Berkeley Rent Board member Chris Kavanagh was arrested Friday morning by Oakland police and is currently (Friday afternoon) in Santa Rita jail, according to his attorney, James Giller. The date of his arraignment has not been set. 

Kavanagh is charged with five felonies, according to Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff, who spoke to the Planet Friday afternoon. 

“The first three relate to voter fraud,” Orloff said. One is registering to vote where he is not eligible, the second is voting where he is not eligible to vote, and the third is filing a false declaration. 

The fourth count is perjury and the fifth is grand theft, relating to having accepted a stipend and health benefits as a rent board member. 

Questions about whether Kavanagh, an elected official, lives in Oakland or Berkeley surfaced earlier this year when new landlords Lynn and Pat Tidd attempted to evict Kavanagh from a cottage on 63rd Street in Oakland, where his name is on the lease. 

Kavanagh has told fellow rent board members that he lives in Berkeley, but has a girlfriend in Oakland. 

Lynn Tidd sent e-mails to the media saying: “We had the pleasure of watching Chris Kavanagh arrested this morning shortly after leaving his home of six years, 338 63rd Street. His home will be searched within the hour.” 

In a phone interview Friday afternoon, Tidd told the Planet that she had helped alert police to when Kavanagh was at the house, since, she said, he had been observed there infrequently over the last couple of weeks.  

At about 6 a.m., Kavanagh “was walking up 63rd Street getting coffee. Police walked up to him and put him in a police car,” said Tidd, who lives in a unit in front of the house and observed the arrest. 

The city of Berkeley, environmental groups and neighbors are seeking to overturn the UC Board of Regents’ approval of documents that would pave the way for a massive construction program and the removal of a grove of oaks along the stadium’s western wall. 

The first day of hearings in the multi-plaintiff battle in Alameda County Superior Court Wednes-day focused on the Alquist-Priolo Act, a 1972 state law that bars certain kinds of new construction on earthquake faults. 

However she rules, Alameda Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller will be on the way to creating new case law, since only one previous court case on the law has resulted in a legal precedent—a case that also involved new construction on the Berkeley campus. 

The issue in dispute Wednesday was whether or not the 142,000-square-foot Barclay Simpson Student Athlete High Perform-ance Center is part of the landmarked California Memorial Stadium or a separate building. 

Stadium or a separate building. 

If Miller rules that it’s part of the stadium—a finding sought by attorneys Michael Lozeau, Stephan Volker and Harriet Steiner—then the high-priced high-tech gym couldn’t be built. 

That’s because of the fact, uncontested in the courtroom, that the Hayward Fault bisects the stadium from end to end. 

That’s also why the lawyers were arguing definitions of simple and seemingly commonsensical words like “building,” “structure,” “alteration” and “addition.” 

Charles Olson, the real estate attorney representing the university, argued that the $125 million gym is a separate building, while Lozeau, Volker and Steiner were equally adamant in arguing that it’s not. 

Olson wants to use a specific definition from the state building code, while the opposing attorneys favor drawing from dictionaries and common use. And Miller pointed out that court rulings have favored commonsense definitions. 

Both sides displayed design drawings of the gym, and arguments centered in part on whether physical connections between the two buildings—or are they “structures,” the term used most often in Alquist-Priolo?—resulted in one single edifice or two buildings related only by legal mandates to ensure that one new building didn’t endanger another. 

Olson said the connections were simple, legally required methods of shoring up the gym during excavations for the gym to make sure the digging didn’t jeopardize the older building. 

He cited the case of one client’s building in San Francisco that was required to protect seven adjacent properties. To hold that the gym and the stadium were a single building, he said, would effectively declare that “nearly every building in San Francisco would be one big building.” 

The building/structure dichotomy also could play a role in determining whether the roof of the gym and its connection to the stadium effectively joins the structures. Olson described it as a plaza, which is the role it will play for spectators coming to events at the stadium, rather than as a roof, the function it will serve for athletes and office workers in the building below. 

Another question hinged on whether or not the regents were derelict in their duties in approving an environmental impact report that paved the way for the gym and the other projects in the area without clear evidence that a hidden fault didn’t lie under the gym. 

The state and federal geological surveys sent letters the afternoon before the regents voted last December warning that the evidence submitted by the university’s consultants left doubts about whether faults might be hidden between the northern and southern ends of the site. 

Later tests, performed after the vote, led the agencies to withdraw their concerns. But the doubts were there at the time of the vote, and that was enough, said the legal trio, to invalidate the decision. 

Not so, contended Olson, arguing that the preponderance of evidence was on the no-fault side, and thus sufficient for the regents to make their decision. 

Another crucial question for the judge to decide is just how much the stadium is worth, whether the gym is an appendage or a mere neighbor. 

Alquist-Priolo limits repairs and renovations to existing buildings perched atop faults to 50 percent of their value. The question for Miller is just what does “value” mean? 

Is it the price the existing building would fetch on the open marker, as Lozeau, Steiner and Volker maintain, or is it the cost of building an entirely new replacement structure? If it’s the former, the university could run into a legal barrier to the stadium renovations that are part of the next two phases of work as described in the EIR the regents approved last December. 

And if the university was left with a seismically unsafe gym, would it still build the gym nearby? 

Olson contends that the definition of value is up to the regents and UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor Ed Denton to decide. The vice chancellor was sitting in the courtroom, chewing on the edge of his glasses during much of the hearing. 

Also sitting in the courtroom were the three most heralded participants in the ongoing tree-sit at the oak grove that has drawn national media attention to the university’s plans: Berkeley City Councilmember Betty Olds, former Mayor Shirley Dean and veteran environmentalist Sylvia McLaughlin.  

The courtroom was packed during Wednesday’s session, spilling over into the jury box. 

Also on had was Jennifer McDougall, one of two university representatives to the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee which is hammering out proposals to handle the university’s substantial real estate projects planned for the city center. 

Also present were Planning Commission Susan Wengraf, Deputy City Attorney Zach Cowan, and a several representatives of the tree sitters.  

The board of the university’s alumni association, pointing out that UC Berkeley graduates account for 20 percent of Berkeley’s registered voters, cast their own unanimous ballots Monday urging the city to drop the lawsuit. 

Much of the rest of the courtroom action will focus on the California Environmental Quality Act, which regulates the mitigation of environmental impacts of development. 

The hearing could well continue into next week, the lawyers agreed, and may include a visit to the scene by Judge Miller after all sides have had their say—a move Olson tried to discourage, worrying that “it might turn into a circus.”  

Finding himself without City Council allies in support of a rapid transit system with dedicated bus lanes, Mayor Tom Bates backed down Tuesday night in his request for the pro-Bus Rapid Transit Transporta-tion Commission to lead city efforts in exploring AC Transit’s BRT proposal. 

Instead, Bates asked Council-member Laurie Capitelli to work with Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who had submitted his own proposal, to recommend a process to guide city commissioners and staff in their evaluation of the $400 million proposal.  

In the council discussion of the proposed project itself, Councilmember Betty Olds summed up what appeared to be the majority council and audience opinion: “Closing lanes on Telegraph is about the stupidest thing the city could do,” she said. 

The council also decided Tuesday to withdraw the operating permit for U-Haul on San Pablo Avenue, to give city funds to the Downtown Jazz Festival, to support the Landmarks Preservation Commission in its refusal to grant landmark status to property at 2747 San Pablo Ave. and to approve a home addition on Berkeley Way. 

BRT 

Bus Rapid Transit is a $300-$400 million proposal by AC Transit to build a bus system emulating light rail that would run from San Leandro, through Oakland, to downtown Berke-ley. Full implementation calls for dedicated bus lanes, widely-spaced stops, automated fare machines at the stops, easy street-level boarding and more.  

AC Transit has asked the three cities to weigh in on the project. After a public process and staff analysis, the City Council will vote some time next year to accept full, partial or no implementation of BRT. 

Bates, who sits on the Metro-politan Transportation Com-mission, suggested in his proposal to the council that the Transportation Commission take the lead in reviewing the plan. The Transportation Commission previously discussed the proposal, generally supporting it. 

Worthington’s competing proposal calls for the Planning Commission to take the lead in developing the city’s position since, he said, it looks more broadly at where transportation fits into other planning concerns.  

He further proposed that the commission consider BRT as just one part of larger, perhaps more urgent, transit needs, such as providing citizens or workers as providing citizens or workers with eco-passes—bus passes which would be free to individuals or workers in Berkeley and paid for by public monies and, in some cases, employer fees. 

Worthington also called for consideration of rapid connections between the rapid buses now running along Telegraph and San Pablo avenues. And he said he wants a study of the impacts of BRT on merchants and neighborhoods. 

BRT “doesn’t do the most important things,” Worthington told the council, noting moreover, “Every report I’ve read says that the eco-pass costs a lot less than the $400 million [for BRT].”  

Creating BRT would take about five years, but Berkeley could have an eco-pass much sooner, Worthington argued. “Then we’d have people riding those nearly empty buses.” 

Speaking before the councilmembers in the queue to speak, Bates told Worthington he’s not willing to include the eco-pass, connectivity and other elements of Worthington’s proposal. “I don’t have that much time on Earth to see that happen,” he said. 

Funding for Worthington’s proposal would be dicey, Planning Director Dan Marks told the council. “We’d ask AC Transit to fund the mayor’s proposal,” he said. “I don’t know who would pick up Worthington’s.” 

Bates defended his proposal: “There are too many cooks making the broth,” he said, referring to BRT discussions that have taken place in the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee and the Transportation and Planning commissions.  

Having the Transportation Commission take the lead would be more efficient. “It would allow us to come to a decision early next year,” Bates said. 

Len Conly of the Friends of Bus Rapid Transit was the only public speaker indicating he favored the BRT option with dedicated lanes. Eight or nine opponents spoke against the proposal. 

“It will make the service more efficient,” Conly told the council.  

Friends of BRT argue further on their website: “The reason Rapid [bus] is not good enough is that we are planning for the future, and the future promises nothing but more congestion. Ultimately the Rapid will be slowed by that congestion and will no longer be an attractive option. Any gaps in the dedicated lanes will degrade reliability of the entire system.” 

The rapid bus currently is in place on Telegraph and San Pablo avenues, using some of the features of BRT including wider spacing between stops and priority signalization, where the driver can hold the green signal longer to allow a faster flow of buses. 

Bruce Kaplan owns Looking Glass, a photography store on Telegraph Avenue and Oregon Street, and is a member of the Telegraph Avenue Merchants Association, which opposes the BRT with dedicated lanes.  

“There were tears when Cody’s closed,” Kaplan told the council, referring to the book store that shut its doors on Telegraph a year ago due to declining revenues.  

He said that creating a dedicated bus lane would increase traffic on Telegraph, making it more convenient for people to shop at the Emeryville mall than at smaller Berkeley stores. Kaplan urged the council to “have a discussion with the public.” 

Other groups on record opposing BRT with dedicated lanes include the Claremont-Elmwood and Willard neighborhood associations. 

“There’s clearly significant opposition to BRT,” said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak. “There are some very legitimate concerns on the potential impact of the bus lanes. The merchants are clearly concerned.” 

A new proposal for the city’s decision-making process on BRT is likely to be on the council’s Oct. 9 agenda. 

U-Haul 

Neighbors have been complaining about U-Haul on San Pablo Avenue and Addison Street for years.  

In June, the Zoning Adjustments Board recommended that the City Council revoke U-Haul’s permit to operate. The business was using the street to park its trucks, which is not allowed, and had some 50 trucks on site, when its permit allowed about 30.  

Despite admission of the problems by the vice president of the company and promises that it would do better, the council voted unanimously to revoke the permit. 

Jazz fest  

While criticizing the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival for hiring few African American musicians for its summer festival, the council voted unanimously to give the festival $2,500 for expenses incurred.  

Councilmember Max Anderson suggested creating a committee to work to increase the festival’s diversity for next year. Agreeing with Anderson, Councilmember Darryl Moore said he hoped “next year we’ll do a better job of reviewing it up front and making sure we have a diverse [festival].” 

Other council matters: 

• The council unanimously upheld the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s denial of landmark status to the property at 2747 San Pablo Ave.  

• The council refused to schedule a hearing for a zoning board appeal by the neighbor of a proposed second-story project at 1625 Berkeley Way. The neighbor said the addition would impact the daylight shed on his property. Voting in favor of upholding the zoning board were councilmembers Capitelli, Anderson, Wozniak and Moore; voting in opposition were councilmembers Olds, Worthington and Mayor Bates. Councilmembers Maio and Spring abstained. 

Other city matters 

Bates will be out of the country from Sunday Sept. 23, on a trip paid for by the government of Great Britain, returning Monday Oct. 9, according to Bates’ Chief of Staff Cisco DeVries. The mayor will be vacationing with wife Assemblymember Loni Hancock for one week and attending a climate change conference the second.  

Acting as mayor will be the vice president of the council, a position that rotates each three months. Councilmember Worthington now occupies the position.  

Worthington told the Daily Planet he had only learned that Bates would be absent when the mayor mentioned it at Tuesday’s council meeting and had not been informed by the mayor of the exact dates of his absence.

About 200 people congregated at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza Thursday to show support for six black teenagers who they say were unfairly charged in the beating of a white student in a small, mostly white town in Louisiana. 

The rally and march on campus coincided with a demonstration in Jena, La., where 50,000 people gathered to protest the treatment of the so-called “Jena Six” and to call attention to racial inequality within the criminal justice system. 

“I’m angry,” said Patrick Chris-topher, a member of the Cal Basketball Team and one of the speakers at the Berkeley rally. “As a black male, I am mad that we are still classified as savage beasts.” 

Christopher’s statement re-flects the belief held by many that the black students were treated more harshly than their white classmates, who were also involved in racially charged incidents over the course of four months. 

The strife between white and black students at Jena High School began intensifying last August, when several black high school students sat under a tree on campus that was deemed “whites only.” The next day, nooses were hung from the tree, sparking black students to stage sit-ins at the site.  

Racial tensions in the town mounted, with a black student being beaten by a white classmate in late November, and a white adult brandishing a shotgun during a verbal dispute with two black teens, who wrestled the gun away from the man and ran away. None of the whites were charged in the incidents.  

The two black youths in the shotgun case, however, were charged with theft. 

The feud climaxed in December, when a schoolyard fight between blacks and whites left one white student, Justin Barker, unconscious for about a minute and badly bruised. He was released from the hospital the same day, and was well enough to attend the junior ring ceremony that night. 

The white students involved in the brawl were suspended. The six black students—Robert Baily, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Mychal Bell—were charged with second-degree attempted murder, and were slapped with bonds of $70,000 to $138,000. Most of the teens spent time in jail, and all but one of the students was able to post bail. 

The charges have since been dropped to aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, felonies that carry up to 15 years in prison. Mychal Bell, whose case is the first and only one to go to trial so far, was not able to make bail before his conviction in June and has been incarcerated for nine months. His conviction has since been overturned by a Third Circuit judge who ruled that he should not have been charged as an adult.  

But the District Attorney has refused to set a bond or to release him, saying he plans to bring him up on the same charges in juvenile court.  

On Thursday, Bell’s attorney, Louis Scott, filed a writ of habeus corpus on the grounds that he is being held illegally because his conviction has been overturned. Scott says the court should set bond or, at the very least, send Bell to juvenile hall. Meanwhile, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, who spoke at Thursday’s demonstration, urged federal intervention on Bell’s behalf. 

Maya Shallcross, a Berkeley High School student who traveled to Jena in a bus ride organized by Revolution Books, spoke to us while sitting at the site of the “whites only” tree, which has since been cut down.  

“It wasn’t enough for me to walk out of class and attend the Berkeley rally,” she said “That the black kids would not get suspended but instead be brought up on criminal charges is completely wrong. We should still be safe from things like this in the year 2007.” 

Shallcross’s sister, Sanghia, who also took the trip down, said she was struck by the number of people showing support for the cause.  

“The town is just flooded with people, mostly wearing black,” she said, adding that she didn’t witness much animosity from the locals in the town, which has a population of 3,500 and is 85 percent white. “When we were driving in, we saw (white) girls holding signs saying ‘We are not Racist.’” 

At the Berkeley rally, students wore green and black to show their solidarity: green to represent the growth of the black community, and black to represent mourning and strength. Many at the rally echoed national leaders like Jackson and Al Sharpton, who say the Jena Six cause will re-ignite the civil rights movement. 

Derrick Smith, a youth program director at Oakland Technical High School and one of speakers at the rally, said “For those who say the noose is just a symbol are coming from a place of passivity. It is not just a symbol. It is a declaration of war.” 

The good news is that Berkeley will be housing three new low-income families in the three- and four-bedroom homes it owns. The bad news is that if you were on the waiting list, you have to start the application process from scratch. 

Eligible prospective tenants can pick up applications at the housing authority office, at 1901 Fairview St., or at other locations listed below. 

While applications are available today (Friday), they can be turned into the housing authority only next week, Sept. 24-28. 

Gracie Jones at the East Bay Community Law Center told the Daily Planet she will be assisting people in filling out their application. She underscored that when people get their applications, they should fill them out and turn them in immediately (starting Sept. 24).  

“The application process is only for one week,” she said. Jones said people should bring proof of income with them. 

One of the aspects of the application process that has frustrated some is that the 5,000-plus people whose names have sat for years on one or more of the three wait lists have to start at the beginning of the application process.  

“The lists are too old,” said BHA Executive Director Tia Ingram. 

The lists that were tossed out had been compiled variously by the BHA staff, Affordable Housing Associates, which had managed the properties until June, and by the Alameda County Housing Authority, which had managed the units at one time.  

It was impossible to reconcile the three lists, Ingram said, noting, for example, there were people whose names appeared on the lists with more than one address.  

Low-income housing advocate Lynda Carson told the Daily Planet on Tuesday that she thinks it’s a good thing that a number of non-profit organizations are involved in helping get the applications filled out properly. 

But it’s not fair for those on the wait list for years not to get prefmakes it seem like “the housing authority suddenly had no respect for those people,” Carson said. 

Moreover, she said, “Creating new lists is going to cost a fortune.” The housing authority is hiring data analysts to put together new lists. Each of the applicants’ data must be verified before they are placed into the lottery. “That will be 4,000 to 5,000 people easily,” Carson predicted.  

Ingram said she thinks fewer will apply. 

BHA Board Chair Carole Norris said working from the three outdated lists would have been time consuming. “The decision [to scrap the wait lists] was made because of costs—the list is so old,” she said. “People hadn’t been purged from the lists; a good number on the lists are not eligible. It would have been a lot of work with little benefit,” she said.  

The three available units, now being remodeled, are among 61 three- and four-bedroom homes owned by the city of Berkeley. BHA staff cautions that the waiting list for these homes is different from the Section 8 wait list, which is closed. The units rented under Section 8 belong to private landlords. 

The old Section 8 wait list was purged and reconstituted last year under the old housing authority, which sent out notices to prospective tenants asking them to update their information. The city has 1,800 Section 8 vouchers; the waiting list is closed to new applicants. 

People on the Section 8 waiting list who meet eligibility criteria may also apply for these units. 

BHA staff will review the applications to make sure people are eligible. Eligible persons will be placed in a lottery out of which 500 names will be selected randomly. They will constitute the new wait list.  

Three persons will be chosen at random from among the 500 to occupy the three available units.  

To be eligible for the units, one must have a family of three or more and be considered low income under HUD guidelines:  

• a family of three cannot earn more than $37,700 before taxes; 

• a family of four cannot earn more than $41,900 before taxes; 

• a family of five cannot earn more than $45,250 before taxes; 

• a family of six cannot earn more than $48,600 before taxes; 

• a family of seven cannot earn more than $51,950 before taxes; 

• a family of eight cannot earn more than $55,300 before taxes. 

Tenant rents are 30 percent of their incomes. 

In July, the city turned over the BHA to a new board of directors appointed by Mayor Tom Bates. Previously, the City Council had overseen the housing authority, which has been placed in “troubled” status by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The goal of the new board is to gain points from HUD to bring the agency out of troubled status, so that the agency won’t be put into receivership.  

BHA Meeting 

The new housing authority board met Monday, but as a member of the League of Women Voters observed, it was very difficult for people find out that the meeting was happening at all. 

That’s because the meeting was incorrectly noticed on the BHA website through Friday Sept. 14 for the Sept. 17 meeting. Agendas for the Monday meeting were posted at the BHA office Friday, minutes before the state-mandated deadline for announcing the Monday meeting.  

BHA staff explained that the delay was because a BHA staff person was away working with the Red Cross in the Ukraine. Notice will improve in the future, the staffer said. 

BHA staff 

At the Monday BHA meeting, which started 20 minutes late and was only partially amplified for the audience straining to hear the speakers, the authority approved a request for custodial work at the BHA offices. Companies that apply must pay workers a minimum of $11.39 per hour, in accordance with the city’s “living wage” ordinance. That’s about $1,800 per month for custodians with full-time work. 

The BHA request indicates no particular attempt to find janitorial companies whose workers are unionized.  

At the same meeting, BHA authorized several positions: an office manager who will be paid $3,901-$4,256 per month plus benefits, a housing specialist and housing inspector, each earning $4,113-$5,000 per month plus benefits and a management analyst who will earn $5,912-$7,021 per month plus benefits. 

Tenants 

Norris told the Daily Planet on Thursday that BHA is planning a meeting next Wednesday specifically to address the tenants and help reorganize a tenants’ organization. The meeting will begin at 5 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. 

Where low-income housing  

Applications Can Be Picked Up 

BHA office, 1901 Fairview St. 

Berkeley Housing Department, 2180 Milvia St., 2nd Floor 

Berkeley Public Library, main branch, 2090 Kittredge St. 

Center for Independent Living, 2539 Telegraph Ave. 

East Bay Community Law Center, 2921 Adeline St. 

Centro Legal de la Raza, 2501 International Blvd. 

Asian Resouce Center, 310 Eighth St.

AC Transit officials have not released bottom-line figures on the complicated exchange of 16 North American Bus Institute buses for 16 buses made by Belgium-based Van Hool company because as late as Aug. 28 the district was still in negotiations over how much it owes the federal government for going through with the deal without federal approval.  

District trustees approved the exchange nearly six months ago on the claim by AC Transit General Manager Rick Fernandez that the deal was a “no brainer” that will “ultimately save [AC Transit] money.” 

In addition, AC Transit officials did not appear to even begin its first internal financial analysis of the transaction until after the trustee board’s approval. 

Those are the conclusions that can be drawn from an analysis of documents released by AC Transit to the Daily Planet following a Planet public records request concerning the district’s justification for the NABI-Van Hool deal. 

At a time when AC Transit is asking for public support for a much larger project—the installation of Bus Rapid Transit connecting several East Bay cities—the conclusions raise serious questions about AC Transit’s statistics and figures, and about how much actual fiscal oversight is being provided by the publicly elected district board. 

The deal involved the sale of 16 seven-year-old 40-foot NABI buses by AC Transit to ABC Company, the American distributor for Van Hool, to be replaced by yet-to-be-manufactured 40-footers to be purchased from Van Hool. 

One of the complications of the deal is the original purchase of the NABI buses by AC Transit in 2000 had been partially subsidized by the Federal Transit Administration. Under FTA regulations, local transit districts receiving such bus purchase subsidies must keep their buses in operation for 12 years, or else pay back to the FTA a percentage of the subsidy for every year early the buses were taken out of service. AC Transit proposed that this payback money not actually be paid back in cash money, but be transferred as an “interest” to a current FTA Maintenance Equipment and Facility Upgrade Project grant to AC Transit. 

A second complication in the deal was that to raise the money to purchase the 16 new Van Hools (originally set at 10, with six later added), AC Transit proposed borrowing $3.3 million in cash from its Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Funds held by the Metropolitan Transit Commission. 

In a Feb. 14, 2007 memo from AC Transit Capital Planning Manager Kate Miller to MTC, Miller said that AC Transit “would like to fund the bus replacements with ... funds (from our BRT project) and then fund the BRT in 2009 (or later as needed) from the FTA program.” 

In the same letter, Miller said that AC Transit officials “thought we would run this by MTC first before we approached FTA.” 

The proposed NABI-Van Hool swap first came before the AC Transit Directors as a 10-bus deal on March 21. At that time, even though General Manager Fernandez gave no bottom line figures for the transfer in his memo of recommendation (saying only that “the fiscal impact will be determined by the proceeds of the sale … the cost of the procurement of the new buses, and the net reduction in maintenance costs” without supplying any hard figures for any of these items), the board approved the deal on a 4-1-1 vote, Board President Greg Harper voting no, Vice President Rebecca Kaplan abstaining, and Director Elsa Ortiz absent. 

Two weeks later, Fernandez returned to the board to increase the bus transfer to 16, telling directors in his memo that “staff has sought funding from MTC for replacing up to 16 vehicles … [and] is currently working with the Federal Transit Administration to seek their approval to retire up to 16 buses prior to the end of their expected useful life and to determine an eligible asset in which to transfer the federal interest.” 

But according to the documents provided to the Daily Planet by AC Transit, that last statement may not have been true. 

In a memo from Capital Planning Manager Miller to Technical Service Administrator Bob Bithell entitled “Your Immediate Help Please” and dated April 10, six days after Fernandez’ memo, Miller wrote that she needed information on the buses to be sold “asap. FTA headquarters received wind of this through the papers before we had an opportunity to send Region 9 a letter. At this point this is rather embarrassing and I would rather not let it escalate.” 

The Daily Planet published stories on the NABI-Van Hool bus transfer on March 23 and again on April 6. 

On April 20, a month after the AC Transit Board approved a deal that was based, in part, on FTA approval, Fernandez finally wrote Region 9 of the FTA, asking for approval of the transfer of the federal interest in the NABI’s. 

Fernandez told FTA Regional Administrator Leslie Rogers that that early retirement of the 16 NABI’s would “eliminate costs associated with mid-life rehabilitation required to keep the buses in good operating order, reduce emissions by replacing the older buses with cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles, serve the public with newer buses with improved design, and improve service performance by deploying new buses.” 

But no data figures were included in Fernandez’ letter to support the maintenance and emission reduction aims, and Rogers said they were necessary for FTA consideration. 

There followed a flurry of internal AC Transit emails during the month of May as staff members scrambled to collect information on possible savings in the deal in the area of maintenance and emissions, information that was apparently never collected or analyzed by the district in its original lead-up to deciding whether or not to make the deal in the first place. Fernandez included this information in chart form in a May 30-31 letter to Rogers at FTA. 

Late in June, Rogers wrote back to say that FTA would not approve the federal interest transfer, saying that “the District’s proposal to remove these buses after six years of service life for reasons of maintenance and operation costs, air quality, and FEMA bus needs, are not compelling justification for FTA to approve early disposition of Federally-funded assets for transfer of the interest to a future capital project.” 

In early July, Fernandez informed district board members of the FTA denial, also informing them for the first time that the Metropolitan Transit Commission had agreed to fronting the $3.3 million Van Hool purchase money “contingent on FTA’s approval of the fleet retirement plan” but then added that “it is also staff’s belief that the $3.3 million from MTC will be available despite [that] contingency.” 

Why staff believed that MTC would make money available based upon FTA approval, but then give the money anyway even though FTA failed to approve, was not explained in the memo. 

Fernandez also wrote in his July 2 memo to the board that despite the fact that AC Transit would now have to reimburse FTA directly and immediately for the early retirement of the federally-subsidized NABI’s “staff has evaluated this alternative and determined that it still would be in the District’s best interest to proceed with the proposal.” 

But between July and August, AC Transit officials conducted running negotiations with FTA over how the federal interest on the retired NABI’s would be figured, and how much cash the district would have to pay the federal government. 

On August 28, AC Transit Capital Development Manager Miller sent FTA Region 9 Transportation Specialist Phil Barros an email including a depreciation comparison spreadsheet that calculated the amount owed by the district to FTA for the NABI retirement at $1.3 million. Miller asked Barros to confirm his agreement to the figure, but no agreement letter was included in the documents provided by the district. 

At a People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting held last week, community members listened to San Francisco-based MK Think, the firm hired by UC Berkeley to plan improvements for the park, and Emily Marthinsen, assistant vice chancellor, talk about conceptual designs for the park. 

The only student representation came from board member Ionas Porges-Kiriakou, a UC Berkeley undergraduate.  

Irene Hegarty, director of community relations for UC Berkeley, complained that the planning process for redeveloping People’s Park lacks student participation. 

“We need more participation from students,” Hegarty said in a telephone interview after the meeting. “That’s one of my concerns. I understand that the planning process didn’t get well under way until May when students were away for summer, but thousands of students don’t even know about it. We need more outreach.” 

Ionas Porges-Kiriakou said that MK Think hasn’t outlined any plans to involve students or the community in the planning process. 

“They haven’t had any large community meetings except for the one at the church,” he said. “I have a lot of questions they haven’t answered yet and one of them is how are they going to get more students involved.” 

MK Think did not return phone calls from the Planet for comment. 

“One of the first thing freshmen at Cal are told is to stay away from People’s Park,” said Jason Overman, a former member of the People’s Park Advisory Board and a UC undergraduate. “I think it’s a shame that [students] now have the chance to give input on how to redevelop the park, but haven’t become engaged in the process.” 

University student leader Igor Tregub echoed his thoughts. 

“There is quite a bit of frustration on the part of students because of that,” he said. “A more good-faith effort by the university to involve students in the discussions would be a start. The remainder of the work is up to us, the students.” 

Park uses 

At the meeting, MKThink gave an update about the community workshop held during summer and outlined park uses. The four main zones identified in the park were the common grassy area, the basketball court, the community garden and the grove. 

Representatives from MK Think said that current entrances to the park looked accidental and disconnected. 

“You can stand half a block away and not know about the park,” Hegarty told the Planet. “We want to make the entry points to the park more welcoming and visible to the surrounding residential, business and religious communities. Closer to Telegraph, one of the entry points has dense vegetation and that doesn’t appear very welcoming. There is also a low railing that goes around the three sides of the park which in a way fences off people. Landscaping and wider pathways would help to invite people into the park.” 

Board member John Selawsky said that the lack of a definite entrance to the park needs to be addressed. 

“You go up the steps of Bryant Park in New York and you know you are there,” he said. “We need to have some kind of an archway or some kind of portal to feel the same way about People’s Park. Right now the park is not a destination area. People pass through it on their way home or to the dorms.” 

The board also agreed that more signage was necessary to direct people to the park and make them aware of park rules. 

Hegarty added that the lack of intermingling be-tween the different zones was a big problem. “People often define the park by territories and turf,” she said. “That needs to be changed.” 

Park safety 

The board also discussed safety in the park, which has seen a spike in crime since summer.  

“How is it that some people feel safe while others don’t?” Hegarty asked. She added that the recent crimes in the park had not been random muggings. 

“They were between people who knew each other,” she said. “The campus becomes a target-rich area over summer and crime tends to increase during this time. Students have often talked about neighborhood watch groups in group-living areas but the problem with things like that is students tend to come and go continuously.” 

Last month, UC police were called to the park when a fight erupted between two men. One of them, who was knocked unconscious, was taken to the hospital, while the other was ordered to stay away from UC property for seven days and later arrested. 

UCPD is also searching for a woman who stripped a bathing suit off another woman and left her nude in the park in July. A couple of strong-arm robberies also took place around the same time.

Much of Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s time is spent working on issues such as low-income housing, diversity and labor. But, he told the Daily Planet on Thursday, his efforts are often blocked by the inadequacy of state laws. 

And so on Monday, Worthington is announcing his run for state legislature. The announcement will be at 5:30 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave.  

The caveat for a Worthington run is that, if a ballot measure tweaking term limits passes in February allowing members of the state legislature to remain in their seats for 12 years, incumbent Loni Hancock will run again for her safe assembly seat. In that case, Worthington—and likely most other challengers—will bow out.  

If the ballot measure fails, State Sen. Don Perata will be term-limited out of office. If so, Hancock has said she will run for his office (probably against former Supervisor Wilma Chan). That will leave Hancock’s assembly seat wide open. 

Other people who may seek the assembly seat are Richmond City Councilmembers Jim Rogers and Tony Thurmond, Richmond City Councilmember, Phillip L. Polakoff, M.D. of Berkeley, West Contra Costa School Boardmember Charles Ramsey and East Bay Regional Parks District board member Nancy Skinner. 

Councilmember Darryl Moore, who had told the Daily Planet last year that he was considering a run for the seat, said he would defer to Worthington and Skinner and concentrate on reelection for his council seat. 

The ballot measure on term limits will be decided in a February election, which is when the presidential primaries will be held. The State Assembly and State Senate primaries will be held in June, and the council/mayor races will be in November. Districts 2 (Moore), 5 (Laurie Capitelli) and 7 (Betty Olds) will be up for election at that time. The 2006 mayor’s race elected a mayor for a two-year term, so that future mayor’s races, beginning this November, would coincide with the presidential race. There will be a mayoral race in November 2008.

The first step for the selection of Berkeley’s next school superintendent will begin with a community meeting Monday. 

This week school board president Joa-quin Rivera announced schedules for different groups to meet with district consultants on Monday and Tuesday. 

Mission Viejo-based Leadership Associates was hired by the board for $29,000 to conduct the recruitment process less than a week after district superintendent Michele Lawrence announced her retirement earlier this month. She will leave the post Feb. 1. 

Parents, district employees, students and community members will be asked to identify characteristics, talents and experience they want to see in the future superintendent at a series of meetings scheduled to be held at different times during the two days. 

Community groups will meet primarily in the council chambers and the school district office conference room at the Old City Hall and at B-Tech. 

Schedules have also been set up for BUSD employees who will meet in the council chambers on both days.  

Those unable to attend specific meetings can attend a general meeting scheduled for Sept. 24 at 7:15 p.m. at B-Tech Academy, 2701 Martin Luther King Way., or on Tuesday Sept. 25 at 12:45 p.m. at the school district office conference room. The schedule will also be up on district website. 

Meeting notifications are being sent out through letters, emails, phone conversations and the local press. 

“We want to hear from all the voices of the community,” Rivera said. “The board hopes to interview finalists around Dec. 9 and soon after visit the district of the person. The advantage is we have the help of the current superintendent to help with the transition.” 

Lawrence said the district has enough time to find her replacement. 

“I want the community to know that,” she said. “All the time I legally need to give the board is 60 days. But I have given a six-month notice which is not a fast-track notice. It was done with a great deal of thought. I did not want to put the district into any kind of jeopardy.” 

She added that she would be acting only as an advisor in the recruitment process. 

“The search will provide an incredible value to bring the community together,” she said. “It will help to build a vision and see what common goals come out of the leadership.” 

Board member Nancy Riddle said the board also wanted to identify what kind of a person would not be a good fit for the district. 

At an earlier meeting, the consultants had told board members that although they could be present at the meetings they should refrain from participating in the discussions. 

Community members unable to attend assigned meetings or alternate sessions can send their suggestions to www.leadershipassociates.org or 23052-H Alicia Parkway, Mission Viejo, California. 

Transportation building resolution 

The board also passed a resolution stating that the district’s transportation buildings could not be used by faculty and students. BUSD is waiting to hear back from the city about the proposed transportation project on Gilman Street. 

Although it is not responsible for issuing permits, the Department of the State Architect (DSA) requires that the project be reviewed for access compliance. It also requires that a resolution be passed by the board which states that the building would not be used for classroom setups and that neither faculty nor students would be allowed to enter its premises. 

Although the district’s K-12 schools are built according to DSA specifications, the district owns certain buildings which are not retrofitted nor built according to its guidelines. Others include the sites at 1720 Oregon, 2031 6th Street and the district headquarters at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was sent to the Planet on Friday evening by a veteran of the Free Speech Movement, using a pseudonym for reasons which will be obvious. 

Three hours ago, I joined some other veterans of UC Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement in a show of support for Berkeley students who are fighting UC’s plans to tear down a wonderful stand of towering oaks to build a $150 million sports facility on an active faultline. 

Half a dozen students spoke and then the microphone was passed to one of the first of the tree-sitters, a lithe young lady names Jessie, who was asked to say a few words. Jessie tried to speak but words wouldn’t come. Instead, she stood upright, clenching the microphone as her face began to tremble. She held the microphone—and the audience—in her grip for several emotional minutes before whispering quietly, “These trees saved me,” and stepping down. 

FSM leader/author/teacher Michael Rossman recalled how the students of the 1960s faced the same unresponsive corporate UC administration tactics. He pointed out the importance of the oaks not only as an ecological keystone species but as an important link in the social ecology of the city—a grove dedicated to the memory of the fallen soldiers from World War I that became a place where students have gathered for generations to enjoy a riff, a tipple, and the serenity of nature close-at-hand. The grove became an important place for friends to gather and socialize and for individuals to settle for quiet contemplation. Rossman recalled how he ventured to the groves to read and study. 

Rossman mentioned another infamous UC Berkeley fence—the one that was erected around People’s Park. And, making sure to note that he was in no way suggesting any form of direct action, Rossman recollected how one day buttons and fliers started to appear around town with a mysterious message. Nothing more than the words “People’s Park,” a date and a time. On that date and at that time, 3,000 people spontaneously walked to the park, surrounded the site and pulled the steel fence down with their bare hands. No one was hurt, the park was liberated and it remains an open space today. 

At the end of the speech-making, 20-plus students—young men and women all wearing orange T-shirts reading “Free Speech” and “Free Trees”—announced that they were going to “exercise” their rights to free expression. “Are you ready to exercise?” the dynamic young spokeswoman announced and, to the surprise of the onlookers, the students suddenly turned, leaped over metal police barricades, sprinted to the hurricane fence and climbed over to join the “imprisoned” tree-dwellers. 

It was a joyous act of civil disobedience that reminded us FSM vets of the afternoon we walked into Sproul Hall with Joan Baez, faced arrest and brought the university to a standstill. 

Somewhat swept away by the students’ spontaneous and joyous act of defiance, I found myself also climbing over the barricade and jogging toward the fence. I figured it would be fitting for a representative from the FSM generation to support the students in full measure. So I clambered over the fence and joined them. 

In the process, however, I punched two holes in my left hand as I swung over the sharp metal spikes atop the fence. After a minute inside, helping the students clean up the site, I notice that my hand (and my pants) were covered in blood where the fence had ripped my palm open. I had to beat a retreat. In the process of climbing back over the fence, I managed to punch another hole in my hand. Zachary Running Wolf patched me up at the scene. 

As I climbed out (with the assistance of some members of the tree-sit support team) a reporter asked my name. I pointed out that, since I had technically just broken the law, I’d prefer not to give my name. He allowed me to use an alias and I chose “George.” What I failed to reveal was that I was not just some aging geezer with a bloodied hand, but I was an FSM vet, a former draft resister, a troop train protester, a Port Chicago vigiler and a tax rebel. And there was one last thing I should have told that reporter: Dang, but if felt good to break the law again! 

The arrested students will appear at a hearing next month to answer to the trespassing charges. The hearing will take place on Oct. 15 at 9 a.m. in the Oakland Courthouse on 661 Washington St., Department 107.  

Dedicating one traffic lane for fast buses for much of the 16 or so miles between San Leandro and downtown Berkeley will get people out of their polluting vehicles and into speedy, comfortable, ecological public transport, says the AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal. 

Opponents of the idea—many of whom like those BRT features that don’t remove automobile lanes—say dedicated bus lanes will cause a traffic nightmare in Berkeley, killing business on Telegraph Avenue and cramming autos into one very slow line of traffic. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it will increase them, with traffic crowding onto neighborhood streets and other already-congested traffic corridors, opponents argue. 

Praised by Mayor Tom Bates, a member of the AC Transit Board, BRT is before the City Council today (Tuesday), not for a vote on the $300-$400 million proposal itself, but for a process decision. Bates wants the council to agree that the BRT will be discussed by the Transportation and Planning commissions and their staffs and then come back to the council for a public hearing and decision in early 2008. 

When it comes to a vote, the council could approve the full BRT plan with dedicated bus lanes, cherry-pick from the proposal, or turn down the project altogether. 

The plan 

BRT is aimed at linking the heavily used transit corridors from San Leandro down East 14th Street, International Boulevard and Telegraph Avenue, ending up and turning around in downtown Berkeley, the destination of thousands of UC Berkeley students and university and downtown workers. 

By using dedicated bus lanes, the system imitates light-rail transport, with four- to five-minute intervals projected in service during peak periods. The draft environmental impact report says BRT will increase bus ridership along the targeted corridor from 56 to 76 percent. 

Some of the elements proposed by the plan include spacing the rapid bus stations farther apart than the local stations and using transit signal priority technology, where the green phase of the traffic light is extended for the BRT buses. Both of these features are already in place on Telegraph and San Pablo avenue rapid buses.  

The proposal also includes installing fare machines at stations, initiating pre-paid tickets with spot verification and providing real time transit information at bus stops. Low-floor buses with multiple doors would be used, allowing people to enter and exit more quickly. 

BRT needed 

In his memo to the council, Bates says the BRT “is a high-quality bus-based transit system that delivers fast, comfortable and cost-effective urban mobility” emulating light rail “at a fraction of the cost.” The mayor’s office did not return calls for further comment. 

The Northern Alameda County Group of the Sierra Club is among the BRT advocates. In a May 2007 resolution, the group lauded BRT for creating “an increase in transit ridership by providing a viable and competitive alternative to private automobile travel” and for providing a way to mitigate the growth of UC Berkeley’s and Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s workforce and student populations. 

On its website, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition says it supports BRT because it doubles bus frequency in the corridor, increases average speed from 10 mph to 17 mph, reduces AC Transit's operating costs by increasing ridership and can later be electrified for use by light rail and/or electric trolley buses 

Slow down 

Telegraph Avenue area Councilmember Kriss Worthington said in a phone interview that the city needs to study the full range of possible transit improvements before rushing into an expensive system whose outcome is unknown.  

“Why rush, rush, rush?” he asked. “There are an awful lot of question marks.” 

The first order of business would be “doing things to create a mode shift,” Worthington said, especially putting in place eco-passes for Telegraph area workers through which the state and employers in the transit corridor would subsidize the buses in an initial phase. 

Worthington points to the success of the Class Pass, through which all UC Berkeley students pay a fee with their registration and all can ride the bus without additional cost. City of Berkeley workers’ bus passes are funded by the city. 

Worthington points to “woeful deficiencies” in the BRT proposal: there is no rapid connectivity planned between the rapid buses on Telegraph and San Pablo avenues, he said, noting that many workers in downtown Berkeley live in the Richmond area. 

Before considering BRT, however, the city needs to study its impacts—will it really bring the new riders? What are the effects on businesses along Telegraph? What are the traffic impacts? Worthington said. 

Worthington also noted that the project is not funded, though Bates says in his council memo that funds are available through the Federal Transit Administration.  

According to AC Transit Spokesperson Clarence Johnson, “Nothing is secured at this point; we’re still at the beginning stages.” 

Responding to questions on whether the riders will jump on board, Johnson said it’s happened in Los Angeles, Brazil and Australia and will happen in Alameda County as well. 

Johnson argued for necessity: “The streets are jammed; the freeways are jammed; we have to move away from the status quo,” he said. 

Critics have said they fear BRT will bring with it more intense development along its trajectory and Johnson did not disagree. “Transit-oriented development is the wave of the future,” he said, noting that otherwise there will be “sprawl from the ocean to the Sierras.” 

The Telegraph Merchants Association and the Willard Neighborhood Association have weighed in against BRT which includes a dedicated lane. The LeConte Neighborhood Association took a straw poll that came out against it. 

George Beier, former District 7 council candidate and member of the Willard Neighborhood Association steering committee, speaking for himself, told the Daily Planet, while he likes the idea of buying tickets at bus stops and boarding the bus on level with the curb, the dedicated bus lane “will snarl traffic,” he said. People will choose to take College Avenue, “which is pretty jammed up now,” he said. 

Greenhouse gas emissions will increase. “People will be sitting idle on Telegraph Avenue,” he said. 

If Bates’ council item is approved, the Transportation Commission will hold a workshop in October on the BRT proposal to identify “remaining issues and appropriate solutions.” Planning and transportation staff will take the recommendations and formulate them into a proposal which will go back to the Transportation Commission, then the Planning Commission and then back to the council for a public hearing and then finally for a decision in January. 

“We will abide by the decision you [in Berkeley] make,” AC Transit’s Johnson said. 

Zachary Running Wolf, pointing to two little known UC documents, said that the university has admitted that the place where it plans to build its $125 million Student Athlete High Performance Center is a Native American burial ground. 

“They want to build a gym where my ancestors are buried,” he said. 

Running Wolf said he recently found the two short entries in the environmental impact report (EIR) the university assembled for its 2020 Long Range Development Plan—a plan that specifically excludes the stadium area projects. 

Buried in that EIR’s public comments section are two paragraphs, one from a local historian and the other an unsigned response from the university—or rather Design Community Environment, the Berkeley company hired by university to prepare the document. 

Richard Schwartz, a Berkeley author and amateur historian, notified the university that “there is a record of about 18 Indian burials unearthed when constructing the UC stadium. There would be many more still there.” 

His e-mail pointed to the state archaeological records repository at Sonoma State University. Those documents are unavailable to the press and general public—a measure to protect burial sites from those who raid burials for bones and artifacts. 

“UC Berkeley has conducted a records search at the Information Center and is aware of the burials you mentioned,” stated the university’s response. 

The university has prepared an “archaeological site sensitivity map” of the area, and if “ground-disturbing” work is begun in highlighted areas and, the brief report added, “UC Berkeley will take appropriate steps to ensure any resources that may be present are properly treated in accordance with archaeological protection laws.”  

“That proves there are burials here,” said Running Wolf. “Let them build their gym someplace else that isn’t over our graves. And it’s on the earthquake fault, too.” 

The four-story, $125 million combination gym and office complex is planned adjacent to the stadium’s western wall, which would be seismically retrofitted before gym construction starts. 

The stadium itself is literally split in half from end to end by the Hayward Fault, which federal geologists predict will be the source of the Bay Area’s next major earthquake. 

The city and three different community organizations have sued to block construction pending completion of a new EIR for the complex of buildings the school plans in its southeast campus quadrant. 

Those buildings were included in a second EIR approved by the UC Board of Regents last year. 

For the City of Berkeley and neighbors, the key questions involve the impacts of the stadium area development stemming from construction and increased traffic of heavy trucks it will bring, as well as long-term effects from the growing demand on city infrastructure and the potential for enhanced dangers from earthquakes, wildfires and landslides in an area with limited access and narrow roads. 

For environmental activists, concerns focus on the fate of a large stand of Coastal Live Oaks, some dating from before the stadium was built.  

Running Wolf said the trees are important to him, as they are to many Native Americans. But it is the burials that are his main concern. 

Leigh Jordan, coordinator of the Northwest Information Center for the California Historical Resources Information Center, located at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park—the office cited by Schwartz in his e-mail to the university—said she couldn’t comment on any burials at the site. 

“I really can’t say anything, particularly about Native American sites,” she said. 

The California Public Records Act, which gives public and press access to most official records of state and local governments, exempts information about archaeological sites, she said. 

“Only landlords and participants in a project with a need to know” are able to access the information in the state files, she said. 

A two-day court hearing starting Wednesday in Hayward will determine the fate of the lawsuit, and with it, the fate of any burials that may lay beneath the loamy soil at the foot of the oaks now occupied by the tree-sitters.

The Oakland Unified School District, struggling to regain local control after nearly five years of state receivership, was sent into turmoil at the end of last week with the abrupt and unexpected resignation announcement of State Administrator Kimberly Statham. 

California School Superintendent Jack O’Connell—who has run OUSD since a 2002 budget shortfall triggered the state takeover— immediately named OUSD Chief of Staff Vincent Matthews as Statham’s interim replacement, but that did little to stem the controversy over the rapid turnover in district leadership. 

Matthews’ selection means that all three administrators hired by O’Connell to run the Oakland schools under state receivership have been trained by the Broad Foundation, founded by Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist Eli Broad, who has been put millions of dollars into the training of superintendent candidates in order to promote his foundation’s goal of “dramatically improv[ing] K-12 urban public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition.” 

In addition, despite the fact that the 2002 state takeover legislation required O’Connell to hire an administrator for OUSD with “recognized expertise in management and finance,” none of the three administrators hired by the state superintendent has had a specific background in finances. 

According to a press statement released by the district, “Before joining the Oakland Unified School District as Chief of Staff, [Vincent] Matthews was an area superintendent for the San Diego Unified School District from 2006 to 2007. He was an educator-in-residence at NewSchools Venture Fund in San Francisco from 2005 to 2006, and served as principal of John Muir Middle School in the San Leandro Unified School District from 2004 to 2005. From 2002 to 2004, Matthews was the California Regional Vice President of Operations for Edison Schools. He previously served as a principal and teacher in several San Francisco Bay Area school districts.” 

“This is the third state administrator hired since the state took over,” School Board President David Kakishiba said in a telephone interview, adding that “because this is an interim appointment, there is the potential of a fourth hire as well. If an elected school board did something like that, we’d be taken over.” 

Kakishiba said that it was “reflective of a growing sentiment in the Oakland community, a sentiment that is shared by the entire school board” that the state “allow the local community to begin the search ourselves” for the new OUSD district leader. The board chair said that the state was not following through on its responsibility to restore fiscal integrity to the district. 

“They may be focusing their efforts in that area but if they are, I am not aware of it, and that is the first order of responsibility under receivership,” Kakishiba said. “They keep telling us that they are concentrating on improving academic achievement, but in a school district, that’s supposed to be a given. It’s like the old Chris Rock routine where a parent is making a big deal about taking care of their children, and Rock says, ‘but you’re supposed to do that.’” 

OUSD has failed to balance its budget in the five years since the state took over, and last month district officials announced a projected $4.7 million deficit for the coming fiscal year, up from the $1.3 million deficit it anticipated only months before. 

In light of the leadership turnover and the district’s fiscal problems, a group of Oakland school parents have already begun circulating a petition calling on O’Connell to allow the OUSD school board to hire a superintendent in place of the state-appointed administrator.  

Oakland Education Association teachers union president Betty Olsen-Jones said that she was preparing a letter to O’Connell calling on the superintendent “to continue the process of returning local control in the area of governance that he began in July by immediately restoring the authority of the Oakland Unified school board to hire the district superintendent.” Olsen-Jones said that OEA was “concerned about the huge instability in district leadership” that has occurred under state receivership, including what she called “the enormous turnover in the district’s central administrative office that has led to an almost complete loss of institutional memory.” Olsen-Jones also said her organization was “concerned that the state is seeing Oakland as a test case to be experimented with.” 

Meanwhile, district officials, parents, and Oakland community residents were waiting for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision on whether to sign or veto a bill that they hoped would speed up the return to OUSD local control. Both houses of the state legislature earlier this month passed Assemblymember Sandré Swanson’s AB45 OUSD Local Control Bill, which would take return to local control in various areas of school operations out of the hands of O’Connell and leave it to the discretion of the state-funded school interventionist and assessment organization Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT). 

Kakishiba said he was hoping that when FCMAT completes its next scheduled report in mid-October, “it will conclude that the district has met its necessary threshold of progress under state receivership” and can recommend the return of local control in “one to three areas” by the beginning of next year. 

Statham announced her resignation, effective September 27, in a letter released to the public last Friday. In it, she said that “the Oakland Unified School District has made remarkable strides in the past two years and is on the cusp of even greater accomplishments in which I would love to take part. Determining to leave a district of such outstanding promise at a time when it is poised to reveal its potential was an agonizing decision, but a necessary one for me and my family. I gave my all to OUSD for the past two-and-a-half years and now it's time to lavish my family with the same level of attention and devotion.” 

In a prepared statement, O’Connell said that he had accepted Statham’s resignation “with regret … She is a respected curriculum expert, passionate educator and able administrator who has been completely committed to the mission of providing students in Oakland with desperately needed educational opportunities. [T]he District as a whole, [is] undoubtedly better off for her efforts.” 

Despite O’Connell’s statement, however, rumors immediately circulated throughout the Oakland school community that Statham had been forced out, either from political pressure by the board, or directly by the state superintendent’s office. Kakishiba, however denied that.  

“No, it wasn’t at the request of the board,” he said. “I also heard through the grapevine that she was not pushed out by Sacramento. As far as I know it involved a family matter, and it was her decision.” 

Kakishiba said that he was “supportive of Dr. Statham’s decision,” even though it left the district in a leadership crisis. “I really don’t believe there was anything else she could have done about it,” he said. 

Statham came without her family when she originally arrived at Oakland Unified in 2005, leaving at least one school-age child in Maryland, and sources in the district said she often worked a full week on district business and then flew back on the weekend to be with her family. “It has really been a strain for her,” the source said. 

There were reports, originally printed in the Washington [D.C.] Examiner and reprinted in the San Francisco affiliate of the paper, that Statham has been hired as the chief academic officer of the District of Columbia Public Schools at a salary of $170,000, but those reports could not be verified. The Examiner quoted former Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb, now the president of the Washington, D.C. School Board, as saying that it was “great news that we have someone on board with such a depth of experience” and D.C. Superintendent Deborah Gist calling Statham “a real rock star. She's really, really strong on school turnaround. And that's something we're focused on.” 

Statham was hired as Oakland state administrator in September 2006 to replace Randy Ward, who had served as OUSD state administrator from the time of the state takeover in 2002 until August 2006, when he was hired as superintendent of the San Diego County Unified School District. 

Two civic bodies meet Wednesday to hash out transportation policies for Berkeley’s new downtown plan. 

Members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) and the Transportation Commission will gather at 7 p.m. in North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

Their goal: A plan that gets people to pound the pavement instead of stepping on the gas. 

“Downtown should be first and foremost oriented for the safety, comfort and enjoyment of pedestrians,” declared the proposed Access Chapter for the new plan. 

As drafted, the new plan would discourage car use and boost mass transit ridership through a series of policies, including: 

• Developing electronic signs pointing to real-time availability and location of downtown parking. 

• Ensuring availability of UC Berkeley-owned and private parking lots for public use. 

• Boosting meter prices to keep at least 15 percent of street spaces open for shoppers and using technology to stop workers from meter-feeding to keep spaces. 

• Ending monthly prices for space at downtown garages and reserved parking for city workers in city-owned garages. 

• Encouraging private employers to subsidize workers who bike, bus, BART or walk to work. 

• Creating incentives for public and school district workers who don’t drive solo to work. 

• Using meter and city garage revenues to fund downtown improvements and maintenance. 

• Creating frequent, low-cost, ecologically friendly shuttles connecting neighborhoods with downtown, UC Berkeley, and other major employers. 

• Implementing pedestrian- and bike-friendly streetscape and traffic policies. 

• Creating and implementing transportation demand management policies with cities, university-related entities, schools and Alta Bates Medical Center. 

• Consideration of mandatory employee transit subsidies and other similar programs for employers with 50 or more workers. 

• Support for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service in downtown Berkeley to Telegraph Avenue, with an ultimate extension of BRT or Rapid Bus service along University Avenue to West Berkeley. 

• Considering subsidies for bicycles for downtown workers. 

• Increasing bike parking downtown. 

• Making additions to the city’s dedicated bicycle lanes. 

• Requiring new office and retail buildings and renovations to add showers and changing rooms for workers who commute by bicycle. 

Rushed agenda  

DAPAC members are counting down the days until their mandate expires at the end of November. 

Three subcommittees are also scheduled to meet over the next seven days to work on their own respective chapters of the draft plan started after settlement of a lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan 2020. 

All of the meetings begin at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

The Streetscapes and Open Space Subcommittee is scheduled to meet tonight (Tuesday), followed Thursday by the Housing and Community Health and Services Subcommittee. 

Then the joint subcommittee of DAPAC and the Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Monday night to iron out details of what may be the most controversial element of the plan—defining the role historic buildings will play in shaping the face of the future of the city center.

Oakland City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee found themselves more divided this week than the council’s Blue Ribbon Housing Commission, with the committee’s four members—Chairperson Jane Brunner, City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, and Councilmembers Henry Chang and Larry Reid—voting to accept the commission’s 105-page report and pass it on to the full council, but without a recommendation.  

Brunner, the co-author of the proposed inclusionary zoning ordinance that led to the original council deadlock on the issue, urged the council to move forward on inclusionary zoning, despite the fact that housing starts are down. 

“The fact that housing construction is slowing down in the nation is no reason we should slow down on the development of city policy,” Brunner said. “We should pass our policies now, so that when construction picks back up again, those policies will be in place.” 

In its report, the 17-member commission split the difference on the two major issues handed it by council last fall, agreeing on recommendations for an inclusionary zoning ordinance for the city, but submitting two opposing “minority” reports on proposed changes to Oakland’s existing condominium conversion laws. 

Commissioners also recommended doubling the Redevelopment Agency’s contribution to the city’s Low and Moderate Income Housing Fund from 25 percent to 50 percent within five years, and sponsoring a $200 million bond measure to assist rental and ownership housing in Oakland. 

The Oakland City Council will now take up the contentious issues of inclusionary zoning and condominium conversion once more, issues which deadlocked the council in October and December of last year and led to the creation of the Blue Ribbon Commission in the first place. The council is scheduled to begin discussion on the commission report and the underlying affordable housing issues at tonight’s (Tuesday) meeting. 

The major difference between the situations last fall and this is that when council took up the two affordable housing issues last year, Jerry Brown was still mayor, while Ron Dellums has since succeeded him in office. 

Brown was an inclusionary zoning opponent and had crafted no independent language himself suggesting how he thought the existing condominium conversion ordinance might be changed, 

Dellums, on the other hand, is known to favor some form of inclusionary zoning in Oakland. In addition, his chief economic aide, Dan Lindheim, told CEDA Committee members on Wednesday afternoon that the new mayor’s office would soon come forward with its own affordable housing proposals for the council to consider, proposals that are expected to address the issue of condominium conversion as well as inclusionary zoning. 

“We waited until now to do so because we thought it appropriate to have the commission members have a full hearing on their own proposals before the mayor’s office weighed in,” Lindheim said. 

Dellums’ aide also indicated that the new mayor’s actions would be collegial and not confrontational, a far different strategy than that employed by Brown in his eight years as mayor. Asked pointedly by Brunner if Dellums would develop his affordable housing proposals in collaboration with the council, Lindheim replied, “We always try to present our proposals in collaboration with the council.” 

The inclusionary zoning ordinance recommended by commissioners would involve the city requiring some new residential developments to include housing that is affordable to low and moderate income buyers. The city’s existing condominium conversion ordinance regulates how existing rental apartments in Oakland may be converted into occupier-owned condominium units. 

The City Council created the commission last October after the council divided 4-4 on a proposed inclusionary zoning ordinance co-written by Councilmembers Jane Brunner and Nancy Nadel. Former Mayor Jerry Brown cast the tie-breaking vote, killing the proposed ordinance, and the council then adopted Councilmember Desley Brooks’ proposal to set up the commission to study the issue and come up with a proposal that a majority of the council could support. Brooks had opposed the Brunner-Nadel ordinance. 

The condominium conversion issue was added to the commission’s charge in December after changes to the existing ordinance sponsored by Brooks appeared headed for a council deadlock, as well. 

At Tuesday afternoon’s Community and Economic Development Committee meeting, those council differences appeared to be as deep as ever. 

Brunner made a motion for the committee to support the items the commission had agreed upon, with the full council itself taking up the issues of condominium conversion and support for more rental housing. But De La Fuente said he would not support a recommendation from the committee that dealt with inclusionary zoning only without consideration of the other affordable housing issues, and Brunner’s motion died for lack of a second. 

De La Fuente said that he was “surprised” that the commission had not come back with an “overall housing policy,” saying that this had been council’s intention when the commission was appointed. 

De La Fuente, Brunner, and Reid all said that Oakland had very different affordable housing needs in different parts of the city, with Brunner saying that the condominium conversion ordinance and Reid saying that the inclusionary zoning ordinance should have exemptions and set-asides to take into account those differences.  

De La Fuente added that “by neglect or accident, we have more housing needs in some areas of the city than in others. Ms. Brunner has some 50 residential development projects pending in her district alone, while we are fighting to get just a few projects in East and Central Oakland.” 

Saying that councilmembers probably all agree that “we need to continue building new housing for renters as well as moving some of our existing renters to home ownership,” De La Fuente said that “neither inclusionary zoning or condominium conversion by themselves alone are the answer. We have to have many options in our toolbox.”  

The commission’s report generated considerable public interest, with 45 speakers signing up to weigh in on the issue. With only a minute apiece to make their points, however, speakers were able to do little more than give their names and their bare positions either for or against the commission proposals, without the ability to go into details. 

Local union leader Andre Spearman, former campaign manager for Dellums’ mayoral campaign, said that he was “amazed to hear the rhetoric that affordable housing will scare developers off. If the murders on Oakland’s streets don’t scare developers off, this won’t.” Spearman charged that “developers had a free ride under Jerry Brown,” adding that they should now be required to help subsidize the housing needs of low and moderate income Oakland residents. 

And Mary Kruger, an Oakland apartment renter, opposed the relaxing of condominium conversions, saying that her apartment had recently been sold and was being converted to condominium. “Our rent was raised $381 a month, with 60 days notice,” Kruger said. “I can’t afford it. Our life is being turned upside down. Our community is being broken up.” 

But Steve Edrington, executive director of the Rental Housing Association of Northern Alameda County, who said he has converted rental housing to condominiums, said that his concern was not with possible relaxing restrictions on such conversions but with the council “creating more restrictions.” Edrington also said that he was opposed to inclusionary zoning because “it is an embedded tax” that he feared would restrict residential housing development in Oakland. 

UC Regents are scheduled to vote Wednesday to approve a lease on an Emeryville building to house a federally funded $250 million biofuel program. 

But just where the lab will be housed, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab officials won’t say. 

Ron Kolb, the lab’s chief media officer, said he can’t disclose the location because the regents will hold their vote in closed session, and because officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) must also give their approval. 

“When the lease becomes an official document, we are happy to share the information with you. This may not occur for a couple of weeks,” Kolb said in an e-mail. 

The DOE-funded Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a separate program from the $500 million Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) bankrolled by a grant from BP, plc—the company formerly known as British Petroleum. 

The BP lab will be housed in a specially constructed building planned for the LBNL campus on the slopes above Strawberry Creek in the Berkeley Hills. 

Meanwhile, the company founded by a UC Berkeley scientist who plays a leading role in both JBEI and EBI has just added 70,000 square feet to the space it leases in Emeryville, according to the San Francisco Business Journal. 

Amyris Technologies, founded by Jay Keasling and three graduate students, specializes in biofuels and in creating a cheap version of the antimalarial drug artemisinin, the latter with the help of funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Keasling and another academic-cum-corporate founder, Chris Somerville, are the two Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers who have key roles in both the federally funded and British-backed biofuel programs. 

Amyris’s new lease is in Wareham Development’s EmeryStation East; the company already leases another 20,000 square feet in Emeryville, most of it in Wareham’s EmeryStation North. 

And at least one source close to the negotiations said the university had been in active negotiations for a lease in the same building. 

Robert Sakai, technology and trade director for the Economic Development Alliance for Business, said that if JBEI locates there, it could encourage companies like ChevronTexaco to locate their own startups nearby. 

“To me, that’s good news,” he said. 

EDAB, a public/private consortium devoted to helping businesses locate in the Bay Area, was enlisted by lab officials early on in their search for support in winning the DOE grant. 

Keasling’s company also hired BP’s North American vice president while UC Berkeley and LBNL were making their pitch for the $500 million grant from the British oil company, and in June the firm hired three other officers who had also worked for BP: Paul Addams, who had headed the team managing BP’s American oil portfolio; Jim Alderman, who had held executive positions at Tosco and BP, and Ena Chen Cratsenburg, who had last worked at another Emeryville company, Pixar. 

The hirings were announced by Amyris CEO John Mello, the BP executive hired during the UC-BP negotiations. 

Amyris recently posted an on-line recruitment pitch for a director of facilities to oversee an “upcoming construction project on 75,000 to 90,000 ft. of office and laboratory space.” 

That size is considerably larger than the 50,000 square feet LBNL sought for the JBEI in solicitation issued on March 23. 

The lab would employ 158 scientists and support staff, and accommodate an additional 16 visiting scientists, according to the lease prospectus. 

Research would concentrate on three areas: feedstock (plants for conversion into fuels), deconstruction of the plants into useable component and the synthesis of fuels from those components. 

The JBEI project will involve scientists from UC Berkeley and its affiliated Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national labs as well as UC Davis and Stanford. 

Other regent actions 

The regents are also scheduled to vote this morning (Tuesday) on the $135 million budget for capital improvements at the Clark Kerr Campus, of which $6.75 million will come from the UC Housing New Revenue Fund and the remainder from external financing. 

Meeting Thursday, the board’s committees on Educational Policy and Finance are set to approved fee increases from professional degree programs for the 2008-2009 school year and a three-year program for increased fees in the professional schools. 

Members of the Grounds and Buildings Committee will receive updates this morning (Tuesday) and lawsuits challenging UC Berkeley growth plans and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Long Range Development Plan. 

Two sessions Wednesday will focus on the search for a replacement for UC President Robert C. Dynes, who resigned on short notice last month. 

While his four-year tenure had drawn fire over an executive pay schedule, Regents Chair Richard Blum had complained that university building projects were taking too long to get off the ground under Dynes’ tenure. 

In a 12:05 p.m. session, the Committee on Governance is scheduled to amend the board’s policy on filling the presidency, and at 3:30 a special committee on selecting a new president will discuss criteria for the search for Dynes’ replacement.

Government health officials who contend there’s no evidence of toxic health threats to most workers at UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station (RFS) found themselves before a skeptical audience Thursday. 

Contra Costa County Public Health Director Dr. Wendel Brunner and a team from the state Department of Health Services presented their findings to the citizen panel keeping watch over the cleanup of contaminated sites along the southern Richmond shoreline. 

The Community Advisory Group (CAG) was created by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the state agency overseeing the cleanups. 

The DTSC was brought in after community activists demanded they replace the previous regulatory body, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

The two largest sites under the CAG’s purview are the university property and the adjacent Campus Bay site—both of which once housed plants that manufactured dangerous chemicals. 

The lead item of the CAG’s agenda was the 99-page Public Health Assessment of RFS compiled by the state and county team. 

Presenting the results were the two physicians on the team, Brunner and Rick Kreutzer, chief of the state agency’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch (EHIB). 

“There is no significant risk to anybody,” Kreutzer said, with the exception of workers who dig in contaminated soil still present at RFS and children who might spend thousands of hours playing in parts of Stege Marsh. 

That said, the two doctors said major parts of the property hadn’t been adequately tested, pointing in particular to an area of the property near a known hot spot of Campus Bay infested with a hazardous brew of toxins. 

Another potential threat arises from three possible sources of radioactive contamination: manufacture of phosphate fertilizers at Campus Bay, a process that concentrates radioactive components naturally found in phosphate ores; processing of uranium metal at Campus Bay, and the possible dumping of radioactive waste from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) at RFS. 

Brunner said that was a “legitimate concern” about phosphates manufacturing which would require further investigation to see if underground water at RFS may have been contaminated. 

Michael Esposito, a retired LBNL scientist who chairs the CAG’s Toxics Committee, said the CAG wanted to know more about the two other potential sources of radiation. 

Rick Alcaraz, a retired RFS employee, said he participated in dumping barrels of waste from LBNL and identified the site where a DTSC consultant identified the presence of buried metal about 30 feet beneath the surface. 

Barbara Cook, DTSC’s statewide cleanup operations branch chief, said plans are under way for a dig at the site to identify what set off the magnetometers. 

While Brunner and Kreutzer said the field station doesn’t pose current risks to workers who don’t dig in contaminated soil or children who don’t spent a cumulative 2,000 hours playing in the marshland, many CAG members remained skeptical. 

The scientists acknowledged that there is no current way to assess the potential additive effects of exposures to a variety of toxins, and Sherry Padgett expressed the concerns of other members worried about the impacts of exposures on people with compromised immune systems. 

Brunner also acknowledged the concerns of CAG member Eric Blum that the report didn’t account for past exposures during the years when chemical manufacturing was at its peak during an era when environmental regulations were either lax or non-existent. 

RFS workers and those who work in businesses near the Campus Bay site have repeatedly expressed their concerns about potential toxic exposures during the earlier cleanups at both sites when large dust clouds blanketed the area. 

Anger generated during that cleanup helped sparked the protests that led to the DTSC takeover. 

Brunner and Kreutzer also stressed that the RFS site itself hadn’t been fully “characterized”—meaning that comprehensive testing of all areas of the site remains to be finished. Both said they don’t expect to find any area more hazardous than those already identified. 

While the assessment called for monitoring dust around the margins of the site for potentials hazards during future cleanup operations, Richmond librarian Tarnel Abbott asked why monitors weren’t scheduled for placement at locations in the interior of the field station. 

“That’s a good point,” said Marilyn Underwood, chief of the EHIB’s Site Assessment Branch. 

Peter Weiner, the San Francisco attorney who has been volunteering his time on behalf of the CAG’s efforts, thanked the health experts, but stressed that he wanted to know what they could do to make sure the whole site is fully investigated to make sure all who worked at or lived near the site knew what their real risks were. 

He said he was concerned that UC Berkeley had declined to participate in the CAG’s activities, and had dismissed past illegal dumping of wastes at Campus Bay as simply paperwork violations. 

Marsh questions 

Under a unique arrangement negotiated by Weiner, Cherokee-Simeon Ventures, the owner of Campus Bay, has agreed to fund the CAG in connection with oversight of its cleanup efforts at the site. 

During Thursday night’s session, a consultant hired with their funds raised questions about the cleanup of Stege Marsh along the site’s bayside shoreline. 

Stewart Siegel, who trained as a student at RFS, is a scientist with Treadwell & Rollo, Inc., an environmental and geotechnical consulting firm based in San Francisco. 

While contaminated marsh soils had been removed and replaced with clean soil drawn from other areas of the bay, Siegel said that future contamination remains a threat. 

“The more I look at the data, the more likely it seems” the marsh will be contaminated again—so long as the 350,000 cubic yards of waste still buried at the site aren’t removed, he said. 

Under the water board’s oversight, a cleanup plan allowed for the burial rather than removal of most of the hazardous material on the site—now temporarily capped with a mixture of paper and concrete. 

Water drains out of the buried waste through a biologically active barrier which is supposed to capture most of the hazardous materials. But the marsh water contains elevated levels of selenium and mercury, Siegel said, which can concentrate in the soil because of limited drainage. 

Siegel said the project was also completed using incorrect tide level data. “The data is absolutely wrong” by about a foot, he said.

A fire-starting burglar and a six-year-old with matches topped the recent hotspots for the Berkeley Fire Department. 

Burning burglar 

Police followed firefighters to an apartment at 2627 Regent St. Saturday night after it was discovered that a burglar had apparently tried to cover up his crime with a greater offense—arson. 

“The tenants were able to put out the fire before we got there,” said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

After burglarizing the place, the burglar had thrown a robe over a lamp, resulting in the blaze. 

“They either got very sloppy or they started a fire to cover up the burglary. We’re treating it as an arson,” said Orth. 

Fire-starter 

A 6-year-old who lives in an apartment in the 1600 block of Sixth Street ignited his bedroom curtains while playing with matches, said Deputy Chief Orth. 

“His mom was asleep and the smoke-detector woke her up” just after 7 p.m. Thursday night, Orth said. 

The blaze was kept in check by fire extinguishers until a BFD chief who happened to be in the area arrived and doused the flames with a garden hose. It was out by the time the engine company arrived. 

Suspicious blaze 

Flames broke out in the grass behind a two-story residence in the 1900 block of Parker Street just after 4 p.m. Friday. Firefighters are considering the blaze as suspicious since folks who weren’t supposed to be there had been spotted in the yard moments before, Orth said. 

Dorm room burns 

Quick response ended a fire that started on the roof of Cory Hall on the UC Berkeley campus last Wednesday shortly before 3 p.m. 

A torch being used by workers to install a new roof ignited the wooden supports to an air unit, and firefighters were forced to tear off some of the roofing before they could quell the flames. A fast response limited the damage to about $3,500, said Orth.

The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is investigating options to move its administrative staff to its West Campus location, according to school officials. 

The proposed move was discussed as part of Friday’s 2x2 Committee meeting between city and school staff. 

The district now uses the Old City Hall, renamed the Maudelle Shirek Building, as its headquarters as part of its 20-year lease with the city which runs out in 2009. “We know the Old City Hall is unsafe and unhealthy,” said board director Joaquin Rivera. “And it’s not retrofitted.” 

“You should get out of that old building immediately,” Mayor Tom Bates told Rivera and Lawrence. “You put yourselves at risk, you put us at risk.” 

The district’s Facilities Construction Plan states that West Campus should be used as BUSD’s headquarters in the future. It comprises nine buildings, several of which are connected. The administration, girls’ gymnasium, auditorium and classroom (Bonar Street) buildings are reinforced concrete construction, while the library, cafeteria and shop building are wood frame construction.  

“We are going through a couple of options for templates at the site but ultimately it would be nice to have a permanent structure there,” said district superintendent Michele Lawrence, who will be retiring in February. 

“Some modular buildings can be on the template for now. They can be placed in a corner so that you can have the University Avenue strip to see what kind of development goes in there. The staging has to be calculated ... We want the best short term that does not affect the long-term development.” 

Lawrence added that the district would also study the Creeks Ordinance, which safeguards the city’s many open and culverted waterways, before proposing any plans. 

Warm water pool 

Lawrence and school board vice president John Selawsky said the district was moving ahead with plans to make the Berkeley High School tennis courts on Milvia Street the new location for a warm water pool to replace the one now located in the school’s Old Gym. 

The district’s South of Bancroft Master Plan includes the demolition of the landmarked Old Gym to make room for new classroom facilities, with the option of relocating the warm water pool to Milvia Street. 

A lawsuit was filed earlier this year asking for a new environmental impact report on the district’s permit to demolish the gym building because the original environmental review did not adequately address the building’s historic status.  

The city is looking at ways to develop the tennis courts into a warm pool but has yet to come to an agreement with the school district about its use. 

A conceptual design was presented at a recent Disability Commission meeting for the second time. 

“It meets most of the requirements of the disabled community but the biggest issue is parking,” said Deputy City Manager Lisa Carona. “Parking is limited but it’s open for discussion depending on the needs of the school district.” 

She added that the proposed $10 million plan did not have any provision for parking above the pool, which would be on the ground floor. 

Corona added that the value of the land would be assessed Tuesday (today) and reported to the City Council. 

The district will first have to declare the Milvia Street property as surplus before leasing or selling it to the city. 

Bates asked the school board to identify legislation that would allow the school to donate the property to the city for use by the community. 

Downtown behavior 

Berkeley Police Department (BPD) chief Doug Hambleton informed the 2X2 committee that violence on the Berkeley High campus and downtown was under control. 

“We are not having a lot of violence downtown,” he said. “Merchants are pretty happy. We do have problems with kids congregating in front of Allston and Shattuck who are rude to police officers. We’d like to have more officers available to pay attention to that.” 

Hambleton added that some Berkeley High students continue to sit on the ledge outside the police department on Martin Luther King Way, apparently unaware of the possible $200 fine for sitting there. 

“The officers don’t like to fine kids, but it’s quite disruptive with all that screaming going on outside,” he said..

Here’s looking at you kid: George Pauly, 74, founder of the “Tely Rep,” one of the last art-house cinemas on Telegraph Avenue’s “cinema row,” is dead. He died Aug. 27 at Summit Hospital after a two-month shoot-out with multiple organ failure. 

A noirist to the core, Pauly would have appreciated that he was almost D.O.A. (one of his favorite films) when he was shot by police during the 1967 protests over People’s Park. 

James Rector, standing next to Pauly, was killed and a man on his other side was blinded. Pauly, who escaped serious injury, lived on to introduce now acknowledged film masterpieces (in 16 mm; this was before “best of” lists) to Cal students and “the usual suspects” from the neighborhood for 30 years. 

According to the website “Cinema Treasures,” which tracks nearly 20,000 U.S. theaters, Tely Rep was “one of Berkeley’s notable venues of cinema during the late ’60s and early ’70s. Originally located several doors south of 2519 Telegraph, it moved to a former apartment building at 2519 where it remained into the ’80s.” 

A patron from the ’70s recalled that Tely Rep “played titles that no one else played: Jodorowski, documentaries, and assorted arthouse fare, Hitchcock (one of Pauly’s favorites, was art house then), and shorts. The Rep was less commercial than its competitors.” 

According to Cinema Treasures, “in the ’80s, the Rep popped its own popcorn in a hot air popper—real butter was available. The entrance was through a nondescript street-level door up a narrow staircase that had the feeling of an apartment house.” 

Probably because it was an apartment house, Pauly lived above the theaters in a penthouse apartment overlooking Telegraph. From across the street, you can still view the steps to the theaters and the apartment house. 

But he soon found the movie exhibition business to be what Bette Davis called “a bumpy ride.” 

As Pauly recalled recently, audiences often threatened to riot when films broke: “Sometimes I was drenched in sweat as the crowd noise invaded the projection booth as I struggled to restore the film.” 

He had gotten the theater bug some years earlier in North Beach, where he alighted in 1969 in a cherry-red Jaguar he had driven to Colorado on a ski trip. He temporarily settled in North Beach in its heyday. 

He never returned to his father’s architectural firm. Instead, he became a habitué at the old Gateway Cinema, south of Market, where he formed his early dreams of movie exhibition. 

An architect trained at Carnegie-Mellon, he lived for a few years in Reno where he contributed to the Reno library system and the Carson City jail. 

But Berkeley and the theater beckoned, eventually consuming him in the details of scheduling and showing more than six films weekly. Sometimes the price was high, as when he was severely beaten by a patron in a beef over a refund. He could not always get distributors to release the films he wanted to show. 

It was not always possible to make the rent on time (he was relentlessly pursued in that period by his landlady). 

Born in Manhattan in 1933 to a well-known architect, George Pauly, Sr., and art teacher mother, he moved with the family to Camp Hill, Pa. where he attended a Catholic boy’s high school. At the University of Pennsylvania he was president of his fraternity, Sigma Nu. He dated the actress Barbara Felton. 

After closing the theater, he drove east to visit his dying sister (his mother had died the previous year). When he returned, he had changed, according to his friends. For nearly a decade, he wandered the streets of Berkeley (eight to 10 miles a day), but avoided his friends. 

Just as mysteriously, he snapped out of it, returning to his long-time headquarters at the Caffe Mediterraneum, a block from the old theater. He continued to live above the theater, which he often said was still vacant for anyone to take up the challenge (no one did). 

Back at the Med, he lost no time re-establishing himself as a dashing avenue figure (tall dark and handsome), Bon Vivant, and coffee house wit with an encyclopedic knowledge of films. 

He could quote long dialogue from hundreds of films, with credits, and other trivia. He admitted that many of the films he mentioned he had never seen (those cranky distributors!). These films went into memory anyway. 

Although not as well known as Tom Luddy, Ed Landberg, or Pauline Kael, he launched the careers of Tom Luddy, first director at PFA, and Prof. Albert Johnson of the UC Berkeley Film Studies Department.  

He leaves no survivors except his gang at the Med, three MGB’s, a generation of film nuts, and broken-hearted women, all of whom loved him. 

His friends remember him as a gentle giant, who, when asked why he didn’t fight back when assaulted, he replied, “that’s the last thing I’d do.” 

A mass will be recited at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, Wed., Sept. 26 (7 p.m. 1640 Addison St.) and a memorial will be held at Caffe Mediterraneum, across from Moe’s.  

Two letters which came in over the weekend are worthy of comment: 

The pivotal political turmoil in Washington D.C. has been seriously ignored of late by the Planet in favor of local news. The Impeachment debate has also been silenced, we suspect by the Editor, Becky O’Malley, who disapproves of Impeachment. Within the last three weeks, two Commentary submissions, one from a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and at least two letters-to-the-Editor advocating the impeachment of Cheney and Bush, have not been published. It is very disappointing to realize that the Planet, heretofore an exemplary community debate forum, is now strangling news and opinions according to its own political bias. 

Libby Lhasan 

Oakland 

And (from early Saturday morning): 

I had heard there was a demonstration at the tree-sitters' site near the stadium yesterday, and checked your website today to see if you had a report. 

On the right side of the page there is a box:  

Special Report:  

Confrontation at the Oak Grove (Video). 

I assumed that this was a video report on yesterday's event.  However, the web link is to a YouTube video uploaded August 29th.  The video begins with a sign announcing the demonstration yesterday, then shows undated video of the police and protesters confronting one another -- clearly made prior to Aug 29.  

So what appears to be a BDP news report on yesterday's events is an *advertisement* promoting yesterday's event.  Shame on you. 

Nancy Van House 

Professor, School of Information 

University of California 

The interesting link in the two letters is the unspoken assumption—what some philosophers would call the presupposition—that whatever shows up in newspapers or on websites reflects considered intent, and that absent any other data it can be assumed to be malevolent intent on the part of the management. 

We should be so lucky. 

My initial response to the Frau Professor’s comment was “fair and balanced”: 

“I'm glad you were able to figure out that the bcitizen video on YouTube was from before Aug.29, which as you note is clear to some viewers, including you yourself.  Your suggestion that the date of material to which we link should be even clearer for the benefit of other viewers is a good one, and I have forwarded it to Mike O'Malley, who designs and maintains our web site, for his comments.  By the way, I think bcitizen, whom we could never afford to pay for the videography they do for the community, has a new video from yesterday posted on their YouTube site.  We'll link to it when we get around to it, but in the meantime you can access it directly.” 

However, my second paragraph perhaps reflected just a bit of annoyance: 

Your charge that a small understaffed community newspaper's having a slightly stale link to old news on someone else's site is intended to be an advertisement for anything is ridiculous on its face.  Shame on YOU, Professor!  

Not to be deterred from her quest for truth, beauty and the American way of life as she sees it, the professor snapped back: 

This looks like a news report from you -- instead it's intended to encourage people to turn out for a demonstration. That's NOT news. That's advocacy.  If it's editorial content, label it. If it's not your paper's opinion, label it.  If it's labeled, as it is, a "special report," we think that's NEWS. .... 

And to my personal email, when she figured out that she had a live human on the hook, 

No, I can't excuse a small NEWSPAPER for having outdated and misleadingly-labeled advocacy content on its dated front page -- we expect the web to be more up-to-date than the paper, not less.  

Then, I regret to say, it got worse. 

Editor to Professor: I'm not familiar with your byline.  What papers have you worked on? 

Prof. to Ed.: Snide, aren’t we? 

Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been accused of making snide remarks. In my defense I must say that at least I avoided vamping on the old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto surrounded by hostile tribes: “What’s this WE, white woman?” 

Instead, I sent the Professor (obviously a web junky, not a print reader) a link to Janet Malcolm’s excellent review of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, which appears under the title “Pandora’s Click” in the latest New York Review of Books. Malcolm quotes the authors: “On email, people aren't quite themselves," Shipley and Schwalbe write. "They are angrier, less sympathetic, less aware, more easily wounded, even more gossipy and duplicitous. Email has a tendency to encourage the lesser angels of our nature." Yes indeed. 

But what’s fascinating about this exchange is that Dr. Van House seems to assume (“we expect”) that those she claims to speak for deserve instant service: that news on the web is something like fast food, and has to be served up hot or not at all.  

The Planet didn’t even have a reporter at the demonstration, that’s how much we knew about it before the fact. Mike and I are the only poor suckers working on a Saturday morning, but he and I, with the generous aid of a participant’s donated commentary and another of LA Wood’s bcitizen videos on YouTube, did actually get around to bringing our weekend web readers up to date on the action at the oak grove by 2 in the afternoon. But we didn’t have to do it. We could have taken time off, gone to the football game for example. 

Our print paper is published twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, as dated issues which go to press Monday and Thursday nights. The web version uses the same content which was sent to the printer, uploaded on the morning the print papers are put in boxes.  

We do put news flashes on the web between issues as often as we can. We’d like to be able to do it more often. But the idea that a faculty member whose job is funded by taxpayers like us has the right to demand anything (using her university-supplied email) from our small free paper is—sorry-- ludicrous. 

And what about the peace lady’s complaint? The latest weekend edition of the paper, as well as the web edition, was graced by a lovely front page photo of Code Pink protestors in Oakland, accompanied by a long article. On the one hand the peace lady accuses us of “strangling news and opinion” because we haven’t yet managed to fit a letter from a member of WILPF (an estimable old-time institution which I myself first joined in 1964) into our lavish opinion section, though her cause is amply reported on the front page. On the other hand, the Professor accuses us of promoting opinion just because we left up a link to an old video produced by admittedly partisan activists. You can’t win in this city. 

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a whole lot worse, as the kids’ camp song says. We are surrounded by a culture of entitlement. I recently griped in this space that some members of the entertainment and real estate segments weren’t doing their bit to support local media’s reports on their activities with advertisements, but as ingrates they haven’t a patch on readers like these.  

GHANDI’S BIRTHDAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Along with Diamond Dave Whittaker, I am again putting together the Gandhi statue birthday poetry reading at the Gandhi statue behind the San Francisco Ferry Building, from 1-6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30. And while Arnie (five-minute sign-ups at pazmopa@yahoo.com) has known it for a few months, it was not until recently that he fully realized in the fourth dimension that the United Nations has declared Oct. 2, Gandhi’s birthday, “International Day of Nov-Violence.” Let us all that day, spread, spam, blog, gather, smoke signals, hand puppets—do all we can to communicate and resonate around the world that there is now a sanctioned day of non-violence!  

Arnie Passman  

• 

MANDATORY  

ADVERTISING?  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It astounds me the way you complain about local businesses not advertising in your paper! Advertising should be a free choice of the people buying the ads. If the local merchants felt that your paper was a good source I’m sure they’d use you more.  

Rich Crowl 

• 

VIBE CHECK 

Dear “George” [the anonymous author of the Sept. 18 First Person story, “A Joyous Act of Civil Disobedience”: 

Please make a note to, next time, have some local “makers” fashion cushy devices that can be plopped on top of the fences so that nobody punctures their hands while scrambling back or forth. 

Oh, and thanks for the “vibe check.” 

Thomas Lord 

• 

A SENSE OF  

ENTITLEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What a spicy editorial you had today. I didn’t know people wrote to you declaring, “How dare you not publish my piece!” What planet are they on? Papers are jigsaw puzzles of hastily assembled material, from what I learned when I was a journalism major. You deserve congratulations for finding the precious space in a twice-a-week paper for as many contributions as you do print. 

Imagine the complaints to you if a revolution broke out? Your e-mail would overload with anger at unreported rallies, boycotts and riots, not to mention unprinted commentaries declaring a call to arms. 

Keep up the good work. 

Ted Vincent 

• 

SUPERINTENDENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley School Board has the critically important responsibility of choosing the next school superintendent to replace Michele Lawrence who will retire on Feb. 1, 2008. To help facilitate the recruiting process, we have engaged the consulting firm of Leadership Associates to coordinate a national search and recruitment process. To help us in this process and allow us to give clear direction to our consultants, we are asking our parents, community, high school students and employees to identify the characteristics, talents and experience they believe our next superintendent should possess. 

The consultants have established a series of meetings in which they will hear from almost 50 groups, representing various constituents in the district and throughout the community. Groups and organizations have been contacted, but we want to ensure that there are also opportunities for individuals in the community to give input to the consultants. You are welcome to attend any of three general meetings scheduled on: Monday, Sept. 24, 7:15 p.m. at BTech Academy (2701 Martin Luther King Way); or Tuesday, Sept. 25, 6:30 p.m. at BTech Academy; or Tuesday, Sept. 25, 12:45 p.m. at the School District Office (2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, second floor, Superintendent’s Conference Room). 

If you are unable to attend, you can send your suggestions to www.leadershipassociates.org or 23052-H Alicia Parkway, Mission Viejo, Calif. 92692 We sincerely hope you will take this opportunity to be involved in the recruitment process. It is important for us to hear the views from all the voices in our community. 

Joaquin Rivera 

President, BUSD Board of Education 

• 

LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So why not let us decide about BRT by public vote? The proposal to convert two lanes of Telegraph Avenue to bus-only traffic (known as BRT) should be placed on the next ballot to guage whether the public actually wants this project (which also eliminates hundreds of public parking spaces). Proponents and opponents of BRT do not seem to be able to agree on much when debating this project. It has been a very contentious argument which will only get worse. There may be agreement on only one thing: If created, BRT will have a tremendous impact on Berkeley—on quality of life, on business and future development projects. Whether that impact is good or bad is a matter of opinion. And there are always unintended consequences, both good and bad. But this issue is far too important to be decided by faceless city staff planners, rubber-stamp planning commissions and a City Council which seems to have already made up its mind. Let BRT be decided by the people of Berkeley at the voting booth.  

Frank Greenspan 

• 

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wish to make a correction to the date of Pete Voulkos’ Solano, cited in Peter Selz’ Sept. 18 article, “Oakland Museum Receives Major Gift.” Voulkos made this piece in 1959 not 1958. Because the label posted at the museum accompanying the sculpture incorrectly cites it as 1958, the error is understandable. 

The Oakland Museum also owns Voulkos’ 1959 sculpture, Little Big Horn, which was included in the exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art that Selz refers to in his article, and which was organized by Mr. Selz. 

Sam Jornlin 

Voulkos & Co. Catalogue Project 

• 

GMO MAYO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just about went into a decline when I moved here from New York City 40 years ago and there was no Hellman’s on store shelves! Anywhere! (Barbarian heathens. I knew I should have stayed in New York.) I got clued in to Best Foods, and all was well. I know I’m not alone; many ex-New Yorkers have reported the same experience. 

Living without Hellman’s mayo, or Best Foods as they call it out here, was unthinkable until today, when I found out from a site called truefoodnow.org that it contains GMO soy oil. I am now willing to use other mayos until Hellman’s sees the light and switches. I believe they used to use olive oil and should go back to that. 

Just to make sure, I spoke to a Hellman’s customer rep who said that Hellman’s did contain GMO oil, and I could rest assured that it was totally fine and pure and just like non-GMO oil. I reminded her that for decades big corporations have been assuring us that this that or the other thing was totally safe, only to be proved wrong by determined activists. The number to call is: 1-800-418-3275. 

The truefoodnow.org site contains a very comprehensive list of foods that contain GMO ingredients, as well as the non-GMO alternatives. 

Alice Molloy 

Oakland 

• 

OAK GROVE RALLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Tuesday afternoon, I attended an event at the Memorial Stadium oak grove. The purpose of the event, as well as the purpose of the grove itself, is to honor and memorialize the fallen veterans of World War I. 

Longtime resident and vet-advocate Country Joe McDonald sang and strummed a touching piece. Former Mayor Shirley Dean gave a wonderful speech as other Berkeley luminaries looked on. Someone named Helen sang a splendid rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and an inspiring eulogy was delivered by the priest (whose name I did not catch). 

The eulogy spoke of the sacrifice of World War l veterans, and how their courage and determination were born of the simple ideals of peace, freedom and democracy. They put their bodies on the line to fight against imperial aggression and tyranny. They truly believed that it would be the war to end all wars. Memorial Stadium and the oak grove were named in honor of those who died, and that is why we were there. It took three hours to read each name of the 1,800 Californians who perished in that war. 

During the ceremony, a large late model pickup drove by our gathering on Gayley Avenue. One of the young males inside shouted out “I hate trees! I love football! F— you.” No one paid any attention, but I could not help but be struck by the symbolic poignancy of the incident. Those of us in the gathering symbolized the soldiers we were honoring, as well as the majority of Berkeley citizens. The young men driving by (we’ll call them “football truck guys”), symbolized the university. 

The vast majority of Berkeley citizens, for good reason, oppose the university’s plan to destroy the oak grove. “Football truck guys” and U.C. hope to destroy the grove to carry out their self-centered, anti-democratic expansionism. 

Those who live here care deeply about sustaining our quality of life. “Football truck guys” will be leaving Berkeley once they finish school. The university, a self-contained entity, arrogantly does as it pleases with no concern for our city and it’s citizens. 

Those of us at the ceremony were there in reverence for the fallen soldiers, and for the oak grove named in their honor. “Football truck guys” shouted out obscenities at our solemn little gathering. The university, if they are allowed to carry out their scheme, will dishonor those soldiers and what they stood for. As the university continues to disregard and disrespect the wishes of most Berkeley residents, it has now aggressively constructed a grotesque fence to make sure freedom and democracy are shut out. 

The people of Berkeley could take inspiration from the courage the oak grove memorializes. The people of Berkeley need to stand up and tear that fence down. 

Kevin Moore 

• 

STEVE BARTON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Our mayor and City Council fall over themselves praising Steve Barton. They call him “a stalwart, creative leader” and “an extremely valuable resource.” Some also take potshots at the city attorney, who is blamed for Barton’s ouster as housing director. Barton demands an investigation of the whole matter. 

Lest we forget....  

• The city manager, not the city attorney, fired Steve Barton. All three serve at the pleasure of the mayor and council, which is where the buck must stop. It is hypocritical and cowardly for the council to decide in a back room to fire Barton and then publicly to proclaim him as an affordable housing messiah. 

• Barton was not fired for dishonesty, but for gross incompetence. Beginning in 2002, he was repeatedly told by federal investigators that the Section 8 program was “troubled,” and that there were numerous instances of wrongdoing among employees and applicants. Barton had five years to solve the problem, but didn’t.  

• Those who call Barton a champion of affordable housing do not see what a sham that program has been. There are only 1,800 Section 8 vouchers. What Berkeley has done is shift a lot of these vouchers away from existing buildings, often owned by local, small landlords, to big high-rises owned by out-of-towners. There is no net gain in covered units. What Berkeley has also done is exhaust its affordable housing trust fund in order to subsidize developments that will most likely not survive economically without even more taxpayer help. 

• Two years ago, Barton sold the council on a condo conversion program that was to have replenished the trust fund with four million dollars a year in fees. So far, nothing has been collected. 

That said, Mr. Barton is right: Berkeley’s housing programs should be investigated, bottoms up, by impartial persons who are not puppets to the council, and who are not tied to old, failed policies. 

There are lots of dark corners to look in. Why, for example, was the city forced to scrap its list of some 5,000 Section 8 applicants? Did people who managed to jump the line corrupt the list? If so, what about the unfairness to honest, qualified folks who have been waiting for years, but who must now start over again? 

In this regard the investigators might start with the case of Eleanor Walden, a member of the Rent Stabilization Board. For 10 years she has simultaneously held down a Section 8 unit in Redwood Gardens, and a super low-rent controlled unit on Milvia Street. A few months ago, Ms. Walden tried to evict a subtenant at Milvia, and told the Rent Board (in writing) that the place had been her home for 2 years. At the same time she told the Section 8 people that Redwood Gardens was her home. Then, just two weeks ago, she changed her story to the Rent Board, stating that she had moved from Milvia to Redwood Gardens “in a gradual process” between 1997 and 2004.” 

This is all in the public record, but so far no one seems to take an interest in these specific examples of gross manipulation by people in power.  

It’s for tolerating this kind of behavior that Steve Barton was fired. Yes, we should all welcome an investigation, the quicker the better. 

David Wilson  

• 

IDIOTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has been brought to my attention that the treatment of Tennessee fans at the Cal game a few weeks ago was reported by your publication as negative. I am writing to inform you that your reporting couldn’t be further from the truth. I am a UT grad currently living in San Diego. I flew up to the Bay Area and attended the game with another alum who resides in Sacramento. We were both clad in orange and received nothing but politeness. 

When walking through the campus before the game, we were greeted several times by complete strangers welcoming us to California due to our orange Tennessee clothing (which we found ironic, seeing as we live here). I can assure you, I have seen ugliness at college football games (try going to a Tennessee-Alabama game in Knoxville wearing Alabama gear) and the treatment of Cal fans to UT fans was excellent. It truly made the day enjoyable even though our team got crushed. 

The only problem I had with the game was that the stadium was ill-equipped at the exits/entrances. I later found out that this was due to the people in the trees. After a little research, I learned of why these people are up in the trees. I find it hard to believe that an entire city has to halt a multi-million-dollar construction job because four or five people are offended (maybe it’s nine or 10, or maybe it’s 500, whatever). It seems like Cal has a great university and a great following for its football program, but the city and its constituents want to disappoint and upset thousands of people to appease a few. This seems like a trend in your area of the country, and it is unfortunate. The overriding sentiment around the nation after that game was that you people are ridiculous. It is not 1969, and people living in trees do as much damage to them as do bull-dozers. Point not taken. 

To summarize, Cal football fans were civil and polite, and your publication should do its journalistic due diligence and report the facts. The hippies in trees are idiots, making those in power siding with them bigger idiots. 

Patrick Berry 

San Diego 

University of Tennessee,  

Class of 1999 

• 

TIRED OF ‘BERSERKELEY’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was born in Berkeley and have lived her all my adult life and obviously, yes, I could move elsewhere if I chose to, but I’ve just got to admit that after 52 years this whole Berserkeley thing feels a little tired. This morning I walked past a young woman, probably a new student; she was talking to her mom on the phone she held in her hand. “And Mom,” she was saying as she passed me, “they have people living in trees here,” and when she said the word “trees” her voice rose up to a little squeak and then she started giggling (and maybe her mom started giggling too). 

Now I’m the kind of person who can sort of see both sides to any given situation, but to me it’s like when you’re a kid and your mom says “Eat all the Brussels sprouts on your plate. There are people starving in Africa.” There really are people dying in Africa...and a whole lot of other terrible things going on all over the world. This whole tree/stadium thing...well, as I said, I can see both sides but I also see an enormous amount of time, energy and money being spent by both a mule-headed university and an ornery city and I guess maybe we should all ask ourselves, given an overview of the world and its myriad problems (go ahead, take your pick), if we really want to be honest, is this the very best use of our time, energy and money? 

Susan Leonard 

• 

BUS STOPS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Caltrans ought to build bus stops at each interchange in the East Bay, as exist in Marin. The only one here is at Orinda. 

More use of buses on freeways will reduce congestion. 

Before BART was built, AC Transit was carrying 58 percent of the people using the Bay Bridge during the peak hours. 

Charles Smith 

• 

GOLDEN GATE TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his Aug. 31 commentary, “Berkeley’s Misplaced Planning Priorities,” Paul Glusman states that “there never has been any direct public transit between Berkeley or Oakland and Marin County.” 

After the Loma Prieta earthquake there was ferry service from Berkeley to Tiburon. 

Mr. Glusman also overlooks the very good bus service Golden Gate Transit provides from the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station to San Rafael seven days a week—thus making it possible to bypass San Francisco. 

Paul Slater 

• 

HOWELL-NORTH BUILDING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The fine old building at 1050 Parker St. has been degraded to an eyesore, which is the Berkeley way to prepare it for demolition. Many years ago, when the building housed the famous publishing house Howell-North, I tried to buy it. I wasn’t so interested in the building itself, but it was full of ancient letterpress and linotype equipment and thousands of drawers of type for handsetting books. Flora North was losing her eyesight and needed to retire and unload her grand publishing business. Howell-North did the very finest railroad books, all beautifully designed and handset and printed in the same building. This was one of the oldest and best West Coast publishing houses and its famous authors even included a favorite of mine, Lucius Beebe. Flora has just sold the building for $35,000. It was the late ’60s, early ’70s, and Berkeley was in revolt and property was for sale cheap. For me the wonderful old equipment had to stay in the building, as it was terribly expensive to move. I guess it all got junked and the books were sold off. Many are still in print.  

I don’t think the building should be saved but I’d like to know more about it as it could easily be from the last century. It was a heartbreaker to lose this particular publishing house and I note that the original editions now sell used for large sums as rare books. 

Phil Wood 

• 

HAMAS AND ISRAEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Lately, whenever I see a reference to Hamas, it is followed with the phrase “which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.” To be fair, I suggest that whenever the media refers to Israel, it should be followed with the phrase “which does not recognize the right of Palestine to exist.”  

Jan Snipper 

Oakland 

• 

SEGREGATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A conservative law firm known as the Pacific Legal Foundation wants to turn back the clock toward the 1950s when segregation was legal. They are anti-Indian, anti-environment, and anti-civil rights. For example, they defended private property owners, oil and gas companies over the sovereignty of American Indians when it comes to both land and water rights.  

On civil rights, they want to roll back racial integration in the schools. For example, they are attacking the Berkeley Unified School District because Berkeley wants to do things what would preserve racial diversity in the schools. The Pacific Legal Foundation cheers the Supreme Court decision which struck down diversity in the schools. That decision is a setback for equality. 

The Pacific Legal Foundation, just like others in the conservative movement, was and still is against the civil rights movement and would love nothing better than to see the day when segregation returns in public life. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

TAKING ISSUE WITH CONN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Conn Hallinan’s Sept. 7 column, “Israeli Settlements and a Scramble for the Arctic,” Mr. Hallinan asserted that General Vang Pao made millions in the drug trade [in Laos]. He referenced Mr. Alfred McCoy’s book The Politics of Heroin as a sources for this claim. In the article, Mr. Hallinan asks the audience to take the time to sit down with McCoy and to watch Leslie Cockburn’s “Drugs, Guns and the CIA,” a Frontline special based on McCoy’s assertions.  

So let us analyze what McCoy truly knew about Vang Pao and the alleged drug cartel he has accused Vang Pao of orchestrating. Based on the time-line that he gave, Mr. McCoy visited Laos in July of 1971 as a graduate student. He spent one month in Laos and visited one Hmong village, the village of Long Pot, were he spent five days interviewing the villagers through a Lao interpreter. By his own admission these villagers had fallen from Vang Pao. During this time, Mr. McCoy did not meet Vang Pao nor did he visit Long Cheng the site he alleged was the center of a heroin factory. Mr. McCoy referenced two shady Lao generals as his main sources for these allegations. He interviewed General Ouane Rattikone and General Thao Ma each once in September of 1971. General Rattikone admitted to McCoy that he bought and sold opium. General Thao Ma was forced to flee to Thailand after his failed coup against the Royal Laos Government.  

Prior to writing this so call “classic” McCoy admitted that he has never written anything longer than a term paper. In the revised 2003 edition of The Politics of Heroin, Mr. McCoy acknowledges that the Church Committee of the United States Senate concluded that there was “no substance” to “allegations that the Agency’s proprietaries were involved in drug trafficking.” Furthermore, McCoy spent one week in a Hmong village, this does not make him an expert on the Hmong, this irregardless on how many PhD’s are attached to his name. 

In conclusion, before Mr. Hallinan publishes anymore cut and paste articles, he should double check his sources as these allegations he made against the Hmong and General Vang Pao can carry serious consequences. Unless Mr. Hallinan can prove that Vang Pao was a drug lord he must retract his statements. He is welcome to contact me for any further clarifications.  

Chong Jones  

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Conly’s assertion that the near-simultaneous arrival of big, articulated buses on Telegraph Avenue (i.e.: “bunching”) will be alleviated by shutting down two lanes of traffic on that main artery is suspicious. So-called bunching on Telegraph began with the substantial increase of buses on the 1R line. I rode the bus to the halfway point several times just prior to the escalation of service; buses ran regularly and it was not difficult to get to Oakland at any hour. It may surprise Mr. Conly and other Friends of BRT that some folks who oppose this scheme have since noted lots of nearly empty buses all along the No. 1 route in both directions. In 2003 AC Transit paid a consultant a lot of money to stop this kind of waste. How odd that it should adopt this practice on the Telegraph Avenue line today.  

I had supposed primary responsibility for what may be shaping up as a legendary boondoggle might belong to top execs at AC Transit. But evidently not. Mr. Conly’s carefully composed counter claim that we aren’t really seeing what we are seeing and that closing lanes to cars won’t do what experience in similar conditions tells us it will do—in concert with further revelations in the Berkeley Daily Planet (City of Berkeley plans to spend $396,000.00 on PR for the BRT scheme) indicates that the Berkeley city government is equally responsible for this public policy misfire. So far both organizations are holding their ears tightly shut to the public outcry against closing two lanes of Telegraph Avenue to cars.  

AC Transit has gone conveniently deaf before. It ignored complaints about VanHool buses from drivers and riders and signed a big contract for lots more. I have been on them quite a few times. They are not as good to ride—for reasons of convenience, safety, and esthetics—as the buses that ran before. They are expensive to buy and operate. Parts must come from Europe. Someone must have a mighty compelling reason to override all the good reasons not to buy them. The same or others must have a similarly compelling reason to disregard tens of thousands of people who want to leave Telegraph the way it is. 

The Daily Planet’s report that 300 or 400 millions of dollars are tied to this hare-brained transit scheme is the most telling piece of information to date. “Public servants” that get a whiff of that kind of money bend all efforts to concoct reasons why it should be delivered into their hands. This process wastes little thought on the wishes of affected members of the public. Nor is it expedient on the way to the bank to consider salient points of criticism: 

1. Buses are a relatively inefficient means of transportation. 

2. Big buses that are run empty waste fuel. 

3. Large numbers of big, heavy buses ruin our streets. 

4. Our streets are already breaking down. 

5. There are lots of buses and BART trains to Oakland already (before the recent escalation of service). 

6. Restricting auto traffic to one lane on Telegraph would waste time/fuel/money and inconvenience thousands each day. 

It has not been difficult to get to Oakland or Berkeley from Telegraph. Rush hour is slower whether you are in a car or a bus. Emphasizing more speed is misdirection. BRT is not necessary in real terms nor is it desired by large numbers of the affected public. My guess is lane closure is a requirement for big-bucks funding. The sudden plethora of buses on Telegraph looks as much like an attempt to secure a fait accompli (“getting people used to it”) as enlightened public policy. 

Glen Kohler 

• 

HR 1940 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dan Lungren is pushing his bill, HR1940, to end birthright citizenship. It plays to the lowest common denominator of the Republican Party and the anti-immigration activists. Lungren’s HR1940 is a racially charged attempt to overturn the Anglo-American common law principle, dating back to 1608, which allows citizenship to all people born here. Isn’t withholding health insurance from children and taking citizenship away from children rather un-American? 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

GOOD VS. EVIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Cal football fans and football: evil. Doug Buckwald: good and virtuous. How long has Doug worked for the Planet?  

Matthew Shoemaker. 

• 

BEARS FAN? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read Doug Buckwald describe himself as a “Cal Bears fan.” Would a fan (or any decent person for that matter) value the lives of a handful of run-of-the-sawmill trees over those of student-athletes, coaches and his fellow fans? That is precisely what Mr. Buckwald and his cronies are doing in their attempt to block the construction of new sports facilities in Strawberry Canyon. Make no mistake—every day that construction is delayed by is another day that environmental fascists put lives at risk (including—as a season ticket holder—my own). Apparently Mr. Buckwald only cares about the lives of trees—people, not so much. 

I find it even more laughable that Mr. Buckwald thinks “it would be helpful if Chancellor Robert Birgineau, Athletic Director Sandy Barbour, and Coach Jeff Tedford would address their fans publicly to encourage more civil behavior toward the guests that come to our campus.” There has been a video from Coach Tedford or one of our student-athletes for years encouraging fans to act with class and dignity (which is more than I can say for Zachary Running Wolf or Ayr). I figured that a real fan—such as Mr. Buckwald—would have noticed that, but I guess he’s been too busy being an activist for the asinine to take in any football games over the past five years. Finally, as for Mr. Buckwald’s absurd claim that we should be respectful of our “fellow alumni who may feel differently from them about the appropriateness of current construction plans,” that is certainly the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe when Mr. Buckwald gives up his strategy of lies and lawlessness I’ll have some reason to respect him, but I won’t hold my breath. With fans like Doug Buckwald, who needs Stanford? 

Jeff Ogar 

Actual Cal Bears fan 

• 

BERKELEY REP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I completely agree with your observations about the Berkeley Rep as far as advertising in the Planet. They are getting a free ride. Certainly hundreds, maybe thousands, of their subscribers and donors are Planet readers. I don’t know how they know what your demography is or, for that matter, what newspapers their demography reads. I personally don’t remember being asked such a question. These arts groups ought to support other arts groups and other like-minded public institutions, such as the Planet, rather than merely maintain themselves as little fiefdoms. 

Bennett Markel 

• 

TERRORIST ATTACK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky, your Sept. 11 editorial reads like a terrorist attack on the Berkeley Rep with whom you are angry for not advertising in your paper. Like Shakespeare’s Iago, you seek to poison our affection for one of Berkeley’s most beloved arts organizations by explaining how a minor marketing decision is really a personal insult to you and your readers. Next, you attempt to set one arts organization against another, sorting out the faithful from the wicked. To ensure that all the poisons will hatch out, you then invite the disaffected to send complaints about the Rep to you for publication. Oh, what a pretty mess you’ve made as “the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds upon.” How can any arts organization or civic-minded citizen now feel comfortable doing business with you?  

Mike and Shirley Issel 

• 

THEATER ADVERTISING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was surprised to read that Berkeley Rep does not advertise in the Daily Planet. The Rep seems to encourage supporting local businesses in its PR materials. I therefore agree with John McBride (Letters, Sept. 14) that the Planet would do best to focus on reviews of “smaller, perhaps semi-amateur or struggling groups.” As a volunteer usher at the Rep for more than 20 years, it is clear the Rep saves lots of money by having the more than 800 volunteers do all the ushering etc. It seems this might free up funds for local advertising. 

Although I and other ushers I know have always been treated extremely well by our supervising staff, I also agree with Debra Sabah Press (Letters, Sept. 14) when she says: “the Rep has a lot to learn about how to treat its patrons and its community.” 

Finally, most of the Planet readers I know also attend performances at the Berkeley Rep. 

Mary Ann Brewin 

• 

SUPPORT THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the Sept. 11 editorial Becky O’Malley concerning the arts scene, I do think it would be a good that both the Berkeley Repertory theater and the Aurora Theater advertise in the Daily Planet. 

I personally don’t check advertisements as we do subscribe to both the Berkeley Rep and the Aurora. I will mention it to them. Thank you for the heads up. 

Wendy Markel 

• 

STADIUM PLANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This letter relates to the city’s lawsuit against Cal’s plan to build a Student Athlete High Performance Center and retrofit Memorial Stadium. As a 28-year resident and homeowner on Panoramic Hill, my family and I should be strongly opposed to the University’s construction plans, since we would be some of the neighbors most severely affected. 

But we’re not. Instead, we wholeheartedly endorse and support Cal’s plans and hereby request that the city drop its lawsuit. 

The Panoramic Hill Association by no means represents the majority of people living on Panoramic Hill. It instead is the voice for a small number of selfish individuals with NIMBY attitudes. What did these people expect when they moved onto a hill behind Memorial Stadium? How can they make such a big deal out of stadium lights that will be used a few evenings/year, for the convenience of many and the slight inconvenience of very few? These are the same people who protest concerts at the Greek Theater. Again, what did they expect when they moved here? My wife and I attended concerts at the Greek Theater back in 1970, so I know they’ve been going on for at least 37 years. Imagine if Cal tried to build the Greek Theater today; what an outcry there would be! 

The City of Berkeley should not be fighting Cal on this issue. Please consider the following factors: 

• Cal is by far the most important element in what makes Berkeley the great city it is. Without Cal, Berkeley would be just another El Cerrito.  

• Does it really matter whether a new building is 10 feet, 100 feet or 10,000 feet from the Hayward Fault when the big one comes along? I suspect not. Just look at the damage in Oakland and San Francisco from the Loma Prieta Earthquake, whose epicenter was quite a few miles away.  

• Whatever risks there are from the Hayward Fault running underneath Memorial Stadium have been known for decades. For the city to now tell the University that they must retrofit the stadium before building the SAHPC rather than immediately after seems disingenuous to me. Cal is gonna retrofit the stadium, and with private funds. Five years ago, this wasn’t in the cards. So now the city files a lawsuit about the sequence of construction? Come on! 

Folks, it’s time to stop with the navel-gazing and instead look up and to the future: imagine it’s 2027, and we have hundreds of 20-25 year-old trees on the Cal campus that are not there today. In addition, we have the level of athletic facilities that a world-class University should have, and the University and city are proud of them. 

This debate reminds me of the bitter protests in San Francisco back in the early 70s against the construction of the Transamerica Pyramid. Today, this building is considered a city landmark and most San Franciscans are proud of it. 

So I ask Mayor Bates and Berkeley City Council members to please look up and to the future, and stop wasting city funds on this lawsuit. 

John McMahon 

• 

POLICE DEPARTMENT RESTROOMS 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Recently I had occasion to wait in the main lobby of the Berkeley Police Station on MLK Way to make a crime report. I had to “make my report” first into a phone extension in the lobby of the echo chamber of the waiting area in the main lobby while everyone there was privy to my particular concern, and I to others’ reports: some very serious, and personal. For instance, there was a young mother there who had experienced both a physical attack and a attack on her car, and had her young daughter, in tow, both traumatized.  

This little girl didn’t need to hear her mother recount the details of her trauma on the phone, in the lobby, and again in a interview room. Someone should have come out right away and taken them in, and while the mother recounted her trauma, the little girl could have been kept amused by another officer with a popsicle and a kind word: been more sensitive. 

We all needed to use the restroom facilities as the wait was quite long to be interviewed. The restrooms in the lobby were all marked “CLOSED.” Upon inquiry, we were directed to go to the Old City Hall Building, which meant losing our place in line, and in the case of this young mother: she needed to stay put and be seen ASAP, and to maybe wash away her tears and get her little girl to the bathroom!  

I asked about the “CLOSED” signs; ie: “Were they out-of-order? I was told by the officer who eventually took my report, that the bathroom had been “closed since 2003” due to “security concerns and terrorism...probably connected to 9/11.” This seemed a bit mis-placed, since the police could, on a case-by-case basis give the key to those of us waiting in line, if they are concerned about leaving it open and unlocked on a general basis. 

Something is wrong with this picture. The main lobby of the BPD is NOT “user friendly,” however the officer that took my report was the picture of professionalism! 

Linda Tumulty 

• 

STADIUM NOISE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Leaving my home last Saturday to escape the stadium noise, the Berkeley policeman who was stopping traffic told me “The games are just a few days!” Unfortunately, the impact from UC football, band rehearsal, other sports played in Strawberry Canyon are not just a few days. The games number seven this year. Band rehearsal is continual. This year the band practiced with simulated crowd noise. Yes, simulated crowd noise. 

And this noisy rehearsal was at night. The games used to begin at 12:30 p.m. One game this year will begin at 7 p.m.! Night time noise is more offensive because background noise lessens in the evening. Given a maximum of four hours, the noise may last until 11 p.m. In addition to the football games are games played in Strawberry Canyon, many again with simulated crowd noise. 

On top of all the games are the 14 or so Greek Theater events that blast so-called music until 11 p.m. Another Planet pays UC over $1 million to rent the outdoor theater and annoy many neighborhoods. Perhaps you can figure out the educational purpose of Greek Theater concerts? I cannot. 

To make things even worse, UC plans to rent out the stadium for other events. Perhaps they too will be as noisy as the Paul McCartney concert and flood UC with noise complaints as far away as Montclair. The Berkeley City Council could tax events at the stadium, as they once did when UC rented the stadium to the Raiders, but I doubt that will happen. Perhaps they could also tax the non-university events at the Greek. 

After all why should UC be the only governmental institution that makes money out of creating a noise nuisance? 

The noise problems from UC stadium, Strawberry Canyon, Peoples Park Concerts and the Greek Theater all add up to far more than just a few days. Weekend evenings without noise are few and far between. Unfortunately, the State Health Services office that controls noise nuisances created by state agencies is not funded. And because it doesn’t have to, UC pays no attention to the noise ordinance promulgated by the city. 

Noise has health impacts. Some places actually pay attention to such details, but not the University of California. 

Ann Reid Slaby 

• 

GREEN COMPOST BINS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was surprised to read Doris Nassiry’s concern about the new use of our yard waste containers. Oakland has had this system for a while and I haven’t heard any complaints from my Oakland friends. I live on the Oakland/Berkeley border and walk Oakland’s streets as much as Berkeley’s and haven’t noticed any “rodents and crawly critters” associated with food stuffs in the yard waste. I was thrilled to get my cute little green kitchen can and eagerly rearranged things under my sink to accommodate it. Our household of four has gone from two bags of garbage a week down to one. I’m on the cusp of exchanging our medium-size gray can for that little round one. Composting really does shrink our footprint at the dump. Berkeley needs to continue following Oakland’s example and start taking our plastic No. 1 and No. 2 yogurt (and other) containers. 

Laura Mahanes 

• 

WEEKLY VIGIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the report on the Code Pink demonstration at the Oakland Federal Building to end funding for the war in Iraq, Judith Scherr failed to note that there has been a vigil regarding Iraq at that same spot every Tuesday at noon for almost 10 years, and those vigilers were there that day, too. 

Spearheaded by Carolyn Scarr and the Ecumenical Peace Institute, the focus for the first few years was a plea to end the sanctions, which contributed to the deaths of many thousands of Iraqi children. The focus changed with the onset of the war against Iraq. Each Tuesday, several hundred informational flyers are distributed to those walking past. Every third Tuesday, there is a “Living Graveyard” street theater, with reading of names of Iraqis and Americans killed in this war. All are welcome to join. 

Dorothy Wonder 

• 

FISH AND GAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The public lynching of State Fish and Game Commissioner Judd Hanna (ironically himself a Republican and a duck hunter) by the National Rifle Association and their cronies, with the help of 34 ethically challenged legislators (Republicans all) is a despicable example of the dirty politics in Sacramento. Good timing, too, just as the legislative session ended. And they wonder why people hate politicians. A pox on all their houses! 

Judd Hanna is one of the best commissioners we’ve had in years. He’s bright, knowledgeable and committed to protecting our beleaguered wildlife. Mr. Hanna is “Old School.” He actually believes in good science, ethics and “fair chase,” unlike the majority of the hook ‘n’ bullet fraternity yapping on the fringes. 

According to the Sept. 14 Los Angeles Times, it was another Republican, former Commissioner Mike Chrisman, now secretary of resources, who told Mr. Hanna to submit his resignation. Mr. Chrisman is a decent man—I can only presume that he received his orders from higher up. Must politics always trump decency and the democratic process? So it would seem. And wildlife and all Californians suffer accordingly. We can likely kiss the condors goodbye, along with our vanishing game wardens. We must demand a public statement about this sorry affair from the commission, from the Department of Fish and Game, and from the Resources Agency. And the Fish and Game Commission should resign en masse, as a matter of principle. This is an unforgivable betrayal of the public trust. Meanwhile, the citizenry should raise hell by contacting the governor (governor@governor.com); the Fish and Game Commission (Executive Director John Carlson, jcarlson@dfg.ca.gov; Acting Director John McCammon, ltoof@dfg.ca.gov; Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman, secretary@resources.ca.gov). 

Eric Mills 

Action for Animals 

Oakland 

• 

BERKELEY SNUFFS HOUSING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How moral and ethical is it for wealthy corporations to purchase government-subsidized buildings, full of elderly and disabled people, then force them out of their units which has been home for them for more than a decade? 

So far two disabled people have lost their Section 8 housing vouchers because they ran out of time. Relocation fees have not been provided. In a variety of meetings between homeless advocates and the City of Berkeley regarding what is to be done when Berkeley Housing Authority is closed. The city has repeatedly told advocates, that those who have been on Section 8 will be helped by the city of Berkeley to relocate. 

A 70-year-old disabled tenant of a Russell Street building is being asked to move by Oct. 1. Without the existence of Berkeley Housing Authority, and the existence of a very long waiting list in Oakland, what chance does she have to relocate? Such cases urgently need the help of the city. 

With the eminent closure of BHA, the City is solely responsible to those who need rent subsidies to continue with affordable low income housing. And while it may be argued that it is too late for those who were removed from the lists, those who are about to lose their contracts should be helped, as they are disabled, elderly and fit well within the low income requirements. 

The Berkeley city attorney in a previous Daily Planet article, stated that the fraud that has happened at the BHA is the worst in any department in 20 years. In fact, it is a disaster which shows the true color of this city demonstrating it’s uncaring policy towards the disabled, poor and elderly. In the wake of this disaster, some $25,000,000.00 designated for low income affordable housing is left unaccounted for. All parties who have been responsible for this disaster will one day be held accountable, as taxpayers, we ought to keep abreast of the current investigation underway by the Federal Housing Authority in San Francisco. 

Dianne Arsanis 

• 

9/11 COMMISSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is painfully obvious that the 9/11 Commission failed to ask the pertinent questions, failed to grill witnesses with fervor and foolishly allowed the White House to dictate the investigation. No true investigation ever took place. Two buildings were hit in New York, yet three fell into their own footprints. Never before in the history, or since, has any thing like this ever happened. 

And what has our 9/11 fearmongering got us? Two wars, thousands more Americans killed and a tarnished, if not trashed, reputation around the globe. If anything, the failure to capitalize on our tragedy should be grounds for ignoring this president and opening a new, truly independent investigation. Today. 

Thank you and peace to us all, 

Rick Pickett 

• 

IRAQ WAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For four years, the Bush administration keeps on asking for more time, and a lot more money, to keep its failed war-of-choice going. It is always the same prediction, “in 12 to 18 months the Iraqis will be able to govern without us.” The truth is that we can not “win” this war. No “victory” is possible for us in Iraq, only continued shame. 

Yet, Sen. John McCain has a point when he says that leaving Iraq in retreat would be a disaster. So, what is the way out of this mess that Bush and Cheney put us in? 

We should separate ourselves, our government, and our country, from the corrupt leaders who got us into this war through their deception and lies. We should prosecute these officials, who usurped our government, for being the war criminals that they are. Then we can leave Iraq in an orderly manner, with apologies for having confused Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden, and find redemption through bringing to justice the people who committed these war crimes in our name. 

Bruce Joffe 

• 

MORE CELL PHONE ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This letter is to bring to the attention of neighbors of French Hotel at 1540 Shattuck Ave. in the heart of gourmet ghetto that cell phone antennas are planned to be installed on the roof of French Hotel. A meeting will be held by the City of Berkeley regarding these antennas on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. in North Berkeley Senior Center. Please come to this meeting to express your objection to the planned antennas. There are already too many of them in north Berkeley. 

Sanjay Sanwal 

• 

BIOFUEL OASIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“A uterus is not a substitute for a conscience.” So said Barbara Ehrenreich in her 2004 essay, “Feminism’s Assumptions Upended,” following the revelations regarding Pvt. Lynndie England’s role in the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.  

Now comes Biofuel Oasis, a “women-owned cooperative that operates a biodiesel filling station...and sells fuel made from recycled vegetable oil,” who are attempting to displace Kandy Kar Wash, an African American business, by offering their landlord double the rent for the site they’ve been operating out of successfully for the past seven years. Oh, and they can’t afford to pay for the permit, so they’ve applied to the city to have this waived.  

We’re not told about the ethnicity of Biofuel Oasis cooperative members, so we can only assume. Will the City of Berkeley agree to subsidize the plunder of this historically African-American neighborhood? If even the citizens of Berkeley are unable to connect the dots, is there any hope for humanity?  

Lily Kay 

• 

PARTY GETS  

OUT OF CONTROL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This past Friday night another teen party meant to be a small, contained event spun out of control when uninvited people arrived to cause trouble. In addition to far too many people showing up, there was a gang of seven or eight guys behaving as menacing thugs robbing kids. By 9:30 the host shut the party down sending fifty of so kids wandering the streets. As the kids regrouped and walked towards BART and the 7/11 store, they were confronted by this gang. Dozens of teens lost money, phones, shoes, beanies, electronics, whatever. When my son’s group was taken by surprise, one of boys stepped up to protect the youngest member and he was assaulted, an unfair fight with six on one. The ring leader resorted to using a baseball bat, removed from it’s hiding place under his shirt. Luckily our boy will recover, but was injured enough to be sent to the hospital. It was at this point that my son quickly called 911 and provided the police with sufficient details leading to a positive ID and an arrest (a veteran of the street wars). 

What concerns me very much about all of this is that outside of my son’s group of friends, nearly all the kids, even those robbed and upset, expressed shock and surprise that my son called the cops. As if his decisive action violated some unspoken code or agreement. In Febrary 2006 a promising young man died from stab wounds when a party on Contra Costa Avenue got out of control and turned violent. Not one of the hundred party goers or the residents on that block called 911 when an emergency occurred. Is it more than the alcohol impairing their judgment?  

I am very disappointed to see time and again teens’ social events marred by violence. I am just as disappointed in the lack of public discourse to address these issues and the attitudes of so many of the community leaders who gloss over the facts and pretend that all is well. It is not! Is the anti-snitch mentality so pervasive in youth culture reinforced when our schools and community fail to provide an honest and realistic picture of youth crime and gang culture? Why is it that every discussion on youth crime is more concerned about any negative or stigmatizing view of the youth offender and rarely concerned about justice for victims?  

My son is content, his decisive and determined action brought some peace and justice for his best friend and stopped this crime spree from continuing that night. And just maybe this ring leader now under arrest will wise up and realize the evil in his ways. And yes, intentionally taking a baseball bat to hurt somebody is evil, for sure. 

Thanks to the El Cerrito Police, who were fast, responsive, decent and professional. 

Laura Menard 

• 

IMMIGRATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is nothing patriotic about white anti-immigration groups targeting a whole segment of society—Mexicans, Latinos and hard working immigrants. Discrimination, prejudice and intolerance characterizes the anti-immigration movement so why does the Republican party embrace and give sanctuary to these pundits of bigotry?  

Every day on the buses I hear and see angry white folk spewing out their hatred toward hardworking Mexicans. It’s like deja vu 1950s all over again when whites demonized blacks. 

The GOP will use border politics, politics of division as their mainstay in the 2008 elections to shift attention away from the failed war in Iraq. It plays well to core supporters and lowest common denominator of the party. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

• 

PATIENCE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The president asked us in a prime time address last week to be patient.  

Seventy percent of us have indicated that we want the occupation to end. Does he think we feel that way because we’ve grown impatient?  

No. We want the troops to come home because they’re being killed and maimed for no reason!  

Besides, it was his impatience that got us into the mess so it’s only fair that our impatience should get us out. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

REPUBLICAN KINGS 

President Bush: Time’s 2004 “Man of the Year” 

Soldier wife lives in Fear 

American blood in the sand 

President’s man Carl Rove smartest in the Land. 

Mr. Book of Virtues rolls the dice 

Whales in Las Vegas have no vice 

We are fighting for God and American Apple Pie 

“And that,” says Mr. Book of Virtues, “is no lie” 

Another Talk Show champ and chump lights cigar, 

his private plane flies so far 

“Thanks for the sacrifice,” he says 

“President Clinton was a mess” 

American nurses sporting head-scarfs in Iraq 

Trying to keep our Image in whack 

Rumsfeld’s condolence letters multiplied 

As more of our soldiers died  

Great Republicans on the golf course 

chatting about this war without remorse 

Another soldier returns without a limb 

America’s future is looking dim 

Our President hosts a dinner tonight 

And cannot discuss the fight 

Diplomats and Celebrities must be fed 

The President has no time to view the dead. 

—Theodore Willem

Glen Kohler, in his Aug. 24 commentary (“Empty Van Hool Buses on Telegraph”), provided a fairly good description of “bus bunching” when he said “A closely-spaced motorcade of double-size Van Hool buses now trundles up and down Telegraph Avenue at all hours.” Ironically, bus bunching would be remedied by the BRT system that Kohler expresses doubt about. It occurs when buses are operating in “mixed flow” traffic which results in buses being stuck in traffic and as a result thrown off schedule. Transportation engineers use the term “mixed flow” to describe the situation where buses are mixed in the same lane with autos, trucks, emergency vehicles, etc. The proposed BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system with dedicated lanes proposed for Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley/Oakland and International Boulevard in Oakland would go a long way to eliminating this problem. With dedicated lanes, buses flow unimpeded by other traffic. 

For instance, the new 1R Rapid Bus is operating with a 12-minute “headway”—the scheduled time interval between consecutive buses—on weekdays along Telegraph, and it is this frequency of service that is responsible for the bus bunching we see there. 

As any bus rider knows, being stuck in a traffic jam will result in the next bus catching up with your bus, and the result is two buses arriving at a bus stop at one time; if the traffic is bad enough, and a driver has trouble helping to load or unload a wheelchair passenger, it is possible to see three buses arriving at the same time. Bus bunching does not occur very often with buses that run with a half-hour headway, and it does not occur with buses running in dedicated lanes. 

Kohler also says: “I see an average range of six to 16 passengers occupying these cavernous vehicles.” 

A number of other letters to the Planet have similarly described seeing many empty buses on Telegraph. This perception may be explained by the fact that during the afternoon commute hours, the southbound 1R Rapid Bus from downtown Berkeley does not run on either Bancroft Way or on the section of Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight. It only runs on Telegraph south of Dwight Way. Only the northbound 1R will be seen north of Dwight Way on Telegraph and on Bancroft. I recently boarded a southbound 1R Rapid Bus on a weekday evening at 6:30 at the corner of Dwight Way and Telegraph and counted at least 10 people boarding the bus at that stop. There were already 25 people on the bus when I boarded. 

These southbound buses carry large numbers of people during the afternoon commute hours, but they will not be seen by someone on either Bancroft Way or on the section of Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight. People there will only see the northbound 1R on Telegraph and could be forgiven for believing that the “buses are running empty” since they don’t see the southbound 1R buses. It is also the case that these northbound buses may very well be lightly loaded—hence appearing to be “empty”—in the evening while traveling north on Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight Way because their main job at that time of day is to carry students and workers away from downtown Berkeley and the campus on the southbound return trip to Oakland and destinations along the Telegraph Corridor south of Dwight Way. This is no different from BART running trains during peak hours which are relatively empty because they are getting ready to carry passengers to or from work, i.e. they are “deadheading.” Neither bus bunching or empty buses are the result of bad management of buses by AC Transit as the tone of some of the letters to the Planet on this topic seem to imply. 

Len Conly is co-chair of Friends of BRT. 

I would like to respond to Hank Gehman’s charge in his Sept. 11 commentary that the University of California (UC) is duping Berkeley citizens with misinformation. While it is clear Mr. Gehman is misinformed, UC is not the source of his misinformation. He starts his article by saying that UC is proposing a new high performance center (HPC) as a diversion for the building of a new expanded stadium to hold many nighttime events. He mentions rock concerts and other events attracting 600,000 to 700,000 people annually. That would be at least one event each month with about 60,000 attendees. This is not part of the environmental impact report. There has not been a commercial event in the stadium in over 20 years. He fails to mention that the capacity of the stadium will be reduced by 10,000 seats down from the current 72,000 seats. He must not know that in the 1950s the capacity was 85,000 as there were bleachers on the east rim of the stadium. The city will have the right to negotiate the parameters of the seven events noted in the EIR.  

The issue of congestion is puzzling to me as the athletes, coaches, and staffs are already housed at that location and the seating capacity will be reduced by 10,000 seats. Congestion may be further reduced if the women athletes do not have to change clothes in their cars. My daughter played lacrosse for a visiting team and said they had no place to change clothes. 

Mr. Gehman is concerned about the magnified shaking, landslides and fires which will occur in a massive quake. I heard Mr. Buckwald, while being interviewed on KQED’s Forum, state that he thought the west wall of the stadium might collapse in a quake. Given this might be true, then the HPC and the stadium must be built and retrofitted to preserve the remaining grove of trees from the destruction they describe.  

Is no one concerned for the safety of the residents on Panoramic? The fault runs right under the only exit from Panoramic. A quake with slides and fires would place the residents in grave danger even when there are no occupants in the stadium.  

Mr. Gehman asserts the university needs a high number of events to pay the debt service for the bonds sold for the stadium retrofit. In fact, the revenue from the interest on the endowment will service the debt. Mr. Gehman wrote that the funds donated for the HPC could be used for academic programs. This is true if that was what the donors had wished. It is not. The donors wanted to support the many athletic programs in the school. 

Mr. Gehman argues that the HPC is a “red herring” to distract the citizenry from the construction of a new and expanded stadium. There is in fact, a “red herring.” It is the discussion of congestion, “ancient grove of oaks,” parking garage, and Tight Wad Hill which is an effort, by some, to rid Cal of “big time football.” Some of the opponents of the retrofit have said or written the following; “Football was established by the elite in the early 1900s to train young men for war.” (Neither Japan nor Germany played football prior to World War II). “My dream is that Tedford leaves and people stop coming to Berkeley.” ( That person should be aware that Tedford is one of many fine Cal coaches going back as far as the 1920s. ) In a letter to your paper titled Muscle-Headed Jock School the writer wants Cal to become like the University of Chicago with no football. (Would she include schools such as Northwestern, Stanford, Duke, Harvard, and Michigan as muscle-headed jock schools?)  

Mr. Gehman uses the term “big time football.” I don’t know if he intends this to be a derisive term. For many of us 40,000 season ticket holders, it means we can take pride in the team’s successes. Attending football games is wonderful family entertainment. I see many multi-generational families, including my own, at the games. There is a cross section of our community there. I was introduced to Cal and football in 1944 when the Longfellow Elementary School traffic patrol was the guest of the university. I sold programs and soft drinks during my Berkeley days and earned money my parents could not provide. Lots of people have those jobs today. Many people and non-profit organizations sell parking space as far as a mile from the stadium. I see restaurants full on game days and people having fun. Studies have shown that donations to the institution increase when school teams have success. 

Finally, the idea of the university holding the city hostage must be addressed. Yes, the university has taken Berkeley property over the years. For example, the end of Telegraph Avenue and the end of College Avenue are now part of the campus. At the same time, the university is by far the largest employer of Berkeley residents. Thousands of students live and shop in Berkeley. Residents avail themselves of lectures, classes, musical performances, and plays all at modest cost to us. The fighting between the city and Cal obscures the missions of both institutions. Berkeley’s mission must be to provide a safe and healthy place to live for all. UC’s mission is to provide people with an education to help better their lives and the lives of others, as it did for me. We are one community. It seems to me the goals for both the city and the university are the same. It is time for us to work together to achieve those goals.  

Leo J. Gaspardone, Sr. graduated from UC Berkeley in 1957.

Berkeley’s City Council may be blundering into AC Transit’s controversial, misnamed Bus “Rapid” Transit (BRT) proposal with eyes wide shut. Hidden on tonight’s consent calendar is item 18, requesting that the “Transportation Commission, Planning Commission, and staff develop a city preferred alternative route for the Telegraph Avenue Bus Rapid Transit.” 

Given the deep public opposition to BRT, you’d think our City Council would pull this off “consent” for a full community discussion. Berkeley neighbors deserve to discuss not where to house AC Transit’s white elephant, but whether to accept it at all—or what to request from AC Transit instead. 

Telegraph (and downtown) merchants overwhelmingly oppose BRT. So do thousands of Southside customers and neighbors who’ve signed anti-BRT petitions. So tonight’s item is a poke in the eyes of both the struggling, core commercial districts that Councilmembers normally claim to support. 

However, the council could simply reject AC Transit’s wasteful, top-down BRT proposal, which offers Berkeley virtually no environmental benefits and no meaningful new transit options. 

That could pave the way for a made-in-Berkeley solution that meaningfully reduces our greenhouse-gas emissions, reduces fuel consumption, improves air quality, reduces congestion, and improves the whole region’s transit network. 

In particular, the council could tonight flatly reject AC Transit’s divisive proposal to create “exclusive bus lanes.” Those lanes would halve the capacity of Telegraph, and of other Southside and downtown streets. That would generate artificial congestion, diverting traffic onto residential streets. 

San Leandro’s city council clearly declined bus-only lanes years ago, and AC Transit listened: it now proposes no exclusive lanes within San Leandro. 

Indeed, bus-only lanes aren’t necessary to speed up buses. AC Transit’s new 1R “Rapid Bus” line has demonstrated this on Telegraph since June 24. Even light rail doesn’t need exclusive lanes to move quickly. San Francisco’s J through N lines demonstrate that, as do some speedy trams I recently rode along Prague’s shared lanes. 

Merchants oppose BRT because of its negatives: Exclusive lanes would remove or convert some 945 to 1,618 parking spaces along AC Transit’s Berkeley/Oakland route—reducing customers’ access, and hurting business. 

Many other people oppose BRT because AC Transit’s own recent draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) shows hardly any positives: no meaningful changes in energy usage, air pollution, carbon emissions, or transit alternatives. Read it yourself at http://Busduse.org/Brt-deir.pdf. 

That study predicts “negligible” impacts on energy usage by 2025 (page 4-152) and minimal reductions in six air pollutants (by a factor of 0 to just -0.0003; page 4-131). 

The DEIS says nothing about CO2 emissions—AC Transit didn’t study them. But with BRT hardly reducing energy consumption or other pollutants, one can assume virtually no progress on carbon either. If anyone claims that AC Transit’s BRT route would cut carbon emissions, they’re deceiving you with theoretical maximum figures from elsewhere. 

Why does this route yield almost no environmental benefits despite assumptions that it would switch many motorists to transit? Because it would add 90 bus runs per day, and the DEIS says: “Buses are not as energy efficient as autos” (page 4-151). Who knew? 

In fact, full buses are highly energy-efficient. But AC Transit proposes to run large diesel buses nearly empty during much of the evening—for show, to collect federal subsidies. That wasteful, rolling Potemkin village would squander the environmental benefits of motorists switching to buses. 

Even the “rapid” is missing: From Berkeley to San Leandro’s Bayfair BART, AC Transit estimates time savings of 0-19 minutes with BRT. In one scenario, BRT actually takes longer. But this is relative to a current trip length of 59-78 minutes. On nearby BART, you can already make this trip in 30 minutes. 

AC Transit relies largely on “proof of payment” to achieve even those trivial time savings: Riders would buy tickets offboard, then board buses through all doors. For this, AC Transit claims it needs exclusive lanes, BRT “stations,” and fancy ticket vending machines.  

But proof of payment is common across Europe, without any of those things. Riders buy single- or multi-ride tickets in advance at service counters, stores, or (if they insist) vending machines inside subway stations. 

The fancy machinery is onboard the buses, where riders cancel their own tickets with a timestamp. Crucially, in most of the cities represented here, that timestamp gives you a long window for free transfers to all other transit vehicles. (In our terms, other buses, BART, or even regional trains like CalTrain.) 

This is an outline of the affordable, conveniently linked transit the East Bay needs to productively shift a lot of motorists to transit—and to really reduce our carbon footprint. If Berkeley and neighboring cities led instead of following, we could persuade transit agencies to provide it. 

Imagine nudging AC Transit to implement advance-ticket proof of payment fleetwide, speeding up its whole network. With free transfers to and from BART. 

Imagine getting more-frequent bus runs on Telegraph using fuel-efficient vehicles. Not the diesel-guzzling, polluting giants AC Transit proposes for BRT, but smaller hybrids. Or the zero-emission, fuel-cell buses that AC Transit is proudly testing elsewhere. 

Grassroots activists near Telegraph are developing an alternative they call “Rapid Bus Plus,” which could include many of these genuine environmental benefits. 

What’s blocking the way is AC Transit’s backward-looking BRT proposal. That’s aimed at loopholes in federal and regional transit subsidies, not at communities’ needs. It’s a bid to extend our region’s old, unsustainable mess of competing and (in this case) redundant transit agencies and routes. Berkeley deserves better. 

If Berkeley rejected exclusive lanes, Rapid Bus Plus would cost much less than BRT. The funds AC Transit is eyeing for BRT are all earmarked for transit, so they wouldn’t be lost. They’d go to worthier transit projects—whether AC Transit’s or other agencies’. 

If they went to an environmentally beneficial project somewhere else, Berkeley could still be proud. Think of it as buying ourselves a giant carbon credit. 

Michael Katz is a Berkeley resident. 

The city bus has become a political scapegoat. Neighbors on Cedar Street have been trying to remove bus service there, because they think the bus is too noisy. These neighbors do not complain about the far louder noise generated by garbage trucks and commercial vehicles. The Willard neighborhood now officially opposes the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The residents earnestly claim to support public transit, but fear that BRT will bring more congestion to Telegraph and cause cut-through traffic onto their quiet streets.  

They make the bus a scapegoat for the result of too much car driving. If enough people were to ride BRT to work instead of drive, there would be fewer cars, and less congestion and cut-throughs. Telegraph merchants claim that BRT will destroy retail business, but nobody seems to know any place where this has actually happened when a BRT was deployed. It hasn’t been a problem in Eugene, Oregon, for example, or in Los Angeles. I think the bus has been made the scapegoat for business problems that have nothing to do with buses. Some sidewalk merchants on Telegraph have complained about “speeding” buses spreading dirt on their T-shirt stock. Actual speed measurements I made show that the buses average 18 mph. I never saw one going over 20 mph. Only cars go faster, yet the bus is the scapegoat, perhaps because it is so big. One merchant called for relocating buses away from Telegraph. Of course, the buses were there long before any sidewalk vendor. Buses provide good transportation and are a reasonable alternative to driving, even when the buses on Telegraph and College must compete with car traffic. If the BRT is deployed with bus-only lanes where the car traffic is thickest, buses will be an even better alternative. I think the true scapegoat for congestion and pollution should be people who insist on using their car for all trips.  

A huge amount of congestion and pollution would be removed if most people just used the buses to commute to and from work. Even if they drove for all other trips, this one thing would make a major impact. The Cal students are very good bus riders; they provide a great example for Berkeley. Of course, most of them didn’t bring a car. Here’s a reality check—some actual observations. In the morning, I have watched the 1 and 1R buses on Telegraph traveling northbound into Berkeley, crossing Parker. I never see empty buses, but the number of people is low before 7a.m. From then until after 8 a.m., the buses vary from a quarter full, to standing loads. An occasional empty bus is seen heading South, opposite the commute traffic flow. I see a similar rider pattern during the afternoon commute hours. Some people look at the same buses and scapegoat them, claiming they are under-utilized. I have a clicker-counter gadget. I have used it to count the number of cars with just the driver, with two aboard and with more than two. I get an average of 1.22 people per car, which is about the same as government statistics. I consistently show over 80 percent of cars carrying just the driver. The cars are under-utilized! Shall we force these empty cars to pick up passengers, to act as jitney bus service? That would get the evil buses off the road. But then what would we do for a scapegoat?  

On the big articulated Van Hool buses, the exhaust blows sideways from the middle of the bus, where the engine is. The exhaust port appears as a round hole on the left side of the bus, pointing away from the right-hand sidewalk. Many cars vent their exhaust to the right. Vans especially have this type of exhaust. On the 40-foot Van Hools, the exhaust vents rearward, through a hole in the left half of the bumper. On some buses and trucks, the exhaust is vertical pipe. Many trucks vent exhaust downward, from the centerline of the vehicle. To check out what the buses are blowing, I rode one of the big Van Hool articulated buses northbound from Dwight to Bancroft. (The southbound buses go on Dana and Dwight, not on that part of Telegraph.) I sat on the left side in the middle of the front section, just behind the exhaust port . As the bus moved along, I watched for movement of bits of paper or dust in the street. I didn’t see anything being stirred up. Maybe the bus was moving too slowly. Maybe the exhaust stream is directed too high. On Sunday, I hung around the T-shirt stall for a while, just watching for blowing clouds of dirt or debris. None appeared while I was there. A light breeze was blowing. The wares looked clean to me.  

Concerning pollution, I found that most of the AC Transit bus fleet uses “clean diesel” engines and exhaust system. This generates less air pollution than natural gas engines. On the AC Transit website, one can read: “AC Transit has completed installation of exhaust after-treatment traps to 50 percent of its fleet, with 100 percent project completion expected this year. These traps not only cut particulate pollution by 85 percent; they also reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by an additional 25-30 percent and hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide by up to 90 percent. This program has helped AC Transit achieve a 95 percent reduction in particulate matter over the last 10 years.” Trucks, especially the older ones, generate far dirtier exhaust. A recent (Sept. 4) PBS TV documentary (QUEST) covered the health danger in West Oakland from truck, train and container ship exhaust at the Port of Oakland. Maybe other vehicles move too fast, and the wind from their wake blows dust on the sidewalk wares? Well, nothing moves very fast on that part of Telegraph. After accelerating away from a stoplight, most cars were going no faster than 18mph.. I have another fun toy—a speed radar gun. I point it at a moving vehicle, pull the trigger and get a display of vehicle speed, coming or going. Several times, I took my gun to Telegraph and measured speed of traffic between Dwight and Bancroft. I got an occasional apprehensive look from a driver, even though I don’t think I look like law enforcement. During 8:30-9:30 a.m. Friday morning Aug. 31, I used my radar gun to measure speeds of buses on Telegraph. They ranged from 10 to 20 mph, average about 18. Given that the local speed limit is 25 mph, this seemed a fairly law-abiding group, except for the ones going 36 and 37. Cars were nicely giving right of way to pedestrians in the crosswalks. I think the bottom line is to stop making the bus a scapegoat. There are plenty of faster-moving vehicles, plenty with exhaust streams pointed at the right-hand sidewalk and plenty of vehicles much noisier and more polluting than a bus. 

Steve Geller is a Berkeley resident.

One of the things I like least about our New Age Of Information Overload is that it seems to have birthed a sort of mix and mismatch trend in journalism in which a reporter—or columnist—does an online Google search of a subject of which they appear to know little, comes across two disparate bits of information that have some tenuous connection, slaps them together, and thereafter loudly announces that they have uncovered a “trend.” As a six-degrees-of-separation parlor game, this can function as an amusing distraction. As a way to conduct our community dialogue on social issues, it can be damaging, leading us into the realm of silliness, when it is seriousness that is called for. 

And so we have the Anneli Rufus “Suffer The Little Children” item in the recent edition coming from our friends at the East Bay Express, in which Ms. Rufus takes to ridicule Mayor Ron Dellums for the selection of a youth rights advocate as the mayor’s new public safety director. I know little about Lenore Anderson, the mayor’s choice, and learn less from Ms. Rufus after she informs us that Ms. Anderson once headed up “the prison-reform nonprofit Books Not Bars.” Included in the column is a quote from the BNB website which says that the organization “engage[s] in grassroots campaigns using media advocacy, policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, and alliance building. Currently, we are working to close California’s abusive, expensive youth prisons and replace them with rehabilitation centers and community-based programs.”  

Beyond that little blurb, Ms. Rufus tells us nothing about the work and goals of the organization that Ms. Anderson actually headed, but quickly moves on to proclaim her “discovery.” Books Not Bars, she informs us, “is one of three projects run by Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Another is Bay Area Police Watch, devoted to ‘supporting victims and survivors.’ What, of crime? No, silly: of police abuse. Photos on its home page depict protesters whose placards read ‘Stop Killer Cops.’ Who better to occupy a post devoted to liaising among City Hall, neighborhood watch groups, and the OPD?” 

There is such a leap of fact and logic in this one paragraph alone, one has to be truly unafraid of heights to try to follow. We’ll give you some help. 

Books Not Bars and Bay Area Police Watch are two separate organizations, both funded by the Ella Baker Center. Are there connections between the two organizations other than their common funding source? From Ms. Rufus’ column, we don’t know. Does Ms. Anderson—Mr. Dellums’ new Public Safety Director—believe that “Killer Cops” should be stopped, or the victims of police abuse supported? Again, from Ms. Rufus’ column, we don’t know. But the logic of Ms. Rufus’ paragraph is that, first, Bay Area Police Watch is the way she describes it in ten easy words, or less, and second, that Ms. Anderson subscribes to the Bay Area Police Watch goals and views as Ms. Rufus so describes them, and that, therefore, Mr. Dellums ought to be ridiculed for choosing such a person as his Public Safety Director. 

There is another interesting bit in the above paragraph, that the post to which Ms. Anderson is appointed is “devoted to liaising among City Hall, neighborhood watch groups, and the OPD?” We will return to that in a moment. 

Meanwhile, Ms. Rufus’ trial of Ms. Anderson by innuendo gets considerably worse, devolving quickly into the realm of haste and slop. 

Ms. Rufus goes on to say that “unsurprisingly” (as if she has already proven the point she has been trying to make) “Infoshop, Indybay, and anarchist groups link to Anderson’s BNB memos, as does PrisonActivist.com, which also links helpfully to BoycottIsraeliGoods.com, Mumia.org, and IraqIntifada.com. (Indybay files an Anderson piece under ‘California: Police State.’)” 

Do the websites BoycottIsraeliGoods.com, Mumia.org, and IraqIntifada.com reprint articles by Ms. Anderson, or do they merely link to PrisonActivist.com, which, in turn, links to one of Ms. Anderson’s BNB memos? We cannot tell from the way Ms. Rufus’ paragraph is written. Further, while the version of the Rufus column in the online Express includes links to PrisonActivist.com, BoycottIsraeliGoods.com, Mumia.org, and IraqIntifada.com, they are to the respective websites’ main pages, not to any particular article or offering of Ms. Anderson. Neither does the column provide a link to the particular Anderson piece which IndyBay filed under “California: Police State” so that we could actually see what Ms. Anderson herself wrote, rather than how IndyBay characterized what Ms. Anderson wrote. And, most breathtakingly, though Ms. Rufus devotes an entire paragraph to how other news organizations and agencies have linked to articles written for Books Not Bars by Ms. Anderson, Ms. Rufus’ column fails to do so. 

We are left with the impression that somehow Ms. Anderson is linked to Iraq terrorists and the murder of innocents, the kind of “fellow traveler” argument that Wisconsin U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy used to keep in his pocket while roaming the Senate floor. 

But these instances of innuendo, for which Ms. Rufus must bear the cross alone, mask a misconception that, unfortunately, is shared by a greater section of the public. 

The misconception is that we will work our way out of the problem of violent crime in Oakland by law-and-order means alone and that, therefore, the person hired by Mr. Dellums to be his Public Safety Director needs to be a law-and-order professional. 

But Mr. Dellums already has a law-and-order professional. His name is Wayne Tucker, and he is the chief of the City of Oakland’s law-and-order enforcement agency, the Oakland Police Department. By all accounts, Mr. Tucker is a competent professional in his field, in whom the mayor has confidence, with whom the mayor shares good relationships, and who articulates and advocates the police professional point of view within the Dellums Administration. Mr. Tucker already serves as the police liaison with many of Oakland’s disparate organizations—meeting regularly, for instance, with the police watchdog group PUEBLO—so hiring a Public Safety Director who duplicated his police professional point of view would appear to be both a waste of city money and an undercutting of the chief. 

In hiring Ms. Anderson, Mr. Dellums appears to be going in a different direction, that the problems of violent crime in Oakland are not merely law-and-order problems but stem from larger societal causes, and that turning our attention to identifying those causes and attacking and solving them needs to occupy some measure of our attention. 

Here we return, as promised, to Ms. Rufus’ contention that the Ms. Anderson’s new position as Public Safety Director is “devoted to liaising among City Hall, neighborhood watch groups, and the OPD?” 

This is the narrowest possible view one can take of “public safety, of course, in that it involves, solely, law enforcement. Implicit, also, in Ms. Rufus’ formation is that the community groups who need to be “liaison” with for the purpose of law enforcement are the neighborhood watch groups. Purposely or unpurposely, the rest of Oakland is left out. 

And one of the groups most distinctly left out is Oakland’s mid-teens to mid-twenties youth, that portion of our city who you rarely see represented in the neighborhood watch meetings. 

One of the features of Oakland’s current wave of violent crime is that it is this group of Oakland citizens—mid-teen to mid-twenties youth—who compromise major percentages of both the victims and the perpetrators. It would seem that to have any chance of success, any rationale attempt at a solution to Oakland’s violence ought to involve young people in several different ways. Unfortunately, in too many ways, Oakland treats them as outsiders, whose names and histories we spread across our newspapers or television screens when either they shoot or are shot at, but whose opinions on the subject we largely ignore. 

There are some exceptions. For three years, Councilmember Desley Brooks has been holding what she calls “liberation concerts” at Arroyo Viejo Park in the heart of one of Oakland’s fiercest killing zones. The concerts are a four-a-year series of free music events in which residents of the neighborhood surrounding the park are invited to come. When the concerts were first held in 2005, there was considerable worry that they would become magnets for youth violence, as did Mosswood Park’s Carijama some years before. There was considerable police presence and the acts booked by promoter D’wayne Wiggins were distinctly old school, Lennie Williams, Rose Royce and the like, none of them directed at the youth crowd. 

Much has changed since then. 

Wiggins—the resident East Oakland music wiz who once formed a third of the national group Tony Toni Toné—has gradually integrated local rap and hip hop groups as opening acts, bringing out a larger number of young people as time has passed. The emcee often plays up the intergenerational rivalry, first inviting the older folks to dance in the open grassy area in front of the raised band platform, subsequently exhorting the young folks to come up to “show your parents how it’s done.” In this way, gradually, the youth have slipped into what seems to be their natural societal role at these events, neither shunned nor “stars,” but simply part of a continuum. 

Another thing that has changed has been the police presence. Gone are the lineups of booted patrolman standing under the trees to watch for problems, the squadron of cars parked on the sidestreets waiting to take perpetrators on the highway up to the county jail in San Leandro. At the last concert this year, featuring the Ohio Players, two officers wandered by, stood around for a couple of minutes, apparently saw nothing that needed their attention, and took off. Their presence has long ago been replaced by members of Minister Keith Muhammad’s Fruit of Islam security, men who come from the same or similar communities, who see their jobs as providing a safe space for the people who have come out to enjoy the music, and who treat problems with a polite firmness that gives respect, and therefore almost always gets respect back, in return. Too often—such as at Carijama, such as in the last days of the Festival of the Lake—the very efforts used by police officers to quell crowd violence only fuel and escalate it, thus compounding a problem they are supposed to be solving. 

And at the Arroyo liberation concerts there have been no problems. No shootings. No arguments. No arrests. 

That example is what Mr. Dellums appears to be aiming towards, in selecting a director of public safety, going after the causes of violence, rather than merely arresting the violent. I hope the mayor’s selection gets judged on its own terms. 

At the turn of the last century, wharves, lumber mills, farms, breweries, tanneries, and Victorian residences dotted West Berkeley. The largest employer south of University Avenue was the Standard Soap Company, which had occupied half a block between the bay shore and Third Street north of Allston Way since 1876. 

The San Francisco earthquake and fire profoundly changed the area’s character, filling it with industrial plants. Across the railroad from Standard Soap, the Van Emon Elevator Company built a factory taking up a quarter of a block on the corner of Third St. and Allston Way. Incongruously, the adjacent property was the flower nursery of Joseph Antoine Boirard, a Frenchman who had lived at 2216 4th Street since 1892 or ’93 and would still be there in 1930. 

Boirard was not the first nurseryman in the area. On the next block to the east, John Anthony Carbone (1865–1946) had been growing roses since 1888. 

Carbone, who would gain fame as the Orchid King of the West, was born in Turin, northern Italy. His father was a gardener, and young Giovanni worked with plants from an early age. In an interview he gave in 1937, Carbone said that he followed his older brother—also a horticulturist—to Chicago in 1883. Soon he was engaged to work on the estate of Lucien Scott in Leavenworth, Kansas. A banking, coal, and railroad tycoon, Scott bought the house—now home of the Leavenworth County Historical Society—in 1882 for $5,200 and spent $50,000 on turning it into a mansion. When Scott sold the estate in 1887, Carbone said, he moved to New York City and worked in Central Park. He neglected to mention that while in Kansas, he was a partner in a flower shop called Carbone and Monti. 

Having heard enticing tales of California, Carbone went west and landed in Berkeley. He was first listed in the directory in 1889 as nurseryman, resident at Allston Way between Fourth and Fifth Streets. By 1892, he had bought three lots on the corner of Fifth St. and Allston Way, which were registered in the name of Margaret B. Carbone, believed to have been the first of his three wives. 

Practically nothing is known about Margaret Carbone. John Carbone was already divorced in 1900, but both he and Margaret may have lived under the same roof at 2200 Fifth St. until 1903 or ’04, when John built 2216 Fifth Street. Margaret maintained her residence in the original house until 1909 and her ownership of the three lots until 1911 or so. 

Why the Carbones divorced is not clear, but John Carbone’s roving eye might have played a role in the separation. In 1902, Carbone married Aurelia Sturla Cassinelli, who was divorced in 1900 by her first husband, Giovanni Cassinelli, also a gardener, on grounds of desertion. 

In its early years, the Carbone nursery specialized in roses and chrysanthemums. As carnations became fashionable, Carbone made them his specialty. The 1903 Sanborn fire insurance map labeled the business West Berkeley Rose Nursery. At the time, it occupied seven lots between Fourth and Fifth Streets. In a southwestern corner of the nursery, one small greenhouse contained a large heater. This may have been the kernel of what would become the largest orchid nursery on the West Coast. 

In 1937, Carbone told an interviewer that he had become fascinated with the idea of importing and growing orchids a few years before the San Francisco fire. By then, he was prosperous enough to undertake such an expensive enterprise, which could at times require an outlay of several thousand dollars for a single plant. In 1917, he would make news by selling a Brassocattleya he had grown from seed and named Queen of California for the record sum of $2,500. The buyer was Charles M. Ward of Eureka, known as the “Tulip Baron of Humboldt County.” 

Carbone’s growing prosperity was evidenced by the land he had accumulated. Like his friend and neighbor Simone Marengo—the founder of the West Berkeley Macaroni Factory who had increased his holdings on Sixth Street immediately after the earthquake—Carbone owned by 1907 seven lots on his block, not counting the three lots still owned by Margaret Carbone and occupied by his nursery. 

No complete photograph remains of the Carbone home at 2216 Fifth Street, long since demolished. Like most of the houses in the neighborhood, it was a two-story Victorian, although the prevailing home-building fashions in other parts of Berkeley at the time tended to Colonial Revival or Craftsman. In this house Aurelia gave birth to Carlo (1904), Melvin (1905), Inez (1908), and John, Jr. (1910). 

The Carbone boys were trained early to lend a hand in the nursery, and several gardeners employed by Carbone usually lived with the family. One of these was John’s elderly uncle Carlo Dughera, who from 1907 until 1914 and again from 1915 until his death in 1924 resided and worked with the Carbones. 

At the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, the Carbone exhibit, showing off more than 80 orchid varieties, was judged Best in Show. In addition to the gold medal for overall exhibit, Carbone received four first prizes for individual orchid cultivars. He would continue exhibiting at all the major horticultural shows over the next thirty years, consistently winning top honors. 

As Carbone’s prestige grew, he became active in civic affairs, rubbing shoulders with Berkeley’s most important citizens. When the Chamber of Commerce moved into its new quarters in June 1913, Carbone contributed flowers for the opening reception. In 1917, when the American Red Cross mounted a nationwide campaign to raise a 100-million-dollar war fund, Carbone was one of the vice-presidents in the Berkeley effort alongside leading figures such as Benjamin Ide Wheeler, mayor Samuel C. Irving, Frank Wilson, John Hinkel, Stephen J. Sill, Redmond C. Staats, Duncan McDuffie, Bernard Maybeck, David P. Barrows, and August Wollmer. 

One undated newspaper article reported that Carbone had given the city 800 Ulrich Brunner rose plants, “to be used in such manner as the park commission directs.” 

One person who was not altogether delighted with John Carbone was his wife Aurelia. On April 13, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported, “After a court battle lasting most of the day, during which florists from Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda were in attendance, Mrs. Aurelia Carbone was granted temporary alimony of $275 pending the trial of her divorce suit against John Carbone, ‘orchid king’ of Berkeley.” 

It wasn’t until Nov. 21 of that year that the suit was tried and its cause came to light. Mrs. Carbone accused her 59-year-old husband of dallying with his stenographer. The marriage was dissolved, and Mrs. Carbone moved to an apartment on Dowling Place with her two younger children. 

John Carbone was married a third time, but not to his stenographer. His best friend, Simone Marengo, was widowed in 1922, and three years later married Maria Barbieri, a woman nearly 30 years his junior who had recently arrived from Italy. At the Marengo house, Carbone saw the photo of a young woman—Maria’s friend in Italy—and initiated a correspondence with her, eventually paying her way to Berkeley as his fiancée. 

Francesca Bertuzzo (1898–1957), the daughter of Italians who had migrated to Brazil in the 19th century, was born on a coffee plantation in Itapira, São Paulo. Having returned to Italy, the family was living in the Ligurian port town of La Spezia, where Francesca ran a laundry whose main client was the navy. This curriculum vitae apparently was insufficiently exotic for the Oakland Tribune, which featured a photo of the bride on April 7, 1928, describing her as the daughter of a Brazilian orchid collector. 

Francesca and John Carbone produced one child, Louise Eliza, who was born in February 1929, on the same day that her father purchased three acres for a new nursery on Woodmont Avenue, overlooking Wildcat Canyon. 

By 1929, West Berkeley was no longer a suitable place for growing prize orchids. A block to the west on Third Street, the Solano Iron Works, the Triangle Paint Company, the Westinghouse/Sturtevant fan-manufacturing plant, and the Armco drainage products plant were polluting the air. Carbone leased his Fifth St. facility to the C. & A. Warren Nursery and decamped for Woodmont Ave., where two notable iris specialists—horticulturist Carl Salbach and U.C. professor Sydney Bancroft Mitchell—were already established. 

The family continued living at 2216 Fifth St. until 1937, when contractor Giovanni Battista Faramia built them a Mediterranean-style house at 571 Woodmont Avenue. The house still stands, although it’s been remodeled and enlarged twice by subsequent owners. 

When John Carbone died at the age of 80, he was honored by the City Council and the Rotary Club. Among his honorary pall bearers were city manager Gerrit Vander Ende and fire chief William Meinheit. Exactly a week after his death, his son Melvin was killed in a car crash. Thereafter, John, Jr. managed the nursery until his retirement in 1959, when the business was taken over by the youngest child, Louise Carbone Colombatto, and Melvin’s son, Mel Jr. 

With demand for cut flowers steadily declining, greenhouses showing their age, and heating bills soaring, the family decided to close the nursery. The land was sold to a developer and subdivided for house lots. 

Remaining are the showy cultivar Cattleya J.A. Carbone and numerous hybrids developed from it by several generations of horticulturists. 

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

This past Sunday I got a bargain, a cymbidium orchid in a gallon pot for five dollars. Nice healthy-looking thing, too. If I’d been willing to stagger around the crowded Sycamore Congregational Church bazaar conking innocent children on the head with a bigger pot, I could’ve had even more bargains.  

We’d spent most of our walking-around money on food anyway, and after watching a performance by a kickass taiko group whose lead drummer is 80 years old, I was inclined to mind my manners. Five bucks for a healthy cymbidium? That’s enough reward for one day. That’s also one more plant to shoehorn onto a crowded front porch.  

But the real reason I couldn’t resist this one frivolous expense was the cultivar’s name: ‘Claude Pepper.’ My goodness, doesn’t that bring back fond memories? 

Claude Pepper, aside from having a name to conjure with, was a U.S. senator and later a member of the House of Representatives, an unusual career sequence in itself. He represented Florida, worked on senior citizens’ issues among other big deals, and died in the saddle in 1989. The best story about him, though, isn’t exactly about him and, alas, probably never happened. 

In 1950 he lost the Democratic primary race to George Smathers. Smathers probably did not give the speech credited to him that included: “Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.” 

So. Theoretically the flower color will be deep deep wine-red—cymbidiums normally run to shades of white, cream, yellow, dark crimson, and maroon—and I don’t know how well it will perform, though obviously someone in El Cerrito has had enough success to divide and propagate some dozen plants, at least, for this fair—but I’m now the proud guardian of a Cymbidium X ‘Claude Pepper’.  

Cymbidium orchids are among the few that prosper outdoors here; they’re mostly from high, temperate places in south Asia. They do need to be outdoors here; dry indoor air will shrivel them. They want shade and shelter from serious frost, though they need a little sun to bloom. There’s a nice foundation planting of them across the street from me, up against the north wall of a house where they benefit from its thermal mass and the eaves over them.  

Look for a plant that’s mostly green, though a brown “back bulb” or two is actually OK. Give regular water and good drainage; feed with orchid food in summer if you want a shortcut through nutritional jargon, and cut off the last flower spikes—whose blooms last for weeks!—before the last flower opens, for more bloom next year.  

Amateur sales like this, at fairs and street parties and garden clubs, are a great source of healthy cheap plants. Keep your eyes open for flyers and banners in playgrounds, and bring a handled bag for schlepping.  

If you stop and think about it, the notion that old houses are better is just as silly as the notion that new houses are better. The truth is that both things are true. Older houses are better in some way and newer houses are better in others. Construction is fraught with misconceptions. Another one is that the framing or “bones” of old houses is better than that of newer ones.  

While it’s certainly true that our older housing stock has, within its walls, some of the best timber ever permitted cut dried for these purposes, the manner in which they are conjoined is inferior to current methods and come the next earthquake, I’d rather be in a house that had been built last year than one built in 1920. Of course, one can take the older house and add the hardware that the newer house has and also withstand the big one when it arrives (which is my idea of the perfect house). 

In recent years, the housing industry has gotten itself in some deep you-know-what as a result of one of its greatest successes, the perfection of the tight house. Houses in the last 20 years have been pushed to such low porosities (the rate at which moisture or gases pass through them) that they lose nary a Therm (a unit of heat measurement). While the goal of making houses energy efficient is a brave and worthy one, the consequences of living in these wooden vacuum bottles are growing more apparent every day. Too many of them are rotting away and sometimes in a matter of months. O.K., I’m being a bit hyperbolic but it IS true that massive fungal infestations are being found in many of this new class of house all across the country but particularly in those areas where humidities run high.  

Understanding how ventilation works and how moisture moves with air is becoming an important aspect of architecture, building inspection and construction as we all try to respond to this nasty bit of news.  

So, why is this happening and what changed. In short, older houses evaded these moisture related problems by leaking. They leaked air, they leaked moisture, they leaked heat. Apparently, this was not so much of a problem as we had formerly thought! Leaking, it turns out, is a good thing, but as with our initial premise, it’s also bad. It depends on what you’re testing for and what you want.  

If you want a house that has a good “drying potential” (the ability to dry out quickly after leaks occur) you get a big thumbs-up. If you want a house that’s going to hold onto a given amount of heat for any length of time, it’s thumbs down. 

A large number of mold-related cases in the recent past have involved newer, tighter houses. Like huge colonies of Stachybotrys chartarum (the favorite of the legal community), these cases having been growing exponentially and are flooding the courts in increasing numbers and all because people, including those in the construction community, fail to understand some basic (and not-so-basic) things about how buildings work. 

If you create a tightly sealed environment, one that does not dry out quickly, and you allow a little water to leak into it through a shoddily built wall, you can end up with water sitting for an extended time inside something not all that different from a cardboard box. Get the picture. 

Actually, this whole problem is even worse with newer houses because the wood products used in most newer homes are so much more digestible than those in older homes that the rate at which they get consumed by fungi can be impressive. 

So all around, it’s a bad scene and if you own a relatively new house the word is simple, keep the water out, period. If you see any sign of leakage, have it fixed properly and quickly. 

Now, let’s get back to our older home. If an older house, with its high porosity, leaks at a window, a roof or right though a wall, the water hangs around for a much shorter period and the likelihood of a mold or other fungal problem (molds ARE funguses) is greatly reduced. 

Older homes and most newer ones as well, were, and are, designed to allow air to pass under them as well as through attic spaces. This does a range of good things for us but none so good as the removal of damp air and replacement with dryer air. In places where Radon is of concern (and this is generally low in our area), the exchange of air also helps to remove this potent carcinogen (second only to cigarettes in lung cancer deaths at around 20,000 per year). 

If it’s wet under your house, some of that water is going to evaporate and find it’s way into the structure. In houses where crawlspace ventilation is poor, there is consistently more fungal growth (molds included). In houses where enough ventilation is provided, the presence of destructive fungi is much lower and usually the result of a leak from plumbing or from rain entry. 

Ventilation is also something that’s easy and cheap to provide. Crawlspace vents are really nothing more than a series of holes though the sides of the house below floor level that allow air to flow through the crawlspace.  

These vents require screening for the sole reason that critters of various sizes and nastinesses favor the space below your house for their dinner parties (“another grub, Madam?”), romantic liaisons (“You smell like rat, my darling. Come to me now”) and infant deliveries (“Look honey, Octuplets!”). The ideal screening is heavily galvanized steel mesh. This is available a range of pre-cut and framed shapes that can be installed quite easily. If you’re adding ventilation because you are aware of the moisture in the crawlspace, I would also recommend adding a plastic barrier laid directly upon the soil. This helps control moisture and requires no sophisticated installation. 

Ventilation requirements in new construction vary but are generally around 1 square foot for every 150 square feet of crawlspace. This means that most houses I see required around eight square feet or around 16 vents distributed around the house (they’re typically a square foot each). Vents do the most good when the wind can get to them so vents that are close to fence or blocked by bushes should be considered to have less value. If you’re adding them, try to place them where they’re more likely to create cross-ventilation. 

It’s worth noting that very few houses meet this requirement and many would clearly benefit from their introduction. Recent codes have allowed a radical reduction in the ventilation requirement for houses (one square foot per 1500 square feet) when vapor barriers are properly installed and where the vents are placed near the corners for improved draft.  

My personal take is that this is short-sighted and that when moisture is present, all the big guns should be brought out and used. If a house is essentially dry underneath, I’m fine to see this radical reduction in ventilation but in crawlspaces where we know it’s been getting wet, adding loads of ventilation as well as vapor barriers is cheap and sensible and there’s really no good reason to avoid it, unless, of course, you happen to like things wet and slimy, but hey, knock your amphibian-like self out. 

Is Your Child’s School Prepared? 

If you have children or grandchildren, you’ll want to check with the school and see what preparations have been made in the event of a serious earthquake. Schools should expect that some parents may not physically be able to pick their child up after a quake (think impassable roads). They are prepared with food, water, first aid, and sanitary necessities, knowing that some of the kids may well need to spend the night at school. 

There should also be a plan of action which involves sharing information with the parents. 

Here’s to making your home secure and your family safe. 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.

Jane Powell is a bungalow and old house zealot. Every community should be lucky to have even one person like her. 

As she writes in Bungalow Details: Interiors, “when I see some old house that has been neglected or abused, I literally begin to twitch, I get a rush of adrenaline, my mind starts going a mile a minute with plans for what needs to be done…” 

If you live in a bungalow, or like bungalows, or just like old houses in general, do yourself a favor and go to her evening talk Thursday, Sept. 27. No one I can think of knows more, both practical and esoteric, about these houses than Jane Powell and she’s enthusiastically willing to share. 

Her lecture, at Berkeley’s historic Hillside Club, is the last in a four-part series exploring the history and built character of Berkeley, organized by Arlene Baxter, president of the Berkeley Association of Realtors.  

“Jane Powell answers the question, What is a bungalow?, exploring the history of bungalows, their relation to the broader Arts & Crafts Movement, and why they have become popular again in the 21st century,” the lecture publicity promises. 

The term “bungalow” originated with the housing British colonials built in a concession to tropical and subtropical climates. Single-floor dwellings with wide, overhanging roofs, large porches, and open, airy, floor plans were all adaptable to local conditions and building materials. 

The style arrived in the United States in the late 19th century and flourished up through World War I, until displaced by “Period Revival” architecture (think Mission Revival or Mock Tudor). 

What’s the detailed definition of a bungalow? The Oakland-based Powell has written that it’s “fundamentally rather complicated.” 

But a few frequently seen characteristics include a single floor (often, though, with extra rooms tucked under a gabled roof), wide roof eaves, a generous front porch, and an interior that de-emphasizes hallways and staircases in favor of rooms that flow into each other. 

Many, if not most, bungalows were inexpensive to build and affordable to buy when new, but even the most humble can contain superb examples of craftsmanship and design that still delight owners and their guests. 

They were also modern, with electricity, indoor plumbing, gas in some cases, and very up to date and functional kitchens and bathrooms.  

Where you see one bungalow there are often twins, triplets, a dozen, or a score. Many bungalows were built as part of “tract” or “suburban” developments as streetcar lines and road improvements opened up convenient access to areas beyond the 19th century urban core. 

In the Bay Area, Oakland and Alameda have many bungalows and some neighborhoods like Rockridge are just thick with them. Berkeley’s bungalows are perhaps fewer and more scattered, but they are here. 

Original bungalows are now quite venerable and, as is often the case with the aged, they’ve been subjected over the decades to efforts of the young to improve or even remove them. 

As early as the 1930 and 1940s houses in the Bay Area, including some bungalows, were being “modernized” with features such as garages burrowed beneath the front façade and exteriors mummified in featureless stucco. 

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, “remodels” often meant atrocities of asbestos siding, painted-over woodwork, brick and tile, acoustic ceilings, aluminum windows, torn out built-ins, or big sculptural porch columns replaced with spindly metal posts. 

In more recent years popular “updates” have included vinyl windows, rears of bungalows demolished or gutted beyond recognition for the creation of “great rooms” and “chef’s kitchens,” and huge master suite additions atop small houses like overloaded baggage on a camel. 

Improper remodeling and disrespectful treatment of bungalows are passionate themes for Powell, sort of bungalow bugaboos. She’s a leading, emphatic, proponent of keeping the character of bungalows intact. 

“Updating” all or part of a house in some trendy current style imposed on top of or in place of the original character simply means the remodel will come, in time, to appear outdated as well. If you doubt this, think of the last refreshing, exciting, modern-looking 1970s kitchen you visited.  

Powell argues in her writing that if you buy a nice old house, however worn and battered, you should feel some obligation to retain, or restore, its character, rather than altering everything. Don’t try to radically change a house you don’t like or that doesn’t “suit your needs”; perhaps even consider buying a house you do like. 

This is not to say some interventions, such as upgrades to mechanical systems or room additions, shouldn’t be done, but they should be as contextual as possible. 

One of things that makes Jane Powell an excellent resource is that she has extensive experience actually working on local bungalows—from stripping paint, to getting permits, to finding the right door hardware—rather than simply a theoretical knowledge.  

She’s bought and renovated several, advised on others, and written several books that should be in the home library of every bungalow owner. 

Her books outline the proper approach and outcome for each bungalow project, but also offer options of “Obsessive Restoration” (do it like they did it back then, with the same materials and processes) or “Compromise Solution” (that still fits in well, but substitutes modern materials or techniques). 

She also has a great turn of phase. An example from Bungalow Interiors: 

“Many people tell me they never use their dining room and I always reply, ‘Why? Is there a force field around it?’ Even if you don’t eat there, it makes a fabulous library.” Or this chapter heading about bungalow heating upgrades, “Many are cold, but few are frozen.” 

Every page of a Powell book offers some well researched, interesting, insight or practical advice. I hope her lecture will be the same. Afterwards, as at past lectures in the series, there should be great cookies, and an opportunity to buy books at a discount and get them signed.

On Sept. 13, George W. Bush spoke to the United States about Iraq. In his most somber assessment to date, the president claimed the surge has achieved modest results and a few troops can return home. However, “Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America,” therefore additional troops will only “return on success.” Bush implied that large numbers of Americans would remain in Iraq throughout the remaining 17 months of his presidency. He didn’t present an exit strategy, but rather a profession of faith: U.S. troops can “win” in Iraq. 

In his speech, President Bush emphasized he is following the advice of the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus. On Sept. 10 and 11, General Petraeus presented his status report to the U.S. Congress. He emphasized “progress” made in buttressing security and downplayed the political situation, where little has been accomplished. He argued that current force levels—20 combat brigades—are required for the security of Iraqi civilians and there should not be a significant drawdown of U.S. troops until next spring. He suggested that substantial U.S. force levels—roughly 15 brigades—would be required for an indefinite period. 

America continues to be deeply divided about the conduct of the war and its relationship to national security, in general. On Sept. 11, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, John Warner (Virginia), asked whether the current strategy in Iraq was “making America safer.” General Petraeus replied, “Sir, I don’t know, actually.” 

The debate about U.S. involvement in Iraq should be conducted within the framework of national security strategy. However, the Bush administration, and most Republicans, refuses to engage in this debate. Instead, the White House continually changes tactics without addressing the larger issue of whether the current strategy in Iraq is making America safer. 

President Bush continues to lead the “stay-until-we-win” Republican phalanx. After having proffered various justifications for the occupation of Iraq, Bush has decided that it’s the central front of his “War on Terror.” “Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror—but it’s the central front.” Thus, President Bush and General Petraeus want an open-ended commitment to Iraq. 

Roughly a quarter of the American electorate supports the Bush stance. Because of the communication power of the White House, the stay-until-we-win perspective has gotten the most U.S. media airtime in recent months and support for the president’s position has increased. Furthermore, the front-runners for the Republican nomination for president all embrace the notion that Iraq is the center of the war on terror However, another quarter of the electorate feels the U.S. should immediately begin to withdraw troops from Iraq. Apparently, the remaining 50 percent don’t know what to do. Writing in the latest edition of the New Yorker, Iraq expert George Packer observed, “The country seems trapped in an eternal present, paralyzed by its past mistakes.” 

The United States desperately needs a strategic perspective on Iraq: a long-term view that determines the best course of action after considering national priorities. That’s what Sen. Jack Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island) argued for in his response to the President’s address on Iraq: “Do we continue to heed the president’s call that all Iraq needs is more time, more money, and the indefinite presence of 130,000 American troops…? Or do we follow what is in our nation’s best interest and redefine our mission in Iraq?” Reed called for the U.S, to disengage itself from Iraq’s “civil war” and to develop a strategy to deal with both the diplomatic issues in the Middle East and the pursuit of al Qaeda. 

Last December the Iraq Study Group, a non-partisan body, took a strategic perspective on Iraq. They cautioned, “The United States should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq.” Both the Iraq Study Group Report and George Packer’s New Yorker article suggest that a strategic perspective needs to consider three questions: How does continued allocation of 15-20 combat brigades to Iraq affect military readiness? How does continuation of the occupation impact the “war on terror?” And, what are America’s strategic interests in Iraq? 

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has proven incapable of thinking strategically. The president and most members of his Party are locked onto one tactic: “stay until we win.” Sen. Reed’s speech, and the comments of Congressman Skelton and Sen. Warner, indicate there is growing Congressional interest in addressing the question of whether involvement in Iraq is actually making America safer. Historically, in the American system, it has been the job of the executive branch of government to develop strategy and the responsibility of the legislative branch to fund it and, occasionally, make changes at the margins. In order to change direction in Iraq, before George W. Bush leaves office, it will be up to Congress to redefine American strategy in the “war” on terror. While possible, it seems unlikely this will happen. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net. 

A few years back, the Planet asked me to review a slim (hip-pocket-size, actually) volume called Sierra Birds: A Hiker’s Guide by John Muir Laws, a joint venture of Berkeley’s Heyday Books and the California Academy of Sciences. I gave it a thumbs up, calling it “ideal…for beginning birders or hikers with only a causal interest in birds,” but also useful to seasoned watchers. Laws, like Peterson and Sibley, had written and illustrated his own guide, which did not assume knowledge of formal bird classification: all the streaky brown birds were illustrated together. The art was lively, the text concise and to the point. 

That same summer, in one of those unlikely coincidences, Ron and I ran into Jack Laws at the Summit Lake campground in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Laws said the bird book wasn’t just a one-off: he was putting together a field guide, or series of guides, to the whole natural world of the Sierra Nevada—wildflowers, trees, insects, fish, mammals, the works.  

He happened to be at Lassen sketching bog-orchids and other montane flowers. Laws gave us a prototype of the mammal and fish sections of the project, which for the first time gave me some hope of telling the Sierra’s myriad chipmunks apart. (The range is in fact a hotbed of chipmunk speciation, but that’s a digression I’ll resist for now.) I later saw him as artist-in-residence at the Academy’s exhibit on California’s biodiversity, where more of his images were on display, and I’ve followed his work in Bay Nature. 

Well, the project is complete: The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada ($24.95) was published by Heyday and the Academy this summer. And I’m happy to say that it lives up to expectations. It’s thicker than the bird book, but would still fit comfortably in a backpack. 

I tend to carry a lot of reference baggage into the Sierra: not the Jepson Manual, but just about everything else. The old UC Press Sierra Nevada Natural History was good up to a point, but it had its limitations. So I found myself packing multiple bird guides, a regional flora or two, tree manuals, mammal and insect and reptile guides. And then I’d encounter an odd fish. No fish guide. Another time I found a meltwater pond in the Lakes Basin swarming with neon-green fairy shrimp. Not in the books. I remember stumbling across an extraordinary moth in a wet meadow in Lassen and having no idea what it was. There is no such thing as a field guide to western moths. Eventually, consulting a reprint of a 1903 moth manual, I concluded it must have been a common sheep moth. 

That identification would have been a snap with Laws’ new book. 

The coverage is inclusive. Not only are there moths, there’s a half-page of bumblebees, and pages after pages of those beetles of which God is so inordinately fond. There are spiders (with web diagrams), plant galls, obscure underwater things like freshwater sponges. Sponges in the Sierra? Yes, and bryozoans and hydroids. 

Fungi. Lichens. Tracks and scat.  

The wildflower section follows the precedent of the stand-alone bird book. You don’t need to know the ever-shifting terrain of plant taxonomy to use this book. (I’m now taking a taxonomy course at Merritt College, and I figure on learning this version—in which the lily family has been broken up, and water lotuses are next of kin to sycamores—and then not trying to keep up any more.) Laws provides simple keys to identification, based on color and other obvious features. There are helpful asides: “Difficulty identifying Arnica? Relax, it’s not you…” That made me feel a lot better. 

The guide covers all the Sierra’s national forests (Lassen to Sequoia) and national parks. Range maps are used sparingly, mostly with the small rodents—location is important in sorting chipmunks—and shrews. Did I mention the seasonal star charts? 

Omissions are inevitable in a project of this scope, but they’re few.  

The book went to press too late to include the newly discovered Yosemite bog-orchid, a tiny yellowish flower that smells, depending on your source, like feet, Limburger cheese, or a corral of horses on a hot day. Although the bizarre cave-dwelling creatures of Sequoia National Park, featured in this month’s National Geographic, are not included, most of us non-spelunkers will never encounter them. I would have liked to see larval amphibians (I’ve met more tadpoles in the Sierra than adult frogs and toads) and mosses, a truly underappreciated division of the plant kingdom. Geology isn’t covered, but there’s an excellent volume in the new UC press series of guides. 

Overall, though, well done, and a model work for other regional natural history guides. How about the Mojave and Colorado deserts? The Coast Ranges? Laws is still young, but there’s a lot out there.  

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 21 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Urinetown, The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 6. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Hysteria” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Sept. 30. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Shakespeare Theater “King Lear” at the Bruns Ampitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $15-$60. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Rumors” by Neil Simon, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sundays at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $11-$18. 655-8974. www.cct.org 

Impact Theatre “Sleepy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oct. 13. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “The Shadow Box” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. matinees, at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Runs through Sept. 29. This show is not recommended for children. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “Alice in Wonderland” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Envision Academy, 1515 Webster St., Oakland, through Oct. 13. Tickets are $15-$30. 800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

Shotgun Players “Bulrusher” opens at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. and runs Thurs.-Sun. through Oct. 28. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Thunderbird Theatre Company “Aaah! Rosebud” at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $20-$25. 415-289-6766. www.thunderbirdtheatre.com 

FILM 

“Special Circumstances” about former Chilean political prisoner Hector Salgado at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Girls Will Be Boys “Hamlet” introduced by Jennifer Bean at 6:30 p.m. and “Viktor und Viktoria” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bjorn Lomberg reads from “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mark Morris Dance Group “Mozart Dances” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$72. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Go-Go Fightmaster, Heavy metal country jazz, at 8 p.m. at Free-Jazz Fridays at the Jazz House, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 415-846-9432. 

Dwight Tribble & Muziki Roberson Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

“Ashana in Concert” at 7:30 p.m. at acred Space at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way, at 6th. Tickets are $15-$20. 486-8700. www.rudramandir.com 

Cuarto Latinoamericano de Saxofones, lecture/demonstration at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Will Bernard Band, The Flux at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bill Kirchen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Splatter Trio, John Raskin Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Acts of Sedition, Thou at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

The Courtney Janes and KC Turner at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Dub Vision at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 22 

CHILDREN  

“The Stone Flower” Puppet show Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Art on the Home Front” An exhibition of children’s art from Richmond’s chid-care centers, from 1943 to the early post-war period. Reception at 2 p.m. at Seaver Gallery, Richmond Museum of History, 400 Nevin Ave., Richmond. Cost is $5-$7.50. 235-7387. 

CCA Photography Retrospective Works by recent graduates as well as faculty. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., at 25th St., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

The Alameda Quilt Show Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Alameda High School, 2201 Encinal Ave., Alameda. Benefits the Humane Society of Alameda. Cost is $5. 749-6717. www.quiltsfans.com 

Ink Paintings of Changming Meng Artist reception at 5 p.m. at Gallery ZiZi, 2014 Park Blvd., Oakland. 251-8277. 

“Forces: Paintings and Calligraphy by Lampo Leong” at the Intitute for East Asian Studies Gallery, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Flr., through Dec. 14. 642-2809. http://ieas.berkeley.edu 

“The Telegraph 3 p.m. Project” Photographs by Robert Eliason and poetry by Owen Hill at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Exhibition runs to Jan. 31. 665-0305.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm & Muse presents poet Garrett Murphy at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., between Eunice & Rose Sts. 304-0483. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Paradigm Brass at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www. 

trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Julie Larson, singer-songwriter, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Cuarteto Latinoamericano de Saxofones, from Chile, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Rachel Z Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Descarga Caliente and Eric Rangel y Orquesta America, salsa at 6 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. 645-9292, ext. 233. 

Moss Henry at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Raya Nova at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Christine Kane at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Bobby Broom Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kurt Ribak Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Steve Smulian at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Midline Errors, Blipvert, Run at the Dog at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Zoe Ellis, jazz vocals, at 9 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810.  

Insect Warfare, Unholy Grave, Population Reduction at 7:30 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 23 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley’s “Other” Revolution: Celebrating 35 Years of Independent Living, Disability Access, and Disability Rights. Photographs by Ken Stein on display in the windows of Rasputin Music, 2401 Telegraph Ave., between Channing Way and Haste, to Nov. 15. 525-2325. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 2 p.m.at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

FILM 

Girls Will Be Boys “A Florida Enchantment” at 3 p.m. and Sylvia Scarlett: at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Seeing the Sacred Everyday” Artist talk by Pauletta M. Chanco at 3 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Panel discussion at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

“From Africa to Afrocentric Innovations Some Call ‘Jazz’” with Dr. Karlton Tucker at noon at the Jazzschool. Cost is $30-$45. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland East Bay Symphony performs with winners of the Young Artist Competition at 3 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Free. 444-0801. www.oebs.org 

Gustavo Diaz-Jerez, pianist, in a recital of Ravel, Albeniz and Cavaterra at 3 p.m. at The Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. 

Trumpet and Organ Recital with James Tindslay, trumpet ,and Christopher Putnam, organ,, at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 2619 Broadway, Oakland. 444-3555. 

Roy Zimmerman with George Mann and Julius Margolin at 7:30 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. Sliding scale $5-$10. 848-6397. 

Cascada de Flores at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Grito de Lares Celebration for Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence at 4 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. 

Bobbe Norris & Larry Dunlap Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Wailing Junk Symphony, Brazilian African junk jazz, at 4:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Jacob Wolkenhauer at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged with The Mercury Dimes at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Frank Martin Group at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

William Beatty and The Unconditionals at 6:30 p.m. at Mt. Everest Restaurant, 2011 Shattuck Ave. 665-6035. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Eden Invaded” Paintings by Judith Wehlau opens at Bucci’s Restaurant, 6121 Hollis St., Emeryville.  

“They Called Me Mayer July” Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., to Jan. 13. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Garrison Keillor introduces “Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $5 available from Cody’s. 559-9500.  

Poetry Express with Julie Potter and open mic theme of “pride and prejudice” at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ellis Island Band, klezmer, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Orquesta America at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 25 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Wash, Rinse, Repeat ... Repeat” Exhibition of works by women artists. Reception at 4 p.m. at the Worth Ryder Gallery, Kroeber Hall, Bancroft at College. Exhibition runs to Oct. 12.  

FILM 

“Bella Bella” A film by Elizabeth Sher premiers at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, Live Oak Park, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and the Sculptor Bella Feldman. Tickets are $8-$10. 644.6893. 

“Home Movies: Autobiographical Films by Women” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Willis Barnstone and Steven Nightengale at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Readings from Viz Inter-Arts, a trans-genre anthology at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Erika Mailman introduces “The Witch’s Trinity” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Creole Belles 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 Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tlen-Huicani at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Times 4 at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $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. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 26 

THEATER 

Seldom Seen Acting Company Homeless actors share their life stories at 10:30 a.m. at St. Vincent de Paul Center, 2272 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 636-4255. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Brick & Mortar: Bay Area Sculptural Abstracts Works by Stephen Day, David O. Johnson, Christopher Loomis, and Florian Roeper opens at Pro Arts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-4361.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Strictly Speaking with Garry Wills author of “Lincoln at Gettysburg” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $10-$20. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“Writing Teachers Write” with Sharon Coleman and Richard Silberg at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Alice Medrich describes “Pure Dessert: True Flavors, Inspiring Ingredients, and Simple Recipes” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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 

Jazz Masters Concert with Café American, gypsy jazz, at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with University Symphony Orchestra at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

Tamsen Donner Band at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West Coast swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

La Verdad 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.  

The Flux at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Baka Beyond at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Robben Ford at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 27 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m.at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Heading North: Journey to Atacama Desert, Chile” Photographs by Thea Bellos, at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“The Sacred in the Mundane” works by Pauletta M. Chanco at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Bungalows: The Ultimate Arts & Crafts Home” with author Jane Powell at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club. Cost is $20. For reservations call 848-4288. 

Sam Quinones and Gustavo Arellano talk about their books and the issues of migration and immigration, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com 

Jane Smiley, Pam Houston and Lynn Freed read essays from “The Other Woman: Twnty-One Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love and Betrayal” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra with guest concertmaster Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$42. 415-357-1111. www.ncco.org 

“Exilio: Creating Home Away from Home” Chilean art, music and poetry Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

ILGI at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Fiveplay at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Franco Nero, Joseph’s Bones, Guerilla Hi-Fi at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Robben Ford at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

I was on a break at the Public Theatre in New York,” said Eisa Davis, playwright, actor and South Berkeley native, “during the second week of rehearsing Passing Strange, when I got a voice message from the actress who played the lead in Bulrusher, and she was crying. ‘Have you heard the news?’ I jumped up and screamed!” 

Davis, a Berkeley native, was recalling how the news broke that her play, Bulrusher—which opens tonight in a Shotgun Players production at the Ashby Stage—had been nominated for this year’s Pulitzer Prize in drama. 

“I called up my mother—and faked her out, telling her in a deathly tone that I had big news,” Davis said. “It was a great day. I celebrated with the others in the cast of Passing Strange. It’s a wonderful feeling to receive national recognition, especially along with the other nominees, whom I admire, as I do the jurors. It’ll be a sticker on my gravestone: ‘She was a finalist!’” 

Davis arrived in town last weekend to attend the final rehearsals, the opening and a fundraiser for Shotgun on Tuesday, “Breaking It Down,” where she’ll sing her own songs from her latest album, read from Angela’s Mixtapes and recount how Bulrusher was inspired and written. 

Bulrusher takes place in Boonville, Mendocino County, in the mid-’50s, during the time of the civil rights battles in the South and Washington, D. C. The title character is an African-American woman, an outcast and a clairvoyant, who falls for a visitor from Alabama. The script is “peppered with” Boontling, the special jargon of that part of the Anderson Valley, spoken by locals and German-American farmworkers since the late 19th century. 

“My aunt [activist, author and educator Angela Davis] was always looking for someplace to write quietly, and gradually inched her way up from Marin to Mendocino County. It became a family tradition from the ’80s for my mother [civil rights attorney Fania Davis] and me to go up with her. In a winery along Highway 128 I saw Charles C. Adams’ book about Boontling. It’s harder to do a play that has special requirements in terms of language; it has to be put on in a balanced way. The New York Times critic wrote about being frustrated, having to both watch and look in the glossary that was in the program. But I think you can pick up the flavor, pick up the meaning from context. There are enough inferential qualities; if you grew up with slang, it shouldn’t be hard. Shotgun has an installation comparing Boontling to Berkeley High slang. Or, as one character says, when the visitor from Alabama doesn’t know what they mean, ‘You don’t have to. It’s just another part of the scenery.’” 

The play began as a series of poems which a composer friend of Davis’ requested for a song cycle. “The first poem ended up as the first monologue for Bulrusher,” Davis said. “There were eight poems, and the plot emerged, along with all the characters except one, in the poems. They were so strong, I thought the play would end up presentational, in the style of [Dylan Thomas’] Under Milkwood, but it didn’t come out that way—it came out more fully formed; it wanted to come out in dialogue!” 

Bulrusher was something of a departure for Davis. “Almost all the plays I’ve written tend to be based on or inspired by real incidents. But not this play; only one incident here really happened. I was probably filling in from my experiences, or those of my family and friends. But it was more of a feat of the imagination—of letting my imagination go, to see what could happen in that town, in that time. I discovered what my themes are as a writer, what archetypes populate my landscape.” 

Davis is happy with the play being done in her home neighborhood. “It’s what’s great about working with Shotgun, with Patrick [Dooley]. They have such a great sense of community. I didn’t even know the old name of the neighborhood until they did Love is a Dream House in the Lorin. I thought it was just where I lived! Marcus Gardley, from Oakland, who wrote it, requested me as ‘mentor’ (I put that in quotation marks!) at New Dramatists, and is now a colleague. And Aaron Davidman, who directed, I’ve known since high school.” 

Davis, who was born at Alta Bates and declares herself “Berkeley all the way,” participated in student-run productions at Berkeley High and is an alumna of the UC Young Musicians Program. She’s sung here since moving back east and performed in Stew’s musical play, Passing Strange, at Berkeley Rep late last year.  

“It’s great to do the play here,” she said. “Theaters in New York liked the play, but said ‘What can we do with it? Why would people in New York be interested in it?’ It finally had its world premiere at Urban Stages last March; the artistic director there has spent a lot of time out here. And various networks here helped get the play a hearing in New York.” 

BULRUSHER 

Presented by the Shotgun Players at 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday through Oct. 28 at the Asbhy Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. $17-$25.  

842-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org. 

“Breaking It Down,” a fundraiser at the Ashby Stage for Shotgun, featuring Davis singing songs from her latest album, reading from Angela’s Mixtapes and talking about Bulrusher, will be held at the Ashby Stage from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25. $50.

At the turn of the last century, wharves, lumber mills, farms, breweries, tanneries, and Victorian residences dotted West Berkeley. The largest employer south of University Avenue was the Standard Soap Company, which had occupied half a block between the bay shore and Third Street north of Allston Way since 1876. 

The San Francisco earthquake and fire profoundly changed the area’s character, filling it with industrial plants. Across the railroad from Standard Soap, the Van Emon Elevator Company built a factory taking up a quarter of a block on the corner of Third St. and Allston Way. Incongruously, the adjacent property was the flower nursery of Joseph Antoine Boirard, a Frenchman who had lived at 2216 4th Street since 1892 or ’93 and would still be there in 1930. 

Boirard was not the first nurseryman in the area. On the next block to the east, John Anthony Carbone (1865–1946) had been growing roses since 1888. 

Carbone, who would gain fame as the Orchid King of the West, was born in Turin, northern Italy. His father was a gardener, and young Giovanni worked with plants from an early age. In an interview he gave in 1937, Carbone said that he followed his older brother—also a horticulturist—to Chicago in 1883. Soon he was engaged to work on the estate of Lucien Scott in Leavenworth, Kansas. A banking, coal, and railroad tycoon, Scott bought the house—now home of the Leavenworth County Historical Society—in 1882 for $5,200 and spent $50,000 on turning it into a mansion. When Scott sold the estate in 1887, Carbone said, he moved to New York City and worked in Central Park. He neglected to mention that while in Kansas, he was a partner in a flower shop called Carbone and Monti. 

Having heard enticing tales of California, Carbone went west and landed in Berkeley. He was first listed in the directory in 1889 as nurseryman, resident at Allston Way between Fourth and Fifth Streets. By 1892, he had bought three lots on the corner of Fifth St. and Allston Way, which were registered in the name of Margaret B. Carbone, believed to have been the first of his three wives. 

Practically nothing is known about Margaret Carbone. John Carbone was already divorced in 1900, but both he and Margaret may have lived under the same roof at 2200 Fifth St. until 1903 or ’04, when John built 2216 Fifth Street. Margaret maintained her residence in the original house until 1909 and her ownership of the three lots until 1911 or so. 

Why the Carbones divorced is not clear, but John Carbone’s roving eye might have played a role in the separation. In 1902, Carbone married Aurelia Sturla Cassinelli, who was divorced in 1900 by her first husband, Giovanni Cassinelli, also a gardener, on grounds of desertion. 

In its early years, the Carbone nursery specialized in roses and chrysanthemums. As carnations became fashionable, Carbone made them his specialty. The 1903 Sanborn fire insurance map labeled the business West Berkeley Rose Nursery. At the time, it occupied seven lots between Fourth and Fifth Streets. In a southwestern corner of the nursery, one small greenhouse contained a large heater. This may have been the kernel of what would become the largest orchid nursery on the West Coast. 

In 1937, Carbone told an interviewer that he had become fascinated with the idea of importing and growing orchids a few years before the San Francisco fire. By then, he was prosperous enough to undertake such an expensive enterprise, which could at times require an outlay of several thousand dollars for a single plant. In 1917, he would make news by selling a Brassocattleya he had grown from seed and named Queen of California for the record sum of $2,500. The buyer was Charles M. Ward of Eureka, known as the “Tulip Baron of Humboldt County.” 

Carbone’s growing prosperity was evidenced by the land he had accumulated. Like his friend and neighbor Simone Marengo—the founder of the West Berkeley Macaroni Factory who had increased his holdings on Sixth Street immediately after the earthquake—Carbone owned by 1907 seven lots on his block, not counting the three lots still owned by Margaret Carbone and occupied by his nursery. 

No complete photograph remains of the Carbone home at 2216 Fifth Street, long since demolished. Like most of the houses in the neighborhood, it was a two-story Victorian, although the prevailing home-building fashions in other parts of Berkeley at the time tended to Colonial Revival or Craftsman. In this house Aurelia gave birth to Carlo (1904), Melvin (1905), Inez (1908), and John, Jr. (1910). 

The Carbone boys were trained early to lend a hand in the nursery, and several gardeners employed by Carbone usually lived with the family. One of these was John’s elderly uncle Carlo Dughera, who from 1907 until 1914 and again from 1915 until his death in 1924 resided and worked with the Carbones. 

At the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, the Carbone exhibit, showing off more than 80 orchid varieties, was judged Best in Show. In addition to the gold medal for overall exhibit, Carbone received four first prizes for individual orchid cultivars. He would continue exhibiting at all the major horticultural shows over the next thirty years, consistently winning top honors. 

As Carbone’s prestige grew, he became active in civic affairs, rubbing shoulders with Berkeley’s most important citizens. When the Chamber of Commerce moved into its new quarters in June 1913, Carbone contributed flowers for the opening reception. In 1917, when the American Red Cross mounted a nationwide campaign to raise a 100-million-dollar war fund, Carbone was one of the vice-presidents in the Berkeley effort alongside leading figures such as Benjamin Ide Wheeler, mayor Samuel C. Irving, Frank Wilson, John Hinkel, Stephen J. Sill, Redmond C. Staats, Duncan McDuffie, Bernard Maybeck, David P. Barrows, and August Wollmer. 

One undated newspaper article reported that Carbone had given the city 800 Ulrich Brunner rose plants, “to be used in such manner as the park commission directs.” 

One person who was not altogether delighted with John Carbone was his wife Aurelia. On April 13, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported, “After a court battle lasting most of the day, during which florists from Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda were in attendance, Mrs. Aurelia Carbone was granted temporary alimony of $275 pending the trial of her divorce suit against John Carbone, ‘orchid king’ of Berkeley.” 

It wasn’t until Nov. 21 of that year that the suit was tried and its cause came to light. Mrs. Carbone accused her 59-year-old husband of dallying with his stenographer. The marriage was dissolved, and Mrs. Carbone moved to an apartment on Dowling Place with her two younger children. 

John Carbone was married a third time, but not to his stenographer. His best friend, Simone Marengo, was widowed in 1922, and three years later married Maria Barbieri, a woman nearly 30 years his junior who had recently arrived from Italy. At the Marengo house, Carbone saw the photo of a young woman—Maria’s friend in Italy—and initiated a correspondence with her, eventually paying her way to Berkeley as his fiancée. 

Francesca Bertuzzo (1898–1957), the daughter of Italians who had migrated to Brazil in the 19th century, was born on a coffee plantation in Itapira, São Paulo. Having returned to Italy, the family was living in the Ligurian port town of La Spezia, where Francesca ran a laundry whose main client was the navy. This curriculum vitae apparently was insufficiently exotic for the Oakland Tribune, which featured a photo of the bride on April 7, 1928, describing her as the daughter of a Brazilian orchid collector. 

Francesca and John Carbone produced one child, Louise Eliza, who was born in February 1929, on the same day that her father purchased three acres for a new nursery on Woodmont Avenue, overlooking Wildcat Canyon. 

By 1929, West Berkeley was no longer a suitable place for growing prize orchids. A block to the west on Third Street, the Solano Iron Works, the Triangle Paint Company, the Westinghouse/Sturtevant fan-manufacturing plant, and the Armco drainage products plant were polluting the air. Carbone leased his Fifth St. facility to the C. & A. Warren Nursery and decamped for Woodmont Ave., where two notable iris specialists—horticulturist Carl Salbach and U.C. professor Sydney Bancroft Mitchell—were already established. 

The family continued living at 2216 Fifth St. until 1937, when contractor Giovanni Battista Faramia built them a Mediterranean-style house at 571 Woodmont Avenue. The house still stands, although it’s been remodeled and enlarged twice by subsequent owners. 

When John Carbone died at the age of 80, he was honored by the City Council and the Rotary Club. Among his honorary pall bearers were city manager Gerrit Vander Ende and fire chief William Meinheit. Exactly a week after his death, his son Melvin was killed in a car crash. Thereafter, John, Jr. managed the nursery until his retirement in 1959, when the business was taken over by the youngest child, Louise Carbone Colombatto, and Melvin’s son, Mel Jr. 

With demand for cut flowers steadily declining, greenhouses showing their age, and heating bills soaring, the family decided to close the nursery. The land was sold to a developer and subdivided for house lots. 

Remaining are the showy cultivar Cattleya J.A. Carbone and numerous hybrids developed from it by several generations of horticulturists. 

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

This past Sunday I got a bargain, a cymbidium orchid in a gallon pot for five dollars. Nice healthy-looking thing, too. If I’d been willing to stagger around the crowded Sycamore Congregational Church bazaar conking innocent children on the head with a bigger pot, I could’ve had even more bargains.  

We’d spent most of our walking-around money on food anyway, and after watching a performance by a kickass taiko group whose lead drummer is 80 years old, I was inclined to mind my manners. Five bucks for a healthy cymbidium? That’s enough reward for one day. That’s also one more plant to shoehorn onto a crowded front porch.  

But the real reason I couldn’t resist this one frivolous expense was the cultivar’s name: ‘Claude Pepper.’ My goodness, doesn’t that bring back fond memories? 

Claude Pepper, aside from having a name to conjure with, was a U.S. senator and later a member of the House of Representatives, an unusual career sequence in itself. He represented Florida, worked on senior citizens’ issues among other big deals, and died in the saddle in 1989. The best story about him, though, isn’t exactly about him and, alas, probably never happened. 

In 1950 he lost the Democratic primary race to George Smathers. Smathers probably did not give the speech credited to him that included: “Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.” 

So. Theoretically the flower color will be deep deep wine-red—cymbidiums normally run to shades of white, cream, yellow, dark crimson, and maroon—and I don’t know how well it will perform, though obviously someone in El Cerrito has had enough success to divide and propagate some dozen plants, at least, for this fair—but I’m now the proud guardian of a Cymbidium X ‘Claude Pepper’.  

Cymbidium orchids are among the few that prosper outdoors here; they’re mostly from high, temperate places in south Asia. They do need to be outdoors here; dry indoor air will shrivel them. They want shade and shelter from serious frost, though they need a little sun to bloom. There’s a nice foundation planting of them across the street from me, up against the north wall of a house where they benefit from its thermal mass and the eaves over them.  

Look for a plant that’s mostly green, though a brown “back bulb” or two is actually OK. Give regular water and good drainage; feed with orchid food in summer if you want a shortcut through nutritional jargon, and cut off the last flower spikes—whose blooms last for weeks!—before the last flower opens, for more bloom next year.  

Amateur sales like this, at fairs and street parties and garden clubs, are a great source of healthy cheap plants. Keep your eyes open for flyers and banners in playgrounds, and bring a handled bag for schlepping.  

If you stop and think about it, the notion that old houses are better is just as silly as the notion that new houses are better. The truth is that both things are true. Older houses are better in some way and newer houses are better in others. Construction is fraught with misconceptions. Another one is that the framing or “bones” of old houses is better than that of newer ones.  

While it’s certainly true that our older housing stock has, within its walls, some of the best timber ever permitted cut dried for these purposes, the manner in which they are conjoined is inferior to current methods and come the next earthquake, I’d rather be in a house that had been built last year than one built in 1920. Of course, one can take the older house and add the hardware that the newer house has and also withstand the big one when it arrives (which is my idea of the perfect house). 

In recent years, the housing industry has gotten itself in some deep you-know-what as a result of one of its greatest successes, the perfection of the tight house. Houses in the last 20 years have been pushed to such low porosities (the rate at which moisture or gases pass through them) that they lose nary a Therm (a unit of heat measurement). While the goal of making houses energy efficient is a brave and worthy one, the consequences of living in these wooden vacuum bottles are growing more apparent every day. Too many of them are rotting away and sometimes in a matter of months. O.K., I’m being a bit hyperbolic but it IS true that massive fungal infestations are being found in many of this new class of house all across the country but particularly in those areas where humidities run high.  

Understanding how ventilation works and how moisture moves with air is becoming an important aspect of architecture, building inspection and construction as we all try to respond to this nasty bit of news.  

So, why is this happening and what changed. In short, older houses evaded these moisture related problems by leaking. They leaked air, they leaked moisture, they leaked heat. Apparently, this was not so much of a problem as we had formerly thought! Leaking, it turns out, is a good thing, but as with our initial premise, it’s also bad. It depends on what you’re testing for and what you want.  

If you want a house that has a good “drying potential” (the ability to dry out quickly after leaks occur) you get a big thumbs-up. If you want a house that’s going to hold onto a given amount of heat for any length of time, it’s thumbs down. 

A large number of mold-related cases in the recent past have involved newer, tighter houses. Like huge colonies of Stachybotrys chartarum (the favorite of the legal community), these cases having been growing exponentially and are flooding the courts in increasing numbers and all because people, including those in the construction community, fail to understand some basic (and not-so-basic) things about how buildings work. 

If you create a tightly sealed environment, one that does not dry out quickly, and you allow a little water to leak into it through a shoddily built wall, you can end up with water sitting for an extended time inside something not all that different from a cardboard box. Get the picture. 

Actually, this whole problem is even worse with newer houses because the wood products used in most newer homes are so much more digestible than those in older homes that the rate at which they get consumed by fungi can be impressive. 

So all around, it’s a bad scene and if you own a relatively new house the word is simple, keep the water out, period. If you see any sign of leakage, have it fixed properly and quickly. 

Now, let’s get back to our older home. If an older house, with its high porosity, leaks at a window, a roof or right though a wall, the water hangs around for a much shorter period and the likelihood of a mold or other fungal problem (molds ARE funguses) is greatly reduced. 

Older homes and most newer ones as well, were, and are, designed to allow air to pass under them as well as through attic spaces. This does a range of good things for us but none so good as the removal of damp air and replacement with dryer air. In places where Radon is of concern (and this is generally low in our area), the exchange of air also helps to remove this potent carcinogen (second only to cigarettes in lung cancer deaths at around 20,000 per year). 

If it’s wet under your house, some of that water is going to evaporate and find it’s way into the structure. In houses where crawlspace ventilation is poor, there is consistently more fungal growth (molds included). In houses where enough ventilation is provided, the presence of destructive fungi is much lower and usually the result of a leak from plumbing or from rain entry. 

Ventilation is also something that’s easy and cheap to provide. Crawlspace vents are really nothing more than a series of holes though the sides of the house below floor level that allow air to flow through the crawlspace.  

These vents require screening for the sole reason that critters of various sizes and nastinesses favor the space below your house for their dinner parties (“another grub, Madam?”), romantic liaisons (“You smell like rat, my darling. Come to me now”) and infant deliveries (“Look honey, Octuplets!”). The ideal screening is heavily galvanized steel mesh. This is available a range of pre-cut and framed shapes that can be installed quite easily. If you’re adding ventilation because you are aware of the moisture in the crawlspace, I would also recommend adding a plastic barrier laid directly upon the soil. This helps control moisture and requires no sophisticated installation. 

Ventilation requirements in new construction vary but are generally around 1 square foot for every 150 square feet of crawlspace. This means that most houses I see required around eight square feet or around 16 vents distributed around the house (they’re typically a square foot each). Vents do the most good when the wind can get to them so vents that are close to fence or blocked by bushes should be considered to have less value. If you’re adding them, try to place them where they’re more likely to create cross-ventilation. 

It’s worth noting that very few houses meet this requirement and many would clearly benefit from their introduction. Recent codes have allowed a radical reduction in the ventilation requirement for houses (one square foot per 1500 square feet) when vapor barriers are properly installed and where the vents are placed near the corners for improved draft.  

My personal take is that this is short-sighted and that when moisture is present, all the big guns should be brought out and used. If a house is essentially dry underneath, I’m fine to see this radical reduction in ventilation but in crawlspaces where we know it’s been getting wet, adding loads of ventilation as well as vapor barriers is cheap and sensible and there’s really no good reason to avoid it, unless, of course, you happen to like things wet and slimy, but hey, knock your amphibian-like self out. 

Is Your Child’s School Prepared? 

If you have children or grandchildren, you’ll want to check with the school and see what preparations have been made in the event of a serious earthquake. Schools should expect that some parents may not physically be able to pick their child up after a quake (think impassable roads). They are prepared with food, water, first aid, and sanitary necessities, knowing that some of the kids may well need to spend the night at school. 

There should also be a plan of action which involves sharing information with the parents. 

Here’s to making your home secure and your family safe. 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.

Jane Powell is a bungalow and old house zealot. Every community should be lucky to have even one person like her. 

As she writes in Bungalow Details: Interiors, “when I see some old house that has been neglected or abused, I literally begin to twitch, I get a rush of adrenaline, my mind starts going a mile a minute with plans for what needs to be done…” 

If you live in a bungalow, or like bungalows, or just like old houses in general, do yourself a favor and go to her evening talk Thursday, Sept. 27. No one I can think of knows more, both practical and esoteric, about these houses than Jane Powell and she’s enthusiastically willing to share. 

Her lecture, at Berkeley’s historic Hillside Club, is the last in a four-part series exploring the history and built character of Berkeley, organized by Arlene Baxter, president of the Berkeley Association of Realtors.  

“Jane Powell answers the question, What is a bungalow?, exploring the history of bungalows, their relation to the broader Arts & Crafts Movement, and why they have become popular again in the 21st century,” the lecture publicity promises. 

The term “bungalow” originated with the housing British colonials built in a concession to tropical and subtropical climates. Single-floor dwellings with wide, overhanging roofs, large porches, and open, airy, floor plans were all adaptable to local conditions and building materials. 

The style arrived in the United States in the late 19th century and flourished up through World War I, until displaced by “Period Revival” architecture (think Mission Revival or Mock Tudor). 

What’s the detailed definition of a bungalow? The Oakland-based Powell has written that it’s “fundamentally rather complicated.” 

But a few frequently seen characteristics include a single floor (often, though, with extra rooms tucked under a gabled roof), wide roof eaves, a generous front porch, and an interior that de-emphasizes hallways and staircases in favor of rooms that flow into each other. 

Many, if not most, bungalows were inexpensive to build and affordable to buy when new, but even the most humble can contain superb examples of craftsmanship and design that still delight owners and their guests. 

They were also modern, with electricity, indoor plumbing, gas in some cases, and very up to date and functional kitchens and bathrooms.  

Where you see one bungalow there are often twins, triplets, a dozen, or a score. Many bungalows were built as part of “tract” or “suburban” developments as streetcar lines and road improvements opened up convenient access to areas beyond the 19th century urban core. 

In the Bay Area, Oakland and Alameda have many bungalows and some neighborhoods like Rockridge are just thick with them. Berkeley’s bungalows are perhaps fewer and more scattered, but they are here. 

Original bungalows are now quite venerable and, as is often the case with the aged, they’ve been subjected over the decades to efforts of the young to improve or even remove them. 

As early as the 1930 and 1940s houses in the Bay Area, including some bungalows, were being “modernized” with features such as garages burrowed beneath the front façade and exteriors mummified in featureless stucco. 

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, “remodels” often meant atrocities of asbestos siding, painted-over woodwork, brick and tile, acoustic ceilings, aluminum windows, torn out built-ins, or big sculptural porch columns replaced with spindly metal posts. 

In more recent years popular “updates” have included vinyl windows, rears of bungalows demolished or gutted beyond recognition for the creation of “great rooms” and “chef’s kitchens,” and huge master suite additions atop small houses like overloaded baggage on a camel. 

Improper remodeling and disrespectful treatment of bungalows are passionate themes for Powell, sort of bungalow bugaboos. She’s a leading, emphatic, proponent of keeping the character of bungalows intact. 

“Updating” all or part of a house in some trendy current style imposed on top of or in place of the original character simply means the remodel will come, in time, to appear outdated as well. If you doubt this, think of the last refreshing, exciting, modern-looking 1970s kitchen you visited.  

Powell argues in her writing that if you buy a nice old house, however worn and battered, you should feel some obligation to retain, or restore, its character, rather than altering everything. Don’t try to radically change a house you don’t like or that doesn’t “suit your needs”; perhaps even consider buying a house you do like. 

This is not to say some interventions, such as upgrades to mechanical systems or room additions, shouldn’t be done, but they should be as contextual as possible. 

One of things that makes Jane Powell an excellent resource is that she has extensive experience actually working on local bungalows—from stripping paint, to getting permits, to finding the right door hardware—rather than simply a theoretical knowledge.  

She’s bought and renovated several, advised on others, and written several books that should be in the home library of every bungalow owner. 

Her books outline the proper approach and outcome for each bungalow project, but also offer options of “Obsessive Restoration” (do it like they did it back then, with the same materials and processes) or “Compromise Solution” (that still fits in well, but substitutes modern materials or techniques). 

She also has a great turn of phase. An example from Bungalow Interiors: 

“Many people tell me they never use their dining room and I always reply, ‘Why? Is there a force field around it?’ Even if you don’t eat there, it makes a fabulous library.” Or this chapter heading about bungalow heating upgrades, “Many are cold, but few are frozen.” 

Every page of a Powell book offers some well researched, interesting, insight or practical advice. I hope her lecture will be the same. Afterwards, as at past lectures in the series, there should be great cookies, and an opportunity to buy books at a discount and get them signed.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 21 

International Peace Day & Iraq Moratorium Gather 2:30 p.m. at West Oakland BART Station, south parking lot, march at 3 p.m. to the Railroad Bridge to the Oakland Ports. info@bayareacodepink.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Booker Holton on “Water in Israel: An Environmental, Political and Security Issue” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.5, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

Protest the War in Iraq from 2 to 4 p.m. on the corner of Acton and University. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Assoc. and Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 841-4143. 

Second Annual Berkeley Sustainability Summit from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Krutch Theater, Clark Kerr Campus, 2601 Warring St. Tickets are $25. Use the #7 Arlington bus line. www.ecologycenter.org/summit 

“Peace One Day” A documentary film describing how the United Nations General Assembly chose September 21st as the annual International Day of Peace and Non-violence at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting Friendship Hall, 2151 Vine St, at Walnut. Potluck at 6 p.m. 848-7357. 

“Special Circumstances” A film on former Chilean political prisoner Hector Salgado at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

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 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 22 

Berkeley Historical Society Tour of the California Historical Radio Society and KRE Radio History from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10, season pass is $30. To register and for meeting place call 848-0181. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland Walkways and Streetcar Heritage from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Call for reservations and meeting place. Tickets are $25-$30. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Cajun/Zydeco Festival at Ardenwood Historic Farm with music by Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie and Corey Lil Pop Ledet from Louisiana, Cajun/Creole food and more, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets are $16-$20 for adults, $2-$3 for childen 4-15, children 3 and younger free. 1-888-327-2757. www.ebparks.org 

"War Made Easy” A film by Normon Solomon at 7 p.m. at Buena Vista United Methodist Church, 2311 Buena Vista, between Oak and Park, Alameda. Benefit for Alamada Peace Network. http://WarMadeEasy.bravenewtheaters.com/screening/show/9772  

Last Day of Summer Stroll in Temescal Park Meet at 2 p.m. at the lawn area b, the north entrance off Broadway in Oakland. 521-6887. www.ebparks.org 

Center for Urban Peace re-opening with yoga and kirtan at 5 p.m., program at 7 p.m. at 2584 MLK, Jr. Way. RSVP to 866-732-2320. 

AAU Boys Basketball Tryouts for ages 12U, 13U and 14U, from noon to 2 p.m. at Berkeley YMCA’s main gym, 2001 Allston Way. 665-3264.  

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 23 

Little Farm Fair Celebrate the completion of the new cow barn, meet the new calves and enjoy live music, carfts and games from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Nature Area, Tiden Park. Visitors encouraged to use ACTransit bus #67. 525-2233. 

Facilitated Labyrinth Walk from noon to 3 p.m. at the future site of Berkeley Community Peace Labyrinth, East Lawn of Berkeley Marina. 526-7377. 

Berkeley Partners for Parks Fundraiser with music and food from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Egret Center on Bolivar Drive, just north of Ashby. Suggested donation $30. RSVP to 540-7223. info@pbfp.org 

6th Anniversary Lake Merritt Walk/Roll for Peace at 3 p.m. at the colonnade, southeast corner of the lake between Grand and Lakeshore Aves. www.lmno4p.org 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Schilling Garden Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Lakeside Drive and Madison, near the Lake Merritt Hotel. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Cross-Pollination: Gardeners Unite Meet people from garden clubs, community gardens, plant societies, and urban farms from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $2-$7. 643-2755. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club Open House with lawn bowling demonstrations and chance to bowl, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 2270 Acton St., corner of Acton & Bancroft. Please wear sneakers. 841-2174. 

“Politics 101 Meets Web 2.0: Democracy or Demagoguery?” Political candidate now have web sites, participate in social networks, and can respond to folks via YouTube. So are we closer to democracy? From 4 to 6 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15 at door. 

Autumn Equinox Gathering at 6:15 p.m. at the Interim Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. Gathering led by Rabbi David Cooper, Kahilla Community Synagogue. Dress warmly. www.solarcalendar.org 

“Learn How To Build A Living Roof Garden” Learn how to convert a flat roof into a planted garden from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St., enter via garden entrance on Peralta. Cost is $15, sliding scale. 548-2220, ext. 242.  

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan’s “little castle” at 1:15, 2:15, and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Free, donations welcome. 883-9710. 

Health Care from a Marxist Perspective at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417. 

Girl Army Self-Defense Class runs for 6 weeks from 1 to 4 p.m. at Suigetsukan Dojo, 103 International Blvd., Oakland. For information and to register call 496-3443. 

“A Taste of California” Rotary Club of Oakland fundraiser from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Tickets are $65 available from www.museumca.org/tickets 

Solo Sierrans Walk Along the Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline Meet at 3 p.m. at the trailhead parking lot, off Talbart in Martinez. 925-458-0860. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Carole Swain ”Living the Lasallian Mission” at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 5 to 9 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Cost is $3 per hour. 644-2577.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Loosening Self-Image: A Buddhist Perspective” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, SEPT. 24 

Peace Corps Volunteer Information Session at 6 p.m. at the Rockridge Public Library, 5366 College Ave. at Manila, Oakland. 1-800-424-8580.  

“Building a Business from Scratch” A series of workshops held Mon. from 6 to 9 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. To register call 620-6561. 

Books and Ideas Group discusses “Whistling Season” at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577.  

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

TUESDAY, SEPT. 25 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Point Pinole. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Community Action Forum on Health Inequities including discussions on asthma, obesity, youth issues, and violence at 6:30 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. 981-5300. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/publichealth/newsevents/sept07forum.html 

Salsas from Oaxaca A cooking demonstration with Rebecca Sibrack from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Tuesday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Derby at MLK. 548-3333. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Hijaking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Sellling of American Empire” A documentary at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. to discuss ELL Budget, Proposed Change to Bylaws, WASC Plan and more in the Community Theater Lobby. 644-4803. 

Berkeley PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St near the corner of Eunice. MelDancing@aol.com 

World Harmony Chorus meets to sing world music at 7:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. See http://InstantHarmony.com  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Tuesday Documentaries at 7 p.m. at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Donation of $5 benefits the Berkeley Food and Housing Project. 665-0305. 

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, SEPT. 26 

Birding with the Golden Gate Audubon Society at Lake Merritt Meet at 9:30 a.m. at the large spherical cage near Nature Center at Perkins and Bellevue. 834-1066. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Alexi Yurchak on “Transformations of Space in Post-Socialist St. Petersburg” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium  

Transportation for the Future: Getting Around without a Car at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 548-9696. 

“East Bay Clean Energy: How You Can Support Community Choice Energy” Learn how communities can assume greater control over energy pricing and invest in renewable energy, at 6:30 p.m. at Bay Area Academy, 2201 Broadway, Suite 100, Oakland. 925-255-3110. EastBayCCA@gmail.com 

“Adapting to the Impacts of a Changing Climate” Learn and share ideas about what we can do as a community to deal with the impacts of global warming at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434. energy@ci.berkeley.ca.us www.cityofberkeley.info/sustainable/ 

Seldom Seen Acting Company Homeless actors share their life stories at 10:30 a.m. at St. Vincent de Paul Center, 2272 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 636-4255. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. or from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

“Loving Maradona” A film on the Argentine soccer player at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $6. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Stories of the Buddha Dharma” with Rev. Ken Yamada at 7 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton. Cost is $15. 809-1460. 

“After Capitalism: An Integrated Vision for a New World” with Dada Maheshvarananda at 7 p.m. at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave. Donation $10-$20.  

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, SEPT. 27 

“Bungalows: The Ultimate Arts & Crafts Home” with author Jane Powell at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club. Cost is $20. For revervations call 848-4288. 

“How Does Immigration Work in the Bay Area?” with Rosemary Langley Mellville of the U.C. Citizenship and Immigration Services, at 5 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters. 843-8824. 

“Numbers in the Courtroom: Statistics as Evidence” Learn how statistics can be used to help a court decide if a company has illegally discriminated against an employee with William Lepowsky, Mathematics Instructor at Laney College and statistical expert witness, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Room G-209 at Laney College, 8th and Fallon Streets, Oakland. Free. 464-3181.  

“Sentenced Home” A screening of the documentary and a panel discussion on the overlap between criminal justice and and immigration policy at 4 p.m. at Boalt Hall, Room 100, UC Campus. 643-7025. 

“Buddhism and Warfare” with Padmanabh S. Jaini, at 5 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St. 6th Floor. 643-5104. 

“Iran, North Korea, and the Dream of a Nuclear Weapon Free World” wth Tad Daley at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

“Covering California: Media and Democracy in the Golden State” The annual conference of the Travers Program in Ethics & Accountability in Government will feature speakers and panels on the interrelationships between the news media and democracy. Thurs. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-6323. http://polisci.berkeley.edu/department/calendar/index.asp  

“Exilio: Creating Home Away from Home” Chilean art, music and poetry Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “The Secret Team” by L. Fletcher Prouty at 6:30 p.m. Call for location. 433-2911. 

Meet a Humane Society Dog for ages 5 and up at 4 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Sept. 24, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5158.  

Zero Waste Commission Mon., Sept. 24, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. 981-6368.  

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Sept. 26, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., Sept. 26, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213.

As part of an ongoing effort to print stories by East Bay residents, The Daily Planet invites readers to write about their experiences and perspectives on living in, working in or enjoying various neighborhoods in our area. We are looking for essays about the Oakland neighborhoods around Lake Merritt and Piedmont Avenue, Fourth Street in Berkeley, and the city of Alameda. Please e-mail your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues in October. The sooner we receive your submission the better chance we have of publishing it.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 18 

CHILDREN 

Daffy Dave the Clown at 6:30 p.m. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 3 and up. 524-3043. 

FILM 

“It’s a Funny, Mad, Sad, World: The Movies of George Kuchar” with filmmaker George Kuchar at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Barsamian will discuss his book “Targeting Iran” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic featuring Eva Schlesinger at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

Ian Klaus describes “Elvis is Titanic: Classroom Tales from the Other Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Book. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gator Beat at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Christian Scott at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Opens with a curator’s talk at noon at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way, and runs through Dec. 23. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“Amax: La Memoria del Tiempo” on the 1932 genocide of the Nahua-Pipil of El Salvador, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568.  

International Latino Film Festival “O Casamento de Romeu e Julieta” at 7 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6555. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt describe “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. 559-9500. 

Lucy Jane Bledsoe reads from her new novel, “Biting the Apple,” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Andrew Helfer introduces “Ronald Reagan: A Graphic Biography” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jazz Masters Concert with Calvin Keys, jazz guitarist, at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, Jazz Faculty Recital at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

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

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

Mazacote at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Rebecca Griffin at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Le Vent du Nord, music of Quebéc at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. 

Christian Scott at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

Works by Ocean Quigley Artist reception at 7 p.m. at Artbeat Salon & Gallery, 1887 Solano Ave. 527-3100.  

FILM 

“Fall of the I-Hotel” a film and panel discussion on the evictions in Manilatown, San Francisco in 1977, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Dale Scott reads from “The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Randall Robinson discusses “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” at 6:30 p.m. at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 International Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$20 and are available from Marcus Books, 3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakland. 652-2344. 

Writing Jewish History with Frances Dinkelspiel at 6:30 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Melanie O'Reilly and pianist John R. Burr, jazz and Irish traditional music at 12:15 p.m. in the Art & Music Room of the Central Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6100. 

Dubconscious, reggae with guest Kaptain Harris, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$8. 525-5054. 

Mark Morris Dance Group “Mozart Dances” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$72. 642-9988.  

Old Blind Dogs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Kitt Weagant CD Release Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Citta di Vitti, Rubber City at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. 

Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends Band at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 21 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Urinetown, The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 6. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Hysteria” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Sept. 30. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Shakespeare Theater “King Lear” at the Bruns Ampitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $15-$60. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Rumors” by Neil Simon, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sundays at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $11-$18. 655-8974. www.cct.org 

Impact Theatre “Sleepy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oct. 13. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “The Shadow Box” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. matinees, at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Runs through Sept. 29. This show is not recommended for children. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “Alice in Wonderland” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Envision Academy, 1515 Webster St., Oakland, through Oct. 13. Tickets are $15-$30. 800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

Shotgun Players “Bulrusher” opens at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. and runs Thurs.-Sun. through Oct. 28. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Thunderbird Theatre Company “Aaah! Rosebud” at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $20-$25. 415-289-6766. www.thunderbirdtheatre.com 

FILM 

“Special Circumstances” about former Chilean political prisoner Hector Salgado at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Girls Will Be Boys “Hamlet” introduced by Jennifer Bean at 6:30 p.m. and “Viktor und Viktoria” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bjorn Lomberg reads from “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mark Morris Dance Group “Mozart Dances” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$72. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Go-Go Fightmaster, Heavy metal country jazz, at 8 p.m. at Free-Jazz Fridays at the Jazz House, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 415-846-9432. 

Dwight Tribble & Muziki Roberson Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

“Ashana in Concert” at 7:30 p.m. at acred Space at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way, at 6th. Tickets are $15-$20. 486-8700. www.rudramandir.com 

Cuarto Latinoamericano de Saxofones, lecture/demonstration at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Will Bernard Band, The Flux at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bill Kirchen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Splatter Trio, John Raskin Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Acts of Sedition, Thou at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

The Courtney Janes and KC Turner at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Dub Vision at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 22 

CHILDREN  

“The Stone Flower” Puppet show Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259 

EXHIBITIONS 

CCA Photography Retrospective Works by recent graduates as well as faculty. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., at 25th St., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therichmondartcenter.org 

The Alameda Quilt Show Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Alameda High School, 2201 Encinal Ave., Alameda. Benefits the Humane Society of Alameda. Cost is $5. 749-6717. www.quiltsfans.com 

Ink Paintings of Changming Meng Artist reception at 5 p.m. at Gallery ZiZi, 2014 Park Blvd., Oakland. 251-8277. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm & Muse presents poet Garrett Murphy at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., between Eunice & Rose Sts. 304-0483. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Paradigm Brass at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www. 

trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Julie Larson, singer-songwriter, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Cuarteto Latinoamericano de Saxofones, from Chile, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20. 849-2568.  

Rachel Z Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson with Comfort Mensah at 9 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Descarga Caliente and Eric Rangel y Orquesta America, salsa at 6 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. 645-9292, ext. 233. 

Moss Henry at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Raya Nova at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Christine Kane at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Bobby Broom Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kurt Ribak Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Steve Smulian at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Midline Errors, Blipvert, Run at the Dog at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Zoe Ellis, jazz vocals, at 9 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810.  

Insect Warfare, Unholy Grave, Population Reduction at 7:30 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 23 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 2 p.m.at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

FILM 

Girls Will Be Boys “A Florida Enchantment” at 3 p.m. and Sylvia Scarlett: at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Seeing the Sacred Everyday” Artist talk by Pauletta M. Chanco at 3 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Panel discussion at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

“From Africa to Afrocentric Innovations Some Call ‘Jazz’” with Dr. Karlton Tucker at noon at the Jazzschool. Cost is $30-$45. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland East Bay Symphony performs with winners of the Young Artist Competition at 3 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland. Free. 444-0801. www.oebs.org 

Roy Zimmerman with George Mann and Julius Margolin at 7:30 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. Sliding scale $5-$10. 848-6397. 

Cascada de Flores at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Grito de Lares Celebration for Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence at 4 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bobbe Norris & Larry Dunlap Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Wailing Junk Symphony, Brazilian African junk jazz, at 4:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jacob Wolkenhauer at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged with The Mercury Dimes at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Frank Martin Group at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

William Beatty and The Unconditionals at 6:30 p.m. at Mt. Everest Restaurant, 2011 Shattuck Ave. 665-6035. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 24 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Garrison Keillor introduces “Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $5 available from Cody’s. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Julie Potter and open mic theme of “pride and prejudice” at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ellis Island Band, klezmer, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Orquesta America at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

While General Betray-us tells us to “stay the course” and while the glaciers are melting, the museums in the Bay Area are doing great. The celebrated artist Fernando Botero has made a munificent offer to donate his powerful drawings and paintings of Abu Ghraib to the Berkeley Museum upon their return from their international tour. The Fishers are about to build a museum at the Presidio to house their significant collection of contemporary art.  

And The Oakland Museum of California has received the donation of the extraordinary collection of California art assembled by Ted and Ruth Nash. Twenty-two works from a total of 275 pieces are currently on view there. 

Many of the pieces are ceramics, a medium which in spite of its great history—Pre-Columbian sculpture, Tang horses, Greek vases, Baroque terra-cottas—has been marginalized as “craft” for too long. Peter Voulkos, who was instrumental in re-introducing clay as medium for sculpture, is represented by Solano (1958), one of his early signature pieces of assembled bulbous forms coated with black slip. I am proud to say that I was able to exhibit works like this piece at the Museum of Modern Art in 1958. The current show has a sign in which Voulkos is quoted: “I became more and more intrigued with the tactile and emotional potentials of working in clay which took me beyond pottery into ceramic sculpture ... I was terribly impressed with ... breaking through old traditions.” 

The exhibition includes Stephen De Staebler’s stoneware “Black Figure Stele” (1975), a human torso, embedded in its clay matrix, with a detached arm by its side. Like the Action Painters and like Voulkos, with whom De Staebler once studied, he encouraged the subject to emerge from the material. This torso is chthonic, earth-bound. It is terra-cotta, Latin for “cooked earth.”  

This material, so suffused with history and myth, has been reclaimed for our time by this fragmentary form. It suggest effigies of the Sumerians and the Egyptians and it also assumes a symbolic function of human incompleteness and yearning, reminding us of our own vulnerability. 

Robert Arneson, a major pioneer in ceramic sculpture, turned to working in bronze later in his career. In the 1990s, following his ill-fated “Bust of Mayor Moscone,” he produced ceramic and bronze portraits of himself, of Voulkos, Picasso and of Jackson Pollock, as in “Wolf Head” (1989) in the current show in which Pollock is shown with a wolf on his head. This image probably refers to the wolf under the mysterious table in Pollock’s great painting, “Guardians of the Secret,” which Arneson had studied in SFMOMA, before making his own glazed ceramic re-interpretation of the famous painting. 

Richard Shaw’s “Walking Man with Sketchbook” (1976) and Marilyn Levine’s “Purse with Rope Handle” (1970) are fine examples of the ability by sculptors to use clay for the creation of trompe-l’oeil effects. It is hard to believe that Levine’s purse is ceramic and not leather, and Shaw manages to put an old tin can in place of the artist’s head on top of a skeletal whimsical figure. These elements and even the drawings in the sketchbook are actually porcelain. The viewer can only be astounded by the technical virtuosity, skill and imagination of these artists. And Viola Frey, known for her over life-size ceramic figures is seen here with “Oakland Myths” (1985), a delightful piece in which cars, motorcycles, bikini girls and pet animals seem to burst from a colorful cookie jar. 

A LEGACY OF ART:  

THE TED AND RUTH NASH ART COLLECTION 

Through Dec. 30 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2200. 

www.musuemca.org. 

Image: Wolf Head (detail), 1989, by Robert Arneson. Bronze on wood base.  

Photo by M. Lee Fatherree 

A few years back, the Planet asked me to review a slim (hip-pocket-size, actually) volume called Sierra Birds: A Hiker’s Guide by John Muir Laws, a joint venture of Berkeley’s Heyday Books and the California Academy of Sciences. I gave it a thumbs up, calling it “ideal…for beginning birders or hikers with only a causal interest in birds,” but also useful to seasoned watchers. Laws, like Peterson and Sibley, had written and illustrated his own guide, which did not assume knowledge of formal bird classification: all the streaky brown birds were illustrated together. The art was lively, the text concise and to the point. 

That same summer, in one of those unlikely coincidences, Ron and I ran into Jack Laws at the Summit Lake campground in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Laws said the bird book wasn’t just a one-off: he was putting together a field guide, or series of guides, to the whole natural world of the Sierra Nevada—wildflowers, trees, insects, fish, mammals, the works.  

He happened to be at Lassen sketching bog-orchids and other montane flowers. Laws gave us a prototype of the mammal and fish sections of the project, which for the first time gave me some hope of telling the Sierra’s myriad chipmunks apart. (The range is in fact a hotbed of chipmunk speciation, but that’s a digression I’ll resist for now.) I later saw him as artist-in-residence at the Academy’s exhibit on California’s biodiversity, where more of his images were on display, and I’ve followed his work in Bay Nature. 

Well, the project is complete: The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada ($24.95) was published by Heyday and the Academy this summer. And I’m happy to say that it lives up to expectations. It’s thicker than the bird book, but would still fit comfortably in a backpack. 

I tend to carry a lot of reference baggage into the Sierra: not the Jepson Manual, but just about everything else. The old UC Press Sierra Nevada Natural History was good up to a point, but it had its limitations. So I found myself packing multiple bird guides, a regional flora or two, tree manuals, mammal and insect and reptile guides. And then I’d encounter an odd fish. No fish guide. Another time I found a meltwater pond in the Lakes Basin swarming with neon-green fairy shrimp. Not in the books. I remember stumbling across an extraordinary moth in a wet meadow in Lassen and having no idea what it was. There is no such thing as a field guide to western moths. Eventually, consulting a reprint of a 1903 moth manual, I concluded it must have been a common sheep moth. 

That identification would have been a snap with Laws’ new book. 

The coverage is inclusive. Not only are there moths, there’s a half-page of bumblebees, and pages after pages of those beetles of which God is so inordinately fond. There are spiders (with web diagrams), plant galls, obscure underwater things like freshwater sponges. Sponges in the Sierra? Yes, and bryozoans and hydroids. 

Fungi. Lichens. Tracks and scat.  

The wildflower section follows the precedent of the stand-alone bird book. You don’t need to know the ever-shifting terrain of plant taxonomy to use this book. (I’m now taking a taxonomy course at Merritt College, and I figure on learning this version—in which the lily family has been broken up, and water lotuses are next of kin to sycamores—and then not trying to keep up any more.) Laws provides simple keys to identification, based on color and other obvious features. There are helpful asides: “Difficulty identifying Arnica? Relax, it’s not you…” That made me feel a lot better. 

The guide covers all the Sierra’s national forests (Lassen to Sequoia) and national parks. Range maps are used sparingly, mostly with the small rodents—location is important in sorting chipmunks—and shrews. Did I mention the seasonal star charts? 

Omissions are inevitable in a project of this scope, but they’re few.  

The book went to press too late to include the newly discovered Yosemite bog-orchid, a tiny yellowish flower that smells, depending on your source, like feet, Limburger cheese, or a corral of horses on a hot day. Although the bizarre cave-dwelling creatures of Sequoia National Park, featured in this month’s National Geographic, are not included, most of us non-spelunkers will never encounter them. I would have liked to see larval amphibians (I’ve met more tadpoles in the Sierra than adult frogs and toads) and mosses, a truly underappreciated division of the plant kingdom. Geology isn’t covered, but there’s an excellent volume in the new UC press series of guides. 

Overall, though, well done, and a model work for other regional natural history guides. How about the Mojave and Colorado deserts? The Coast Ranges? Laws is still young, but there’s a lot out there.  

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 18 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Garreston Point. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Memorial Ceremony at the Oak Grove with Country Joe McDonald and veteran’s groups to honor the Californians who gave their lives in World War I. At noon at the Oak Grove in front of Memorial Stadium, Piedmont Way. www.saveoaks.com 

Join in the “Living Graveyard” Bring a white sheet and join in the legal street theater to make visible the reality of the deaths caused by the war, at noon at Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay St. 655-1162.  

Clean up of Strawberry Creek on the UCB Campus Meet at Sather Gate at 11 a.m. 893-8556, ext. 159. 

Constitution Day at the Free Speech Cafe with Daniel Farber on “Bong Hits 4 the Constitution: Free Speech Rights of Students Today” and Loweel Bergman on “Lots of Talk and No Action: Free Speech in the New Millenium” at 6 p.m. at Free Speech Movement Cafe, UC Campus. 643-6445. 

Berkeley Garden Club “Color, Texture and Water in the Garden” with Paul and Robin Cowley at 1:30 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. 

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Open House from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. RSVP to 642-9934. olli.berkeley.edu 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

“High Crimes and Atrocities” A documentary on the lies of the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165.  

“Sleep? I Wish!!!” Why people with Fibromhyagia, ME/CFS and related conditions do not get full and restful sleep and what can be done about it, with Andrew Greenberg, MD, of the California Center for Sleep Disorders at noon at Maffly Auditorium, Herrick Campus, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2001 Dwight Way. 644-3273. 

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

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

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

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19 

Community Forum on the Plans for the Solano Safeway at 6:30 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Building, 1325 Portland, Albany. 849-4811. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234.  

“Troubled Waters: Health of the SF Bay” Learn about legislation and other steps being taken to protect and restore the Bay at 6:30 p.m. at Rosa Parks Environmental Science Magnet School, 920 Allston Way. 559-1406. 

“On Learning from Disasters” with Bay Area cultural historians Stephen Tobriner, author of “Bracing For Disaster: Earthquake Resistant Architecture and Engineering in San Francisco,1838-1933” and Gray Brechin, author of “Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Margaret Crawford on “Everyday Urbanism” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium  

“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” with John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

“Amax: La Memoria del Tiempo” a film on the 1932 genocide of the Nahua-Pipil of El Salvador, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. 

Introduction to Marxism at 6:30 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. To register call 524-2319.  

Camp Kesem Information Night about a summer camp for children who have or had a parent coping with cancer, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 2040, Valley Life Sciences Bldg., UC Campus. campkesemberkeley@gmail.com 

Free Estate Planning Seminar at 7 p.m. at Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, 2700 Ninth St. RSVP to 845-7735, ext. 19.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 20 

Emergency Benefit for Street Spirit Editor Terry Messman and Ellen Danchik with poetry readings, art and music at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. at Cedar. www. 

freedomvoices.org/streetspirit 

“Local History of the Codornices Creek Watershed” with Richard Schwartz at 6:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. 759-1689. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll hunt for spiders, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will hunt for spiders from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Fall Plant Sale from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755, ext. 03. 

Students United For Peace “Committee on UnAmerican Activities” documentary by Robert Carl Cohen, also “Operation Abolition” at 7 p.m. in Dwinelle Hall, room 145, UC Campus. studentsunitedforpeace@gmail.com 

“An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” with Randall Robinson at 6:30 p.m. at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 International Blvd., Oakland. Advance tickets available at Marcus Books 3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakland, $5-$30. 652-2344. 

“Two Rings Around the Bay: The Bay Trail and the Bay Ridge Trail” A slide talk with Bill Long at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Sponsored by Berkeley Path Wanderers. 848-9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Border Patrol & Immigration Issues at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

“Places Seen-Places Imagined: Reflections on Xuanzang’s Xiyu-ji” with Max Deeg, Senior Lecturer in Buddhist Studies at Cardiff University, Wales, at 5 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Flr. Sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies. 643-5104. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Fall of the I-Hotel” a film and panel discussion on the evictions in Manilatown, San Francisco in 1977, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

Center for Elders Independence Gala “‘S Marvelous!” with food and music by the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, at 5:30 p.m. at Historic Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $125. RSVP to 839-3100. 

Free Diabetes Screening Come find out if you might have diabetes with our free screening test and make sure not to eat or drink anything for 8 hours beforehand, from 8:45 to noon at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. in the cafeteria at the LeConte School, corner of Russell and Ellsworth. karlreeh@aol.com 

Easy Does It Board of Directors Meeting at 6 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. 845-5513. 

“Andropause: The Male Menopause” at 5:50 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 21 

International Peace Day & Iraq Moratorium Gather 2:30 p.m. at West Oakland BART Station, south parking lot, march at 3 p.m. to the Railroad Bridge to the Oakland Ports. info@bayareacodepink.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Booker Holton on “Water in Israel: An Environmental, Political and Security Issue” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.5, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

Protest the War in Iraq from 2 to 4 p.m. on the corner of Acton and University. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Assoc. and Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 841-4143. 

Second Annual Berkeley Sustainability Summit from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Krutch Theater, Clark Kerr Campus, 2601 Warring St. Tickets are $25. Use the #7 Arlington bus line. www.ecologycenter.org/summit 

“Peace One Day” A documentary film describing how the United Nations General Assembly chose September 21st as the annual International Day of Peace and Non-violence at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting Friendship Hall, 2151 Vine St, at Walnut. Potluck at 6 p.m. 848-7357. 

“Special Circumstances” A film on former Chilean political prisoner Hector Salgado at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

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 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 22 

Berkeley Historical Society Tour of the California Historical Radio Society and KRE Radio History from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10, season pass is $30. To register and for meeting place call 848-0181. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland Walkways and Streetcar Heritage from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Call for reservations and meeting place. Tickets are $25-$30. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Last Day of Summer Stroll in Temescal Park Meet at 2 p.m. at the lawn area b, the north entrance off Broadway in Oakland. 521-6887. www.ebparks.org 

Cajun/Zydeco Festival at Ardenwood Historic Farm with music by Geno Delafose & French Rockin’ Boogie and Corey Lil Pop Ledet from Louisiana, Cajun/Creole food and more, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets are $16-$20 for adults, $2-$3 for childen 4-15, children 3 and younger free. 1-888-327-2757. www.ebparks.org 

"War Made Easy” A film by Normon Solomon at 7 p.m. at Buena Vista United Methodist Church, 2311 Buena Vista, between Oak and Park, Alameda. Benefit for Alamada Peace Network. http://WarMadeEasy.bravenewtheaters.com/screening/show/9772 

Center for Urban Peace re-opening with yoga and kirtan at 5 p.m., program at 7 p.m. at 2584 MLK, Jr. Way. RSVP to 866-732-2320. 

AAU Boys Basketball Tryouts for ages 12U, 13U and 14U, from noon to 2 p.m. at Berkeley YMCA’s main gym, 2001 Allston Way. 665-3264.  

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 23 

Little Farm Fair Celebrate the completion of the new cow barn, meet the new calves and enjoy live music, carfts and games from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Nature Area, Tiden Park. Visitors encouraged to use ACTransit bus #67. 525-2233. 

Facilitated Labyrinth Walk from noon to 3 p.m. at the future site of Berkeley Community Peace Labyrinth, East Lawn of Berkeley Marina. 526-7377. 

Berkeley Partners for Parks Fundraiser with music and food from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Egret Center on Bolivar Drive, just north of Ashby. Suggested donation $30. RSVP to 540-7223. info@pbfp.org 

6th Anniversary Lake Merritt Walk/Roll for Peace at 3 p.m. at the colonnade, southeast corner of the lake between Grand and Lakeshore Aves. www.lmno4p.org 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Schilling Garden Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Lakeside Drive and Madison, near the Lake Merritt Hotel. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Cross-Pollination: Gardeners Unite Meet people from garden clubs, community gardens, plant societies, and urban farms from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $2-$7. 643-2755. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club Open House with lawn bowling demonstrations and chance to bowl, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 2270 Acton St., corner of Acton & Bancroft. Please wear sneakers. 841-2174. 

“Politics 101 Meets Web 2.0: Democracy or Demagoguery?” Political candidate now have web sites, participate in social networks, and can respond to folks via YouTube. So are we closer to democracy? From 4 to 6 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15 at door. 

Autumn Equinox Gathering at 6:15 p.m. at the Interim Solar Calendar, Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. Gathering led by Rabbi David Cooper, Kahilla Community Synagogue. Dress warmly. www.solarcalendar.org 

“Learn How To Build A Living Roof Garden” Learn how to convert a flat roof into a planted garden from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St., enter via garden entrance on Peralta. Cost is $15, sliding scale. 548-2220, ext. 242.  

Health Care from a Marxist Perspective at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417. 

Girl Army Self-Defense Class runs for 6 weeks from 1 to 4 p.m. at Suigetsukan Dojo, 103 International Blvd., Oakland. For information and to register call 496-3443. 

“A Taste of California” Rotary Club of Oakland fundraiser from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Tickets are $65 available from www.museumca.org/tickets 

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan’s “little castle” at 1:15, 2:15, and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Free, donations welcome. 883-9710. 

Solo Sierrans Walk Along the Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline Meet at 3 p.m. at the trailhead parking lot, off Talbart in Martinez. 925-458-0860. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Carole Swain ”Living the Lasallian Mission” at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 5 to 9 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Cost is $3 per hour. 644-2577.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Loosening Self-Image: A Buddhist Perspective” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, SEPT. 24 

Peace Corps Volunteer Information Session at 6 p.m. at the Rockridge Public Library, 5366 College Ave. at Manila, Oakland. 1-800-424-8580.  

“Chickens and Ducks in Your Garden” Learn how to raise chickens and ducks in your garden with Linnea Due, who has raised them in North Oakland, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St. Enter via garden entrance on Peralta. Cost is $15 sliding scale. RSVP to 548-2220 ext. 242. 

“Building a Business from Scratch” A series of workshops held Mon. from 6 to 9 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. To register call 620-6561. 

Books and Ideas Group discusses “Whistling Season” at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577.  

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

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues. Sept. 18, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Sept. 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., Sept. 19, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Sept. 19 , at 7 p.m. at the South Branch Library. 981-6195.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Sept. 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7010.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.

As part of an ongoing effort to print stories by East Bay residents, The Daily Planet invites readers to write about their experiences and perspectives on living in, working in or enjoying various neighborhoods in our area. We are looking for essays about the Oakland neighborhoods around Lake Merritt, Fourth Street in Berkeley, and the city of Alameda. Please e-mail your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues in October. The sooner we receive your submission the better chance we have of publishing it.