope its effects will prove even more enduring in reshaping the fabric of the American body politic. 

Henri Poole, the organizer of presidential contender Dennis Kucinich’s Internet campaign, and Dan Robinson, who ran the national Meet-Up list for Howard Dean’s campaign have come up with a piece of software they believe will bring political power back to the neighborhood and community. 

What’s even more revolutionary is that it’s free and open source—meaning users can modify it to suit their needs. 

Dubbed AdvoKit, Tools for a New American Politics, the software package is currently in the beta release phase, where users are field testing the program to work out the bugs before it goes into general release next month just as campaigns launch their intensive get-out-the-vote campaigns. 

The two self-confessed geeks came up with the idea last year at an emerging technologies conference attended by campaign computer specialists, including representatives of the Kerry campaign. 

“We were having the same problems in the Dean and Kucinich campaigns, and we were interested in working together on more e ffective organizing tools,” Poole said. 

“The big issue in organizing around the war was to get people to knock on doors, to talk to their neighbors, so find out if they were voters or non-voters, likely or unlikely voters, activists or non-activists,” sa id Robinson, “and then concentrating on the last 48 hours before the election—which is where the Republicans have been best at. 

“Our big concern was what’s missing, what technological piece is missing to organize an effective campaign. Resoundingly, peop le across the country told us there was a special need for software to enable neighbor-to-neighbor activity—and that, ideally, it should be freely distributed, easy to use, and free.” 

So Poole and Robinson set to work. 

A key insight came from Williamsto wn, Mass., where key property taxes carried sunset provisions, forcing activists to wage anew hard-won battles fought to maintain key community services. Activist Pat Dunleavy came up with a strategy he dubbed the Friend to Friend System. 

While tradition al campaigns have handed lists to volunteers and dispatched them to work door-to-door through blocks and neighborhoods, Dunleavy forged a system relying on the individual social networks of each volunteer. 

“There’s a much greater likelihood that people will listen to people they know, rather than some stranger who comes knocking at their door,” Robinson said. 

“He would get 30 or 40 volunteers together and show them the lists, then ask them to identify the people they knew and work on them,” Poole said. 

“His numbers went way up, and they were constantly growing and the numbers of likely voters identified went way up. Volunteer burnout went down, too, because it’s a lot easier for most people to talk to friends,” Robinson added. 

“It’s like watering root s that are already there,” said Poole. 

So it’s no surprise that Dunleavy’s become actively involved with AdvoKit. 

Poole and Robinson offered a quick demonstration for a curious reporter, who found himself amazed at the software’s ease of use and potenti al beyond the confines of electoral politics. 

“Volunteers can take specific tasks as prioritized by the campaign, and their profiles are continuously updatable. There are options, with dates and schedules, and it allows them to keep track of their contacts,” Robinson said. “You can organize functionally or geographically, and you can mix and match.” 

Managers can keep track to ensure that volunteers fulfill their tasks and submit their reports, and quickly develop a picture of the campaign as it unfolds. 

“Because you’ve got all this interaction, anyone who seriously tries to game the system is going to be easily and quickly found out,” Robinson said. “You can see who the performers are and they get immediate feedback.”  

Existing commercial software mimics the top downward organization of traditional campaigns. The lower end packages cost between $5,000 and $10,000 and the most expensive packages cost between $50,000 and $100,000 per state. 

As their work on AdvoKit progressed, Poole and Robinson began to see their software’s broader potential. 

“In the [Democratic presidential] primaries, what was completely disruptive to the democratic process was that as soon as a candidate dropped out, their organizations would disappear along with all of their too ls and networks,” Poole said. “With software that’s free and easy to use and with really cheap Internet hosting or organizations that host their own sites, we’re setting up the train tracks. 

“Come Nov. 3, people have their own systems in place, and no ma tter how the election turns out, they can use them to raise money for their PTAs, or to preserve the trees in their communities and to organize around any issue in their communities.” 

While the New York state Democratic Party has already adopted the soft ware and the Democratic National Committee is hearing AdvoKit’s pitch today [Aug. 13], Robinson and Poole are also encouraging nonprofits to adopt the package. 

Naturally, the notion of free software is greeted with some skepticism in fields where high-pr ice packages are the rule. 

“I was on the phone Wednesday with nonprofits across the country,” Robinson said, “and one woman kept asking what the hidden costs were. She asked about one thing, and I’d say, ‘No, there’s no charge,’ then she’d immediately co me back with, ‘Well how about this?’ She just kept throwing things out, and every time I’d say, no, there’s no charge.” 

With interest in AdvoKit growing nationally, the software developers said major announcements may be coming in the next two weeks. Their only hint: “A couple of organizations are thinking about rolling it out nationally,” Robinson said. 

And Robinson’s already thinking about one close-to-home application: organizing the PTA at the North Berkeley school his child attends. 

Technological activism comes easily to AdvoKit’s creators. Both have two decades in the information technology arena. Poole has deep ties with the Free Software Foundation, itself a radical movement in an era of Microsoft and Cisco, and Robinson has been active in poli tical organizing going back to the days of opposition to Ronald Reagan’s bloody covert actions in Central America. 

They earn their bread and butter through their Internet-based campaign consulting business, which specializes in strategy and project management, fundraising, get out the vote drives, website design and volunteer recruitment and other Web-based strategies and programs for progressive campaigns. 

CivicActions.com is based in Poole’s Ashby Ave. home, which once housed an earlier generation of Berkeley radicals—the Red Family commune of future state Senator Tom Hayden. y

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13 

An Evening with Paul Krugman in conversation with Larry Bensky, at 7:30 p.m. at M. L. King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Ample free parking, wheelchair access, ASL provided. Benefit for Pacifica Radio and KPFA. Tickets are $15 advance, $20 door, available at Cody’s, both locations. 848-6767, ext. 611. www.kpfa.org  

“So How’d You Become an Activist?” with Maria Gilardin, founder TUC Radio, and Pierre Labossiere, founding member, Haiti Action Committee, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St., at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. 528-5403. 

Long Haul Infoshop’s 11th Birthday Join the celebration at 8 p.m. at 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, 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. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14 

“There is No Room in Albany for Las Vegas” A community forum to discuss the fate of the Albany Waterfront, with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, California State Assemblymember Loni Hancock, as well Albany City Council candidates. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., at Masonic. Sponsored by the Citizens for the East Shore State Park and the Sierra Club. 461-4665, 848-0800, ext. 312.  

Family Fun Festival at the Saturday Farmers’ Market with live music, crafts fair, story-telling, and clowns, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Civic Center Park. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Greens at Work We will assist Strawberry Creek Lodge project volunteers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lodge located at 1320 Addison St. between Acton and Bonar. We’ll be moving west along the bank, removing ivy, blackberry and elm, and doing a little clean up in the creek as needed. Bring something to drink, your work gloves, and a trowel or weeder if you have one. And please park in the street and not in the Lodge’s parking lot as it is reserved for the residents. greensatwork@yahoo.com 

Summer Bird Walk with Chris Carmichael and Dennis Wolff from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $12-$17. 643-2775. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

“That's an Herb, Not a Weed!” Herbalist Patricia Kazmierowski will talk about common herbs that grow in the Bay Area and how to identify and use them. From 2 to 4 p.m. at City Slicker Farms, 16th & Center, Oakland. Free. 763-4241. cityslickerfarms@riseup.net 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Showdown at Crawford Gulch” at 2 p.m. at Live Oak Park, Shattuck and Berryman. www.sfmt.org 

Financial Education Workshops covering steps to purchasing a home, credit/debt management, retirement savings and more. Offered Sat. Aug. 14, 21, 28, Sept. 11, 18, 25 at 10 a.m. at the East Bay Community Law Center, 3122 Shattuck Ave. For more information call 548-4040, ext. 357. 

Point Richmond Music Festival from noon to 7 p.m. with performances by Masquer’s Theater Kids, Nic Bearde, Reed Fromer and Friends, David Thom, Ya Elah, The Outbacks, and many more. 117 Park Place, Richmond. 236-1401. www.pointrichmond.com/prmusic 

Osun Festival celebrating Mother Africa and the African Diaspora, classes in batik and tie-dye, dance and drumming workshops, from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the American Indian Public Charter School, 3637 Magee, Oakland. Fees vary. To register call 530-3735.  

South African Plants with Hank Jenkins at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Temescal from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Meet in front of Genova Delicatessen, 5095 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5 for OHA members, $10 for nonmembers. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Educators Academy on Fire Ecology from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area for teachers of grades 5 to 12. Educational materials included. Fee is $45-$51. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, a group for gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgenders over the age of 55 holds their monthly potluck at noon at San Leandro Community Church, 1395 Bancroft Ave., San Leandro. 667-9655. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. The class is taught by Rosie Linsky, who at age 72, has practiced yoga for over 40 years. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15 

Cavalia: A Magical Encounter Between Horse and Man under the big-top at Golden Gate Fields, Tues.-Fri. at 8 p.m. Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. extended through August 26. Tickets are $44-$79 available from 1-866-999-8111. www.cavalia.net 

Gathering to Celebrate the Life of Wendell Ralph Lips- 

comb at 1 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Way, UC Campus. Tributes by Chris Lawrence, Craig Woolridge, John Hancom. Slide presentation of the life of Dr. Lipscomb. Sponsored by the family of Dr. Lipscomb. For information call Ellen Gunther 841-4083. 

San Francisco Mime Troupe “Showdown at Crawford Gulch” at 2 p.m. at Live Oak Park, Shattuck and Berryman. www.sfmt.org 

My Seedy Friends A walk for youth and families to find seeds from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. 525-2233. 

Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at the Willard Community Peace Labyrinth, on the blacktop next to the gardens at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Enter by the dirt road on Derby. Free. Wheelchair accessible. Sponsored by the East Bay Labyrinth Project. 526-7377. 

“The Case for Worker-Funded International Labor Solidarity” A presentation by Kim Scipes, labor activist, followed by questions and discussion, at 7 p.m. at SEIU Local 250, 560 20th St. Oakland. Donation $5, no one turned away. Sponsored by The Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice. 594-9575.  

Osun Festival Family Day celebrating Mother Africa and the African Diaspora, with youth performances, community mural painting and concluding performance and ritual, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, Oakland. Donation $5 and up. 595-1471. 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Class Learn how to perform basic repairs on your own bike. From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $85 members, $100 non-members. Advance registration required. 527-4140. 

Grizzly Peak Flyfishers, annual summer casting clinic, held in lieu of the monthly meeting, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Oakland Casting Ponds in McCrea Park, 4460 Shepherd St., at Carson Blvd near the 580 freeway, Oakland. Expert, beginning and “wannabe” fly fishers are all welcome. For further information, call Richard Orlando at 547-8629. 

Bike Trip to Explore Historic Oakland on the third Sunday of the month through October. Tours leave the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Fallon Sts., at 10 a.m. for a leisurely 5-mile tour on flat land. Bring bike, helmet, water and snacks. Free, but reservations required. 238-3524. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour Laurel Neighborhood from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Meet at Albertson’s parking lot, 4055 MacArthur Blvd. Cost is $5 for OHA members, $10 for nonmembers. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Free Sailboat Rides between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring warm waterproof clothes. www.cal-sailing.org 

Campfire and Sing-A-Long at 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Bring your hot dogs, buns, marshmallows, long sticks and dress for possible fog. We’ll walk uphill to the campfire circle. Call for disabled assistance. 525-2233. 

“Current Difficulties of the West Contra Costa Schools” with Patricia Player, at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Road, Kensington. 525-0302.  

“This is What Free Trade Looks Like” a film on NAFTA in Mexico, the failure of the WTO at 8:15 p.m. at Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

Golden State Model Railroad Museum open from noon to 5 p.m. Also open on Saturdays and Friday evenings from 7 to 10 p.m. Located in the Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline Park at 900-A Dornan Drive in Pt. Richmond. Admission is $2-$3. 234-4884. www.gsmrm.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Ando on “Vimalamitra and the Transmission of the Dharma in Tibet” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, AUGUST 16 

Solid Waste Management Workshop on Commercial Services: Recycling, Source Reduction, and Franchised Services at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 2180 Milvia St., 6th Flr. 981-6357. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. 524-9122. 

Fitness for 55+ A total body workout including aerobics, stretching and strengthening at 1:15 p.m. every Monday at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5170. 

Iyengar Yoga on Mondays from from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $12. 528-9909. gay@yogagarden.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17 

Mini-Rangers An afternoon of nature study for ages 8 to 12. Dress to get dirty, bring a healthy snack to share. At Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 525-2233. 

African Affairs Benefit Brunch with Patrick Hayford, the United Nations’ Director of African Affairs in the office of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at noon at House of UNITY in Eastmont Town Center, 7200 Bancroft Ave. #209, Oakland. Minimum contribution of $25 requested for the brunch; also there will be a free 7:00 p.m. public event. Sponsored by AFSC’s African Initiative, Aseya Africa and others. www.afsc.org 

Contemporary Political Election Issues, a discussion with Millie Barsh at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

“What is Ahead for Venezuela?” with Lisa Sullivan who hosted the 2004 Marin Interfaith Task Force Delegation to Caracas, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar. 528-5403. 

Organic Produce at low prices sold at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon Sts. from 3 to 7 p.m. This is a project of Spiral Gardens. 843-1307. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

Phone Banking to ReDefeat Bush on Tuesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Bring your cell phones. Please RSVP if you can join us. 415-336 8736. dan@redefeatbush.com 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18 

An Evening with Arundhati Roy, David Barsamian, Amy Goodman and Boots Riley, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Community Theater, 1930 Allston Way at Milvia. (wheelchair access, ASL provided). Supported by Global Exchange & Mother Jones Magazine. Tickets are $21, available from Cody’s or www.cityboxoffice.com 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday, rain or shine, at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes, sunscreen and a hat. 548-9840. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/wallkingtours 

“Dr. Strangelove” a film adaptation of Peter George’s thriller “Red Alert” at 7:30 p.m. at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Free, donations are welcome. 393-5685. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. For information call Robert Flammia 524-3765. 

Fun with Acting Class every Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Free, all are welcome, no experience necessary.  

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19 

“Who Owns Water?” Protecting the world’s water from corporate takeover. Join us for a discussion with Juliette Beck and John Gibler of Public Citizen’s Water for All Campaign, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Safe Boating Class on “Boating Skills and Seamanship” offered by the US Coast Guard Auxiliary begins today and runs for 13 weeks, on Thurs evenings from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the US Coast Guard Air Station, San Francisco International Airport. A $50 fee covers textbook and certificate. For reservations please contact Wayne Wattson at 650-755-9739. 

Circlesinging Workshop with David Worm of SoVoSó from 7 to 9 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, Oakland. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. Resevations suggested. 444-8511, ext. 15. www.artsfirstoakland.org 

Lavender Seniors of the East Bay, a group for gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgenders over the age of 55, catered lunch at 12:30 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue, Oakland. 667-9655. 

Mills College Open House for the graduate program in Interdisciplinary Computer Science from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Program open to women and men with a talent and interest in computing, and a bachelor's degree in another field. Financial assistance available. Mills College is located on the MacArthur exit of 580 East. 415-336-4466. http://ics.mills.edu 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20 

“Oscar in the Wild: Camping with Cal Shakes” from 5 p.m. to Sat. 10 a.m. at the Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. Cost is $28-$35. Performance tickets sold separately. To register call 548-9666. 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema on Washington St., between 9th and 10th Sts. Music at 5 p.m., and film, “Tootsie” at 8 p.m. Bring your own chairs and blankets. Sponsored by the City of Oakland and the Old Oakland Historic District. 238-4734. www.filmoakland.com 

“Manhattan” A Woody Allen film at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org  

ONGOING 

Free Summer Lunch Programs are offered to youth age 18 and under at various sites in Berkeley, Mon. - Fri. 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. until Aug. 20. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley Health Dept. 981-5351.  

This Land is Your Land Day Camp Weekly sessions to Aug. 27 for children ages 5-12, at Roberts Regional Park in Oakland and at Tilden Park in Berkeley. Science and nature studies with art, music, hiking, swimming, and outdoor games. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cost is $245 per week. 581-3739. www.sarahscience.com 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. Aug. 16, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Aug. 18, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Labor meets Wed., Aug. 18, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Delfina M. Geiken, 644-6085. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/labor 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Aug. 19, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/commissions/designreview  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Aug. 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/transportationª

South Berkeley residents who live near the Ashby Bart Station gathered Wednesday night to view the latest plans for the Ed Roberts Campus, the two-story center for disability rights, education, training and advocacy named after the founder of the city’s internationally known Center for Independent Living. 

Area residents have expressed dissatisfaction with designs and potential neighborhood impacts during earlier meetings, and architect William Leddy spent most of the 90-minute session explaining the latest site model and how it differed from earlier designs. 

The earliest version, floated before Leddy’s involvement, called for a 130,000-square-foot, three-story structure that would have towered over neighboring homes. 

The latest version is a floor shorter—“to fit the neighborhood,” he said—and the overall size is reduced to 80,000 square feet. 

The architect also added additional trees to reduce sounds to neighbors to the ambient level along Adeline and reduce the building’s visual impact. 

Resident Dale Smith said she worried that the clearly 21st century building would conflict with the largely Colonial Revival style of many of the existing buildings on Adeline. 

“The city has dumped a lot of institutions in the neighborhood,” many of them now “ugly, vacant, and dirty,” and leveled a section of homes for low-cost housing that was never built, she said. 

“When you have a big institution with the help of the city coming into the neighbor, you’ve got to understand our concern,” she emphasized. She also worried that the building’s “international airport style doesn’t really fit” the neighborhood. 

Ron Good, who lives near the corner of Adeline and Woolsey streets, said that “right now, it’s an ugly space,” and he finds the building, with its curved transit plaza in the front “an extremely pleasant and lively space.” 

Dmitri Belser, an ERC activist and executive director for the Center for Accessible Technology in Berkeley, praised the design, especially the copper-clad spiral ramp leading up to the second floor that will feature displays of key moments and people in the history of the disabled rights movement. 

Leddy said the ramp was inspired by the unique design of Manhattan’s Guggenheim museum. 

Belser, who is visually impaired, said that in the past, “the disabled community was housed in two types of buildings—either dumps or institutions. The ramp is very exciting.” 

Erica Cleary, a neighborhood organizer for the 2300 block of Prince Street on the immediate east side of the project, said “My neighbors agree that the design has greatly improved, but I keep hearing concerns that it still has that airplane hangar look.” 

Caleb Dardick, the professional consultant hired to handle community relations for the project, said the campus has slated a preview presentation to the Zoning Adjustments Board. 

The organization has been able to muster about half the needed funds, and Dardick said the rest should come more easily after they win their use permit. “because philanthropists want to see the permit issued before they will fund a project.” 

Also in the audience for the first half of the meeting was the peripatetic Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

The session ended on a largely upbeat note, with plenty of smiles and handshakes. 

President Hugo Chávez seems almost certain to win the recall referendum called for this coming Sunday in Venezuela.  

Chávez’s lead in nonpartisan polls is increasing; his government is awash in oil money that is being put into social projects; more than a million new voters from traditionally marginalized segments of the population have been registered; and, most important, the U.S. government has begun to soften its public stance toward Chavez.  

A telling sign of the situation is the meeting that Venezuela’s media magnate Gustavo Cisneros and President Chávez held last month. Cisneros has been the main power behind the relentless communications campaign against the president; the conspirators that deposed Chávez for two days in April 2002 met at Cisneros’ home before going over to overthrow the government. He has been the embodiment of anti-government feelings in Venezuela. His meeting with Chávez, brokered by Jimmy Carter, was an acknowledgment of failure and an effort to protect his vast interests in the country. It was a psychological blow to the opposition.  

Carlos Andrés Pérez, the former Venezuelan president who was removed from office for corruption in 1993 and convicted of mismanaging $17 million of government money, has just issued a statement in Miami accepting that Chávez will win the recall vote on Aug. 15, and calling for his assassination. “He must be killed like a dog,” Pérez said of the Venezuela president. Perez, like Cisneros, knows which way the wind is blowing.  

The softening of the American position toward Chávez was reported in detail recently by the Financial Times of London. It requires explanation, however, because Washington’s policy for Venezuela has been running on two tracks, not one.  

The United States has two primary interests in Venezuela: oil, and the containment of the war in next-door Colombia.  

Venezuela supplies the United States with approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. It is the fourth largest foreign supplier of the American energy market after Saudi Arabia, Canada and Mexico. In May 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney authored a report of the National Energy Policy Group on U.S. oil needs in the next 25 years and identified Venezuela as a critical energy source. Since then, the uncertainties of the available oil supply, for political as well as technical reasons, have only risen.  

Washington’s second concern is to contain the Colombian conflict, where guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug dealers and a beleaguered and corrupt army compete for land, money and power. Political instability in Venezuela, which shares a long and open border with Colombia, has the potential to significantly increase the intensity and scope of the struggle in its neighbor’s territory. Political necessity mandates that American administrations be able to claim success in the war against drugs while avoiding direct military entanglement. A deterioration of the situation in Colombia would force the United States to pour more money and political capital, even troops, into that country.  

Oil and Colombia underlie the American desire for stability in Venezuela. The Chávez administration has not been oblivious to this. The supply of oil to America has never been threatened; the agent representing the Venezuelan government in the sale of oil to the U.S. strategic reserve is Jack Kemp, 1996 vice-presidential running mate of Bob Dole and distinguished member of the Republican Party’s conservative leadership. In addition, the Venezuela government has kept its hands out of the Colombian conflict.  

Washington has been faced with two less-than-ideal options concerning Venezuela: 1) live with a rhetorical enemy who guarantees the supply of oil and keeps clear of Colombian involvement; or 2) encourage the return to power of the divided and corrupt politicians who made the present situation possible and who, having forced Chávez out of office, would in all probability have to deal with an unstable internal situation that in turn could jeopardize the oil supply and spill into Colombia.  

The ambivalence of the U.S. position with regard to Venezuela has been manifest in the anti-Chavez pronouncements of Otto Reich and Roger Noriega, former and present assistant secretaries of state for inter-American affairs, and of Secretary of State Colin Powell. On the other hand, the work of Jack Kemp and the assessment of Venezuela’s oil importance by Dick Cheney represent a pragmatic willingness within the present administration to accept Chávez as the lesser of two evils.  

The present softening of the formal Washington position on Chávez is the reconciliation of what has been a double track approach. Ironically, a Chávez victory may be beneficial to American policymakers, who may then enjoy more freedom to pursue U.S. interests without being tied down to the defense of an inept and potentially troublesome local Venezuelan opposition.  

Francisco Jose Moreno is president of Strategic Assessments Institute, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm, and former vice president of Philip Morris International for Iberia and Latin America.  

›

Berkeley Heist Leads to Serial Robber Bust 

Things went badly wrong for the armed robber who flashed his pistol at a clerk at the Mail & More at 1476 University Ave. just after 1:15 p.m. Monday. Not only did he fail to collect any loot, but Berkeley police developed information linking the gunman to an address in the 1400 block of West 12th Street in West Oakland. 

What made the case especially interesting to Berkeley and Oakland Police was that the robber’s description matches that of the man who had staged a series of 13 or more other heists in recent weeks—most of them in Berkeley. 

BPD spokesperson Officer Joe Okies said Berkeley set up a stakeout at the residence, and were spelled by Oakland officers who made the arrest after 27-year-old Billy Carter left the house later that night to enter his car. 

Carter was arrested without incident, and detectives in both venues are preparing cases to hand to the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. 

Father Orders Son To Return Stolen Cash 

When a Berkeley father learned that his son had robbed a man at gunpoint Monday, he ordered the youth to return the cash. 

The minor youth still had to deal with police, who booked him on charges of armed robbery. 

Neighborhood Spat Takes Violent Turn 

A disagreement between two neighbors who lived near Hearst and Sixth Street took a violent turn Monday afternoon. One neighbor used a fist, while the other resorted to a bat. Yet when officers arrived, no one wanted to press charges. 

Octogenarian Arrested for Spousal Abuse 

An 80-year-old South Berkeley man was arrested for spousal abuse and threatening great bodily injury on his mate after police were summoned to the couple’s home. The case is still under investigation, and Officer Okies said that “to say that circumstances are unclear is an understatement.” 

High Noon Scissors Attack 

Officers rushed to the corner of Center Street and Shattuck Avenue at two minutes ‘til noon Tuesday, where they found a man bleeding for a scissors assault by another man, apparently known to the victim. 

Police are seeking a bald African American man in his twenties who stands about 6’2” and weighs about 150 pounds. 

Blotter Writer’s Plate Boosted 

It was, appropriately, Berkeley Police Officer Marty Heist who answered the call of a certain police blotter writer just after 10 a.m. Monday to take his report of the theft of the rear license plate from his Plymouth Neon, plus a batch of CDs and a flashlight.

Just as the Democratic Convention was wrapping up in Boston, President Bush’s handlers announced that he’d be hitting the campaign trail with an amped-up stump speech. 

Bush’s new speech would have two new phrases—“turning the corner” and “results matter.” He’d say America is “turning the corner” on the economy and the Iraq War. And he’d show how he had gotten things done as president, pointing out that Kerry hadn’t done much as senator, and conclude with “results matter.” 

One week later, Bush’s speech hasn’t transformed the campaign. At least not in the ways he wanted. Bush’s catch-phrases have made headlines—mostly, when Kerry has used them to counterpunch against Bush. 

When both candidates were campaigning a few blocks away from each other in Davenport, Iowa on Aug. 4, Kerry joked that Bush could attend the Democrats’ economic forum “if he were just willing to turn the corner.” More seriously, in an address on Thursday at the UNITY 2004 Journalists of Color Conference in Washington, D.C., Kerry declared: “Just saying we’re turning the corner on the war, on terror, on jobs, on opportunity, and on one America doesn’t make it so.” 

Meanwhile, Bush and his handlers have yet to craft a stump speech that uses the “turning the corner” and “results matter”—or any other catch-phrases—to make a compelling case for his re-election. 

For all the hype announcing his new stump speech, those two phrases only appear towards the middle of the remarks he delivered, virtually word-for-word, at rallies last weekend in the swing states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Reciting a litany of issues where he says he’ll continue to “make progress” during a second term, Bush says: “We are turning the corner, and we’re not turning back.” He says this about “improving public schools,” “giving Americans more choices about their health care,” and—halfway through the speech—“creating jobs for America’s workers,” but not about several other issues that he mentions, including energy, the environment, and job training. As for “results matter,” Bush only uses that phrase towards the end of the speech, about jobs, education, and the war on terrorism. 

Why does Bush’s speech bury the very points his spinners told the news media that he was going to make? The problem isn’t Bush’s rhetoric; it’s his record. 

Presidents in trouble tend to blame their speechwriters, and, if he continues to trail Kerry, he may fire some current staffers and hire some new ones. (Veteran Republican writer Peggy Noonan announced Thursday that she is taking a leave from her career as a pundit to help her party, adding that she doesn’t think Bush needs her help.) But Bush already has a talented team of wordsmiths who rely on the short words and simple sentences that he is most comfortable using—and that make for the most effective oratory, anyway. 

Instead, the problem is that Bush has presided over an economy where 1.8 million private-sector jobs have vanished, 3.7 million Americans have lost their health coverage, and wage increases have fallen behind the rising the cost of living. After rallying Americans in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and defeating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Bush led the nation into the war in Iraq without an exit strategy or even a plausible explanation. 

Thus, he can’t make the classic case for re-electing a president: The country is in better shape than when I took office, and I’ll make things even better if you give me another four years. For all the simplicity that appeals to Bush and his media adviser Karen Hughes, slogans such as “We’re turning the corner, and we’re not turning back” can boomerang on Bush, just as they did this week. His opponents can ask “Why not turn back” to the country’s condition before Bush took office—peace, prosperity, and a nation that was at least a little less polarized? And what are we turning the corner on? The problems Bush inherited? Or those he himself presided over, such as the growing federal deficit and rising unemployment? 

These realities—and not rhetorical shortcomings—explain why Bush’s new stump speech is so scattershot. Among other techniques, he tries: 

Cultural populism: Bush begins by praising the places where he’s campaigning—for the past week, they’ve mostly been in the Midwest—as “the heart and soul of the country.” Then, he slyly suggests, “The other folks believe the heart and soul can be found in Hollywood. Soon, afterwards, he says, half in jest, that he should be re-elected so that his wife, Laura Bush, can continue as First Lady—a subtle reminder that Teresa Heinz Kerry is foreign-born and can be caricatured as elitist. 

Laundry lists: Then Bush segues into a list of the issues that he’d on if re-elected—education, health care, job training, and job creation. While he boasts later, that, unlike Kerry, he’s achieved “results,” the accomplishments he mentions are meager indeed—the controversial “No Child Left Behind” education law and prescription drug programs. But, just by mentioning a slue of domestic issues, Bush implies that he is in touch with working families’ problems and hard at work on their behalf. 

Not-so-subtle attacks: Having presented himself as a president who’s trying to make life better for most Americans, Bush then proceeds to bash his opponents. During his discussion of health care, Bush emphasizes his efforts against what he calls “frivolous lawsuits that raise health care costs”—a not-so-subtle swipe at Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, a trial lawyer by profession. To clinch the point, he adds: “You cannot be pro-patient and pro-doctor and pro-trial lawyer at the same time. You have to choose. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket.” 

Scatter-shots against Kerry: While his attack against Edwards is cleverly worded, his criticisms of Kerry aren’t coherent. Faced with the choice of branding Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal or an unprincipled waffler, a Washington insider or an ineffective back-bencher, Bush and his handlers choose “all of the above.” Thus, he attacks Kerry as a backer of big government, as a straddler who has been on both sides of major issues, as “an experienced Washington, D.C.-type Senator,” and also one with “few signature achievements.” 

Tax cuts for whom? When it comes to tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the very wealthy, Bush uses the same rhetorical techniques he’s perfected for four years: confusing who gets most of the money. Instead of calling them “tax cuts,” he calls them “tax relief.” He equates taxation based on the ability to pay with social engineering or political favoritism, declaring: “We didn’t pick winners or losers when it came to tax relief. We had a fair view that said, if you pay taxes, you ought to get relief.” Listing the beneficiaries, he mentions everyone but those with the largest incomes, listing instead “families with children,” “married couples,” and “small businesses.” 

A “war president”: When he finally turns to national security, Bush uses a similar technique: embedding the Iraq War in a series of more successful and less controversial endeavors. First, he mentions the 9/11 attacks, then the war in Afghanistan, then cooperation with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in pursuing terrorists, then Libya’s “abandonment of the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction,” and, only then, the Iraq War. Understandably, he takes pride in the ouster of Saddam, and, then, he rattles off a list of justifications for or benefits from the war. From Iraq, he segues into efforts to promote security here in the United States and a tribute to Americans’ strength of character, as revealed by the response to the 9/11 attacks. 

Intriguingly, Bush does not repeat a point that he made in a speech before the Democratic convention but has since stopped: that, while he is a “war president,” he would prefer to be a “peace president.” Writing in the Wall Street Journal’s online edition, Noonan advised Bush to make this point, warning him that voters are concluding that he enjoys war too much. Now that she’s on leave from her column and is available to help her fellow Republicans, Bush soon may be reading her words again—this time at podiums across the country.  



John LeConte Jory died Aug. 8, 2004. He was born in Berkeley on Sept. 3, 1924 and missed his 80th birthday by only one month. He grew up in Berkeley, spent World War II as a pharmacist’s mate in the Navy in the South Pacific, studied business administration at Cal, worked for the City of Berkeley as a recreation supervisor for 15 years, took care of his handicapped wife, Cathy, until she died in 1988 and after that, took care of other elderly people.  

He was once told by a grandmother psychic that his karma in life was to give to others and he followed that all his life. He was active in the Friends Meeting, the Berkeley Interfaith Council, the Bay Area Funeral Society and the Gray Panthers. If there was a charity around, John was giving to it even when his own income was depleted. He is survived by five nieces and nephews, one brother, who is writing this and too many friends to mention here. He will be missed. 

—Stephen Jory, brother, four years younger›

SAN FRANCISCO—Ratana Som, 24, is trying to turn his life around. The ex-drug dealer works at a nonprofit in the city’s Tenderloin district, a high-crime neighborhood where his family and many other Cambodian refugees first arrived in the early 1980s. But along with 1,400 other young Cambodian Americans convicted of aggravated felonies, Som faces deportation.  

While non-citizens have always been at risk for deportation, Congress passed an amendment to immigration law in 1996 mandating that non-citizens convicted of aggravated felonies and sentenced to at least one year of prison be deported, regardless of the length of their residences. The law also expanded the definition of an aggravated felony to include petty crimes such as shoplifting.  

The law hinges on whether countries are willing to take back their nationals; post-9/11, the United States convinced Cambodia to do so. Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba are among the few remaining countries that still refuse to enter into such agreements with the United States.  

Since July 22, 2002, about 100 Cambodians have been deported, and 11 more were deported in July, mainly from California, says Porthira Chhim, advocate at Cambodian Community Development, Inc., an Oakland-based nonprofit. Approximately 172,000 Cambodians lived in the United States in 2000, according to the U.S. Census. In California, the community numbers around 75,000.  

The last time Som was in jail, in 2002, his family was able to bail him out. Just a few months later, the law changed: no bail for non-citizens.  

A heavy-set young man with a youthful face, Som has been off the streets ever since. In soft-spoken slang, he says he no longer wants to make money the fast way, because the cost of lawyers and bail always offset the amount of money he was making from dealing narcotics. “After awhile,” Som says, “the money just got recycled.”  

Som sits slouched in shorts and sandals and says he wishes he had stayed in school and off of drugs. He dropped out in high school, lured by the amount of money he could make selling drugs. He needed to help his parents feed and clothe the other six children in the family, he says, as well as an older sister left behind in Cambodia.  

Som wants to stay in America. “In Cambodia,” he says, “there is no [rule of law]. If someone kills you, no one is going to investigate why.” He plans to complete his G.E.D., get off of parole and turn his life around.  

Advocates for Cambodian Americans call the laws racist. Many Cambodian youth in America were born in refugee camps in Thailand. Technically, they are not Cambodian citizens. The United States, advocates say, took these children in as refugees. Though they are not U.S. citizens in the legal sense, their experience in America calls into question the meaning of such limited definitions of citizenship.  

“They are products of America more than they are of Cambodia,” says Chhim. These youths got involved in crime on crime-filled, American streets, just as many American-born youths do. Citizenship, advocates say, is not just a piece of paper; it is also an experience.  

Chhim responds to Representative Lamar Smith’s (R-Texas) idea that non-citizens who are criminals “terrorize” American communities, as reported in AsianWeek on November 21, 2003: “If this [the deportation] is really about safety, let’s designate an island for all ex-criminals. I’ll bet you’ll see a lot of white people.” Smith co-authored the 1996 law that currently deports Cambodian Americans.  

Recalling the whole history behind why Cambodians are even in America, Chhim says, “America landed on us.”  

Nixon and Kissinger’s administration terrorized the Cambodian people in America’s campaign against communism. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the countryside was completely carpet-bombed, destroying whole villages. In the erupting civil war, the United States supported Lon Nol’s democratic government, but not enough to prevent Communist Pol Pot’s rise to power. In April 1976, the Killing Fields began. When the Vietnamese intervened in 1979, a third of the country’s population was dead, and genocide survivors spilled into Thai refugee camps. The United States welcomed more than 100,000 of them into its poor, urban communities.  

“What kind of opportunities were [Cambodian refugees] given?” Chhim asks. In a poor, urban environment, he says, it’s no surprise that people “will do what they need to do to get by.”  

Katherine Sear, 22, is a student at the University of California at Berkeley and a Cambodian American.

We come across an article in this Wednesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, headlined “Community Buys Into Cleaning Up Its Streets.” An awful idea emerges. 

“A community anti-crime group has come to the aid of the cash-strapped Oakland Police Department and made it easier to contact officers by buying a special cell phone for a police team in North Oakland,” it reads, in part. “The purchase, which comes with an unlimited-use plan, is believed to be the first time that private citizens have purchased such items for the city’s police department, which recently eliminated mobile phones for most beat officers for budget reasons. … The community group [which was unnamed in the article] represents residential neighborhoods near the city’s Auto Row on Broadway. … The cell phone is not designed to replace 911 calls or traditional non-emergency calls but instead will make it easier for residents to update officers about crime problems near their homes… The phone number will not be released to the general public but will be shared with community groups or crime victims who are on the lookout for specific suspects or activities, said Lt. Lawrence Green, who oversees patrols and crime reduction teams in North Oakland.” 

Like any institution put together by humans, the Oakland Police Department plays favorites in whom it responds to, and how (see the response to the Barzaghi domestic problems, for recent reference). But up until now, they have at least made the pretense of doing this unofficially, and not with newspaper announcements. But we’re crossing into new territory, even for this odd land which we’ve come to call “community policing.” 

I know this is really old school, but my idea of community policing has always come from those old ‘40s and ‘50s black-and-white RKO movies where the beat cops patrolled the neighborhoods on foot—never in patrol cars. They knew everybody they passed, and spoke. “Good morning, Mrs. Conners.” “Good morning, Officer Bradley. How’s Mrs. Bradley?” If they saw a crowd of kids hanging out on a stoop skipping school, they could call each one by name, pick out the ringleaders, and know which button to push to get their attention. “You’ll break your mother’s heart, you don’t graduate this year, son.” Coming across another crowd of older men on a corner, they knew the real bad-asses from the guys who just look like bad-asses. These beat cops knew the neighborhood because they were from the neighborhood, or else had worked it so long, that they might as well have been from it. They learned the neighborhood on their feet. They kept down crime as much by their knowledge as by any threat of force of arms. They thought of the neighborhood as a whole—a community—and so they could properly be called “community police.” 

I’m not sure if this ideal world of policing ever existed in Oakland. If it did, it got itself subverted, long ago. Instead of walking neighborhood patrols, we have what you might call a mobile strike force approach to policing—the police roam the neighborhoods in cars, staring expressionless as they pass, shining their spotlights on suspicious characters, responding either to observed trouble or 911 calls. Some of the more street-smart residents can recognize the most infamous of the police—calling them usually by combat- or professional wrestler-type nicknames—but for the rest of us, the Oakland Police are generally merely uniformed authority: faceless, nameless, endlessly interchangeable. Make a call, a who knows who will show up. 

This was recognized by John Cascio, the neighborhood resident credited with spearheading the effort, as reported in the Chronicle article: “He said it made more sense for citizens to be able to contact the same officers who were already familiar with a neighborhood problem than trying to explain everything all over again to an unfamiliar cop.” 

Anyhow, somewhere along the way, the term “community policing” in Oakland began to get applied solely to police liaison to neighborhood groups, rather than entire communities. 

Sometimes these were official Neighborhood Watch groups, formed specifically to monitor crime and other suspicious activity, and to act as a liaison with the police. Other times, they were existing organizations formed for general community betterment, safety being one of their many issues. In either event, they became convenient, mini-communities for the police officers, making their jobs infinitely easier. Instead of having to study, understand, and get to know an entire community, the police only had to get to know 25-30 people in a single group, people who were thoughtful enough to put their names and phone numbers and addresses on a list, and who came out once a month to a church or neighborhood center to voice their concerns to the police. Much more convenient for the cops than stopping to chat on the street with every interested soul they passed. And going one better, most patrol officers didn’t even have to attend these police-community meetings. Instead, the department designated a regular liaison officer—someone like Lt. Green of North Oakland—articulate, personable representatives who could stand up before groups and make presentations, note down community concerns on a yellow pad, and then take them back to the squad for implementation. 

These community groups were not exclusionary—anyone could come if they wanted and had the time—but neither were they necessarily representative of the communities in which they functioned. There was no election, and no provision for reporting back to the remaining citizens of their neighborhoods. 25 to 50 people whose concerns were made primary over hundreds, sometimes thousands. 

No one should take this as a criticism of these community organizations. They are made up—for the most part—of citizens with legitimate community concerns, good people who often volunteer time and money to benefit their neighborhoods-and they deserve to be responded to by the police. The problem is, so do the rest of us. A taxpaying citizen should not have to attend 12 four-hour meetings a year so that their names become known, and they can, therefore, qualify for special attention and service. 

And so we have crossed a line here, with these good folks in that unnamed community group around Auto Row in North Oakland. A private group collects money and buys cell phone service for the police, giving them a direct line to police officers that none of the rest of us have. We are descending—now officially—into a system of two tiers of police service: one for people who buy the police a phone, another for people who rely on the regular office numbers. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that? 

“I hope other neighborhood groups follow our lead,” says Mr. Cascio. 

I hope not. We already bought the police telephones. Every single one they use down at the police station.

POLICE BLOTTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Hyberbole can be an amusing form of getting a point across but I take offense at Stacy Taylor’s use of it in such a hurtful manner. She might not like Richard Brenneman’s Police Blotter but I wish she had stated that fact in a gentler manner. I, for one, find Brenneman’s levity to be an effective tool in reporting uncomfortable situations and I hope he keeps up the good work. 

Joan Trenholm Herbertson 

• 

MAUDELLE SHIREK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Where is the justice in not permitting Berkeley citizens to vote for Councilmember Shirek due to misunderstandings, paperwork snafus, sneaky legislation and who knows what underhanded manipulations? This is an outrage. 

Terry Cochrell 

• 

DAVID TEECE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Richard Brenneman’s article on David Teece (Daily Planet, Aug. 6-9) was superlative investigative reporting. Bahraini petrodollars from an Islamic bank, Russian business school, Tony Blair’s economic policies, the Republican Party. Sounds like The Manchurian Candidate. 

Nancy Ward 

• 

THREE-TON LIMIT 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

The city has recently put signs up on some streets banning vehicles over three tons. (“Three-Ton Limit,” Daily Planet, Aug. 10-12).  

According to a recent article in Slate magazine, many California cities that have imposed three-ton limits on their streets have banned some SUVs without realizing it. SUVs weighing over 6,000 pounds include the Chevy Suburban and Tahoe, the Range Rover, the GMC Yukon, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Sequoia, the Lincoln Navigator, the Mercedes M Class, the Porsche Cayenne S, the Dodge Ram 1500 pickup with optional Hemi, and (of course) the Hummer.  

The current Berkeley ordinance is limited to vehicles with commercial license plates, but it should be rewritten to apply to all heavy vehicles.  

SUVs benefit from being trucks by being exempted from automobile fuel economy rules. They should also pay the penalty for being trucks by being ticketed if they drive on streets where vehicles over 6,000 pounds are not allowed.  

Let’s rewrite our ordinance so we can ticket the governor if he tries driving one of his Hummers in Berkeley.  

Charles Siegel  

• 

FIRE STATION 7 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a neighbor of Fire Station 7 currently under construction who has lived near the location on Shasta Road for 25 years I can assure your readers and Russ Henke (Letters, Daily Planet, Aug. 6-9) that the changes to the hillside near the water tank and the location of the station itself is a welcome addition to our community. Despite Mr. Henke’s remarkable reported sighting of a steam shovel on the job, modern equipment and massive steel girders are being used to reinforce a hillside which has always been prone to slides. The non-indigenous trees removed to accomplish this purpose were near the end (or past) their life cycle and actually represented an additional safety threat perched as they were on the steep slope. 

For the last 25 years I can attest that the site has been used by construction crews to stage equipment, gravel, pipes and debris, even on one occasion hazardous waste! The replacement of this eyesore by a pleasant fire station design that every neighbor had the opportunity to help shape is more then wonderful! Thanks to the City of Berkeley, my neighbors, Betty Olds and the firefighters who fought so long and hard to get this station built! 

Vic Kley 

• 

CASINO PROJECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A July 30 Contra Costa Times article, “Point Molate project pending,” wrongly states that environmental groups favor this casino project. 

That is absolutely incorrect.  

We know of no environmental group that favors this project. Our organization, Citizens for the Eastshore State Park, is composed of individuals and environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, Save the Bay, Golden Gate Audubon Society, and multiple others; none has come out in favor of this project. 

Point Molate is public land and should remain in public ownership.  

What message does this send to our children, that we solve our financial problems with casinos?  

On the drawing boards are the two in Richmond, one in San Pablo, the casino gambling on the ballot for Golden Gate Fields, plus the card rooms. 

How many casinos will gamblers frequent? Does anyone believe that casinos deliver their promised panacea?  

We can do better than to finance our future with casinos. 

This land can be a mix of parkland, Bay Trail and compatible other uses. This is a precious shoreline resource, as are Breuner Marsh and the shoreline at the Zeneca site. 

Richmond and the surrounding community have an historic opportunity to protect this legacy for future generations.  

Robert Cheasty  

President, Citizens for the  

Eastshore State park  

• 

ONE-ON-ONE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Twelve weeks from today we’ll know, God willing, whether or not the world’s only super power will have a forty-fourth president. Between now and then we’ll witness a fight between two dull and evenly matched contestants sparing with one another on minor issues of little difference to the rest of the world. They’ll give the same speech over and over in a few “battleground states” hoping to win over a very few undecided voters. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us, Democrat or Republican, having made up our minds long ago, can look forward to 84 days of mind numbing boredom.  

And those who do not yet know who they want in the White House are, ipso facto, not qualified to vote. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

CHRONICLE CRACKDOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One thing I found puzzling about Sarah Norr’s piece (“SF Chronicle Cracks Down on Liberal Staffers,” Daily Planet, Aug. 10) is her failure to mention the union. Why haven’t Rosen, Norr, Pates et al. filed grievances? If they sought union help and were denied they ought to file a joint NRLB complaint against the union, their legally certified representative, for failure to represent them. It would be a great way to expose the Chronicle and, if necessary, the union.  

Ernie Haberkern 

• 

STOP THE NONSENSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks for the excellent article by Sarah Norr on the “conflict of interest” policy at the San Francisco Chronicle, which has now cost several progressive journalists their jobs. Norr correctly identifies the bias against workers (owners pursue their politics as they damned well please) and the left (since no one could recall a conservative voice being silenced). I would add that the policy is intellectually vapid, since it presumes that fairness and honesty correlate with having no meaningful opinions about the world. I know many Berkeleyites turn up their nose at the Chronicle and cling to the New York Times—a more conservative and biased paper, if you ask me—but they are missing the fact that the old Chron is the Bay Area’s newspaper of record and has gotten much better in recent years. Which is why the current trend is more disturbing. Ms. Norr is right to say we had all best keep hounding the editors there to stop the nonsense. 

Dick Walker 

• 

NO CREDIBILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

As a writer who has lived in the Bay Area for better than three decades, I’ve come to know enough Chronicle staffers to state that they would be amused/appalled to read Sarah Norr’s contention that there is a present crackdown on “liberal staffers.” Indeed, most reporters and columnists at the Chron are liberal and a good percentage of the staff would be fired if Norr’s allegation had any credibility. 

Let’s look at the recent changes Norr has cited. The firings and movement of personnel came as a result of both a breach of the newspaper’s ethics and downright poor journalism. The Chron is neither a polemic like the Bay Guardian nor a print version of KPFA-like propaganda such as the Daily Planet. Rather, it 

attempts to inform it’s readers without a semblance of overt bias. And to that end, its staff must eschew mantle of extremism or prejudice in their life away 

from the newspaper. 

Norr’s father, Henry Norr, violated those ethics by journeying to the Palestinian territories as a member of the ISM, an organization which has both supported terrorists by hiding them or trying to keep the Israeli army from stopping the smuggling of munitions from Egypt. Understandably, many staffers were distraught with Norr’s extremism and he truly merited his severance from the publication. 

Ruth Rosen, best known before her hiring at the Chron as the most facile of feminists, continued her simplistic worldview as a columnist. Not only was she so predictable that most of us who consider ourselves progressives stopped reading her, she failed to check her research in making allegations which proved to be false. This was journalism at its worst and she, too, deserved her walking papers. 

For several years, William Pates riled fairminded readers in printing a plurality of letters which adhered to his political prejudices. He was particularly fond of publishing a preponderance of correspondence which made the Chron letters page a font of pro-Palestinian propaganda. But as editor of letters, Pates went over the line in giving money to a political candidate when the appearance of non-bias is paramount to the Chron’s choice of recitation from its readers. Violating a code he knew full well, Pates was justly reassigned. 

In sum, the Chronicle rightfully enforced strictures necessary to assure the public that it is a publication sans the polemics of political prejudice. And when it comes to good journalism, one could say that the firing of Norr and Rosen, along with the reassignment of Pates, was addition by subtraction. The Chron is a better paper for it. 

Dan Spitzer 

• 

MISSING THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I recently moved from Berkeley to Hawaii, and I’m already beginning to miss certain things—including your paper. Even the “big city” newspapers here are really just poorly disguised local papers—and even at that, they can’t compare with the Planet. 

I look back with fond memories to those Tuesday and Friday mornings when I’d stumble down sleepily from my Shattuck Avenue apartment to pick up your paper. I particularly enjoyed the work of your cartoonist and would always flip to that page first. The cartoons were consistently intelligent and well drawn, and captured issues in a clear and thought-provoking way. The cartoonists around here don’t seem quite as capable or willing to take on important issues—their cartoons are more likely to elicit a groan rather than a laugh or a nod in liberal solidarity. 

So thank you, Daily Planet, for several years of good work. Who knows, your great articles and cartoons might just help lead me back home. 

Robin Shaw 

Honolulu 

• 

ONLY TWO OUT OF NINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s outrageous that only two out of nine councilmembers have enough common sense to understand that giving city employees free parking as a “perk” is wrong. Only two out of nine had the guts to vote against ripping off the taxpayer. 

Giving parking enforcement officers (of all employees) this perk—free on-street parking is a direct violation of Berkeley City Charter Article VII, Sec. 32 This action by Wozinak, Olds, Hawley, Maio, Bates, Shirek and Breland is a direct slap in the face of every taxpaying citizen in the City of Berkeley.  

Making matters worse is our city attorney’s twisted interpretation of the city charter. The council can give away whatever perk or bonus it wants to employees. But as soon as council passes a “resolution” giving it away, no longer is it considered a “perk” it’s now “compensation.” According to her, passing the item as a “resolution” means—like it or not— there is nothing tax payers can do. We don’t even have the right to do a “referendum” as allowed under the city charter. 

This is another case of Berkeley city government screwing over the tax payer to get what they want. Interpreting the laws for their benefit and interests. 

Every tax paying citizen in Berkeley should be outraged at the seven councilmembers, the city attorney and city manager for another one of their crooked backroom deals.  

Some people know what side of the plate their bread is buttered on... Kriss and Donna—Thanks for standing up for the citizens and tax payers of Berkeley. 

Jim Hultman 

• 

BERKELEY BOWL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to Robert Kavaler’s letter (Daily Planet, Aug. 10-12), wherein he takes issue with Jakob Schiller’s use of the word “win.” I, too, take issue with the headline “Berkeley Bowl Employees Win Right to Unionize” in that the right to organize a union is in fact guaranteed by federal law under 1935’s Wagner Act. This right, however, is constantly violated by employers. Indeed, Berkeley Bowl management violated these rights nearly every day of the union drive, from unlawful interrogation of union supporters to actually threatening termination for union activities.  

While Mr. Kavaler is correct that employees voted against unionization last October, I fear his judgment is less than critical. The employees voted against the union under the context of coercion, intimidation, and the promise of a better Bowl without the union. Shortly following the election, some employees got a better Bowl. For example, many cashiers received raises of $4-6, while a number of produce clerks were given a mere .25-50 cents, only to have their overtime cutback. Slight disparity? Perhaps their increased wages went instead to Littler Mendelson, a notorious union-busting law firm currently retained by Berkeley Bowl.  

Mr. Kalaver may not know that, long before the election, a strong majority of employees had already authorized the union to represent them for sake of collective bargaining. This changed only after management began their illegal counter-campaign. What employees- yes employees- did in fact win, then, is actual recognition of their union and the company’s agreement to bargain in good faith.  

He seems also to forget the role of the NLRB in his list of parties involved in the settlement. The National Labor Relations Board, a branch of the federal government, found the evidence regarding management’s illegal actions severe enough to mandate a bargaining order. A trial was scheduled this month, but the Berkeley Bowl chose to settle as opposed to facing this trial.  

This is a complex matter involving many people with a multitude of opinions. As an employee of four years, and someone most sensitive to the views of my co-workers, this decision is a rallying point. Not so much a “win,” perhaps, but certainly a step closer to the ultimate goal: a contract between management and workers.  

Kevin Meyer 

• 

LET THEM KNOW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have enjoyed reading the Planet’s interesting articles and editorials about the Democratic National Convention. One important point raised by the Planet’s coverage is that some voters don’t want four more years of President Bush and Republican rule, but feel that John Kerry and the Democrats are not differentiating themselves enough. (Medea Benjamin’s protest at the convention was one example of that sentiment.) 

To those voters, I offer the following suggestion: send e-mails and letters to Kerry and the Democratic National Committee ASAP and let them know your feelings as a voter. Tell them that it’s not enough to say “anybody but Bush.” Tell them what issues you care about and what stands they should publicly and firmly take on those issues if they want your vote in November. (Examples include removing the troops from Iraq, providing more reconstruction assistance to the Iraqi people, and overturning the Patriot Act.) You can even threaten to vote for Nader—or to abstain from voting altogether—if they don’t. (The sincerity of this threat, or lack thereof, is up to you.) If enough voters put pressure on Kerry and the Democrats, they might listen; after all, they need your votes to win in November. I can’t guarantee that this will help, but it can’t hurt. I’ve done it myself, and at least I can say I’ve made my feelings clear. 

David B. Mitchell 

• 

McNALLY KICKED OUT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was standing in line, ordering pizza in Berkeley Bowl, at roughly 6:30 p.m. Monday, when I noticed the individual from the front cover of the Aug. 6 Berkeley Daily Planet. I introduced myself, shook his hand, and thanked him for his efforts on behalf of the working class. Chuck responded amicably, announcing that he was back for the first time, and then added that he felt a little nervous. As he went on shopping, I couldn’t understand why he’d feel nervous after the settlement. Five minutes later, I discovered why. 

Feeling that I had big news, I told a friend of mine, a Berkeley Bowl employee, that Chuck McNally was in the store. The friend responded that he knew, and that management had already kicked him out. Demanding answers as to why, the friend regurgitated the hocus-pocus that he previously threatened an employee, as mentioned in your article. 

I cannot understand why Chuck McNally is still not allowed in the store. I thought his gesture to spend his money at Berkeley Bowl after the settlement both courageous and kind. Obviously, he still poses some kind of threat. Clearly, he was not there to provoke someone who no longer works there. Perhaps it has something to do with the union still not having a contract.  

Whatever the case, once again, I find myself at odds with wanting to spend money at a private enterprise that not only spends outrageous resources union-busting, but that also tries to pick and choose who is allowed to shop in their store. 

Corey Wade 

• 

DOGS IN GREECE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was appalled to learn that the Greek government has supported the poisoning of an estimated 30-50,000 stray dogs in an effort to “clean up” the streets of Greece in preparation for the Olympic Games. What an extreme tragedy this is and a shameful stain on Greece and the games. Greece, like most other countries, struggles with uncontrolled canine and feline overpopulation. It is more than unfortunate that Greek officials did nothing to mitigate this problem (through education of citizens, ordinances regarding spaying/neutering of pets, and “catch and release” programs) before the eyes of the world turned toward them as host to the Olympic Games. Despite that poisoning animals is a criminal offense in Greece, it is a traditional method of controlling the stray population. According to Welfare for Animals in Greece, a NYC advocacy and lobby group that just traveled to Greece to investigate, 80 percent of the abandoned street dogs of Athens and the greater Attika area, including the Olympic sites, have already been exterminated. 

In Greek mythology, the Sibyl didn’t poison Cerberus (the hound of Hades), she merely placed him in a temporary sleep. Hercules himself returned the mighty guard dog to Hades at the end of his final Labor. Surely, an ancient and creative society such as Greece can find a way to save these abandoned animals and shine as host of the Olympic Games. I urge readers to contact officials at the Greek Embassy at Greece@greekembassy.org and call for an end to the poisonings immediately!  

Mrs. Terri Cordrey 

?

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Sunday, Aug. 8, issue of the Contra Costa Times has a letter to the editor from a man who claims he received a parking citation from San Francisco on a day that his FASTrack record shows he was not in The City that day. 

How could this happen? I believe I have the answer. Last year the use of a quota system was made legal by the California Vehicle Code section 41600 et seq. A quota may be used as long as it is not the sole principal to be used for judging an officer’s performance. 

Berkeley used a quota system starting in 1993 when parking violations were changed from criminal to ccvil. The receipt of a citation is proof of guilt. And the citing officer may not be called into court to be cross examined. 

A parking citation is supposed to include the VIN number recorded off the vehicle (at the lower left corner of the windshield) but it is available from the DMV for local police if a license plate number is given. 

So officers under pressure invent citations, using all the data from their computers. Many persons do not challenge citations and pay them without hesitation. 

Many cities have made parking citations into a form of revenue to subsidize their General Fund, collecting far beyond the cost of enforcement. All in violation of Prop. 13 which requires a two-thirds vote of the voters. 

Other citations have been sent by mail after an officer has seen a person wait for a driver to pull out of a parking space; let out their child at school; leave a package at a friend’s house, for blocking traffic in front of a truck that was stopped the whole time, all in violation of different sections of the Vehicle Code. 

Some citations are issued when there is still time on a meter. Other short-time meters are left unrepaired for long periods, etc. 

The whole process is based on collecting as much money as possible. The three-step process to challenge citations deliberately made to be as cumbersome as possible, with penalties added up for missing deadlines. 

ADA protests by elderly or disabled are deliberately ignored so far with impunity by Berkeley. 

Lawyers seldom help with parking citations, so citizens, especially the poor, are caught in a web of high costs and wasted time that is very difficult to live with. 

Many merchants are very aware of the problem which hurts business. 

I suggest that a widely-used program by all persons using parking spaces to report out-of-order parking meters would be an effective way to correct this government fraud. All drivers should still pay whatever the cost is to rent the space to park because it is a legitimate way to encourage short-time use of the street parking. 

Charles L. Smith

Zoning Adjustments Boardmember Laurie Capitelli wishes that “people would get their facts straight” about ZAB’s unanimous approval of La Farine’s application for a use permit for a retail bakery with incidental seating at 1820 Solano Ave. (Letters, Daily Planet, Aug. 6-9).  

Capitelli should get his own facts straight.  

It’s true, as he states, that he helped write the zoning ordinance for Solano Avenue commerce. It’s also true, as he further states, that Section 23E.60.090 of the ordinance lists the circumstances under which a use permit may be granted to exceed the legal quotas on food services on Solano.  

What’s untrue is that ZAB granted La Farine’s use permit in accordance with those circumstances. Left uncited by Capitelli, those circumstances are as follows:  

“The board, following a public hearing, may grant a use permit which authorizes a use which exceeds a numerical limitation set forth in section 23E.60.040, only if all of the following conditions and findings are met:  

1. There are circumstances or conditions which apply to the proposed location which do not generally apply to other examples of the same use in the district;  

2. Granting an exception will, in the specific instance, maintain the purposes of the district; and  

3. Adverse parking transportation impacts of the proposed use are negligible or have been mitigated so as not to adversely affect circulation or parking capacity on adjacent streets or in the immediate neighborhood.”  

Capitelli writes: “My colleagues on the board take their charges very seriously…”  

Without questioning the general validity of that claim, I suggest that anyone who listens to the tape of ZAB’s May 13 public hearing and discussion of the La Farine application will likely conclude that in this particular matter, the board’s gravitas was unequal to the task at hand. Drawing laughter, one ZAB member—not Capitelli—repeatedly inquired after La Farine’s recipe for morning buns. (I half expected to find the recipe attached to the notice of decision.)  

More to the point, nobody at the ZAB meeting mentioned the three findings that, as section 23E.60.040 stipulates, must be met in order to grant a use permit for a new food service on Solano Avenue.  

Had ZAB done its duty and considered whether La Farine’s application met the requirements of section 23E.60.040, it would have found it very difficult—indeed, I believe, impossible—to make the first finding. Which is to say, the board could not have identified conditions or circumstances that apply to La Farine’s application at 1820 Solano Ave. that do not generally apply to other examples of the same use in the district.  

I invite Capitelli to describe such unique conditions, and I ask him to offer something other than the bogus claim made by the city’s zoning staff—that the incidental nature of the food service proposed by La Farine meets the bill. That argument is explicitly precluded by section 23E.60.060, which states that “all food service uses shall be subject to the numerical limitations listed in table 23E.60.040.”  

In short, the only way ZAB could have legally allowed La Farine to have food service of any kind at 1820 Solano would have been to grant the business a variance, an action even more difficult to take (legally) than the granting of a use permit for a new food service on the street.  

In this context, it’s off-putting to find Capitelli, in his letter, characterizing critics of ZAB’s decision on La Farine as “a small minority of disgruntled individuals who will misrepresent and manipulate the rules to their own end,” and who “show little respect for the public process[,] impugning others [sic] motivations in order to deflect attention from their own duplicitous behavior.”  

Whom is he talking about? Capitelli names no names, but one person he has in mind must be Jesse Townley. In a letter published in the previous edition of the Daily Planet, Townley, citing the zoning ordinance, assailed the La Farine decision as a sell-out to developers and realtors.  

But since Capitelli writes of “individuals,” he must also be thinking of the three District 5 residents who appealed the La Farine decision to the City Council.  

It beats me how appealing a ZAB decision could be construed as showing disrespect for public process. If anything, citizens who go to the trouble and expense of filing an appeal—it costs $60—are showing that they care deeply about the responsible administration of our city’s laws.  

Capitelli bemoans the “protracted and costly proceedings that strain the resources of both the staff and community volunteers” brought on by allegedly duplicitous and manipulative individuals who question ZAB actions.  

Again, what’s he talking about? Instead of sweeping allegations, Capitelli needs to point to specific cases. Above all, he needs to point to cases where legally defensible ZAB decisions were needlessly appealed to the City Council. Clearly, the La Farine case doesn’t fall into that category: it should have been appealed, and it was. Disgracefully, the council approved the ZAB decision on consent, meaning there was no discussion of the matter.  

As for duplicity and manipulativeness: certainly, the appellants made their objections to the La Farine application publicly known, as did Townley.  

What Townley didn’t say in his letter is that he’s running against Capitelli for the District 5 Council seat. Is Capitelli implying, then, that political self-aggrandizement is Townley’s real motivation for criticizing the La Farine decision? If that’s the case, why doesn’t Capitelli say so?  

In fact, Capitelli’s letter makes no mention of his own candidacy. Instead, he ends by “urg[ing] voters to support candidates this November who will respect the process created by a neighborhood-created plan.” If Capitelli wants us to conclude that this means voting for him, he has a lot of explaining to do.  

Zelda Bronstein, a former chair of the Planning Commission, is president of the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association. The views expressed here are her own.›

The ongoing battle between neighborhood preservationists and the developer who plans a pair of duplexes in the recently landmarked Oceanview Sisterna Historic District flared anew this week during a three-hour-plus hearing before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. 

Developer Gary Feiner wants to demolish an existing Victorian cottage at 2108 Sixth St. and raise the adjoining cottage at 2104 Sixth St. and transform both into duplexes. 

On March 1, the LPC landmarked both the home and property at 2104, but only the land at 2108 because the structure itself had been significantly altered from its original Victorian features. 

Feiner appealed the decision on May 12, and LPC hearings followed on June 7 and July 12, drawing substantial turnouts from preser vationists and neighbors who spearheaded the landmarking on one side and architects and development-related partisans on the other. 

Neighborhood advocates charged that Feiner’s plans significantly altered both the appearance and feel of the structures to a point where they no longer fit in with the character of the surrounding houses—a sentiment echoed by commissioners. 

Feiner and his architect had already modified their plans after the earlier hearings, but neighbors Monday insisted they hadn’t gone fa r enough. 

Even the new plans “would change the feeling of the whole district,” said Lori Pesavento, a licensed clinical social worker whose practice is located in the restored Victorian at 2110 Sixth. “It’s bulky. . .it doesn’t fit in with the original footprint.”  

“It’s shameful what is going on here,” said Jano Bogg, a resident of the landmarked home at 816 Addison St., who said Feiner’s project would make the neighborhood “look like a development in Concord.” 

Another sore point for Bogg, echoed by others in the audience, was the proposal’s inclusion of trees on a neighbor’s property as noise mitigations for the Feiner projects. 

“I would like to maintain the integrity of the neighborhood,” Feiner replied. “I want to keep as much integrity in the ne ighborhood as possible.” 

Curt Manning, whose landmarked home at 2107 Fifth St. lies with the landmarked Sisterna Tract district, charged that the plans for 2108 were at such variance with the other homes as to require a full environmental impact report—a point echoed by many of the other speakers, but not by most commissioners. 

Neal Blumenfeld, a psychotherapist who practices at 2110 Sixth with his spouse Lise, had planned to attend Monday night’s session, but remained in New York, where Lise has been u ndergoing radiation therapy. 

In a prepared statement read by Manning, he told commissioners that he believed that the project’s impact would produce cumulatively considerable impact on the district when weighed with other large apartment buildings already constructed to the south in the same block and thus mandated a full EIR, rather than the simpler impact statement city staff had drafted. 

Feiner attorney John Gutierrez disagreed, offering “my condolences” to the neighbors and charging that Blumenfeld had cherry-picked terms for the document to arrive at conclusions that were “kind of meaningless.”  

LPC member Carrie Olson volunteered to write up the comments of her fellow commissioners to send on to the Zoning Adjustment Board, which will take an i nformal look at the proposal during its Aug. 26 meeting. Though the presentation falls short of a public hearing, foes and proponents will be able to speak during the general public comment session early in the meeting. 

Commissioners also found fault wit h the formal Impact Statement prepared by city planning staff—which led them to issue a proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) on the site which most agreed underplayed the project’s impact on the newly created historic district. 

While he said the problems fell short of requiring a full environmental impact report, Commissioner Aran Kaufer said he had particular problems with the architectural renderings of the duplex at 2108 Sixth St. 

He singled out gables, a dormer window, a skylight in front “like a Cyclops,” and an overall design that mirrored 2104 in a neighborhood where the other houses didn’t mirror their immediate neighbors. 

“I don’t like the way any of these drawings look,” said Commissioner Adam Weiss, singling out both the size and th e sheer mass of their appearance from the street. 

“We’ll sit here and take as long as it takes to get this thing right,” Kaufer added. 

LPC Chair Jill Korte called the design for 2108 “the intruder in the district.” 

“The visual degradation of the surrounding area requires mitigation,” said Commissioner Steven Winkel. 

Addressing Feiner and his attorney John Gutierrez, Korte said, “We feel we need mitigation that’s agreeable to the applicant, the neighbors and this commission,” complete with landscaping and street elevation plans. 

Winkel then moved that the LPC make a formal comment on item I c. in the staff report—which had found that the project did not “substantially degrade the existing visual character or quality of the site and its surroundings”—a nd calling for the visual element to be resolved by mapping and discussion with the developer, neighbors and the commission. The motion also called for Korte’s suggested landscaping plan, streetscape elevation and neighborhood map. 

The motion carried una nimously, save for an abstention by John McBride, who was sitting in for Commissioner Becky O’Malley, and had not attended the earlier session. 

After unanimous approvals of other items on their agenda, Korte then raised the issue of Gov. Arnold Schwarzen egger’s California Performance Review, in which a panel of 275 volunteers looked at all aspects of state government and proposed “streamlining” changes. 

Much to the disfavor of the commission, the panel called for elimination of the state Historic Preser vation Commission, which among other tasks administers the federal historic preservation funds. 

Commissioner Olson said she had just received an e-mail which indicated that the governor might not be able to eliminate the office because federal law mandates the agency. 

Korte said that while the law provides an exception if the functions are transferred to another state office, the commission should actively support the office. 

In the motion of Commissioner Emmington the LPC unanimously chose to draft a letter to the governor “stating our concern over the recommendation to dissolve” the office and the supervising commission “which are vital parts of our economic development.”et

One of the first uses of the phrase “world music” was in 1974, when the Center for World Music opened its doors at what is now the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts on College Avenue in Berkeley. The Oxford English Dictionary lists it first in 1977, apparently missing all the previous uses in the Bay Area press coverage of the period. Today, a Google search on “world music,” brings up a list of 13,500,000 references within a half second.  

How did 45 performers from Asia, Africa, and Western traditions, medieval and modern, burst upon the scene that summer of 1974? A few of the now famous alumni from that era are Vincent Delgado, Richard (Baba Ram Dass) Alpert, Ingram Marshall, Joshua Redman (at the age of 9), Sandy Bull, Perry Lederman, Julie Taymor, Lou Harrison, and Steve Reich. This weekend there is a reunion to celebrate four decades of the American Society for Eastern Arts and the Center for World Music, and in commemoration of the first Berkeley World Music Festival in the summer of 1974. 

It all began 1963, when Samuel and Luise Scripps founded the American Society for Eastern Arts (ASEA) “to foster and encourage education in the performing arts of the various Asian countries.” The previous year, she had seen the legendary Indian bharata natyam dancer T. Balasaraswati dancing in the U.S. and wanted to start an organization to bring her back here to teach. Luise moved to Madras to study with Balasaraswati, and then after ASEA was started, the Scrippses joined Balasaraswati on a European tour, with performances at the India Festival at the Edinburgh Festival. Other Indians there were Ali Akbar Khan, his brother-in-law Ravi Shankar, and M.S. Subbalakshmi, a renowned South Indian vocalist. 

ASEA opened with an advisory board which was a small “who’s who” in ethnomusicology, including Mantle Hood, Charles Seeger, Robert E. Brown, and Robert Garfias.  

The first summer program opened in 1965 at Mills College in Oakland with Balasaraswati and Ali Akbar Khan—he taught classes in North Indian music and her dance class was complemented by the music taught by her brothers, the flautist T. Viswanathan, and drummer, T. Ranganathan. There were local concerts, and in the fall national tours. These performances attracted great critical acclaim and drew many to study at ASEA the following year. 

In 1966, the sound of the sitar could be heard in the background of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” LPs of Indian music were being recorded and released in the U.S., and the 1966 ASEA summer program moved to Berkeley. By 1967, many things Indian—not only music—were in the air, especially on Haight Street, and the summer school moved to a fraternity house on Durant. The brilliant sitar player, Nikhil Banerjee, and Ali Akbar’s son, Aashish Khan, joined to teach the growing number of students. Japanese music was added with shakuhachi player Kodo Araki, and koto musician Keiji Yagi. 

KQED’s Bill Triest was a major supporter. Arrangements were simple: ASEA provided artists at no cost and paid for recording tape, while KQED produced and distributed the programs via the old Educational Television System, pre-runner to PBS. Half a dozen programs were seen nation-wide. After taking lessons from Ravi Shankar, George Harrison with the other Beatles left London to stay with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. India was in. 

In 1968, the first of the many ASEA spin-offs appeared, when Ali Akbar Khan decided he wanted a permanent California branch of his Calcutta college. The Ali Akbar College of Music was established and thrives to this day in San Rafael, now in its twenty-sixth year. At the age of 82, he will perform at Marin Center this Saturday. 

Telegraph Avenue was hectic that summer, so when ASEA moved back to Mills College the faculty and students appreciated the peaceful surroundings. Now classes were fully accredited. Sarangi player Ram Narayan joined the Indian faculty while Benedictus Suharto and his wife, Senik, started Indonesian dance classes. In August, KFPA in cooperation with ASEA held an Indian Festival including 18 radio programs, many being interviews and performances by ASEA artists. The festival included two concerts at the Berkeley Little Theatre, the first by Banerjee being broadcast live. Kanai Dutta joined Banerjee on tabla for the fall tour and then returned to teach for the next three summers. In 1969, the Indonesian program included gamelan and shadow puppet master Oemartopo, who gave an all-night outdoor performance at Mills in 1969. A summer program started in Bali in 1971. 

In 1974 an opportunity arose. Old St. John’s Presbyterian Church on College Avenue, designed by Julia Morgan, was threatened with demolition after the congregation moved to a new church, so Sam Scripps stepped in and bought the building. A stage was built, space was arranged for classrooms, and ASEA opened the Center for World Music (CWM).  

Bob Brown assembled a large cast, first for a spring session and for the summer a faculty of 45 including master Indonesian dancers Maridi, Nugraha, Irawati, Nyoman and Nanik Wenten, and other dancers, musicians and puppeteers from Java, Sunda, and Bali.Balasaraswati returned with her daughter Lakshmi to teach dance, and Lakshmi made her U.S. debut on the newly built stage. 

The South India music faculty also included the finest musicians available including vocalist K.V. Narayanaswamy, violinist T.N. Krishnan, drummer Palgut Raghu, and the ghatam clay pot drummer Vinayakram. C.K. Ladzekpo taught African dance and music. Medieval European music classes by Music for a While provided counter-point to Steve Reich’s New American Music, and Laura Dean offered new ideas for dancers. Composer Lou Harrison joined the faculty for the Chinese and World Music courses. During that year sixty concerts were presented, culminating with the First Berkeley World Music Festival in August. But by year’s end funds were running out. 

During 1975 there were many benefit concerts and a smaller faculty, and there was a Second World Music Festival. Ultimately the old church building had to be sold, the ASEA organization became the Center for World Music, and Sam Scripps donated the Javanese gamelan, with a fund for Wasitodipuro to continuing teaching, to the University of California at Berkeley’s Music Department where it is still played today. It was only due to the perseverance of Robert Brown that the Center survived, first with summer programs at various venues, finally settling in San Diego in 1979. The summer program in Bali has continued over the past three decades.  

Balasaraswati and many of her fellow musicians from India and performers from Indonesia are no longer with us. However, on Friday, August 20, the Julia Morgan Center stage will see dancing by Balasaraswati’s grandson Aniruddha, accompanied by his father Doug Knight on mridangam and musicians from India. The next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, there is a reunion of students, faculty, and staff at the new St. John’s Presbyterian Church, across the street from the old church, now the Julia Morgan Center. It is fitting that later the same day, Ali Akbar Khan and his son Alam will perform at Marin Center in San Rafael. The two artists who inspired the first major programs at ASEA, Balasaraswati in the form of her grandson, and Ali Akbar Khan, will thus provide the beginning and the end of the reunion. 

Graeme Vanderstoel was director of programs at ASEA 1966-1970, and concert manager for CWM in 1974. 

›

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “A Delicate Balance” by Edward Albee. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck at Berryman, through Aug 14. Tickets are $10. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Alameda Civic Light Opera “Bye Bye Birdie,” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. to Aug. 22. Kofman Auditorium, 2220 Central Ave. in Alameda. Tickets are $23-$25. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

Berkeley Russian School, “Mademoiselle Nitouche” at 5 p.m. at Thousand Oaks Baptist Church, 1821 Catalina Ave. at Colusa. Tickets are $5. 526-8892. 

California Shakespeare Theater, “The Importance of Being Ernest” Tues.-Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 4 p.m. at the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, through Sept. 3. Tickets are $13-$32. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “My Fair Lady,” directed by Michael Manley, through Aug. 14, Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2 p.m. Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave, El Cerrito. Tickets are $12-$20 available from 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Shotgun Players “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. in John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave., until Aug 29. 841-6500. wwwshotgunplayers.org 

Stage Door Conservatory, “Annie” performed by local teenagers, at 7 p.m. Fri. and Sat, 5:30 p.m. Sun at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $10-$20 available at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals, “The Will Rogers Follies” at 8 p.m., Thurs.-Sun. in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Tickets are $19-$31 available from 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “Ossessoine” at 7 p.m. and “The Witch Burned Alive” at 9:35 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Osun Festival, honoring the Nigerian River Goddess and celebrating Mother Africa and the African Diaspora. Nigerian dances and drummers at 7 p.m. at the Malong Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 14th and Alice Sts., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 595-1471. 

Dave Ellis at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Ballet Counterpointe Rep of Berkeley presents “Works in Motion” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at ODC Theater; 3153 17th St. at Shotwell, SF. Tickets are $15-$18. 415-863-9834. www.odctheater.org 

Steve Smulian, past performer with Bread and Roses, will give an acoustic guitar benefit concert, 7:30 p.m. at 5951 College Ave., College Ave. Presbyterian Church. Donation taken for community meal. 658-3665.  

Kami Nixon and Friends at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Jack Williams, original and traditional southern American folk music, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

How Salsa Arrived in Cuba a dance performance by Salsa Rueda Cuba at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tap Roots & New Growth with Jaojoby. Lecture and demonstration with Emmanuel Nado and Jaojoby at 8 p.m., show at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenez. Cost is $15 for lecture and concert, $5 for concert only. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

The People, Sacred Journey at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

East West Quintet at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Kapunik, The Cables, Secret Synthi at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com  

Joshi Marshall at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Beth Robinson, singer, songwriter at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Broun Fellinis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Heavy Petty at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Modern Life is War, One Up, Still Crossed, At Risk at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Elaine Elias Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14 

CHILDREN 

“Wild About Books” storytime at 10:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Encaustic Exposed” featuring works by Ann Baldwin, Paula De Joie, Hylla Evans, Gera Hasse, Sandi Miot, Ricki Mountain, and Heather Patterson. Reception from 7 to 9 p.m. at Fourth Street Studio, 1717D Fourth St. 527-0600. www.fourthstreetstudio.com  

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “The Leopord” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“African Cultural Diaspora” with Luisah Teish at 4 p.m. at the American Indian Public Charter School, 3637 Magee, Oakland. $10 donation requested. 595-1471. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Osun Festival, honoring the Nigerian River Goddess and celebrating Mother Africa and the African Diaspora. Nigerian dances and drummers at 7 p.m. at the Malongs Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 14th and Alice Sts., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 595-1471. 

Bill Ortiz: A Tribute to Miles at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

Point Richmond Music Festival from noon to 7 p.m. with performances by Masquer’s Theater Kids, Nic Bearde, Reed Fromer and Friends, David Thom, Ya Elah, The Outbacks, and many more. 117 Park Place, Richmond. 236-1401.  

www.pointrichmond.com/prmusic 

Sistahs Strong an evening of music, spoken word and dance to benefit the 2005 National Black Lesbian Conference Scholarship Fund, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tap Roots & New Growth with Near East Far West at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson with Amel Tafout at 8 p.m. Cost is $15. Discount if you bring your receipt from the Aug. 12 lecture. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Angel Magik at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $20. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Gris, Gris, Eddie Gale, Mushroom at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Shana Morrison & Caledonia, Celtic and r&b fusion, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Nick Luca Trio at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Mel Sharpe Big Money in Jazz Band at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sky Nelson, singer, songwriter at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Mandrake, acoustic quartet at 8 p.m. at Ego Park Gallery, 492 23rd St., Oakland. For all ages. Cost is $3-$5.  

Ponticello, a violin, bass, drums trio from L.A. at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Barbary Coast by Night Join maestro Omar for an evening of authentic music and food from Algeria. Every Sat. at 7 p.m. at Cafe Raphael’s, 10064 San Pablo Ave. El Cerrito. 525-4227. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

Berkeley Art Center Juried Exhibition opens with a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. at 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “The Job” at 4:15 p.m., “The Witch Burned Alive” at 5:30 p.m. and “Ossessione” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Invincible” at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Suggested donation $2. 848-0237. www.brjcc.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

East Bay Chamber Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. 

www.berkeleyartcenter.org  

Americana Unplugged: The Thompson String Ticklers with Suzy and Eric Thompson, vintage hillbilly and ragtime, at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Fely at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Lost Trio, CD release party, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Admission is free, donations encouraged.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

Faruk & Ali Erdemesel, traditional music from Turkey, 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 

Orquesta La Moderna Tradición at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MONDAY, AUGUST 16 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Elements of the Garden” sculpture by Trent Burkett, opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 1111 Broadway.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express featuring Ross Cantalupo from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rebecca Parris with the Larry Dunlop Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17 

FILM 

Time’s Shadow: “Ruins” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Black Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Film Festival opens at 6 p.m. at the Parkway Speakeasy, 1834 Park Blvd. and runs through Aug. 22. 814-2400. www.apeb.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Hamsa Lila at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Richard M. Krawczyk discusses his new book “Financial Aerobics” at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

King David String Ensemble, comprised of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union, at 7:30 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $15-$20 available from 925-798-1300.  

Dick Conte Duo at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jazz House Jam, hosted by Darrell Green and Geechy Taylor, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

George Cables with Gary Bartz, Eric Revis and Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Also on Wed. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazz- 

school at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18 

THEATER 

“John Muir’s Mountain Days,” a musical, to Aug. 29 at the Alhambra Performing Arts Center, 150 E St., Martinez. Call for show times and reservations, 925-798-1300.  

www.willowstheatre.org  

FILM 

Exploit-O-Scope: “Dementia 13” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Oakland Open Stage with poets and playwrites including Marc Bathmuthi Joseph, Aya De Leon, and Hanifah Walidah at 8 p.m. at The Oakland Box. Cost is $10. 

www.openstagefest.com 

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise Freejahlove at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik, featuring Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jules Broussard, Ned Boynton and Bing Nathan at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Zydeco Flames at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Zydeco dance lesson with Diana Castillo at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ben Adams Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Bearfoot, youthful bluegrass ensemble from Colorado, 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 

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Ducksan Distones play straight ahead jazz at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15 sliding scale.  

www.thejazzhouse.org 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Past and Present Connection” an exhibition featuring local print artists and selected artists with disabilities. Reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at Niad Art Center, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

“Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture” An exhibition of Tapa from Tonga and the Pacific Islands. Gallery tour at 5 p.m. and documentary screening at 6:30 p.m. Through Sept. 7 at the Craft and Cultural Art Gallery, State of California Office Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 

“Elements of the Garden” sculpture by Trent Burkett. Reception from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1111 Broadway.  

FILM 

Luchino Visconti: “The Leopard” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Ulin discusses earthquakes in “The Myth of Solid Ground” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with featured readers Bert Glick and Randy Fingland at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave., near Dwight Way. 526-5985.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Open Stage with the new music of Hanifah Walidah, Tim’m West and Nonameka at 8 p.m. at Oaklandish, Jack London Square. Cost is $10. www.openstagefest.com  

The Dunes at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Phil Marsh, original and traditional 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 

7th Direction, Saul Kaye Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

Brian Kane at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Aaron Novick plays jazz originals at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Cost is $8-$15 sliding scale. www.thejazzhouse.com 

The James Affair at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Ron Carter Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazz Mine, string swing jazz quartet, at 6:30 p.m. at King Tsin Chinese Restaurant, 1699 Solano Ave. www.jazzmine.net 

Circlesinging Workshop with David Worm of SoVoSó from 7 to 9 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison, Oakland. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. Resevations suggested. 444-8511, ext. 15. www.artsfirstoakland.org 

One of the most satisfying and relaxing rides you can take in the Bay Area is a tour of local artisan cheese producers in Sonoma and Marin counties. Starting with Vella’s Cheese in Sonoma and ending at Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station, the trip is about 100 miles roundtrip from Berkeley.  

The late summer Sonoma and Marin rural terrain radiates a golden Wild West feeling that makes you want to abandon city life for the dirt and dust of cowboy movies. Just turning east off Highway 101 onto Highway 37 north of Terra Linda evokes a sigh of relief. It’s the beginning of my cheese tour.  

Following the signs to Sonoma, find Vella’s Cheese on Second Street East, a block east and a block north of the northeast corner of Sonoma Plaza and Mission San Francisco de Solano. Located in a stone building that once housed a brewery, the tiny cheese producer wins medals all over the world, particularly for its Dry Jack.  

Vella’s Cheese proprietor Ignazio (Ig) Vella served as a Sonoma Country supervisor and director of the Sonoma County Fair. With cheesemaker Roger Ranniker, Vella makes sensational lightly salted butter, a creamy blue cheese, a Toma soft ripened Piedmontese-style cheese, and a perfect Asiago. Vella’s high moisture Monterey Jack comes au naturel, and is also available in spicy flavors, all of which are achieved with natural ingredients such as Mezzetta peppers and garlic from the Sacramento Valley. The Vella partially dry jack and cheddars are mouthwatering. The company shop also sells Laura Chenel’s goat cheeses (since she isn’t open to the public), as well as crackers and sausages. The proprietor is usually around to answer questions. 

Vella gets all of its milk from Mertens Dairy about three miles south in Schellville, where cows ingest no growth hormones or animal products. All Vella cheeses are made with vegetable coagulant, not animal rennet. Orange colorings come from annatto seed, and all cheeses include a maximum salt content of one percent by volume. 

While you are in Sonoma, be sure to visit Ig Vella’s daughter’s cheese shop, appropriately called The Cheesemaker’s Daughter, on East Napa Street just a half block east of the Plaza. Ditty Vella and partner Gary Edwards carry the finest imported cheeses anywhere, Nan McAvoy olive oils, divine natural Greek yoghurt with honey, local breads, and the best gelatos and coffees. Ditty encourages tasting as part of your educational and cultural experience! 

The Sonoma Cheese Factory on Spain Street on the north side of Sonoma Plaza offers cheeses and decent sandwiches and hamburgers, but no longer makes cheese here. 

To get to Spring Hill Jersey Cheese west of Petaluma, take Hwy. 116 to Hwy. 101. From 101 take the Washington Street exit and go west. Washington Street’s name becomes Bodega Avenue (some places called Bodega Highway). Follow it eight miles and turn left onto Spring Hill Road at Two Rock Church. After one mile you arrive at 4235 Spring Hill Road, with pumpkin and potato patches in front and a long, straight dusty driveway back to the barns, cheese “factory,” tasting room, milking station, and calf hutches. Owner Larry Peter lives in the main house, a classic 1876 Sears Catalog relic.  

Spring Hill is a rare find: it makes estate grown cheeses. Peter sold his car and got around Petaluma for five years on a bike to save money, buy a house, fix it up and sell it—all to start this farm and make cheese. 

He keeps only Jersey cows, because their milk contains higher butter fat content, although they produce less milk than Holsteins. They are milked right outside the cheesemaking building, and the milk goes directly into the pasteurizer and cheese vats. Spring Hill produces delectable quark, ricotta, cheddars and jacks, fresh curd, Gianna (like Taleggio), Dry Jack (his just beat mentor Vella’s at the International Cheese Competition), Old World Portuguese, a brie, and a dry brie, all with no antibiotics, additives, or preservatives. 

If you have time to venture out to Sebastopol, visit a real Portuguese-American cheesemaker, Joe Matos, at his Jose Matos Cheese Factory, at 3669 Llano Road. From the Azores, Joe makes just one fabulous cheese: white, called St. George. 

Otherwise, turn right as you leave Spring Hill Jersey Cheese, then turn right on Chilean Valley Road, and right (west) on the Petaluma-Pt. Reyes Station Road, which will take you quickly to Marin French Cheese Co., formerly known as Rouge et Noir, just southwest of Novato Boulevard, and then on to Cowgirl Creamery in Pt. Reyes Station. Marin French Cheese Co. majors in bries and camemberts, some with flavorings, but also makes Schloss and Breakfast cheeses. Try samples of Triple Crème Brie, Quark, and Crème Fraiche. They also use non-animal rennet and Jersey milk. Here you can buy soft drinks, sandwiches (romaine lettuce in separate bag), Marin and Sonoma wines, shirts, and even pot holders. Kids can fish in the pond, while loads of people enjoy picnic tables, Frisbee, and a generally delightful atmosphere. Great place to stop on your bike. 

Continue out westward to Point Reyes’ Cowgirl Creamery and Tomales Bay Foods, both located in a redone Giacomini family barn. Chefs Sue Conley and Peggy Smith started Tomales Bay Foods, a much-needed assemblage of fine local produce, wines, deli, espresso drinks, and Strauss Family Ice Cream. With friend and cheese director Maureen Cunnie, Cowgirl cheeses are made exclusively with Strauss Family Dairy organic milk, which comes from the dairy a few miles north in Marshall, also the home of Hog Island Oysters. You can usually watch cheesemaking in progress in the tiny tidy glassed-in factory.  

Be sure to try Cowgirl’s Red Hawk, Mt. Tam, St. Pat, clabbered cottage cheese, fromage blanc, and crème fraiche. They also offer the best of other producers’ cheeses from around the world, including Point Reyes Original Blue by the Giacomini family, Joe Matos’ St. George, a special selection from famed Neal’s Yard in London, and Redwood Hill Camellia. Top it off with a memorable Strauss Family Farm ice cream cone, and you are equipped for the drive back to Berkeley. Enjoy! 

Kathleen Hill is co-author with husband Gerald Hill of Sonoma Valley-The Secret Wine Country. 

G

The New York Times reported on Monday that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York.” The report went on to say that “FBI officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence.”  

This is the kind of news that worries those of us who are concerned about protecting whatever civil liberties we still have left. Of course, it’s no surprise to Berkeley people who grew up in circles which were “monitored” by the FBI. One friend tells about a childhood with a car with two men in business suits, conspicuous in a working class neighborhood, parked at the end of her block most of the time. Another, the daughter of one of the legendary Petaluma chicken farmers, tells a story of the time an FBI agent came to question her father as he was shoveling out the chicken house. As the story, perhaps now apocryphally embroidered, goes, he handed the agent a shovel and exaggerated his already substantial Slavic accent until the job was done. Then he went into the house, got out his shotgun, and ordered the agent off his property.  

During the Vietnam War we sent out invitations to a party at our Ann Arbor house for the benefit of the Winter Soldier anti-war project, with special guest Jane Fonda. The male member of the household got a call from the FBI saying that they wanted to show him a few pictures of wanted fugitives. Curiosity overcame caution, and he told them they could come over. They were scrupulously careful to find a time when they would not be alone with the woman of the house, but two of them finally showed up when both of us were home. I made a great show of minding the babies, and they ignored me in favor of showing him a pile of blurry Xeroxes of faces of famous fugitives, including H. Rap Brown. “You know, they don’t all look alike,” one of them said. But he’s never been one for remembering faces, so he was able to say with complete honesty that he didn’t recognize anyone. The clear intent, not successful, was to frighten us out of having the party. We held it anyhow, and our small seedy house was deluged with 300 Fonda fans, but that’s another story. 

FBI visits can still be intimidating. The Times quoted someone who was interviewed recently: 

“The message I took from it,” said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver anti-war group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, “was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, ‘hey, we’re watching you.’”  

It’s likely that a good number of Planet readers are planning to go to New York for the Republican convention. Three lively (not violent, occasionally disruptive) ones (Osha Neumann, Jane Stillwater, Patti Dacey) have offered to send us dispatches from the action. It’s a pretty good bet that none of them will be reporting from inside the hall, though you never know. We’d like to hear from anyone else who’s going who is contacted by “investigators” of any kind regarding their participation. E-mail us at news@berkeleydailyplanet.com, or call the front desk (841-5600) and tell us what’s happening. Same old refrain: Sunshine is still the best way to make sure that democracy flourishes despite a climate of fear. 

• • • 

One more historic footnote: Federal personnel in the past have also functioned as agents provocateurs, people who mingle with legitimate protesters and goad them into counter-productive behavior. Exactly what in New York will turn out to be counter-productive remains to be seen, but anyone who goes should be careful not to be provoked into doing something that helps the Bush re-election effort. Please. 

Chalabys in the news again. Treason, espionage, murder…who knows where it will end? And who’s surprised? Evidently, yet again, the people in Washington who are supposed to be running the country. It’s scary. What I still fail to understand (and I’m sorry to keep coming back to this point, but it haunts me) is how many of us here in little Berkeley, not to mention our friends in New York and Boston and even in Illinois, West Virginia and Indiana, knew from day one that Chalabys I and II were bad apples, and Bush’s guys didn’t. It’s been all over the Internet, in letters to the editor in hundreds of papers, and the subject of conversation in probably thousands of cafes around the world. 

One image from Fahrenheit 9/11 that sticks with me is a little clip from the opening scenes: top presidential advisor Paul Wolfowitz, spitting on his comb and combing his hair with saliva. In front of the camera. How could he not have known (a) that the camera was running and (b) that most people do not comb their hair with saliva, and in fact find it deeply disgusting. Or if he knew these things, why didn’t he care?  

The same analysis could be applied to his championing of the Chalabys and their ilk. What he lacks, in common with evidently the whole of the Bush administration, is the decent respect for the opinions of mankind which was cited as the basis for the Declaration of Independence. Politicians are accused of relying too much on polls, of playing too much to the gallery, and yet this crowd seems to pride itself on ignorance of what “everyone knows.” They make much of their connection to higher powers, but something seems to have gotten lost in the transmission from their sources, and they don’t hear the voices from the streets. 

Even locally, it’s possible to discern that many active in electoral politics don’t seem to know what everyone else knows, or to care much about what everyone else thinks. It’s inconceivable that a councilmember’s aide, a 20-year veteran in the job, could have missed the change to Berkeley’s election law which requires nominating signatures to be collected within the district, but it happened. Hours of council meeting time were devoted to this topic, but somehow he missed it. Go figure. 

A very quick glance at the campaign contribution forms for November City Council candidates which were turned in on July 30 suggests that other candidates are not paying attention to the zeitgeist. In a city that’s clearly tired of over-development, at least one candidate lists multiple “maxed-out” gifts from well-known proponents of controversial up-zoning schemes. You’d think he would at least have had the decency to wait, as is traditional in Berkeley, for the last post-election filing to report these donors, so that the November voters wouldn’t hear about it. But no, it’s right there now on the city’s website for all to see. And it will be in the Daily Planet. Some will say that this candidate should get extra credit for honesty, I suppose, but others will say that he’s just clueless, or simply doesn’t care what others think. 

Another candidate, who filed on the last day, claims in her ballot statement to be endorsed by almost all of the neighborhood groups in her district. Since she has just announced her candidacy, that would be impossible, since they have to meet and vote to endorse. Oh well. Facts. 

Our little local elections don’t compete with the national ones for gravitas, of course. Our local schemers don’t rise to the level of a Wolfowitz or a Rumsfeld. Our dumb-seeming candidates couldn’t be as dumb as Dubya.  

Still, it is certainly boring now, and will be boring during future local campaigns, to hear officials and candidates say, for example, that they had NO IDEA there was anything wrong with the Gaia Building, and that they fully expected to find a lovely bookstore on the ground floor by now. I hate to say it, but we told you so, and we-the-people (now there’s a much-abused slogan) will continue to tell you what’s going on, whether or not you want to hear it. Candidates and councilmembers should listen more and talk less. But perhaps that’s asking too much. 

—Becky O’Malley