Photo by Gar Smith 

As car crashes go, this one on Sunday on Miramonte Court was both spectacular and nearly pristine. No shattered glass; no rubble in the roadway. One car totaled, one barely scratched. One neighbor lost control of her car, tried to hit the brakes but hit the gas pedal instead and hit a neighbor’s parked car across the street. The driver was not hurt. The neighbors gathered, along with curious passersby, chairs were set up on the lawn and a mini-block party ensued while the two car owners waited for the police to arrive. One neighbor remarked: “This is a fitting way to celebrate Earth Day—taking two cars off the road.” 

—Gar Smith

The mayor and city manager will propose, at tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting, a shift in tactics for writing Berkeley’s greenhouse gas reduction plan.  

The council will also discuss a proposal to eliminate plastic shopping bags and to recycle food scraps. It will hold a public hearing on community service agency funding and will consider purchasing new weapons for police, creating a day to honor conscientious objectors, instituting programs at the Willard Park clubhouse and more. Preceding the council meeting, which begins at 7 p.m., the Berkeley Housing Authority will meet at 6 p.m. to discuss the status of its operations. 

City to address greenhouse gas reduction  

The council decision to write a greenhouse gas reduction plan follows an 81 percent voter approval of Measure G in November 2006, a measure that calls on the mayor to work with the community to develop a local plan to reduce greenhouse gases.  

In February, the council voted to have Sustainable Berkeley (SB) hire an individual to write the city’s greenhouse gas reduction plan. SB is an organization of consultants, UC Berkeley representatives, nonprofit administrators and “green” health-related professionals.  

However, after criticism from some community members, councilmembers and the press, alleging the strategy lacked transparency, the mayor and city manager are now proposing to place the implementation of Measure G within city government.  

“Upon further evaluation of the issue, I think it preferable to use city staff and the existing public input processes for this purpose,” Assistant City Manager Arrietta Chakos wrote in an April 24 staff report.  

“The creation of the plan by city staff instead of by an outside agency will be more efficient and will allow more transparency and public access to the plan development process,” Chakos wrote, noting further that in February the council had allocated $100,000 to Sustainable Berkeley, but that the agency “is not a corporate entity with which a contract can be signed.” 

The new process to develop a citywide plan will include input from a number of commissions, a community meeting, and an interim report to the council before summer break.  

According to a memo written by Mayor Tom Bates, the new process will also include a request for funding above the $100,000 already allocated to the plan. The report does not indicate how much the mayor will ask for and what he wants to spend the funds on. 

The city has already advertised for an individual to implement the plan.  

No sunshine 

Despite a unanimous vote (with Councilmember Laurie Capitelli absent) on March 20 calling for the council to address on April 24 (today) how it plans to move forward in creating a sunshine ordinance—a law that would make Berkeley government more transparent and accessible to the public—the ordinance is not on tonight’s agenda. 

According to city spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross, the city manager plans to report orally to the council on the progress of redrafting the ordinance presented on March 20. 

At the March 20 meeting Bates had said he would call upon open government experts Terry Francke of CalAware and Mark Schlossberg of the American Civil Liberties Union, both of whom had volunteered to work on the ordinance. As of last week, neither had been contacted. 

The council will not be permitted to discuss the city manager’s oral report because it is not on the agenda. Asked who was responsible for leaving Sunshine off the agenda, given that the council voted to discuss the process, City Clerk Pamyla Means said it could have something to do with the city attorney’s vacation.  

“This is the mayor’s baby,” she added. 

As for the item not being on the agenda, Councilmember Kriss Worthington quipped: “After six years of delay and obfuscation [of the ordinance] two more weeks is almost like the blink of an eye.” 

Plastic bag ban proposed 

Plastic shopping bags cause the felling of more than 14 million trees, the use of more than 12 million barrels of oil and the death of more than 100,000 marine animals from entanglement, according to San Francisco’s recently passed Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance.  

If the mayor has his way, Berkeley will follow in San Francisco’s footsteps and adopt an ordinance that would stop large grocery stores and chain pharmacies from using petroleum-based plastic shopping bags. 

If the resolution is approved by the City Council tonight, the city’s Zero Waste Commission will weigh in on the question and advise the council on whether to adopt a similar ordinance. 

Dave Heylen, spokesperson for the California Grocers Association, said the association would like the city to wait to see how the implementation of the San Francisco ordinance is going. Implementation of the ordinance begins in six months. 

“Give the ordinance a chance. Monitor it and see if it’s an effective program,” Heylen said. 

Another factor in delaying a decision is passage of AB2449, Heylen said. The bill requires larger grocery stores across the state to provide recycling bins for plastic bags. 

Heylen said his organization encourages the reuse of plastic bags around the house. “We see more and more retailers selling reusable bags,” he said. 

Mayor Tom Bates declined to comment except by e-mail for this story. 

Chamber of Commerce President Roland Peterson told the Daily Planet his organization has not taken a position on the question. 

Food scrap recycling 

Another effort to “green” Berkeley is a proposed food scrap recycling program. The city already has a commercial food scrap recycling program, but lags behind other cities in implementing a residential plan. Details on the plan were not available at press time. 

New weapons for police 

With police service revolvers more than 15 years old, the department is asking council for 225 new weapons at a total cost of about $101,000. “[T]he present police service weapon, the Smith and Wesson 4006, was beginning to fail and … replacement parts were difficult to obtain,” says an April 24 police staff report. 

Old service weapons will be crushed or melted. “It is the policy of the department to ensure firearms that are no longer used for law enforcement purposes do not resurface,” the report says. 

The weapons will be purchased from Claremont-based All State Police Equipment Company, which was the low bidder and paid for through the Asset Seizure Funds.  

According to Berkeley Police Capt. Bobby Miller, Asset Seizure Funds come from the sale of property seized during arrests in drug-related cases. The property could include automobiles, houses or household goods, Miller said. 

Hearing on allocation of CDBG and other funds 

The council will hold a public hearing on $5.2 million of federal money available for community services from Community Development Block Grants, Emergency Shelter Grants and Community Service Block Grants. This is 3 percent less than the city received last year.  

The council will be asked to make recommendations on these grants tonight. During the regular budget session in May or June the council will consider $4.7 million in community service grants from the city’s general fund, which is the same amount as last year.  

The proposed funding includes the arts, childcare, community media, disability programs and more. Among the projects that are recommended for increased funding are the Berkeley Food and Housing Project (BFHP) Men’s Overnight Shelter Program and the Women’s Daytime Drop-in Center. New funding is recommended for the BFHP Russell Street Residence and BFHP’s Section 8 residential support.  

At the same time the manager is recommending cuts in the BFHP’s Multi- Service Center Drop-In Center and BOSS’ family and singles shelters, among others. 

The council will also address: 

• Increasing a grant for artwork for the bike bridge. 

• Renewing military leave compensation for city employees deployed overseas. 

• Creating a day—May 15—to honor conscientious objectors and war resisters. 

• Housing trust fund allocation. 

• Supporting youth programs at Willard Park clubhouse. 

• Programs at Willard Clubhouse. 

• Training police in crisis intervention. 

The massive Oak-to-Ninth development project continued its various journeys through the state court system last week, with lawyers for the Oakland Heritage Alliance filing its opening brief in a lawsuit challenging the City of Oakland’s CEQA findings on the 180,000-square-foot Ninth Avenue Terminal. 

OHA sued the City of Oakland after developers Oakland Harbor Partners, a joint venture of Signature Properties and Reynolds & Brown, won staff and City Council approval last year to build a joint commercial-residential development on a 64-acre parcel along the Oakland Estuary waterfront just south of Jack London Square. Included in that parcel is the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal, the most visible part of the parcel. Oakland Harbor Partners is proposing to demolish more than 90 percent of the building, leaving only the façade and shell. 

“The Oak to Ninth Project holds great promise for Oakland,” OHA said in a prepared release announcing the filing of its brief. “OHA’s intention is to improve the project for this City and for its generations to come. The Ninth Avenue Terminal is a symbol of pride for our port and our city. It is in a class with City Hall as emblematic of our city’s distinctive heritage. Oakland remains an industrial port city. It has been since its founding nearly 150 years ago. The terminal is an enduring monument to this historic and still defining character.” 

OHA President Valerie Garry added in the release that, “bringing this lawsuit is not something our organization takes lightly—it is an enormous undertaking that taxes our resources as a non-profit. But our mission is to protect Oakland's historic resources and when a major piece of Oakland maritime history is blithely proposed for demolition on what we believe is a thin pretext, we are left no choice. We want to see this historically significant warehouse reused. Oakland’s history is inextricably tied to the estuary. This last remaining breakbulk terminal provides historic context and a unique sense of place along the Bay Trail.” 

A hearing on the OHA lawsuit is scheduled for July 26 in Superior Court in Oakland. 

The OHA action is one of three separate lawsuits filed against some portion or all of the Oak-to-Ninth Project. OHA’s lawsuit is distinct from the other two in that it only challenges the destruction of the Ninth Avenue Terminal building. 

The OHA lawsuit has been joined with one filed by Oakland environmental advocate Joyce Roy and the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), which is based on grounds that the entire 64-acre project violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), as well as on calls for the invalidation of the council vote last year approving the Oak-to-Ninth project because the council may not have had the final version of the development agreement in front of it when it took its final vote. 

And after Oakland City Attorney John Russo invalidated petitions by the Oak-to-Ninth Referendum Committee that would have placed the development agreement before the voters for approval or disapproval, the referendum committee filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in Oakland challenging that invalidation. In December, a Superior Court judge ruled against the city attorney’s motion to throw the lawsuit out without a trial, ruling that a hearing on the merits will have to take place. 

Also complicating the issue, a parallel proposal which would save the Ninth Avenue Terminal building and turn it into a winery and tourist destination has received a favorable hearing before the city’s Landmark Preservation Advisory Board, and is currently scheduled for consideration by the Planning Commission next month. 

“It’s kind of insane,” OHA Board member Naomi Schiff said by telephone, trying to explain how the city is now considering a building restoration that it has officially ruled “infeasible.” “The original CEQA finding was that keeping the Ninth Avenue Terminal building intact would make the entire 64-acre project ‘infeasible.’ When that came out last year, we met with city representatives and asked that they back off that finding of infeasibility and issue a new RFP [request for proposals] for development and use of the Ninth Avenue Terminal. They didn’t back off that finding of infeasibility, but they did issue a new RFP which told developers that developing the terminal was not feasible, but will you send in a proposal. They got one response, from Ninth Avenue Partners to turn the building into a winery, so now the xity is considering a proposal that says keeping the terminal is feasible.” 

The earlier decisions by city staff to approve the original Harbor Partners proposal and forward it to City Council were made under the administration of former Mayor Jerry Brown. Schiff said she had no idea how any decisions have been affected, or will be affected, by the newly elected administration of Mayor Ron Dellums. 

OHA President Garry agreed that it’s not yet possible to determine how the change in mayoral administrations will affect the outcome of the battles over the Ninth Avenue development. 

“I suppose at some point that may come into play,” Garry said by telephone. “But right now, it’s a legal matter. And there are a lot of legal hurdles that have to be resolved.” 

In separate interviews, Schiff and Garry emphasized that Oakland Heritage Alliance is not seeking to stop the entire Oak-to-Ninth Project.  

“Nobody wants to completely sink this deal,” Schiff said. “We just want to fine-tune it to resolve some of the complexities.” 

And Garry said, “We’re not opposed to the project per se. We want to see something worked out to everyone’s satisfaction. We just hope to save as much of that building as possible. There are a lot of buildings being torn down in the United States every day. This doesn’t have to be one of them.” 

With AC Transit rapidly expanding its purchase of Belgian-based Van Hool buses, the senior vice president of a Bay Area bus manufacturing company is refuting a key reason why AC Transit officials say the European-manufactured buses are more desirable than American-made ones. 

At an AC Transit District Board of Directors meeting earlier this month, district Executive Director Rick Fernandez said that the European Van Hools are preferable to American buses because Van Hool “is willing to make changes in the design of their buses” when requested. In response to rider and driver complaints, and board and staff concerns, Van Hool is currently making several design changes to 50 40-foot buses recently ordered by AC Transit. 

That willingness to make modifications to its bus design “is different from American bus manufacturers,” Fernandez told board members. “They just make a bus, and you have to take it or leave it.” 

That is flat-out not true, according to Brian Macleod, senior vice president of the Hayward-based Gillig Corporation, which advertises itself as the second largest bus manufacturer in the country. 

“Our transit buses are a custom-built product,” Macleod said last week in a telephone interview. “We get a list of specifications from the customer, and that’s what we build from.” 

Included in the typical specifications requested by purchasers of their buses, Macleod explained, are such things as the number of seats and their configuration, the type of air conditioning to be installed or no air conditioning at all, and the number, style, and tint of windows. In addition, he said, some transit agencies request wheelchair access for both the front and rear doors, which he said Gillig accommodates. 

Macleod said the type of specifications Gillig is able to comply with “has to be within reason, of course. We manufacture our buses to American transit standards and to American road conditions. Within those parameters, we are flexible.” 

At the April 4 board meeting in which Fernandez made his assertion about the inflexibility of American bus manufacturers, the board authorized the sale of 10 more 40-foot North American Bus Institute (NABI) buses five years short of their federally recommended 12-year life, and their replacement with 10 comparable buses from Van Hool. 

That brings to 20 the total number of 40-foot NABIs the board has authorized to trade in for Van Hools, half of the NABI fleet currently owned by AC Transit. The transfer was approved at the April 4 meeting on a 4-1-2 vote, with Board President Greg Harper (Ward II, Emeryville, Piedmont, and portions of Berkeley and Oakland) voting no, and Board Vice President Rebecca Kaplan (At Large) and Ward III Board Member Elsa Ortiz (Alameda and portions of Oakland and San Leandro) abstaining.  

AC Transit recently renewed a five-year contract with Van Hool to purchase 50 new 40-foot buses, with an option to purchase 1,500 more. The 20 additional buses bring the authorized purchase of Van Hools to 70. Prototypes of the new buses are currently being manufactured. AC Transit currently operates 175 Van Hools out of the district’s total fleet of 682 buses. 

Executive Director Fernandez told board members at the April 4 meeting that “when you have the chance to turn over your fleet with a new product, it’s a no-brainer.” 

But key information concerning the NABI-Van Hool swap, including bottom-line figures detailing how much it will either cost or save the district over the long run, was not presented in Fernandez’ two memos recommending the trade. In his first memo, issued March 21, Fernandez said only that “the proposed early [NABI] bus replacement will result in a $1.2 million savings to the region,” but no figures were included to tell how that savings would occur.  

The two memos do not provide a line-item budget for the transfer, only background narratives that are sparse on figures. 

Also, because the NABI buses were bought, in part, with federal funds that were based on a 12-year use life by the district, the swap involves a complicated financial transaction in which the federal interest in the remaining five years of the NABIs must be approved for transfer to another AC Transit asset. It is unclear from documents presented by AC Transit staff to the board and public how that federal asset transfer will ultimately affect the cost of the swap to AC Transit. 

The lack of information was one of the reasons Board President Harper said he did not want to commit himself to continuing approval for these types of swaps. 

“I trust the general manager that he’s getting more than these [NABI] buses are worth,” the former Emeryville mayor said in a telephone interview. “And for the small amount of numbers we are trading right now, I can see some board members wanting to get that money up front.”  

But asked if the board has been provided a detailed analysis of the full cost of the trade-in, including comparing the projected maintenance costs of the NABIs over the final five years of their 12-year life with the cost of purchasing new buses five years early, Harper said no. “I imagine that we have a NABI maintenance schedule and the projected costs, but that wasn’t provided to the board.” Harper said that “if we’re going to [trade in old buses before their 12-year life] on a regular basis, we’ll need those figures.” 

And board member Ortiz said that she abstained on the NABI-Van Hool trade because of the recent community complaints voiced about the Van Hool buses. “I’m waiting to see the modifications that Van Hool is making on the new buses.” 

In addition, as a new board member elected last November, Ortiz said, “I am familiarizing myself with the history of the Van Hool purchase” as well as the details of the NABI-Van Hool swap. “I need to understand what is going on. I understand the need to replace buses before they burn out, but I’m still learning about this issue.” 

As Virginia Tech struggled to recover from the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, residents of International House at UC Berkeley came together in a riot of colors to celebrate unity in diversity Saturday. 

The annual Edith Coliver Festival of Cultures—known as SpringFest—was a burning example of how peace was still possible in a globalized turbulent world. Of how, in these difficult polarizing times, tolerance is more important than ever. 

“It wasn’t easy that the attacks took place the week we were busy preparing for SpringFest,” said Dr. Liliane C. Koziol, director of programs at International House. “But we knew that we had to make the festival a success. Everyone was in a state of shock. Students felt vulnerable because the same incident could take place any time, anywhere. An Asian student came to me fearing backlash on his community. Finally I-House issued a statement saying that we were with all students and would provide them with counseling at any time. There was no way we could just sit there and act as if nothing had happened.” 

Koziol said that I-House had always had a history of cultural festivities such as the one on Saturday.  

“However, between 1960 and 1990, there was a hiatus,” she said. “In 1991 I wanted to revive the spirit of celebrating different cultures once again. When we started out, there were only ten booths. We have definitely come a long way since then.” 

Edith Simon Coliver—an I-House alumna—stepped in then to fund the event, Koziol said. Considered a “woman of the world,” Coliver was fluent in German, French and Spanish, and conversant in Tagalog, Portugese and Mandarin. She was the first woman field office director for the Asia Foundation as well as the first woman to serve as vice president of the World Affairs Council of Northern California. 

On Saturday, thousands gathered at the I-House to share world cultures which were represented by a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and smells. Flamenco musicians rubbed shoulders with young Turks while wiras—Indonesian warriors—shared a joke with Chilean huasos (cowboys). 

“In spite of what happened last Monday, the spirit is upbeat,” said Koziol.  

“Both Luca and Anna are Italian but they are dressed in kimonos for the show,” said I-House Executive Director Joe Lurie. “Bao is Vietnamese but he’s wearing a Tibetan costume. Therein lies the essence of I-House. Everybody gets a chance to not only see other cultures but also experience them.” 

The first coeducational, interracial residence west of New York, Berkeley’s I-House attracted controversy and raised fears in the community about “mixed marriages” in the ‘30s. 

“It’s possible to celebrate differences, to co-exist and to appreciate different cultures. We make that theory live,” Lurie said. 

As Ah-Rom Lee and Jaeran Song—both exchange students from South Korea—practiced steps from a traditional Korean fan dance, their friends cheered them on. 

“We are really sorry for the victims at Virginia Tech,” Ah-Rom, a psychology major said. “We were scared that we would be singled out because the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was Korean. But then this is Berkeley and people here understand that the attack had nothing to do with nationalities. Cho had a mental problem. Koreans on the whole are not aggressive.” 

Haas MBA student Kim Nguyen, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1975, said she has felt the sting of racial discrimination at times.  

“Not in Berkeley, but it has happened in the subway in New York,” she said, delicately arranging spring rolls at the Vietnamese student booth. “As for me, I bear no ill will toward Americans because of what happened in the Vietnam War. It’s in the past. America provided us with a home and I am grateful for that.” 

Christina Lnu, an Indonesian student from Jakarta, said that she had feared a backlash toward her community because of events in the news as well. “People here often associate Indonesia with terrorism because it’s a Muslim country,” she said, showing off ethnic artifacts to visitors. “I want to change that perception, make people aware that there is more to my country then just terrorists and Bali.” 

Jeremy (another Indonesian student who did not want to give his last name) said that he had been affected greatly by the shooting. 

“It had taken place in a engineering building and I am a physics major at Cal,” he said. “I am in a college campus as well. The good part about being scared is that you become more aware of the people around you. You want to reach out to them and help them if they are in trouble.” 

As the afternoon progressed, a melee of sounds—Sufi strains, African thumb pianos, dried Caribbean bamboo sticks—could be heard echoing throughout the building. 

“You wonder whether what happened last Monday in Blacksburg will happen here,” said Adeeti Ullal, an Indian student. “But then you look around and you see SpringFest. You see people having an open dialogue. You realize that there’s always going to be something bad but that today is an example of something good.” 

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee  

Jaeran Song and Ah-Rom Lee, UC Berkeley exchange students from South Korea, discuss dance steps with their friends before performing at the I-House SpringFest Saturday. 

The Berkeley Board of Education is scheduled to vote on development of the Curvy Derby Plan for the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) East Campus field Wednesday. 

“Staff is going with the assumption that the board will approve the Curvy Derby plan,” said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. “The board could either stick to the Closed Derby Street plan or listen to the community and allow the Curvy Derby plan to move forward.” 

Coplan said that the original plan had mandated that in order for a regulation-size baseball field to be constructed at the East Campus field, Derby Street would have to be closed. 

“However the neighbors objected to this and came up with a new plan,” he said. “This conceptual plan extends the field north into Carleton Street so that Derby Street can remain open. The board’s approval will allow up to $20,000 in funds toward developing the Curvy Derby plan.” 

WLC Consultants will be hired to look into the development of the plan. 

In January, proponents and opponents of a nearly decade-long dispute over the playing field construction at East Campus came to an agreement about the Curvy Derby plan, which was created by Berkeley residents Susi Marzuola and Peter Waller. 

WASC accreditation 

The school board will receive a presentation from Berkeley High School (BHS) staff regarding the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation update and a report on the small schools. 

In 2006, BHS was accredited by WASC for a period of six years, said Coplan. 

Black Tour report 

The board will also hear a presentation from administrators who recently participated in the Black College Teacher Recruitment Tour. 

“This was the first time that BUSD sent out a group to search for African-American applicants,” said Coplan. “We expect the report to be positive. The group specifically visited universities who cater to African American students.” 

Coplan added that schools all over the nation were struggling to hire more teachers of color in their schools. 

“Big corporations also want to hire people of color and as a result schools often lose out,” he said. “Public education just doesn’t have the same kind of money corporate America does. This tour was undertaken to get out there and recruit the best African American teachers.” 

MLK track 

The board will vote to approve an advertisement to solicit bids for the resurfacing of the track at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School during the summer. 

The track—which is largely used by the community—will remain closed from June 15 to the end of August. 

Mural projects 

The board will also approve a Tile Mural Project at Oxford Elementary School and a Centennial Tile Mural Project at Jefferson Elementary School. 

MENLO PARK (BCN)—Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author David Halberstam was killed this morning in a three-vehicle crash near the Dumbarton Bridge in Menlo Park, the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office reported. 

According to a spokeswoman with the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Halberstam left Berkeley this morning and was on his way to an interview in the South Bay about a new book he was working on about the Korean War. Halberstam was being driven to the interview by a graduate student at the journalism school. 

Halberstam had given a lecture Saturday at an alumni conference at the school, the spokeswoman said. 

Halberstam, 73, of New York City, was a passenger in one of the vehicles and was the only fatality, according to Deputy Coroner Michelle Rippy. 

The crash was reported shortly after 10:30 a.m. on the westbound Bayfront Expressway at Willow Road, according to Menlo Park police Public Information Officer Nicole Acker. Menlo Park Fire District units also responded to the crash. 

According to Fire District Chief Harold Schapelhouman, emergency units arrived to find Halberstam trapped in the passenger side of a red Toyota Camry and the car’s motor compartment on fire. 

While the fire was extinguished, emergency crews worked to free Halberstam from the passenger side of the vehicle, which had been caved in about 18 to 24 inches by the impact of the collision, Schapelhouman said. 

Halberstam was extricated but had no pulse and was not breathing, according to Schapelhouman. Life-saving measures were not successful and Halberstam was pronounced dead at the scene, he said. 

According to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism spokeswoman, the male driver of the car in which Halberstam was riding is a student at the journalism school and was taken to Stanford Medical Center. He is believed to be “doing OK,” the spokeswoman said. 

Two other cars were involved in the crash, Schapelhouman said, the primary one a late-model, green Infiniti. Its driver was taken to Stanford Medical Center, he said. The female driver of the third vehicle, a silver Nissan coupe, was uninjured, according to Schapelhouman. 

Police are still looking for witnesses to help in their investigation, Acker said. Anyone with information about the collision is asked to call Menlo Park police at (650) 330-6300. 

Halberstam is widely known for his coverage of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement and also penned several books on sports. He was born in New York City and received the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) is scheduled to hear a nuisance proceeding Thursday. 

The City of Berkeley Code Enforcement Division has requested ZAB to hold a public hearing to consider recommending to the City Council that the property at 2973 Sacramento St. be declared a public nuisance because of alleged drug activity at the location. The discount store which operates on the site is called B-Town. The property is owned by the Chul J. Kim family and is managed by the son, Joo H. Kim, a San Francisco police officer, and is leased to Nayef Ayesh, the owner and operator of B-Town, according to the Zoning Adjustments Board staff report. 

The report states that the Berkeley Police Department had originally pursued the nuisance designation in 2004 with the incorrect belief that the a discretionary permit was required and had not been obtained for the retail use. However, the Planning Department has since concluded that this was not the case, so the report now recommends that the City Council order abatement by termination of use.  

The report provides a detailed summary of information from the Berkeley Police Department regarding drug activity in and around B-Town from 2003 through February 21 of this year. Police allege that drug dealers were hanging out in front of the building and using it as a place to carry out drug transactions. After a series of discussions with the owners in 2004, the report says that the problem momentarily stopped, but that it began again in 2005 and has been going on ever since. 

In March, the City Council passed a resolution which stated that ZAB would act only as an advisory board to the council in nuisance cases. The ZAB now can recommend the case to the City Council and the council will decide how to abate the nuisance. 

New hearings 

• MG Pacific, Inc. will request the modification of a use permit to change the use of an approved restaurant addition from a waiting area to a reception/cocktail lounge at Chester’s Bayview Cafe at 1508 Walnut St. 

• Robert Gaustad of San Rafael will request a use permit to add wine and beer service and live entertainment to Bobby G’s at 2072 University Ave.  

• Chris Worthen, a Berkeley resident, will request a use permit to add windows, skylights and a door to an existing house, to replace the foundation, and to raise the building 2.5 ft., from 18.25 ft. in average height to 22.75 ft., in order to create a habitable basement level with a garage on a parcel that is non-conforming for minimum front and side yard setbacks, minimum building separation, maximum residential density and lot coverage at 1740 Addison St. 

• Peter David Gilbert of Oakland will request a use permit to construct a single-family dwelling and accessory dwelling unit with an average height of 37.75 feet, 3,546 square feet of floor area and two parking spaces on a vacant lot of 6,717 square feet at 482 Michigan Ave. 

Consent items 

• Peter David Gilbert of Oakland will request a use permit to correct discrepancies in the approved plans for a single-family dwelling on a vacant lot, and to conform to arborist recommendations for redwood trees along the south property line at 122 Avenida Dr. 

• Adeline Studios of Emeryville will request a use permit to modify the plan approved by a earlier use permit to replace a proposed entry lobby with two off-street parking spaces at 2750 Adeline St. Off-street parking spaces would occupy the former loading area. 

• Affordable Housing Associates of Berkeley will request a use permit to modify the plan approved by an earlier permit to remove four projecting bays on the south elevation, to vary open space dimensions and to replace the paving of the plaza along Ashby Avenue with asphalt at 1001 Ashby Ave.  

Since September, due to a California Supreme Court decision, the Police Review Commission has not held any inquiries into police misconduct. On Wednesday, the commission will hold a public hearing on new regulations for closed hearings.  

The public hearing is on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center at Hearst Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

“We need to get started on the inquiries,” said PRC Chair Sharon Kidd. “We have 50 cases pending.”  

At issue in the Supreme Court Case, Copley Press v. San Diego, was the notion that police personnel concerns are private matters and may not be discussed in public. A bill, SB1019, has been introduced in the State Senate that would allow hearings to be public. 

About 250 UC Berkeley students were shadowed last Thursday, but it was all for a good cause. 

The Berkeley YWCA 17th Annual Shadow Day saw 250 high school students from Oakland, Richmond, Emeryville, and El Cerrito get paired up with Cal students to experience a day in the life of a college student. 

“These kids are not academically ‘college-tracked’ and are under-represented in the UC System,” said Jenny DeRuntz, who coordinates the program at the UC Berkeley YWCA campus. “Our aim is to bring high school students from the East Bay to a college campus and give them an opportunity to see what college could provide them with.” 

DeRuntz said that applications were received from both Cal as well as high school students. 

“We match them according to a variety of factors,” she said. “It can range from general interests, hobbies, majors and genders. We try our best to match by ethnicity, but that doesn’t always happen. It’s also important that their schedules match because each Cal student has class at different times.” 

Sponsors for the event included YWCA Berkeley, UC Berkeley and the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). 

Students check in as early as 8 a.m.—a time DeRuntz referred to as “slightly chaotic.” 

“Close to 500 students have to find their match. So there is a lot of running around and talking while people look for name tags,” she said. “Once morning registration, shadow pick-up and breakfast are over, the high school students leave with their mentors to go to class or participate in other activities. Then they have lunch at Crossroads, which is followed by a UC Berkeley/Community College Admissions discussion at the YWCA. Once that’s over, it’s pretty much an open schedule until it’s time to leave at 3.30 p.m.” 

High school students also get college material and “Shadow Day” T-shirts. According to DeRuntz, 90 percent of the applications are from Oakland. 

“We don’t bring in Berkeley students as they already get a lot of opportunities,” she said. ‘It’s often the Oakland and Contra Costa communities that don’t get much attention.” 

The YWCA student volunteer board—a group of 23 UC Berkeley students—also helps organize the event. 

“Cal students want to do it because they want to share their experiences with these kids,” said Sharon Ma, a student volunteer. “We want to encourage students to look at the future and show them that college is a viable option.” 

Ma, who mentored students in November, said she had been able to relate to her shadow mentees in a lot of ways. 

“We were both from the Bay Area and there was a lot we could talk about,” she said. “Kids are curious about how college works, about how our schedules differ and about extra-curricular activities. They want to know about our majors, study abroad and funding for college. We in turn get to learn from them and make new friends. It’s a rewarding experience for both.” 

When the students are not sitting with their mentors in class, they are taken for a tour of the Campanile, Memorial Stadium and Telegraph Avenue. 

“They even go into the classrooms, the dorms and the frats. They come here in the morning really shy and at the end of the day they have this new-found energy,” said DeRuntz. “We are really trying to promote higher education. Not everybody can get into Cal, but we can at least try.” 

DeRuntz said that there have been students from McClymonds High School in Oakland who have been admitted to UC Berkeley in the past. 

“We have received excellent feedback from high school counselors who have said that this event has motivated students tremendously and has helped improve grades,” she said. “The kids understand that we are just like them and that they too can go to college. It’s definitely a rewarding experience for everyone.”

Wet Seal chase 

On Thursday at around 5:30 p.m., an employee from Wet Seal, a business on the 2300 block of Telegraph Avenue, phoned the authorities to report that two men stole an iPod and some cash from the employee area. 

Cal auto burglary 

On Thursday at 12:08 p.m., a man called in to report that somebody had smashed open the driver’s window of his car and had stolen his backpack. The incident took place between 11 p.m., the previous day, and 8:30 a.m. that morning. No suspects have been taken into custody. 

Late night restaurant vandal 

After the French restaurant, Le Bateau Ivre, located on the 2600 block of Telegraph Avenue, closed Wednesday night, an unidentified person sprayed graffiti paint between the fence and the external walls. No suspects have been identified. 

Residential burglary 

On Tuesday, April 17, at 5 p.m., a woman who lives on the 1200 block of Oxford Street called to report that her house had been broken into the previous day at around the same time. She reported that the thief pried the window open and stole money and a phone charger. The police have not identified a suspect in the case. 

Whole Foods thief 

Before midnight on April 16, a man in his late fifties attempted to steal wooden pallets from the rear of Whole Foods Market at Telegraph and Ashby avenues. When apprehended by Whole Foods staff, he fled the scene of the crime. 

Assault 

On April 16, at 11:23 p.m., a woman called in a report that somebody hit her in the face with a bottle while she was walking down the 1600 block of Ashby. No other information is available. 

Burglary 

On April 15 at 6:15 p.m., a homeowner on the 1700 block of Prince Street reported that a burglary had occurred at their house. They came home, the alarm was ringing, and the window was open. Contents of their wallet were missing. There are no suspects. 

Assault 

On April 14 at 1 a.m., a man assaulted another man. The victim showed up at a local hospital and reported the attack, according to Berkeley Police Department Spokesperson Ed Galvan.

SB67  

Vehicles: speed contests and reckless driving (the so-called sideshow car confiscation bill) (State Senator Don Perata, D-Oakland) 

Passed the Senate April 16 on the voice-vote consent calendar as a “non-controversial” matter. Currently on first reading in the Assembly. Held at the desk, not yet assigned to committee. 

AB45  

Oakland Unified School District: Governance (to restore some measure of local control to OUSD) (State Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, D-Oakland) 

Currently in the Assembly Education Committee, scheduled for hearing Wednesday, April 25, 1:30 p.m., Room 4202 in the State Capitol Building, Sacramento.

A group of West Berkeley residents have set up an air monitor to detect emissions from Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) Monday. 

Setting up an air monitor has been the goal of community members for a long time. Denny Larson, director of the non-profit Global Community Monitor (GCM)—an organization that promotes environmental justice and human rights for communities—helped acquire funds for the project from the Bay Area Air Quality District (BAAQMD). 

He was joined in his effort to install the monitor by environmental activists including Steven Ingraham, LA Wood and Peter Guerrero. 

“We are putting it up to verify what is in the air,” said Ingraham, a Berkeley resident who tested the equipment. “The community has a right to know.” 

Located at 1333 Second St., PSC produces steel castings that are used in different industries. Area residents have complained for years about noxious odors and emissions which they feel impose a health risk. 

Ingraham added that the exact location of the air monitor would not be disclosed because it might be tampered with.  

“This is an Airmetrics, Mini-vol monitor. It’s state-of-the-art battery-powered and has an electronic programming model which was recommended by the district,” he told the Planet Monday. 

“The grant's collaboration parameters have given Denny information on the use, and some of their staff came by to check out our site this morning. We have a rooftop platform which the unit is mounted into and the program was set to begin catching a sample for lab analysis.” 

The group hopes to get definite data over the next six months and carry out surveys of illnesses in West Berkeley that have been linked to long-term exposure to chemicals. They are currently looking for more funding. 

Four of the employees of Blackwater USA, one of more than three dozen private military companies operating in Iraq, were murdered, burned and left hanging on a bridge in Fallujah in 2004. Jeremy Scahill, a contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for Democracy Now!, has written a book about how a company that is barely 10 years old rose from the swamp of North Carolina to become the world’s most powerful mercenary army, controlled by one man. Scahill recently spoke to Sandip Roy on the program “Your Call on KALW” about his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. 

Roy: With the many private contractors in Iraq, why is Blackwater special? 

Scahill: Most people believe that Blackwater is on contract with the U.S. military. It is actually on contract with the State Department. Since June 2004, the U.S. State Department has paid Blackwater some $750 million to protect senior U.S. diplomats in Iraq. I call it the Praetorian Guard of the war on terror because it’s literally guarding the senior officials on the frontlines of the occupation of Iraq. Forty percent of every dollar being spent in Iraq is going to contractors. 

Roy: But what’s wrong with a private company performing duties like providing bodyguards or protecting movement of kitchen equipment? 

Scahill: The active duty military, in the words of Colin Powell, is just about broken. The Bush administration relies on these secretive private forces, which no effective laws govern, to engage in these offensive operations. It also really impacts the morale of active duty U.S. forces. I was talking to a young solder in Fort Hood who said he was making $28,000 a year. Now, he is making $40,000 in Iraq. But that’s the monthly take for some of the better-paid mercenaries from Blackwater. This kid looks at the Blackwater guys making six-figure salaries with better weapons and body armor and probably has one of two reactions—I hate them or I want to be like them. In fact, now if you leave the military and go into the private sector in Iraq, the slang is “going Blackwater.” 

Blackwater is now lobbying heavily to be sent to Darfur as an anti-genocide force and are using phrases like “Janjaweed be gone.” 

Roy: If the American military cannot protect the people of Darfur, what’s wrong with Blackwater doing it? 

Scahill: We have enough trouble monitoring official forces in the so-called war on terror. Blackwater has repeatedly refused to turn over documents related to deadly incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was extraordinary to see a private company telling Henry Waxman, chair of the Government Oversight Committee, that they cannot provide him with documents because they are classified. 

One of the great concerns in Darfur is much of the violence in Sudan is attributed to militia violence. So adding another armed private force is a cause for serious concern. 

Roy: Have you found instances that their Christian ideology affects their work? 

Scahill: We have heard Blackwater operators referring to Iraqis as hajis. In April 2004, when they opened fire into a crowd of Moqtada al-Sadr supporters they called them “f---ing niggers.” Some guys sign up because they think they are doing their patriotic duty. But I think there are some frightening guys who just want to go and kill Muslims. 

Roy: How did Blackwater get to be so powerful? 

Scahill: A decade ago Blackwater was no more than a 5,000-acre plot in North Carolina. Its secretive founder, Erik Prince, grew up in Michigan where his father ran a company called Prince Manufacturing, which serviced the auto industry. Erik Prince saw his dad use the business as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of the religious right in this country. He gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Erik Prince was an intern there. They were significant bankrollers of James Dobson and his Focus on the Family. Erik had been one of the wealthiest people ever to join the Navy SEALS. When he opened Blackwater, its stated purpose in 1996-97 was to anticipate government outsourcing of training and firearm-related activity. 

Roy: But, like Halliburton, did they have a champion in White House or Congress? 

Scahill: Interestingly, its rise happened during the Clinton administration. That’s when Blackwater was actually given its contract to become an official vendor to the U.S. government. The Clinton administration was very enthusiastic about privatization but it wasn’t until 9/11 that Blackwater’s moment arrived with the Republicans in total control. 

Roy: Has Blackwater actually gotten away with murder? You say no security contractor has been prosecuted for crimes in Iraq? 

Scahill: Only one contractor has been indicted in Iraq since March of 2003 and he wasn’t a mercenary—he was a regular contractor who stabbed someone in a kitchen. There is almost no transparency to operations of Blackwater. There are scores of reports of Blackwater being engaged in firefights with Iraqis. Blackwater would say they are only engaged in defensive operations. 

Roy: Has it been helpful to be given the name of contractor instead of mercenary? 

Scahill: It’s part of a sophisticated re-branding operation. The mercenary trade association has the very Orwellian name of International Peace Operations Association and its logo is a cartoon lion. When you are talking about Blackwater you are talking about mercenaries. 

Roy: What does it mean that now they are regarded as part of the “U.S. total force”? 

Scahill: In February 2006 Donald Rumsfeld issued the Pentagon’s quadrennial review which lays out the Pentagon’s vision for years to come. There he classified Blackwater and other contractors as a legitimate part of the total force making up the U.S. war machine. This was legitimacy that they could not have dreamed of. Now Blackwater has taken that designation and used it in two wrongful death suits filed against it— one for the incident in Fallujah and one for a plane crash in Afghanistan. They have said they should be immune from civilian legislation inside the United States because they are essentially part of the U.S. national security apparatus. At the same time it lobbies against placing its men under the US court-martial system. 

Roy: What are Blackwater’s activities in the USA? 

Scahill: In New Orleans during Katrina, I encountered Blackwater mercenaries on Bourbon Street—burly guys with flak jackets and M-4 machine guns. They said their mission was to stop the looters. It came out that the Department of Homeland Security had hired Blackwater to the tune of $240,000 dollars a day to provide security. At one point they had 600 men there. The Blackwater men said they were making $350 a day per man. But they were billing the government $950 per day per man. 

Last year Blackwater representatives met with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about doing earthquake disaster response in California. They are planning to open a private military base, they’d call it training facility, near San Diego. It has a new base in Illinois. 

Roy: Are there public hearings being held by people like Speaker Pelosi? 

Scahill: When Nancy Pelosi goes to Iraq she is protected by Blackwater. The Democrats’ plan for withdrawal from Iraq doesn’t mention private contractors. So there could be 40,000 actual soldiers in Iraq in late 2008 per the Democrats plan, and you could just supplement it with 160,000 private contractors. 

The congressional initiatives are all aimed at oversight and transparency. No one with the exception of Congressman Dennis Kucinich is framing this in concept as the radical privatization of war. 

Blackwater represents the life’s work of not just Rumsfeld but also Dick Cheney. One of the last things Cheney did as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War was to commission a study from Halliburton as to how to further privatize the military bureaucracy. 

From Franklin Trail in Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline Park spread panoramic views ranging from Martinez and Benicia nearby to the far reaches of Mt. Diablo, Mt. Tam and the Lower Delta. Anchoring the two ends of this trail are the small, strait-side towns of Port Costa and Crockett. Plan a glorious getaway exploring parkland, browsing antique shops and eclectic boutiques and sampling intriguing eateries.  

Bordering Carquinez Scenic Drive, almost 2,800 acres of coastal hills, wooded ravines, shaded meadows and river shoreline comprise Carquinez Regional Park. Communities of native grasses; oak, bay, buckeye and eucalyptus woodland; and coastal shrub provide habitat for western meadowlark, bluebird, red-tail hawk, American kestrel, Great horned owl, golden eagle, gray fox, mule deer and Botta’s pocket gopher. 

Separated into two sections by private land, the Bull Valley Staging Center offers access to the western portion of the park with its spacious picnic areas and 280-foot Eckley Pier, as well as some regional history. 

Emerald grasses, newly budding shade trees, bird calls and the whistle of a train greeted my recent post-rain visit. Weathered brick and rusted iron give voice to past inhabitants—brickworks, grain wharf and resort. All blend into a sharp portrait of man’s reclamation of the land. Popular Eckley Pier stretches into the strait’s deep channels for migrating sturgeon. One twelve-foot-long monster was discovered by divers laying cable along the bottom.  

Franklin Trail is ideal for exploring the park, offering an easy hike through various natural communities and 750-foot high, 360-degree views, all in less than three miles round trip. From the picnic area the trail climbs steeply through tuck-and-roll grassland and then levels out. Strategic benches offer respite and a chance to take in the encompassing scenery. 

From open expanses, the trail dips into shade-providing woodland, alive with bird conversations, then opens to a bluff above the town of Port Costa. From my grassy perch I absorbed the life surrounding me—raptors soaring with the winds, breezes riffling eucalyptus leaves, a ship gliding through the strait amid tugboats and pleasure craft. Across the canyon, atop a towering hill, is one lone oak, its bare branches festooned with mistletoe and silhouetted against the sky. 

From this point on Franklin Trail, two options are available. One is to retrace your steps back to the starting point. The other is to follow a downhill trail and residential streets into the quaint town of Port Costa, definitely worth a visit. 

In 1879, deep water channels along the Carquinez Strait led to the founding of Port Costa as a major grain port for merchant sailing ships. During peak seasons, town warehouses, saloons and hotels housed over 3,000 sailors, stevedores and railroaders. 

Today this timeless town of 250 residents boasts well-tended historic homes and gardens along Canyon Lake Drive. Towering trees attest to its longevity, as does cavernous Warehouse Café. Inside, saloon ambience is in full swing among dark-toned wood, shaded light fixtures and memorabilia decorating every surface. The large bar and gaily covered tables enhance the mood. 

Across the street resides the other half of the town’s restaurants, the well-known Bull Valley Inn. Its elegant American cuisine, sporting generous portions and robust flavors, also touches back to Port Costa’s lively past. 

At the opposite end of Carquinez Regional Park is the town of Crockett, visually dominated by the California & Hawaiian Sugar Factory and the Carquinez Bridge. Here small-town spirit lives on. From the eclectic mixture of homes to activities including town meetings, town-wide yard sales and barbecues, a strong community spirit unites Crockett’s residents, both old-timers and newcomers. 

Toward the end of the 20th century the sugar refining industry, both beet and cane, took hold in Crockett. By 1906 Hawaiian sugar dominated; since then C & H has been in operation every year. In 1908, they took over town improvements, gaining Crockett the reputation of a company town. 

The Crockett Museum, at Rolph and Loring Avenue, is the place to re-visit Crockett’s past. Occupying the full length of the former train station, each room is themed with a different aspect of Crockett’s history, documenting military experiences, home life, C & H memorabilia, 78 years of graduation pictures and a 9-foot, 460-pound sturgeon. The museum appears to be a repository for generations of garage and attic potpourri, creating a charming glimpse of a varied and interesting past. 

Crockett is a walking destination. Take the time to explore broad, shaded streets lined with brick and clapboard homes and some of C & H’s improvements. Along Loring Avenue, against the backdrop of the massive brick refinery, attractive historic buildings house private residences and the Odd Fellows Hall. Rithet Park, developed in 1912, is a lovely expanse of tended lawns and gardens with lanes dedicated to the town Bocce League. 

The main commercial area at Pomona Street and Second Avenue offers shops for browsing, eateries for sampling and bars for sipping. Toot’s Bar shares Second Avenue with Here, There and Everywhere, the Healing Touch and The Fireplace. The front window display at What’s On Second Antiques reflects the cornucopia of the Museum’s artifacts. Next door the former A. Ghioldi Jewelry store is now home to Crockett Pottery. Watch your step on Crockett’s raised sidewalks while ogling architectural details and one-of-a-kind merchandise. 

Along Pomona Street, Buffalo Run Leathers features hand-crafted motorcycle saddle bags while Romari’s beaded jewelry displays tempt your interest. Eats are plentiful. The Valona Deli offers soups, sandwiches and espresso drinks at tables topped with brightly colored oilcloth before expanses of glass overlooking the street. At Los Arcos American breakfasts and authentic Mexican burritos and conchas can be enjoyed inside or on the shaded patio. 

Fill out your excursion with a visit to the waterfront. Here you can re-experience views from atop Franklin Trail at water-level. Linger awhile at The Nantucket, sampling calamari and crab cakes, both Nantucket specialties. Watch fishing boats return and unload their catch. Marvel at the soaring metal framework of the Carquinez Bridge. Reflect on this area’s historic past while savoring the delights of its present.  

Getting There: Take Hwy 80 to Hwy 4, exit at Cumming Skyway and drive north. Turn right onto Crockett Blvd. and drive to Pomona St. in Crockett. Turn right onto Pomona; this becomes Carquinez Scenic Drive. Follow Carquinez Scenic Drive to the Bull Valley Staging Area entrance on the left. Continue down the drive to the picnic area and Eckley Pier. Approx. 25miles one way. 

Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline: No day-use fee, no pet charge. Dogs allowed off-leash on trails. No fishing license required for pier fishing, license is needed for shore fishing. East Bay Regional Park Headquarters 925 228 0112. www.ebparks.org/parks/carquin. 

1. Where were you born and where did you grow up, and how does that affect how you regard the issues in Berkeley and in your district? 

I was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., at the tail end of the World War II in a largely Italian American community. My father was a factory worker and in all of the families we knew well, there was never enough money for everything. A lot of people didn’t have cars. What I remember is we didn’t have enough money for regular medical care and my family, particularly my mother, was always scrambling to figure out where the money was going to come from. So that left me with a deep impression: that it’s critical to have a family supported in the basic ways, basic ways having food, clothing, housing and medical care. So that’s what a lot of my focus since I’ve been on the council and have actually done, political work has been in affordable housing and basic services to keep the family healthy and the community healthy. And really that goes back to my Italian-Catholic background. 

2. What is your educational background, and how did that help prepare you for being a councilmember? 

I sort of came to my formal education later. I graduated from high school back in New York and came out here and started junior college at what was Grove Street College. Way back when, where the Black Panther Party actually, I think, came out of Grove Street College. When I started at Grove Street College, it was sort of at the tail end of all of that political activity. But the college district was about to close that campus down and move it to the hills. It really needed to stay rooted in the community where education was something that was definitely needed and people were not going to travel up into the hills. It was a really important resource in the community. So I kind of cut my teeth then on getting involved with the students at Grove Street College to try and save the school. And I worked with Maudelle Shirek back then on that as well. So I came through that period really getting an education in two things: getting my AA degree but also at the same time understanding what local politics is all about. So I transferred out from Grove Street College to UC Berkeley where I got my bachelor’s degree in 1979. And then I went on to get a teaching credential the following year. 

3. What are the top three most pressing issues facing your district (District 1)? 

Right now one of the biggest issues in my district is environmental health. There are two sources that are a concern to me. One is the large amount of diesel particulate that comes from largely truck traffic from the freeway which flows because the winds come from west to east largely, pushes a lot of the particulate to well into West Berkeley and that has definite links to cancer and asthma. So we know that we’ve seen high incidents of asthma hospitalizations paralleling the freeway. We now know that a lot of the diesel particulation is not only linked to asthma but also linked to cancer. And then we have the second source of emissions that are quite foul in odor from Pacific Steel Casting industry there. So that’s one issue.  

The second is affordable housing for families that can’t afford to get into this market. You cannot buy a house in Berkeley for less than a half a million dollars but largely it’s on the other end. So it’s important for me. And I’ve been working on this for years to make sure there are affordable housing options for families. So that’s number two.  

The third issue is really kind of a nexus of two issues which is preservation of the arts in Berkeley and the arts and crafts. There are a lot of places in West Berkeley where artists have found little affordable niches in order to live and work. With more and more gentrification happening in West Berkeley that’s a lot less possible now. There are a couple of arts magnets in west Berkeley that are really kind of hanging on by their fingernails through the good graces of whoever owns the building. And so we need permanently affordable arts space which is actually a very good neighbor with industrial uses. And making sure we have good incubator space for green businesses to start up in Berkeley because we have the intellectual resources in Berkeley. We have to help develop that and create places for new startups to happen, particularly green business and biotech. That will take some real muscle on the part of the city through zoning and its mitigation programs to make sure that we get the kinds of businesses we want and we have permanent affordable spaces for the arts to flourish because it’s a very big part of what Berkeley is all about. 

4. Do you agree with the direction the city is heading in. Why or why not? 

There’s been a lot of effort in environmental issues. In education as well. We’ve made a lot of headway. We are quite prominent, particularly in the environmental area. 

Development is the big issue in Berkeley--what happens to Berkeley’s future? So where does development go? What does it look like? How does it interface with the neighbors? We’re still shaping that. We’ve had some experiences which have helped us realize that we have to have better interface between neighbors and new development. We also have to make sure that when new development comes down the pipe it gives us something we really need and want. And the arts is one of the areas that I talked about. Affordable housing is another. So personally I feel that we’ve charted out a good course. Now we just have to make sure that we realize it properly. 

5. What is your opinion of the proposal to develop a new downtown plan and the settlement with the University of California over its LRDP? 

You have to realize at the get-go that the university is tantamount to a state agency; it doesn’t have to follow the city of Berkeley’s rules. Now, we would like to change that, but right now we can’t change that. So they can act autonomously if they choose to do that. And the downtown plan and getting the university to come to the table to work on a downtown plan together, which was part of the settlement agreement, gives us the ability to actually work with them to steer their development in the right direction and not just basically be the victim and say, “Oh my God, they’re doing it to us again.”  

So, I know there’s a lot of concern and misrepresentation that we sold out to the university, but in fact the reverse is true in that the university has agreed to work with us in developing the downtown and steering future development in the downtown through this planning process. So I support the DAPAC process. It’s a big community process. Very public. And I think it’s going to be a good plan. 

6. How do you think the mayor is doing at his position? Are you considering running for mayor, and if so, what changes would you try to make? 

I think the mayor’s doing an excellent job. He’s got his hands full. He’s on a number of commissions. He’s steering the city in terms of the environment and education and green business. I myself have been asked to run for mayor a number of times, but it’s not on my horizon at this time. 

7. Has Berkeley’s recent development boom been beneficial for the city? What new direction, if any, should the city’s development take over the next decade?  

A lot of the new development has been quite handsomely done. There have been a couple of developments that are problematic. And I point particularly to the one at Acton and University that is not an attractive building in my opinion. It doesn’t respect the neighborhood as it should have when it went up. It really kind of points to all of the things that people can look at and say, hey, we don’t want anymore of that. And I agree, we don’t want anymore of that. But there are other developments in and around the downtown that have come out quite nicely. So that’s the direction we need to go.  

Steering development downtown is something that really makes sense. The Brower Center should be coming on line in four or five years. Kittredge and Oxford will be housing and a landmark environmental building. We know what we really like and we have to make sure we steer development that’s attractive and that provides good amenities to the city, such as affordable housing and places for the arts. 

8. How would you characterize the political climate in Berkeley these days? 

Well, I’ve been on the council for 14 years now. And I will say that it’s much more congenial on the council now. Ever since I’ve been on the council there have been tensions in the City of Berkeley between people who want different things and see the city’s future differently. But we work them out over time and we really try and do our best to remain candid while we do that. 

9. What is your favorite thing about Berkeley? 

The variety of wealth and treasures embodied in the people in this town. They make things happen in their own way. They’re creative. They’re smart. They’re humane. And it’s really about the people. The environment is wonderful to live in. It’s got a great historic fabric. I appreciate all of those things. When it comes right down to it, it’s the people I’m glad to be among. 

10. What is your least favorite thing about Berkeley? 

I think the sniping is my least favorite thing. When you’re on the council, people can insult you, they can attack you verbally, they just get very angry and worked up, and they forget about just civil discourse. It’s not that frequent, but when it does happen, it doesn’t feel great. People who think about running for political office worry about the fact that this happens, but really they shouldn’t because it doesn’t at all outweigh all of the positive aspects of serving your city.

Korean-Americans’ fear of a backlash from the campus massacre at Virginia Tech eased a bit when mainstream news media began focusing on issues that concern all Americans, such as mental illness, gun control and campus security, rather than the ethnicity of the gunman. 

Their anxiety, however, was understandable. Koreans cannot forget the nightmares that resulted from the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which they were targeted and more than 2,000 Korean-owned businesses were destroyed. 

On April 17, when the news about the gunman Seung-hui Cho broke, Seung-wook Lee, president of the Korean Students Association, convened an emergency meeting to prepare Korean students emotionally for possible verbal abuses or physical attacks. 

Korean students attending Virginia Tech were on edge. “We are hesitating to go to the school’s cafeteria for fear of possible retaliation,” a student said. “We gather in threes or fours when we go out. Some stayed in their dormitory all day long.” Some who came from Korea were thinking about returning to Korea, Lee said. Some 1,000 Korean students, including hundreds from Korea, are enrolled at Virginia Tech, he said. 

At Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia, the gunman’s old school, tension was evident. Several Korean students reportedly were deliberately hit with backpacks. 

In Los Angeles, several Korean students were physically attacked at a junior high school near Koreatown, according to Jenny Kim, a parent of an eighth-grader. The school authority told the parents they were investigating the report, she said. 

In Korea, the anxiety level is running just as high. Many students who were preparing to apply for colleges in the United States are rethinking their plans. At a consulting agency in Seoul which specializes in helping Korean students find a foreign school, some students withdrew their applications for study in the United States, even though they had already paid the deposit of $2,000. 

At the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, only a dozen Koreans showed up on April 19 to apply for a U.S. visa. The line of people waiting each day outside the office used to average about 100 yards long. 

The Korean Tourism Organization (KTO) said it pulled its “Sparkling Korea” television advertisements off CNN after the shootings. “It would be inappropriate to air the 30-second ads featuring images of Korea’s culture and natural beauty in between the news reports of a shooting rampage by a Korean-born student,” said Park Young-Kyu, an official at the KTO branch in New York. 

In an extreme case, the Kangwon Ilbo, a daily newspaper based in Korea, published a series of interviews with government officials to calm local fears that the Virginia Tech shootings might have a negative effect on local efforts to host the 2014 Winter Olympics at the region’s ski resort in Pyeong Chang. 

Lee Tae-shik, the Korean ambassador to the United States, came under fire from the Korean media. While speaking at a Korean church in Washington, D.C., he suggested that Korean American Christians fast for 32 days to mourn the 32 people Cho killed.

Images of a young Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar ablaze flickered across the screen at the UC Berkeley Wheeler Auditorium on Wednesday. The film Berkeley in the ’60s was not just entertainment for the some hundred students from History 7B (American History since 1865)—it was classwork. 

“When I sat on the advisory committee for this movie in 1990, it was History 7B who viewed it for the first time,” said Leon Litwack, the professor who, after teaching the class for decades is teaching it for the last time.  

He told the class Wednesday that he had asked those students to help him edit the movie by suggesting cuts. “But they said, ‘Don’t touch it,’” he said with a laugh. “Fortunately for you, we did touch it, or else you would have had to be here for three hours tonight.” 

Litwack, 77, retires from UC Berkeley this month, and students, faculty and alumni celebrated him Tuesday for his distinguished career as an award-winning scholar and much loved teacher of social history, specializing in African-American history and the history of civil rights, by honoring him with the Golden Apple. 

The award, in its third year, goes to a faculty member for outstanding teaching. Although Litwak is no stranger to awards, having won the Pulitzer Prize and Newsweek’s “Giving Back” awards among others, he calls winning the Golden Apple the finest moment in his career. 

“It’s special, you know,” he said, sitting in his office at 3317 Dwinelle Hall Wednesday. “Because it came from the students.” 

Litwack’s finest moment as a student, he said, came when he was asked to introduce Henry Wallace, who had run for president on the Progressive Party ticket the year before, at a campus event in 1949. 

“I had long admired him as a personal challenge to conventional wisdom, and I finally got to meet him,” he said. 

Portraits of free-speech advocate Mario Savio and American civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois hang behind Litwack in his office, as do rows and rows of books on the civil rights movement and African-American history. 

“I grew up on the east side of Santa Barbara, in a primarily Hispanic neighborhood. My parents were immigrants from Ukraine and my neighbors were immigrants from Mexico,” he reminisced. 

“I was a first-generation American and most of my friends were first-generation Americans,” he said. “I went to history class in school looking for the stories of these people. Instead I got the Pilgrims, the Puritans and the Founding Fathers. It made me realize that it had nothing to do with my history.” 

Litwack said that he challenged the notion of slavery and black reconstruction as early as eleventh grade, after reading W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. 

“I had read Howard Fast and he talked about a part of the past that no one was interested in. I learned that the whole notion that slaves were happy and contented under slavery was incorrect. People thought they were serving a humane purpose in civilizing them, as if they had been uncivilized before. No one talked to the slaves or took their stories into account. My high school teacher found my point valid enough to grant me 50 minutes of class time.” 

Litwack said that since historians often relied on the records of privileged people who had time to write journals and diaries, they assumed that the history of working class people could not be reclaimed. 

“But that is not true,” he said, “Ordinary people might not necessarily keep their records in writing, but they do so through their music, songs, storytelling and humor. These should be areas of interest to any historian.” 

Litwack’s interest in pop culture is evident from the random Andy Warhol “Pink Cow” postcard, the Aretha Franklin pin-up and a host of other knick-knacks in his room that come from the world outside academia. His house is a labyrinth of books from all around the world, and he plans to add to them from the collection in his office. 

“I don’t like computers,” he said, “and the first thing I read in the morning is the SF Chronicle sports page. I also try to read the Times, Rolling Stone magazine and the Nation.” 

The professor is, among other things, an avid listener of hip-hop. 

“There are some who like it and others who think it is sacrilegious, just like they said about the blues back in the ’20s,” he said smiling. “I think hip-hop is the essence of day-to-day life. It is what rapper Ice-T meant by a ‘cry from the bottom.’ If I teach a survey course, that’s something I want to point out.” 

It’s not just Litwack’s love for hip-hop that makes him something of a rebel. He admits that he has always been one. 

“When I first came to Berkeley in 1949 as an undergraduate, there was no civil rights movement,” he recalled, “but we challenged the discriminatory practices in hiring, in housing and in the workplace. We used to go up to a house which had a ‘For Rent’ sign, and after a black person had been rejected, the whites among us would go up and ask if the place was available. And then, of course, it would be. We would use this as a way to break down the unfair practice.” 

Litwack acknowledged that racism was still alive in modern America, albeit expressed in more subtle ways. 

“We do our best to hide it, we pretend to be concerned, but it is a great hypocrisy,” he said. “Racism is not a southern problem. It is a northern and a southern problem.” 

Although retirement is around the corner, Litwack said that it wasn’t because he was tired of teaching. 

“I love to teach, but there is a voyage I have been wanting to take for a long time. Come October, I will be off to the Dalmatian Coast.” He also has two book contracts to finish. 

Litwack’s advice to his students has always been to research and write well. “But I don’t recommend Wikipedia as a source for your term paper,” he said laughing. “If you look me up there, you will see I retired five years ago.”

Berkeley’s Academic Senate handed a victory to supporters of the proposed half-billion-dollar contract between the former British Petroleum and the university. 

Microbiologist Randy Schek-man, sponsor of the winning resolution, modified his original  

proposal to create a review committee with four Academic Sen-ate committee chairs, but insisted on striking any reference in a proposed compromise measure that would mention a study critical of the latest major academic/corporate research pact. 

Schekman later said the creation of the committee was made at the suggestion of Academic Senate Chair William Drum-mond. 

But the key vote, striking any reference to a study the senate ordered after the university’s last corporate funding controversy, was defeated on a 186 to 82 show of hands. 

“I wanted to expunge any mention of the Michigan State study,” he said after the meeting. The study, commissioned by the senate, was critical of the university’s handling of the five-year pact between Novartis, a transnational Swiss agro-pharmaceutical giant, and the Department of Environ-mental Science Policy and Man-agement of the College of Natural Resources. 

“This is not about BP,” said Drummond, after the meeting. “On one level it’s about whether members of the faculty want to stall the deal with BP. The answer was emphatically ‘no.’ 

“On another level, there is a sense of alienation and a sense of fracture among some of the faculty,” with teachers in the social sciences and humanities “because they feel the resources and attention are being taken away from them and given to the schools of law, engineering, chemistry and so forth.” 

BP p.l.c. has announced the award of $500 million to create the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), which would be located at the Berkeley campus, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

UC Berkeley would be the recipient of the funds and subcontract with the other two institutions. 

The EBI proposal has won the endorsements of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, who praise the idea of creating vehicle fuels from plant crops as a “green” solution to the global warming. 

Critics on the Berkeley faculty have challenged the close ties the agreement would create between the university and a multinational giant with a checkered past. 

From the first vote taken at Thursday afternoon’s meeting, the end result was clear, and when it came to a show of hands, an amendment to modify Schekman’s resolution by including a recommendation to consider the recommendations from the Michigan State review of the Novartis agreement were rejected. 

The only compromise was the creation of “an adequately supported committee” consisting of the chairs of the senate’s Budget, Research, Academic Planning and Resource Allocation, and Academic Freedom committees. 

Heated moments 

At one point during a discussion, Schekman appeared to compare dissident faculty member Ignacio Chapela to Don Imus, the trash-talking radio host recently fired by CBS radio and MSNBC television for racist and sexist remarks about women athletes. 

Schekman said a professor had called Birgeneau a prostitute during that session, adding, “Don Imus was fired by CBS for such remarks and I regret we don’t have the power to” do the same. 

Applause followed. 

But a review of a transcript of the March 8 forum reveals the only use of the words ‘prostitute’ or ‘prostitution’ came during remarks by Professor Ignacio Chapela, one of the 17 faculty members who had called for the Thursday senate meeting. 

As associate professor in the College of Natural Resources, Chapela was one of the leading critics of the Novartis decision and was released by the university two years ago and rehired only after he filed suit. 

During the March meeting Chapela had said of the BP proposal, “I have tried for size the word ‘prostitution’ as best describing that for which the Chancellor and his associates would like us to sign.” 

“I never called the chancellor a prostitute,” Chapela said. “I wouldn’t do that.” 

“It was very interesting that it came right after Anne Wagner was booed when she said that there were rumors about people being threatened with loss of tenure or their positions if they opposed EBI,” he said. 

Wagner, a professor of art history, was the principal speaker for the defeated resolution calling for a blue ribbon oversight committee. 

The meeting consisted of a long series of votes dictated by parliamentary procedure, and critics of the BP lost on every one, whether by show of hands or by voice. 

Schekman and his allies presented the calls for oversight as a threat to academic freedom—specifically the freedom of researchers to seeks funds wherever they want. Critics portrayed the BP proposal as a potential threat to the openness and collegiality of a public university. 

Drummond later blamed the course of events on Proposition 13, which has forced universities to turn to corporate coffers. 

“Blame it on your parents,” he told a young reporter. 

Earlier, during the meeting, anthropologist Charles Briggs said he wanted more oversight because during fieldwork in Venezuela in 1995 he discovered a secret agreement between the government and then-British Petroleum that called for oil exploration in an environmentally sensitive rain forest. 

“I contacted activists, and they forced a public debate,” he said, calling for close scrutiny of BP’s dealing with Cal. 

Chapela said he found the Senate meeting “a very educational experience,” in which “we ended up voting on Schekman’s resolutions and didn’t even get a chance to vote on our own.” 

He said backers of the agreement mobilized effectively, citing an email sent to engineering faculty in which the meeting “was billed as their ten-year immunization against people like myself.” 

Publicity drive  

Thursday’s vote followed an extensive campaign by the university. 

The university’s public relations staff has been lobbying hard for the BP project in recent days. The push started with an April 10 story about a story, describing an upcoming article in Vanity Fair that portrays the BP deal in glowing terms. 

Two days later, the PR staff followed up with a package of seven items covering the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the name given the project that would be funded by BP’s half-billion-dollar research grant. 

Another story followed Tuesday, discussing a biofuels rating system being developed on campus that would rate fuels “like the Michelin stars for hotels and restaurants” according to their ecological and social goodness. 

The campus PR site also linked to paeans of project praise written by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Director Steven Chu for the San Francisco Chronicle and a similar piece by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer for the Sacramento Bee. 

The PR site didn’t mention that accompanying the Birgenau/Chu encomium piece were a highly critical article by Los Angeles attorney Al Meyerhold and a Chronicle editorial opposing the half-billion-project carrying the headline “UC and the perils of partnership.”  

Nowhere in any of the articles did the word “Novartis” appear, though it was very much in the minds and on the lips of critics, who have often referred to the warnings issued by a research team hired by the university to examine the school’s last major gown/boardroom collaboration. 

Debate over the 1998 five-year, $25 million Novartis research agreement effectively drew the line in the sand which has again divided faculty at the prospect of the BP accord. 

A team from Michigan State University was hired by the Academic Senate to look at the agreement while the contract was running and examine its actual results and its implications. 

While the researchers said the worst fears of critics hadn’t been realized, they said the agreement itself posed vexing issues, especially because it involved the entire Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management. 

The researchers specifically recommended that no future deals should be allowed which involve entire departments or large numbers of faculty. The recommendations were never implemented, despite the study’s cost of $225,000. 

Also on hand for Thursday’s votes was John M. Simpson of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which has organized support for critics of the BP agreement. 

“Our only recourse now is to continue and try and shine light on what’s happening and to raise the issue with UC regents,” he said.

A bill that would guarantee single-payer health care coverage to all Californians passed the California State Senate Health Committee Thursday, leaving at least one community advocate optimistic about the bill’s chances of becoming law. 

Senator Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840 now goes to the full Senate and, if it passes there, to the Assembly. Kuehl’s bill would provide health care coverage for all Californians through a single, state-developed health care system, the so-called “single payer” system. 

Vote Health organization, a local advocate of Kuehl’s bill, has scheduled a public discussion on the bill and health care reform for Monday, April 23, 7 p.m., at California Nursing Association Hall, 2000 Franklin St. at 20th Street, in downtown Oakland. 

Other bills that would guarantee coverage for a smaller number of Californians have been introduced by Senate President Don Perata, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, the Senate Republican Caucus, and Assembly Repub-licans. In addition, while not introducing a specific bill himself, Governor Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger has released the outlines of a health insurance reform package. 

Vote Health has written an eight-page comparison of what they call Kuehl’s “comprehensive reform” to the other proposals, which they describe as either “incremental” (the Schwarzeneg-ger, Perata, and Nuñez plans) or “limited” (Republican legislators’) reform. 

Perata is a co-sponsor of Kuehl’s bill, and both he and Nuñez have said that they support single-payer, universal health care coverage in principle. Both Democratic legislative leaders have said, however, that they don’t believe such a bill can make it to law this year, and they want to pass legislation that can lead to at least some increase in health care coverage in California. 

But many health care advocates in the state are putting all their efforts and bets on  

Kuehl’s bill. 

“Spectacular,” Health Care for All (HCA) chair Dan Hodges said in a telephone interview in describing the scene at yesterday’s committee vote. “It was a gigantic turnout by people advocating for passage. The hearing room was packed, both on the ground floor and in the balconies.” 

Others were watching the hearing on television in overflow rooms in the Capitol Building, and in rooms outside the state house, as well. It was a rainbow of t-shirts from such groups as the California School Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and the California Nurses Association. 

When Senator Kuehl spoke before the committee, she thanked the “1.2 bazillion people” who had come out to support her bill. “HCA has been working on universal health care issues since 1998, and this is a monumental change, a historic change, in advocacy for a single-payer plan. It’s the greatest growth we’ve seen in public support for health care reform.” 

Hodges said that Kuehl’s bill passed on a 6-4 partisan vote, with committee Demo-crats voting in favor and Republicans voting against. With a two-thirds vote needed to overcome a possible veto by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, some Republican support is needed for Kuehl’s bill to become law. 

Hodges is upbeat that this can be done. 

“We are going to need a giant public demand for health care reform,” he said, “a giant, historic grassroots movement which will cause some businesses to break ranks and come forward and do the right thing and support Kuehl’s bill.” 

Hodges said that businesses will be the key to the bill’s passage.  

“I can’t see this happening without many businesses changing their positions,” he said. “I can’t see Republican support without pressure from their business constituents. That’s going to lead to a leveraging of moderate Democrats as well.”

DAPAC members finally adopted recommendations for developing UC Berkeley-owned property in downtown Berkeley Wednesday, but it took more than three hours, and one key element remains to be decided. 

The marathon session of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee didn’t deal with the second major item on their agenda—adoption of the sustainabilty element, the cornerstone of the new downtown plan they’re formulating. 

Chair Will Travis began the meeting with an announcement that the city had defeated the lawsuit challenging the court settlement that provided for the creation of the new downtown plan DAPAC is formulating. 

“We can move forward with total confidence that we are a legitimate body,” he said. 

When one committee member expressed doubt, Travis said, “There are still people who don’t believe in global warming and even Galileo had trouble convincing everybody.” 

While an Alameda County Superior Court judge decided against the litigation filed by activists including Anne Wagley, Berkeley Daily Planet arts and entertainment editor, attorney Stephan Volker said he will appeal on behalf of his clients. 

That suit challenged earlier litigation filed by the city over the university’s Long Range Develop-ment Plan 2020’s plans to add an additional 800,000 square feet of construction off campus in the city center, plus the creation of at least 1,000 new parking spaces. 

Wednesday night’s DAPAC meeting focused on a report by a joint DAPAC-UC Berkeley subcommittee tasked with providing recommendations for how and where the university implements its expansion plans for the heart of Berkeley. 

Before subcommittee chair Dorothy Walker began describing each of the subcommittee recommendations, DAPAC member Billy Keys warned that “the whole plan won’t be finished” by the November deadline if work continues at its present pace. 

But members wanted to go through and vote on the items individually. 

Many of the recommendations had come directly from the Downtown Berkeley Association and its economic development consultant, Deena Belzer, who presented recommendations she said would help revitalize the city center. 

“The thinking is that you have to have a tight core that is very walkable,” Walker said, and once customers are happy with that, retail can expand to surrounding areas. 

The recommendation adopted by DAPAC calls for concentrating initially on Shattuck Avenue from Center Street to University Avenue, and University Avenue, Addison and Center streets between Shattuck and Oxford Street. 

Much of the discussion focused on the university’s plans for the old state Department of Health Services highrise between Berkeley Way and Hearst Avenue and Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street. 

The university plans to demolish the existing buildings and transform the site into a public health campus, with clinics, an optometry clinic/ shop and functions that will serve the community as well as the campus. 

DAPAC members want a 100-foot depth of frontage along Shattuck to be devoted to retail. Developer Ali Kashani, filling in for the absent Mim Hawley, said that unless parking was provided, 100 feet would be a minimum depth needed to attract successful retail. 

Another recommendation calls for development of a parking structure on the city’s existing surface lot on Berkeley Way west of Shattuck, but discussion and a vote on that proposal was delayed at the request of Rob Wrenn. 

Several members, starting with architect Jim Novosel, were concerned that a recommendation that the university acquire additional property, including the old Purcell Paint Co. site. 

“If the university expands downtown and is taking property off the tax rolls, there should be overarching language that the city be paid” for what services it provides as well as any loss of resources, said DAPAC Chair Will Travis. 

Novosel said he also wanted to see the university devote the ground floors of new development for either retail or public outreach functions to provide a livelier atmosphere on the street. 

While there was support for university development of the site of the landmark University Garage at 1920 Oxford St., members voted to adopt a resolution by Novosel asking for the university to preserve a meaningful portion of the building’s facade and frontage. 

Members turned down a proposal to urge the university to relocate the Student Athlete High Performance Center on the site of the university’s Tang Center lot at Fulton Street and Bancroft Way in the event the university is blocked from building at the planned site west of Memorial Stadium.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates urged local businesses to help propel Berkeley toward becoming the greenest city in the country at the Sustainable Berkeley Commercial Property Climate Protection Luncheon gathering on Tuesday. 

The event aimed to educate property owners and managers about free and subsidized services that would help save money and increase tenant satisfaction. 

“We are going to lead the nation in reducing greenhouse gases,” Mayor Bates told an enthusiastic crowd of local business leaders and property owners. “Berkeley already has 200 green businesses. We are now on our way to getting 100 green restaurants. I urge you to join us and sign up a sustainability pledge today.” 

Mayoral Chief of Staff Cisco DeVries said that different factors, such as the percentage of residents using public transit, number of parks, zoning policies to encourage housing near transit, and environmental purchasing rules, were often used to measure how “green a city was.” 

Sustainable Berkeley—a mostly city-funded group of public and private individuals and institutions—has attracted controversy recently because it does not fall under city government oversight. 

Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington expressed concerns last month that the organization is not subject to open meeting laws, union oversight and civil service protections. 

Mayor Bates also announced that there would be a Berkeley Measure G Climate Action Kick-Off on May 19 at the Ashby Stage. 

Co-hosts include Bates, The Sierra Club, KyotoUSA, Sustainable Berkeley, Transportation and Land Use Coalition, The Ecology Center and StopWaste.org. 

In 2006, 80 percent of Berkeley residents voted in support of Measure G, which aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Berkeley by 80 percent by 2050 and directs the mayor to develop a community-based climate action plan by 2007. 

“The reason we put it on the ballot was because we realized that if we were going to make meaningful greenhouse gas reduction we need a broader community engagement,” said DeVries, who has worked extensively on the project. 

“We need residents as well as businesses to take steps to reduce emissions,” he said. “Measure G was sort of a first step in a broad community effort to show people’s commitment to making changes. We wanted people to think of this as a major focus of city government. There is no way a group of smart people can sit in a room and create policy that will work unless individual people make the right choices. We want to give people information and work with them to create a greenhouse gas reduction plan.” 

DeVries said that the next step was to put a team together that would gather community input.  

“ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability recently finished analyzing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2005 and the preliminary data seems to indicate that emissions are decreasing in the environment,” said DeVries, who added that the data was subject to revision. 

“This is with respect to gas, electricity and even transportation to some extent. This shows that people in Berkeley do care about issues such as global warming.” 

The April 24 City Council agenda lists a process recommendation from the Mayor asking the City Council to “adopt a framework for community and commission engagement in the development of the Measure G greenhouse gas reduction plan, including input from relevant commissions, community engagement, a kickoff event in May, and an interim report to the City Council.” 

The agenda also contains a request from City Manager Phil Kamlarz to “approve a budget recommendation of $100,000 to fund a project-based position to work on the development of the Measure G plan and the costs associated with development of a community process.” 

Ashby Stage was selected as the venue for the Measure G inaugural event because of its decision to go solar, said Mayor Bates. The theater is in the process of fund-raising for the cost of 63 solar panels and a new roof, which it estimates to be $107,000. 

“This makes us the first 100 percent solar theater in the country,” said Joanie McBrien, who handles development at the theater. “We were spending $10,000 a year in electricity bills. We realized that with solar energy we would be able to save that money and redirect it toward our artists. It seemed a smart move. Also, we are located at a very visible part of Berkeley, at the corner of Ashby and Martin Luther King Jr. As a result, the project would serve as an inspiration to others.” 

The project is scheduled to begin in September 2007 and to be completed by October. 

Laura Billings, who represented SRM Associates—the real estate developer that owns 2150 Shattuck Av. (formerly known as the PowerBar building)—at the Sustainable Berkeley event, said her company was exploring solar options within its projects. 

“We are currently working on four LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified projects,” she said. “We are looking at purchasing carbon offsets to reduce energy consumption in buildings.” 

SRM Associates is waiting to get a Silver LEED approval on its remodeling of the Peet’s Coffee and Tea building in Alameda. 

“We were able to control a lot of lighting and water usage in the building,” BIllings said. “We are also in the process of rehabbing the old Vista College building at 2020 Milvia. We want to recycle as much as we can from the existing building and implement an energy efficient heating and cooling system.” 

Billings also said they were working with new tenants—such as Cadence Design Systems, which will be taking over the PowerBar office space—on tenant improvement projects such as green interiors. 

“We are also using green janitorial supplies and diverting 75 percent more waste at the 2150 Shattuck Ave. building,” she said. 

James Monninger, who spoke at the panel on behalf of PG&E, said that they were excited to be a part of Sustainable Berkeley. 

“PG&E wants to help Berkeley residents and businesses,” he said. “The key is to get involved up front. We like to come up with a lot of acronyms and today we have come up with ACT. It stands for analyze, conserve and transfer. We have expanded support and now offer a tremendous amount of choice such as free services and cash or calculated rebates. The best way to get an audit conducted would be to call our business customer center and we will send over a person to start the process immediately.” 

The City of Berkeley’s Solid Waste department asked citizens to make use of the waste management and landfill diversion options available to them.

Legislation that would re-open police disciplinary hearings and open up police personnel disciplinary files narrowly passed the Senate Public Safety Committee this week on a partisan 3-2 vote, leading advocates to the conclusion that a compromise will be necessary for the bill to survive both the Legislature and a possible veto from Gov. Schwarzenegger.  

An Assembly bill (AB 1648) by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) that was similar to State Sen. Gloria Romero’s (D-Los Angeles) bill was pulled by Leno before it came to a vote this week in the Assembly Public Safety Committee. 

Romero’s SB 1019 seeks to overturn the 2006 Copley Press, Inc. v. Superior Court (County of San Diego) ruling, in which the California Supreme Court decided that counties could properly bar the public from police disciplinary hearings. In addition, SB 1019 would expand the public’s right to see some police disciplinary records that were not available before the Supreme Court’s ruling.  

Voting for the measure in Tuesday’s meeting were three Democrats (Romero, Cedillo Gilbert, and Mark Ridley-Thomas, all of Los Angeles). Voting against it were the committee’s two Republicans, Dave Cogdill of Modesto, and Bob Margett of Los Angeles. 

In announcing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California’s support for Leno’s bill, which the organization described as “similar” to Romero’s, Police Practices Policy Director Mark Schlosberg said that, “the public has a right to know about misconduct by public officials who are paid for with public tax dollars.” 

“The Supreme Court decision, Copley Press v. Superior Court (2006), shuts down public access to information about police complaints and hearings that have traditionally been open,” the ACLU of Northern California announced this week in its release. “Since the Copley decision, San Francisco Police Commission hearings of disciplinary cases and records have been closed. Other oversight agencies throughout the state have been similarly affected including those in Los Angeles, San Diego, Berkeley and Oakland.” 

Following Tuesday’s hearing and vote on SB 1019, at least one local advocate for the bill believes compromise will be necessary to ensure its passage and the governor’s signature into law. 

“It’s clear that there will have to be amendments,” Rashidah Grinag, representative of the Oakland community organization PUEBLO, said by telephone. “A return to the pre-Copley open public hearings may be acceptable to all sides. But release of police disciplinary records is going to be a problem. Attorneys for police agencies told the committee that police would be put in jeopardy if that information was released to the public. They made it pretty melodramatic.” 

Grinage also said that police agency attorneys said “we didn’t mind having public disciplinary hearings in the past, but recently, members of the press and defense attorneys have begun to show up to monitor them. So they were saying they didn’t mind having the public hearings, so long as the public didn’t notice them. Now that the public is noticing them, they want them stopped. There’s a lot of irony in that.” 

Grinage said Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland) will be a “key figure” in forging a compromise to get Romero’s bill passed into law, and lobbying for the measure by East Bay Area activists is now expected to turn to Perata’s office. 

Besides Grinage from PUEBLO, Berkeley Police Review Committee Director Victoria Irby, Berkeley PRC member Sharon Kidd, Oakland Community Police Review Board Director Joyce Hicks, CPRB policy analyst Patrick Caseras, Northern California ACLU representative Mark Schlosberg, and Chris Morray Jones of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland all came to Sacramento on Tuesday from the Bay Area to testify in favor of Romero’s bill. 

Oakland City Council’s Rules Committee has scheduled a hearing on SB 1019 on May 3 with the possibility of the full Council eventually endorsing the bill. Oakland City Council previously endorsed Leno’s AB 1648.  

In November of 2006, the City of Berkeley contested a lawsuit brought by the Berkeley Police Association that contended similarly to the Copley case that police officer hearings and records of the hearings must remain closed to protect the privacy of police officers. 

The city lost to the BPA last February in Superior Court.

The sale of seven Berkeley apartment buildings will make the city richer by $2.1 million in the form of a one-time property transfer tax payment, reports Calvin Fong, an aide to Mayor Tom Bates. 

The fee, assessed at the rate of 1.5 percent of the sale price, indicates that the seven apartments owned by Panoramic Interests sold for about $150 million. 

The addition of more than $2 million to the budget of a cash-strapped city represents a major windfall at a time when the city has been struggling for funds and scheduling periodic days off for city workers. 

“I’m not sure what the final amount is, but whatever it turns out to be, we could spend it five times over,” said City Manager Phil Kamlarz. 

City councilmembers adopted a policy two years ago of treating major transfer tax receipts as one-time payments for use on capital projects, Kamlarz said. 

“We’ve got a laundry list five miles long,” he said. “It could be streets, or storm drains or housing. Everyone’s got ideas.”  

The seven buildings built by developer Patrick Kennedy, a Piedmont resident, and UC Berkeley Professor David Teece, include the Gaia, Fine Arts, ARTech, Bachenheimer and Touriel buildings as well as the Berkeleyan Apartments and Acton Courtyard. 

The buildings, which consist primarily of smaller apartments rented by UC Berkeley students, represent the largest group of rentals under private ownership in the city. 

The properties were acquired by Equity Residential, a Chicago-based firm that represents itself as “the largest publicly traded owner and operator of multifamily properties in the United States.” 

While Panoramic’s 368 Berkeley units represent a significant percentage of the city’s newer rentals, the figure pales in comparison to the Equity Residential’s February figures for other California rentals—26,241 apartments—and its national total of 165,716. 

In addition to the one-time transfer tax windfall, the city also stands to gain from its share of increased property taxes when the apartment buildings are reassessed based on their new sales price. 

The pre-sale values assigned by the Alameda County assessor’s office total $67.8 million, with the individual values for the buildings set at: 

• The Gaia Building (2001), 2117 Allston Way, $13,496,483; 

• The Fine Arts Building (2004), 2110 Haste St. at Shattuck Avenue, $18,102,621; 

• The Bachenheimer Building (2004), 2119 University Ave., $7,645,446; 

• Berkeleyan Apartments (1998), 1910 Oxford St., $6,376,190; 

• Acton Courtyard (2003), 1370 University Ave., $11,095,554; 

• The Touriel Building (2004), 2004 University Ave., $6,075,994, and 

• The ARTech Building (2002), 2002 Addison St., $5,000,210. 

The assessed values and the actual property values differ significantly because assessments are capped at a maximum annual increase of 2 percent, thanks to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. 

Thus, the values of the Panoramic properties don’t reflect the recent strong inflation in real estate, which has only begun to level off in recent months. 

Kamlarz said that the bonanza from a major commercial sale is partly offset by the recent decline in turnover of residential properties.

Forty-two school board members from around the country paid a visit to Longfellow Arts and Technology Magnet Middle School Monday to look at what the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is doing with technology in the middle schools. 

The school board directors were in San Francisco for the 67th annual National School Board conference. 

The group spent the day at Longfellow and interacted with students and faculty. 

“Longfellow is a model in the field of providing technological education. It is helping students bridge the digital divide by ensuring that every student is technologically literate by the end of eighth grade,” said BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan. “Technology innovation at Long-fellow Middle School has been supported by an Enhancing Education through Technology grant which led to equipment upgrades, a full lab with industry hardware and software, professional development for staff, and the creation of a set of technology standards that articulates what students need to know.” 

The children can also choose to participate in the nationally recognized Environmental and Spatial Technology (EAST) Program, where they apply their technological skills to service-learning projects or in an afterschool program called GenY where they collaborate with teachers to develop technology-enriched curriculum projects.  

Students had an exciting time showing the visitors the things they have designed, from PowerPoint presentations to highly animated websites. The board members also asked the school’s technology teacher questions about the curriculum and observed classroom teacher Marlo Warburton with her students in the computer lab. 

In addition to technology, the visit also focused on the School Lunch Initiative, a collaboration with Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation, Berkeley’s Center for Ecoliteracy and Children’s Hospital Oakland, which aims to change the way schools across the country look at nutrition.

The Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board (LPAB) in San Francisco voted 6-1 in favor of the local landmark designation of the UC Berkeley Extension Laguna Street Campus Wednesday.  

UC Berkeley’s plan to convert its historic six-acre Laguna Street Extension campus in San Francisco into a private rental-housing development has met with some controversy from residents and community groups who want to retain the site for public use. 

“The LPAB will meet again on May 16 to vote on the specific details of what is considered contributory,” said Cynthia Servetnick of Save the UC Berkeley Extension (UCBE) Laguna Street Campus. “The Planning Commission must act on the LPAB’s recommendation within the next 60 days.”  

First used as a city orphanage from 1854 until the San Francisco State Normal School was established in the 1920s to accommodate public school teachers, the campus has also served as the original home of San Francisco State University (SFSU). 

SFSU will be screening fimmaker Eliza Hemingway’s Uncommon Knowledge: Closing the Books at UC Berkeley Extension, which documents the closure, on May 10 to raise awareness about preservation efforts for the campus. 

Citing prohibitive maintenance costs to bring the campus up to current seismic and disability codes, the UC Regents closed the UC Extension building in 2004, and it has been sitting empty since then. 

A public comment period for the draft environmental impact report of the proposed project at the UCBE campus took place Thursday at the Planning Commission meeting at the SF City Hall Thursday. 

Members of the public can also send in their written comments to Paul Maltzer, environmental review officer at the Planning Department, until Monday.

Intravenous drug use (IDU) is emerging as a significant driver for the “second wave” of the international HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to Dr. Chris Beyrer, a leading authority on the disease. 

This wave is driven, in part, by record world levels of opium production, particularly in Afghanistan, and is compounded by the virtual absence of effective HIV/AIDS treatment programs in public health systems. 

Beyrer, a leading epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, presented his findings to a group of ethnic media journalists who were co-hosted by New America Media and the Open Society Institute’s Washington, D.C. office. 

The “good news,” Beyrer said, is that “there is evidence of the slowing and decline of new infection rates” in sub-Saharan Africa and South America. However, Iran, Nepal, Indonesia, Central Asia, Vietnam, North Korea, Russia and the Ukraine are among those countries that are almost certain to experience an epidemic that will overwhelm their current capacity to adequately cope or contain the disease. 

Beyrer noted that, while HIV/AIDS is most often associated in the American public’s mind with sexual activity, intravenous drug use adds another unique set of challenges to public health systems, particularly where those systems are relatively fragile or, as in some developing countries, virtually non-existent. 

Data gathered in 2004 on Russia, for instance, showed that 87 percent of registered HIV cases were the result of intravenous drug use. Nine countries within the former Soviet Union’s orbit typically showed well over 50 percent of registered cases attributable to IV drug use. 

Beyrer pointed out that well known drug trafficking land routes correlate with projected second wave epidemics, but countries in the path of drug shipping are also at risk. Thus, in West Africa, Ghana and Nigeria are potential “second wave” countries, while the island of Mauritius off of Africa’s east coast is suffering an alarming increase in IV drug use-driven HIV cases as smuggled drugs head toward Tanzania and Kenya, two countries that also made the list as emerging epicenters. 

Quite simply, the flood of heroin through a country—whether it is the eventual destination or not—tends to increase the number of users there who quickly determine that needle injection is the best method to derive the desired effects of the drug. Beyrer also emphasized that, in some countries, the spread of HIV/AIDS is accelerated by needle sharing among prison populations. Iran is a prime example. 

Beyrer cited 2005 data that showed only 10,000 cases of HIV/AIDS being reported to the Iranian ministry while the estimated drug user population ranged between two to four million people. Yet, there was a 15.2 percent prevalence of HIV “among male intravenous drug users attending drug treatment in Tehran in 2005” and the disease was “strongly associated with a history of shared drug use injection in prison rather than sharing outside of prison.”  

Additional evidence showed that IV drug use was responsible for 85 percent HIV/AIDS transmission among drug users in Iran. 

Regardless of religion or culture, drug use appears to take root when there is a sizeable flow of drugs through a society. The Uighurs, a people of Turkic origin, are facing an increase in IV drug use despite their adherence to Islam. Their homeland, China’s Xinjiang province, lies along a major drug trafficking route. Similarly, Iran, regardless of its religious traditions, is likely to remain at risk given its proximity to Afghanistan. 

Yet, Beyrer says Iran is among the countries making important steps to confront its IV drug use patterns. Iran has legalized sterile needle exchange programs, a practical approach to limiting the infectious spread of the disease that the United States still refuses to fund through its international and even domestic HIV/AIDS prevention programs. Iran has also legalized the use of methadone as a treatment methodology. 

Beyrer explained that heroin, a derivative of opium from the processing of poppy, is treatable with an “opioid analogue therapy.” Methadone is probably the best known drug used in this therapy. Countries that ban methadone remove a useful tool in their public health arsenal. Beyrer also noted that Iranian public health officials are leveraging their cultural strengths to confront IV drug use. Having identified the mother in the Iranian family as a central actor in running the household, Iranian health officials are engaging mothers in monitoring their children’s adherence to drug treatment regimens. Collectively, Iranian actions indicate the growing consciousness that intravenous drug use is a public health concern rather than simply a criminal offense. 

It is difficult for individuals to admit their addiction in societies that champion criminal detention and prosecution as the mainstay of their anti-drug strategy, Beyrer explained. Criminal charges can lead not only to social alienation, but to termination of legal rights. Stripped of their dignity, imprisoned users thus become among the most marginalized members of a society, with no effective treatment available as they face the prospect of contracting HIV/AIDS through shared needle use. 

Breyer called for countries to begin building their public health capacities by using “evidence-based” strategies to curtail IV drug use-driven HIV/AIDS. But he was somewhat somber in the face of the record bumper crop of opium harvested in Afghanistan in 2006. 

When Afghanistan was under Soviet occupation, through the eras of the warlords, the Taliban, and now under President Karzai, no Afghan government has been able to eliminate opium production, according to data collected since 1980. The most successful effort was in 2001, the last year of Taliban rule, due to compliance with a government “fatwa,” or religious edict, calling for a ban on opium production. Since 2002, however, production has risen. 

Beyrer said the country’s 6,100 tons of opium produced in 2006 was the highest on record by far. The volume would have yielded approximately 610 tons of heroin, “more than all the drug users [in the world] can use.” 

Beyrer said that the staggering volume of heroin available and the amount of profit that can be derived from drug sales makes confronting IV drug use-transmitted HIV/AIDS daunting. Unless countries put a health infrastructure in place now, he said, the world will be seeing a fourth and fifth wave of HIV/AIDS in the decade ahead.  

“The window of opportunity to control these epidemics is narrow and closing,” Beyrer said.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of imported tschotchkes, have a house full of them. (For the Yiddish-challenged, that’s all the little bits of useless decorative stuff you either love because your mother didn’t let them into your childhood home, or hate because she did.) But still, in the context of our PC-plus city’s Earth Day festival on Saturday, I did wonder. The Planet had a table there, and we spent an hour or so alternately sitting and walking around, chatting with vendors and visitors. We noticed quite a few stalls with merchandise which originated in Asia or Latin America which was delivered in big vans, panel trucks or SUVs. What’s wrong with that, you might ask?  

Well, energy consumption—all the stuff that we love to bring in from far away, but at what cost? Even our local pols see no contradiction in jetting around the world on their long vacations, presumably to study sustainability. Of course I’m no saint myself—I bought some lovely earrings at the fair (beads from China, assembled nearer to home.) 

And one visitor groused at great length about the seeming need for mega-amps of loud music at an Earth Day event, and I must admit I agreed with him. Whatever happened to the concept of noise pollution? Silent Spring was about not being able to hear the sounds of the birds, but even if we’re no longer killing as many of them with DDT we’re drowning them out with human-produced sounds at every outdoor opportunity. Or masking them with personal seemingly-embedded earbuds playing synthetic songs. At least the organizers could have hired mariachis, an endangered species, to entertain the crowd—acoustic of course.  

Which brings us round to the whole uncomfortable subject of green-washing, a topic which has enormous potential for embarrassment whenever it comes up. For starters, there’s that nice new office building which is being built downtown for “environmental organizations.” We’ve printed a lot of their letters, their explanations about why the founding father for whom the building is named is smiling down on their project from heaven or wherever, but no one has explained to my satisfaction why it wouldn’t be “greener” just to re-use the several existing buildings downtown with thick walls and windows that open, built of never-to-be-replaced old-growth wood.  

And then there’s the question of why, just as jobs are moving apace to the suburbs, housing is being crammed into older cities. Or, the other way round, why are many trying to re-zone cities like Oakland and Berkeley, which still have a good number of light industries, to drive out jobs just as people are moving back in? (There was a good article by Eyal Press in a recent Nation about this conundrum.) The standard explanation is that people will live downtown and walk to services, but—reality check—there’s still no major inexpensive supermarket near Center and Shattuck in Berkeley, nor will there be in our lifetime. Whole Foods will be the first “supermarket” to locate in Oakland in 25 years and—well—it’s Whole Foods, not priced for the working stiff. Also few jobs which will support families, even in subsidized housing. 

The big green-washing event of the quarter has been the Faustian spectacle of UC’s science faculty enthusiastically selling their souls to the British Petroleum devil. Watching it unfold has been fascinating. The first, non-voting meeting of the faculty senate offered ample material for a terrific opera, with actual and potential beneficiaries of the BP largesse falling all over each other to explain why it’s really really fine. They would make a perfect quartet, male and female voices, all full of passion. Berkeley’s own John Adams used the Dr. Faustus motif to great effect in Dr. Atomic, and here we have the ideal sequel: Dr. Bionic perhaps? Or Dr. Genomic? 

The latest act in the epic was last week, when 186 faculty members out-voted 82 of their colleagues to pass a pre-fabricated compromise endorsing the half-billion dollar contract with faint praise while promising token oversight. Some 2200 (or 1400, depending on how you count) tenure-track and emeritus faculty members were eligible to vote, but only 268 of them bothered to exercise the franchise. Many if not most of the pro voters would have been barred by the conflict of interest rules which govern the Berkeley City Council and other bodies, since they expect to profit financially from the contract.  

We had the opportunity over the weekend to talk to one of the “no” voters, an emeritus professor from a scientific field who had previously been part of the unsuccessful attempt to disengage the University of California from nuclear weapons research, along with the late Nobel Prize winner Owen Chamberlain and others. Most of his vote-no fellows last week were from the humanities or the soft sciences, not the hard sciences.  

He said that in the earlier case, as in this one, most of the support for retaining the contracts which were challenged on an ethical basis came from researchers who were afraid of losing their own funds, including some in different fields. But even he is not completely convinced that the BP deal will turn out badly, since he worries about global warming and hopes some science somewhere will provide a solution. 

The official university administration argument was that academic freedom is now defined as the freedom of academics to take anyone’s money. This is a curious recent gloss on the old idea of libido sciendi, lust for knowledge, to which Christopher Marlowe attributed Dr. Faustus’s downfall. There’s an equation in here somewhere, I’m sure. Knowledge is power, but also money is power, so maybe there’s an added touch of libido dominandi, lust for power, in what the pro-voting scientists want.  

And for some of course, money is just money, and what’s wrong with that? 

In fact, not all money is good money. We’re on the email list of a German organization, Coalition Against Bayer Dangers (CBG), devoted to exposing the history of another contributor to the local economy, the Bayer corporation. Here in a nutshell is what they charge on their web site:  

“Bayer has a long history of giving profits precedence over human rights and a sound environment. During the First World War the company invented Chemical Warfare (moisture gas) and built up a School for Chemical Warfare. Bayer was part of the conglomerate IG Farben, which worked closely with the Third Reich. IG Farben exploited several hundred thousand slave workers to build up their plant in Auschwitz, took over companies all over Europe and used human guinea pigs for pharmaceutical research. IG Farben’s subsidiary Degesch manufactured Zyklon B, the poison gas used in the gas chambers. In the late ’30s organophosphates (sarine, tabun) were introduced, after the war marketed by Bayer as pesticides (E 605, Folidol, Nemacur, Fenthion). IG Farben’s managers were convicted as war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. After the war IG Farben was broken up into BASF, Bayer and Hoechst (now called Aventis), and the three firms still cooperate closely and exert a large influence on German and European politics.” 

We have no first-hand knowledge of Bayer’s current policies and politics, though perhaps we should, but the IG Farben story is well-documented. Its research funding during the second world war was the very definition of “bad money,” and the German academics who took it were clearly in the wrong.  

There are now several similar advocacy organizations devoted to collecting and exposing what they consider to be British Petroleum’s environmental crimes. It’s at least a theoretical possibility that they’re on to something, that BP money is bad money. The token oversight created by the official compromise won’t provide much of a barrier in the very likely case that the researchers’ libido sciendi gets out of hand. We’ll probably have to wait for Dr. Bionic see how this particular Faustian bargain turns out. 

The picture that emerges from the appearance of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee is not one of “high crimes and misdemeanors”—unfortunately. “We should have done a better job of communicating,” he says. “I accept responsibility,” he says, “mistakes were made.” Next thing you know, he’ll be going into rehab. 

Gonzales claimed he never liked the plan to replace the U.S. attorney in Arkansas with one of Karl Rove’s flunkies, and that he was sincere when he told Arkansas Sen. Pryor that the Senate would have a chance to vote on whether Rove’s guy would be confirmed. As the bulldog-like Sen. Charles Schumer made very clear, Gonzales was either lying to Pryor, or he was out of the loop on the elaborate plan to evade the confirmation process which was being hatched by his subordinates. He also claimed absolutely no recall of any of the events or conversations surrounding the attempt to remove Patrick Fitzgerald. His level of asserted non-comprehension of what’s been going on in the Justice Department where he’s supposed to be in charge is breathtaking.  

We’ve had plenty of scoundrels in government in this country before. But this time the criticism of Gonzales is not really that he’s a scoundrel, or even that he’s broken any laws per se, but that he’s a fool. This opinion is obviously bi-partisan, though some Republicans do seem to feel that he’s more to be pitied than censured. 

It is sad when a man doesn’t even know when he’s lying—Gonzales seems to be saying that currents of corruption were swirling all around him, but he was just going with the flow, as we say in California. What’s saddest of all is that there seems to be no evidence that he has ever been on the take in any big way—he’s allowed Justice to go to hell in a handcart for no particular reason except his desire to be considered one of the good ol’ boys.  

Now more than ever, where is Molly Ivins when we need her? We’re seeing on the national level the kind of shenanigans she did such a good job of reporting on from the Texas Legislature. When she spoke in Berkeley in 2004, UC’s press service quoted her: “The spin we’re getting from the White House—that everything is just lovely and that we’re going to bring a beacon of democracy to Iraq—is such happy horseshit,” she said. “I can barely stand to listen to it, and I spent years listening to the Texas Legislature.” And now the Bush administration, in the person of Alberto Gonzales, is treating the nation to yet another unsavory whiff of Texas Lege-style politics.  

Payoffs, especially at the level of mutual back-scratching, have been the special province of another Texas transplant, Karl Rove. Slots as U.S. attorney have been horse-traded as political favors to please senators and others whose support was needed to advance some other agenda. Gonzales freely acknowledged that at least one of the attorneys whose job was in play is an excellent lawyer and a fine manager of staff, but was just the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Competence and performance had nothing to do with it. 

The way the Iraq war has been handled is another classic example of a situation so messed up you can’t even tell the fools from the knaves. Paul Wolfowitz is a prime case in point. Michael Moore made him look like a stage villain in Fahrenheit 9/11, combing his hair with saliva, but the stories coming out of his short tenure at the World Bank, complete with exotic mistress, make him look more like a buffoon. There’s a faint commedia dell’arte flavor about the whole Bush crowd: Dario Fo does the Texas Legislature perhaps?  

It would even be funny if the consequences weren’t so serious. As many commentators have already pointed out, while the United States. was mourning 32 deaths on a college campus caused by a madman empowered by Virginia’s lax gun control laws, 200 more Iraqis died as a consequence of an invasion which started with an earlier round of the Bush administration’s peculiar signature combination of lies and credulousness.  

One of the key attributes of George W. Bush’s presidency is that he prefers to surround himself in public with weak and incompetent people—what used to be called yes-men, but now includes women like Harriet Miers. The brains behind his regime—and they are certainly there—reside most often in the person of shadowy figures like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney who operate most effectively behind the scenes.  

Do they even know when they’re lying, these Bush stooges? It’s hard to tell.  

When Douglas Feith was peddling the WMD story, did he realize it was faked? When Alberto Gonzales went along with firing U.S. attorneys who were doing their job well, did he realize he was enabling a political purge? His department authorized destructive practices like illegal wiretapping—is he enough of a lawyer to recognize what unconstitutional mischief he was presiding over? 

The profound disgust which is visible on the faces of some of the Republicans on Judiciary as they question Gonzales is striking—they are simply unable to hide their contempt for him. Perhaps even Republicans, for whom there has seldom been a good word in this space, are starting to catch on.  

OPPENHEIMER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for Phil McArdle’s April 17 article on Robert Openheimer. It was my good fortune to attend a lecture Openheimer gave after his retirement in which he said that mathematics can prove that the ultimate unit of reality is a particle or else energy. He said he believed there is something existing between these two polarities and he would now spend time seeking that other thing. 

Karl Kasten 

• 

CAPTAIN AHAB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I couldn’t agree more with J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s April 6 column up to a certain point. I too was struck by the resemblance of our leader to Captain Ahab when I saw Moby Dick on Channel 9 a couple of weeks ago. Allen-Taylor’s assessment of the danger of “walking backwards” out of Iraq makes sense. However, the lineup of American casualties on the PBS Newshour (12-plus almost every day) indicates that our non-mercenary troops are in gravest danger right now—not to mention thousands and thousands of Iraqi dying, and traumatized children orphaned. 

The fastest way to get out of this mess: Impeach the Bush administration now! Think of the damage they can still do with further crimes and misdemeanors! 

No one can blame Nancy Pelosi for not wanting the job, but she would be an excellent interim president during the 18 months, 78 weeks, and 549 days remaining in the current regime. 

Nancy Chirich 

• 

BLACK PANTHERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Going to the Black Panther exhibit in the city last spring, I came away with my closest memories of their operation. Rockets were exploding to celebrate the A’s 3rd straight world chamiponship in 1974, as I entered the doors of the Oakland Community School on E. 14th St., and was greeted by the stunning sight of a 52-piece youth jazz orchestra. 

The Panthers had brought in jazz drummer and teacher Charles Moffett, who was a close friend of Ornette Coleman, to create a jazz curriculum. Inspiring to me that kids were being given the opportunity to learn the heights of their improv-infused culture, I became friends with Charles (he died in 1997) and his family, got him some gigs, and even a tour of Japan. 

I believe there is an incredible story to be told about what has become of those 52 kids. As a documentary, it could have a Moffett family sound track (all five are musicians, and Charnett is an acclaimed bass player). I have been talking about this for a few months, have made and re-made good connections, although not a list of the Moffett 52.  

With Ron Dellums becoming mayor, ripe seems the time. As well as talking this up with long-time friends of the creative free jazz scene locally. Any ‘n’ all who would and can help on this, hey, be my quest. 

Arnie Passman 

• 

IMPEACH NOW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The world faces a grave emergency. The Bush administration is carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity in your name. These include the Iraq war, legalized torture, kangaroo courts posing as trials, warrantless spying, and now plans for war against Iran. The very nature of U.S. society and its relationship to other countries are being reshaped. 

Yet the Democratic-led Congress refuses to act in any meaningful way to stop the Bush regime, declaring that impeachment is “off the table” in the words of Nancy Pelosi. Democrats have voted to authorize $100 billion more for the Iraq war while pretending they are trying to stop it. To quote historian Howard Zinn, “It’s as if, before the Civil War, abolitionists agreed to postpone the emancipation of the slaves for a year, or two years, or five years, and coupled this with an appropriation of funds to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.” 

Each day the situation grows more urgent as Defense Secretary Gates extends the duty tours for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and aircraft carrier task forces maneuver near Iran poised to launch attacks on the president’s order. The torture, the spying, the attacks on abortion, the scapegoating of immigrants, and the unprecedented undermining of habeas corpus—all continuing.  

Silence can be complicity. On April 25, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, actress Olympia Dukakis, writer Chris Hedges, musician Tom Morello, reporter John Nichols, lawyer Michael Ratner, and Cindy Sheehan are inviting other prominent citizens to convene on Capitol Hill to demand Congress begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.  

On April 28, World Can’t Wait—Drive Out the Bush Regime and other organizations are calling for people to make the demand for impeachment visible everywhere. 

Big changes are possible. Bush will soon veto a war appropriations bill. His regime defends the firings of U.S. attorneys, and it is besieged over opposition at the World Bank to Paul Wolfowitz. Bush’s Supreme Court has just taken the first steps to outlaw the right of choice.  

Millions oppose the Bush regime, but we will have to manifest that sentiment in ways that cannot be ignored—to have a chance of stopping it.  

If not now, when? If not you, who?  

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

• 

BURY OUR HEADS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

NBC is trashed for showing a killer’s rants on its airwaves. By all means, let’s bury our heads in the sand and maybe the menace will go away. Why know what sends an unstable person into a rampage? Might we find out it is society’s own materialism and selfishness that feeds this frenzy? 

About the Supreme Court decision to uphold the antiabortion doctrine. What did you expect when Bush installed two more like-minded religious icons on the Supreme Court? Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito are fulfilling the fringe right’s fondest desire; forcing their intolerant and minority viewpoint on women of America. 

Give these diehard abortion opponents an inch and they’ll take a mile, watch! 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

• 

GUNS NO ANSWER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wonder why I haven’t heard anyone discuss these obvious questions?: Thirty people in a classroom should be able to simultaneously attack and subdue one person with a gun, either hitting him with chairs or using their bare hands. Why couldn’t they do that? Are we too individualistic as a culture, and not used to working as a team? Was everyone thinking about how to protect themselves, and not how to protect the group as a whole? The teacher who barred his door seems to have had the right idea, perhaps because of his prior experience with violence. 

We frequently hear about guns being used to commit crimes (including the crime of unilaterally attacking Afghanistan and Iraq). Why don’t we ever hear about guns being used (other than by the police) to do something good, such as defend people against criminals? It appears to me that, whatever the reason for allowing people to own guns, it isn’t working! The Second Amendment is either obsolete, or has been misinterpreted. 

Who can answer these questions? 

Mike Vandeman 

San Ramon 

• 

WORLD WATER CHALLENGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I attended the World Water Challenge last week, and was inspired as I shared in a dialogue with more than 100 participants about the importance of protecting our water supply both abroad and here in our own community. The San Francisco Director of the Environment, Jared Blumenfeld spoke about the many ways in which we can conserve and care for the excellent water that we have access to in the Bay Area. I was pleased to hear that Mayor Gavin Newsom (SF) seems to really support the proposal to at least phase out contracts with bottled water companies, who seek to turn water into a for-profit commodity, and yet cannot even promise a product that has a better quality than the water that comes straight from our taps. The event was both informative and encouraging, especially as a diverse group of people simultaneously pledged to take personal actions to preserve water as a basic human right.  

Hanna Jacobsen 

• 

DISREGARDING THE LAW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Totally ignoring the Berkeley Public Library’s April 13 press release announcing the “upcoming vacancy on the Board of Library Trustees” (which gave potential candidates two and a half business days to apply by 2 p.m. on April 18), Trustees Darryl Moore and Laura Anderson, at the April 18 board meeting, proclaimed that there was actually no vacancy. This, despite the fact that applicant Pat Cody was present at the meeting, in accord with the vacancy announcement’s requirement that candidates must be present if they wished to be considered for the opening. However, since there was a predetermined outcome the board chose not to subject her to a pro forma interview. 

By a 3-1 vote, with Trustee Lee voting no, (Kupfer had recused herself) Trustee Susan Kupfer was recommended for reappointment for a second four-year term. 

The Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC sec.3.04.010) reads “The term of office of the members of the board shall be four years.” When that is up, the term expires. It seems clear that when a term expires it creates a vacancy. By recommending an automatic renewal of trustees’ first term appointments, essentially creating eight-year terms, the library board has refashioned the BMC to insulate themselves and nurture a self-perpetuating fraternalistic country clubish board. Any actual change in Berkeley’s laws is the job of the City Council, and the Council must take back its authority and see that the current applicable code, a four-year term for library trustees, is respected by announcing the current position opening widely, in an appropriate manner and allowing a reasonable time for potential candidates to apply. The council, under its City Charter mandate, must then appoint a trustee to fill another four-year term. 

The Library has weathered two years of strife. While the climate has changed for the better under the new director, we must heed the devastating 3.21.07 report to the board by SEIU local 535 on the failures and costs of the radio frequency identification system (RFID). Some $108,000 in addition to the $111,000 loan payment was spent in fiscal year 2006 on RFID materials. Now, additionally, a maintenance contract is being considered. The cost of this so-called labor saving system has resulted in a shortage of workers needed to reshelve a backlog of books. Can the current Board, with a vested interest in RFID, face up to the downsides of this malfunctioning system? 

Gene Bernardi 

Jane Welford 

Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense (SuperBOLD) 

• 

A GREEN GARBAGE COMPANY? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We at the Ecology Center deeply appreciate the efforts of the Alameda County Green Business Certification Program in helping local businesses achieve significant environmental improvements in their operations and practices. As a member of the Alameda County Source Reduction and Recycling Board, I am especially pleased to see dramatic reductions in wasting. We applaud the Berkeley Daily Planet for highlighting these businesses through the targeted advertising they have done around earth week. However, it is very important to recognize a few important distinctions when considering where to spend your dollars and what this certificate really means.  

First, there is a fundamental difference between an enterprise (for profit or not for profit) that is mission driven and one that is primarily driven by the bottom line. For example, transnational garbage company Waste Management Inc., has repeatedly demonstrated, in spite of their multi-million dollar ad campaign to the contrary, that their primary goal is to provide profit to their senior management, Board, and stockholders by burying or burning garbage (Google: SEC, Arthur Anderson, Waste Management Inc). Waste Management Inc.’s recycling activities began opportunistically as public relations efforts not from their core mission or values, and are a sideshow to their real business ventures. No matter how much they clean up garbage dumps and incinerators, they will never be a “green”, simply because of the volume of valuable resource they waste. In no way can one compare such a “green" business to a community based recycling enterprise, driven by an environmental mission.  

Second, it is important to understand that while the Green Business Certification represents an important series of initial steps that any business can and should take, the standard for certification is really low. There should be some distinction recognizing some of the businesses who have come the furthest, made the greatest actual impact, or do it from the start because they are driven by a mission. A bronze, gold, and platinum standard for example could help significantly to raise the bar. 

Finally, as a member of Sustainable Berkeley I must remind readers that green only has two e’s. When we talk about sustainable economic development and sustainable businesses we use three e’s—a triple bottom line to evaluate practices: Economic Success, Environmental Responsibility, and Social Equity. Without equity no enterprise can truly be sustainable. 

To find more green certified businesses and information on how to become one, or what it means to be one, check out www.greenbiz.abag.ca.gov/ShopGreen.html. For a directory of local enterprises, businesses, organizations, and agencies providing environmental information, products, and services check out the Ecology Center’s online EcoDirectory. It represents 35 years of information gathering and community engagement with mission driven and sustainable enterprises. www.ecologycenter.org/ecodirectory 

Martin Bourque 

Executive Director 

Ecology Center 

With almost no public examination a private, developer-driven organization with $10,000 in funding from the city has targeted a new property assessment for large swaths of West Berkeley. Bringing into question our foundational tenets of “one person, one vote,” and “no taxation without representation,” this effort appears to find its basis in that ever popular mutation of the golden rule: whoever owns the gold (property) makes the rules. 

The West Berkeley Business Alliance (WBBA), comprised mostly of West Berkeley’s largest and most active development and real estate interests is proposing: 

• A significant assessment on every piece of residential and commercial property in the industrial zones (including mixed-use residential) from University Avenue south to the Emeryville border in order to create a Community Benefits District (CBD); 

• That this taxpayer-funded district act as a lobbying organization to “give input on proposed zoning issues” and “advocate on land use conflicts”; 

• That this district be approved through a “weighted” petition and voting process where the “weight” of one’s vote is determined by how much property one owns; 

• That the approval process provide no vote for businesses who are tenants, yet they can be required to pay the assessment if their lease, as is common, allows taxes and assessments to be passed through; 

• That this district address issues that are arguably the responsibility of the city, including “security, parking, graffiti, sidewalk and street cleaning, tree planting, angled parking, storm system maintenance” and “social services to curb anti-social behavior in the public rights of way;” 

• That the governing structure, although open in theory to all property owners, be one that historically has proven to be dominated by the largest interests that can pay their representatives to consistently participate; 

• That instead of holding workshops to educate the public on an issue of such importance, the project be moved along rapidly with almost no community outreach  

The now-complete first stage of this process, a WBBA commissioned survey to gauge support for a Community Benefit District, was sent to West Berkeley’s industrial zone property owners in February. The survey’s WBBA authors were, among others, West Berkeley’s largest developer, Rich Robbins of Wareham Corporation, Steven Block, Don Yost and John Norheim, the most active commercial brokers in West Berkeley, and Doug Herst, whose Peerless development is presently being promoted. The survey posited that “security, parking, cleanliness, and infrastructure deterioration have all become… challenging,” and “in response to these challenges”…WBBA ”had settled on the assessment district model,” and went on to pose 10 questions regarding these issues. 

Interestingly, the survey did not address costs, but the little now known about them points to their being significant. Marco Li Mandri of New city America, the consultant hired by the WBBA to establish the proposed district, declined to give a figure of what a commercial or industrial property owner might pay, but said that a typical 1,000-square-foot house on a 3,000-square-foot lot would pay $180-$360 a year. Steven Goldin of the WBBA stated that $150 would be typical for a residence. These amounts may seem trivial to some, yet are significant sums for many residents in the mixed-use residential (MUR) zone who bought homes when these were affordable, working-class neighborhoods but could never dream of buying in now. 

The results of the survey, the approval process’s first stage, revealed so much opposition north of University Avenue that this area has been excluded from the proposed district. In the next stage, all property owners within the WBBA’s “finalized” boundaries will receive a petition. Here the process becomes curiouser and curiouser. According to Mr. Li Mandri, this petition is mandated by the California constitution to be “weighted,” where the more property one owns the more “weight” one’s signature receives. The exact “weight” is determined by a formula (created by the WBBA’s CBD steering committee) potentially involving lot and building size, use, and linear feet of street frontage. If over 30 percent (by “weight,” not number) of property owners sign the petition, the City Council will vote on whether to conduct the third and final stage, a mail-in ballot vote. Having already given the WBBA $10,000 to jump-start the process, this approval would seem foregone. With the final vote also “weighted,” one property owner’s single vote, let’s say Wareham (with tens of acres and hundreds of thousands of square feet of built space) can take precedence over hundreds of residents and small property owners, requiring whole neighborhoods that might vote no on the assessment to pay it against their will. Another crucial point left unmentioned in the survey is that many businesses who rent, with no say in the approval process, will nevertheless be required by their commercial leases to pay the assessment. 

The proposal that this taxpayer-funded CBD act as a lobbying entity on land use and development issues is highly unusual. Of the 43 districts that Li Mandri has been involved with, only two concern themselves with these issues which are outside the traditional concerns of these districts, cleanliness, beautification and security. Land use in West Berkeley is a hotly contested subject with varied opinions on the efficacy and future of the West Berkeley Plan. Through their advocacy and membership the WBBA has consistently demonstrated the perspective of development and real estate interests. This is their right, but asking taxpayers to fund these efforts is not. The following list of some of the WBBA’s activities would seem a reasonable indication of their future efforts and highlights the question of whether the public funding of an entity under control of this advocacy group is proper or in the public interest.  

• When 37 businesses along Ashby Avenue, together with the vast majority of residents in the immediate vicinity of the West Berkeley Bowl, requested that the city and Bowl consider traffic mitigations and a store no larger than other Berkeley supermarkets, the WBBA insisted the Bowl be approved as proposed, with no concern for the economic, safety, and traffic issues raised.  

• WBBA played a seminal role in efforts to change the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance to more easily facilitate development by reducing its ability to protect historic structures. 

• Against the interests of 100 industrial and artisan business and their 2,000 employees along the Gilman and Ashby corridors, the WBBA supports changing the zoning to retail, potentially further endangering the economic health of the city’s struggling retail districts. 

• WBBA members have been involved in the eviction of the Durkee tenants, the threatened eviction of the Fantasy filmmakers, and played various roles in the situations that resulted in the loss of the Nexus and Drayage artists.  

Though the structure of the CBD appears democratic, the demonstrated history of such entities reveals a different story. Controlling authority lies in a non-profit management corporation overseen by an open (to assessed property owners) advisory board, but experience shows that those with the largest stakes, like development interests, pay their representatives to consistently participate, thus assuring organizational control. Average citizens with family and work have little time or energy to consistently volunteer, making their participation sporadic and ineffectual. The WBBA’s confidence in ultimate control of the CBD is evidenced by their investment of tens of thousands of dollars (beyond allocated city monies) in its creation and their control of the process through their CBD steering committee. 

Though the CBD states it will fund services “over and above those currently provided by the city,” all proposed services, save transportation, are already within the city’s purview. Would newly harvested monies be better directed to the city where there already exists a transparent, democratic process in place for their allocation? Except for the controversial “social services to curb anti-social behavior in the public rights of way,” the cleanliness, beautification and security concerns are valid, but do most West Berkeley property owners see them as deserving of more of their hard earned dollars than they already pay the city for such services? Security is an ongoing concern, but unlike a gated community, West Berkeley has requested more police as a solution, not security guards with questionable training, background, and no real public oversight.  

Most assessment districts are traditionally structured as Business Improvement Districts (BID), where the businesses are similar and thus share similar concerns. This CBD encompasses such a large, diverse area that any homogeneity is precluded and structural conflict is the likely result. Finally: 

Should a taxpayer-funded, developer inspired private organization be empowered to lobby the city on development issues?  

Who pays and how much? 

Who gets to vote on the CBD’s creation, and is that vote fair?  

Should a private organization or the city be responsible for the proposed tasks?  

Is organizational and fiscal control of the proposed CBD truly democratic?  

This commentary is hopefully just the beginning of a much-needed discussion to answer these and other questions. On a topic with potentially profound economic and social consequences for our community one might expect the sponsoring organization to hold interactive educational public workshops, but this hasn’t occurred. WEBAIC, West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies, representing the interests of hundreds of businesses and their thousands of employees in West Berkeley, calls for slowing down this process enough to allow for a full and transparent examination of the proposed Community Benefits District. Berkeley deserves no less. 

Rick Auerbach writes on behalf of WEBAIC, a non-profit trade organization representing West Berkeley industry, artisans, and artists, originally created with assistance from the city of Berkeley. WEBAIC receives no funding from any governmental source.  

I’ve been thinking about the violence at Virginia Tech, and about a violent man I once met. He was the boyfriend of a friend of mine. She brought him over to visit one afternoon, but his vibe was so repellent, so dangerous, that I didn’t want him near my kids, near me, nor in my home. I remember him sitting in my kitchen, his eyes moving over the furniture, the fixtures, evaluating everything, sizing everything up. My friend sat a little in the background, not saying much, anxious for us to like him. She was something of an innocent. She owned her own house, had a job, but (and this is my own interpretation; I can’t speak for her) felt she needed a man, a baby, and so invited this man into her home. He had come out of nowhere, had no job—she met him in a café. Over the next few months I often thought of calling her, of warning her about him, and my only excuses for not doing so was that I was pretty sure she wouldn’t listen to me, and moreover that I couldn’t imagine that it would end the way it did. It was obvious that he had all the power, had taken the reins. This is what violence, or the threat of violence does; it trumps good sense, good intentions. So I didn’t call her and he killed her. 

I probably wouldn’t have been a hero even if I had got to warn her; other friends, closer to her than I, had warned her repeatedly and she had cut off contact with them. She isolated herself with this rabid dog, this madman, and didn’t want to listen to her friends: she didn’t want to believe in the worst. In No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy’s last book but one, there is a killer who stalks his victims as implacably as death—and so defies comprehension, at least to the characters in the book, until he is right in front of them, and then they have to believe. I can see why, on that bucolic campus in Virginia, no one acted on the warnings. We can’t protect ourselves from people like Cho Seung-Hui, not completely, because the blessedly sane, the peaceful, don’t really believe in violence, don’t want to believe in it. The only thing to do, unless we want to live in eternal lockdown, is to mitigate its effects. That’s why we need gun control. 

After the deaths in Virginia, I thought of how we can’t believe in the worst, and then I thought of my friend. She was a sweet woman, she traveled widely, she loved dinner parties, she thought deeply about the world, and none of these details can bring her back. Nor will the stories about the people who died in the classroom; this one’s favorite book was “Little Women,” this one a holocaust survivor. To tell these stories, to read them and to cry over them is to pay the victims a little tribute. It’s all one can do, after the fact. But everybody who was afraid of or for Cho, who saw the violence in him, who knew something wasn’t right and spoke up, the Cassandras, they have already done what they could do, what all of us should do. Because when someone speaks out, it is always possible that a paper will be filed, someone notified, a law passed, a gun taken out of a sick man’s hand. 

Marian Berges is a Berkeley resident.

Some publicity hound—maybe it was Al Capone—once quipped, “You can write anything you want about me as long as you spell my name right.” Having read about myself in the pages of the Planet lately I can’t say that I have much sympathy for that idea. Maybe it’s my age, but this grandfather of six doesn’t have quite the thick skin he had at 30 when jousting with the windmills of imperialism’s hubris. I actually don’t see why any critic about Berkeley would enjoy being flattered as a writer of “hit pieces,” a “red baiter” or an “agent baiter.” I’ll accept that my piece on KPFA was hard-hitting, but I had thought of that in figurative terms. Sure, I expected some wrathback. Still, those responses helped make my point.  

Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Sasha Lilley managed to avoid the key issues of my article on KPFA, despite their own incendiary brilliance. I stressed the history of the way that paid staff have fought tooth and nail to prevent community, in the form of elected station boards—first advisory and later governing—from influencing changes (be they positive or negative) at this supposedly community-controlled radio station. How they helped push out two general managers to the effect of placing their own loyalists at the top. The not-named focal individual in my article who has been most galling at using the fine points of Roberts Rules of Order to frustrate open dialogue and collective decision-making on the station board is the same Brian Edwards-Tiekert. Folks who have followed this saga may remember back over a year to my revealing in these pages the e-mail from Brian to his allies suggesting they discuss how to undermine or disband the station board.  

There are a goodly number of elected members of station boards who can relate the sordid details, the level of their frustration and the degree of disrespect Brian, a staff rep, has shown over the past few years. I don’t go to those meetings because I can’t handle the dissonance—not all Brian’s fault by any means. I had tried to avoid provoking Brian by name because—though a major actor in the drama—he’s not the issue I was addressing.  

But the memo by Sasha Lilley to Miguel Molina warning against advocacy is a central issue. It’s part of the larger project by paid staff, their appointed-from-their-own “interim” management, and a group of community allies, to move away from, rather than toward incorporating new programs from the vital growing grassroots movements resisting many aspects of capitalist crisis—in the military, prisons, undocumented communities, New Orleans etc. The “professional” staff has not challenged the assertion that they oppose bringing those types of advocacy programs (what I called “the barbarians”) onto the airwaves. Instead they changed the subject to tout ongoing coverage of peace demonstrations and occasional reportage on aspects of the movements to which I refer. It’s as if Brian’s mention that KPFA covered Lt. Ehren Watada’s court martial trial (for which they deserve thanks) is equivalent to helping organize an ongoing show of, by and for the very important GI movement in resistance. It’s not. I think that what they do do is a shadow of what they might do, if they weren’t resisting advocacy journalism and change. That is why the memo to Miguel Molina is telling. I agree that KPFA can’t be only about advocacy, but it must encourage and support it.  

Brian’s style betrays staff’s subterfuges. In response to my mention of Sasha as a union rep Brian slaps me down, asserting that she is not a union rep and is not even a member of the staff union. But who can dispute that as union rep Sasha Lilley helped organize staff to refuse to even meet with then Station Manager Campanella? That her ascendancy into management required her union resignation allows Brian to suggest that I just don’t know what I’m talking about? This is semantic license—what some used to call “parsing” the language when they were after Bill Clinton for lying about sex with Monica. Brian wrote that I claim Sasha “issued a new ‘edict’ ” against advocacy. Edict is his word, mine was “memo,” yet he puts edict in quotes to suggest my “angry” writing. Almost Rovian. Both Brian’s and Sasha’s articles claim I intimated that Sasha or other staff are FBI or COINTELPRO agents. Can anyone honestly draw such a conclusion from the following: “The problem...is that when people—both staff and those who are critics of KPFA management and staff behavior—behave provocatively….this advances the surreptitious attack on KPFA.”  

Suggesting I am an ignorant, misinformed, hostile enemy of KPFA is the innuendo these folks do best, and, not coincidentally, why I wrote that they could easily wreck the station’s base within the eclectic radical populist movement of the Bay Area. I’m not an enemy of KPFA. I’m an avid listener. I’ve been on the air numerous times. I give KPFA enough money, sometime help with phones at fundraisers, give out and wear the bumper sticker. I preached to the Coalition for a democratic Pacifica years ago that they not go head on against the paid staff but begin to work with them inside the station to avoid fostering defensiveness. Brian should know this because I told him. Sasha considers my April 6 Daily Planet commentary red baiting because I found her self-characterization as a socialist, Marxist, feminist ironic. But it was she who presented those credentials (and her father’s) while defending her hostility toward the former station manager she helped select. Twas a public witnessed discussion we had. Red baiting or red herring? My earlier piece stands on its merits.  

Marc Sapir currently works for the ambulatory care division of Alameda County Medical Center and directs the Retro Poll group at www.retropoll.org. He founded the Berkeley High School Health Center (1989), negotiated free confidential HIV testing for Berkeley (1988) and has some experience as a radio programmer.  

On my plane flight back from Iraq, I was cogitating on what I had learned while I was there and, in between the in-flight movie and the rubber chicken, I started remembering what one female Parliamentarian I had interviewed kept saying to me. “The number of American troops that have died over here is much higher than reported because they do not count the contractors.” 

Counting contractors’ deaths? Was she talking about including the deaths of mercenary soldiers into the U.S. troop death count? I guess she was. But their deaths, although tragic, wouldn’t have made the troop death toll all that much higher. Or would it? 

Then, as my plane was cruising at 35,000 feet somewhere over Greenland, it finally hit me what she was talking about. “Contractors!” She wasn’t talking about the handful of mercenaries out doing battle on the front lines. She was talking about the 130,000 contractors (according to Defense News) doing battle on the chow lines, the truck lines, the supply lines and PX lines in Iraq.  

Everywhere you go in the Green Zone and on all the military bases in Iraq, you see “contractors” doing jobs that were formerly done by soldiers. In Vietnam, the soldiers themselves did all these jobs. The supply clerks were soldiers. The janitors were soldiers. The sentries were soldiers. There were soldiers on KP, in the motor pool, in the offices, on guard duty, manning checkpoints, on the road. Now all that work is being done by contractors. Yet, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “When you cut them, do they not also bleed?” 

“The reason there are significantly lower numbers of troop deaths in Iraq now than there were in Vietnam is because of our more efficient body armor,” everyone tells me. Hell, no. The reason there is a significantly lower number of troop deaths in Iraq now is because nobody counts the contractors’ deaths. Six hundred contractors are dead and 4,000 are wounded? But now we can’t count them because of semantics? Whatever.  

One contractor I met in Iraq said to me recently, “A friend of mine in the supply office got killed by a mortar last week.” And then she cried. 

Whether we officially count them or not, the price that “contractors” pay for our country is the same. And the costs of this “war” are just as enormous to their families and friends. By using contractors instead of soldiers and not counting their deaths and fiddling with the numbers, the Department of Defense tries to make this “war” a little bit more palatable. But guess what? I find this peekaboo game that the Defense Department is playing with dead people to be in “grave” error. 

PS: Contractors do not like to get killed. But our troops don’t particularly like getting killed either!  

PPS: Every time I talked with a soldier and he or she found out that I was a journalist, they would always say the same thing. “When you go back home, please tell people that our tours of duty have just been extended to 15 months and we are not happy campers about that!” You know, serving in Iraq isn’t all that bad—because of the work ethic, the comradeship and the can-do attitude of our troops and, yes, of our contractors too. Plus it’s a steady job. But still and all. It’s hot over there in the summer and people shoot at you! And despite help from the “contractors,” our troops are really stretched thin (and that idiot in the White House is talking about starting a war with Iran? With what troops?) Thus yet another extended tour of duty far away from spouses and family does not sit well with the troops.  

PPPS: Bush and Cheney’s failure of leadership have gotten us bogged down in disaster after disaster, including the World Trade Center, Katrina, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Israel/Palestine tragedy and Iraq. Bad concepts, bad planning and bad execution are their stock in trade. Let’s ditch these bums before they can think up something else to foul up! 

Iraqi citizens in the neighborhoods are truly sick of all this violence and they appear to be organizing at the neighborhood level to protect their own from the warring factions that rage above them -- at their expense. Listen up, guys. This is hopeful.  

I just got an e-mail from reporter Stewart Nusbaumer. He said, “You would love to be where I am now. The colonel here is damn sensitive, and is doing the right way. Let the Iraqis sort it out, help them. Don’t impose. Let them have their neighborhood watches, make them professionals slowly.  

“I’m in town now, it looks like a nuke was dropped here. Hit, the town, was a major insurgents stronghold, they ran the town. Then the people, evidently, said enough. Now the big thing is for the United States to help them create a police from local people.  

“Now, that is simplified, and things are not black/white, and the commander is taking a chance here in trusting locals, helping them out a little at a time. But the colonel knows he is leaving, that it is up to them....”  

So. If Americans throw Bush and Cheney in jail, then average Iraqis who are struggling so hard to bring order to their poor shredded country will see by example that Americans don’t tolerate gangsta behavior either. Throwing Bush and Cheney in jail just might be the exact token gesture to start bringing peace to Iraq! 

PPPPS: I met the most wonderful surgical tech at the Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. “I was trained by the Army for this job,” she told me. You shoulda seen her in action, stepping up to the plate and helping to save lives. The most important thing in the world one can possibly do is to save a human life. I envied her. I wanna save human lives too! And if you are just out of high school and jobless and are afraid to leave your sleazy boyfriend because he’s so needy and cute, here’s a recommendation from me: Join the Army and become a surgical tech. You will be helping out people far more needy than the cute boyfriend—plus the guys over here are all far more cute. 

And, like that wonderful surgical tech in Baghdad, let’s concentrate on helping to save lives in Iraq, not to destroy them. Iraq needs a Marshall Plan, not a “surge". Exxon doesn’t need all that extra oil money. But Iraq does. 3,000 Iraqi citizens meet violent deaths every month. Imagine the Virginia Tech tragedy times 100 every single month. That’s a hecka lot of post-traumatic stress.  

Berkeley resident Jane Stillwater, sponsored by the Lone Star Iconoclast of Crawford, Texas, blogged during her recent trip to Iraq. To read more of her posts, see http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com. 

LONNIE TORRES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dave Farias (March 23) wrote to you about a dear friend of mine, Lonnie Torres, being falsely accused of being a serial rapist. His letter speaks for me as well. Where is the apology? Where is the article announcing how he was wrongly accused? His name was slandered in the papers. Thank God not in the hearts and minds to those who know him best! And as for the officer who was falsely awarded, I hope it was revoked! As an avid reader of your paper I am still waiting for the correction to be printed as well as many others who have stood behind Lonnie knowing (without a doubt) of his innocence.  

Kathy Jo Martinez 

• 

UC-BP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Richard Brenneman’s April 13 story, “UC-BP Debate Reveals Two Cultures Schism,” stated incorrectly that UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert “Birgeneau hired two faculty members specifically to work on the EBI proposal,” and identified them as Chris Somerville and his wife, both eminent plant biologists at Stanford University. Somerville, who collaborated with UC Berkeley faculty to put together the successful proposal to BP, is a Visiting Research Scientist at LBNL and not a member of the UC Berkeley faculty or a UC Berkeley employee. 

In addition, there is an error of omission. Brenneman quoted Academic Senate chair William Drummond’s Feb. 15 speculation, “I doubt if we get a preview of the contract.” Brenneman omitted the fact that four Academic Senate committee chairs were subsequently invited not only to preview the contract, but to provide input before any contract is signed. We request that you run corrections in your paper to set the record straight. 

Robert Sanders 

Manager of Science  

Communications, 

UC Berkeley Office of  

Media Relations 

• 

CORRECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the article “Divided Commission Landmarks Iceland,” Richard Brenneman stated “Ben Anderson, the architectural consultant hired by Iceland’s owners, portrayed the venerable structure as an undistinguished hodge-podge of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, much of it with little character or articulation.” 

I want to clarify what I said, and object to this interpretation as to the way that I portrayed Berkeley Iceland. 

My presentation included the assertion that at the north and south elevations, where the connection to the street is made up of the landscaped berms, that as landscape elements these berms do not show any real articulation to create a sense of “place” in the site as it meets the street, and that they are too steep to be easily occupied.  

However, my commentary on the building itself was not that it is undistinguished or had little character or articulation, but rather that it develops it’s character through the utilization of two sets of architectural language: “streamline moderne” and “art deco”. I referred to Berkeley High School as an example of a building which combines these two styles gracefully by separating them on to different surfaces, while Berkeley Iceland combines these two elements on top of each other, at the west entry, which results in the two elements competing for the viewers eye. 

Please make these corrections, and thank you for your time on this article. 

Benjamin Anderson 

• 

THE BOOK ZOO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With independent book stores failing like most memory and history, it is with great joy that I report the resurrection of The Book Zoo. This hallowed, deliciously atavistic curio revived the early ’60s feel over the cobblestones back in that Japanese restaurant-fronted Fondue Pot mall south of Blake on Telegraph. The Book Zoo, with more head and book room, but with the same warmth, is now just south of Alcatraz, at 6395 Telegraph in Oakland (654-BOOK).  

Take a load off and spend some time there, and encourage the tireless efforts of co-owners Eric and Nick. Readings take place all the time. A recent one was with Jerry Beisler, author of The Bandit of Kabul, a tale of the ’60s-’70s Asian hippie trail, published by our own Regents Press. 

Arnie Passman 

• 

BUSD SURPLUS PROPERTIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The April 6 article (“BUSD Weighs Options for Surplus Properties”) states that the Berkeley High School tennis courts are being considered for surplus property by the school district. At the present time BHS uses the portable classrooms on Washington School’s campus across the street from BHS. Until now, those portables housed the elementary school’s Extended Day Care program. The program had to move into the main building. Speaking for myself—I work as a movement teacher at Washington—it doesn’t seem fair to either the program or the classroom teachers who must now share their spaces. Instead of considering the tennis courts as surplus property, why isn’t the BUSD considering erecting some portables on that site? 

Ruth Bossieux 

• 

A PERSONAL ENDORSEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The shock, the drama, 

Iraq, Osama... 

Barack Obama 

For President. 

O.V. Michaelsen 

• 

KPFA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Barbara Epstein’s recent letter reminds me of why some of us left the Left. 

First, are we supposed to refrain from attacking someone because they are female or some other PC category? 

Second, I have heard hosts over the years endorse many marches on KPFA. 

I wasn’t even aware of this gag rule until I read Marc Sapir’s op-ed. KPFA’s gavel to gavel coverage of many peace and civil rights marches over the years could certainly be taken for endorsements. 

Third, Lilley has been outspokenly hostile to the democratic participatory changes at KPFA. Every one knows that she is the choice of the entrenched staff hostile to any real change at KPFA. 

Fourth, many of the oldtimers at KPFA such as the (thankfully) retiring Bensky were themselves upholders of the old gag rule until it was used against them in 1999. 

They supported every purge but, surprise !, their own. 

Fifth, is KPFA supposed to an employer of the last resort for otherwise unemployable aging old lefties so they indulge their narcissism at the public’s expense? 

Sixth, are the editors not supposed to print letters that disturb the Barbara Epsteins of this world ? 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

SAPIR’S INACCURACIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wish to correct just one of the many inaccuracies in Mark Sapir’s “KPFA’s Tradition of Advocacy is Threatened.” (April 6). He states: “Then this past year the core staff went out and created their own slate of listener candidates for the station board. . . .” This is untrue. In the fall of 2005, I was among a group of KPFA listeners who started meeting to express our dissatisfaction with a local station board that spent a lot of time in useless squabbles, in trying to micro manage the station and in attacking staff, rather than what we considered the role of a community board - supporting the station, helping to raise money and increase listenership. To find out more about what was happening on the board, we invited a few of the current local station board members who we heard were dissatisfied to meet with us, as well as some staff. Subsequently, we invited a few of them to join our efforts in forming Concerned Listeners for KPFA. 

Sapir seems to be obsessed with KPFA staff. First, he asserts (with no evidence) that “the inside core staff controls management.” Then at the end of his article he says: “Managers who attack advocacy in programming should be replaced by staff . . .” I presume that these are not the “core staff,” whoever they are. Sapir thus seeks to stir up staff divisions. This is not what KPFA needs to prosper. 

Kay Trimberger 

• 

GUN VIOLENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is a culture of gun violence in America that is being fostered and perpetuated (inadvertently) by a political agenda, the NRA, and gun lobby. The solution to this epidemic: Control the guns—the rest of the industrialized world has—you can’t control the lives of 300 million Americans. And let’s not lose perspective; people in Iraq live with this type of violence and worse, everyday. One hundred and seventy-eight Iraqis were killed today. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley  

• 

C-SPAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The best advice I can give to my fellow citizens today is to watch C-Span. 

If you are not watching C-Span you are missing some of the best discussions of current issues, done without commercials, by top persons in their fields. 

Charles Smith 

• 

INTERTRIBAL FRIENDSHIP HOUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Intertribal Friendship House here in Oakland had just paid off all the back taxes of several years ago and now it’s no longer on the auction block. It took grassroots effort by the American Indian communities around here along with others to save the building. IFH had served the American Indian community for nearly 50 years. It sponsored meetings, dances, dinners and other events. 

It would have been a travesty if the building were to fall into the hands of real estate folks who want to use it for profit. Again, congratulations to the people who fought to keep Intertribal Friendship House open. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

EARTH DAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With Earth Day fast approaching, no one should let the one-day-a-year appreciation devoted to respecting the Earth, go by. You don’t need to be an extreme activist and tree-hugging hippie to help save the planet. Just by eating no meat or less meat, you are helping the environment. This may be a solution that no one has ever brought upon you before, as I had never knew the facts either. Just by refusing to eat one pound of beef, you are saving more water than a year’s worth of showers. Why beef? Cows produce the most harmful of greenhouse gases—methane, and eat over 75 percent of the corn we produce in the United States. Corn crops are, in a sense, taking over the Earth. We need to produce more and more corn to feed the farm animals which we want to eat. 

In one day, there are 1,440 minutes. Each minute, we are destroying parts of rain forests the size of seven football fields in order to make more room for cattle grazing. Can we really afford 10,080 football fields a day in order to satisfy our beefy needs? You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that its bad that farm animals are using almost half of the water supply that’s used in the United States. Stop thinking “I’m just one person, even if I stop, everyone else would keep doing it,” and start thinking. If everyone thought like that, where would we be?  

Diana Shek 

San Francisco 

• 

SAFE CLIMATE ACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released official reports conveying that global warming a very real and urgent issue. The burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation are effecting not only weather patterns but also heath factors in many Californians. 

Cars, coal burning power plants, cement kilns, and lumber manufacturers are the leading cause of excessive amounts of CO2 and water vapor on emissions which cause a greenhouse effect and thus cause global temperatures to rise. These emissions are also responsible for exacerbating asthma symptoms amongst children leading to more missed school days than any other cause in California. 

The Safe Climate Act would prevent the worst effects of global warming by setting science-based limits to reduce global warming pollution by at least 15-20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. 

Andrew Klaus 

Assistant Canvass Director, 

Fund for Public Interest Research 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Berkeley resident Jane Stillwater, sponsored by the Lone Star Iconoclast, a Crawford, Texas newspaper, is blogging about her trip to Iraq. Below are her posts of April 12 and 13. To read more, see http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com. 

If you invade someone’s country, they are going to fight back. Apparently that wasn’t taught at Yale.  

—Kurt Vonnegut. 

Yesterday I went down to the Iraqi Parliament and interviewed two female Parliament members regarding their views on the current situation in Iraq. The Parliament was meeting in what formerly used to be Baghdad’s most prestigious convention center. I sat in the center’s restaurant for over an hour, interviewing the Parliamentarians and observing various delegates come and go. 

After I had written and filed my story this morning, I returned to the convention center in order to see if I could give a copy of it to my two female Parliamentarian interviewees. I entered the front of the building and climbed the stairs to the second floor but after a visual search of the many delegates gathered there to caucus between sessions, I was unable to find who I was looking for and so I left. 

An hour later an apparent suicide bomber somehow managed to enter the restaurant and set off an incendiary device which, according to Reuters, injured over a dozen delegates, some of them seriously. Two delegates were allegedly killed.  

My heart goes out to the injured delegates and their families—and to all of Iraq. Am I relieved that I missed being injured by flying shrapnel or burned? Of course. But more than that, I am deeply grieved by this tragic horror that happened to people who were well and whole just minutes before. 

Friday the 13th: No luck getting out of the Green Zone — or the war 

With the bombing of the Iraqi Parliament on April 12, my thinking about war in general and this war in particular changed radically. This freaking adventure isn’t fun any more. 

Be careful what you pray for. Every single day of my life, I get up in the morning and pray that I will be able to do as many good deeds as possible that day. And then I add, “And have fun doing it too.” Well, this invasion/war/occupation/police action/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Bush blunder (or whatever it is) isn’t fun any more. It stopped being fun for me at around 2 p.m. yesterday afternoon. 

I had gone to the Baghdad convention center yesterday to see if I could find my two new Parliamentarian friends. They weren’t there so I left. Had they been there, we might have talked for a while and we might still have been there when the suicide bomber blew himself up a short time later. Apparently, he blew himself up only about three or four tables away from where we had been sitting the day before. We could have been injured or killed. But that didn’t happen. End of story. 

But here is another story about yesterday—which, for security reasons, I was asked not to tell at the time. But I can tell it now. After I left the convention center, I then went over to the CSH—the Combat Support Hospital—and took a tour. The public affairs officer was wonderful and gave me a complete tour of the facility. “The wounded soldiers are medi-vac-ed to the CSH by helicopter.” Then they are triaged at the ER and sent upstairs to the ICU or the operating rooms. I met doctors and nurses and saw a bunch of stuff like the sterilization room, the blood bank and the chapel. It was a fabulous hospital. It was a great tour. According to the PAO, “Our staff is always calm, collected, professional and proficient despite whatever challenges they face.” I believe it. These guys look like they are ready for ANYTHING! 

At one point, however, a middle-aged Iraqi man with blood on his face came in through the front door. “Sometimes civilians arrive here for treatment,” said the PAO, “and we treat them. It’s not all that common but it does happen.” We both thought nothing more about it. Until the next middle-aged Iraqi man appeared with blood on his face and hands. And then there was another. And another. Good grief! What is going on here!  

“The Parliament has been bombed! The Parliament has been bombed!” someone sobbed. And then suddenly we were in the mix. The injured started pouring in. The CSH went into high gear, proving its worth once again as one of the best trauma centers in the world.  

You cannot imagine the hell that ensued. Soon the corridors and examining rooms and operating theaters were filled with gurneys with bleeding Parliamentarians on them. “How many women were injured!” I screamed. “Where are they! What do they look like!” Three women were injured. I raced to look at them. They were not my friends. I was happy. Sure I was happy. But my heart was also breaking for these others. 

One Parliament member, a woman, a younger woman, wrapped in blankets, turned her terror-filled eyes toward me. Her face streamed with blood. I looked into her eyes as deeply as I could and whispered, “I will perform du’a for you, Sister,” and pantomimed the universal Muslim gesture for prayer. God, I hope that my futile gesture did some good. 

Doctors and nurses came and went. The gurneys piled up in the hallways. They cut the clothes off the victims. One man’s face was completely blackened from the collar-line up. I hoped that somehow it was just blackness from powder and not from burns. Another man’s hand was badly injured and laid limply on his chest while he was strapped with IVs. 

And then it hit me. “War is Hell.” War isn’t some stupid little thing that someone playing at President declares (with or without the approval of Congress) so that he can fatten his Swiss bank account. War is your worst nightmare. End of story. “Lighten up, Jane.” 

So last night I was finally gonna leave the Green Zone and take the Rhino—an armored transport vehicle the size of a house—out to Baghdad airport and start going home. But guess what? Even that didn’t happen! I can’t even get to the Red Zone on my way home! I’m doomed to stay here forever. Like that old Kingston Trio song about Charlie who was stuck on the MTA, I may “never return”! 

But that’s not the point. What happens to me or doesn’t happen to me doesn’t matter. What matter is this: People are being killed over here folks. I don’t care who started it. I don’t care who’s to blame. I don’t care who the good guys are or who the bad guys are. I just want to stop it. To stop here. To stop in Israel/Palestine. To stop in Darfur. I want man’s inhumanity to man to stop. I don’t want to see my friends who are American troops die. I don’t want to see my friends in the Parliament die. I want this bloody nonsense to stop. 

And violence is never prevented by the use of more violence. Never. 

Last night I called a cell phone number of an Iraqi friend. “I can’t talk now,” he said. “I’m walking to my home. I can’t be heard speaking English on the street.” There you have it, summed up in a few words. On the streets of Baghdad, speaking English can get you killed. Hell, on the streets of Baghdad, anything can get you killed. 

What do I propose as a solution? Edmund Burke said it best. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” There are six billion people alive on the planet today. Of all those people, surely a majority of us are not in the killing business. It’s time for the rest of us to put our “boots on the ground.” Enough! Enough killing. Enough war. It’s time for the human race to evolve. 

PS: After my experience at the CSH, I started seeing the Green Zone in a whole new light. Before this, I had seen it as a small bit of America plopped down in the middle of Iraq, where you could get pumpkin pie at the dining facility and watch America’s Next Top Model on TV. Now I see that it too is a war zone and that every day people here also deal with the ever-present possibility of sudden death. 

PS: I got some schemes up my sleeve to get out of the Green Zone. I could always say something in my articles that are against the ground rules and then they would throw me out—but I don’t want to do that. I could develop a mysterious disease and get med-evac-ed out. I could go on strike and walk around the press room with my fist raised, chanting, “Attica! Attica! Sal si Puedes! We shall overcome!” Or I could whip out my REAL secret weapon—my dirty laundry. I could stop taking showers and keep wearing yesterday’s clothes. That oughta do it. 

Did you know that Easy Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), your water company, sets the standard? The trick, which EBMUD seems to do so effortlessly, is to first secure a high-quality water source from the eastern Sierra mountains and the Mokelumne River watershed, transport that water through three 90-mile aqueducts to the East Bay, move it through a 331-square-mile area; from Crockett on the north, southward to San Lorenzo, eastward from San Francisco Bay to Walnut Creek, and south through the San Ramon Valley and through local pipelines to your tap. EBMUD serves 1.3 million water customers and over 650,000 wastewater customers here in the East Bay. The wastewater system covers an 88-square-mile area.  

Water, a vital resource, is becoming increasingly scarce due to fluctuations in climate, coupled with a growing population. EBMUD is a leader in promoting water use efficiency as a foundation for its long range water resource management plan. For many years, demand management, and water re-use have been important components in our water policies and practices which have been designed to promote wise and efficient use of our limited water supply. 

In relation to our wastewater service, EBMUD has instituted a resource recovery program to manage a variety of waste streams, including high biochemical oxygen demand and total dissolved solids wastes, groundwater and stormwater, winery and food processing wastes, and industrial process wastes and sludges. SD-1 (our Wastewater District) offers a disposal alternative to land application or for those without a sanitary sewer connection. Our digesters convert high strength waste into energy. This allows us to provide a sustainable and environmentally friendly disposal option. 

Water conservation and recycling are key components of EBMUD’s water supply reliability. So, the EBMUD Board of Directors set a 25-year goal of conserving and recycling an additional 49 million gallons per day (MGD) by 2020. Water consumption in 2005 was less than the demand in 1970, despite an increase in customers and accounts. This is because EBMUD offers a broad range of customer opportunities to reduce consumption, re-use supplies, and decrease water waste. Our water efficiency programs are founded on voluntary customer participation demonstrating that wise water use can be achieved without compromising lifestyle. Take advantage of our water conservation programs, rebates, and services for all customer categories. EBMUD programs and services include free indoor and outdoor surveys and water saving devices, incentives for installing water saving fixtures and equipment, as well as education and outreach programs. 

Water recycling is a growing part of EBMUD’s water portfolio. The San Ramon Valley Recycled Water Program, a partnership between EBMUD and the Dublin-San Ramon Services District, began delivering water to irrigation customers. EBMUD connected customers to the system by retrofitting their plumbing for recycled water and installing pipelines and meters. The first phase will deliver 0.7 MGD annually, and when completed will supply 2.4 MGD. The East Bayshore Recycled Water Project will provide 2.5 MGD to portions of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland for irrigation and other uses. We are also working with the Chevron Refinery in Richmond and the West County Waste Water District to produce 4 MGD of recycled water for use at the Chevron boilers (RARE Project), thereby freeing up 6 MGD of our water supply. So, when you think of your water company, think about conserving and re-using. It reduces demand, helps you save on your water bill, better prepares us for drought and contributes to a stable water supply.  

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it’s important to reflect on where we as a Jewish community stand on this issue, especially here in the Bay Area.  

This occupation, through a system of checkpoints, home and orchard demolitions, detentions, land and water confiscations, assassinations and more, makes normal life impossible for millions of Palestinians. It violates international law, which was created in no small part as a response to World War II, and is universally condemned by human rights groups and governments, including the United States. 

Far from bringing Israelis safety, it endangers people in Israel as well as the 400,000 settlers who live on occupied land, at least 40 percent of which, according to Israeli records, is actually owned by Palestinian families. 

Given the Bay Area’s extraordinary history in the forefront of major social justice movements, it should come as no surprise that the leadership of the country’s largest and fastest-growing Jewish peace groups hail from here.  

There is Brit Tzedek, which does critical work within the affiliated Jewish world as a pro-Israel/pro-peace group; Tikkun, which as part of the Network of Spiritual Progressives reaches across religious lines to raise a voice of justice; and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the only national Jewish peace group that views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of international human rights law. 

All of us have experienced some form of censure from the institutional Jewish world for publicly challenging unquestioning support for Israeli policies. 

On April 28-29 in Oakland, JVP will hold our first national conference, “Pursuing Justice in Israel/Palestine, Changing Minds, Challenging U.S. Policy.” (Go to www.JewishVoice forpeace.org for information.) The conference will offer attendees a way to learn more about the Middle East, get involved, or sharpen their strategy and skills. 

Just 5 years ago, JVP was an all volunteer group based here in the Bay Area. Today, we have four program staff positions; a 24,000-person mailing list; chapters in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Seattle with more coming; and advisory board members including Howard Zinn, Deborah Chasnoff, Tony Kushner and Adrienne Rich.  

We encourage all people, but Jews in particular, to attend the conference as a way learn about Arab-Jewish organizing, Christian fundamentalist anti-Semitism, life under occupation and more. 

A Jewish movement for  

peace and justice 

It is challenging to be an “out” Jew on this issue. Many movements simplistically divide the world into us and them. But as Jews, many with close ties to Israel, we are both us AND them. We must constantly fight the temptation of others, and at times ourselves, to dehumanize the “bad guys.”  

Many of us needed to break through the one-sided ideas about Israel we were taught from birth. We knew too well the Jewish stories of suffering and exile – we ourselves carry the wounds. And we understood the need to create a place where Jews could be safe. 

But we realized we knew little about Palestinians, why they called the Israeli war of independence Al Nakba, the disaster. Or why many still carried keys to their old homes, or why children threw rocks at tanks, or why some became suicide bombers and sought to kill Israeli civilians on buses or in pizza shops. 

Many of us decided to learn the whole history, and to go to the West Bank and Gaza ourselves to see exactly what occupation looks like.  

It is a searing experience none shall ever forget. 

There are no words to describe the anger the first time one sees a scared Israeli teenage soldier pointing a huge gun and callously barking orders at an elderly Palestinian at a checkpoint.  

And there are no containers to hold the tears one sheds when one sees a Caterpillar bulldozer destroy a Palestinian family’s home because they lacked an impossible to obtain permit, while the mother watches restrained, screaming, her children’s clothes and toys strewn on the side of the road. As one rabbi who witnessed such destruction just a few miles outside of Jerusalem said, “This is the worst day of my life.” 

We come back to the Bay Area, having experienced some of the worst days of our lives, and instead of being greeted with open arms by one of the most progressive Jewish communities in the world, ready to work with Israeli and Palestinian peace groups for justice, we find an increasingly polarized community. 

On the one side we find Jewish leaders who, feeling under attack, circle the wagons and go into defense mode. Many repeat superficial and racist platitudes about Palestinians just hating Jews or not caring about their families, platitudes that insult the intelligence of most who know full well the complexity of the situation. 

We find progressive Jewish groups who we look to for inspiration on every tough social issue, but who decide simply to not talk about Israel-Palestine, as though it weren’t there. 

Finally, we find Jewish leaders wielding the powerful charge of anti-Semitism, at times, to silence legitimate albeit sometimes hyperbolic criticism of Israel. At the same time, we see them take no accountability for the widespread Islamophobia and toxic disregard for Arab lives that has become widespread in many Jewish communities. 

We then do our part to add to the polarization. 

Out of our collective frustration at being shut out, and our anger at the moral hypocrisy of our leaders, we speak in a way that makes other Jews feel we don’t care about Israeli life, no matter how untrue that may be.  

We focus on the failings of the Israeli government, the powerful player, and gloss over the failings of Palestinian leadership, and fail to communicate our acknowledgment of the very real fear Diaspora Jews and Israelis feel about annihilation. 

There must be a way to break out of this cycle. 

It is a devastating lie that one must be either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian.  

It is possible, in fact, necessary, to be integrated as a Jew who loves the Jewish people and traditions, and who fights for justice for all people—especially those who suffer at the hands of a Jewish state. 

The future of Palestinians depends on it. The future of Israel depends on it. The very future of Judaism depends on it. 

Go to www.JewishVoiceforPeace.org to find out more and to register for the conference. 

Cecilie Surasky is director of communications for Jewish Voice for Peace. 

A ferry from Berkeley to San Francisco may be a good idea, but such a service should usefully augment the public transit we have. Sure, it’s good to have an alternative if the bridge or BART suffers damage from a quake, but with increasing global warming, we really need to reduce the number of car trips. The ferry is going to rely on cars with parking to achieve any decent ridership; therefore, it is questionable whether it will help in reducing car trips. Even short trips to a ferry terminal can generate as much pollution as a trip of 10 miles, due to the cold start. 

If one examines overall public cost and rider convenience, together with the speed and frequency of travel across the bay, buses are the best mode. If an earthquake damages both the Bridge and BART, it will require more than 10 times the current fleet of ferries and infrastructure to handle the load. Also, a lot of money is being spent on the Bay Bridge and BART on reinforcement to resist the predicted big quake, so we should have more faith in them. It will take a truly devastating quake to damage the new bridge or BART and if that occurs, it will eliminate much of the need to cross the bay, since people will be trying just to survive locally. 

The ferry should be planned as part of a fully integrated public transit system. If the ferry terminal is built at the Berkeley Marina, the ferry project should subsidize additional public transit buses for a few years, until ridership stabilizes. 

Paul Kamen’s energy analysis, in several Daily Planet commentaries, of cars, buses, rail and ferry may be correct on energy used to propel one vehicle. This is fine for a bus system, but a rail system operates multiple cars (3-10) per train and requires additional infrastructures that use energy to operate. Rail stations require area lighting, all night lighting for parking and energy for communication and signaling as well as numerous additional costs to operate the system. When all of the required energy and costs are accounted for, the cost per rail passenger can exceed that for bus operation. Of course, a ferry terminal will also have such additional energy and costs. 

Another question on transit development: MTC has established development criteria for transit stations and ferry terminals, requiring some minimal number of dwellings within a half-mile radius for the system to be considered viable. None of the East Bay ferry sites meets this criterion, except possibly Oakland’s existing Jack London ferry terminal. However, if the ferry plan subsidizes supplemental bus service as part of the project cost, MTC development criteria may be considered offset. 

Paul Kamen says that people will want to ride the Berkeley Ferry, but says it’s wishful thinking to say people will flock to better bus rapid transit (BRT) bus service. Then he says that a passenger-only ferry service should be a bus advocate’s dream because it forces people to use the bus for at least one end of their trip. Great, if most access the ferry sans autos, for autos are the major generators of greenhouse gases (GHG) that add to global warming. With bus access, there will be less pollution with no cold starts or added GHG emission. Most Seattle ferry terminals have residential developments nearby as well as interconnecting bus service, even for automobile ferries. 

Like the smoothly integrated ferry system of New York’s Staten Island ferry or those in Vancouver, B.C., or Sydney, Australia, a Bay Area ferry should not depend on parking. Parking should not be a major mode for access to the ferry, since GHG emission should be a major concern in ferry planning, and that means reducing car use. 

Regarding BRT, New Jersey Transit has a multi-route bus system that includes privately operated buses entering NYC using a contra-flow bus-only freeway lane during morning peak leading into the Lincoln Tunnel. This Busway carries about 2.5 times what BART carries during peak hour, and BART currently carries more passengers than vehicles are transporting on the Bridge. Interestingly, even before BART started operating to SF, AC Transit operated Transbay buses every 14 seconds on the bridge, and were carrying as many riders as there were passengers in cars during morning peak hour. The buses first picked up riders in their neighborhoods and without transfer transported them to San Francisco. This was without a bus-only lane on the Bridge.  

A really great vision of buses is to extend BRT down University Avenue to connect to the freeway, which already has HOV lanes that buses use, and speedily transport riders to San Francisco. This would cost far less than the ferry operation and would be more convenient, frequent and faster service that would not require transfer. Eventually these HOV lanes could be converted into busways on the freeways and bridge. In 2000 there was a “Bus Challenge” to a car starting from Hilltop Park and Ride, going to San Francisco. The bus got to San Francisco 15 minutes faster than the car, and the slowest section was crossing the bridge, which took up 50-plus percent of the trip time. 

The ferry could be a favorable alternative if extensive development around the ferry terminal would actually reduce car use, but this is unlikely at the marina. Overall, from public cost, usability and benefits, we will be better off improving our bus service than funding a new ferry. 

Roy Nakadegawa has 45 years of public service as a civil servant and elected official. He has worked as a civil engineer in Richmond, served as the president of the Institute for Transportation of the American Public Works Association, as a director of the AC Transit district, and as a member of the Bay Area Rapid Transit board. He also serves on a Standing Committee of the Transportation Research Board, a branch of the National Academy of Science. 

Having ranted about the allergenic pollen from certain flowering trees—the sorts one might not even think of as “flowering” except in the taxonomic sense—allow me to spend a few inches on thanks and praise for their more conspicuous brethren. 

From January onward, we’re blessed by flowering trees on our streets and in our public and visible places. The first flowering plum I used to notice was one that stood behind the recycling center, now closed, at Dwight and Martin Luther King. I don’t know whether it was genetics or its situation—reflected light and heat from buildings or some such thing—but it always shone like a beacon to reassure me that winter really wouldn’t last forever this year either. 

I missed a lot of the plum blossom show this year, including the one in our own backyard, as I was in Florida having the opposite of fun. But despite the gloomy weather I came back to, the street trees were offering a welcome that looked good even after time in the semitropics, where something’s always blooming prolifically.  

We do pretty much have the best of several climatic worlds here, with flowering plums and peaches and quinces from northern places, crape myrtle and dogwood and magnolias from our own Southeast, tibouchinas and jacarandas from the semitropics, bottlebrush trees and paperbarks and New Zealand Christmas trees (those are the ones that look very like Hawai’ian ’ohia lehua) from over the South Pacific, pears and rhododendrons from Asia, and our own California native—if thus far underused—species of dogwood and cherry and ironwood.  

Big showy flowers evolved in plants—to risk a teleological metaphor—to attract pollinators more efficient, or at least more directed, than the wind. This isn’t to say that trees with big flowers are “more evolved”—less basal, as taxonomists say it, and more remotely related to ancestral forms—than birches and mulberries and oaks and such, the small-green-flowered kinds. In fact, magnolias seem (as of the last big analysis I’ve seen) to be among the oldest families of trees, and you’re hard put to find a more conspicuous flower.  

In fact, some of those magnolias flower not only before they leaf out, but before winter’s half over. Some of those are from Asia, and their distribution—southern North America, mid-Asia, and not a lot in between—speaks of an old, old line that has stood its ground while the ground was moving and changing climatically beneath it.  

One could argue, if one were to stay in that teleological groove, that fruit trees evolved not only to manipulate insects, birds, bats and such to move their genetic material around, but to further manipulate birds and mammals and fruit-eaters in general into moving their seeds around after they’d formed. (One would have to further stretch meaning to do that; as Joe pointed out similarly last week, one can’t strictly be said to manipulate if one lacks hands.)  

Strolling further along that line of thought, flowering plants of great beauty and adaptibility have managed to enlist humans to distribute their descendants all over the world. Look where those trees have come from; there’s not much chance they could’ve sent even so sturdy a seedcarrier as the coco de mer so far as northern California, never mind so far inland as even San Pablo Avenue.  

And consider trees like Franklinia alatamaha, whose survival is strictly a matter of ex situ conservation: The species, like the less showy but symbolic ginkgo, is long gone except where we’ve planted it. In neither case do we know, precisely, what caused the extinction, so we can’t blame ourselves for it. 

The spent petals of that metaphor are drifting around my head, and the plums and quite a few others have been stripped of flowers by time, wind, and rain over the past few weeks. But the flaxleaf paperbarks are starting to bloom, and the red horsechestnuts are balancing those gorgeous candles on their branches, and here come black locust blooms too. (As red horsechestnut has a white-flowered form, black locusts come in pink and white—the “black” refers to someone’s perception of their bark color.)  

Beauty as perceived by humans is adaptive for plants. Never mind all that; I’m grateful for it and rejoice in it as it softens the utilitarian edges of our cities. The trees seem to think we’re worthy of such pleasure, even if sometimes our fellow humans don’t.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

Flowers on an Eastern dogwood in a North Berkeley garden.  

Some years ago, in a more energetic time in my life, I used to pick up day work unloading banana boats for Chiquita Brands on the docks at Charleston, South Carolina. By that time they had stopped shipping bananas by the stalk, but instead, they were coming up from Central America in 40 pound boxes. These boxes were stacked up to the roof of each deck of the banana boats, and when you first got on the floor in the morning, there was barely enough room for the 10 man crews to stand in the bare space around the hold, much less start working sending the boxes up the single conveyor belt that took them up the hold to the top deck. 

We had two crews, with a different foreman in charge of each, and with different ways of going about their jobs. Oscar would start us all to work immediately, as soon as we hit the deck coming out of the hold, with nine men all sweating and bumping and cursing in an energetic rush to get the boxes to the single worker who was sitting on a stool beside the hold, sending the boxes one by one up the conveyer belt. We worked out in all four directions, simultaneously, catawampus, as the old people used to describe that sort of thing. As the morning wore on it got easier, of course, as we made room for ourselves getting rid of the boxes. Within a half-hour or so, there began to be enough space to set up metal rollers, along which we could slide the boxes from all ends of the deck. 

We have begun to hearing the beginnings of low rumblings of criticism over the early actions—or inactions—of the administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. These criticisms peaked, in chorus, on the passage of Mr. Dellums’ first hundred days in office, the traditional point—since the frenetic time of Franklin Roosevelt in seeking to roll back the Depression, I believe—of marking the initial accomplishments of an administration. 

From Heather MacDonald of the Oakland Tribune of April 10: “Today, his 100th day in office, Dellums' promise to turn Oakland into a model city is very much a work in progress. … Dellums has answered questions from the news media only once since taking office and did not hold the first quarterly town hall meeting required by the City Charter. … Much of the criticism directed at the mayor during his first months in office has been that he is not visible enough, leaving many residents to wonder what the mayor is doing, if anything. Critics inside City Hall say Dellums is too cautious and delegates too much authority to staff members, leaving many unsure of where the mayor actually stands.” 

And from reporter Christopher Heredia in the April 10th San Francisco Chronicle: “Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums entered office in January calling for an extraordinary collaboration with everyday citizens and the business community, for peace on the streets, for better schools and improved access to health care. One hundred days later, the mayor has announced a reorganization of the Police Department with an emphasis on community policing. The rest, he's working on. Dellums' lack of specific actions during his first 100 days in office frustrates some residents while others say it shows he is deliberating carefully about how to address the city's most vexing issues.” 

And, finally, from Alex Gronke’s April 10th blog at Oakland-based NovoMetro.com, commenting on both the Tribune and Chronicle stories: “The Trib story had some startling revelations from Dellums’ press secretary. Chief among them was the news that Dellums was caught off guard by the complexity of City Hall. This was a man who wrangled with the Pentagon when he was chair of the House Armed Services Committee. It’s hard to know what to make of that confession.” Mr. Gronke concluded: “Oakland doesn’t need a mayor who pretends he didn’t really want the post, it needs a mayor who can at least pretend to love the job.” 

And in our own Daily Planet, we recently had a biting editorial cartoon by Justin DeFreitas on Mr. Dellums’ “disappearing act.” 

Neither the Chronicle nor the Tribune articles could be characterized as “hit pieces.” They appeared to attempt to take a balanced view of the Dellums Administration’s accomplishments at the end of one hundred days. I just believe, respectfully, that Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Heredia failed to take some relevant things into account. 

Oakland is going through a transition in our city government that took an eight year delay during the two-term administration of Jerry Brown. Prior to the passage of Measure X—the strong-mayor ballot measure—in 1998, the city was ruled by a Council-Manager form of government in which the mayor functioned as little more than a super-City Councilmember, presiding over City Council meetings but having no more voice over the running of the city—one vote on the hiring and firing of the City Manager—than any of the other seven Councilmembers. The Council hired the City Manager, and the City Manager hired and fired the rest of the city staff, and ran the bureaucracy. 

Measure X broke that system in two, taking the mayor off the Council and putting the mayor in charge of the City Manager—now the City Administrator—and the city bureaucracy under that office. As we now know, Mr. Brown took little interest in the running of city affairs except for certain areas of concern, and for eight years during the Brown Administration the vast army of city workers was run by an uneasy alliance between the City Manager—first Robert Bobb and then Deborah Edgerly—and City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, with Mr. Brown intervening every once and a while. 

In succeeding Mr. Brown, Mr. Dellums has decided to carry through with the original intent of Measure X, pointedly refusing to intervene in City Council matters—such as refusing to intervene in the selection of the City Council President, or to break the recent tie over the selection of a firm to manage the Oakland Ice Center—but at the same time taking over the reins of the city bureaucracy and workforce, as mandated by the City Charter. 

For anyone who knows anything about city bureaucracies, that is not proving to be an easy task. 

It was made more difficult by the fact that while Mr. Dellums repeatedly called last year for a complete audit of Oakland city government in advance of his taking office so that he could make intelligent decisions based on actual conditions, the first audit—of the city’s payroll—only began late last month, only a few days before the end of his administration’s first hundred days. In addition, we have now learned that Mr. Brown destroyed much, most, or practically all of this administration’s records on his way out the door. That means that the Dellums administration had to start almost from scratch in figuring out what the old mayor’s office had been doing, and what, now, needed to be done. And, of course, there is the struggle with the Oakland Police Officers Association, the police union, that is complicating the crime reduction and police activity reforms that the Oakland public has demanded. 

Is this to make excuses for the Dellums administration? Not at all. They’re big kids over there, and can make their own excuses. I have my own criticisms and concerns. Mr. Dellums is reorganizing the police department to “enhance community policing,” but has yet to define, in writing, the exact sort of community policing he means. With Mr. Brown, it always seemed to be a moveable feast. And I think there is some confusion in Dellums’ office over the role of—and public access to—the task forces that needs to be straightened out. 

But it’s my belief that Mr. Dellums—a man who clearly enjoys public speaking—is keeping out of the spotlight now because he’s busy doing one of the major things that Oakland voters asked him to do, reorganize Oakland’s bureaucracy and work force so that it can better serve his policy directions. If that job isn’t done, then Mr. Dellums’ four years in office will simply be as a figurehead, making pretty speeches about lofty goals that his administration cannot back. If that job is done, then we can reasonably begin to see some major policy changes taking shape towards the end of the year. 

Some of it, we are already seeing. Developers and residents, alike, have long complained about the uncertainty of Oakland’s zoning code, which is out of sync with its General Plan, without which planned development that both attracts outside business and meets community concerns cannot take place. Long neglected under Mr. Brown, the process of conforming the zoning code with the General Plan has begun under Mr. Dellums, and we have already seen a dramatic change, with Mr. Dellums’ decision to suspend plans to rezone Oakland’s industrial lands. 

But mostly this is grunt work, policy-wonk work, that most newspapers don’t regularly report on, and most citizens have no idea is happening. I’d like to see the Dellums Administration open up a little more, and give us more information on what they’re doing and trying to do. If Mr. Dellums can’t come out himself, there are other articulate spokespersons in his administration—Chief of Staff Dan Boggan, for one—who might do. But ongoing criticisms aside, which we should continue to do, I’m willing to be a little more patient about demanding major results, because that’s the only way I believe were are going to have major results. Come back in three more months, and let’s talk. 

As a 50-ish fan of Susan Parker’s column, I am following with keen interest her colorful descriptions of loss and renewal at age 55. I wish her great good fortune in finding or creating the “next right career” for herself. However, I just had to share an anecdote of my own, in case Ms. Parker meant seriously that perhaps she’d apply at Peet’s. 

Several months ago, I went in to the Vine Street flagship Peet’s store and happily ordered the same tea drink I’ve been ordering for many years: large cup filled with hot water, three teabags of masala chai, room for soymilk. 

It was a Sunday afternoon around 5, the light was changing outside (a sweet, somewhat vulnerable time—the weekend’s festivities being largely over, signs of the work week to come still a bit at bay, a time that my sociologist-self would call “liminal”). I was on my way to meet a group of friends who provide each other mutual support. 

Also, I had fairly recently been dumped, by the live-in boyfriend who had—up until he told me from atop the closed toilet seat while I was in the bathtub (on Valentine’s Day, no less) that he was “no longer physically attracted to me”—mentioned many times that he expected us to stay together for the long haul. So you can understand, I was a wee bit vulnerable. 

Imagine how it felt to be yelled at, by a Peet-nik I’d never noticed before, saying, and I quote, unfortunately, exactly verbatim: “Just because you’re old and lonely and desperate doesn’t mean you get to come in here expecting free stuff.” 

Apparently, the third teabag was now considered “extra.” But what a way to deliver the news! 

The scenario got uglier and uglier, as a couple of co-workers got in on the act; meanwhile my fellow customers who’d missed the start of the show began to give me sidelong, suspicious glances. 

I must mention that I am a multi-culturalism/diversity consultant, listed in Who’s Who of American Women (2001 edition), let alone the international recognition. Plus, I am told almost on a daily basis that I look so much younger, to which I habitually quip, “This is what 50 looks like now.” 

One kind and mindful employee just concentrated on step-by-step making my drink, taking my cash, handing me my cup and change. She looked embarrassed for her aggressively acting-out colleagues on either side of her, and we exchanged a rueful smile. 

The management responded to my complaint with a box of free chai tea. Upon further follow-up complaint, I was given a loaded Peet’s card. Thus reinforcing the notion that it was in fact all about “free stuff.” One man in management responded in several conversations like a human being with emotional intelligence, so I decided to focus on that instead of the cluelessness of others in Peet’s corporate. 

Oh. yes, maybe a month later I caught a glimpse of the angry young man in the parking lot of what friends have mentioned is a venue for a “recovery” meeting known to be “wild.” So I surmised that to be his problem. For which I do not lack compassion. But I still would not wish for any 50-plus woman (for the derogation implied in the particular manner of insult is all about sexism as much as ageism—we all know that it is older women who are called “hags” and marginalized while many older men are regarded as being at their powerful prime) to apply for a job at Peet’s. Unless the job was “consciousness-raising crone!”

Nobody recognized the commercial value of natural scenery better than Mark Daniels.  

“Developing and selling landscape beauty is perhaps the only way in which a man of the community may have the cake and eat it, too,” he said in June 1914, addressing the Tourist Association of Central California at the Shattuck Hotel in Berkeley. “[T]he visitor does not take one jot from the landscape or the community […] in return for the money he contributes, nor does the natural beauty of a district or country need to be repaired or replanted each year. And yet the community may sell it and resell it without losing any part of the original bulk of the commodity.” 

Two years earlier, in a booklet titled Hillside Homes and Gardens, Daniels extolled the advantages of hill dwelling: 

The great history-making nations of the world have invariably been mountain or hill folk, dwelling near the sea. […] If we wish to develop within ourselves the capacity for inspiration, ambition and a sense of the bigness of things, there is no better way than to seek an environment of inspiring view, where may be seen a portion of the world of sufficient magnitude to give us better perspective and a better sense of the relative importance of things. 

But Daniels did much more than speak on the subject. Civil engineer, planner, landscape engineer, national park superintendent, and eventually architect, Daniels (1881–1952) was perhaps the most accomplished practitioner in California of the art of developing and marketing scenic beauty. 

Born in Spring Arbor, Mich., the young Daniels will have seen his share of natural rock formations before arriving in California. His parents having settled in Fresno, Mark entered UC Berkeley and obtained a B.S. degree in civil engineering. He was one of the better known members of the class of 1905, active in the Skull and Keyes and the Theta Nu Epsilon honor societies, manager of his class Blue and Gold, and playing a prominent role in amateur theatricals, a passion for which he would retain for the rest of his life. 

At UC he met the first of his four wives, Frances “Dolly” Trost (1888–1941). A gifted singer and artist, Dolly was a soloist member of the Treble Clef Society and a contributor to the Blue and Gold, where one of her pen-and-ink wash drawings “attracted great attention, being considered the best in the book,” according to the Oakland Tribune. The newspaper featured her photograph on several occasions, never failing to refer to her beauty. The couple wed in June 1907 and took up residence near Alta Bates hospital before decamping for Nob Hill in San Francisco. 

Having begun his career in workaday civil engineering jobs—he had been superintendent of a placer mine in Plumas County; worked in the engineering department of Southern Pacific; was chief engineer of the Monterey, Fresno & Eastern Railroad; and served as assistant city engineer in Potlach, Idaho before returning to San Francisco to open his own office—Mark had his first chance to develop scenic beauty when John Hopkins Spring subdivided Thousand Oaks in northwest Berkeley. 

Blessed with an abundance of water, Coast Live Oaks, and extraordinary rock formations, the area had been a favored locale of the Ohlone, providing both physical and spiritual sustenance. At the turn of the 20th century, it was still a remote and secluded place that attracted hikers, nature lovers, and picnickers, who named the largest of the rocks: Great Stone Face, Tunnel Rock, Monument Rock, Shasta Rock, Picnic Rock. 

In 1908, while the Chamber of Commerce was waging a quixotic campaign to move the state’s capital to Berkeley, a bond measure proposing to allocate 100 acres in Thousand Oaks for a public park failed at the ballot. The land was soon snapped up by Spring, who had a different vision: an exclusive residential park, with much of its natural beauty privatized. 

The access problem was solved in 1909, when Southern Pacific excavated the Solano Tunnel, allowing streetcars to run north on Arlington Avenue. Spring lost no time and hired Mark Daniels to lay out the tract. 

The profusion of rock outcrops made the tract difficult to develop. Daniels entered into partnership with Vance Craigmiles Osmont, a mining engineer associated with UC and an expert in volcanic rock. In 1905, Osmont had published the book A Geological Section of the Coast Ranges North of the Bay of San Francisco, in which he described St. Helena rhyolite and proposed the term Bodega diorite for the exposed granitic rocks of the Bodega headland. Both these rocks are related to Northbrae rhyolite, the prevailing rock in Thousand Oaks. 

Daniels contoured streets to follow the terrain and curved them around ancient oaks and crags. Lots were sold with their rock outcroppings left intact. Arlington Avenue, the neighborhood’s grand boulevard, was planted in flowers along its full length. The most popular picnic destination, Great Stone Face, was preserved as open space and eventually given to the city for a small public park. 

In 1910, Daniels selected a choice—and very rocky—lot for his own house near the Great Stone Face. Although in later years he would join the AIA and design houses (including his own at Pebble Beach and in Bel-Air, Los Angeles), the rustic shingled house he built is the work of Oakland architect A.W. Smith (1864–1933), one of the Bay Area’s most prolific and versatile home designers of the day. 

A long rectangular structure with wide roof overhangs, the Daniels house is sited parallel to the hillside, obeying the dictum set by Bernard Maybeck for the Hillside Club. It is set well away from the street at the bottom of a sloping stone path. Gigantic boulders hem it in on three sides. One of these is the celebrated Shasta Rock. 

Mark and Frances moved into their new home in early 1911. A year later, one of the front-page stories in the Oakland Tribune recounted how society matron Mrs. Mark Daniels rescued a servant and saved the neighborhood’s reputation by chloroforming to death a skunk found feasting in the garbage can—not exactly what we would characterize as living with nature. 

Meanwhile, the Thousand Oaks real-estate marketing machine was churning away. In charge of sales were the Newell-Murdoch and George Friend companies—Robert C. Newell and George Friend had married two of Spring’s daughters. Newell-Murdoch had also retained Daniels to lay out the Haddon Hill home park on the east shore of Lake Merritt and Forest Hill in San Francisco. In August 1912, the company’s newspaper ad exclaimed, “Thousand Oaks Heights is in the Path of Progress. It is the only way Berkeley can expand […] Here the people must come.”  

Citing the federal census, the ad proclaimed Berkeley one of the fastest growing cities in the state and pointed to Thousand Oaks as “the first time in the history of California that suburban and interurban railroads have constructed lines in a district before it was populated.”  

With streetcars every five minutes, residents could reach San Francisco in 40 minutes and the university campus in ten. The fare was five cents. 

Explaining why the Key Route, Southern Pacific, and the Oakland Traction Company had invested $4,200,000 in extending car lines into Thousand Oaks ahead of the population, the ad delivered this punch line:  

“The people are coming—houses are going up—and soon land values will do the same. Invest a few dollars in Thousand Oaks, then sit back and watch it grow. […] When Thousand Oaks Heights is sold out, there will be no more hill property in the Berkeley district of Alameda County.” Arlington Avenue was dubbed “the street of a million flowers”; a ride on its streetcar line promised “the grandest panorama of the bay ever placed before the eyes of mankind.” 

Next to the Newell-Murdoch ad, the Homesite Realty Company was touting lots in Arlington Oaks, across the road from Thousand Oaks and a little closer in. “We have retained the services of Mark Daniels, landscape engineer of Daniels and Osmont, to pass upon the landscape merit of every piece of land listed with us. If a lot has not unusual beauty we will not handle it,” trumpeted the ad. 

In April 1914, Daniels was appointed landscape engineer for Yosemite National Park, whose condition was judged unkempt and its beauty marred by inartistic buildings and camps.  

Talking to the press, Daniels said, “It is not the object to in any way attempt to add to the beauties of nature within the park, but to develop a plan for the accommodation of utilities so that the government appropriations for each year may cover work to be done in accordance with a carefully worked out and fixed program. The problems in Yosemite Valley are numerous. They comprise sanitation, water supply, lighting, patrolling, fire protection, insect control of concessions and many other things.” 

A mere two months after the appointment, Daniels was elevated to the position of superintendent and landscape engineer of national parks, a job in which he lasted only until December 1915. During his tenure, he opened Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite and sought to increase public accommodations in the parks. 

When not on government business, Daniels was laying out Sea Cliff and Crocker-Amazon in San Francisco, executing a development system for a subdivision commissioned by the Spring Valley Water Company, and developing an irrigation system in Butte County. 

And then Daniels vanished from Berkeley. His work took him to Monterey and the development of Pebble Beach and the 17-Mile Drive. Several years later, his first marriage in ruins, he would move to Los Angeles, where he would be instrumental in laying out Bel-Air. By the late 1920s, he had expanded his practice to include architecture. Eventually he would return to San Francisco, working on a wide variety of projects, from the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939–40 to a public housing project in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 1934, he designed a Berkeley home for his friend and Bohemian Club co-member, the printer John Henry Nash, but Daniels himself would never live here again. 

An army captain in World War One, Mark Daniels was buried in the Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno. Architect Sidney Barker Newsom, who with his brother Noble designed a good number of homes in Thousand Oaks, is also buried there. 

The rocky garden around the Mark Daniels house will be open on BAHA’s Spring House Tour, May 6, between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph By Daniella Thompson 

The rocky garden around the Mark Daniels house in Thousand Oaks will be open on BAHA’s spring house tour, May 6.  

Among the Rocks: Houses and Gardens in Thousand Oaks 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association Spring House Tour 

Sunday, May 6, 2007 

1 p.m.–5 p.m. 

Tickets: $35; BAHA members $25 

(510) 841-2242 

www.berkeleyheritage.com 

I am a total crank. I admit it. I can’t help myself. I think this just the way Lord Shiva made me and there ain’t too darned much I can do about it. Some things just rile me, chafe and get under my pink semi-translucent skin and one of those things is the utter and thorough inability of just about everyone in the building trades to properly strap a water heater.  

Now, this may seem a silly, small and niggling thing but it’s not. It’s genuinely important and I’ll take a few minutes (if you’ll bear up) and explain why. I will also, of course, explain how one ought to do this vital task). 

In the January of 1997, just about 10 years ago, California began enforcing a law that required the sellers of homes to strap their water heaters prior to delivery, to their eager new recipients. At first, it was understandable that plumbers and handyfolk would get this wrong and so I made excuses and waved the little booklet around and asked that these be done again.  

No problem. Well, of course they nearly all got fixed wrong and as time went on, my face got longer and more beleaguered and eventually, I just lost all composure. Now this job isn’t all that complex. It’s also been 10 years and only a small fraction seem able to get it right. I don’t get it. I think the real problem is that nobody really understands what’s at stake.  

I’ll never forget this one image from the Northridge earthquake of 1994 (the one that resulted in the law). A field of burned lawns and those funny rectangles of concrete representing the former homes of football stars and grocery clerks. Well beyond the little squares lay the remains of water heaters, often yards from each house. 

It took me a minute but the fuzz cleared to reveal what had happened. Water heaters had caromed about in these houses and crashed through doors or walls and ended up far from where they had perched before things went all wonky.  

Water heaters are very heavy and their gas and water connections are far too flimsy to restrain so great a mass. Also, earthquake forces love objects like this and slender straps become something of a joke. Only a serious pair of heavy straps, bolted into framing seem able to work when the shaking gets grand. In the absence of these, gas lines torn open, deploy their ordinance and the result tends to be quick and devastating. 

The architect’s office of the state (yes, Yuri, there is a State Architect) published a short booklet to go with the new law and I see them from time to time, usually taped onto the front face of a poorly strapped water heater just for comic relief. If you read it, it’s pretty straight forward. Two straps of heavy gauge metal (you can buy a kit in most hardware stores these day that’s plenty adequate) for any water heater of up to 52 gallons. I’ve never seen a 52 gallon water heater so I’m not sure who came up with that! 

The straps need to be bolted, not nailed, not screwed, not glued, bolted into the actual framing of the house. If you want to bolt to something else, you need to make sure that the thing you bolt to is well bolted to something else. I’ve seen more than a few goofynesses related to this but it’s just not that complex if a little effort is applied. 

Straps need to hold the water heater against some surface and not merely off in space. This is perhaps the most common cognitive failure I see. A pair of heavy straps might be used but they leave a large gap between the water heater and the wall, as though the water heater will know, when the earthquake begins, that it should observe this perimeter and not attempt any silly business like bouncing off the wall and shredding its straps (which is exactly what it will do).  

No strap or bolt is sized to withstand the force of 500 pounds bouncing off a wall. They just don’t make them big or strong enough. The only thing that really works is to keep the water heater from developing that level of acceleration and the only way to do that is to read the instruction (it says it right in the booklet and shows it in every picture for those who don’t read) and install the straps so that there is no bounce room. Straps should tighten the tank right up against the backing and thus prevent the sort of movement that can liberate the beast. 

It’s really best and easiest to do this against an exterior wall (from the inside or outside) and even easier in a corner. Nonetheless, sometimes they have to be strapped inside the basement some distance away.  

I’d generally opt for replumbing at the better location but when there is no other choice, one will need to build a small wall right behind the tank. Said wall will have to connect boldly to both top (floor framing?) and bottom (basement slab?) with the same level of bolting that the strap itself demands.  

Another thing to be tuned into is the spacing of the straps. One strap should be just above the controls (within 4” if possible) and the other should be near the top (within 9”). Now this seems logical but I will see one in the middle and one at the top all the time as though the lights are on and nobody’s been home for a while. 

There are a range of other bizarre aberrations often seen but let it be sufficient to say that not 10 percent of these jobs are done vaguely right and there’s just no excuse. The instructions are readily available and the materials are cheap. Also, the consequences are really quite serious. 

True, I would very much like every house in the Bay Area to have a valve that will automatically shut off the gas in a quake and, yes, this would eliminate the fire concern from flying water heaters but there is at least one other darned good reason to overtake inertia and get this done and it’s all about clean drinking water. Every water heater contains many gallons (30, 40, 52?) of clean, fresh drinking water (unless you haven’t used your hot water lately!) because water is constantly flushing through the tank.  

If you have your water heater strapped and it’s stayed in one place, you might be the only folks on your block with fresh drinking water in the sober days that will follow a local temblor and that’s nothing to shake a divining rod at. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 24 

THEATER 

Tell It On Tuesday Solo performances at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 sliding scale at the door. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Honors Art Show Opening reception at 4 p.m. at the Worth Ryder Gallery, Kroeber Hall, UC Campus.  

FILM 

Academy Film Archive: Recent Preservations with Mark Toscano at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michelle Goldberg presents her new book, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism” at 6:30 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kitredge St. 981-6107.  

Jacob Needleman talks about “Why Can’t We Be Good?” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Free, but donation of $10 suggested. 559-9500. 

A Conversation with Roger Scruton and Zaid Shakir on “Can We Talk About God? Devotion and Extremeism in the Modern Age” at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. 582-1979. www.zaytuna.org 

Shawna Yang Ryan reads from “Locke 1928” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Stephen Prothero discusses “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Randy Craig Trio at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Sachal Vasandani at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 

EXHIBITIONS 

“When We Were Very Young” Photography by Nicole Beck Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at North Gallery, 5231 College Ave. at Broadway, Oakland. Presented by California Colllege of the Arts. www.cca.edu 

FILM 

History of Cinema “An Injury to One” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash presents Robin Becker reading from “The Horse Fair” and Alison Luterman reading from “The Largest Possible Life” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Writing Teachers Write with Cyrus Armajani and students from “Write to Read” at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Roberta Maisel reads from “All Grown Up: Living Happily Ever After with Your Adult Children” at 7:30 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$20, benefits Aquarian Minyan. 465-3935. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

South Berkeley Youth Arts Summit with the Longfellow Middle School Jazz Band and Peace Choir, La Peña Children’s Chorus and The Lab Live Hip Hop Ensemble at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Salif Keita, griot music from West Africa at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

U.C. Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rumba Cafe at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

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

Brown Bums at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Beckett’s Family Reunion with Nicole and the Sisters in Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Nels Cline Singers at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 26 

THEATER 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” opens at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, and runs Thurs.-Sat. to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Prayer for Peace” Mixed media works by Lucien Kubo. Reception at 6 p.m. at Oakland’s Asian Resource Gallery, 310 Eighth St., corner of Harrison. 287-5353. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Thousand Oaks” An illustrated lecture on one of Berkeley’s unique neighborhoods by Trish Hawthorne at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Presented by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Cost is $10. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

“Bernard Maybeck and the Hillside Movement” A lecture by Tim Holt at 7:30 p.m. at 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5. 843-8724. 

An Evening with Greg Palast on “Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild” at 6:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$24 avalable from www.gregpalast.com  

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Regan McMahon describes “Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mo’ Phone at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is 85. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Teed Rockwell, touch-style fretboard and Hindustani ragas, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Winter Blanket, The Trenchermen, Lindi Wiggins at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Rafael Manriquez in concert and celebrating his 60th birthday at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Marian McPartland at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Bombay Crawlers, The Privies, Attack Formation at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

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

FRIDAY, APRIL 27 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Lysistrata” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through May 12. Tickets are $12. 525-1620. www.aeofberkeley.org  

Aurora Theatre “Private Jokes, Public Places” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 13. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

Barestage “Cabaret” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 72 Cesar Chavez Center, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$12. 642-3880. 

Berkeley Rep “Blue Door” at 8 p.m. at 2025 Addison St., through May 20. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “A Streetcar Named Desire” Tennesse Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winning play opens at 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Runs through May 12. Tickets are $8-$11. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Impact Theatre “Measure for Measure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 26.Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “She Loves Me” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 12.Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org  

Shotgun Players “Blood Wedding” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through April 29. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Acrylics on Canvas by David Giulietti Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Artbeat Salon and Gallery, 1887 Solano Ave. 527-3100. www.arbeatsalon.com 

“Touchable Stories: Richmond” A multi-media, oral history event created by the people of Richmond. Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 6 p.m. through May 13, at 1303 Canal Blvd., Richmond (the former Kaiser Shipyard Cafeteria). Cost is $6-$12. For reservations call 619-3675. www.touchablestories.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Chester presents a slideshow and lecture on “Berkeley Rocks” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. Some of the homes and gardens will be featured on Berkeley Architectural Heritage’s Spring House Tour on May 6. 704-8222. 

“Music and Message” with Sweet Honey in the Rock on the role of music in the Civil Rights Movement and social activism today at 2 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free.  

Strictly Speaking with David Sederis at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“Returning to the Shore” Tribute to James Chaill, connoisseur of Chinese painting at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. all-day symposioum on Sat. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Jazz Poetry Festival with Adam David Miller, Gael Lacock, Avotcja, Modupue and others at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $20. 848-3227. www.hillsideclub.org 

“The Music of Primes” with mathematician Marcus du Sautoy at 5:15 p.m. at the Valley Life Sciences Bldg., Room 2050, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. 642-0448. 

Marta Acosta reads from “Midnight Brunch” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Dance Project 2007 “The Reception” choreography and tele-immersion technology at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$14. 642-9925. 

De la Canción Protesta al la Canción Propuesta with Holly Near, Linda Tillery, Lichi Fuentes and others at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kimberly Jackson & “Urban Legends” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Ed Neumaster Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Sambada, Sage, Afro, Barzillian, funk, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Nearly Beloved, folk, country afrobilly, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Keith Greeninger at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Evelie Posch and Steve Taylor-Ramirez at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Pat Nevins & Ragged Glory, City Fritter at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Monster Squad, Ceremony at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

3rd Date at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Native Elements at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10-$12. 548-1159.  

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

Marian McPartland at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 28 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with magician Diana Shmiana at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stage Door Conservatory “The Hobbit” Sat. and Sun. at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20 at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tied Up On A Rainy Day” Paintings by Bill Jefferson, sculpture by Larry Baumiller. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at The Gallery Of Urban Art, 1746 13th St., Oakland. 910-1833. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Outdoor Poetry Reading at Berkeley Arts Magnet’s Allen Ginsberg Poetry Garden from 2 to 4 p.m. at 1624 Milvia St.  

National Poetry Month Celebration with readings by Denise Newman, Barbara Tomash, Brian Strang, Patrick Duggan, Chad Sweeney, David Holler, Ilya Kaminsky, Bruce Boston, and Martin Woodside at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Jeremy Scahill describes “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St, Oakland. Tickets $10 in advance, $15 at door, available at independent bookstores, or at 415-255-7296, ext. 253.  

“A Gathering of Greatness" Allegorical photographs of famous people in the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, by Dorothy Levitt Mayers. Lecture at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207. 

Ann Fagan Ginger, Candace Falk, Helene Goodwin, Kathy Johnson, PhoeBe ANNE (sorgen) discuss “Where is Feminism Now?” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books 486-0698.  

Rhythm & Muse Open Mic with Tracy Koretsky at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Free Concert at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr Community Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Harp Music with Chris Caswell Celtic, Latin and Middle Easterm muisc on hand-made harps at 4 p.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

Flauti Diversi “Bella Rosas” a program of renaissance and contemporary works for recorder trio at 8 p.m. at St Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $15-$18, reservations recommended. 527-9840. 

Berkeley Dance Project 2007 “The Reception” choreography and tele-immersion technology at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$14. 642-9925. 

Kensington Symphony performs Smetana’s “Ma Vlast” at 8 p.m. at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. Suggested donation $12-$15, children free. 524-9912. 

Ronnie Gilbert, Sandy Tolan, Charlie Varon, Jeff Halper, and more, at 7 p.m. at the Fontaine Auditorium, Samuel Merritt Health Education Center, 400 Hawthorne Ave., Oakland, in a benefit for Jewish Voice for Peace. Tickets $15-$25 sliding scale. 465-1777. 

Quinteto Latino Compositions by Latin American masters at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. 

Classical African Music and Dance at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988. 

National Jazz Appreciation Month BMI & The Roster Super Company at 7 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649.  

Sweet Honey in the Rock at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Steve Mann and Friends at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Jesus Diaz & su QBA, Cuban timba dance music, at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Music on the Commons at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance leson with comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Rebecca Griffin at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Chris Zanardi Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Steve Forbert at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Juliet Green and Moodswing at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

David Feffrey’s Jazz Fourtet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

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

The Pine Needles, skiffle band, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Captain Mike and the Sea Kings, Amy Lou’s Blues at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Born/Dead, Signal Lost at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 29 

CHILDREN 

Stage Door Conservatory “The Hobbit” at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20 at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

Works by Carla Van Slyke, Rita Sklar, Charlotte Britton and Jack Anderson Reception for the artists at 2 p.m. at Solano Groll, 1133 Solano Ave., Albany. 525-8686. 

“Celebrate the Earth” a show by members of the California Watercolor Association and hand-blown glass by Michael Sosin, on display at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave. through June 8. 204-1667.  

“Jazz on High” Art Show and Jazz Vespers featuring the Art of Andres Guerrero and jazz by Dave Rocha & Quartet at 4 p.m. at High Street Presbyterian Church, 1945 High St, Oakland. www.highstreetpresbyterian.com 

“In Earth’s Shoe” drawings and prints by YaChin You and “The Prom Queen Series” paintings by Brooke Hatch. Artists’ reception at 7 p.m. at 1811 Carleton St. # A. 847-6272. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amy Wachspress reads from “The Call to Shakabaz” at 6 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Jacqueline Bautista reads from her stories about modern Spain, “Fiestas” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra features Gabriel Faure’s Requiem at 4:30 p.m. at Saint Joseph The Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. www.bcco.org 

Berkeley Dance Project 2007 “The Reception” choreography and tele-immersion technology at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$14. 642-9925. 

California Bach Society “A Madrigal History Tour” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $10-$25. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.org 

William Beatty, pianist, Marvin Sanders, flute at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893.  

Theater in Song Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano with music by Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $62. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Ravi Shankar, sitar, at 7 p.m. at at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $36-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“Songs of Lesser Known Writers” Dave Shank, piano, at 5 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., corner of W. Richmond Ave., Point Richmond. Suggested donation $10. 236-0527. 

Healing Muses and Octangle, wind octet, at 4 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington St., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Ian Tyson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Brazilian Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Gift Horse at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Balkan Folkdance at 1:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Battle of the Bands at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Shotwell, Sonskull, Coming Up Roses, Shorebird at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, APRIL 30 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Aurora Theatre Staged Readings “Happyslap” by Laura Jacqmin at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. For tickets call 843-4822. 

Alistair Horne will discuss “A Savage War of Peace” and the parallels between the Algerian War, the subject of his 1977 book, and the current Iraq War, at TIME at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Co-Sponsored by Moe’s Books. Donation $5. 848-3227.  

“Art of the Book” with Malcolm Margolin, Publisher, Heyday Books and Amy Thomas, owner of Pegasus and Pendragon Books at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

Steven Bach Describes “Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl” Hitler’s filmmaker, at 7 p.m. at Cody’d Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Masha Hamilton reads from “Camel Bookmobile” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Express with open theme night on “secrets” with special guest Blair at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Berkeley High School Jazz Bands at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

A TRIBUTE TO  

JAMES CAHILL 

UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus James Cahill’s collection of Chinese and Japanese paintings form the core of the Asian art collection at the Berkeley Art Museum. Former students and scholars in the field will gather for a conference in his honor on this weekend at the museum, beginning Friday at 5:30 and continuing all day Saturday. 

Known as the Ching Yuan Chai Collection, after Professor Cahill's studio name, this group of paintings has long been admired by scholars, the public, and most intently by the many students who studied with Cahill, many of whom consider to be among the most knowledgeable connoisseurs of Chinese painting in the 20th century.  

This installation, which continues through May 27, provides an overview of the Berkeley Art Museum's holdings of Chinese paintings. For more information, call 642-0808 or see www.bampfa.edu. 

TOUCHABLE STORIES 

A multi-media oral history exhibit is on display this Friday and Saturday in Richmond to challenge public perception of the city by telling the story directly from the people who are living it. Designed by a host of area artists, this 10-room tour is an intimate and interactive journey into the life and times of Richmond. Tours are one hour in length with an audience size limited to 15. The showings are the next three weekends: Fridays (April 27, May 4 and 11) at 8 p.m., and Saturdays (April 28, May 5 and 12) at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. 1303 Canal St. $12. Richmond residents/seniors/students $6. (Families: pay what you can. Tent City participants free) Reservations required: 619-3675.

If you’ve seen the film A Great Day in Harlem, you may have noticed that of the 57 jazz legends who showed up to be photographed by Art Kane standing on the stoop of a Harlem brownstone at 17 East 126th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues on an August morning in 1958, only three of them were women and only one of the three was white. 

The three women were the great Kansas City pianist, Mary Lou Williams, known as “the lady who swings the band” when she performed with the Andy Kirk orchestra; vocalist Maxine Sullivan, famous for swinging Loch Lomond; and Marian McPartland, originally from Berkshire, England, who has spent the last 64 years playing jazz piano and educating people all over the world about this quintessentially black American music. 

Besides being the only white woman in the photo, and the only player not born in the USA, McPartland is one of only six survivors from that photo shoot, along with Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin, Hank Jones, Horace Silver and Benny Golson. Golson’s presence, in what may be the most famous jazz photo of all time, led to his small but pivotal role in Steven Spielberg’s film, The Terminal. 

McPartland’s film career has been more limited than that, but her radio career has been astounding. Her weekly one hour public radio show, Piano Jazz, is the longest-running cultural program on NPR. Her first show aired in 1978 and over the years she has interviewed, featured and dueted with the likes of Lionel Hampton, Mary Lou Williams, Dorothy Donegan (a great jazz pianist otherwise given short shrift by jazz critics), Jay McShann and Johnny Guarnieri. 

Many of these shows are available on CD and they retain their musical and historical interest after repeated listening because, for once, the interviewer knows the true value of the music and musicians she is interviewing. She also knows what to ask them to play to showcase their lives and talents. When she joins her guests at the piano, the duets are spontaneous examples of the kind of telepathic communication plus virtuosity that only occurs at the highest level of jazz performance.  

I first heard McPartland at the Charcoal House in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio around 1965. She and her husband, cornetist Jimmy McPartland, an original member of Chicago’s Austin High School Gang, were playing the local restaurant. She was the pianist in Jimmy’s Dixieland band and when the band took a breather she continued to perform solo. Only it was not Dixieland, but bebop piano that she played between the band’s sets. Jimmy and Marian had met during WWII through the USO and, although her style was still evolving, they found a way to perform together without any of the rancor that was usually associated with Dixieland/bop confrontations. 

Her style has continued to evolve, but she still plays with the same crystalline clarity, spinning out flowing, articulate right hand melodic lines while backing them with inventive left hand harmonies and rhythmic accents. She has obviously learned from bebop pianists, but she also has a profound knowledge and understanding of the entire jazz keyboard tradition. That quality that makes her radio show so fascinating is rooted in her own curiosity and desire to learn about all the ways jazz can be played and swung on a keyboard. It is that combination of eagerness to learn, technical mastery, a brilliant mind still able to be amazed at what takes place during the jazz creative process and a soul overflowing with song that makes Marian McPartland one of the great living giants of jazz.  

Marian McPartland appears Thursday through Sunday at Yoshi’s, with shows at 8 and 10 p.m., except on Sundays when they are at 7 and 9 p.m. 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com. 

A young Asian woman in a fashionable, low-cut black dress and high heels busies herself with last minute fussing over the white bulk of an architectural model, positioned on a table elevated enough so that she needs to climb above it on a high tech stepladder to reach down into its interior. 

Meanwhile, a video projection plays on the screen above and behind her, on a wall covered with floor plans, vying for attention with the other, occasionally outre’, architectural models positioned above the stage of the Aurora Theatre for the production of Oren Safdie’s aptly titled play, Private Jokes, Public Places. 

On the screen is the extreme close-up of a smiling, dark-haired Caucasian man with an almost decorative, ostentatiously foreign accent, addressing the camera in a relentless torrent of words: “ ... as if you created a dialectic ... most basic poetic structures ... allows for the true viscera without pusillanimity.” 

The camera pans tightly over what seems a panel, three men exuberantly spouting the most absurd meta-language that seems to refer to, qualify, judge or exalt stray citations of examples of architecture—or, more often, projects. The Aurora audience is already laughing, and in a moment will be pressed into service, literally as an audience, not of a play, but of an ideological brouhaha erupting out of a review by distinguished men of the profession of student projects. 

The panel disbands, the screen goes black, and the three men seen projected on it enter the third dimension through the opposite entrance into the theater, carrying chairs, routing a harried videographer, who sets up at the back of an aisle. The brightly lit Aurora house has now become the architectural school equivalent of an anatomical theater--or dissecting lesson--with one of the suited gentlemen, obviously the academic advisor, advising “those of you who have just joined us” that there will be “the tour of a hospital wing for anorexia ... followed by a picnic lunch,” but that, first, “Well, this is Margaret.” 

It seems we’re all on a first name basis in a breezy, friendly—if self-conscious—academic environment, the extended friendliness ricocheting back from the professional guests. But this is belied by Margaret’s very personal self-consciousness, expressed in many ways as she endeavors to present her project, a public swimming pool designed to scrupulously respond to private needs and fears, which she illustrates with anecdotes from personal experience. Margaret wants the pool and its surrounding structure to be a refuge, “but not claustrophobic.” 

This occasions a diatribe by Ehrhardt, the gangling professional European with a leer, all over the map with his mixed metaphors, far afield from Margaret’s obvious intentions. He waxes Nietzchean, neo-Freudian, post-modern with compelling ambiguity, fashionable yet fully adjustable: “Thanks to psychoanalysis, we only have to communicate visually ... to be one with God!—as an iconoclasic symbol, of course ... You see what I’m getting at; architecture is not about words; architecture is about what’s in here [his hand grazes Margaret’s breast] ... No, Margaret, don’t think architecture is about words!” 

And many, many words follow, ostensibly about architecture, swarming like bees, stinging with issues of class, gender and race (when told her ideas have “a Pei-like quality,” Margaret explodes: “He’s Chinese. I’m Korean!”)—which charmingly remind the learned gentlemen of the ’60s. 

Unlike other plays which use theoretical physics, fine art or poetry as a flimsy, discardable metaphor for social misunderstanding or personal passion, Private Jokes reverses the field and takes on metaphors as a means to misappropriate humanistic ideals for private preoccupation and gain. And it remains a comedy throughout, as directed by Barbara Damachek, an even more farcical tea party in which Mad Hatter Robert Parsons (as gangling professional-European-with-a-leer Erhardt), March Hare Charles Dean (as puckish-then-prissy Colin) and Dormouse Max Gordon Brown (nebbishy advisor William) drag Margaret, a disbelieving Alice, through the ruined place settings they’ve gleefully befouled. 

Through it all, M. J. Kang, for whom the part was written, defines Margaret contrapuntally with her distinctive voice and body language, her facial expressions ranging from melancholy to uncomprehending to furious, turning the tables on her inquisitors, but with a unique humor. 

As a farce, even tour-de-force, which has to top itself, the climax, in which the hilarity finally provokes a display of the men’s hysteria and Margaret’s naked pride and contempt, is a little bit hackneyed, very much like ‘60s memorabilia. But the brief denouement, of her looking down on her spurned model like a mother into a cradle, is good, and the play stands as a paradox, a wry and sanguine view of the aesthetics—no, metaphysics—of contemporary architecture and all that the shape of human dwelling places can possibly imply. 

PRIVATE JOKES, PUBLIC PLACES 

8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays through May 12 at the Aurora Theatre. $12. 2081 Addison St. 525-1620.

There was a time in history when travel diaries were the way people in London, Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam found out about the countries they had yoked to their imperial ambitions. India, Sumatra, and rural Donegal—the places that funneled raw materials and gold into the great imperial centers—came alive in journals and long letters to leading newspapers. Most of the diarists focused on the exotic, but not a few accurately predicted that no matter how many dragoons were sent to terrorize the Irish countryside, insurrectionary groups like the “Whiteboys” would appear in their wake to burn down a landlord’s house. Or divined that all the “khaki boys” in the British Army would never quell the fierce Pushtin tribesmen of the Northern Frontier. 

Benjamin Dangl, the author of The Price of Fire, is a sort of 21st century version of these 18th and 19th century commentators who disdained the colonial comforts of Dublin or Delhi to head off into the outback. He rides buses into Bolivia’s altiplano, chews coca leaves in a Potosi park, and gulps his coffee as a cloud of tear gas descends on him in Buenos Aires. His five-year odyssey took him though Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and Argentina, all the while recording what might be called the death of the Monroe Doctrine. 

While the book is subtitled “resource wars and social movements in Bolivia,” Dangl covers most the countries that make up the Andes crescent. His thesis is that Bolivia’s “water war” of 2000 sparked similar uprisings in neighboring countries over the control of resources and resistance to the neo-liberal “Washington Consensus,” whose model of open markets and punishing austerity has plunged the southern hemisphere into economic chaos and bone-grinding poverty. 

Dangl sees “common threads” between land struggles in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil, the seizure of Argentine factories by unemployed workers, and Venezuelan barrio members turning a prison into a community center. While these specific movements are of our time, the spirit that drives them is hardly new. A good part of the book chronicles the long history of resistance, first to the Spanish, than to the avaricious elites and rapacious corporations that followed in their wake. The current struggles, he points out, have deep roots on the continent, and are built on the memories—sometimes the bones—of previous generations.  

But each great struggle has a transforming moment: a Puebla, an Easter Rebellion, a Soweto. For Bolivia it was a war over water.  

The Cochabamba water war was sparked off when the World Bank pressured the Bolivian government into selling local water rights to the huge, California-based Bechtel Corporation. The sale was textbook neo-liberalism: private enterprise and the free market would come in, upgrade the water system and provide for all. Instead, Bechtel raised rates by as much as 200 percent, seized control of irrigation systems and rural wells and, in the words of author William Finnegan, “stole the rain.”  

This privatization mania—led by the two horsemen of global capital, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—swept through South America during the 1990s, turning the continent’s resources over to multinational corporations for pennies on the dollar. In one particularly egregious example, Argentina sold off its fleet of state-owned Boeing 707s to a French company for $1.40 apiece. The planes are still being flown.  

But in Cochabamba the people took a stand against both the largest construction company in the world and their own government. And they won. 

“There is no organizer like victory,” Ho Chi Minh once remarked. The water war triumph led to a similar campaign in Alto, Bolivia, and then spread to Argentina and Uruguay. It also brought the issue of water privatization to the attention of the international movement against globalization. In Bolivia it paved the way for the great Gas War of 2003, which in turn laid the groundwork for the election of the Movement Toward Socialism’s Evo Morales as president.  

Dangl argues that the Bolivian resistance resonated throughout the rest of Latin America. There is certainly truth in this, although in its battle against the IMF, Argentina also drew on its own history of a powerful trade union movement and strong left. In places like Paraguay and Uruguay there is little doubt that Bolivia set an example for others to follow. 

But the book is not about who should get credit for what, it’s about the fact that resistance produces concrete benefits, whether they be for landless campesinos in Paraguay, unemployed factory workers in Argentina, or illiterate barrio dwellers in Caracas.  

And all of these people come alive in the Price of Fire. Dangl’s reporting—which brings to mind John Reed’s “Insurgent Mexico”—is filled with images of what Daniel O’Connor once called “the great common people.” There is coca farmer Leonilda Zurita, dressed in traditional garb, chatting up a reporter from the BBC on her cell phone. There is a former soldier turned rapper earnestly explaining why he took up the fight against the IMF. And a chilling interview with a pair of right-wing students in Bolivia’s conservative and restive Santa Cruz Department. 

One of the book’s strong points is that, while the author celebrates the growing tide of resistance, he has no illusions about how difficult the future will be. The people of Cochabamba won the water war, but, as Dangl notes, “creating a successful public-run water system proved to be harder than many citizens imagined.”  

Dangl eschews rose-colored glasses, keeping a certain political independence about the current situation in Latin America. For instance, while he cheers on the growing power of the Left, he is also critical of Brazilian President Lula de Silva for reversing his support for land occupations by landless campesinos. He even has sharp words for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for seizing the land of indigenous people.  

Nor does he think the colossus of the north has been vanquished. Dangl warns that the U.S. is using the war on drugs as “a convenient way to continue post Cold War intervention in Latin American countries.” U.S. military spending in the region has more than doubled during the Bush Administration.  

His ability to balance embracing those involved in the struggle, with maintaining a certain analytical distance keeps the book from being just a well-written and engaging piece of anti-globalism cheerleading. 

While the book’s main focus is the current situation, Dangl packs a lot of history into its modest size, history about which most Americans haven’t the foggiest idea. Who knew that the bloody Chaco War (1832-35) between Bolivia and Paraguay was initiated by Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell? That may seem like esoteric history, but the bitterness left by the Chaco War played no little role in fueling the Great Gas War of 2003.  

The Price of Fire is about everyone from grassroots organizers to presidential candidates, and they all get a chance to have their say. It’s a book about big things, like the IMF, world trade, and international finance. But it is also about small moments that transform. Cochabamba grassroots organizer Oscar Olivera distills the formula that led to the water war victory: “we lost our sense of fear.” The Price of Fire is about how people lose their fear, and when the poor and the disposed of the world lose their fear, the pillars of empire tremble. 

Conn Hallinan is an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a winner of a Project Censored Award, and did his Ph.D. dissertation on the history of insurrectionary organizations in Ireland.

Having ranted about the allergenic pollen from certain flowering trees—the sorts one might not even think of as “flowering” except in the taxonomic sense—allow me to spend a few inches on thanks and praise for their more conspicuous brethren. 

From January onward, we’re blessed by flowering trees on our streets and in our public and visible places. The first flowering plum I used to notice was one that stood behind the recycling center, now closed, at Dwight and Martin Luther King. I don’t know whether it was genetics or its situation—reflected light and heat from buildings or some such thing—but it always shone like a beacon to reassure me that winter really wouldn’t last forever this year either. 

I missed a lot of the plum blossom show this year, including the one in our own backyard, as I was in Florida having the opposite of fun. But despite the gloomy weather I came back to, the street trees were offering a welcome that looked good even after time in the semitropics, where something’s always blooming prolifically.  

We do pretty much have the best of several climatic worlds here, with flowering plums and peaches and quinces from northern places, crape myrtle and dogwood and magnolias from our own Southeast, tibouchinas and jacarandas from the semitropics, bottlebrush trees and paperbarks and New Zealand Christmas trees (those are the ones that look very like Hawai’ian ’ohia lehua) from over the South Pacific, pears and rhododendrons from Asia, and our own California native—if thus far underused—species of dogwood and cherry and ironwood.  

Big showy flowers evolved in plants—to risk a teleological metaphor—to attract pollinators more efficient, or at least more directed, than the wind. This isn’t to say that trees with big flowers are “more evolved”—less basal, as taxonomists say it, and more remotely related to ancestral forms—than birches and mulberries and oaks and such, the small-green-flowered kinds. In fact, magnolias seem (as of the last big analysis I’ve seen) to be among the oldest families of trees, and you’re hard put to find a more conspicuous flower.  

In fact, some of those magnolias flower not only before they leaf out, but before winter’s half over. Some of those are from Asia, and their distribution—southern North America, mid-Asia, and not a lot in between—speaks of an old, old line that has stood its ground while the ground was moving and changing climatically beneath it.  

One could argue, if one were to stay in that teleological groove, that fruit trees evolved not only to manipulate insects, birds, bats and such to move their genetic material around, but to further manipulate birds and mammals and fruit-eaters in general into moving their seeds around after they’d formed. (One would have to further stretch meaning to do that; as Joe pointed out similarly last week, one can’t strictly be said to manipulate if one lacks hands.)  

Strolling further along that line of thought, flowering plants of great beauty and adaptibility have managed to enlist humans to distribute their descendants all over the world. Look where those trees have come from; there’s not much chance they could’ve sent even so sturdy a seedcarrier as the coco de mer so far as northern California, never mind so far inland as even San Pablo Avenue.  

And consider trees like Franklinia alatamaha, whose survival is strictly a matter of ex situ conservation: The species, like the less showy but symbolic ginkgo, is long gone except where we’ve planted it. In neither case do we know, precisely, what caused the extinction, so we can’t blame ourselves for it. 

The spent petals of that metaphor are drifting around my head, and the plums and quite a few others have been stripped of flowers by time, wind, and rain over the past few weeks. But the flaxleaf paperbarks are starting to bloom, and the red horsechestnuts are balancing those gorgeous candles on their branches, and here come black locust blooms too. (As red horsechestnut has a white-flowered form, black locusts come in pink and white—the “black” refers to someone’s perception of their bark color.)  

Beauty as perceived by humans is adaptive for plants. Never mind all that; I’m grateful for it and rejoice in it as it softens the utilitarian edges of our cities. The trees seem to think we’re worthy of such pleasure, even if sometimes our fellow humans don’t.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

Flowers on an Eastern dogwood in a North Berkeley garden.  

TUESDAY, APRIL 24 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Big Springs Staging Area off South Park Drive, Tilden Park. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will explore the seasons from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“Can We Talk About God?” Devotion And Extremism In The Modern Age with Roger Scruton, conservative British writer and philosopher, and Zaid Shakir, resident scholar at the Zaytuna Institute at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft. 582-1979. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:15 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater. 644-4803. 

Berkeley PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. MelDancing@aol.com 

“Hearing Spirit: Social Thresholds and Ears of the Heart” with David Elliot at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, at the corner of McKinley and Bancroft. 527-2935. www.ahimsaberkeley.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991.  

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

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 

Teach-In and Vigil Against American Torture every Wed. at noon at Boalt Hall, Bancroft Way at College Ave.  

Walk, Talk, Buck the Fence What’s at stake in the Ecology of Berkeley’s Strawberry Canyon A walk at 5 p.m. every Wed. with Ignacio Chapela and expert guests to discuss what is at stake in the proposed steps for the filling of the Canyon by the UC-LBL Rad-Labs, and now British Petroleum. http://canyonwalks.blogspot.com  

Earth Day 2007: Will Unchecked Profiteering Kill our Planet? with Tod Brilliant, environmentalist, and Nina Rizzo of Global Exchange at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 548-9696. 

New to DVD: “Notes on a Scandal” at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “What Do You Say After You Say Hello?” by Eric Berne, M.D. at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Coffee Shop, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

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

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 26 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will explore the seasons from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“Thousand Oaks” An illustrated lecture on one of Berkeley’s unique neighborhoods by Trish Hawthorne at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Presented by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Cost is $10. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Biofuels: A Conversation between science, engineering, ecology, poitics and urban design at 7 p.m. at 750 Davis Hall, UC Campus.  

Greg Palast’s “From Baghdad to New Orleans” at 6:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10. Sponsored by Speak Out and KPFA FM. 601-0182. 

“Know Your Rights to Break the ICE” An educational forum on immigrant rights at 6:30 p.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary School, 920 Allston Way. Sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. 665-5821. 

California’s Mental Health Oversight Commission Public Hearing to solicit input on personal experiences of mental health stigma and suggestions for policies to combat stigma, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Emeryville Hilton Garden Inn, 1800 Powell St., Emeryville. 916-445-1104. 

“Esoteric Buddhism During the Song Dynasty” with Prof. Charles D. Orzech, of UNC, at 6:30 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave.Free, but RSVP requested. 809-1444. 

Multicultural Dinner and Fundraiser for schools in Nepal, Thailand and Kenya at 5 p.m. at restaurants in Berkeley, followed by a cultural program at Yogakula. Tickets are $25. 849-4983 or 549-0611. 

Dining Out for Life to Fight AIDS at various East Bay restaurants. For a list of participating restaurants see www.diningoutforlife.org 

“Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, Politics” at 7 p.m. at 3335 Dwinelle Hall, UC Campus. 848-1196. 

Great Books Discussion Group meets to discuss “Wild Duck” by Henrik Ibsen, at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3700, ext. 16. 

Poetry Workshop with Donna Davis, ongoing on Thurs. from 9 a.m. to noon at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Donation $10 per semester. 848-0237. 

Easy Does It Emergency Services Board of Directors' Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. All welcome. 845-5513. edi@easyland.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, APRIL 27 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with David Ratner on “How Stock Markets Work” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

Film Festival for Diversity “Making Whiteness Visible” at 6:30 p.m. in the Longfellow Middle School Auditorium, 1500 Derby at Sacramento. Free, including dinner and child care. Presented by the Berkeley PTA Council. 644-6320. 

“Residues of the Cold War: Cross Straits and Korean Peninsula” A symposium from 1 to 5:30 p.m. in the Great Hall, Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way. Sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies. 642-2809. 

Circle Dancing simple folk dancing with instruction. Potluck at 7 p.m., dancing at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Planning meetings for Dedication to denise brown will be on going every Friday at 2 p.m. at LeConte School, Room 104. Photos, videos and dvd's are welcome to be included in the event. For more information, contact Rita Pettit, PRitaAnn@aol.com, 559-4602. 

Family Pot Luck Shabbat at 6 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Please bring dinner food appropriate for children and non-perisahble ffod for the needy. Sponsored by Kol Hadash. info@kolhadash.org 

SATURDAY, APRIL 28 

“Pursuing Justice in Israel/Palestine” The Jewish Voice for Peace National Conference begins at 7 p.m., followed by a day of speakers on Sun., at Samuel Merritt Health Education Center, 400 Hawthorne Ave., near 34th, Oakland. Cost is $25-$200. Advance registration recommended. 465-1777. www.JewishVoiceforPeace.org 

Open the Farm Meet and greet the animals at the Little Farm as you help the farmers with the morning chores. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Bring Back the Natives Tour of School Gardens throughout the East Bay. Cost is $30. 236-9558. www.BringingBackTheNatives.net 

LeConte Elementary School Multi-cultural Spring Festival “Tastes of the World” from noon to 4 p.m. at 2241 Russell St. www.leconteonline.org 

Berkeley History Center Walking Tour “South West Berkeley Cultural Landscape” led by William Coburn at 10 a.m. Cost is $8-$10. For information on meeting place and to register call 848-0181. 

Mt. Wanda Wildflower Walk Join a Park Ranger for a walk in the hills where John Muir took his daughters. Terrain is steep, wear walking shoes and bring water. Rain cancels. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Cal-Trans Park and Ride lot at the corner of Alhambra Ave. and Franklin Canyon Rd., Martinez. 925-228-8860. 

City of El Cerrito Earth Day with volunteer work parties, food, music, an art show, composting demonstrations, an alternative fuel vehicle display, fun activities for children. Barbeque lunch at noon at the El Cerrito Community Center. For more information on the work parties, please contact earthday@ci.el-cerrito.ca.us or call Garth Schultz at 215-4351.  

“Where is Feminism Now?” Panel Discussion on the newly published Feminists Who Changed America by Barbara Love and Nancy Cott at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com  

“Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” with author Jeremy Scahill at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St, Oakland. Tickets $10 in advance, $15 at door, available at independent bookstores, or at 415-255-7296, ext. 253. www.globalexchange.org/events/blackwater 

Volunteers Needed for “Get Ready Berkeley” to distribute information on Pandemic Flu preparations at 10 a.m. at Frances Albrier Community Center, San Pablo Park. 981-5342. 

“Universal Healthcare-How Do We Get There?” A forum with Ron Adler, MD., Susan Bergman, Ann Munoz, MHA, at 10 a.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, Martin Luther King and Hearst.  

E-Waste Recycling for computers and monitors, cell phones, televisions, printers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Whole Foods Market, 3000 Telegraph Ave. 649-1333. 

Know Your Rights Training with Berkeley CopWatch Learn your rights when interating with police from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Grassroots House, 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Cal Carnival for Children from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Lower Sproul Plaza with games, prizes and food. CalCarnival@gmail.com 

Berkeley Public Library Teen Services Demonstration of Live Homework Help at 2 p.m. at the Electronic Classroom on the 3rd Floor of the Central Library, at 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6133. 

International Family Fair with games and activities for children, entertainment and food, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the New School od Berkeley, Bonita St. at Cedar. 548-9165. 

WiterCoach Connection Yard Sale and Fundraiser at 2447 Derby St. from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

The SAT or ACT? Which Test is Right for You? A free test assessment for high school students from 9 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. at Princeton Review, 2176 Shattuck Ave. For information call 845-7900, ext. 111. 

Bolshevik Café “Putting the social in socialism, the comedy in communism and the peace in a piece of pizza” at 7 p.m. at Finn Hall, 1819 10th St. Cost is $5-$15. 415-863-6637. 

Film Screening of “Street Survivors” a Claire Burch film at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. 547-7602. 

Luna Kids Dance Open House from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Studio C, 2640 College Ave. kids@lunakidsdance.org 

Petite Pooches Playgroup for small dogs from 10:30 11:30 a.m., one block north of Solano on Ensenada at Talbot. 524-2459. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

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, APRIL 29 

2nd Annual Children’s Day/Book Day Celebration with music, a magician and origami, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Children's Library, 4th floor, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Albany Spring Art and Music Festival with rhythm and blues, Taiko drumming, West African dance and more, children’s activities, food and community booths, from noon to 6 p.m. at Memorial Park, Washington at Carmel, Albany. www.albanyca.org 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cancelled only by heavy rain. 525-2233.  

El Cerrito Historical Society Spring Meeting will show a video of Sundar Shadi in his home and walking around his garden as he talks about his annual exhibits and his flowers at 1 p.m. at the El Cerrito Senior Center, behind the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7507. 

CA Revels Mayday Zoo Event with a Maypole, the Deer Creek Morris Men and other activities at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo. 632-9525.  

OakTown Blues & Bar-B-Que, St. Paul’s Episcopal School’s annual auction, will be held from 2 to 6:30 p.m. at Dunsmuir Historic Estate, 2960 Peralta Oaks Court, Oakland. Call for more information and tickets 285-9614. 

“War & Peace: Israel and the New Regional Paradign” with Israeli security analyst Eran Lerman at 7 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. Cost is $10. 525-3582. 

Berkeley Playreading Group reads Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” at 2 p.m. at 1471 Addison St., cross st. is Sacramento, in rear of the 1473 building. Donation $5. 655-7962.  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Ken McKeon on “Inside Inquiry” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, APRIL 30  

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at the East Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Union, Bancroft & Telegraph. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE  

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. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., April 24, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., April 25, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., April 25, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. Gil Dong, 981-5502.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., April 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., April 26, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.

In an April 13 story on labor relations in the Berkeley schools, a school employee’s name was misspelled. Her name is Anita Thomson. 

Leon Litwack’s name was misspelled in the April 20 story “Historian Leon Litwak Retires with Golden Apple.” Jimi Hendrix’s name was also misspelled. 

Litwack will give his last lecture for his course, History 7B, at 11 a.m. on Monday, May 7, in Wheeler Auditorium.

FRIDAY, APRIL 20 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Lysistrata” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through May 12. Tickets are $12. 525-1620. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Private Jokes, Public Places” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 13. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. 

Barestage “Cabaret” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 72 Cesar Chavez Center, UC Campus, through April 28. Tickets are $8-$12. 642-3880. 

Berkeley Rep “Blue Door” at 8 p.m. at 2025 Addison St., through May 20. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “A Streetcar Named Desire” Tennesse Williams’ Pulitzer Prize winning play opens at 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Runs through May 12. Tickets are $8-$11. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Impact Theatre “Measure for Measure” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through May 26.Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “She Loves Me” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through May 12.Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org  

Shotgun Players “Blood Wedding” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through April 29. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Four Decades of Bestselling Poetry” by Small Press Distribution, on display at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., to April 30. 981-6107. 

“Big World Little World” artwork by Emily Nachison and Robin Weinert. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Transmissions Gallery, 1177 San Pablo Ave. Exhibition runs through May 31. 558-4084. 

“Un Lugar Solitario” Paintings by Michelle Ramirez. Exhibit closing at 7 p.m. at The Gallery of Urban Art, 1746 13th St., Oakland. 706-1697. 

“Partners in Paint - The Tuesday Drawing Group” exhibition opens with a reception at 6 p.m. at the Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. 981-7533. 

FILM 

Aki Kaurismäki Film Festival “Man Without a Past” in Finnish with English subtitles, at 7:30 p.m., at Finnish Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Cost is $5. 849-0125. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nancy Silverton describes “A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Cristina Garcia reads from her new novel “A Handbook to Luck” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Dance Project 2007 “The Reception” choreography and tele-immersion technology at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$14. 642-9925. 

Oakland East Bay Symphony at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m.. Tickets are $15-$62. 652-8497. www.oebs.org 

University Chamber Chorus will perform the medieval version of Carmina Burana at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988. 

Akosua Oakland based, Ghanaian-American singer-songwriter at 8 p.m. at Mills College Concert Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 430-2255. 

National Jazz Appreciation Month Youth Music Extravaganza at 7 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649.  

Free Jazz Fridays with Phillip Greenlief, saxophone, Damon Smith, bass and Spirit, frums and percussion, at 8 p.m. at 1510 Eighth St. Performance Space, Oakland. Cost is $5-$15 sliding scale. 415-846-9432. 

Dennis Edwards, piano, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $12-$15. 848-1221.  

Lura, Portuguese chanteuse at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave. Tickets are $30. 642-9988. 

The Michetons, Wetbrain in support of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation at 5 p.m. at Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus.  

Friends of Deir Ibzi’a Benefit with the Georges Lammam Ensemble, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Stephanie Ozer and Lorenzo Kristov at 8 p.m. at the Jazz 

school. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Eric Swinderman Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Pickpocket Ensemble, klezmer-jazz CD release party at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St Tickets are $10-$15. www.hillsideclub.org 

Albino, The Flux at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Judea Eden Band at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Patty Larkin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Crooked Roads Band and Derek See at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

John Howland Trio, Waywarad Sway, Joshua Eden at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Diskonto, Stormcrow, Catheter at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Kevin Beadles Band at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Bayonics, Felonius at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

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

Flatbush, Re:ignition at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Forrest Day’s 420 Party at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Keiko Matsui at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 21 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Melissa Rivera & Maria Fernanda at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Madeleine Dunphy describes “Here is the Southwestern Desert” and “Here is the Coral Reef” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Celebration of Children’s Literature Day with children's authors, illustrators, storytellers and entertainers, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Tolman Hall, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “Manzi: The Adventures of Young Cesar Chavez” at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 925-798-1300. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Amazing Blooms” Group show of paintings, photography, sculpture and other media. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. Exhibit runs to June 1. 644-4930. www.expressionsgallery.org 

“Children’s Art, Childcare and the Home Front, 1943-1966” Fifty paintings on the childcare centers funded by the Kaiser shipyards. Reception at 1 p.m. at the Museum of Children’s Art, 538 Ninth St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to June 3. 465-8770. 

FILM 

Flamenco Film Screening “Enrique Morente: Alhambra Daydreams” at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568 ext. 20. 

Aki Kaurismäki Film Festival “I Hired a Contract Killer” at 1 p.m., “Ariel” at 4 p.m., “Lights in the Dusk” at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Cost is $5 for each film, or $15 for the series. 849-0125. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Traditional Zuni Fetish Carvings by Lena Boone on display Sat. and Sun. at Gathering Tribes, 1573 Solano Ave. 528-9038. 

“Dreaming Nature” the works of QiRe Ching and music by Cornelius Boots at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, #116, Oakland. info@TheFloatCenter.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

A Conversation with Jim Campbell on his current interactive installation at noon at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

“On the Wings of a Story: Second Annual Storytelling Festival” celebrates National Library Week with stories in words, dance, and song, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline St. Sponsored by the Urban Librarians Project. 238-7352. 

Cara Black reads from her latest Parisian Mystery “Murder on the Ile St. Louis” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Dance Project 2007 “The Reception” choreography and tele-immersion technology at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$14. 642-9925. 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “The Devil Made Me Do It!” with the Mark Foehringer Dance Project at 8 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Free. 248-1640. www.sfchamberorchestra.org 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “It Might As Well Be Spring” at 8 p.m. at St. Ambrose Church, 1145 Gilman St. Free, donations appreciated. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

University Chorus will perform Carl Orff’s version of Carmina Burana at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

“Virtue and the Viper” Italian Thirteenth Century Music from the Court of the Visconti at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College at Garber. Tickets are $10-$25. 528-1725. www.sfems.org 

The Hats, a capella, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Lloyd Gregory Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Resination, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Holler Town and Brad “The Dudeboy” Rogers at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Barbara Higbie & Friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Wil Blades, Scott Amendola at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Mark Holzinger & Friends, guitar, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

4 one Funk, Band of Brotherz, Alphabet Soup at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $12. 451-8100.  

Antioquia, The Flux, Green Machine at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Skip Heller Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Jefree Star, Order of the White Rose at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 22 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Constructions” Works by Jenny Honnert Abell, Marya Krogstad and Thomas Morphis. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

“Vanishing Victorians” opens at the Berkeley History Center at 3 p.m. at 1931 Center St. See examples of Victorian Gothic, Stick Eastlake, Italianate, Queen Anne, and Classic Revival, that can be found throughout Berkeley, as well as examples of those that were lost. Regular hours are Thurs.-Sat. 1 to 4 p.m. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/ 

THEATER 

“The Earth is Humming” Dramatization of dreams at 2 p.m. at The Dream Institute, 1672 University Ave. 845-1767. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Vine and Fig Tree: Poetry and Music for Peace in the Middle East at 2:30 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. 891-7197. 

Valerie Miner describes “After Eden” her novel on the meaning of home and homelessness at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Judith Taylor reads from “Tangible Memories: Californians and Their Gardens 1800-1950” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Paul D’Amato discusses “The Meaning of Marxism” at 5 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poetry Flash with Barbara Ras and Robert Thomas at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 525-5476. www.poetryflash.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Arts Festival “Music of Schoenberg and His Students” with Jerry Kuderna, piano and Nora L. Martin, vocalist at 8 p.m. at the former Fidelity Building, 2323 Shattuck Ave. www.berkeleyartsfestival .com 

Berkeley Dance Project 2007 “The Reception” choreography and tele-immersion technology at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$14. 642-9925. 

Chamber Music Sundaes with San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door are $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

Berkeley Broadway Singers “It Might As Well Be Spring” at 4 p.m. at St. Augustine's Church, 400 Alcatraz, betwn. Telegraph and College, Oakland. Free, donations accepted. 604-5732.www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

Music in the Community Two concerts with various groups performing classical and jazz, at 4 and 7 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Suggested donation $20 per concert or $35 for both. 524-0411. 

Oakland Lyric Opera “Romantic Opera Scenes” at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Tickets are $18-$20. Reservations requested. 836-6772. www.oaklandlyricopera.org 

George Mann, Roy Zimmerman, and Faith Petric, satirical songs and radical folk music at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Suggested donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

University Wind Ensemble at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32. 642-9988. 

Melanie O’Reilly & Tir na Mara at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Prince Myshkins & The Fromer Family, political satire and music, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Trumpet Supergroup at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Battle of the Bands at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

Josh Brill at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Shinehead at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15-$20. 548-1159.  

MONDAY, APRIL 23 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Art and the Old and New Downtown” with Kevin Consey, Director, Berkeley Art Museum and Jim Novesel, Architect and Planner at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6150. 

“Shakespear as a Calling” A celebration of Shakespeare’s Birthday at 7 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-6798. 

Aurora Theatre Staged Readings “Over the Mountain” by Brian Thorstenson at 7:30 p.m. at 2081 Addison St. For tickets call 843-4822. 

Felicia Luna Lemus and Aaron Petrovich read from their new novels “Like Son” and “The Session” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Kirk Lumpkin at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Average Dyke Band in a benefit for CodePINK at 6 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $23. For tickets call 524-2776.  

Megan Lynch and Mike Anglin, bluegrass, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

West Coast Songwriters Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761  

Musica Ha Disconnesso traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Chabot College at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, APRIL 24 

THEATER 

Tell It On Tuesday Solo performances at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 sliding scale available at the door. 

FILM 

Academy Film Archive: Recent Preservations with Mark Toscano at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michelle Goldberg presents her new book, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism” at 6:30 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kitredge St. 981-6107. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org  

Jacob Needleman talks about “Why Can’t We Be Good?” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Free, but donation of $10 suggested. 559-9500. 

A Conversation with Roger Scruton and Zaid Shakir on “Can We Talk About God? Devotion and Extremeism in the Modern Age” at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. 582-1979. www.zaytuna.org 

Shawna Yang Ryan reads afrom “Locke 1928” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Stephen Prothero discusses “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Randy Craig Trio at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Sachal Vasandani at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 

EXHIBITIONS 

“When We Were Very Young” Photography by Nicole Beck Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at North Gallery, 5231 College Ave. at Broadway, Oakland. Presented by California Colllege of the Arts. www.cca.edu 

FILM 

History of Cinema “An Injury to One” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash presents Robin Becker reading from “The Horse Fair” and Alison Luterman reading from “The Largest Possible Life” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Writing Teachers Write with Cyrus Armajani and students from “Write to Read” at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Roberta Maisel reads from “All Grown Up: Living Happily Ever After with Your Adult Children” at 7:30 p.m. at JCC of the East BAy, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$20, benefits Aquarian Minyan. 465-3935. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

South Berkeley Youth Arts Summit with the Longfellow Middle School Jazz Band and Peace Choir, La Peña Children’s Chorus and The Lab Live Hip Hop Ensemble at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Salif Keita, griot music from West Africa at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

U.C. Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rumba Cafe at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

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

Brown Bums at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Stacey Earle & Mark Stuart at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Beckett’s Family Reunion with Nicole and the Sisters in Soul at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Nels Cline Singers at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 26 

THEATER 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Macbeth” opens at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., near Rose in Live Oak Park, and runs Thurs.-Sat. to May 26. Tickets are $12-$17. 276-3871.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Prayer for Peace” Mixed media works by Lucien Kubo. Reception at 6 p.m. at Oakland’s Asian Resource Gallery, 310 Eighth St., corner of Harrison. 287-5353. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Thousand Oaks” An illustrated lecture on one of Berkeley’s unique neighborhoods by Trish Hawthorne at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Presented by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Cost is $10. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

“Bernard Maybeck and the Hillside Movement” A lecture by Tim Holt at 7:30 p.m. at 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5. 843-8724. 

An Evening with Greg Palast on “Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild” at 6:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$24 avalable from www.gregpalast.com  

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Regan McMahon describes “Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mo’ Phone at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is 85. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Teed Rockwell, touch-style fretboard and Hindustani ragas, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Winter Blanket, The Trenchermen, Lindi Wiggins at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Rafael Manriquez in concert and celebrating his 60th birthday at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Marian McPartland at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Bombay Crawlers, The Privies, Attack Formation at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

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

‘PARTNERS IN PAINT’ 

The Addison Street Windows Gallery opens a new exhibition, “Partners in Paint: The Tuesday Drawing Group,” with a reception at 6 p.m. today (Friday). The Addison Street Windows Gallery is located at 2018 Addison St., across the street from the Berkeley Repertory and Aurora theaters. 981-7533. 

FREE-JAZZ FRIDAYS 

As part of its Free-Jazz Fridays, The Jazz House presents Phillip Greenlief (saxophone), Damon Smity (bass), and Spirit (drums and percussion) in “Bush of Ghosts” at 8 p.m. today (Friday) at The Performance Space. Taking the name from Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s surrealist novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, this improvising trio will take listeners on a journey that veers from the quiet of Zen meditations to the sonic romps of free jazz, and everywhere in between. 1510 Eighth St., Oakland. $5-$15, sliding scale. (415) 846-9432. 

ANTONIONI CLASSICS 

Pacific Film Archive continues its Michelangelo Antonioni retrospective with Beyond the Clouds (1995) at 8:50 pm. Featuring John Malkovich, Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. 2575 Bancroft Way. $4-$8. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

‘BLOOD WEDDING’ 

Shotgun Players has extended its production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding through April 29. This production of Lorca’s fiery story of passion, jealousy and tragedy features flamenco dance choreographed by Yaelisa and accompanied by guitarist David McLean. 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org. 

Kon Ichikawa directed nearly 30 films in his native Japan before anyone took much notice of him. He was a studio director, taking assignments and completing them dutifully if not artfully. It was only when he and his wife/co-scenarist Natto Wada began developing their own projects that Ichikawa received his due recognition. 

Two of his most renowned works, The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), have recently been released on DVD by Criterion.  

The Burmese Harp is often hailed as one of the masterpieces of Japanese humanist cinema. Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama, it is a thoughtful and compassionate view of Japanese soldiers fighting in Burma during World War II. A regiment, led by a captain who was a musician before the war, surrenders to British forces after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The captain has trained his men to sing as a choir and one member of the company has learned to play the Burmese harp, accompanying his comrades in cathartic folk songs during their imprisonment at the hands of the British. (If the oft-repeated theme seems familiar, it’s for good reason; it’s a Japanese derivation of “Home Sweet Home.”) 

These men are patriotic and rue the fall of the Imperial Army, yet they are only human and thus weary of battle, eager to return home not only to surviving friends and family, but to do to their part in reconstructing their decimated nation. When the captain, who eloquently gives voice to this sentiment, learns that another Japanese regiment is entrenched on a mountain, refusing to surrender even though the war is over, he dispatches one of his men, Mizushima, the harp player, to ascend the mountain and persuade the stubborn company to surrender. When the company’s captain refuses, Mizushima’s company believes that he has perished on the mountain in the ensuing round of bombing. 

As Mizushima’s company mourns the loss of their comrade, the captain is especially distraught, guilt-ridden for having sent the soldier needlessly to his death after the war’s conclusion. At one point his men ask him to let go of the notion that Mizushima may have survived, for although the company has come across a Buddhist monk who resembles him, they cannot confirm his identity. It would be easier, they say, to simply believe that the resemblance is coincidence.  

Meanwhile Ichikawa catches us up on Mizushima’s story. Wounded by the bombing, he is nursed back to health by a Buddhist monk. When he is able to walk again, Mizushima steals the monk’s robes to use as a disguise while trying to make his way back to his regiment. But he is waylaid by the grief and trauma he discovers along the way in the form of Japanese corpses, strewn across the landscape and abandoned to the elements. Mizushima is compelled to give proper burials to all he comes upon, and in the process he undergoes a transformation, the impostor monk becoming a true monk. And it is here that Ichikawa is at his best, seamlessly blending Mizushima’s physical and spiritual journeys with beautifully expressive technique. The director keeps the horizon always high in the frame, allowing his shots to be dominated by the rocky foreground, rough terrain that must be traversed en route to that horizon. Thus we see Mizushima struggling across the blood-stained landscape, his feet cut and bleeding, his soul tormented by the plight of his fallen countrymen. 

Fires on the Plain, based on the 1952 novel by Shohei Ooka, is starker in its vision of warfare; it is a more harrowing version of a similar tale—more graphic, more comic, more disturbing. 

Again, a Japanese soldier is left to fend for himself in a foreign land, this time the Philippines. Private Tamura makes his way across another rough landscape, encountering fellow soldiers along the way who, like him, have descended to varying degrees of depravity under horrific conditions. If The Burmese Harp focused on what was best in the soldiers of Japan’s Imperial Army, Fires on the Plain casts a merciless gaze on the worst. Soldiers are reduced to primitive survivalists, using, abusing and defrauding each other of the necessities of survival. It’s like an adult version of Lord of the Flies.  

But Ichikawa again manages to find the poetry in the turmoil, this time with a lovely metaphor of insects unable to see the greater world and context of their struggle, but concerned only with immediate obstacles. Our first glimpse of this device comes when Private Tamura takes a minute to marvel at an ant, placing it in his hand and watching it scramble madly across his palm. The metaphor comes more clearly into focus a bit later, when a group of Japanese soldiers attempts to cross a road and field under cover of darkness, right under the noses of Allied forces. One particularly artful shot shows the soldiers descending from the top of the frame, clinging to roots and vines as they scamper down an embankment, like so many insects filtering down the screen. They then writhe through tall grass toward the road, where they slowly crawl on all fours en masse like an infestation set on destroying the crops across the way. 

Another memorable sequence presents a more light-hearted view of the conditions of survival. A pair of abandoned shoes lay on a path in the forest. The camera stays fixed on them as a soldier comes along, inspects them, and exchanges them for his own, followed by another soldier who does the same and so on down the line, until Tamura approaches and looks balefully through the soleless shoes before opting to go without shoes altogether. In the DVD’s liner notes critic Chuck Stephens points out the scene’s debt to Chaplin. While the scene obviously owes much to the famous boiled boot sequence from The Gold Rush (1925), it also calls to mind Chaplin’s short film Shoulder Arms (1918), which humorously and poignantly depicted the trials and tribulations of the little Tramp character while serving in the trenches of World War I. 

More broadly though, Ichikawa has adopted the overall aesthetic of Chaplin, that genre-defying blend of pathos and humor that seeks to find truth and humanity amid deprivation and tragedy. With The Burmese Harp he finds dignity among the rank-and-file of the aggressive Imperial Army, and in Fires on the Plain he finds humanity and visual poetry amid the most gruesome of conditions. 

THE BURMESE HARP (1956). 116 minutes. FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959). 104 minutes. 

Published by Criterion. $29.95. www.criterionco.com.

Composer Carl Orff’s 20th century “scenic cantata,” Carmina Burana, and the 13th century collection of songs that inspired Orff’s “reimagining” will both be performed—probably for the first time ever in this format, “back to back, recto to verso”—by the University Chorus and Chamber Chorus with guest soloists and musicians, under the direction of Marika Kuzma. 

The medieval songs will be performed tonight (Friday) at 8 p.m., Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus and Orff’s Carmina Burana will be performed at Hertz Hall at 3 p.m. Saturday, free, as part of Cal Day. 

The medieval Carmina Burana will be repeated Sunday at 7 p.m., St. Dominic’s Church, 2390 Bush St., San Francisco—also for free, with free parking provided. 

The medieval songs of the Carmina Burana, which the University Chamber Chorus will perform tonight are from a manuscript collection found in the abbey at Benediktbeurn, Bavaria, in Latin, German and French, created and sung by Goliards, vagantes, wandering scholars who sang for their supper while on the road from one university to another, singing of wine and love, and satirizing the clergy.  

The performance will be staged, based on materials from Thomas Binkley’s production (where Kuzma assisted Binkley, and several of the guest musicians played) at the Early Music Festival in 1990 (Binkley’s Studio der fruhen Musik originally recorded selections for Teldec.) Guest instrumentalists include guitarists Paul Binkley (Thomas Binkley’s nephew, who will play on Binkley’s instruments) and Michael Bresloff, recorder players Francis Felden and Kit Higginson, harpist Cheryl Ann Fulton, Shira Kammen and Roy Whelden on vielles and percussionist Peter Maund, with choreography by Charles Moulton. 

Carl Orff’s (1895-1982) “scenic cantata” was first performed in Frankfurt in 1937, becoming the first piece of Trionfi, a trilogy including Catulli Carmini (1943) and Trionfo Di Afrodite (1953). Orff, who divided his time between children’s musical education, conducting, designing percussion instruments (which earned the monicker “Orff instruments”) and editing old musical manuscripts, took 25 songs from the medieval collection of the Carmina Burana, mounting them in three parts ( “Springtime,” “In the Tavern” and “The Court of Love”) to realize his modern work, with his signature techniques of building climaxes through repetition, avoiding counterpoint, emphasizing chorus and percussion, and using mimed staging.  

Orff taught at the Munich Academy of Music in his hometown, also co-founding there in 1924 the Gunther Schule for music and movement with Dorothee Gunther. After the age of 40, Orff devoted himself solely to theatrical music, from incidental stage music to operas like Antigone (1946), setting the translation of Sophocles by Romantic poet Friedrich Holderlin. His educational activities were discontinued by the Nazis; in 1948, the postwar government put him on radio to teach, with worldwide impact. 

The University Chorus’ production will be performed in the piano-percussion arrangement with soloists Axel Van Chee, Gregory Fair and Candace Johnson, with pianists Karen Rosenak and Jeffrey Sykes, and percussionist Florian Canzetti. 

Both versions will be conducted by Marika Kuzma. 

“So few people know the origin and contexts of the songs which inspired Orff,” Kuzma said, “that it may come as a surprise how different the sensibilty is. Something I’ve loved about working with the student choruses on this is that these songs from the 13th century are from students, in their search for pleasure and wisdom, and it’s been student imagination and student energy coming together with the original to put this show on. 

The students of the 13th century were, in their way, singing of the nature of true values and even something like the separation of church and state. There are so many lines back and forth between past and present. Orff refers to the 13th century, which referred back to antiquity. And in Thomas Binkley’s version, you can hear very clearly the influence of other cultures. It sounds very Middle Eastern.” 

The medieval songs will be performed at 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Tickets ($4-$12) are available at the Zellerbach Box Office, 642-9988, tickets.edu.berkeley or an hour before the show at Hertz Hall Box Office. 

Orff’s Carmina Burana will be performed at Hertz Hall at 3 p.m. Saturday, free, as part of Cal Day. 

The medieval Carmina Burana will be repeated at 7 p.m. Sunday at St. Dominic’s Church, 2390 Bush St., San Francisco. Free, with free parking provided as well. 

Nobody recognized the commercial value of natural scenery better than Mark Daniels.  

“Developing and selling landscape beauty is perhaps the only way in which a man of the community may have the cake and eat it, too,” he said in June 1914, addressing the Tourist Association of Central California at the Shattuck Hotel in Berkeley. “[T]he visitor does not take one jot from the landscape or the community […] in return for the money he contributes, nor does the natural beauty of a district or country need to be repaired or replanted each year. And yet the community may sell it and resell it without losing any part of the original bulk of the commodity.” 

Two years earlier, in a booklet titled Hillside Homes and Gardens, Daniels extolled the advantages of hill dwelling: 

The great history-making nations of the world have invariably been mountain or hill folk, dwelling near the sea. […] If we wish to develop within ourselves the capacity for inspiration, ambition and a sense of the bigness of things, there is no better way than to seek an environment of inspiring view, where may be seen a portion of the world of sufficient magnitude to give us better perspective and a better sense of the relative importance of things. 

But Daniels did much more than speak on the subject. Civil engineer, planner, landscape engineer, national park superintendent, and eventually architect, Daniels (1881–1952) was perhaps the most accomplished practitioner in California of the art of developing and marketing scenic beauty. 

Born in Spring Arbor, Mich., the young Daniels will have seen his share of natural rock formations before arriving in California. His parents having settled in Fresno, Mark entered UC Berkeley and obtained a B.S. degree in civil engineering. He was one of the better known members of the class of 1905, active in the Skull and Keyes and the Theta Nu Epsilon honor societies, manager of his class Blue and Gold, and playing a prominent role in amateur theatricals, a passion for which he would retain for the rest of his life. 

At UC he met the first of his four wives, Frances “Dolly” Trost (1888–1941). A gifted singer and artist, Dolly was a soloist member of the Treble Clef Society and a contributor to the Blue and Gold, where one of her pen-and-ink wash drawings “attracted great attention, being considered the best in the book,” according to the Oakland Tribune. The newspaper featured her photograph on several occasions, never failing to refer to her beauty. The couple wed in June 1907 and took up residence near Alta Bates hospital before decamping for Nob Hill in San Francisco. 

Having begun his career in workaday civil engineering jobs—he had been superintendent of a placer mine in Plumas County; worked in the engineering department of Southern Pacific; was chief engineer of the Monterey, Fresno & Eastern Railroad; and served as assistant city engineer in Potlach, Idaho before returning to San Francisco to open his own office—Mark had his first chance to develop scenic beauty when John Hopkins Spring subdivided Thousand Oaks in northwest Berkeley. 

Blessed with an abundance of water, Coast Live Oaks, and extraordinary rock formations, the area had been a favored locale of the Ohlone, providing both physical and spiritual sustenance. At the turn of the 20th century, it was still a remote and secluded place that attracted hikers, nature lovers, and picnickers, who named the largest of the rocks: Great Stone Face, Tunnel Rock, Monument Rock, Shasta Rock, Picnic Rock. 

In 1908, while the Chamber of Commerce was waging a quixotic campaign to move the state’s capital to Berkeley, a bond measure proposing to allocate 100 acres in Thousand Oaks for a public park failed at the ballot. The land was soon snapped up by Spring, who had a different vision: an exclusive residential park, with much of its natural beauty privatized. 

The access problem was solved in 1909, when Southern Pacific excavated the Solano Tunnel, allowing streetcars to run north on Arlington Avenue. Spring lost no time and hired Mark Daniels to lay out the tract. 

The profusion of rock outcrops made the tract difficult to develop. Daniels entered into partnership with Vance Craigmiles Osmont, a mining engineer associated with UC and an expert in volcanic rock. In 1905, Osmont had published the book A Geological Section of the Coast Ranges North of the Bay of San Francisco, in which he described St. Helena rhyolite and proposed the term Bodega diorite for the exposed granitic rocks of the Bodega headland. Both these rocks are related to Northbrae rhyolite, the prevailing rock in Thousand Oaks. 

Daniels contoured streets to follow the terrain and curved them around ancient oaks and crags. Lots were sold with their rock outcroppings left intact. Arlington Avenue, the neighborhood’s grand boulevard, was planted in flowers along its full length. The most popular picnic destination, Great Stone Face, was preserved as open space and eventually given to the city for a small public park. 

In 1910, Daniels selected a choice—and very rocky—lot for his own house near the Great Stone Face. Although in later years he would join the AIA and design houses (including his own at Pebble Beach and in Bel-Air, Los Angeles), the rustic shingled house he built is the work of Oakland architect A.W. Smith (1864–1933), one of the Bay Area’s most prolific and versatile home designers of the day. 

A long rectangular structure with wide roof overhangs, the Daniels house is sited parallel to the hillside, obeying the dictum set by Bernard Maybeck for the Hillside Club. It is set well away from the street at the bottom of a sloping stone path. Gigantic boulders hem it in on three sides. One of these is the celebrated Shasta Rock. 

Mark and Frances moved into their new home in early 1911. A year later, one of the front-page stories in the Oakland Tribune recounted how society matron Mrs. Mark Daniels rescued a servant and saved the neighborhood’s reputation by chloroforming to death a skunk found feasting in the garbage can—not exactly what we would characterize as living with nature. 

Meanwhile, the Thousand Oaks real-estate marketing machine was churning away. In charge of sales were the Newell-Murdoch and George Friend companies—Robert C. Newell and George Friend had married two of Spring’s daughters. Newell-Murdoch had also retained Daniels to lay out the Haddon Hill home park on the east shore of Lake Merritt and Forest Hill in San Francisco. In August 1912, the company’s newspaper ad exclaimed, “Thousand Oaks Heights is in the Path of Progress. It is the only way Berkeley can expand […] Here the people must come.”  

Citing the federal census, the ad proclaimed Berkeley one of the fastest growing cities in the state and pointed to Thousand Oaks as “the first time in the history of California that suburban and interurban railroads have constructed lines in a district before it was populated.”  

With streetcars every five minutes, residents could reach San Francisco in 40 minutes and the university campus in ten. The fare was five cents. 

Explaining why the Key Route, Southern Pacific, and the Oakland Traction Company had invested $4,200,000 in extending car lines into Thousand Oaks ahead of the population, the ad delivered this punch line:  

“The people are coming—houses are going up—and soon land values will do the same. Invest a few dollars in Thousand Oaks, then sit back and watch it grow. […] When Thousand Oaks Heights is sold out, there will be no more hill property in the Berkeley district of Alameda County.” Arlington Avenue was dubbed “the street of a million flowers”; a ride on its streetcar line promised “the grandest panorama of the bay ever placed before the eyes of mankind.” 

Next to the Newell-Murdoch ad, the Homesite Realty Company was touting lots in Arlington Oaks, across the road from Thousand Oaks and a little closer in. “We have retained the services of Mark Daniels, landscape engineer of Daniels and Osmont, to pass upon the landscape merit of every piece of land listed with us. If a lot has not unusual beauty we will not handle it,” trumpeted the ad. 

In April 1914, Daniels was appointed landscape engineer for Yosemite National Park, whose condition was judged unkempt and its beauty marred by inartistic buildings and camps.  

Talking to the press, Daniels said, “It is not the object to in any way attempt to add to the beauties of nature within the park, but to develop a plan for the accommodation of utilities so that the government appropriations for each year may cover work to be done in accordance with a carefully worked out and fixed program. The problems in Yosemite Valley are numerous. They comprise sanitation, water supply, lighting, patrolling, fire protection, insect control of concessions and many other things.” 

A mere two months after the appointment, Daniels was elevated to the position of superintendent and landscape engineer of national parks, a job in which he lasted only until December 1915. During his tenure, he opened Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite and sought to increase public accommodations in the parks. 

When not on government business, Daniels was laying out Sea Cliff and Crocker-Amazon in San Francisco, executing a development system for a subdivision commissioned by the Spring Valley Water Company, and developing an irrigation system in Butte County. 

And then Daniels vanished from Berkeley. His work took him to Monterey and the development of Pebble Beach and the 17-Mile Drive. Several years later, his first marriage in ruins, he would move to Los Angeles, where he would be instrumental in laying out Bel-Air. By the late 1920s, he had expanded his practice to include architecture. Eventually he would return to San Francisco, working on a wide variety of projects, from the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939–40 to a public housing project in San Francisco’s Chinatown. In 1934, he designed a Berkeley home for his friend and Bohemian Club co-member, the printer John Henry Nash, but Daniels himself would never live here again. 

An army captain in World War One, Mark Daniels was buried in the Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno. Architect Sidney Barker Newsom, who with his brother Noble designed a good number of homes in Thousand Oaks, is also buried there. 

The rocky garden around the Mark Daniels house will be open on BAHA’s Spring House Tour, May 6, between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph By Daniella Thompson 

The rocky garden around the Mark Daniels house in Thousand Oaks will be open on BAHA’s spring house tour, May 6.  

Among the Rocks: Houses and Gardens in Thousand Oaks 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association Spring House Tour 

Sunday, May 6, 2007 

1 p.m.–5 p.m. 

Tickets: $35; BAHA members $25 

(510) 841-2242 

www.berkeleyheritage.com 

I am a total crank. I admit it. I can’t help myself. I think this just the way Lord Shiva made me and there ain’t too darned much I can do about it. Some things just rile me, chafe and get under my pink semi-translucent skin and one of those things is the utter and thorough inability of just about everyone in the building trades to properly strap a water heater.  

Now, this may seem a silly, small and niggling thing but it’s not. It’s genuinely important and I’ll take a few minutes (if you’ll bear up) and explain why. I will also, of course, explain how one ought to do this vital task). 

In the January of 1997, just about 10 years ago, California began enforcing a law that required the sellers of homes to strap their water heaters prior to delivery, to their eager new recipients. At first, it was understandable that plumbers and handyfolk would get this wrong and so I made excuses and waved the little booklet around and asked that these be done again.  

No problem. Well, of course they nearly all got fixed wrong and as time went on, my face got longer and more beleaguered and eventually, I just lost all composure. Now this job isn’t all that complex. It’s also been 10 years and only a small fraction seem able to get it right. I don’t get it. I think the real problem is that nobody really understands what’s at stake.  

I’ll never forget this one image from the Northridge earthquake of 1994 (the one that resulted in the law). A field of burned lawns and those funny rectangles of concrete representing the former homes of football stars and grocery clerks. Well beyond the little squares lay the remains of water heaters, often yards from each house. 

It took me a minute but the fuzz cleared to reveal what had happened. Water heaters had caromed about in these houses and crashed through doors or walls and ended up far from where they had perched before things went all wonky.  

Water heaters are very heavy and their gas and water connections are far too flimsy to restrain so great a mass. Also, earthquake forces love objects like this and slender straps become something of a joke. Only a serious pair of heavy straps, bolted into framing seem able to work when the shaking gets grand. In the absence of these, gas lines torn open, deploy their ordinance and the result tends to be quick and devastating. 

The architect’s office of the state (yes, Yuri, there is a State Architect) published a short booklet to go with the new law and I see them from time to time, usually taped onto the front face of a poorly strapped water heater just for comic relief. If you read it, it’s pretty straight forward. Two straps of heavy gauge metal (you can buy a kit in most hardware stores these day that’s plenty adequate) for any water heater of up to 52 gallons. I’ve never seen a 52 gallon water heater so I’m not sure who came up with that! 

The straps need to be bolted, not nailed, not screwed, not glued, bolted into the actual framing of the house. If you want to bolt to something else, you need to make sure that the thing you bolt to is well bolted to something else. I’ve seen more than a few goofynesses related to this but it’s just not that complex if a little effort is applied. 

Straps need to hold the water heater against some surface and not merely off in space. This is perhaps the most common cognitive failure I see. A pair of heavy straps might be used but they leave a large gap between the water heater and the wall, as though the water heater will know, when the earthquake begins, that it should observe this perimeter and not attempt any silly business like bouncing off the wall and shredding its straps (which is exactly what it will do).  

No strap or bolt is sized to withstand the force of 500 pounds bouncing off a wall. They just don’t make them big or strong enough. The only thing that really works is to keep the water heater from developing that level of acceleration and the only way to do that is to read the instruction (it says it right in the booklet and shows it in every picture for those who don’t read) and install the straps so that there is no bounce room. Straps should tighten the tank right up against the backing and thus prevent the sort of movement that can liberate the beast. 

It’s really best and easiest to do this against an exterior wall (from the inside or outside) and even easier in a corner. Nonetheless, sometimes they have to be strapped inside the basement some distance away.  

I’d generally opt for replumbing at the better location but when there is no other choice, one will need to build a small wall right behind the tank. Said wall will have to connect boldly to both top (floor framing?) and bottom (basement slab?) with the same level of bolting that the strap itself demands.  

Another thing to be tuned into is the spacing of the straps. One strap should be just above the controls (within 4” if possible) and the other should be near the top (within 9”). Now this seems logical but I will see one in the middle and one at the top all the time as though the lights are on and nobody’s been home for a while. 

There are a range of other bizarre aberrations often seen but let it be sufficient to say that not 10 percent of these jobs are done vaguely right and there’s just no excuse. The instructions are readily available and the materials are cheap. Also, the consequences are really quite serious. 

True, I would very much like every house in the Bay Area to have a valve that will automatically shut off the gas in a quake and, yes, this would eliminate the fire concern from flying water heaters but there is at least one other darned good reason to overtake inertia and get this done and it’s all about clean drinking water. Every water heater contains many gallons (30, 40, 52?) of clean, fresh drinking water (unless you haven’t used your hot water lately!) because water is constantly flushing through the tank.  

If you have your water heater strapped and it’s stayed in one place, you might be the only folks on your block with fresh drinking water in the sober days that will follow a local temblor and that’s nothing to shake a divining rod at. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 20 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Fred Nachtwey on “Sleep” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“Tales of Western Ornithologists” with Harry Fuller at 7 p.m. at the Live Oak Recreation Center. Sponsored by Golden Gate Auddubon Society. Cost is $10-$15. 843-2222. 

Oceans Awareness to bring awareness of the problem of plastic in our oceans at 5 p.m. at Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus. Sponsored by CALPIRG. 

Alcohol Free Weekend Can You Do It? Take the sober weekend challenge sponsored by UC Berkeley Health Serives. For more information call 642-7202. 

“Tell the Truth and Run: Georges Seldes and the American Press” a film screening at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $10, no one turned away. Discussion follows with filmmaker Rick Goldsmith. 528-5403. 

“Life and Debt” A documentary about Jamaicans and their strategies for survival, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., midtown Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Power of Now Group meets to discuss the book “The Power of Now” for ages 50 plus at 7 p.m. at 1471 Addison St, behind 1473 Addison. RSVP sterkjohn@yahoo.com  

Red Cross Blood Drive From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at UCB Unit 2 Dorms, Recreation Room, 2650 Haste. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Conscious Movie Night “The Secret” at 7:30 p.m. at Center of Light, 2944 76th Ave., Oakland. 635-4286. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 21 

Berkeley Earth Day Fair from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Cener PArk, MLK and Allston, with cultural performances, activities, food, craft and community booths. 654-6346. 

Earth Day Restoration & Cleanup Program at Eastshore State Park Meet at 10 a.m. behind Sea Breeze Deli off University Ave. and West Frontage Rd. Bring sunscreen, non-slip shoes or boots, gloves, pick. 544-2515. kfusek@ebparks.org 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 6-9 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Springtime Pond Plunge See babies of dragonflies, phantom midges, frogs and maybe even newts. Use nets and magnifying glasses to study them up close before we return them to thier watery home. Meet at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Recycle Computer Equipment to help keep it out of landfills. Bring your items to Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. www.elephantpharm.com  

“The Woodpecker’s Toungue: Accuracy in Drawing Birds” with Dan Gleason at 10 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

“Introduction to Bio-Intensive Gardening” Learn how to feed your family from your own backyard, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Grandma Mary’s Organic Farm, 100 Behrens St., El Cerrito. Cost is $75. 527-9271. www.kleiwerks.org  

The 2007 Edith Coliver Festival of Cultures A celebration of cultural unity with dance, drama, food, arts, crafts, exhibits and children’s activities from around the globe, from 10 a.m .to 6 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft. 642-9461. http://ihouse.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA) meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Sproul Room, 2727 College Ave. All welcome.  

Peralta Hacienda Historical Park Earth Day Celebration Join us to help clean up the park from 9 a.m. to noon. Meet the Archeologist from 11 a.m. to noon, follwed by a community potluck. For information call 532-9142. 

Car Care Clinic for Women Learn how to avoid the scams and the basics of auto repair and maintenance, at 10 a.m. at Marty’s Motors, 10929 San PAblo Ave., El Cerrito. Free, but RSVP required. 235-6000. 

John Adams’ 60th Birthday Celebration from 1 to 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. 559-6910. jstrauss@crowden.org 

Rotary Club of Berkeley “A Night at the Races” with dinner, auctions and horse-races on large screen video, at 5:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $50, and funds raised benefit community projects in Berkeley. For reservations call 339-3801. jmasters@cencomfut.com 

Open House at the Earthquake Engineering Research Center, Richmond Field Station. Tour the labs that stimulate the effects of earthquakes, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 1301 S. 46th, St., Bldg. 451, take the Bayview exit off 580 in Richmond. 665-3617. 

Spring Blooming Perennials with Gail Yelland, landscape designer at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens Nursery, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

Bay Area Socialism Conference from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the ntertribal Friendship House, 523 International Blvd. between 5th & 6th Sts., Oakland. Cost is $10-$20, includes breakfast and lunch. Call to register. 821-6171. 

East Bay Atheists meets to watch a video of Richard Dawkins speaking in Lynchburg, Virginia about his latest book, “The God Delusion” at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 3rd Floor Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. 

Christians for the Abolition of Torture with Dr. Marc Zarrouati at 1 p.m. in the Small Assembly Room, First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. 848-3696. 

California Writers Club meets to discuss action vs procrastination at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. 

Everyday Safety Skills for Children from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $60, scholarships available. Call to register and for location. 831-426-4407. www.kidpower.org 

Luna Kids Dance Spring Gala at 7 p.m. at Clif Bar Theater, 1610 5th St. Donations $35 and up. 644-3629. 

Musical Pizza Fest and Silent Auction to benefit Dandelion Cooperative Prescool at 4 p.m. at Northbrae Community Center, 941 The Alameda. 526-1735. 

Free Car Seat Check-Up Learn how to protect your children and make sure your car seat is installed correctly. Fomr 10 a.m. to noon in the parking lot of St. Columba Church, 6401 San Pablo Ave., at Alcatraz. Free car seats provided to low-income families. For an appointment call 428-3045. 

Families Dealing with Dementia Seminar from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Mercy Retirement & Care Center, 3431 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. Free. 534-8547. www.mercyretirementcenter.org 

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, APRIL 22 

People’s Park 38th Anniversary Celebration with music, food and activities for children from noon to 6 p.m. at Perople’s Park, just east of Telegraph Ave. on Dwight Way. www.peoplespark.org 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233.  

Wild and Native Hike Explore native plants in Wildcat Canyon on a brisk 7-mile hike. Bring lunch, liquids, and layers. Meet at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Vanishing Victorians” at the Berkeley Historical Society general meeting from 3 to 5 p.m. at 1931 Center St. 848-0181.  

Restore Wetlands in Oakland Volunteer with Save the Bay in a wetland restoration project near the Oakland Airport, a home for many species, including the California Clapper Rail and Burrowing Owl. Volunteers assist our plant propagation efforts in our on-site Wetland Native Plant Nursery from 9 a.m. to noon RSVP to 452-9261 ext. 109.  

Progressive Democrats of the East Bay General Meeting on The U.S. and Iran: The Standoff, Its Origins, and Its Ramifications, with Shahram Aghamir, an Iranian and producer of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA Radio; and Sepideh Khosrowjah, an Iranian playwright and peace and social justice activist, from 1:30 to 4 p.m. at 2161 Allston Way. 636-4149. 

“Savvy Solutions to Global Warming” with Felix Kramer of CalCars, David Hammond of UC Berkeley, and Jane White of Project 3650 at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. 527 0450. www.berkeleycybersalon.net  

“Beyond Prisons” A talk by author Laura Magnani at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Society of Friends Meeting House, 2151 Vine at Walnut. 843-9725. 

Earth Day at the Kensington Farmer’s Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington, behind Ace Hardware. 525-7232. 

Music for Babies, parent-led activities in rhythm, finger play, bubbles and more at 9 a.m. at Bananas, 5232 Claremont Ave., Oakland. 658-7353. 

“Living Ship Day” with a commemoration of the “Doolittle Raid” from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Aircraft Carrier UCSS Hornet Museum, Pier 3, 707 W. Hornet Ave., Alameda. Cost is $14 for adults, and $6 for children. 521-8448. 

Berkeley City Club Tour of the “Little Castle” designed by Julia Morgan at 1:15, 2:15 and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. 883-9710. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek on “The Dharma in Asia” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, APRIL 23 

“The Energy Problem: What the Helios Project Can Do about It” with Steve Chu, Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater 2025 Addison St. 486-5183. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425.  

TUESDAY, APRIL 24 

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Big Springs Staging Area off South Park Drive, Tilden Park. For information and to register call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will explore the seasons from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“Can We Talk About God?” Devotion And Extremism In The Modern Age with Roger Scruton, conservative British writer and philosopher, and Zaid Shakir, resident scholar at the Zaytuna Institute at 7 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. at Bancroft. 582-1979. 

Free Diabetes Screening from 8:15 to 11 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Do not eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand. 981-5332. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater. 644-4803. 

Berkeley PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. MelDancing@aol.com 

“Hearing Spirit: Social Thresholds and Ears of the Heart” with David Elliot at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, at the corner of McKinley and Bancroft. 527-2935. www.ahimsaberkeley.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 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. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 

Teach-In and Vigil Against American Torture every Wed. at noon at Boalt Hall, Bancroft Way at College Ave.  

Walk, Talk, Buck the Fence What’s at stake in the Ecology of Berkeley’s Strawberry Canyon A walk at 5 p.m. every Wed. with Ignacio Chapela and expert guests to discuss what is at stake in the proposed steps for the filling of the Canyon by the UC-LBL Rad-Labs, and now British Petroleum. http://canyonwalks.blogspot.com  

Earth Day 2007: Will Unchecked Profiteering Kill our Planet? with Tod Brilliant, environmentalist, and Nina Rizzo of Global Exchange at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, corner of MLK. 548-9696. 

New to DVD: “Notes on a Scandal” at 7 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Discussion follows. 848-0237. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “What Do You Say After You Say Hello?” by Eric Berne, M.D. at 6:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Coffee Shop, El Cerrito Plaza. 433-2911. 

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

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, APRIL 26 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will explore the seasons from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“Thousand Oaks” An illustrated lecture on one of Berkeley’s unique neighborhoods by Trish Hawthorne at 8 p.m. in the Chapel, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Presented by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Cost is $10. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Greg Palast’s “From Baghdad to New Orleans” at 6:30 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$10. Sponsored by Speak Out and KPFA FM. 601-0182. 

“Know Your Rights to Break the ICE” An educational forum on immigrant rights at 6:30 p.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary School, 920 Allston Way. Sponsored by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. 665-5821. 

“Esoteric Buddhism During the Song Dynasty” with Prof. Charles D. Orzech, of UNC, at 6:30 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave.Free, but RSVP requested. 809-1444. 

Multicultural Dinner and Fundraiser for schools in Nepal, Thailand and Kenya at 5 p.m. at restaurants in Berkeley, followed by a cultural program at Yogakula. Tickets are $25. For information and reservations call 849-4983 or 549-0611. 

Dining Out for Life to Fight AIDS at various East Bay restaurants. For a list of participating restaurants see www.diningoutforlife.org 

“Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, Politics” at 7 p.m. at 3335 Dwinelle HAll, UC Campus. 848-1196. 

Great Books Discussion Group meets to discuss “Wild Duck” by Henrik Ibsen, at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3700, ext. 16. 

Poetry Workshop with Donna Davis, ongoing on Thurs. from 9 a.m. to noon at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. Donation $10 per semester. 848-0237. 

Easy Does It Emergency Services Board of Directors' Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. All welcome. 845-5513. edi@easyland.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

ONGOING 

Find a Loving Animal Companion at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society Adoption Center (open from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday). 2700 Ninth St. 845-7735. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

Medical Care for Your Pet at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society low-cost veterinary clinic. 2700 Ninth St. For appointments call 845-3633. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., April 23, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5158.  

Zero Waste Commission Mon., April 23, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. 981-6368.  

City Council meets Tues., April 24, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., April 25, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., April 25, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. Gil Dong, 981-5502.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., April 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., April 26, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.