Amidst jeers, catcalls and demands for the mayor's recall – and threats from Mayor Tom Bates that he'd clear the rowdy public from the chambers – the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday to allow two powerful telecommunications companies to place their antennas atop UC Storage, adjacent to the neighborhood at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue. The building is owned by developer Patrick Kennedy.  

Voting in favor of overturning a zoning board decision to disallow the antennas were Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli, Linda Maio, Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak. Councilmember Max Anderson voted to uphold the zoning board denial and Councilmembers Dona 

Spring, Darryl Moore and Kriss Worthington abstained. 

The vote came after attorney Kirk Trost, hired as outside counsel by the city, told the council and public clearly what he had been saying in closed sessions: Berkeley could not win the federal court case filed by Verizon, given the telecommuncation companies' rights under the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996.

As Berkeley’s downtown planning panel faces its Wednesday deadline to make, break, or abandon a compromise on raising buildings’ height limits, it might want to look to the decisions of those who’ve considered the issue a bit longer.  

The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee’s (DAPAC) volunteer members have worked hard for two years in attempts to frame a better downtown. But whether fairly or not, the people who built Scandinavia’s most famous cities had up to a 950-year head start on DAPAC. And up to an 800-year lead on Berkeley’s initial settlement. What did they do with that advantage?  

As I learned last summer, visiting Scandinavian cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen (Denmark) is like a trip to an alternate future. These capitals have virtually no skyscrapers anywhere near their centers. 

There, as in other Scandinavian cities, you’ll hear the same story: Some institution built one slightly tall building, and everyone felt it had overshadowed historic landmarks and compromised the city’s core. So they didn’t make that mistake again.  

Here in Berkeley, Mayor Bates and planning staff keep pressing DAPAC members to approve 16-story downtown “point towers.” But Scandinavia’s city dwellers consciously chose to let other kinds of points dominate their skylines: historic church and city-hall spires that are high points of civic pride.  

In Berkeley terms, the equivalent would be deciding to keep buildings low enough to preserve views of the Campanile, our own City Hall, the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the hills. 

What Scandinavia has achieved is cities of moderate density and wonderful human scale—places where you’ll find a great balance of vitality and civility. You can see hints of this in my fragmentary snapshots here. But for more panoramic cityscape views, do a Google image search for “Stockholm,” “Copenhagen,” or Norway’s Berkeley-scale “Bergen.” 

Stockholm, in particular, is probably the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. (And I speak here as a fierce Bay Area partisan.) It forges its civic identity out of several distinct islands, each recalling a different model European city.  

In all, Stockholm’s skyline looks a lot like the 1940s San Francisco that Herb Caen (and many others) lamented losing to skyscrapers. Yet Stockholm does achieve density—not through soaring towers, but through a graceful fabric of five- to seven-story buildings.  

Those heights fit conveniently within Berkeley’s existing 1990 Downtown Plan zoning. In fact, Berkeley can readily meet its regionally assigned housing targets within this current envelope, according to DAPAC and Planning commissioner Gene Poschman—our city’s spry eminence grise when it comes to planning as if people mattered.  

Stockholm is the alternate future that Poschman is talking about. It’s also the future pointed to by the overwhelming majority of speakers who opposed “point towers” at DAPAC’s Oct. 20 public workshop.  

It’s important that Scandinavian capitals aren’t living museums preserved by tourism, like Florence or Venice. They’re real, living big cities—vital political and trade centers. And they do have some tall buildings and other structures (like TV towers), if you look hard enough. But by design, these are located nowhere near these cities’ cores.  

Mayor Bates and some DAPAC appointees are advocating higher downtown buildings in the sincere hope of expanding housing access and moderating the city’s environmental footprint. But Scandinavia’s low-rise-by-choice countries are hardly slackers on either front.  

By almost any indicator, Scandinavia leads the world in promoting broad prosperity and bridging social inequality. Scandinavian countries routinely top international rankings of overall “quality of life” and residents’ self-reported happiness.  

Sweden, already committed to weaning itself off nuclear power, has set a national goal of becoming oil-free by 2020. Stockholm seems to be every planning scholar’s model of an energy-efficient, “green” city. One-third of its area is parkland, reportedly the highest ratio in Europe.  

Off Copenhagen’s waterfront (as in many other places in Denmark), you’ll see tall wind turbines proudly deployed to generate clean electricity. And Scandinavian cities offer swift, frequent, and integrated public-transit service that makes AC Transit’s and BART’s slow-motion competition look like the relic of a bygone century.  

Back in Berkeley, whatever DAPAC recommends must still run a gantlet of Planning Commission and City Council approval—followed by possible litigation and ballot referendums. There’s a real chance of seeing two years of work overturned.  

One frustrated insider told me that DAPAC’s whole administrative budget might have been better spent on giving commissioners and staff a concise “Grand Tour” of European cities that long ago solved Berkeley’s dilemmas, then just turning them loose to write.  

So in its contentious debate over building heights, perhaps DAPAC should just renew the five- to eight-story guidelines from 1990’s Downtown Plan. DAPAC could declare that these limits still basically serve community sentiment and goals for another 20 years. This would put the new panel’s imprimatur on a living document that emerged from a robust, open and participative, process.  

Almost no one dislikes the 1990 plan. Unless, that is, they sit very high up—like in the mayor’s office, or top UC administrative offices, or the leafy Piedmont aeries where major developers tend to live. 

Can we all get along? It was cooperative, consensus-based Scandinavia that also originated the “ombudsman” name and concept, more than 450 years ago. UC maintains an ombuds office, and the city eagerly subsidizes a “mediation” service that serves the same end.  

Can we agree on five to eight? 

Michael Katz is a Berkeley resident. 

High rises and high densities top the agenda for Wednesday’s Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meeting. 

With DAPAC’s Land Use Subcommittee unable to reach a decision last week on the most controversial element of Berkeley’s new downtown plan, they kicked the decisions upstairs to the full committee. 

DAPAC is now in its final month of deliberations on the new plan for the heart of Berkeley mandated in settlement of the city’s lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley expansion plans through 2020. 

City staff has consistently called for construction of 16-story point towers to accommodate anticipated population growth figures set by the Association of Bay Area Governments. 

City Planner Dan Marks has said downtown is the only practical place to locate the units, given strong opposition in other neighborhoods to building large numbers of dense condominium apartment buildings. 

While city staffers have reduced their calls for 14 of the high rise towers, the question remains what height limits the plan will impose, and in what areas of downtown. 

Hopes for what subcommittee Chair Rob Wrenn called a super-majority collapsed Wednesday when two members said they wouldn’t vote for an eight-story base height in an expanded downtown area core that the whole subcommittee approved earlier in the meeting. 

While city staff insists higher construction is needed to accommodate the ABAG numbers, Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman contends the numbers can be achieved with the existing plan and its five-floor baseline.  

During previous DAPAC sessions, opposition to the point towers has been strong, though retired UC Berkeley development executive and DAPAC members Dorothy Walker told the subcommittee Wednesday that the denser development she favors has strong support. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. At the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The new downtown plan is the result of the city lawsuit that challenged the latest version of UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP). 

The same day Berkeley’s citizen planners will be considering the impacts of one UC campus’s LRDP, students, faculty and town citizens in another UC campus community will be meeting and marching to challenge another UC LRDP. 

The gathering starts at 11 a.m. in Baytree Plaza Santa Cruz, followed by a march at noon. 

The Santa Cruz LRDP calls for boosting enrollment there by 4,500 students, and organizers say expansion plans threaten the quality of educational life for student and faculty and endanger 120 acres of forested land on campus. 

Berkeley could be the first city to pay upfront costs for residents upgrading energy efficiencies and/or going solar.  

Tonight (Tuesday), the City Council will be asked to OK the concept of a Sustainable Energy Financing District. Few details of the financing plan, including its cost to the city, are presented in the two-page proposal, whose goal is to add 125 homes and businesses to the city’s stock of about 400 energy-efficient and/or solar sites. 

Before the regular meeting, the council will hold a 5 p.m. closed session addressing a Verizon lawsuit against the city, based on a zoning board decision not to give permits for the placement of telecommunications antennas atop UC Storage at 2721 Shattuck Ave. The public can speak before the executive session begins. A public hearing on this question will also be held as part of the regular council meeting. 

At 6 p.m. the council will hold a work session on condominium conversion, addressing, among others, questions of simplifying the conversion process. 

The regular council meeting begins at 7 p.m. In addition to the discussion of city financing for energy efficiencies and solar panels, the council will discuss a final version of the procedure for public comment at council meetings, two reports by the city auditor recommending improvements in handling funds at the Nature and Permit centers, and increasing a loan for the Freight and Salvage. 

Financing solar Berkeley  

Cisco DeVries, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates, has been working for about six months with staff in the city’s finance department and energy division and the city’s bond counsel to create a Sustainable Energy Financing District. 

According to the proposal, the city would raise funds through bonds or financial institutions and interested people or businesses would borrow the funds for the purpose of making their homes more energy efficient and/or for adding solar panels and solar hot water.  

The city would have a lien on the home or business to assure repayment, and the property owner would pay off the loan—including interest and an administrative fee—through property taxes over 20 years. New owners of the improved property would assume the added tax burden. 

The assumption is that the city could borrow funds for this purpose at a lower interest rate than the individual property owner. It is also assumed that property owners want to make these changes to their homes, but are not doing so because other means of financing is too costly. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington told the Daily Planet that, while no survey has been taken documenting the number of people interested in going solar, the publicity about the financing district would draw people to have the work done.  

“It’s all about advertising,” Worthington said. “The key thing is that this opens the door for people to move forward” on going solar. 

The two-page report does not estimate staff costs to date or future costs to put together the district.  

The city has written a grant application to the Environmental Protection Agency through which they hope to obtain $160,000 for some of the initial costs. 

The grant proposal names a number of city staff to work on the project, but does not say what percentage of their time will be spent on this project and what priority this project will have over other projects: 

“The project will be managed by the city, under the direction of the principal investigator—Neal De Snoo, energy officer and manager of the Energy and Sustainable Development Office. The city will be responsible for all deliverables, financial management and the overall performance and execution of the project. In addition to De Snoo, seven staff will be assigned to the Sustainable Energy Financing District program, including Billi Romain, sustainability coordinator (management of Build-It-Green process); Alice LaPierre, associate management analyst (adviser on technologies); Timothy Burroughs, climate action coordinator (adviser on outreach and program evaluation); Cisco DeVries, chief of staff to the mayor; Zach Cowan, deputy city attorney; Robert Hicks, finance director; and a new staff person.” 

Build-It-Green, named in the proposal, is a Berkeley-based non-profit. The organization would hold workshops with builders, contractors and solar installers “to develop and market the initiative.” Build it Green’s board includes members who work for local “green” for-profit businesses, including solar installers, construction companies and building materials venders. 

Rules for public comment 

The council will be asked to formally approve rules for public speaking to which it has already agreed in concept, with guidelines permitting the public to speak on all items they wish to. The council’s earlier rules restricted the public to ten speakers chosen by lottery. This was challenged by SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense), which threatened a lawsuit if the rules were not changed. 

While SuperBOLD had wanted the rules to apply to all commissions and boards in the city, the current draft covers only the City Council.  

Auditor looks at permit and nature centers 

The permit center collects more than $800,000 in license, permit and engineering fees annually, but lacks a number of controls, City Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan said in a Nov. 6 report to the City Council. 

Among the problems cited are: sharing of one password among eight employees for computer entry into the receipts file; employees collecting payments do not have separate cash drawers or change funds; six employees have the combination to the safe, which is old and does not have the ability to capture data, such as the identity of the person opening it. 

The auditor has suggested remedies and the city manager agreed to most. They should be implemented by May. 

The nature center and adventure playground take in about $34,000 annually. In her report to the council the auditor pointed out controls she said were lacking. 

One was that Adventure Playground fees were sometimes waived when customers said they were low-income. There was no individual accountability for cash overages or shortages, she said. Among her recommendations is that if it is the City Council’s intent to waive fees, criteria should be established. 

Freight loan 

The council will be asked to approve an increase for the Freight and Salvage Coffee House of $350,000 beyond the original $527,000 loan to pay for city building permit fees for the new venue at 1010 Addison St. The council will also be asked to forgive another $75,000 of the original loan when construction of the new site is complete. The Freight and Salvage, formally known as the Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music, has repaid $450,000 of the original loan. 

Human rights 

The council will be asked by the Peace and Justice Commission to approve a resolution for world financial institutions to cancel the debt of impoverished countries.  

The Peace and Justice Commission is also asking the council to call on state Attorney General Jerry Brown to dismiss charges against the San Francisco 8, eight former members or associates of the Black Panther Party charged in the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer.  

The resolution notes that the Panthers were “a primary target in the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO program … designed to destroy and disrupt a number of progressive organizations … [and that statements of guilt resulting from] torture were used to bring charges in the mid-1970s.” 

161 Panoramic Hill 

A new home is proposed for 161 Panoramic Hill, but neighbors in the Panoramic Hill Association have appealed it, due to considerations of safety on the narrow street, particularly during construction. The public hearing on the appeal has been continued to tonight’s meeting. 

Warm pool 

The council packet includes a report on the warm pool, a swimming pool kept at about 92 degrees for the benefit of disabled and frail elderly people. The council has the option of discussing the report by moving it to the action calendar. 

In 2000, voters approved a $3.2 million bond to renovate the warm pool, currently located at Berkeley High School. Since that time the school district decided to demolish the structure that houses the pool and the pool itself. Constructing a new warm pool at Milvia Street and Bancroft Way, now a parking lot, is under consideration. 

Costs are estimated at $15 million. Voters would likely be asked to finance the costs through a bond measure. The cost to the taxpayer is estimated at about $6-to-$8 per $100,000 assessed value of a home, according to the report to the council.  

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) voted on Thursday to nominate the Berkeley High School campus to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district . 

The commission’s 5-0-1 motion to recommend the historic district was tempered with the acknowledgment that the old gym on the campus, itself the subject of a landmarking battle and now slated to be demolished, had been neglected and altered, and that a number of non-historic structures occupy the southern part of the campus. 

The State Office of Historic Preservation will vote in Palm Springs Friday on whether the district should be listed on the National Register. 

LPC Vice-Chair Gary Parson, who had opposed the landmarking of the Berkeley High old gym, abstained. 

“The application sweeps under the rug the effects of the earthquaking,” he said. “There is not much information provided about the pre- and post-retrofit structures.” 

LPC staff advised against the district nomination. 

Marie Bowman, a member of Friends Protecting Berkeley’s Resources, the group responsible for writing the historic district nomination, said that despite the staff comments, the state and the federal governments were pleased with the application. 

The Friends had sued the school district in March for what it charged was an inadequate environmental impact report on the demolition of the gymnasium and warm water pool within its Berkeley High School South of Bancroft Master Plan. 

Located on four consolidated city blocks in downtown Berkeley, Berkeley High was the first high school in California to be built according to a campus plan and is the only collection of school buildings in Berkeley which comprises different architectural styles of early 20th-century school designs. 

The district consists of eight buildings, four of which—the old gym and Natatorium (indoor swimming pool), the Shop and Science buildings and the Community Theatre—are city landmarks. 

Designed by William C. Hayes in 1922 in the Beaux Arts style, the old gym and the administration building are the oldest buildings on campus. 

Berkeley architect Walter H. Ratcliff designed two additions to the gym and Natatorium in 1929, which were modified by Thomas Chace in 1936 according to California’s 1933 Field Act for improvements in school building safety. 

The other three Art Deco style buildings were designed by Gutterson & Corlett in the 1930s. 

“All of the contributing buildings in the district are good examples of their style and illustrate the architectural evolution of the campus,” said Bowman. “Throughout its history, Berkeley High School’s various campus plans have tried to meld programmatic and administrative functions with civic architectural vocabularies, as the campus was conceived from its very start as an integral part of the downtown Berkeley civic center area.” 

Berkeley High itself goes back to Berkeley’s very beginnings in 1878, when the city was incorporated and the school district was established. 

One of the first accredited public high schools in California, in 1884, the school had its origins at the former Kellogg Primary School, located east of Shattuck Avenue, and Ocean View School in West Berkeley. 

1050 Parker 

LPC voted unanimously against landmarking a building at 1050 Parker St. but recommended that the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) should require that its full history be recorded as a condition of its demolition permit.  

In August, the tall metal-sash, multi-light windows were removed from the unoccupied one-story World War II-era building even though no demolition permit had been issued by ZAB. By law, demolition permits for any building over 40-years-old in a commercial zone must first be reviewed by the landmarks commission to determine whether the structure has any historic significance. 

The property had been purchased by San Rafael-based Wareham Developers from Pastor Gordon W. Choyce’s Jubilee Restoration organization in June. Project applicant Darrell de Tienne told the Planet in August on behalf of Wareham that the windows were removed as part of an asbestos abatement project. 

“The building is currently in very poor condition,” Chris Barlow, who was representing Wareham Developers, told the commission Thursday. “It would cost $2 to $3 million to bring the building back to warehouse standards. We would be delighted to recognize its history through a plaque.” 

Barlow added that Jubilee had an option to buy the San Pablo Avenue lot of the property back from Wareham to construct a residential unit. 

“The building did not look so bad not long ago,” said commissioner Carrie Olson. “Since Jubilee took it over, it has totally gone downhill ... anything that had any value was taken away.” 

The building was formerly occupied by Howell-North Publishers, who specialized in Berkeley, East Bay and California topics and railroad history. 

“Preservationists are united in saying that a plaque where a demolition has occurred is a joke no one appreciates,” Olson told the Planet after the meeting. “Our hope is that ZAB will require Wareham to have its history accurately represented ... The story then becomes part of the public record where future generations and historians can access it.”

The Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency (RCRA) is proposing to build a new housing development called Miraflores on the site of three Japanese American nurseries that date from the early 20th century. The greenhouse roofs are visible from west Interstate 80 near the Cutting Boulevard exit. 

Richmond bought the nearly 14-acre site for $7.6 million in June 2006 from the Sakai, Oishi, and Endo families, according to RCRA housing director Patrick Lynch and development program manager Natalia Lawrence, speaking in a joint interview last Friday. RCRA will establish a mix of single-family homes and rental apartments on the site. 

The two other partners in the Miraflores project are nonprofit developers of affordable housing: Eden Housing and the Community Housing Development Corporation of North Richmond. They will build 80 to 90 affordable-housing rental units on four acres of the site, said Lawrence. 

The city will choose a developer to build between 85 and 120 single-family homes for sale, most at market rate and at least 15 percent as affordable housing. The site will be a “parklike setting,” said Lynch, with open space, walkable areas, and the daylighting (or uncovering) of Baxter Creek, which flows partly under the site. 

In late October, Richmond published a request for proposals (RFP) from developers to build the single-family homes. A pre-submittal meeting and site tour will take place on Friday, Nov. 9, at 1 p.m. in the city council chambers. Proposals are due on Dec. 19. 

RCRA has met with a residents’ advisory committee and held a September meeting to get public input on the scope of the required environmental impact report (EIR). With preparation of the EIR, remediation of the site, and construction, Lynch and Lawrence estimate that the project will be complete in about 36 months. 

According to Donna Graves, who wrote the historical component of the 2004 “Historic Architecture Evaluation: The Oishi, Sakai and Maida-Endo Nurseries,” the site contains “the only extant cut-flower nurseries begun by Japanese Americans before World War II in the entire Bay Area, and [is] the last remaining of Richmond’s community of Japanese American flower growers.” 

Parts of the site may be eligible for placement on the National Register of Historical Places as well as the California Register of Historic Places. The city has identified the Sakai home, an adjacent water tower, and one greenhouse as structures to preserve, and plans either to keep them where they stand or to move them to new locations. 

California was once home to many farms and nurseries established by Japanese, or Issei, men who immigrated to the United States around the turn of the 20th century. 

A sizable Japanese American community grew up around the Bay Area, wrote Graves, as Japanese laborers who had found work with the Domoto brothers’ nursery in Oakland or laying railroad tracks in Richmond moved to the outskirts of established towns to start businesses. They bought or leased land and often used family labor to grow the carnations, chrysanthemums, and roses they would sell in San Francisco. 

The Alien Land Law of 1913 and similar laws forbade “aliens ineligible to citizenship,” Chinese and Japanese aliens, from owning property. Issei nurserymen and farmers transferred ownership to their U.S.-born children, or Nisei, or into corporations formed with non-Asian U.S. citizens. 

But this strategy proved no help after Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.  

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, authorizing the military to evacuate the 120,000 people of Japanese descent who lived on the West Coast into internment or concentration camps, often with only a few days’ notice. Most Japanese Americans complied, in the belief that this was the best way to show their loyalty. 

Japanese American families scrambled to store or sell most of their belongings, usually at a loss. Nursery owners hastily made arrangements for non-Japanese friends or colleagues to lease or maintain their businesses. In North Richmond, wrote Graves, nursery owners Frederick and Carrie Aebi took care of three Japanese American families’ nurseries in their absence. 

Some unscrupulous caretakers didn’t pay rent to interned owners, causing them to default on their mortgages. In Across Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Nisei Flower Grower, Yoshimi Shibata describes the caretaker’s white workers threatening him with a knife when he returned to check on his family’s property in 1944. 

Some nursery families that returned to the Bay Area in 1945 and 1946, like the Adachis, found their properties vandalized, their greenhouses shattered. In Richmond, some found their homes subdivided into rental units to house the shipyard and defense workers who had caused the city’s population to grow from 23,000 before the war to more than 100,000. 

Don Delcollo, president of the Contra Costa county chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, would like the Miraflores site to contain a memorial “to not only honor the flower-growing families but also all those interned” during World War II.  

Sixty-five years after the internment began, “we’re beginning to lose the vast majority of people who lived through the internment experience,” Delcollo said. He would like to see Richmond host “not just a memorial but something more on a national scale,” with the help of the National Park Service. 

Richmond is home to Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, a collection of sites throughout the city, such as a Kaiser shipyard, two child-care centers, and the Ford assembly plant, that highlight Richmond’s industrial past and commemorate the lives of ordinary Americans during the war. Including some nursery structures in the national park might just work. 

Richmond Councilmember Tom Butt said in a recent interview that the National Park Service originally suggested that the nursery properties were part of the homefront story: “Richmond is rich in historic resources and properly used, these can add a lot of value.”  

He gave two recent examples of historic structures that have been saved. A 104-year-old building from Point Richmond’s Santa Fe train yard was rehabilitated and reopened this week as a Mechanics Bank branch. And a private developer bought the Ford assembly plant on the waterfront, rehabilitated the property, and fully leased the space. The Ford building is the future home of the national park visitors’ center. 

“All of these projects started out with a large number of naysayers, people saying, ‘That old piece of garbage? We’ve got to tear it down.’ ” Butt said. “But now they’re showplaces, they’re unique. They’re something that brings people to Richmond and adds value to the businesses that are in them and adds value to the community.” 

He sees the same thing happening at the Miraflores site. “What’s there will add value and will make that development distinctive and more desirable than it would be if all that stuff was just bulldozed and forgotten.” 

Historian Graves agrees: “There really needs to be a more systematic and inclusive conversation about what’s most significant here, what’s a way to tell the story that allows the housing to happen but doesn’t erase this really critical portion of the past. 

“Many communities have been able to achieve that balancing act, and now that Richmond has the honor of being the only place in the United States where the homefront story is being told, it seems to me that with some energy and creativity, people could find partners and resources to assist with this.” 

City of Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency 

www.ci.richmond.ca.us/index.asp?nid=99 

Eden Housing (non profit) 

edenhousing.org 

Community Housing Development Corporation of North Richmond (CHDC) 

www.chdcnr.com 

Donna Graves (historian), Ward Hill (architectural historian), and Woodruff Minor (architectural historian), “Historic Architecture Evaluation: The Oishi, Sakai and Maida-Endo Nurseries” (October 2004) 

www.ci.richmond.ca.us/DocumentView.asp?DID=2144 

Councilmember Tom Butt, EForum Newsletter: 

www.tombutt.com/e-forum.htm 

City of Richmond Miraflores RFP and Related Documents 

www.ci.richmond.ca.us/index.asp?NID=1335 

Yoshimi Shibata, Across Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Nisei Flower Grower 

www.acrosstwoworlds.com 

For the average citizen, trying to clear up personal information on a government computer—Social Security records, for example—can range between a headache and a bureaucratic nightmare. For California ex-offenders it can be worse, a permanent way of life that sometimes can resemble a trip down into a Victor Hugo or Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel, a hole in which any effort to dig one’s way out only ends in burying oneself in a deeper hole. 

As a condition of their convictions, many California ex-offenders must pay fines and restitution, either to the state or to the victims, most often on installment. To pay such monthly installments, the ex-offender must, of course, have some source of income. But most employers require the filling out of a form that asks information on any criminal convictions, and many of those employers virtually automatically exclude any candidates who answer “yes” to such a conviction. No job, and no ability to pay the installments, gets the ex-offender deeper into problems with the courts. 

Another difficulty comes when ex-offenders take the first steps to try to clear up problems with their records in order to move forward with their lives. No small number of them have outstanding warrants that they have either forgotten about or were never informed of. Trips to the courthouse to deal with one situation can result—after a quick computer check—in an arrest for an entirely different situation. The same can be caused by simply going down to the Department of Motor Vehicles to reinstate a driver’s license or to obtain an identification card, without which no legitimate job can be obtained, and no check can be cashed once a job has been worked on and wages earned. 

The result can be that many ex-offenders who want to turn their lives around are prevented from doing so by bureaucratic entanglements, and are forced to either remain in a twilight zone of life where they can never re-enter society as full citizens, or else to revert back to the same type of criminal activity that got them into trouble in the first place. 

On Saturday morning, for the third straight year, a coalition of East Bay politicians, judicial representatives, and social services organizations called local ex-offenders together in the Berkeley High School Auditorium for a summit conference to help them start the process of working their way out of the morass. Co-sponsors and organizers included Congressmember Barabara Lee (D-Oakland), Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson (D-Oakland), the Alameda County Superior Court, the East Bay Community Law Center, and local ex-offenders organization All Of Us Or None. 

Dorsey Nunn, the charismatic ex-offender leader of All Of Us Or None, told participants that “cleaning your slate is a stopgap measure until we can win full rehabilitation after completion of your record.” He likened the continuing problems ex-offenders have once their time in prison or on parole is over to a situation “if you finished paying off your bill, and then a bill collector showed up the next day to ask you to pay something more.” 

Nunn said that helping get ex-offenders back into the mainstream of community economic and social life was “one of the important ways we can stop the violence and the craziness that’s going on all over Oakland.” 

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Gordon Baranco, who introduced the day’s events, said that “too many times, the legal system is a barrier to recovery from criminal conviction rather than assisting in that recovery.” Baranco said that such recovery was important both for the ex-offenders themselves and for society at large, and urged ex-offenders to “call your mamas, call your friends, call your neighbors across the backyard fence who always have that funny smell coming from their window, tell them we’re going to be here all afternoon, and they should come out and start getting their records cleared up.” 

In one workshop held in the Berkeley High band room, participants sat between the piano and assorted drums and peppered Serina Rankins, an East Bay Community Law Center paralegal, with questions about details on how to expunge their criminal records, and what will be the exact results. 

Participants learned, for example, that removal of a conviction from a person’s record under Penal Code 1203.4 can allow a job applicant to legally answer on a form that they have not been convicted of that particular crime. On the other hand, the conviction can still count as a strike under the three strikes law, and if it is a sex offense, the offender remains on the publicized sex registry. 

They also learned how, under certain circumstances, to have a felony conviction put down to a misdemeanor on their record using Penal Code Section 17b, or that they need a Certificate of Rehabilitation instead of record expungement if they served time in state prison, since in such cases the conviction will always remain on their record. 

For anyone who has never had to deal with the aftermath of a criminal conviction, it might have seemed like a conversation in another language, or dealing with a society with strange new rules. 

Rankins said that the Berkeley-based East Bay Community Law Center provides free consultation and representation for ex-offenders clearing up Alameda County criminal records, and will assist in filling out forms for records in counties outside of Alameda and states outside of California. 

Participants earnestly took notes or shared experiences with each other, and many of them took Rankins’ business card and set up consultation appointments. 

Earlier, participants listened to short presentations by local politicians sympathetic to their problems. 

Congressmember Barbara Lee criticized the fact that rehabilitation is no longer an official goal of the state’s criminal justice system. “Not enough lawmakers are concerned about what happens when ex-offenders come back to their families and communities after serving time,” Lee said. “When [Berkeley Mayor] Tom Bates and I were in the California Assembly, we tried to get rehabilitation back into the criminal code. We weren’t able to succeed. I know that [Assemblymembers] Sandré Swanson and Loni Hancock are working on that now. It’s a necessary step.” 

Bates, Swanson, and Hancock were all present at the summit. 

Lee also criticized “the prison-industrial complex that has skyrocketed in California under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.” 

Hancock called conditions for ex-offenders “a broken system. We have a broken probation system and a broken parole system. Coming out of incarceration, it takes four months to get an ID card from the state. Without that card, people can’t get a bank account, they can’t get a job, they can’t cash a check. And we wonder why these people are having problems.” Hancock said that the legislature passed a bill she authored this year (AB 639) that would have mandated the Department of Corrections to see that ex-inmates are able to get Department of Motor Vehicle ID cards as they come out of incarceration. “Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed it.” Hancock said.  

In his veto message Schwarzenegger said that while “I share the author's concern for providing tools to individuals about to be released from prison that will aid them in making a successful transition into the community … this bill will result in parolees receiving services that are not currently available to the general public. For example, the DMV does not perform the function of determining whether or not members of the general public have the ability to pay applicable identification card fees.” In addition, the governor said that Hancock’s bill would duplicate a pilot ID project already being worked on in collaboration with the California Department of Corrections and the Department of Motor Vehicles. 

“In his veto message, the governor said the ID program was going to be implemented, without the law,” Hancock said. “So we will watch him and see that he does so.”  

Swanson said that “we have to convince the larger public that we are not just doing you [ex-offenders] a favor, but that we are following the Constitution” in allowing ex-offenders to re-enter society after their sentences have been completed. 

And citing the biblical story of Jesus telling a crowd that was about to stone a prostitute that “he who is without sin, cast the first stone,” Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson said that “our society must understand we cannot prison-build our way out of the problem of crime and violence in California. We have to drop our stones and put our emphasis back into rehabilitation.” 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Police Chief Doug Hambleton will be at the Wednesday Police Review Commission meeting to respond to a subcommittee report on evidence theft issues. 

Last year former Sgt. Cary Kent pleaded guilty to felonies stemming from his theft of drug evidence he was charged with keeping safe. He subsequently spent one year on home detention.  

Following Kent’s conviction—and the charges against another officer for stealing property of arrestees—a subcommittee has been working to put in place new policies to reduce the possibility that these kinds of criminal actions could reoccur within the department. 

The subcommittee made a number of recommendations to the police chief and city manager, including improving the systems for auditing drug evidence and remedying deficiencies in the Kent investigation such as identifying the exact amount of drugs that were missing from all of the evidence envelopes that had been tampered with. 

The full report can be found on the PRC website: www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/prc. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. There will be time for public comment. 

—Judith Scherr  

Council rules are clear: councilmembers and mayor may not direct city staff to perform any task—at least not without the city manager’s intervention. 

And so a city manager’s memo last week sparked questions about which councilmembers might be overstepping their boundaries.  

The memo stated: “a few staff members have been involved in work assignments for council members ... Direct requests from individual members can cause uncertainly in priority setting and can cumulatively impact the goals that the council as a whole has set for the city.” 

“I assume the memo’s mostly directed at the mayor,” Councilmember Dona Spring told the Daily Planet on Friday. “His office involves city staff in so much of Tom’s [Mayor Tom Bates’] off-agenda work.”  

Spring said she was referring to the mayor’s solar initiative, for which he engaged the work of staff from a number of departments as well as outside bond counsel, all on the city’s dime.  

The manager’s memo might also refer to the mayor’s task forces, such as the health, budget and green business task forces for which the mayor uses city staff, Spring said, noting that Bates’ task forces often parallel city commissions. 

Mayor Bates did not return a call seeking comment Monday afternoon. 

“There’s an ad hoc government going on,” Spring said, noting that when she requests staff attend her community meetings, it takes weeks to get a response from the manager’s office.  

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said it’s not just Bates who makes liberal use of staff people. “Historically, the mayor gets away with this all the time,” he told the Planet on Friday. “City managers have historically been quite deferential to mayors.” 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz, however, told the Planet that his memo does not target any particular councilmember. “It’s the same memo I send out every couple of years,” he said. “It’s hard for new staff people to say ‘no.’” 

As long as the mayor or a councilmember goes through his office, they can request staff work, Kamlarz said. 

The City Charter says: “Except for the purpose of inquiry, the Council and its members shall deal with the administrative service solely through the city manager, and neither the council nor any member thereof shall give orders to any of the subordinates of the city manger, either publicly or privately.” 

As for giving preference to the mayor or particular councilmembers, Karlarz said: “I have staff work with all councilmembers. It’s all about managing the workload. It’s hard enough having one boss—but impossible with nine.” 

From the outside, Portable 9 looks like any other classroom at Berkeley High. But inside, a mix of sights, sounds and colors hurtles the visitor into a world of oil, paper and fabric.  

Local muralist Sara Bruckmeier enlisted the students from this classroom to help create two three-dimensional murals as part of the National Endowment of Arts’ “Big Read” project being celebrated in libraries across the nation this fall. 

Portable 9 is the home of Berkeley High’s Life Academy, started by Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp in 2005 as a program which helps 20 ninth-graders who need extra help to adjust to high school through an interdisciplinary project-based curriculum. 

“The idea was that it would be an open storybook,” said Bruckmeier, who directs the HereStories project at Epic Arts, which produces local public art projects. “The kids have stuff they want to talk about and stuff they don’t want to talk about and we had to respect that ... At first we thought they would just come in and spill their guts, but at this age they want to keep their privacy.” 

On Thursday, the work and stories of these student artists will be mounted on the recently renovated walls of the West Berkeley Library Branch. Under every page on the murals is a hidden one, revealing only as much as its creator wants us to see.  

The academy students spend their freshman year in the portable classroom on the east side of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and then move across the street to the main campus for sophomore year. 

“The idea was to take students who get flagged out of junior high as kids who might struggle in a traditional academic setting and offer them support both academically and personally,” said Hasmig Minassian, Life Academy teacher. “Our small class sizes and structured coursework prepare them for tenth grade at Berkeley High.” 

She said middle schools refer students to the program who show potential but have not been successful in school.  

“We often get students who face academic and behavioral challenges,” Minassian said. “They may have trouble interacting with teachers, be below grade level or just defiant. We teach them skills they wouldn’t otherwise get ... try to get them involved in community and find a purpose.” 

Some Life Academy students said the location of the program helped them focus on their assignments, but others said they longed to be across the street with the other students. 

“I like it here, It’s quieter and helps me concentrate,” said Alanah Davis, 15, who painted a boombox on the mural to express her love for music. “I got sent out of class everyday at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School ... I was disruptive. The other students got to me and distracted me. But when I came here I started paying more attention.” 

Next to the Alanah’s boombox on the mural is a hand-stenciled charcoal-gray sketch painstakingly crafted by freshman Salman Khan. 

Salman, who got suspended from Longfellow Middle School for tagging, said that he wanted to become a graffiti legend when he grew up. “I draw names and faces on train tracks, factory walls and trucks,” he said, showing off black, silver and gold spray cans which travel with him in his bag all day. 

Salman’s friend Michael Joyce tagged the word “kid” in bold red letters on the mural. 

“People keep telling me to stop acting like a kid,” he said. “But I don’t want to. I think graffiti is a problem because people think it is a problem... If you make it legal, I bet you no one will do it.” 

Salman and Michael said they appreciate the classes at Life Academy but hate the portables. 

“It sucks,” said Salman. “I want to be in the main campus with my brother. They have way too much fun there.” 

Bruckmeier’s library mural project, enlisting the talents of the Life Academy students, has been a boon for many of the teenagers, said Matt Kraft, a Life Academy teacher. 

“A lot of our students have valuable insights and art gives them the ability to speak about themselves,” he said. “Helping them engage their artistic intellectuality is one of the many ways to try to build on their intellectuality ... It exposes them to a world they haven’t been exposed to.” 

Bruckmeier said the students have done a beautiful job of weaving their stories into the project. 

“When I look at the murals, I see the chaos and struggle that takes place when you are searching for identity,” she said. “Then I see the beautiful calmness. It’s important to remember that this group responds more to images than to words ... and that all they want is the freedom to express themselves.” 

Artists Reception open to the public at the West Berkeley branch on Nov. 8 from 2:30 p.m.-4 p.m. 

www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/services_and_resources/literacy_program/BigRead.php 

The easygoing truce that prevailed during much of the debate over downtown land-use policy blew apart Wednesday, fissuring along familiar fault lines. 

The key issue, as always, is height: just how tall a skyline should be allowed for Berkeley’s city center in the new downtown plan. 

With considerable work left to be done, the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee Land Use Subcommittee is lobbing the political grenade up to the full DAPAC for its meeting next Wednesday night. 

While subcommittee members had seemed near a compromise that called for a lower skyline than some wanted, by the end of Wednesday morning’s meeting the search for what subcommittee chair Rob Wrenn called a “super-majority” had collapsed. 

The sticking point came near the end of the session after the panel had defined the boundaries of the core district where taller structures will be allowed. 

DAPAC is charged with drafting the basics of a new plan mandated in the settlement of a city lawsuit against UC Berkeley that challenged—among other things —the university’s off-campus expansion plans into the heart of downtown. 

The citizen planners have until the end of the month to finish their work, which will then pass on to the hands of city planning staff and the Planning Commis-sion, before eventually winding up for final decisions by the City Council and university administrators. 

From the start, the clearest divisions within DAPAC have been around the question of tall buildings. 

City staff has pushed consistently for high-rises in the form of 16-story “point towers” as a way of generating the population growth that advocates say will spark a cultural renaissance in the heart of the city. 

Critics charge that new housing will simply be filled with more UC Berkeley students, and not the families all sides say could bring a new vitality to the commercial district. 

Adding to the incentive for boosting the downtown’s population is a regional government quota for allowing new housing that city officials say must be accommodated to avoid the possible loss of some of the state and federal funds administered through the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). 

ABAG has set a preliminary figure of 2,431 new units of housing Berkeley must be willing to permit between 2007 through 2014. 

City Planning Director Dan Marks said he prefers to locate as many of the mandated units as possible downtown because of a history of opposition in other neighborhoods to new major housing projects. 

To accommodate all of the apartments and condominiums, Matt Taecker, the planner hired with university and city funds to steer the downtown plan to fruition, has been consistently urging DAPAC to approve 16-story “point towers,” each as tall as the Wells Fargo and Power Bar buildings which now dominate the downtown skyline. 

The Land Use Subcommittee was a last-minute addition to the DAPAC process after committee members voiced their frustration with the repeated resurgence of the point towers in a staff-proposed land use plan section. 

Planning Commissioner Gene Posch-man, a consistent critic of the towers, has argued that all the ABAG units can be accommodated within the existing plan’s height limits. 

By the end of Monday’s subcommittee meeting, members seemed to agree to eliminating the point towers from the plan if the holdouts could be convinced the needed numbers could be housed within lower-profile buildings, with a few buildings allowed to rise to ten stories. 

But the compromise fell apart when it became clear that some members had different understandings of what would be the baseline heights for all other buildings in the expanded downtown core area—the maximum height all buildings would be allowed without special conditions. 

It was Jesse Arreguin who raised the question, insisting he would only back the existing five-story limit, quickly backed by Juliet Lamont. The two have raised the most consistent resistance to the taller skyline, while retired UC Berkeley development executive Dorothy Walker has been the most consistent advocate of more height. 

The subcommittees other three members—Victoria Eisen, Jim Novosel and Wrenn—have been more ready to compromise. 

When Wrenn made a final plea for a compromise as the meeting drew near its close, Lamont responded, “That’s not going to happen.” 

In the end, DAPAC members will have to decide Wednesday whether to: 

• Keep the current baseline maximum building height in the downtown core to the current 65 feet, or five stories, with a limited number of exceptions to 100 feet [eight stories]; 

• Raise the baseline height to 100 feet;  

• Decide how many, if any, buildings should be allowed to rise over 100 feet, and by how much. 

Members did agree to bring forward a suggestion by Walker to set a review period that would allow for a reconsideration of height limits. 

While Walker wanted five years, the majority sentiment seemed to favor eight. 

Setting a review period length and adopting the boundaries proposed as the limit for taller buildings will also be on the agenda. 

The subcommittee did agree on allowing for 100-foot structures on Shattuck Avenue at the southern corners of the Durant Avenue intersection if a developer agreed to include a full-service grocery store in the project.

While Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee members have waged prolonged struggles over landmarks and tall buildings, they voted unanimously twice Monday night, approving two more chapters of the new downtown plan. 

With minor changes, DAPAC gave the green light to chapters on Economic Development and Housing and Community Health and Service. 

Joining the committee as it rushes toward its mandated Nov. 30 shutdown was Erin Banks, named by City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli to replace his former council colleague Mim Hawley, who stepped down from the committee. 

Banks, who filled in for Hawley during DAPAC’s last session, is the spouse of former city Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades. 

Lisa Stephens urged the committee to add a provision requiring the university to pay fees whenever they leased office space off campus to compensate the city for revenues lost when the property was automatically removed from the tax roles. 

“It’s a nice idea, but it’s pie in the sky,” said Terry Doran. “I don’t believe we as a city have the power to require the university to pay fees.” 

Emily Marthinsen, the UC Berkeley assistant vice chancellor who represents the university as a non-voting DAPAC member, urged the committee to reject the proposal, because no one on the Berkeley campus could approve it. The decision ultimately would be up to the university’s Office of the President. 

DAPAC Chair Will Travis said that approval might imperil the spirit of cooperation he said had prevailed throughout the downtown planning process. 

“If they don’t want to have such an agreement, then there should be no office space,” said Wendy Alfsen. 

“I kind of agree,” added Patti Dacey. “The taxpayers of this city have to pay every time they flush a toilet.” 

“Let’s not try to pick a fight,” said Travis. 

In the end, members thought it better to ask than to require. 

Another suggestion, urging cooperation with the university athletics department to encourage student athletes at Berkeley High, was rejected because it might violate National Collegiate Athletic Association recruiting rules. 

Language for another proposal, to encourage the Haas School of Business to locate its executive education program downtown, was removed after Marthinsen said the school had opted to change the program’s format so it could be taken to distant corporate offices rather than bringing the executives to Berkeley. 

Haas had originally tried to take over Bowles Hall, the first residence hall in the University of California system and a nationally- and city-recognized landmark, for the program. 

Alumni of the all-male hall were quick to mount a protest, encouraging the use of the Shattuck Hotel instead, a move seconded by local preservationists. But in the end the university opted for the off-site version of the program, leaving Bowles in its traditional role. 

Committee members also struck language from the plan that would have encouraged the city to use arts and cultural bonuses to allow developers to build bigger buildings in exchange for providing space for exhibitions, performances and similar uses. 

The language was eliminated in light of the ongoing battles over the use of the city’s cultural bonus at the Gaia Building. 

Members rejected a request from Marthinsen to strike language calling for a 100-feet-deep business zone along the Shattuck Avenue frontage of the university’s building site at the old Department of Health Services property. 

Members cited other policies already adopted that called for the space to be used to generate sales tax revenues for the city. 

Adoption of the housing and services section was rushed through in the closing minutes of the meeting over the objections of Billy Keys, who said the committee should spend more time looking at the chapter in detail. 

DAPAC will face critical decisions during its next session Wednesday night, when it considers questions of building height and population density. Members of the committee drafting that chapter were not able to come to consensus. 

At the following session on Nov. 12, members attending the committee’s 47th meeting will take up the environmental sustainability chapter, which will buttress what members have agreed will be the plan’s overarching theme. 

That session will also begin the review of chapter revisions as worked out by the city’s planning staff, with the final review including all of the chapter set for Nov. 26. 

Drafts of the proposed chapters are posted on the city’s web site at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/dap/reports.html

Berkeley High School has dropped a plan to ask visitors to provide photo identification to enter the campus after some parents complained that it was unwelcoming and discriminatory. 

The proposal, devised by the school administration last month, was to have contributed to added security measures at the high school, following a survey of high school safety in neighboring school districts. 

Principal Jim Slemp had told the Planet that photo IDs would make the school safer and help keep tabs on who was on campus. He did not return messages Thursday asking for comments on the demise of the plan. 

Slemp’s secretary Richard Ng said the school’s Governance Council rejected the proposal for checking identification of all campus visitors. The council instead voted on Oct. 23 to approve the current visitor policy, which requires all visitors make an appointment at the front desk to meet with a teacher, though they do not have to show any identification. 

“We are not going to ask for IDs because we are not sure what would be accomplishing with it,” parent volunteer coordinator Janet Huseby told the Planet. “We are trying to do a balancing act between security, safety and welcoming, and the idea of an ID check didn’t seem particularly welcoming.” 

Parent Teacher Student Association president Mark Van Krieken said that the ID policy would have been potentially discriminating against immigrant parents who might not have photo IDs. 

“It just creates more emotional distance between the families and the school,” he said. 

Most teachers and parents on the council agreed that the identification check would set an unfriendly tone for the school. 

“It was not enforceable,” said council parent representative Jon Marley. “We do not want to put people at the front desk, as police officers and ID checkers, some of whom are parents themselves. Signing in and checking what their business is is enough ... As a parent, I would not be okay with passing through a security process. It is intrusive and discourages people from coming on campus.”  

Phil Halpern, council teacher representative, said he understood the desire for a more secure visitors’ policy. 

“It made some sense to assert some control on visitors because we’ve had some scary incidents on campus,” he said. “Some of my colleagues have been through the uncertainty of a stranger walking in their corridor. That can get to you. I would like to have an open institution, but I think the well-being of teachers and students is also important.” 

Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, another parent representative, said that the protocol should be put in all languages in the parent handbook. 

Berkeley High parent Laura Menard said that requiring all adults to present a photo identification wouldn’t have im-proved campus safety much since she believed the real threat comes from young non-students hanging around the campus to sell drugs and cause trouble. 

“Students should wear IDs off campus at lunch,” she said. “Police often fail to identify suspects involved in fights.” 

Dean of Students Alejandro Ramos and Berkeley High beat officer Casimiro Pierantoni did not return phone calls for comment. 

The law governing Berkeley’s condominium conversion, revised multiple times over some three decades, is likely to undergo more changes in the next month or so.  

“[The ordinance] hasn’t been very successful and you have to ask why,” Don Holm, who sits on the Berkeley Property Owners Association Board of Directors, told the Daily Planet Wednesday. 

Although Condominium Con-version Ordinance revisions of 2005 were supposed to facilitate conversion and the eventual sale process, no rental apartments converted to condominiums have actually sold under the revised law, according to Jay Kelekian, executive director of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board. 

The question of revamping the ordinance will be discussed Tuesday at a 6 p.m. workshop before the regular City Council meeting at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The council is slated to address some changes to the law in December and consider other changes next year. 

Topics discussed at the workshop will likely include the planning staff’s suggestion to simplify the steps it takes to convert a unit and a property owners’ group’s recommendation to lower conversion fees. 

Berkeley’s Condominium Con-version Ordinance regulates conversion of apartment and tenants-in-common buildings (TICs), in which a number of individuals have purchased a building together and live in separate units, to condominiums.  

It aims at ensuring that the Berkeley’s rental housing stock is protected and that middle- and low-income renters are not forced out of Berkeley. The ordinance also raises funds for the Housing Trust Fund, the city account which was set up to pay for low-income housing. 

Berkeley’s original ordinance prohibited conversions, which are considered by some to be a source of gentrification.  

Since 2005 a revised Condominium Conversion Ordinance has facilitated conversion of TICs. TICs are problematic, says Rent Board Executive Director Jay Kelekian, because if one partner has a crisis—say, a bankruptcy—all partners are jointly responsible.  

TICs “also create incentives to evict tenants through the Ellis Act [which allows landlords to go out of business and remove tenants from their properties] in order to sell a building as a TIC project,” says an Oct. 12 report by the ad hoc Committee on Condominium Conversion, comprised of Planning and Housing departments and Rent Board staff and the city attorney. 

Holm of the BPOA believes, however, that problems associated with TICs have been overstated. 

Beginning in 1992, the ordinance allowed conversion of apartments, but required a fee that amounted to about 70 percent of the selling price. While the ban on conversion had been lifted, the law’s intent was to discourage conversion. 

In 2005, the ordinance was modified to allow property owners to pay fees of 12.5 percent of the selling price, if, in return, the seller agreed to give sitting tenants who do not want to purchase their unit a lifetime guarantee of tenancy with guaranteed moderate increases in rent. The tenant would have the right of first refusal for a year to purchase the apartment. 

No such fee is associated with the conversion of TICs. 

It was expected that this plan would generate millions of dollars for the Housing Trust Fund that would be matched with federal low-income housing dollars to provide affordable housing. 

But while 230 property owners have applied for conversion since 2005 and 20 to 30 have actually converted, none have sold, Kelekian said. 

The reason for the slow pace of conversion depends on whom one asks. 

Fee question 

Holm cites a number of factors. One, he says, is the “burdensome” fees established by the ordinance. At 12.5 percent of the selling price, fees for a $500,000 condominium would be at $62,000. 

A more “reasonable” fee would be set at $8 to $12 per square foot, Holm said. “If the mitigation fees were lower, in the end we would have more units and more revenue,” he said. (Fees for an 800 square-foot-condo at $10 per square foot would be $8,000.)  

But Kelekian points out the instantaneous increase in value which property owners attain by converting. For example, he said, a four-unit property may have the value of $600,000, or $150,000 per unit, but when those units becomes condominiums, their value can go as high as $500,000 each. 

Process revision 

Holm said another reason the ordinance has been ineffective is that the planning staff is not familiar with the conversion process. 

“Sometimes staff doesn’t know what to do next,” he said. “It’s partly because the ordinance has changed so many times,” he said. 

Numbers 

In the current ordinance, 100 units per year can convert to condominiums. But Holm said among the suggestions made by BPOA is that more than 100 units should be allowed to enter the process, especially given that few actually are converted and sold.  

“There are 150 units in the pipeline,” Kelekian said, adding that not many property owners want to get in line. 

Local law compliance 

One of the demands of the ordinance that sidelines some potential converters is the requirement that if work has been done on the property without permits the owner is required to have the work inspected and brought up to code.  

“It’s a big issue,” Kelekian said, noting that he thinks there are good reasons to inspect the unit and bring it up to code for health and safety issues. Work done that does not affect health and safety should be noted and shared with the buyer, but not necessarily brought up to today’s codes, he said. 

Kelekian gave the example of a bathroom where a door was slightly too narrow: The owner had to spend $20,000 remodeling the bathroom, when this was not a health or safety issue. 

Staff will likely ask the council to consider making some changes in December, such as streamlining the ordinance and changing the code compliance requirement, while other questions could wait until March.  

A question that needs more time is how to treat inclusionary units in a building where the units are slated for conversion. One unit out of five in new buildings under state law must be affordable to relatively low-income people. Kelekian said the city should find a way to preserve inclusionary units in converted buildings.

A dozen protesters gathered Tuesday morning outside the building where UC Berkeley was celebrating its embrace of Dow Chemical. 

For Kamal Kapadia, a doctoral student from India, the $10 million “Sustainable Products and Solutions Program” joining Dow with Berkeley’s College of Chemistry and the Haas School of Business was nothing more than another example of corporate greenwashing. 

“This program allows Dow to use our name and claim to be sustainable,” said Kapadia. 

Pointing to campus police who showed up at the invitation-only event in an upper floor meeting room at Haas, Kapadia said, “It should say something about ‘sustainabilty’ that we have to have police at this event, and that they have to do it in secrecy. What does this say about the kind of sustainabilty we are signing on to? But this is not about sustainability. This is about making things.” 

Still, the turnout was a far cry from the mass protests that targeted Dow four decades ago, when angry demonstrators and a widespread boycott forced the company to stop selling napalm to the government—the chemical used in the massive firebombing campaigns of the Vietnam War. 

Some of those gathered for Tuesday’s protest were members of Veterans for Peace, who had seen the effects of the bombings firsthand. 

Paul Cox, a white-haired veteran, said he was especially concerned about Dow’s role as a manufacturer of Agent Orange, a chemical plant killer sprayed on thousands of square miles of jungle during the war to lay the land bare to expose Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troop movements. 

The Veterans Administration has linked the disease with a wide range of cancers and other ailments, while Dow insists there has been no established link to disorders. 

The veterans’ group is helping Vietnamese residents in their quest for legal damages from Dow. 

Soft launch 

The program, funded at $2 million annually over five years, was unveiled at the luncheon meeting by deans Tom Campbell of Haas and Charles Harris of the College of Chemistry, joined by David Keppler, Dow’s chief sustainability officer. 

Serving as the program’s director is Tony Kingsbury, another Dow executive who recently served as the company’s global public affairs leader. His new title for the unsalaried position at Haas is director, Sustainable Products & Solutions Program. 

According to the university’s invitation to what it described as a “soft launch,” the program will create “a new multidisciplinary learning and research environment when the foundations of sustainability—business, science, environment, and society—are all considered simultaneously as new products and solutions are explored.” 

Among the program’s features will be sustainable product research fellowships, case studies and the facilitation of links to corporate grant and internship sponsors. 

“Ultimately the program will involve future collaborations with several UC Berkeley schools and corporations,” the invitation announced. 

The university’s announcement of the Dow program comes just a week before the anticipated signing of another controversial corporate deal, the $500 million research grant linking UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of Illinois in a collaborative effort to mine new transportation fuels and energy sources from plants, microbes, coal and nanotechnology. 

Bhopal tragedy 

Dow inherited the legacy of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters when the company bought Union Carbide six years ago. 

Because of a systemic failure at Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, a massive leak of deadly methyl isocyanate gas triggered by a Dec. 3, 1984, explosion killed as many as 8,000 people. 

Another 100,000 people, many elderly and children, sustained permanent injuries, and victim advocates claim that as many as 20,000 of them have died as a consequence of the damage done from the chemical exposure. 

When Dow bought Union Carbide the company refused to accept any liabilities stemming from the disaster, and the Supreme Court of India had upheld an earlier settlement. 

Advocates fought the settlement, and have demanded that Dow pay for all costs of remediating the still-contaminated soil and groundwater. 

The Associated Students of the University of California at Berkeley adopted a 2004 resolution asking the company to accept responsibility and carry out a cleanup. 

According to an Oct. 28 article in the Calcutta Telegraph, thousands of students and some of the faculty at the seven Indian Institutes of Technology have signed petitions demanding that Dow stop recruiting on their campuses.

It was just a little rain three weeks ago, but enough to stop up a drain and cause flooding at the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library bookstore in city-owned Sather Gate Mall. 

Carpets and piles of books were ruined.  

“It was an unseasonable rain,” said Hallie Llamas, property administrator for the city. The city has scheduled maintenance of the drains, but the storm came sooner than expected, she said. 

Llamas said the city unclogged the drain and advised the Friends of the Library about how to make claims for damage with the city. 

“We’re back up and running, though we don’t have any carpet,” Ruth Grimes, Friends of the Library volunteer and board member, told the Daily Planet. The store has been reopened for one week, after two weeks of closure. “Sales were definitely up” after the store reopened, Grimes said, noting, however, that she didn’t know if they were up enough to make up for two weeks closure.  

The Friends of the Library are still calculating loses, said Amy Ross, president of Friends of the Library. 

The Friends of the Library used bookstore in the Sather Gate Mall is at 2433 Channing Way. 

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is reprinted with permission from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. 

The Bay Guardian has presented enough evidence of predatory pricing by the SF Weekly that our lawsuit against the paper and its chain owners can go forward to trial, a judge ruled Oct. 25.  

Judge Richard A. Kramer denied three separate motions by Village Voice Media, the Phoenix-based 16-paper chain, that sought to dismiss the case.  

In a suit filed in 2004, the Guardian charged that the Weekly and the East Bay Express had engaged in a pattern of selling ads below cost in an attempt to put the locally owned alternative paper out of business.  

VVM sold the East Bay Express this year to local owners.  

The case was filed under the state’s unfair business practices law, which bars the sale of any good or service for less than the price of producing it if that cut-rate selling is aimed at hurting a competitor.  

VVM’s motions for summary judgment argued that the Guardian couldn’t prove any intent by the Weekly or VVM to injure the local competitor. In briefs and oral arguments, VVM lawyers claimed that the chain’s CEO, Jim Larkin, had denied any predatory plans or intent. And VVM insisted that the evidence collected by the Guardian so far was inadequate to take the case to trial.  

The chain lawyers also argued that the Guardian’s suit was a threat to the First Amendment rights of the Weekly, because if the paper was forced to quit selling discounted ads it might have to cut editorial space and staff.  

Ralph Alldredge, a Guardian attorney, noted that the Weekly had admitted selling ads below cost. And he said the evidence collected so far in the case shows strong indications of predatory intent.  

Alldredge acknowledged that selling below cost isn’t always illegal; start-up businesses, for example, often lose money at first trying to attract customers. But he said the Weekly has been losing money every year since New Times/VVM bought it in 1995, and those losses have only increased over time, to as much as $2 million a year. It’s hard to imagine any good reason why a business would set its prices so low that it operated at a loss every year for more than a decade, Alldredge argued, unless the goal was to use chain resources to starve out a locally owned competitor.  

Alldredge cited a deal between Clear Channel, which owns the concert promoter Bill Graham Presents, and the Weekly under which the Weekly paid to have its name on the Warfield theater, a BGP venue - and in exchange, the Weekly would get almost all of the advertising money that once went to the Guardian. He cited a memo showing that the deal would give the Weekly 85 percent of the ads, and the Guardian would get “15 percent to zero.”  

James Wagstaffe, arguing for the Weekly, said that forcing the chain paper to sell ads at a higher rate would be the equivalent of the government deciding how much of the finite space in the publication could be devoted to news. He said an economic expert hired by the Weekly, Harvard professor Joseph Kalt, had determined that the ad market in San Francisco was so soft that the only way to increase revenues enough to cover the Weekly’s operating costs was to cram more ads onto every page.  

Alldredge countered that courts have always agreed that basic economic regulations can apply to newspapers without a First Amendment threat.  

“One hundred years of cases say that the mere economic regulation of newspapers is not unconstitutional,” he said. “There is nothing in the First Amendment that says you can engage in predatory behavior.  

He also noted that Jed Brunst, the top finance officer for VVM, had testified in a deposition that the chain had prepared projections in 2005 to present to investors. Those projections showed that the Weekly could become profitable - if it raised ad prices. The paper would lose some ad volume to the Guardian, but would be able to retain the same percentage of editorial space to ad space and would be a profitable operation, Brunst’s report to the investors said.  

In other words, the top people at the chain knew they could make money by ending their below-cost sales - but they continued with the predatory practice. That, Alldredge said, created a pretty reasonable presumption that the chain was out to harm a competitor.  

Kramer rejected all of the SF Weekly’s claims. He said that the First Amendment didn’t allow newspapers to engage in “impermissible anticompetitive” behavior. And the question of intent, he said, was a fact for a jury to determine—and “a denial of improper activity by itself is not enough” to dismiss this case.  

New Times Executive Editor Mike Lacey and Executive Associate Editor Andy Van De Voorde came from Phoenix to attend the hearing, and Van De Voorde wrote a lengthy piece that appeared on the Weekly’s website calling the Guardian’s three-year-old lawsuit “looney.” The piece put the chain’s spin on the hearing and laid out the Phoenix operators’ opinions on the Guardian claim.  

But in the end, only one opinion mattered, and that was the opinion of Judge Kramer—who didn’t buy one bit of the Weekly’s argument.  

Trial is set to begin early in January 2008.  

The Guardian is represented by Ralph Alldredge, E. Craig Moody and Rich Hill. Three VVM lawyers—Ivo Labar and James Wagstaffe of the San Francisco firm Kerr and Wagstaffe and Don Bennett Moon of Phoenix—were in the courtroom representing VVM.

A group of South Berkeley neighbors will picket the Verizon Wireless store on 1109 University Ave. from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday to protest the company’s plans to install cell-phone antennas atop the UC Storage building at 2721 Shattuck Ave. 

The protesters said they will be wrapped in tin foil.  

“We are making costumes of aluminum because at the last council meeting, [Councilmember] Gordon Wozniak suggested that people could protect themselves from the antenna radiation with aluminum foil,” said Laurie Baumgarten, a member of Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union. 

The group will ask the cell-phone giant to withdraw its lawsuit against the City of Berkeley alleging that the city violated the Telecommunications Act prohibiting health concerns as a factor in weighing approval of wireless facilities. 

The Berkeley City Council had asked the Zoning Adjustments Board to make a decision on the antennas based on a third-party engineering review, parking concerns and illegal construction, instead of health issues.  

“The idea that neighbors should live with metal blinds drawn down all the time and not go out into the garden is absurd. It’s not acceptable that the neighborhood lives in fear,” Baumgarten said. “The city is obligated to protect the community from potential health hazards. We want the city to support the ZAB and fight this lawsuit.” ZAB’s decision stated that it was “unable to make the necessary finding based on substantial evidence that the towers were necessary to provide personal wireless service in the coverage area, since service is currently being provided and since no evidence has been presented that existing service is not at an adequate level.”  

The question of whether the antennas should be permitted on UC Storage has bounced back and forth between the council and ZAB a couple of times, with the council splitting its vote last week over whether to uphold an earlier ZAB rejection of the cell-phone antenna application. The council will vote again on the issue at Tuesday’s meeting. 

Verizon attorney Paul Albritton told the council that were no other suitable sites for locating the cell-phone antennas and asked them to “to look beyond emotional appeals” of the community.  

Although city staff have said that the lawsuit could cost around $250,000, community members contend that it could be fought for less.

Formerly incarcerated individuals will have the chance to learn how to clear up their criminal records and “put the past behind them” when Congressmember Barbara Lee and several East Bay officeholders and agencies host the third annual Clean Slate Summit this weekend. 

The event will be held Saturday 9 a.m.–3 p.m. at Berkeley High School, 2223 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Citizens with criminal records who wish to have records cleared will be able to attend workshops to learn how that is done, as well as begin the process under the guidance of volunteer attorneys and service providers who will be available at the event for consultation.  

According to Margaret Richardson of the East Bay Community Law Center, no record purging will take place on Saturday. “That involves a process that includes going to a judge and getting a court order,” she said.  

Criminal records are considered one of the major impediments for formerly incarcerated individuals to obtain the employment needed to keep from committing criminal acts to support themselves. 

Along with Lee, co-sponsors of the event include Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Gordon Baranco, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Trin Thompson, and representatives from the Alameda County Superior Court, Alameda County District Attorney's and Public Defender's Offices, All of Us Or None, and the East Bay Community Law Center.

Robbery 

On Sunday at 9:58 p.m., a young man evaded local authorities after he stole cash and a pack of cigarettes from Andronico’s at 1501 University Ave. 

Walgreens robbery 

An elderly Berkeley man stole items from Walgreens on the corner of Stuart and Adeline streets at 3:39 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. When the automatic door didn’t open on his exit, an employee detained him. He pulled out a knife and ran from the store. Local police stopped a man fitting the description a mile away from the scene and arrested him. 

Road rage incident 

Shortly past 11:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, two men got into a fight near Grocery Outlet on the 2000 block of 4th Street. One male struck the other male and escaped.  

Witness/victim scare 

On Saturday, two men approached a UC student. While one hit him, the other went through his pockets. The men took a cell phone and a wallet containing cash and credit cards. The injured student ran by a witness who asked if he should call the police. After the young student said yes and the witness began to call, one of the suspects noticed and chased the witness down to the bottom level of the Downtown Berkeley BART station, where station agents called the police. The student went to the hospital. No suspects have been taken into custody. 

Fight 

At 1:20 p.m. on Friday, two adults fought each other at the corner of University and 8th Street. No arrests were made, since the battery was mutual, said Lt. Wes Hester, spokesman for the Berkeley Police Department.

CHIANG MAI—The world needs to hear from Aung San Suu Kyi—even if it’s just a three-minute statement.  

In the wake of the recent army crackdown, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad has urged that detained opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Suu Kyi be allowed to talk to the U.N. Security Council.  

Undoubtedly, the Oxford-educated daughter of Burma’s national independence hero Aung San would deliver a powerful speech. The world needs to know where she stands following the regime’s bloody response to the September demonstrations. But the question remains: Is this opportunity to address the world realistic?  

I was recently told that Suu Kyi, 62, was distressed to learn about the deaths and brutal crackdown on monks. U Ohbasara, one of the monks who led the peaceful march to Suu Kyi’s house, told The Irrawaddy over the phone last week that she had asked the monks to carry on their peaceful march. “She was in tears,” the monk said. “She told us she wanted to enjoy freedom.”  

When U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari visited Rangoon at the height of the crisis, she met him twice but there was no public statement from her. During her first term of house arrest, from 1989 to 1995, Suu Kyi managed to send out occasional messages to the outside world through U.N. envoys, visiting U.S. congressman Bill Richardson and her late husband Dr. Michael Aris.  

Over the last four years, however, there has been little news from Suu Kyi, let alone any indication of where she stands vis-à-vis this ongoing political stalemate. In March 2004, a diplomatic source disclosed that she had sent a personal letter to Than Shwe, proposing a dialogue. It could have been a sign that Suu Kyi was ready to forgive what had happened in Depayin the year before, when government thugs attacked her convoy, killing some of her supporters.  

Despite the occasional signals emerging from her sealed-off Rangoon home – and the rumors and speculation about her state of mind, health and political stance – the regime has been able to cut her off from the outside world while stepping up its diplomatic offensive. With her aging “uncles” now in ineffective control of the National League for Democracy, the need to hear from Suu Kyi remains vital.  

Suu Kyi, the politician, may not be perfect or shrewd enough to deal with the manipulative generals, but she remains a beacon of hope in Burma.  

Among the latest rumors surrounding Suu Kyi was a report that a black sedan had driven up University Avenue and had taken her to meet some high-ranking officials. Rumor has it that Thura Shwe Mann, the regime’s number three, wanted to meet her to sound out her views and had asked his aides to take her to a government building. But without Than Shwe’s blessing, Shwe Mann won’t dare meet her.  

Last week, Suu Kyi was taken out of her house for a meeting with Labour Minister Aung Kyi, who was recently appointed as “liaison minister.” No details of the hour-long meeting have been released, although images were broadcast on state television – a rarity in a country where Suu Kyi spent years out of the public eye. Suu Kyi gave a pensive and worn-out impression, but her captor looked normal and attentively engaged the camera.  

We’re used to this staged drama. Since the first meeting between Than Shwe and Suu Kyi in 1994, the regime has released photographs and video footage of rare meetings between the generals and her, but there has never been any accompanying sound. The images raised false hopes and speculation among critics and apologists alike, but we all realized that was part of the game.  

The hands of Than Shwe, the former psychological warfare officer, could be seen in this diplomatic offensive. He is not giving up, and is as determined as ever to launch domestic and international diplomatic offensives from his dusty Naypyidaw. With the release of film material on the meeting between Suu Kyi and Aung Kyi, Than Shwe might be trying to buy more time and more breathing space. He wants his allies and friends to welcome the meeting and issue encouraging statements.  

Just after the crackdown, some Western diplomats and sources in Rangoon told me that Suu Kyi no longer wanted to participate in party politics, but would be happy to be a figurehead and a force for national reconciliation. No one would confirm that these ideas emanated directly from Suu Kyi, however.  

“It would be terrific for her to be in circumstances to come to the United Nations and to address the Security Council or other organs of this state,” Khalilzad said. “We would like for her to be released, we would like for her to be able to be in circumstances that she can consult with her party members, with her leadership of the political movement, with experts, to be unencumbered and able to travel.” 

The generals would certainly be delighted to allow her to leave the country, for then they would be able to bar her from returning. When her husband died in 1999, they asked her to leave but hinted that they would not let her back in. Suu Kyi declined to leave the country for fear that she would never be allowed to return. 

However, it is not a bad idea to propose hearing from her at this time of political crisis. This is surely something that U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari could arrange on his next visit to Burma, planned for later this week. It is crucial that we all hear her voice and learn where she stands.

… poco maestoso  

On Monday evening, May 20, 1968, Harvard Professor George Wald, a newly crowned Nobel laureate in Medicine and Physiology, contributed to the Centennial Celebration at the UC Berkeley with a public lecture titled “The Origin of Death” [Google this title and you will find the text of his lecture]. 

He demonstrated convincingly, as I recall, that death does not exist in the non-human world and must therefore have meaning only among humans, not as a chimera or illusion but as concept. Although it is not relevant to the expanding body of biological knowledge the idea of dying pervades human consciousness and exerts important influences over our lives.  

In 1849, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a young political dissident, was imprisoned in the Peter/Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg and came within hours of being executed. One can easily imagine how such a close call would inspire the great writer to create characters obsessed with death. For Ippolit in The Idiot—and to a lesser degree for Alyosha, the youngest of the Karamazov brothers—suicide was an alluring choice; a man could rise above his natural state by killing himself because in doing so he’d be performing an act reserved only for God, the taking of a human life.  

The burden of this essay is to use Professor Wald’s thesis and Dostoyevsky’s proto-existentialist theme—the non-existence of death, except as an idea, and death as an act characteristic of God—to shed light on my own end and by extension on yours too. Though I consider my approach to be philosophical, I am too much of a maverick to abide by its traditional norms or, indeed, by any other. 

…poco vivace 

The arc of any human life can be traced and its features scrutinized using various and ever more sophisticated scientific disciplines—e.g. psychological for Dostoyevsky, physiological for Prof. Wald—and yet life’s critical points, its inception and termination, its take off and landing, once precise, have become indeterminate. Since the middle of the last century advances in biomedical sciences have increasingly destroyed confidence and blurred what was once very clear; we can no longer be sure exactly when a human life begins nor when it ceases.  

It is clear that the moment of conception, a sperm penetrating an ovum, initiates the first tick of an individual biological clock but it disturbs us that the womb of a mother is no longer necessary for this initiation. Conception can now be reproduced in the laboratory.  

Human life ends, the biological clock stops ticking, when cell growth ceases and decay starts. That slowing down or “dying” process can be arrested today with feeding tubes and respiratory devices.  

In a manner of speaking, therefore, science has given rise to Science, the creator and sustainer of life.  

Looked at from a rational and impersonal perspective a human life does not exist at or outside its end points (before conception or after decomposition) but does exist at every point in between. Human life is finite but open ended.  

[Aside: A mathematically literate reader will recognize a geometric analogue: life’s span is like a closed line segment, continuous between fixed terminals. Paradoxically, although the segment contains infinitely many points none can be identified that is immediately next to any other; no point is adjacent to any other.]  

…molto vivace 

All beings, including humans, are composed of the same stuff. In Genesis God revealed to Adam his worthless composition, “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.”  

Life at conception begins with pre-existing inert atoms and at death life ends leaving behind essentially the same inert atoms. The thing existing between these two clumps of inert matter is a living thing. Is life, therefore, that finite interval between two indistinguishable inert clumps?  

Professor Wald cited several non-human species to illustrate this overlapping at the portals of life. He showed pictures of copulating preying mantis—immediately after conception the female kills her mate by biting off his head—and underwater photos of salmon at the end of their life cycle, decaying even as they spawned.  

Deduced from the principle that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, Professor Wald made it clear that biochemical changes accompany the transformation from inanimate stuff to animate stuff and back again. Death, he surmised, must be an abstract notion peculiar to humans for it is incompatible with the life cycle of other living things and useless in understanding them.  

Reflecting on the relevance of this “brave new world” to one’s own life, one may cry out with St. Paul: O death, where is thy sting. O grave, where is thy victory. 

The will to live is universal and super-strong, but although it is suggestive it does not necessarily imply a fear of dying.  

… scherzo  

Throughout history people, regarding their own death, have sought to capture its meaning and importance in religious, metaphorical, and cultural language. In the 17th century John Donne wanted to subdue the fear of death by personifying it: Death be not proud, though some have called thee/ Mighty and Dreadful, for though art not so…  

People everywhere, with objective detachment, distinguish the living from the non-living, animate from inanimate – basically, live things react to external stimulus, non-living things do not. The difference between a carcass and a stone lies in the fact that the former consists of decaying cells whereas the cells of the latter are static. In common parlance we talk of “my life” and “your life,” as if life is a substance like money, an attribute like hair or a condition like pimples.  

Logically considered, life and death are opposites; one cannot be understood independently of the other; one is light and the other is darkness, one is sound, the other silence. Life comes first and with age vital organs deteriorate and death eventually and inevitably follows.  

Death is not a simple occurrence like a fall or a blow, nor is it a willful act like throwing, walking or eating. Common sense tells us that death is basically a state of permanent, irreversible unconsciousness.  

Metaphorically, death is the end towards which life is directed, a land from whose bourn no traveler returns, a loss—you had something and now it’s gone and it’s never coming back. It is personified in the Grim Reaper; it is transmogrified by devouring monsters, prefigured by excruciating pain, euphemized as eternal rest (requiescat in pace). With innumerable rhapsodic images people strive to render unknowable death knowable.  

And we fear death; some are advised to “not go gentle” and others feel such trepidation that they will not use the harsh sounding words and say instead, “He (or she) passed (or passed away),” conveying an image of death as a unique and final journey. Still others accept Donne’s cloak of religious piety as a shield against the fear of death.  

A couple of millennia earlier, the Greek thinker Epicurus quieted fear with a nakedly secular observation. Noting the incompatibility of self with death, he wrote, “while we exist, death is not, and when death exists, we are not.” To an atheist or anyone not inclined to seek the shelter of religious faith fearing death is no more rational than fearing the devil or the boogy man or an earthquake.  

Finally (so to say), if death is an invented concept then to define it is no more meanignful, nor less creative, than to define an angel or a Martian or a unicorn. Even so, it seems likely that it is precisely the fear of death that compels us to define it. To define something is to tame it. 

… allegro 

Aristotle taught that we extract the universal from the particular—man from Socrates—and the non-material from the material—beauty from the Mona Lisa—and the spiritual from the physical—thought from brain. Since death implies the absence of consciousness, do I extract my death from my own consciousness? Can my non-existence be deduced from my existence? Ummm! Am I immortal?  

…solo 

On a Sunday in the fall of 1947 I entered Novitiate and looked ahead to a full year of spiritual training at the end of which I would be invested formally into the religious class. When it was over I vowed poverty, chastity and obedience and was forthwith transformed by the Church from layman to cleric.  

On a day in March, 1954, I commenced military training that ended after nine weeks in the award of a shoulder stripe designating me a private in the US Air Force. The following September I started Officer Candidate School that, after six months of more hellish training, ended with the award of a gold bar signifying my commission as a second lieutenant.  

I cite these periods of my life to emphasize a common experience: for all of us life’s continuity unfolds in periods or interludes, each framed between a start and a finish and each contributing its special something to our lives.  

At the start we use our imagination to “foresee” the end and at the end we use memory to “record” what we went through. Imagination (not fantasizing or wishful thinking but experience-based vision) looks ahead. Memory, like a mental camcorder, looks back. 

I am now in the first year of my ninth decade and thus without doubt nearing the end of my life; the final tick is not far off. At one time I believed with Dylan Thomas that “Old men should burn and rage at close of day” but not any more.  

If my life is coincident with my consciousness, and as explained by Prof. Wald there is only inert matter before the Alpha of my conception and inert matter following the Omega of my death, then Ippolit and Alyosha were wrong about the divine significance of suicide. Furthermore, death is not a victory, nor is it dreadful. The inescapable truth is much simpler:  

It is impossible to remember living before conception or imagine living after death.  

“Downtown Berkeley is at present a pretty desolate and unattractive place, one that many citizens avoid if at all possible.” 

We’ve been drowned in a new flood of words about the process commonly known as DAPAC which is scheduled to wind up this month, to the great relief of many of our readers, I’m sure. I’d firmly resolved to leave the remainder of the discussion to our many eager correspondents, who are more than capable of handling their role in the discourse with intelligence and even panache. But as the days dwindle down to a blessed few, the above quote, taken from a letter from a UC Berkeley faculty member, a humanities department chair in fact, just sticks in my craw. He’s a self-confessed hills dweller, though he graciously conceded that in the fullness of time he might be lured to a downtown condo if the area were fixed up to his specs. How condescending of him, as one of Jane Austen’s characters might have said without irony... 

His letter reminded me of an old book I inherited from a family member—perhaps it’s not even in print any longer. It is a collection of columns from the 1950s by San Francisco’s favorite PR guy, Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, now held in the deepest reverence because he railed long and hard against the Embarcadero Freeway, a classic planner’s disaster fortunately undone by the 1989 earthquake.  

To my surprise, even the sainted Herb made a few mistakes in the ’50s, or maybe more than a few. I was shocked by his chapter defending the demolition of thousands of Victorian-era homes in the Fillmore district and the Western Addition, using the contemporary leftist-modernist dogmatic excuse that those people (read “Negroes”) were propelled into lives of crime because they lived in degraded housing stock in an unpleasant area. Now, of course, there’s a nostalgic effort to bring back the remains of what seems in retrospect to have been a great neighborhood for those who lived there, regardless of what it might have looked like to those like Herb who lived in the more affluent parts of Baghdad-by-the-Bay. (Yes, children, he used to call it that affectionately). 

More and more, Berkeley politics seems to have deteriorated into this kind of us-vs.-them configuration. People like the professor in question who live in the higher reaches of Thousand Oaks or behind gates in the Claremont district are all too ready to tell the people who live on Addison Street or Berkeley Way or MLK what would be good for their neighborhoods. We don’t print addresses with our letters, but they’re often easy to find on the Internet, and a quick Google map exercise shows that those letter writers who live in the green leafy parts of town are the biggest promoters of more concrete downtown.  

And The Professor’s expressed willingness to move into the right kind of new condo in central Berkeley doesn’t help at all. Are we to suppose that if downtown is gentrified enough to meet his exacting standards, garden apartments for low-income families will be constructed on the verdant site of his current abode? I think not. His lovely hills home will be snapped up by another well-paid exurbanite, perhaps a refugee from San Francisco’s current binge of excessive urbanization, and the families driven away from their pleasant houses on Berkeley Way by the monstrous Trader Joe’s condo project will have to move to El Cerrito. And so it goes.  

While we’re in the let-them-eat cake department, an aside with a few unkind words about the fancy food folks might be in order. A San Francisco woman complained in a letter in Sunday’s New York Times about what sounded like yet another hagiographic treatment of Berkeley icon Alice Waters. I looked it up. It was in fact a tongue-in-cheek piece written by a harried mother of teenage boys about her desperate attempts to simultaneously be an up-to-code foodie mom and to continue her journalistic career at the Times.  

The letter writer’s feminist objections on Sunday to the current obsession with perfect food is not unfounded—she called for a new edition of “The Feminine Mystique” as a remedy. The funniest line in the original piece was the mother’s confession that she’d bought under-eye concealer to hide the ravages of a late night making from-scratch chicken broth. It’s not just women who are engaged in the feverish search for ultimate eating, however. The men have it pretty bad too, and when it morphs into parental guilt-tripping fathers suffer pangs just as much as mothers.  

And how does this relate to highrises in downtown Berkeley? It’s one more instance of privileged people telling the less privileged what’s good for them. Privilege isn’t only about money or status, it’s also about time. When busy parents who have their own lives to lead are told that they’re not doing right by their kids if they don’t make vinaigrette dressing at home with a mortar and pestle, something’s wrong somewhere. 

The writer, coached by Alice Waters in person (that’s the kind of connection a Times byline brings) reported triumphantly that her little dears responded enthusiastically to a Frog Hollow Flavor King pluot from the farmers’ market. Hallelujah—they’re not crazy.  

But I performed my own nutritional experiment on Halloween, at much less cost and with equally good results. I mixed a few ordinary no-brand fresh apples (probably organic, but maybe not) into the bowl of wrapped commercial candy which is now demanded by parents who believe urban legends. Guess what? The kids took them enthusiastically, one even biting into hers on the spot. “Wow,” she said. Wow, indeed.  

Is there a moral in here somewhere? Well, there always is. The Times writer’s healthy normal boys rejected roasted marrow bones at Chez Panisse and went instead for pluots, and they’d probably like my apples too.  

The lengthy and expensive DAPAC process was supposed to result in university gurus and hired planners with northside homes telling people who live in the urban part of Berkeley what’s good for them. But the people who actually live in the flats, Patti Dacey and Lisa Stephens and Jesse Arreguin and Jim Novosel and others, didn’t buy the script. They know what’s good for them and for others like them, and it’s not 16-story point towers. What effect their opinions will have on the future of downtown Berkeley remains to be seen.  

—Becky O’Malley

Today, Nov.2, is the date called All Souls Day in my childhood. There was a two-tier system for remembering the dead in those days. All Saints’ Day, Nov. 1, was a Holy Day of Obligation, a day when everyone was supposed to go to church to honor the superstars, the church-certified superstars like St. Francis of Assisi. The next day, an optional church day, was for the regular folks, no better or worse than anyone else, who had departed for Heaven before our time, who might be there already or were perhaps having a temporary layover in Purgatory to get ready for the big time. We were supposed to try to speed them on their journey with our prayers on All Souls Day. 

As we became more sophisticated (high school and above) it was acknowledged that the fun and games of Halloween were derived from its Oct. 31 date just prior to All Saints and All Souls, and the really sophisticated among us spoke knowingly of the Celtic traditions around this time of year which predated the Christianizing of the British Isles. On Halloween we indulged ourselves in fantasies that the Dead (or the Undead) were still among us in some scary way, but only the little kids really believed that was true. 

My New England ancestors had a typically sober way of thinking about the dead, as exemplified in the Longfellow poem that I memorized as a child: 

Lives of great men all remind us 

We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time;” 

Readers were exhorted to live meaningfully in the present, not to obsess about death: 

Let the dead past bury its dead. 

In more recent times, starting here in California but now spreading around the world, all kinds of people have become acquainted with the traditions inherited by the Mexican people from their indigenous ancestors. The Dia de Los Muertos festivities celebrate the lives of those now dead in many colorful ways, notably with elaborate displays memorializing through art what the departed did in life. Even though these offerings prominently feature skeletons, they’re not scary, solemn or sad, but cheery, or even comic. Adding this joyful note to the way we think about the dead is a wonderful contribution to our contemporary culture. 

In the spirit of the day, in my restrained Anglo way, I’ve been building altars in my head to the memory of those now gone whose lives cheered mine while they were here. I’ve been thinking about my friend Ann Tondu, who revived my interest in jazz and taught me to love opera. When it became clear that the breast cancer which seized her in her forties, much too young, was likely to take her away, she began, at top speed, creating a series of lovely pastel portraits of friends and family. Her picture of my youngest child at 11 or 12, which hangs in the living room, is an uncanny forecast of what my daughter would look like as a young woman.  

I’m remembering Elsa Knight Thompson, from whom I learned that there’s no such thing as “the news,” but that news is the concert of many voices, though only some of them are singing on key. Oh, and “establish and maintain a constant relationship with the microphone” when you’re on the radio, if you want to sound authoritative.  

Our mutual friend Pele de Lappe, who died recently, outlived Elsa by 20 years. Pele always seemed to me to be acting out the song of Mehitabel the Cat:  

my youth i shall never forget 

but there s nothing i really regret 

wotthehell wotthehell 

there s a dance in the old dame yet 

toujours gai toujours gai 

The last time I say her she was attending an exhibit at the de Young in a wheel chair, enjoying every minute of the experience. 

And while we’re talking about enjoying life from a wheelchair, I think of my mother-in-law, the painter Mary Holmes, who had crippling arthritis in her last two decades, but went on painting beautiful pictures from her chair even when she could no longer stand at her easel or hold the brush as she used to. The secret of life, with all due deference to the New England ancestors, seems to be finding joy wherever you can.  

The artists among us are the lucky few who can leave tangible monuments for future generations, but we shouldn’t undervalue the contribution of those who simply were good company at parties. Our cousin Christopher’s partner Glen could always be counted on as an extra pair of hands in the kitchen on Christmas, and he was a great source of amusing comments on family idiosyncracies.  

Some people are remembered because of what they do for others, in public or private contexts. My rowdy neighbor Judy was the hub of a durable commune for many years, and was a mainstay of Food Not Bombs in her still-radical middle age. Another neighbor, Roseanne, supported equally good causes in a much more ladylike way, encouraged a number of young people to share her love of music, and took loving care of her husband for many years after he survived a disabling stroke. 

When you start reminiscing about the departed, in fact, there’s no end to the list of those who are still in living memory. The glory of the Mexican tradition is that the dead are not simply memorialized by stone monuments, but their lives are displayed in an active, vigorous present-day context.  

And judging by the kids who rang my doorbell on Halloween night, here in California, those traditions should be part of all our futures. Many children who were wearing Superman and Snow White costumes were saying “Trick or Treat” in English even as their parents were reminding them in Spanish not to be greedy and to say thank you. Let’s hope that besides insisting on good manners, their parents are also teaching them to continue the Dia de Los Muertos idea of celebrating those who have gone before us, who live still because we remember them. It’s become one of the best parts of our complex shared culture. 

WILL DAPAC HAVE BEEN WORTH IT? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sometimes at the end all we can say is that the process was our most important product! 

Robert C Chioino 

• 

COLUMNISTS OR CHEERLEADERS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Both J. Douglas Allen-Taylor and Chip Johnson miss the point. It doesn’t matter whether Jerry Brown or Ron Dellums is mayor of Oakland, or how many cops Oakland employs. Because the criminal justice system is broken. The system is primarily focused upon providing more jobs with unaffordable salaries and benefits for lawyers, prison guards, prison construction personnel, and police officers. The system as presently constituted provides California with a skyrocketing population of lawbreakers and more prisons with cost overruns. 

The East Bay needs a justice system focused primarily on protecting people from crime and on effectively motivating criminals to respect others. Perhaps Allen-Taylor and Johnson can quit cheerleading for their favorite local politicians long enough offer some help to East Bay residents who really are suffering from lawbreaking. 

Nathaniel Hardin 

El Cerrito 

• 

PART OF THE SOLUTION? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s amusing in a morbid sort of way that pied piper Bill McKibben and his merry followers continue to peddle the fantasy that an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is compatible with stopping the worst effects of global warming. 

As Guardian U.K. journalist George Monbiot convincingly argues in his brilliant treatise “Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning,” if we are serious about keeping global warming under the apocalypse threshold, we’ll need a 94 percent cut by 2030 in the United States in concert with an average 90 percent cut across the so-called “developed world.” Monbiot says doing something without doing enough is equivalent to doing nothing. That is to say, if our cuts are insufficient, we’ll still pass the tipping point where global warming accelerates without our help as a result of positive feedbacks, perhaps leading to the end of Earth’s capacity to sustain life (and in the best case, resulting in hundreds of millions of environmental refugees and ecological disaster so enormous it’s hard to imagine). The tipping point is generally recognized as two degrees centigrade of warming over pre-industrial levels, and if Monbiot is to be believed, McKibben’s target doesn’t keep us on the correct side of that perilous line in the sand. 

McKibben must somehow be aware of the futility of his efforts, as he’s asking Step It Up campaigners to scuba dive whilst holding banners announcing the insufficient target. “Congress: cut carbon 80 percent by 2050” proclaim the signs; they should be amended “and we’ll still end up underwater.” 

Hey, McKibben and friends—step it up! 

Matthew Taylor 

P.S.: Remind me, what goals did Berkeley’s Measure G set? Oh... also 80 percent by 2050? Glad to hear that Berkeley’s planning to turn my Gourmet Ghetto pad into a beachfront property. 

• 

HOW MANY ANTENNAS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Between November 2002 to February 2004, neighbors in the vicinity of 1600 Shattuck Ave. were fighting the installation of antennas on the top of this building. Now, in the past 18 months, people on the south side are doing the same to stop antennas on the UC storage. Fighting wireless corporations brings immense hardship to neighbors. 

The fact of matter is that people are rightly concerned about the health risks of radiation from these antennas. There are papers in many scientific journals that report microwave syndrome among those who live close to cell-phone antennas. For instance, see, the paper entitled “The Microwave Syndrome: A Preliminary Study in Spain,” in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, Vol. 22, pages 161-169, 2003. There are several major hurdles to fight wireless facilities.  

1. People are kept uninformed about the existence of cell-phone antennas in their neighborhood. Wireless facilities are usually hidden. Since the radiation from them is silent, odor-less, and invisible, people would never know that they are being irradiated.  

2. Reports from research institutes that warn the health risks of wireless facilities are marginalized.  

3. People are so much attached to their high-tech gadgets that are not willing to think twice. Using cell-phones is of course an artificially created demand by corporations. Ten to 15 years ago, people were living happily without being on cell-phones constantly. 4. In the United States, the Telecommunication Act of 1996 appears to guarantee unlimited power to wireless providers to install their antennas almost anywhere they wish and as many as they want. They always claim that there is not adequate coverage, there are no health risks from these facilities, etc. Such claims are mostly false. As Councilmember Anderson said in the public hearing, Verizon is not in Berkeley for the health of people.  

5. In Berkeley, in particular, the office of city attorney does not have the courage to fight corporations. 

A major question is: How many antennas can be installed around the town? This question was also raised by several councilmembers in the public hearing on the Oct. 23. There was no clear answer. But, by common sense, if wireless providers install 10-20 antennas in every two three blocks, then soon the level of power density from them will exceed even the lax limits set by the FCC. 

I believe that the City of Berkeley should make sure that the level of power density from these antennas in a neighborhood remains well below the FCC limits. This could be achieved by denying permit to wireless facilities when there are already some of them in the area. A proposal from Council Member Wozniak as people can cover their windows by aluminum foil is certainly not welcome. We should not jail ourselves in dark rooms because corporations like to make profit. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 6, the City Council will decide on the antennas on the UC Storage. Neighbors and the public should come to the Old City Hall to let the City Council and Verizon know that we do not want these antennas pop out like mushroom around us. 

Shahram Shahruz 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is refreshing to read the letter from Dean Leakas, who uses his common sense to correct the “transportation experts’” claims about Bus Rapid Transit. 

The planners at AC Transit have looked at the traffic counts on Telegraph Avenue, they have looked at studies of how many drivers shift to transit in projects like the proposed BRT, and they have looked at each intersection on the route individually to see how many cars intersections could accommodate with mitigations to improve traffic flow. As a result of this study, they have concluded that, with mitigations, BRT will not cause a significant degradation of level of service at any intersection in Berkeley if we adopt the two-way Shattuck option. There will be one intersection that cannot be adequately mitigated if we adopt the Shattuck-Oxford loop option. 

Without going through all this transportation-expert nonsense about traffic counts and capacity at each intersection, Leakas is able to look around, use his common sense, and tell us that BRT will really cause gridlock. I’ve got another set of experts for Leakas who are even worse than the transportation experts. Mr. Leakas, do you know that there are astronomy experts who actually claim that the earth is round like a ball, when we can all look around, use our common sense, and see that the earth is really flat. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

MAD AS HELL! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Do you think that it is fair for Dow Chemical to kill U.S. troops and people in other countries, and then say that they hand nothing to do with it? Well, I call it blood money, because I am one of those people dying from Agent Orange cancer made from the chemical that they made, and there are thousands of more people in other countries dying from it too. 

Herb Mathis 

• 

PEOPLE’S PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Two comments on plans for People’s Park. 

First is on the idea of adding new buildings to the park. Why not turn all the struggle which has occurred over this park through time into a positive, which is that a net result of all of this is that it has eked out an open space resource in an area where such a resource is sorely needed and which otherwise would have certainly been developed long ago. As density increases, this becomes more of an issue that was not anticipated in the past. MK Think’s Art Taylor stressed himself in their initial reconnaissance research that this area is impoverished for open space and this makes the open space aspect of the park a valuable resource which shouldn’t be undone. Any new buildings, be they museums or whatever, will effectively reduce the open space aspect of the park. Why do it? That is a mistake. 

Second is a feeling of unease about efforts to “memorialize” the park pre-humously. Celebrating the park’s history is one thing, and a good thing, but treating it like a memorial to something which was in the past and is now dead is another mistake. This mistake would be extremely disempowering to those who keep working on the park and who keep it alive. But still, People’s Park is not dead—it is alive, so burying it with an honorary commemorative funeral is not appropriate. An important part of its life which still goes on is embodied in the fact that community people still work on the gardens. Preserving this dynamic is crucial towards preserving the life that People’s Park has left in it. Replacing these efforts with those of professional landscaping services which would “exclude” user development is perhaps the worst idea I have heard proposed for anyone who cares about the meaning of People’s Park. As with any valuable resource, historic or otherwise, you don’t try to kill the resource when you still have it and then say “What a valuable resource we had. Let’s erect a plaque for it.” Let’s focus on options which keep the resource alive and does not “take the park away” from those who tend it in order to "transfer ownership” to those who want to mend it. 

Joseph Stubbs 

• 

DAY OF THE DEAD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was a participant in the annual “Day of the Dead” procession in the Mission on Friday night. It was a beautiful and moving event. 

As I was going home, I saw two people with signs that read: 

“Dia de los Muertos is Not Halloween.” 

“Stop Mocking Our Traditions.” 

I was surprised that someone felt we were stealing their customs. I thought about how many different ethnicities participate in the Chinese New Year’s Parade. Then I watched as one sign was turned over, and it read: 

“Culture Vultures and Hipsters Out of the Mission.” 

It became obvious the sign-holders felt their district was being invaded by others and maybe they felt threatened. 

I was raised in an Italian/Polish Catholic family. Death was never talked about. Once a person “went to God” we never spoke of them again. 

Three of my closest friends died horribly from AIDS in the 1980s. I had no way to cope with that—their bodies were jetted away to their graves. About six years ago I attended my first Dia de los Muertos, and I made an altar for them. I did my research, so my “ofrenda” would be respectful of the cultural norms. 

I can understand, to a point, the sign-makers. I too saw the “fashionistas”—those who dress up in fancy clothes and seem to model their skeletal costumes. I also sense more of a “Burning Man” presence.  

But this is San Francisco. Everything that happens here becomes larger than the original. How many thousands of Spanish, Italian, heterosexuals, or other people go to the Gay/ Lesbian Pride Parade? 

The beauty of the Bay Area is the way we learn about other cultures and lifestyles. Done with respect, how can that be faulted? 

R. Tony Haze 

San Francisco 

• 

BERKELEY’S POPULATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I keep reading this nonsense in the Daily Planet about Berkeley’s population supposedly decreasing. All you need to do is step out onto the sidewalk and you can see with your own eyes how much more crowded and congested it is than it was 20 years ago. Do these erroneous population surveys take into account the thousands of homeless in Berkeley? Do they take into account the thousands of illegal immigrants? Do they take into account the thousands of recent legal immigrants (who are traditionally under-counted and difficult to count)?  

Well, here’s some indisputable facts. The UC Berkeley student population is growing by leaps and bounds every year. (Last year’s freshman class was an all-time record. Next year’s class will be even larger.) The California population is growing at the rate of one million new people every year. The California population is now growing at a faster rate than India! Does that give you an idea of what’s in store for us if we don’t stabilize our population growth? If you’re not bright enough to figure it out, just look at what’s already happened to the quality of life in India, China, Mexico and all the other countries that failed to stabilize their population. The answer isn’t useless nonsense like the falsely-named “Smart Growth.” The answer is no growth. We either stabilize our population or face the bitter consequences. 

Ace Backwords 

• 

EUGENE TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Geller’s Nov. 2 op-ed failed to note a couple of crucial differences between Eugene, Oregon’s EmX system and A/C Transit’s proposed East Bay Bus Rapid Transit project. 

The EmX reserved lanes don’t significantly worsen traffic congestion because there are still two or three lanes in each direction left for cars and trucks, plus lots of alternative routes. On Telegraph Avenue, the proposed East Bay BRT would leave only one lane in each direction; since most alternative routes are blocked to through automobile traffic by Berkeley’s “traffic calming” measures, at peak times this would result in the sort of gridlock we already see on College and Shattuck. 

The EmX provides fast service between downtown Eugene and nearby Springfield along a five-mile corridor that previously had only regular bus service. The local transit agency considered light rail, but went with BRT because it was cheaper. The proposed East Bay BRT would run between the Bayfair and downtown Berkeley BART stations, with stops at or within a few blocks of the San Leandro, Fruitvale, 12th Street, 19th Street, and MacArthur stations; no EBBRT stop would be much more than a mile and a half from a BART station. 

Rather than building a BRT system that would mostly duplicate existing BART service, we should invest in services that would increase BART ridership, such as more shuttles like the Emery-Go-Round and easy bike rental a la Paris’s Vélib.  

Robert Lauriston 

• 

BATTLE OF THE BOARD  

AT KPFA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I used to imagine that KPFA somehow ran itself, and that it was a place where people worked together for common goals, made decisions collectively and got along pretty well. Then, about two years ago, I started attending KPFA’s monthly board meetings. The situation, as I see it today, is like this: 

The station is run by a group of people who operate autonomously. They do not respond to listeners, or even to volunteer workers at the station. In August the station announced that it will no longer recognize the UnPaid Staff Organization (UPSO ). I find it maddeningly painful to see a progressive institution adopt policies that resemble those of a union-busting corporation. 

The de-recognition of UPSO is only one example of their exclusion of others from participation. Their decision-making and management style is top-down and cloaked in secrecy. 

It was to prevent excesses such as the above that KPFA has a board of directors which is elected by listeners and staff. The board’s job is oversight. This has brought the board into conflict with people who don’t want anyone looking to see how the listeners’ money is spent. In 2004 and ‘05 there was a successful year-long fight for transparency, led by members of the People’s Radio slate. (And for that I must say I do like People’s Radio.) 

Today, even the candidates on Sherry Gendelman’s slate pay lip service to transparency and accountability. In a leaflet they say: “We’ve strengthened the LSB’s financial oversight, bringing an unprecedented level of transparency to KPFA’s budgeting process.” But in reality, members and allies of Sherry’s slate generally opposed transparency. Some fought tooth and nail against it, which is why it took over a year to achieve. 

The station has had a series of general managers, but the real power always seemed to lie elsewhere. A clue to the identities of the power holders came out in the fall of 2005, when an intriguing e-mail came to light. It was addressed to eight KPFA people, including one who has since become the interim general manager. 

“[W]e need a general strategy session,” the e-mail read in part. “[H]ow do we make our enemies own the problems that are to come? Alternatively, should we be recalling LSB members/dismantling the LSB?” At first I was inclined to think that “dismantlement” wasn’t intended to be taken literally. The author of that e-mail impresses me as a capable person who’s done some good work at KPFA. Nevertheless, what I’ve seen in the last two years convinces me that he and the others are not being open with us, and that they are indeed working to neutralize the board. 

Although the e-mail was posted on websites, most KPFA listeners probably never knew of its existence until the current election when People’s Radio candidates wrote a collective statement for the voter pamphlet which included that e-mail and a detailed analysis of it. That statement drew blood. Both KPFA/Pacifica as well as Sherry Gendelman and others on her slate responded with howls of pain, characterizing their opposition as nasty, hateful and unfair. 

I think the People’s Radio statement was fair and appropriate. They said something that needed to be said. That’s how democracy works. 

Daniel Borgström 

Oakland 

• 

KPFA’S PAST ISN’T EVEN PAST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Reading Matthew Hallinan’s “The KPFA Flap” (Oct. 30), I find the People’s Radio slate characterized as “nasty characters,” “attack dogs,” and “true-believer bullies,” capped by “they...substitute paranoid and baseless attacks on others to avoid spelling out what they really want....” Rather than engaging in exactly what he accuses the People’s Radio slate of, Hallinan would have done well to educate himself about the station on whose board he wishes to sit.  

“There is no danger of management turning the clock back to 1999,” he writes. “The power of the Local Station Board is now written into the bylaws of the Foundation.” But a central point of the People’s Radio fact-based candidate statement is that virtually all of the station’s current governance problems stem from intransigence regarding the bylaws by those holding power within the station. Contrary to statements made by some Concerned Listener candidates, the democratized bylaws do invest the Program Council with decision-making powers. When the Program Council decided to move Democracy Now! forward one hour (basically so that working people could listen to it during morning drive time), what was the overall reaction inside the station? Well, they didn’t agree to try it out on a probationary basis subject to evaluation. And they didn’t call for open discussion of the issue, in which the different viewpoints could be aired with the goal of reaching consensus or compromise. No, instead key staff simply refused to implement the decision. This signaled the beginning of post-hijacking actions by power brokers within the station to block and subvert any attempt to implement or create truly democratic process within KPFA, obstructions that continue to this day (witness the station’s current string of election violations).  

Like many current KPFA administrators and long-time insiders, Sherry Gendelman appears to know that it’s not politically feasible to admit to anti-democratic bias when it comes to station governance. KPFA management’s dirty little secret—not so secret now thanks to People’s Radio—is that they adamantly oppose democracy and transparency from taking hold within the station. That so many Concerned Listener candidates seem willfully oblivious to post-takeover station politics comports with an LSB intended to function as a rubber stamp to an increasingly secretive station administration, where top-down decision-making is the order of the day and power is unhealthily concentrated among a very few.  

Steve Gilmartin  

Oakland 

• 

LOCAL STATION BOARD 

ELECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have read all the listener candidates’ statements in the KPFA voters’ pamphlet and all the Planet commentary and letters about the current KPFA Local Station Board (LSB) election. I have listened to most of the on-air election speeches. When candidates talk about what they WANT at KPFA, I find myself in agreement with most, if not all, of their ideas and proposals. I do wonder how some of these suggestions could possibly be implemented without a more serious approach to fund-raising, so statements that don’t emphasize (or don’t even mention) fund-raising trigger my skepticism. Likewise, the assumption that if we expand the KPFA listenership, fund-raising will just take care of itself. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? 

Beyond that, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the entire collective statement of the People’s Radio (PR)group in the voters’ pamphlet, rather than a statement of what they are FOR, is an attack on another slate of candidates, the Concerned Listeners group. The voters’ pamphlet is the one opportunity that all candidates have to explain, in print, why they are running for the LSB, not to anybody who happens to tune into KPFA during the candidates’ forums, but to those of us who take the time to read the pamphlet and can actually vote in this election. People’s Radio folks chose to use that opportunity to attack other candidates, rather than tell us what THEY are about. 

What is the basis of this attack? A memo found in a trash basket at the station, suggesting a meeting that never actually took place. This memo has been used to accuse some staff and some board members of trying to “dismantle” the LSB. Sorry, but that’s not evidence of any plot to dismantle anything, much less a democratically elected station board. I wish Dan Siegel had not removed candidates’ statements from the Pacifica website, but it wasn’t wrong for anybody to bring to his attention the fact that some candidates had violated election rules that prohibit the use of KPFA resources to attack other candidates. 

Having said that, it is true that any board that is on a path that can lead to dysfunction, needs to change, if the organization is to survive. Several people, such as Carol Spooner, have urged KPFA listener voters to vote for the I-Team candidates, who are purportedly independent, although that’s not at all clear from their voting records. Spooner, in her recent Planet commentary, devotes a lot of space to attacking Dan Siegel, the now-infamous “dismantling” e-mail note, and the Concerned Listener candidates. But again, no discussion about the many and complex issues KPFA confronts in its attempts to reach a broader audience, to raise desperately needed funds, to diversify programming, and to build civility and truly respectful behavior within the LSB, the management, and the staff. And Spooner’s suggested voting strategy is aimed at defeating Concerned Listeners. It’s not about balance on the LSB. And it won’t promote free speech and open debate. This listener isn’t buying that argument. Concerned Listeners took the high ground and did not attack other candidates; they have a program that cares about expanding and deepening KPFA’s programs and outreach. Vote for them. 

Nancy Polin 

Oakland 

• 

A CRITIQUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The analysis by Noelle Hanrahan, Adrienne Lauby, et al, published in the Oct. 31 SF Bayview, as well as the Berkeley Daily Planet, is right on the money in describing the situation at KPFA. The main problem with it is the voting recommendations. 

There are only four people on the I-Team slate, and without additional allies they are not going to be able to influence the direction of governance and the effectiveness of LSB decision making. While the Concerned Listeners on the LSB were divided in supporting the Unpaid Staff Organization against the interim general manager’s attempt to decertify it, this may have been because they have been directed to “support the staff,” those who “abstained,” in effect casting a No vote, understand that it is not the staff per se that they want to support, but the ruling clique of insider staff we have called the “entrenched staff.” The Concerned Listeners still constitute a voting bloc which follows leaders such as Sherry Gendelman in such votes as continuing to allow cutting edge speakers’ presentations in KPFA sponsored public events to be withheld from listeners and other progressive media as well, in order to raise money in KPFA fund drives. Only those who can afford to donate a large sum of money can hear the full talks, which are sometimes played in their entireties months later, if at all. This seems to be a clear violation of KPFA’s role as non-compromising source of information. The Concerned Listeners do not often “chart their own paths”, and we need to offer more pro-democracy candidates for people to vote for. 

In the meantime, the solidly progressive group which is already there, People’s Radio, has had its standing weakened by a long history of attacks by its opponents, and their more recent charges of election violations for using their campaign statements to lay out the power situation at the station. Complaints were made that this was merely personal attacks to those mentioned for their undemocratic stances, when it was an attempt to reach listeners with facts, listeners who were reached en masse by the CL sending out a mass mailing, which only they could collect enough money to do. The interim executive director of Pacifica himself in a clear violation of election procedures then characterized the PR statement as “personal attacks,” “hate speech” and “toxic,” and advised people to vote against them. 

Even Carol Spooner recognized this as a threat to progressive governance and chose to suggest that, as well as the I-Team slate, people should also vote for People’s Radio candidates. 

People’s Radio candidates are: Richard Phelps, incumbent; Stan Woods, incumbent; Attila Nagy, incumbent; Gerald Sanders; David Heller; Bob English; Mara Rivera. For more information on People’s Radio and the situation at KPFA please see People’s Radio website: www.peoplesradio.net. 

Mara Rivera 

When I interviewed with Councilmember Kriss Worth-ington two years ago regarding my interest in serving on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the first thing that I said was that I felt that the existing Downtown Plan was generally fine and that there really was no need for a new plan. When I was later appointed to the DAPAC, I entered the process with a lot of skepticism, hoping that something positive would come out of the process. Two long and exhausting years later, I am still not only skeptical but also concerned about the direction of the DAPAC.  

I still believe that overall the existing Downtown Plan is a good document. While some changes are needed, I don’t think that it needs a complete rewrite like the DAPAC has done. Nevertheless there have been some benefits to this approach. DAPAC has included a lot of things that were not in the existing plan about green building, open space, and affordable housing, if they ever get implemented we will have a vibrant city center.  

When I first joined the committee, we were all informed that the purpose of the DAPAC was to not only develop an update of the existing Downtown Plan but to also help decide where the university will grow in the downtown. However over the past two years, this planning process has been less and less about the university, and more about allowing for high-rise buildings in the downtown. So it seems that either the focus of the DAPAC has shifted to the issue of whether to completely rewrite our land use policies, or maybe that was the main reason all along? 

When we first started our discussion of our land use policies, staff presented a number of suggested alternatives. The most controversial one was allowing for a significant number of 16-story buildings, or “point towers.” Unfortunately, “point towers” are still on the table, but in a different way. To support their argument the staff and some DAPAC members have offered a number of justifications. However over the past year and half these reasons have shifted and the discussion has morphed into a troubling direction.  

First staff had argued that we need significantly taller buildings to accommodate the number of new units required under the ABAG quota. However, we are not obligated to build the amount that is required. Additionally, it has been shown that we can accommodate the number of units that ABAG wants under our existing zoning. 

Then the argument was that buildings between five stories and 10 stories are not economically feasible. While I have never seen a single financial analysis supporting this argument, all one needs to do is look at the height of a lot of the new buildings in the downtown. A few of them are between five and 10 stories, including the infamous Seagate building.  

Then the argument was that we need taller buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Staff presented a series of calculations, which among other things said that if people were not going to live in the downtown they would live in Rockridge. This belief skewed the numbers and made it look like a five-story height limit would not provide the same number of benefits. Additionally, there has been a lot of research to show that tall buildings are not necessarily more energy efficient and in some cases use more energy than low-rise buildings.  

Then the justification was that we need taller buildings to promote transit-oriented development to reduce the number of people who drive to work and to support retail. None of these arguments has been supported by any academic study, and in fact they have been refuted many times.  

Some DAPAC members wanted taller buildings to allow for future residents to live in Berkeley. To date there has not been any analysis of how many people each scenario might bring to the downtown.  

At the DAPAC’s Land Use Subcommittee some members were suggesting that we need taller buildings to get more affordable housing and open space. However recent proposals approved by the City Council and before city commissions such as a study to rebate hotel tax revenue for the new Center Street hotel and a proposal to cap affordable housing in-lieu fees for high end condos seriously undermines this belief. 

Unfortunately now the debate has come down to some abstract debate over whether we want tall buildings or not. The DAPAC has not been presented with all of the necessary information to make a decision about heights, such as how the state Density Bonus law would factor into any height limit. We seem to be making a critical decision on the future of our community on the basis of aesthetics.  

Is this really what the community needs or wants? If the 50 or so people who spoke at the DAPAC workshop several weeks ago is any indication of the views of Berkeley residents, then there is strong opposition to any buildings over the seven stories allowed under the existing plan.  

More importantly we don’t need tall buildings to allow for an increased number of people, we can accommodate our population growth under our existing zoning.  

One of the speakers at the October workshop said that we need a “Berkeley solution” to whatever land use decisions that we make.  

I think that a “Berkeley solution” would be to keep our existing limit of five stories in the central part of the downtown but allow for some limited tall buildings, but only under the condition that we could get various public benefits such as open space, good design and affordable housing.  

Otherwise what is the point of allowing taller buildings? Density for density’s sake is not what should be driving our plan. We need a forward thinking vision that allows for change but also respects our identity and quality of life.  

I hope that the DAPAC can move beyond aesthetics and develop a plan that represents not only what the community wants but also what we will need for the future.  

But 16-story, 14-story, even 12-story buildings are not the answer.  

Jesse Arreguin is a member of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.  

Having lived in Berkeley and other parts of the Bay Area for a number of years (yes, I am one of those dreaded “true believers” indoctrinated at UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning), I occasionally read the Daily Planet online from across the country—mostly for entertainment, it must be said. I’ve watched the debate over tall buildings in downtown Berkeley with some interest and have to say that, despite my “true believer” status and my tendency to agree with the “pro-development lobby group” Livable Berkeley, I find myself in this case sharing the skepticism about the wisdom of filling up downtown Berkeley with buildings of 14 stories and more. But opposition to that kind of height should not translate into support for the anti-growth position so often espoused by the Daily Planet.  

The moderates in this debate—and the others as well—would do well to find examples of places like Berkeley that have achieved smart growth goals without a lot of height. Not Paris, not San Francisco…wonderful places, but not really models for Berkeley. What about Cambridge, Massachusetts? Despite having a total population and demographic composition almost identical to Berkeley’s, despite having a university presence of at least the same scale (if one adds up Harvard and MIT), and despite having similar politics and ethos, Cambridge has achieved a more compact, urban feel without sacrificing its livability or human scale. To be sure, much of this is due to historical patterns of development, and the anti-development voices in Cambridge are loud and persistent. But Cambridge has also achieved density in some of its new developments without a lot of height and without detracting from the established residential neighborhoods. Equally importantly, the main activity nodes—Harvard Square, Central Square, Inman Square—have an urban feel lacking in Berkeley, and again, without a lot of height. The result is a small, livable city where people walk more (check the journey-to-work figures in the census) and that feels, in my opinion, more active and alive than Berkeley. 

When I moved from Massachusetts to Berkeley, I was surprised that the place that I had always thought of as a West Coast Cambridge was actually very different. When I moved back, the differences seemed even more striking: lots of compact urban nodes with restaurants and services, more people in the streets, no stretches of major avenues with vacant lots or used car dealerships, no empty retail spaces, a healthy job base in the biotech sector. 

Cambridge is not perfect, and the debate going on in Berkeley would not sound unfamiliar there. But it does show that the goals shared by many across the debate in Berkeley can be achieved without excessive height and without sacrificing quality of life. I would be happy to show anybody from Berkeley around Cambridge (as well as the best of Boston and surrounding communities) any time you wish. I suggest, however, that you wait until spring…weather is one realm in which Berkeley definitely has the upper hand. 

Gerald Autler lives in Boston, Mass.

Over the past 24-plus years, I have directly participated, either as a volunteer or a paid landscape architecture/urban design consultant, in approximately 15 separate projects that have been actually constructed in Berkeley’s downtown. 

In no particular order, those projects include the landscape and urban design components of the Blockbuster/Barnes & Noble Building, several phases of alterations to the BART Plaza, Central Library Expansion and Plaza, Library Gardens, Center Street Sidewalk Widening & Wayfinding, several phases of alterations to Addison Street to create the Addison Street Arts District, Berkeley Poetry Walk, selection and installation of public art, Measure S Downtown Public Improvements, and Berkeley Repertory Theater expansion and courtyard. 

These high visibility urban design projects, both public and private, collectively reflect the contributions of many individuals. For the 15 projects, total construction costs of the urban design features alone were approximately $6,500,000 over 24-plus years. This is the cost of the exterior work (sidewalks, streets, trees, lights, courtyards, etc.) not the buildings or other project costs. Each of these projects has had a positive effect, sometimes rippling into nearby areas.  

But, in fact, the overall impact of these projects on downtown has been relatively minor and the $6.5 million spent to date has barely made a dent in the general character of downtown. Even when coupled with numerous other completed projects with urban design components—Berkeley High School, Vista College, new housing developments, Civic Park and City Hall renovations, historic building renovations, movie theaters, new arts venues, new restaurants, office, retail stores—the actual condition of our downtown today remains very poor, to put it kindly.  

Sure, $6.5 million seems like a lot of money, but it pales in comparison with the amount that will be required to carry out the urban design transformation of downtown envisioned in the emerging downtown plan. And that vision is a fair representation of our community’s desires as expressed over many years, and during the DAPAC process. It is clear that much larger sums are needed, and that the improvements will have to be funded by a combination of public and private sources. 

More of the relatively small incremental improvements of the past two and a half decades are important, but they alone will not be enough to make our downtown into a safe, lively, attractive, and richly realized place. We are at a point when a larger, more concentrated effort is needed to redefine the center of our city, without apology. It is time to embrace a broader vision that encourages mutually complementary private and public developments that will help fund the essential public improvements necessary for a new downtown pedestrian structural system. 

Matt Taecker has courageously stuck his neck out with the proposed land use plan he brought before the DAPAC. While the plan he put forward may not be adopted, in my opinion he has properly framed the new way to think comprehensively about the future of our downtown. There is general agreement on the need for high levels of private as well as public investment, realistic and explicit incentives for development, and thoughtful distribution of both density and open space through the core area. Taken together, the emerging vision sets a bold new course. 

It is essential that the adopted plan be realistically implementable, with a clear funding strategy. If not, it will simply be a wish-list with unfulfilled and partially completed public improvements, storefront vacancies, and gritty confusion interspersed with a few jewels struggling to succeed. 

John N. Roberts is founder and principal of John Northmore Roberts & Associates, a landscape architecture and land planning firm in Berkeley. 

Winston Smith was sitting in his cubicle in the Ministry of Truth. It was his job to collect all of the information about the problems with high-rise buildings and high-density development and place it in the tube to be sent down the Memory Hole so that it would be forgotten forever. It had been a busy day; many records had been changed to prove that high-rise “Smart Growth” worked perfectly everywhere it had been tried. He was exhausted.  

Winston slowly pulled a cigarette out of his crumpled packet of party-approved cigarettes. The cheap, acrid smoke filled his lungs. It was unpleasant, but at least it wasn’t as bad as the diesel bus pollution that filled the concrete canyons along the streets down below and never seemed to dissipate. Besides that, the cigarette smoke warmed him up a bit—which mattered because heating expenses were now so high that they could no longer afford to heat the upper 27 stories of his building.  

Behind him, the poster on the wall listed the three slogans of the Party: 

“3- to 5-story buildings in quiet neighborhoods promote troublesome social intercourse. 

“ ‘Vibrant’ doesn’t just mean noisy; it also means enthusiastic young people committing playful acts of vandalism while intoxicated. 

“We have nothing to fear but fear of change itself.” 

Sighing heavily, Winston pushed away the stack of papers that would await him tomorrow morning. He glanced out the small window beside his desk and saw nothing but rows and rows of identical windows staring back at him set in drab gray concrete edifices. Whenever he saw this view, he recalled the party’s latest jingle that was broadcast repeatedly throughout the day: “Drab gray takes the blues away.” Indeed. The blue of the sky, first of all, thought Winston. Luckily, he caught himself before he frowned; an expression of discontentment would have attracted the attention of the patrols. 

Winston got up slowly on his arthritic leg and began to walk the half-mile to nearest elevator. As he rode down 47 stories to the street below, he thought about how fortunate he was to work in one of the smaller buildings in the city center. On the way out, he passed by the one parking space left in the whole downtown. It was reserved for the parking enforcement supervisor. 

Once on the street, he paused to admire the water feature that had been selected for downtown: The Juliet Lamont environmentally sustainable day-lighted drinking fountain—with two levels: one for kids, one for adults. UC advocate Dorothy Walker had argued strenuously for only the higher level—but fortunately DAPAC members had been able to work out an acceptable compromise.  

Winston stopped to take a drink, because he still had to walk another mile to reach his small cottage nestled beside an oak grove on the eastern edge of town. He was surprised that the oak grove had been saved—and he marveled that some causes were perhaps just too powerful even for Big Brother. Maybe there was hope after all. 

After dodging several speeding bicyclists along the way who careened straight at him on the sidewalk, Winston arrived at his front door. He slipped inside and stepped into the corner of his living room that was just out of range of the telescreen that the authorities used to observe all of his activities. He pulled a small book out of the cabinet drawer and set it down on the table. It was his brand new diary, just purchased on the black market. He took out his pen and opened the first page, and before he realized it he had filled half a page with the following words: 

DOWN WITH BIG BUILDINGS 

DOWN WITH BIG BUILDINGS 

DOWN WITH BIG BUILDINGS 

DOWN WITH BIG BUILDINGS 

DOWN WITH BIG BUILDINGS 

Well, he had done it now: By questioning the value of huge high-rise buildings, he had committed Height-crime. The Thought Police would be after him for sure. 

Winston was so shaken that he decided to go out for a walk. As he was heading down the sidewalk, he recognized a young woman walking towards him. He had seen her frequently on the streets downtown, usually craning her neck to try to catch a small glimpse of sky or a green leaf somewhere. In fact, Winston had heard people say that she knew all of the spots downtown where one could sit in actual sunshine for a whole 10 minutes!  

Just as the woman passed him, she stumbled and dropped a single orange out of her bag—which Winston knew must have come from the black market. So, Winston thought with exhilaration, she, too, was willing to risk violating the party’s rules! The woman looked up at him with an expression that was more like fear than pain, and he asked her if she was all right. She said, “It’s nothing, I just hurt my knee a bit. Thanks.” They both understood that they could show no emotion without risking interrogation by the Thought Police. He reached out his hand to help her up, and as he did so he felt her place a small piece of paper in his palm. And with that, she walked off in the direction she had been heading, as though the encounter had really meant nothing.  

His heart beating rapidly, Winston carefully placed the note in his pocket and walked back to his cottage. He again retreated to the corner of his living room out of sight of the telescreen, and took out the note and read it. He was so stunned by its contents that he read it once again more slowly. It said in large, almost child-like handwriting, “I love you…and SENSIBLE five-story downtown building height limits.” 

The Thought Police arrested both of them the next morning.  

Doug Buckwald is a Berkeley civic activist. He recommends that people read George Orwell’s classic work, 1984, for further insight into our current governmental practices.

Tonight (Tuesday), Bruce Kelley, a local developer, will ask the City Council to approve his plans to build a house at 161 Panoramic Way. The lot Kelley plans to build on sits between two blind curves on the narrowest section of this substandard road. While California Fire Code requires roads to be 20 feet wide, Panoramic Way is only 11 feet, 8 inches wide adjacent to the north side of Kelley’s lot. Panoramic Way was designed for 1920s cars and has hardly been upgraded since then. The road is treacherous because of its narrowness, its many blind curves, and the absence of shoulders and sidewalks. Walkers and joggers are forced to the edge of the road to dodge passing cars and delivery trucks.  

Larger trucks, unable to maneuver the curves, frequently block the road, sometimes for hours at a time. Delays in emergency response occur because the Fire Department has difficulty getting up the road. The construction of a new residence at the most dangerous location on the hill, with no ability for materials and supplies to be brought to the site without closing the road, could bring about life-threatening hazards. Panoramic Hill is zoned ESR, the strictest regulation in the city, because of the extreme fire danger and bad road conditions—there is only one entrance/exit serving all the 400-plus residents of the hill.  

“PHA [Panoramic Hill Association] was formed in 1948 because of the desperate need for an emergency access road. Nearly 60 years later this need is more urgent than ever because the risks are higher. The woodlands have grown, the roadway and other infrastructure have badly deteriorated, and more and larger vehicles often clog the road and block access,” explained Jerry Wachtel, president of the PHA  

In a close vote last March, the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) approved Kelley’s project, based, in large part, on the requirement that he perform several mitigations to reduce the risk and improve the safety of the proposed project. Inexplicably, these previously agreed upon mitigations seem to have changed. Most importantly, the ZAB approval prohibited construction activity, including loading/unloading or parking along and adjacent to the north side of the lot. Now city staff have flipped-flopped and have agreed to allow loading and construction at this, the most dangerous location on a dangerous road. In fact, they now propose closing the road on multiple occasions to allow construction to take place, thus denying their neighbors access to their own homes. . Neighbors are outraged and worried about the dire consequences should someone need an ambulance or fire department during the time the road is closed. But Kelley says closing the road and unloading from the north side will inconvenience no one.  

One neighbor wonders how Kelley could get the city to waive the front yard 20-foot setback requirement to be able to build his house 4.8 feet from the property line. “Everyone expects front yard setbacks in residential neighborhoods,” she added, is there some sort of backroom deal?”  

Janice Thomas, a Panoramic Hill resident, questioned the city’s role: “It is not the city’s job to twist the facts so as to make every project appear doable. Neither city staff nor advisory bodies nor elected officials should be so compelled. The applicant is indeed entitled to build at this site and to develop his property, but only if he does so in a way that does not cause detriment to others. To grant this use permit is to exacerbate an already existing dangerous condition, a condition that would not exist, I might add, were it not for the neglect of the city of Berkeley.”  

The City of Berkeley and the City Council have had considerable interaction with Panoramic Hill neighbors this year. Both the city and the university contributed funds to commence a study looking at the feasibility an emergency access road so emergency vehicles can reach homes when the tiny road is blocked. The PHA is a co-plaintiff with the city and the California Oaks Foundation opposing the University’s development plans for the stadium and SE campus area. Alameda County has proposed merging the Oakland and Berkeley parts of Panoramic Hill into one city. The City of Oakland, in which part of Panoramic Hill lies, effectively has a moratorium on building on the hill. Berkeley is considering a similar moratorium. All of these actions are taking place for one simple reason; the combination of Panoramic Hill’s location in a high-risk wildfire area, its proximity to the Hayward Fault, and its outdated and substandard road, contribute to this community being at extremely high risk for loss of life in the event of a natural disaster.  

There can be no excuse for approving a construction project that knowingly puts neighbors at elevated risk. Since the city is clearly aware of the existing dangers and the heightened risks imposed by this project, it would be more prudent, as Janice Thomas suggests, to first fix the road, and then allow development to more safely proceed.  

At its July public hearing, Councilmember Betty Olds commented “I don’t know why you all up there put up with those bad conditions.” The fact is that Panoramic Hill residents have been trying to work with the city for 60 years to fix these life-safety risks, but have little to show for it. The residents of Panoramic Hill again request that the mayor and the city take action to improve those conditions and prohibit development of this project until the road is repaired and emergency access is available.  

Cathy Orozco is a Berkeley resident. 

In 1992, the Earth First conference in Rio de Janeiro brought together people from all over the world, from all disciplines and walks of life, to address the issue of sustainability, especially in relation to the earth’s diversity of species—its living systems. Among other topics, Rio ’92 addressed polices of the rich countries that drove poor people who live off the land to adopt certain “slash and burn” practices detrimental to the environment. Out of Rio ‘92 flowed the United Nations Biodiversity Convention which the United States was one of the last countries to ratify. A similar stance was taken over the Kyoto Protocol that addresses the emission of greenhouse gases that are not sustainable to the earth’s environment. 

Since 1992, the international community has moved slowly towards the awareness and acceptance that rich countries in the Northern Hemisphere, with about 20 percent of global population, consume roughly eighty percent of the earth’s resources, including oil from non-renewable fossil fuel. Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth has helped to increase global awareness of this uneven consumption and negative environmental consequences that no doubt earned him the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 

One of the proposed solutions to the finite-supply-of-oil problem, is the search for renewable forms of energy. This includes development of solar, geothermal and wind as sources of energy. But the big oil companies, in partnership with various governments, are pushing the idea that genetically-engineered crops, grasses and weeds, for example, can provide bio-fuels to replace oil used in vehicles. Assuming research is successful, how will this technology be deployed? Who will gain and who will lose? These are important public policy questions that governments everywhere and the public must address before jumping on private sector’s big oil agenda.  

There is evidence already that ethanol production from genetically modified corn has certain negative environmental and economic externalities and small farmers from the midwestern states are opposed to this. Palm oil bio-fuel plantations have displaced many people in Southeast Asia, the consequences of which are not dissimilar to those faced by dislocated Hurricane Katrina and Asian Tsunami victims. War-for-oil policies have wreaked disaster in Iraq and threaten the Middle East and further devastation of agricultural lands in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. What have we accomplished since 1992 in terms of sustainability on the planet?  

If we accept the United Nations’ underlying principles of sustainability—reduce, re-use, recycle—then the big oil renewable energy agenda must be challenged. Aside from the scientific and technical arguments regarding the ecological consequences of mass-scale bioengineered fuel plantations which the European Union will no doubt oppose in its own back yard, even if it involves its own British Petroleum or Shell, big oil business models and agendas are not driven by reduction of consumption, one of the chief principles of sustainability. In fact, its growth plan is based on increased number of vehicles run on bio-fuels. Even if this form of energy proves to be environmentally “clean” which is itself debatable, where would these plantations be located? In whose lands? Displacing which populations? Employing which slave-laborers? These are serious public policy questions that need to be discussed in open public forums all across the planet. We can no longer be concerned only with fueling our own SUVs and humvees, and the growing demand for cars in China, without worrying about the livelihoods of others even if they are in the Southern Hemisphere. We cannot continue to expect refugee relief, non-governmental agencies, and reactionary immigration policies to fix hunger and starvation of millions of people brought on by irresponsible front-end polices based on greed and increased consumption.  

Here in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, we must adopt sensible sustainability practices in terms of peoples’ needs. Key to this is land use and industrial development policies. A priority for land use policies, in light of the need for job creation, should be a preference for the types of industries that is also good for the environment. These industries include re-use and recycle, as well as wind and solar-based renewable energy, clean-technology industries that produce goods and supplies that are needed to upgrade our buildings and make them more energy efficient. These industries do not rely only on highly educated and highly-skilled workers, the way the bioengineering sector does. This emerging “truly green” sector needs to be carefully nurtured and not shoved aside by big oil agendas. 

Sustainability does not mean only environmental protection and clean energy. It means sustainable development for people and attention to those communities most in need of infusion of financial capital for revitalization, alleviation of poverty and reduction of crime. Building model cities requires the adoption of widely accepted principles of sustainability, such as reducing the reliance on cars as a primary mode of transportation. If not we will end up with worsening poverty even with the large sums of monies that big oil is investing. Such monies typically come with terms and conditions that are not in the best interest of the poor and disadvantaged. And the fate of the latter cannot be improved by the usual trickle down economic development supported by the work of non-governmental organizations. Governments have to fully embrace what is meant by sustainability in every corner of the planet. If not, 15 years from now where will we be? Can any local, state or regional government, win the 2022 Nobel Prize for leading the way for socially-equitable sustainable development for millions of people in its jurisdiction? This will require bold leadership and vision to deviate from the usual and forge new paths where none has gone before. It can be done.  

Oakland resident Nazreen Kadir is a scholar in science and public policy at the Western Institute for Social Research.

Evelyn Giardina said in a recent letter to the editor, “And good riddance to you, Manuela. You built a career by telling the city manager and City Council what they wanted to hear, which is not the same as providing good legal counsel. Take your golden parachute and just go.” 

Unfortunately, the real tragedy is not reached by this sort of conception of what happened. Manuela Albuquerque started out her career with Berkeley by defending rent control and ended it by almost single-handedly selling Berkeley down the river amidst the rising tide of corporate fascism. She did not just tell the City Council what it wanted to hear, but was a powerful influence in forcing it to do what it did not want to do. Under the rubric of expertise at law, she twisted the law and lied about the law at every turn. She created the prevailing attitude in Berkeley that law is too difficult for the common citizen or even the elected officials and must be left to the experts, especially her. She exercised autocratic power in Berkeley until apparently the shame became too much for even herself to bear. 

Her most dastardly deed was of course to engineer the City Council’s undemocratic acceptance of the current LRDP, which commits Berkeley to infiltration by the fascist hordes who are speedily taking full control of Berkeley, America, and the world. So that the common citizen CAN understand the real facts surrounding LRDP lawsuit, I will quote from my own brief filed with the United States Supreme Court on appeal. The fact that the courts denied and suffocated the truth at every turn does not cause it to cease to be the truth. Rather it is a further indictment of the court system itself and what it has become, which is a far, far cry from even what our founding fathers intended. Let the citizens of Berkeley know the truth: 

Petitioner alleged in his motion that he and all other citizens of the City of Berkeley had been unlawfully excluded by an actual extrinsic fraud both from participation in the settlement process and from the case itself as potential interveners. The alleged illegality was based on a self-evident conjunctive construction of California Government Code Sections 54953.(a) and 54956.9 together with California Evidence Code Sections 1152 and 1154.  

The argument is simply that Section 54953.(a) requires all meetings of the legislative body of a local agency to be open except as otherwise provided in the Brown Act itself. Section 54956.9 provides the allowable exceptions pertaining to meetings of the legislative body with its legal counsel to discuss pending litigation. That section applies only “when discussion in open session concerning those matters would prejudice the position of the local agency in the litigation.” However, Evidence Code Sections 1152 and 1154 provide that settlement offers and settlement negotiations can never be admissible in the litigation to establish either the validity or invalidity of a claim. Therefore, the discussion in open session concerning those matters, insofar as it is limited to a discussion of what occurred in the settlement negotiations, could never prejudice the position of the local agency in the litigation. Therefore, the exception does not apply and the discussion involving only what occurred in the settlement negotiations between the parties, as opposed to any further discussion involving legal analysis and weighing of options, was required to take place in public open session meetings. 

The rationale for the secrecy was stated by the city attorney as follows (see Appendix H):  

“The confidentiality agreement was actually signed at the city’s request, because the city has in the past had situations where during the pendency of a lawsuit comments are made or settlement discussions occur and then those discussions and comments are used in the litigation against the city.”  

It strains credulity that any city attorney could be so ignorant of the law. Rather, one must conclude that this was part of a conspiracy to deceive the public, whom the city attorney could assume would not be familiar with the law. This is made very clear by the confidentiality agreement itself, where the above concern is stated in Section 1, along with a mention of Evidence Code Sections 1152 and 1154. Again, it is inconceivable that well-educated attorneys could not realize that they were standing these code sections on their head by deriving a justification for secrecy from them, especially in light of the Brown Act and the recently added provision of the California Constitution pertaining to it, which were well-known to the attorneys. Rather, Section 1 of the Confidentiality Agreement was clearly a subterfuge for Section 2 of the Confidentiality Agreement, which disclosed its real and unlawful purpose (see Appendix G): 

“Both parties hereby agree that they will not disclose any of the information or documents exchanged during settlement negotiations outside the context of settlement of this Litigation. The parties agree that to the extent allowed by law, the information discussed or exchanged during settlement discussions will not be disclosed publicly.” 

This is clearly self-conscious subterfuge, because these two sentences are incompatible. The city attorney knew full well that the secrecy was not allowed to any extent, and yet she attempted to befuddle the masses into accepting a deprivation of their rights under the law. 

Peter Mutnick is a Berkeley resident. 

A CHANCE FOR COMPASSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Believing that credit should be given where credit is due, in all fairness I have to credit President Bush for visiting the Southern California wildfire area last week. With all that’s on his mind these days, like World War III—(oh, yes, he and Vice President Cheney dropped that little bombshell last week!)—it was very generous of him to take time out from his busy schedule to offer comfort to the people left homeless. Now you’ve got to admit that George W. is a master at comforting—be it parents of a 19-year-old killed in Iraq, visiting double amputees at veteran’s hospitals, and, in this case thousands of people whose homes burned to the ground. Yes, the man fairly oozes compassion! “We want the people to know there’s a better day ahead...tomorrow life’s going to be better. And to the extent that the federal government can help you, we want to do so.” 

OK, Mr. President, here’s your chance. Having sent Congress a $45.9 billion emergency funding request last week, on top of the $147.5 billion sought earlier this year, could you not siphon off one or two billion dollars for the rebuilding of that devastated area? I’m speaking as a taxpayer who’s frankly fed up seeing my dollars spent on destruction. I want that money to build and restore and give hope to people left with nothing! Would you do that, Mr. President? I know it will hurt, but please, please consider granting that $2 billion for citizens desperately in need of your compassion. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I didn’t mean to over-simplify the illegal immigration issue with my one-paragraph letter to the editor. Considering how the United States was founded from the beginning—taking the land from the Native American Indians—a strong moral argument could be made questioning who’s land this really is in the first place. And considering the names of some of our American cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, etc.), well, its obvious someone else was also here from the beginning. (Perhaps the “English only” crowd could start a drive to rename Los Angeles “The Angels, and San Francisco “Saint Frank.”) All I’m saying is: If we’re going to continue to allow endless millions of mostly poverty-level immigrants to flood into California’s already swamped low-income housing market every year, then we need to take a very close look at all the ramifications of that. 

Ace Backwords 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I found Bob Piper’s Oct. 26 letter on Bus Rapid Transit nothing short of amazing. 

Nothing could more clearly show how our so-called transit “experts” are completely clueless, and one of the major reasons the transit systems in the Bay Area are not as good as they could be. 

His statement about traffic spillover should BRT be installed on Telegraph: “The allegation that such spillover with BRT would be worse than without it lacks analytical or logical support” is at such variance with reality I had to read it twice to make sure I read it correctly! 

Let look at this logically: You take a heavily traveled street such as Telegraph Avenue and take out two of the four lanes for BRT. You have halved the capacity of that street, so logically the traffic load will double on the remaining lanes. Let’s be extremely generous and say that 25 percent of the drivers originally on Telegraph decide to take the BRT (I don’t think any sane person thinks that ALL the displaced drivers will take the BRT). Therefore you have increased by 75 percent the traffic load on an already heavily traveled street! The gridlock this will create will be stunning, and remember that local bus service will be stuck in that gridlock as well. Drivers will look for alternate routes and this will obviously be though neighborhoods. This is not rocket science! 

As an AC Transit Bus operator I love the idea of BRT, I would enjoy working such a route. But by taking lanes away from thousand of cars (and local bus service) you would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. It will destroy reliable local bus service, and, most importantly, anger thousands of taxpayers who will be asked to pay for further transit projects. 

Dean Lekas 

• 

PROPERTY THEFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today two men in a white utility truck marked as belonging to the university stopped on Dwight Way to take a bicycle and attached trailer parked on the sidewalk and filled with someone’s personal possessions and put them in the truck. They were moving very fast, as if they did not want to be observed. This is one of the most ignoble and mean-spirited attacks on a homeless person I have seen.  

Glen Kohler 

• 

BLOCK SCHEDULING AT BHS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a parent of a son who has attended two high schools with block scheduling and having discussed this issue with friends who have kids enrolled at BHS, I thought I would add my views to the debate. Neither school—one in Canada and the other El Cerrito High School—had advisories. On the other hand, teachers were able to get to know students and their parents better because they were teaching 90 students instead of 180. At both schools we had a “progress report” night in addition to the usual back-to-school night. Here, you could sit down with each teacher and spend about five minutes reviewing your child’s first month of course work and initial grade. This initial meeting helps parents connect with the teacher and feel more comfortable contacting them later if there are problems. I think this would be more useful than an advisory because it encourages the parents to get involved in their child’s education. 

The big downside of block scheduling is for kids who take AP classes—and for the teachers of those classes. At ECHS, our wonderfully dedicated staff spend after school and evenings between February and early May reviewing all of the material they covered in fall semester classes so kids are ready for the AP tests. Similarly, teachers for spring AP classes have to hold special sessions to cover all of the material of a course about six weeks before the end of the semester. Both kids and teachers are stressed out and I think it places an unrealistic (and uncompensated) burden on the teachers. Finally, switching the schedule from day to day is very confusing to kids, especially to those who may not have a first block class. They forget when they are supposed to come to school and often show up late. 

I urge the BHS school board and school community to talk to people at other high school with block scheduling and perhaps hold forums for students and teachers from these schools to share their views before committing to major changes. 

Gail Bateson 

• 

DEPRESSED AMERICA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Just a thought regarding Bob Burnett’s Oct. 20 Public Eye column, “Depressed America”: Intentionally or not, acceding to the use of (prescribed) antidepressants, coupled with the constant media campaign about the “huge numbers of persons with undiagnosed and/or untreated mental illness” is better for the economy (e.g., PhRMA, campaign coffers) than a population or press that looks behind the headlines and questions the research. 

Kathie Zatkin 

• 

IN DEFENSE OF  

THE RENT BOARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Mr. Sukoff’s letters of Oct. 5 and Oct. 26: The Rent Stabilization Board was created by a vote of the Berkeley electorate in 1980. The vote was overwhelming, and support for rent control and habitability procedures has received ongoing and consistent support from the residents and voters of Berkeley since that time. Nothing has changed, indeed, the stakes are even higher today. Tenants face eviction and displacement from such legal tactics as tenants in common, from sale of a property, and from redesignations to condominiums. The long-term, family-unit rental base in Berkeley has declined as new developments have catered to either students or to high-end, market-rate condominiums. This trend is squeezing long-time residents, the elderly, the disabled, and the middle class out of Berkeley. These are some of the market forces and some of the dynamics that the Rent Stabilization Board deals with every day, and I am glad they are here to oversee such important work. 

John Selawsky 

• 

GIVING VS. ENABLING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here comes that time of year again, corporate America along with the upper class and even some local church organizations just giving and giving and giving, so that we all feel so much better about truly helping those in need.  

The real truth and therefore the trouble is that this over-abundance of “giving” can often turn into extreme enabling, thus merely keeping the very people we’re trying so hard to help, down! Absolutely, the gift of giving brings so many smiles to young and disadvantaged faces for a brief time, but what is this actually doing to empower and enhance the lives of those we give to? Do we expect them to turn around and give back in return from the “other side of the line” the following year, thus eventually helping the less fortunate for the next time around? It sounds nice, however, what are we really creating here? 

The hard truth is that studies will show that most of these “just down on their luck” or folks experiencing “hard times” are becoming more enabled by these so-called “do good” corporate charity giveaways and end up being more dependent on the system, eventually doing less and less for themselves, while continually in search of more free handouts.  

Personally, I’ve known people “working both sides of the line” and it’s becoming a much bigger business on both sides with each passing year. Please choose your charities carefully and wisely so as to help those actually in need to benefit from and even be encouraged by the many good things which do happen during this upcoming time of year.  

M.J. Parker 

• 

ABAG’S IMPACT ON BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m delighted to learn that former ABAG Executive Director Revan Tranter loves what makes Berkeley unique (“Berkeley’s Population,” Oct. 30). Nonetheless, capital funding contributions from ABAG have had a devastating impact on the character of the town. 

ABAG loaned $72 million to Patrick Kennedy to build seven apartment boxes, all big and mostly ugly (and all sporting “Now Leasing” or “Now Renting” signs). By far the ugliest is the Touriel Building at 2004 University Ave. (it looks like it has a case of mange). It replaced a part of Berkeley’s former charm—the Doyle House, a historic structure made of clear-heart redwood that Kennedy destroyed long before construction began, even though a nearby landowner expressed interest in moving the house to his property. 

Kennedy has now sold the seven buildings for approximately $150 million to Chicago-based Equity Residential, the largest owner of apartment buildings in the United States. This sale was a logical outcome of the funding—Kennedy wasn’t building for love of Berkeley (I think it was about the money, after all).  

National corporations add nothing to the character of a town—they only subtract. Is there any possible benefit in having a major portion of Berkeley owned by a huge mega-corporation? Time will tell. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

McGEE-SPAULDING-HARDY 

HISTORIC DISTRICT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On behalf of the McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group, we could like to express our long-standing and deep concern about the future of Old City Hall.  

This gem of Beaux Arts architecture is not only a much-loved city landmark but is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is presently used as the administrative building for the Berkeley Unified School District whose lease will expire soon. We understand that because the City of Berkeley has declared the building unsafe, it will need to be retrofitted to meet earthquake safety standards. Because the obvious time to retrofit would be as soon as BUSD moves, we’d like to know what plans the city has to determine the level of earthquake safety needed.  

We believe that ideas for the future use of Old City Hall should be explored now in public proceedings. We understand that a committee has been appointed to discuss future plans for Old City Hall. Who are its members? We have never seen an announcement of its meeting place or schedule. We believe that the use should be a civic one, such as City Council offices; various cultural and educational uses have also been suggested. Since the City Hall is located in the historic McGee-Spaulding District, we would expect to be notified of any committee meetings and to be able to participate in them.  

We are also concerned about the maintenance of Old City Hall. For instance, last winter we noticed that a downspout on the building’s north side broke off its mooring near the roof. It was eventually removed, but never replaced. This winter the rainwater from the roof will drain down the exterior wall. The damage caused by this kind of neglect is far more costly than the maintenance that would have prevented it. 

Old City Hall will be 100 years old next year. We would like to see a real celebration of this fact. What better occasion could there be to ensure that it stands for another 100? 

Carrie Sprague 

Lynne Davis 

J. Michael Edwards 

• 

AIR RIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has belatedly come to my attention that the city is selling an air rights interest in the Center Street garage. I believe that the City Council is making a terrible mistake by selling this valuable publicly-owned asset to a private party. I hope the City Council will consider the information contained in this letter before adopting the second reading of the ordinance. 

1. Did the city err in approving the project and should the city approve this easement to correct some mistake? 

No. The plans approved by the Zoning Adjustments Board do not indicate operable windows along the western property line. SNK is a sophisticated real estate developer that should have known that the project, as originally designed, would require the construction of fire-rated windows along the project’s interior property lines. Even if SNK claims not to know about building code issues, it is the city’s long-standing policy that mistakes made by a developer and/or developer’s architect are not the responsibility of the city (this can be confirmed with Jan MacQuarrie). 

2. Is this city receiving a fair price? 

No. First, while the easement describes the actual area being “sold” as 1,780 square feet, it is actually 2,180 square feet because the 20-foot long area immediately south of the fire separation will become unusable. The city’s appraisal indicates a value in excess of $800,000. SNK appears to have paid more than $6 million for its property (a $3 million-plus profit to the original developer, Seagate Properties), implying a value of $556,000 for the city’s property ($255 per square foot). Why is the city accepting $200,000? 

3. Should the city sell its air rights? 

No. The Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee has identified the city’s garage as a potential location for a point tower. A point tower could be 180 feet tall. By selling its air rights, the city is foregoing the potential value and re-use of this publicly owned property forever. No private sector land owner would make this deal. 

4. Does SNK need a 20-foot easement? 

No. The Arpeggio building could be constructed with fire-rated windows located three feet from the property line pursuant to the California building code. If the city decides to proceed with the sale, it should sell SNK no more than a three-foot wide easement. 

5. Has the city been compensated for its costs of negotiating this deal?  

The City Council should demand that SNK’s purchase price also include the significant staff costs associated with the negotiations of this bad deal. 

It seems to me to be poor practice for the city to sell easements to publicly owned property because of a mistake made by developers. No private sector property owner would ever agree to such a significant encumbrance for such a small payment. Once the City Council adopts this ordinance, it cannot be undone. The city will have permanently relinquished its rights to its own property. 

Charles Smith 

• 

THEN AND NOW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When I first moved here in 1968, at the age of 26, the cars on the streets were compact models, at that time foreign-made. Previously, I was back in Michigan after a spell in London, where the cars were small. Look at us today: one SUV after another. What are we thinking? 

H. Grayer 

• 

SIGNS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recent correspondence in these pages about stop signs and cyclists calls to mind some road advisories that don’t convey an accurate message. 

“Falling Rocks,” states one. The last time I stopped at such a sign I waited for more than an hour, and not one single rock fell. 

“Blind Persons Crossing,” warns another. Nonsense! Observation over an extended period revealed that not one person, blind or sighted, used the crossing. 

Truth or consequences: Misleading statements like these have the consequence of inciting general skepticism of road advisories. 

Ross Morton 

• 

VAN HOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a resident taxpayer of the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, and a regular rider of its buses, I would like to see the Alameda County Grand Jury investigate AC Transit’s purchase of Van Hool buses. 

The grand jury should look into the possibility of a conflict of interest, should anyone in AC Transit’s top management be related by blood or marriage to any representative of Van Hool 

There’s something rotten in Belgium—and in Oakland. 

Paul Slater 

Thanks to J. Douglas Allen-Taylor for his ongoing coverage of the tensions between Children’s Hospital Oakland and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors over the private hospital’s unilateral—and successful—effort to get a bond measure for their seismic improvements onto the ballot, potentially jeopardizing the Supervisors’ own plans for a bond measure for Highland, the county’s public hospital. If the powerful Board of Supervisors feels blindsided by CHO’s tactics, which deliberately left them out of the loop as CHO quietly wrote a bond measure and hired signature gatherers to qualify for the ballot, imagine how the nearby neighbors of CHO are being treated. We were just as surprised as the supervisors at a recent public meeting called by CHO, where they announced their plans for a 12-story tower in the R-40, single family home area north of the hospital campus, between 52nd and 53rd and the parking garage on MLK and the freeway. 

We have known for some time about CHO’s need by the state-mandated “deadline” of 2013 to retrofit the “Original Baby Hospital,” which is gutted and engulfed by other structures on the campus. We feared the Baby Hospital was toast. But for CHO to justify this 12-story tower—a “state-of-the-art” facility with single occupancy rooms, as tall as the Kaiser Permanente tower on MacArthur—because three other buildings need work, was a shock. The classic bait-and-switch! 

CHO already owns and occupies several of the structures in the area selected for the tower—the Family House and Foundation building would be torn down, in addition to several family homes they’ve bought and emptied out. But the area also includes several houses with reluctant sellers, and CHO representatives, including the CHO President Frank Tiedemann and Vice President May Dean, refused to rule out asking the city to use its powers of eminent domain. 

In Berkeley, livable, indeed desirable, blocks of residences, can co-exist next to Alta Bates Hospital, which has been forced to buffer its impacts with street closures and small parks. The City of Berkeley blocked Alta Bates’ attempts to expand its emergency room with the threat of litigation. 

The neighbors of CHO are not likely to be so lucky. Historically, CHO has expanded ruthlessly by buying nearby family housing, keeping them long enough to become blighted, and them knocking them down in another wave of expansion. At this rate, we should expect to see CHO gobbling homes to 55th Street and beyond. 

The previous CHO CEO, Tony Paap, had a verbal pact never to expand (other than to the Research Center at Old Merritt) north of 53rd. In the new Tiedemann regime, we understand CHO has just acquired a charming craftsman duplex (formally home to two families—now empty) on the north side of 53rd and more purchases may be on the way, including perhaps the Public Housing Authority residences at the end of 53rd. But who knows truly what CHO’s short or long-range plans are? The neighbors (and North Oakland Councilperson Brunner, weakly) have asked CHO to come up with a master facilities plan for their properties spread throughout North Oakland. They have not complied. 

This is what we know so far: the 180-foot, 12-story tower will dwarf neighboring family houses, and lights from the tower will be a poor substitute for the sunlight, views, and privacy that will be lost. Construction will be a two- to three-year nightmare; parking, traffic and crime a permanent bad dream. CHO plans to move their helicopter landing pad to the top of this tower, so we will be bombarded with hospital uses by land and sky. 

Ironically, CHO has selected a staffmember to handle community relations who himself chose to sell his house to Kaiser rather than live in the shadow of their new parking structure now under construction. What advice will he have for us? 

CHO quickly got Mayor Dellums, Brunner, and City Council Precedent De La Fuente to endorse their plans, although Dellums suggested recently some consensus-building process should be followed. Brunner’s aide for this area told me he wasn’t even sure CHO would be required to do an EIR, although Kaiser did. 

The hospital and these elected officials trumpeted the Good News that CHO would be staying in Oakland after all, at a joint press conference, although Tiedemann, at a recent meeting, said that moving out of Oakland was never really on the table, since they had such an investment in infrastructure at this site. 

But why, as several neighbors have suggested, shouldn’t CHO expand by opening satellite buildings elsewhere in Oakland? Serving children’s needs IS important, but keeping affordable housing around for families who already live there is also critical. Does a hospital get to destroy a neighborhood of families with children for the sake of “The Children”? 

Robert Brokl is a 36-year neighbor of Children’s Hospital.

From Oct. 8 through 11, I visited Eugene and rode their BRT. This is a brief summary of the longer trip report on my website, http://berkeleybus.mysite.com.  

The “Emerald Express” (EmX) makes a 20-minute one-way trip between transit malls in Eugene and neighboring Springfield. EmX uses dedicated bus-only lanes (“busways”). People are riding the EmX and businesses along the route are doing fine. The route starts at Eugene Station, a transit mall in the middle of downtown, with bays for 19 buses. There are public rest rooms and a convenience store. EmX is a green articulated bus with two doors on both sides. The bus was custom-built by New Flyer, in Winnipeg, Canada. 

The EmX leaves the station and comes onto the first busway, a one-vehicle-wide strip of concrete marked “Bus Only.” Only the EmX uses the busways—not cars, trucks or even other buses. To make turns, cars cross the busway, but cars must yield to the EmX. Traffic lights nicely control this in most places. I saw an EmX driver give a warning honk to a car flashing its left-turn signal in the lane to the right of a busway. Because it’s free and there are two doors, the EmX doesn’t spend much time at the intermediate stations. Service seems to stay at the advertised every 10 minutes during most of the day (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and 15-20 minutes at other times, including weekends. EmX runs until 11 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and to 8 p.m. on Sundays.  

Eugene has two types of busway. One is a single lane of concrete. The other is two concrete tracks, with a strip of grass between the tracks. Part of the route is on a highway—three lanes in each direction. The bus shares lanes with cars, and pulls out of the left lane into the busway next to a station. Springfield has no busways, but there are only two stations there. I often noticed traffic congestion near the Springfield station. I didn’t see very many street people in either Eugene or Springfield—or on the buses. I got panhandled only once: a guy wheeling a bike asked me for 75 cents—that was in Eugene. Downtown Eugene looked prosperous and lively. In some places, EmX has a single busway for both directions. The change-over is at a station, where one bus pauses, and the other bus exits the single busway and veers onto a busway at the side of the station. 

The EmX is supposed to receive priority at signal-controlled intersections. This was not clearly evident to me. I did notice that the EmX got through intersections fairly quickly. In some places downtown, there were loading zones on the streets paralleling the busways. I didn’t see any serious conflict with delivery vehicles or parked cars. The EmX is an impressive and successful BRT. I think Berkeley has something to learn from Eugene. 

Steve Geller is a Berkeley resident.

Exposing people for their true values and politics by showing what they have done versus their rhetoric is fair play in politics. Have you noticed that with all the hyperbole from Hallinan, Gendelman and their anonymous allies, they have not debunked any of the things we put in the campaign booklet. The reason that they are so hot is that they have been exposed for their duplicity. I have offered to debate any and all of them and they have declined because they are afraid of what the listeners will find out if their true positions are exposed. They like to stay with the controlled attack, e-mails behind our and the voters’ backs, and personal attacks with no facts, and the expensive mailer that says nothing in particular. 

Why don’t they have a position on the Program Council or the Democracy Now! time change issue or the unpaid staff issues in their campaign literature? Because if they published their actual anti-democratic, top-down positions they would be exposed. What would you think of a candidate for president who didn’t have a position on health care or the occupation? Trying to hide something, right. All they have said are general platitudes and on their slate mailer, conspicuous in its absence are the words “democratic process,” “transparency” or “accountability.”  

Compare Peoplesradio.net’s program with the Concerned Listeners. Most of the points below have been with us since 2004. We don’t want to control or run anything. All we want is a transparent level playing field with a democratic process for listener input (the folks that donate all the money). We want it to be “your station” all year long not just during fund drives. While they wrongfully accuse us of micro-managing, they have applauded their ally, Dan Siegel, for trying to prejudice the election in their favor in violation of Pacifica Bylaws and any one’s sense of fair play. 

Our 10-point program — a brief synopsis (see website for original):  

1. KPFA with no corporate underwriting. Listener sponsors the primary source of financial and political support.  

2. A democratically elected Program Council with listener representation equal to staff, and with the authority to make programming decisions by majority vote. Webcast the Program Council meetings, post the meeting minutes. 

3. Broader diversity in programming as well as increased outreach to underserved communities, including more labor/workplace coverage, progressive analysis of world events, and enhanced coverage of developing political parties and movements. 

4. Newscasts should be based primarily on progressive sources, and should include coverage of news and community events for areas outside the immediate Bay Area. 

5. Democracy Now should be broadcast twice a day, once at 7 a.m. (prime time) and once in the evening. 

6. Transparency in all station affairs, with an accountable process for management decisions at the station.  

7. Strong, effective and transparent elected boards at KPFA and Pacifica. Meetings web cast and archived, agendas and minutes promptly available on the KPFA website. The LSB e-list should be open to listener observation.  

8. Unpaid staff allowed to organize for representation on the Program Council, and to negotiate with management. Unpaid programming staff should be reimbursed for the out-of-pocket expenses of producing their programs. 

9. The station should restore a Folio with listener comments to inform and unite the listener community.  

10. Fundraising must be treated as a means to accomplish the Pacifica Mission. Fundraising must not inhibit the Mission or make information a commodity to sell, as is currently done.  

They only way to hold a slate accountable is to know where they have stood in the past, something Concerned Listeners conveniently leave out, and when Peopleradio brings it up they want to kill the messenger instead of dealing with the issues. I am embarrassed that some “progressives” could fall for these attacks with no facts and Siegel’s unlawful and unprincipled attempt to sway the election. Did Ohio in 2004 or Florida in 2000 inspire him?  

Matthew and/or Sherry, let’s debate the issues in public for all to see and hear. Or are you afraid of the history of CL and KPFAForward, your predecessor? You don’t want people to know about Sarv’s and other allies votes with Justice and Unity on the PNB against transparency, and to allow them to control WBAI despite the fact that they were destroying the listener base? Etc., etc., etc.  

Oakland attorney and mediator Richard Phelps is candidate for re-election to the Local Station Board.

The Pacifica Bylaws establish a collaborative, democratic process between listeners, staff and management with specified and shared powers and responsibilities, but not everyone gets the concept or wants it to happen. In fact, Concerned Listeners (CL) and their management/staff power allies are committed to the business as usual and status quo imposed by the old regime’s NPR/Healthy Station model and program grid, and are organized and funded to block and dismantle the transition to a democratic KPFA, to control what they can’t disable or destroy, including our elections.  

People’s Radio (PR), unlike the CL slate, doesn’t rely on financial resources to conduct a campaign in the fashion of the corporate two-party system; we don’t have the money raised through private events attended by KPFA staff stars, to send a mass mailer to all or segments of the 26,000 KPFA voters precisely timed to the arrival of ballots during the three-week election blackout at the station (no candidate recordings or statements or election information allowed on air or the website during the always numero uno fund drive--that is the only time it’s referred to as “our station,” when they ask for our $). What we do have and what we used to reach the same listeners is the free speech, democratic election opportunity of our candidate statements. Instead of the traditional individual “vote for me, here’s why” statements, we decided to do something unique and more informative with integrity: a collective continuous narrative statement, within the limits of the voter booklet format and random alphabetical order, to give truly concerned listeners a point of view, information and analysis which most can’t get anywhere else without being more actively involved or dedicated LSB watchers.  

We understand that whether we (as individuals and members of a pro-democracy caucus at KPFA) are elected or not, or whoever is elected, nothing will change at KPFA and Pacifica until listeners have access to and understanding of the developing crisis and continuing anti-democracy actions, presented and demonstrated with examples and analyzed in our statements--that is, the current top management, key staff, and CL control of important station and board positions and their domination, dismantling or disabling of every democratic or semi-democratic institution put in place by the Bylaws, including the Program Council, Unpaid Staff Organization, Advisory Board and the Local Station Board. Reading the CL version of a very limited advisory, fundraising role for the LSB (as Stan Woods puts it, like “Friends of the Ballet"), we can see that they, like the interim managers they support, aren’t rooted in and don’t understand or care about the history and principles of the listener movement and the mandated function and powers of a unique, historical democratic governing Station Board.  

There are few means available and rare opportunities to let listeners see through what is effectively a gag rule veil that covers up station affairs, governance activity and issues, informal power blocks and cronyism--the continuity and preservation, that is, of the status quo that allowed the old hijacker regime to gain power in the first place (while hundreds of progressive/radical programmers and volunteers were banned and fired in the 1990s and never returned) and that has replaced our once great progressive community radio. For an in-depth history and background of the hijacking, Take Back KPFA, followed by the SavePacifica movement, see Maria Gilardin’s “Why Did the Staff Not Prevent the 10 Year Corporate Raid, “ the “Chronology” and other pieces posted on www.peoplesradio.net.  

To those not yet familiar with the history or who can’t share or accept my analogy or summary assessment of current realities above, please look at another timely example and Pacifica media issue now being exposed and discussed: ask the organizers of this Saturday’s peace march, and ask station management and their staff front persons like Brain Edwards-Tiekert, why KPFA refuses to let them tape and play a recorded “cart” on air promoting the peace march and mobilizing listeners to attend. As LSB candidate and PR member Mara Rivera notes, this is such a disgrace to Pacifica and KPFA. This was, but clearly no longer is, the community radio station and network dedicated to peace and social justice.  

Vallejo resident Bob English is a People’s Radio candidate for the KPFA Local Station Board. He was active from 1999 in Coalition for a Democratic Pacifica, FreePacifica/listener democracy movements).  

Carol Spooner’s Oct. 30 commentary in the Berkeley Daily Planet states that the “People’s Radio” candidate statements in the KPFA election “. . . are not attacks on anyone’s character. They are factual assertions and strong arguments concerning the positions and actions of other candidates. . .” 

Perhaps Spooner should re-read the statements in question. In lieu of any substantive discussion of how KPFA can better fulfill its mission, they engage in name-calling (repeatedly referring to myself and their opponents as “the dismantlers"), launch petty attacks on the character of KPFA staff and boardmembers (“They only want your money, not your thoughts and input on how to improve the station”), and propose a paranoid conspiracy theory that puts me at the center of a plot to destroy KPFA’s elected board. (This last, Spooner writes, “should be of concern to the voters.”) 

To be clear: In 2005, when I thought KPFA’s board was charting a course that jeopardized the future of the station, I wrote an email to a group of people who care about KPFA that suggested topics we might discuss at a meeting—a meeting that, in fact, never happened. One of those topics was “recalling LSB members / dismantling the LSB”—asking KPFA’s members, via recall petition, to clean house on KPFA’s board. (I had just read a paper on nonprofit governance entitled “Boards Behaving Badly"—which suggested the only remedy for some boards made dysfunctional through infighting was "dismantling” them by stripping them down to the legal minimum number of members, then building them back up with fresh faces). 

I did not pursue that idea—instead, I’ve worked diligently as the KPFA Board’s elected Treasurer to build unity on the station’s budget (approved unanimously this year) and press for financial accountability from the Pacifica National Office. That has not, however, prevented some members of KPFA’s Board from alleging every action I, and anyone copied on that email, have taken since then has been part of an elaborate plot to destroy democracy at KPFA (how they consider a recall vote anti-democratic is still beyond me). 

The treatment of that email, which was dug out of the trash at KPFA, published on the internet, and has been used as election propaganda for two years running, demonstrates a central problem in KPFA’s internal politics: the tactic of demonizing one’s opponents based on their alleged motives rather than debating their positions based on their merits. There is simply no room for dialogue, compromise, and consensus-building when one party holds that the other’s positions are part of a secret conspiracy. 

What troubles me about Carol Spooner’s commentary is that the slates she endorses include some of those principally responsible for the KPFA Board’s culture of attack. 

Richard Phelps, running on the “People’s Radio” slate, has left me voicemail comparing KPFA’s staff to Nazis, flipped me off during a committee meeting (and then, when confronted, told me I deserved it), and dogged me with abusive and sometimes profanity-laced phone calls at my home and workplace. 

Joe Wanzala, running on the “independent” slate, has widely circulated an email insinuating that Larry Bensky is a CIA asset, published another statement calling former KPFA manager Nicole Sawaya “an integral, albeit passive, part of the long-term effort to subvert Pacifica” and, during the last KPFA board election, ghost-wrote and distributed an endorsement email that purported to be from Dennis Bernstein—which Bernstein promptly and vociferously denied. Beyond their conduct, members of those two slates have openly taken positions that would destroy KPFA as we know it: attacking KPFA’s award-winning news department; proposing to eviscerate KPFA’s music offerings; advocating for drastic cuts to KPFA’s staffing; attacking the very notion of professionalism while promoting a fringe political agenda sure to marginalize our radio station—“People’s Radio” candidate Bob English has publicly defended Pacifica station WBAI for selling copies of a conspiracy theory documentary directed by holocaust denier Eric Hufschmid. 

KPFA needs to do better. That’s why I’m endorsing the “Concerned Listeners” slate, a group of candidates who represent the diversity of experience that one hopes for in an organization like KPFA—combined with a commitment to bring civility to KPFA’s fractious board. They are people who will roll up their sleeves and work to improve KPFA—rather than sniping from the sidelines. The candidates are Sherry Gendelman, Warren Mar, Susan McDonough, John Van Eyck, Diane Enriquez, Antonio Medrano, Matthew Hallinan, and Paul Robins. You can read more about them, and their other endorsers, at concernedlisteners.org. If you’re a KPFA member, remember to get your ballot in by Nov. 15. 

Brian Edwards-Tiekert is a staff representative on KPFA’s Local Station Board. 

First, I’ve been watching the board operate at KPFA for over two years. I’ve gone to almost every board meeting. I started this to try to figure out how much screaming to attend to. That’s not a style I appreciate, but sometimes I understand people express themselves in less-than-optimal ways under pressure. 

While I am uncomfortable with some of the tone of globalizing and attributing of motives in the “People’s Radio” combined statement, I have come very reluctantly to feel that our beloved KPFA staff members are not operating as openly as I would like. In fact, I have come to find it very frustrating to unravel some seeming inexplicable moves on the board and realized the only way I could come to understand them is to realize some board members seem to be working extremely carefully to keep the board from functioning efficiently. My opinion: There may be some truth in the idea that some People’s Radio board members presentations at times end up seeming critical. However, stepping back and looking at things in a larger context, the frustration level of trying to get resolutions discussed and acted upon by board members and chairs whose tones are snide and whose studied “passing” and obfuscating stalls things probably takes its toll. 

As the deadline for getting this in arrives: 

1. Carol Spooner was also a lead plaintiff in wrenching the old hijacking Pacifica board back to KPFA and other local station control. 

2. “Sectarian” applies at least as much to the staff-recruited people as to anyone of the other candidates. 

3. There IS a link between the people named in the “People’s Radio” statement and the “concerned listener” block. To sign onto the “Concerned Listener” slate meant agreeing to precepts put forth by the recruiters of that slate. 

I do not want to demonize any staff members—beloved staff members. But a conversation does need to take place. Richard Phelps, LaVarn Williams, and their allies got access to Pacifica financial records for the first time since the hijacking just last year. They did this despite the efforts of Sherry Gendelman’s slate. 

The significance of getting access to financial records, as Phelps and Williams finally did, is that the new bylaws ironed out after winning back the station were supposed to give access to board members, such as Phelps, Williams and all board members, so that listener/sponsors had at least some say in where their money was going. 

Virginia Browning is an Oakland resident. 

The situation at KPFA radio, some encouraging signs notwithstanding, remains grim. The idea of participatory democracy was conceived as a response to the crisis of the ‘90s, but has yet to take hold. Many members of the KPFA staff, who embraced the concept when it helped save the station, do not support it now that listener members have been given real governing power. In other words, while the 'savepacifica' era was characterized by solidarity between staff and listeners, the 'save(d)pacifica' era has been characterized by polarization between these two groups. 

The station management, as well as some staff, perceives KPFA’s listener members and the Local Station Board (LSB) as a threat to their control of the airwaves. Those in charge would prefer that the “unprofessional” volunteers” who help run the station take no active role in station governance or programming decision-making. They function autocratically and consider such entities as the Program Council to be a mere obstacle they can easily bypass. When Larry Bensky retired the Program Council which had been making programming decisions at KPFA for the last four years was not consulted about what to do with his time slot. Out of a pool of over 60 candidates, mainstream political pundit Peter Laufer (another older white male) was selected. Apparently no thought was given to dividing up the time among younger, more diverse, non-white voices. 

History is repeating itself and the agenda of the old Pacifica National Board (PNB) is still manifest among some who were ostensibly involved in the effort to save Pacifica. In October, 2005, Fred Dodsworth of the East Bay Daily News quoted current board member and Concerned Listener candidate, Sherry Gendelman as saying: "the board is bitterly divided…’undemocratic' is the mantra they're using to bring the network down. They're attacking the paid staff. They want to reduce the staff and move in more esoteric conspiracy theorists. Nonprofit community radio is still a business and it needs to be run professionally, by professionals...". 

Gendelman's advocacy against “unprofessional volunteers” at the station suggests that she, and her allies on the LSB and on the staff, either do not grasp what the struggle to save Pacifica was about or have resolved, without irony, to lead the station down the same path that the old PNB tried but failed to do. In many respects, we are again where we stood a decade ago. This time the effort is to drive the “community” out of community radio. 

The Concerned Listener group has sought to increase their power and influence on the KPFA LSB by cultivating ties to the local Wellstone Democratic Club. For the second year in a row they are running a slate of candidates for the LSB. While some LSB members who were part of last year’s Concerned Listener ticket seem to be charting their own paths, there remains a core group who are closely linked to KPFA’s interim General Manager (iGM) Lemlem Rijjio and interim Program Director (iPD) Sasha Lilley. Significantly this latter group abstained when the LSB, at its August, 2007 meeting, voted to support a resolution requesting that the iGM rescind her decision to de-certify KPFA’s 17 year old unpaid staff organization. 

Beyond seeking to eviscerate democratic governance, the Concerned Listener group has also sought to re-write the history of the Program Council. The 'Orientation Packet for Concerned Listeners,' a document apparently put together by the group's leaders, contains talking points which misinform the otherwise uninformed Concerned Listener candidates about recent station history. For example, the packet tells the candidates that the Program Council never had decision-making power, and that the dispute between the iGM and the unpaid staff organization has been resolved. Both pieces of this false mantra have been repeated on the air and elsewhere by Concerned Listener candidates who do not appear to have performed their own independent due diligence about what is really going on at the station. 

In closing let us urge you, who are eligible to vote in this election, to support independent, progressive-minded candidates. It is important that you select independent candidates who best epitomize listener democracy and who want to achieve it through collaboration and consensus with those on both sides of the political divide. 

Please consider voting for the I-Team: Integrating Independence and Integrity (names listed in alphabetical order): Steve Conley, Chandra Hauptman, Joe Wanzala and Tracy Rosenberg. For more info check out their website: www.radiopoetics.org. 

Noelle Hanrahan 

Adrienne Lauby 

Henry Norr 

Sepideh Khosrowjah 

Akio Tanaka  

Hep Ingham  

Perrine Kelly 

References: 

www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Pacifica/endgame.htm 

www.counterpunch.org/pacifica.html

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the original letter referred to by Matthew Hallinan in his Oct. 30 commentary in the Daily Planet.  

Dan Siegal, the lawyer who was president of the Oakland School Board when that District was placed under the control of a state Monitor for mismanagement, has become involved in controversy at Pacifica Radio as interim Executive Director (while the newly appointed ED, Nicole Sawaya waits in the wings). Siegal, responding positively to KPFA management and Concerned Listener slate pleas to censor and censure the ballot pamphlet statements by members of the Peoples’ Radio slate, redacted the slates elections statements from the Pacifica web site. Suggesting that Peoples’ Radio election pamphlet statements are akin to “hate speech”, Siegal acted unilaterally without consulting Pacifica’s election commission. The Pacifica elections commission, after evaluating the situation, agreed—in part--with KPFA managers, that in naming names when criticizing managers and staff in their statements, the Slate had behaved inappropriately by violating the spirit of rules governing the local board elections but also found that there were no obviously slanderous comments, nor examples of hate speech. (my own reading, too, was that Peoples’ Radio had used this venue inappropriately but I find no inaccuracies of fact). The election panel ordered Siegal to return the statements to the Pacifica site. While Siegal’s initial actions gave a PR boost to the pro-management Concerned Listener slate, the impact of the reversal is unclear.  

Carol Spooner, well known listener activist, lawyer and leader of the successful Listeners’ law suit of 1999, responded pointedly to Siegal’s actions, claiming them to be prejudicial interference against a group of candidates in the election. Where Spooner had previously endorsed a different group of candidates—the independent or “I” team made up of Chandra Hauptman, Joe Wanzala, Tracy Rosenberg and Steve Conley—Siegal’s actions caused Spooner to urge people to add some members of the Peoples’ Radio slate to their list after they prioritize the I team. In a related minor incident, key Wellstone Democratic Club members, despite my protests, labeled me a supporter of the Peoples’ Radio slate—which they have repeatedly alleged aims to wreck KPFA and with having only a disruptive impact on governance, management and staff. When I protested that I too had some criticisms of Peoples’ Radio and so had endorsed the “I” team and not endorsed the Peoples’ Radio slate the Club was told by one of its leading members that I was lying, and later by that leader and another that there is really no difference between the Peoples’ Radio slate and I team lists since both groups are equally critical of current management.  

Clearly anyone critical of the policies or behaviors of current interim managers and core staff—even if their criticisms are reasonable, submitted at an appropriate place and time and factually based--is being labeled a disruptive element and an enemy of KPFA. These challenges reveal a battle over who gets to define KPFA, to represent it’s history, its program continuity and it’s future with respect to the political movement in the region. I have argued that no political grouping—not the interim managers, the core paid staff and the Concerned Listeners slate organized with management support, not the peoples’ radio, the justice slate, nor the I team group have any exclusive right or authority to lay claim to KPFA’s legacy or to control its future. KPFA’s strength has been it’s inclusiveness and eclectic character. Until there is a more formally united movement in the region, the left political movement in the Bay Area needs that this important independent station remains independent. And independent in this context means not only independent of corporate money and the power of the two major political parties but also independent of groups of a few hundreds or thousands of people attempting to use Board elections to establish an exclusive agenda or dominance allowing them to claim to speak in the name of the extensive non-participating KPFA audience.  

All the protagonists around KPFA readily recognize sectarianism, even plots, by their adversaries. But few recognize their own side to this dialectic. While being accused of concealing my (nonexistent) support for the Peoples’ Radio slate, I was similarly also being chided for faking the appearance of an aloof neutral “Olympian” (presumably the Greek gods). However, I have not been aloof, nor concealed my views of management behaviors such as the attack on the on-air advocacy of a protest that occurred this year. That I have written several critical articles in the Daily Planet does not mean, per se, that this critic is unwilling or unable to work with or compromise with those he or she criticizes. Like the I team members I have more than once offered my assistance to KPFA’s managers—current and past--and likewise repeatedly offered to help Wellstone Democratic Club set up a public forum to focus on differing visions of KPFA’s future (not on past controversies). If KPFA’s station board will only be allowed the role of a ratifying body for the management and core staff, growth and diversity at the station will remain seriously hampered, if not stagnant. KPFA’s future in this complex political environment of reaction requires a kind of diversity and inclusivity that can foster trust and cohesion with powerless communities. That is why listeners ought to elect representatives to the Board who express a clear vision of KPFA’s future role with which they agree. I hope that this vision for KPFA will reflect serious evaluation of criticisms, as well as inclusivity, dialogue and compromise.  

Marc Sapir, a local physician, previously directed the alternative polling group, Retro Poll, which focused attention on how Corporate Media distorts public perception.  

Welcome to South Berkeley. With its 14 cell phone antenna locations and an unknown number of actual radiation emitters at each location, South Berkeley has become Berkeley’s elektro-smog ghetto. Any Berkeley resident who lives in a neighborhood without antennas is probably using ours! As far back as1996, the Communications Workers of America stated in their pamphlet called Your Community Guide to Cellular Phone Towers, “ In some cases, companies have chosen poorer sections of a town to build towers. Is this part of town being asked to house the eyesore and health hazard so the other side of town can use the phone?” 

Elekro-smog is the term German citizens have given to ambient RF radiation coming from cell phone antennas. These antennas pollute the environment continuously with low- level radio frequency emissions. RF radiation has been shown to cross the blood-brain barrier and cause cell damage in lab animals. Studies done in Spain, Germany, Israel, Austria, Egypt and the Netherlands indicate significant adverse health effects from living near cell antennas. In September, the European Environmental Agency urged precaution. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has classified electromagnetic fields as Class 2B carcinogens, as has the World Health Organization.  

The recent BioInitiative Report (http://www.bioinitiative.org/report/index.htm), published in August, 2007, written by 14 scientists and public health advocates states, “There may be no limit at which exposures do not affect us. Until we know if there is a lower limit below which bioeffects and adverse health impacts do not occur, it is unwise from a public health perspective to continue “ business-as-usual” deploying new technologies that increase ELF and RF exposures, particularly involuntary exposures.”  

Many scientists with excellent reputations have found ill effects from exposure to RF radiation only to have their funding cut off and their reputations ruined. The case of Robert Becker is an example of a giant in this field who had his lab closed and his career smashed in the 1980’s when he started alerting the public to the connection between power lines and leukemia. How can studies be replicated and refined if funding is denied and researchers fired? Louis Slesin (MA in Chemical Physics from Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Policy from M.I.T.), who is the editor of Microwave News says in an interview in October, 2007 with the Institute for Inquiry, a non-profit web-based organization and journal, “A new generation of scientists comes along, asks the same question, finds the same effect and publishes the results, but then the funding dries up and the issue remains unresolved….The major player is industry (electric utility and telecommunications), and its principal objective is to shut down all health research.” 

We need the health questions answered if we want our government to set emission standards that are protective. Instead, our FCC standards were set by representatives of the industry and the military, but there is a growing consensus that those standards are too low. Countries such as Switzerland, which both honor the precautionary principle and have good cell phone service, operate within standards that are 100 times more protective than our own. Must we in South Berkeley live in a degraded environment because we live downtown? How is Berkeley going to sell the concept of infill and density if living in these multi-use neighborhoods means being exposed to harmful radiation?  

There is also a growing consensus about cell phones themselves. The Karolinska Institute of Sweden has found a 39% increase in brain tumors on the side of the head radiated by cell phones among people who have been using cell phones for 10 years or more. Recently, Marcus Antonietti of the Max Planck Institute, one of Germany’s most renowned scientific research facilities, warned of greater danger than previously thought from these emissions. He has limited his daughter to no more than five minutes a day on her cell phone!  

The City’s own health officer, Fred Medrano, submitted a report in July, 2006, after reviewing the literature, that states that he does not know whether RF radiation is safe or not. Are the chances 50-50? 70-30? What percentage of chance makes it acceptable to irradiate people, young and old, people who happen to live in the flatlands? To date, there has been no measuring of these emissions to find out if South Berkeley is out-of-whack with other neighborhoods. 

Verizon is presently threatening to sue the City of Berkeley. If our local ordinance is thrown out in court, even those of you who live in more affluent neighborhoods may be effected. If tall buildings are the desirable hot spots, why not the Claremont Hotel, or the Lab up the hill? Perhaps you will find the trade-off of having towers close by worth it: The closer the antenna, the weaker the signal, and the less radiation going into your head. 

Personally, I want no part of this devil’s bargain. I prefer my low-tech cord phone, and I don’t like being a guinea pig. Class divisions aside, all of us are in this boat together. Our environment needs repair in many ways, and this issue of wireless technology is one of them. The insanity of the present type of irrational development gets even worse when guided by the proprietary interests of the telecom companies. According to law, when a company puts up cell antennas in a particular location, every other company can put up antennas in the same location in order to compete for business. This is called collocation, which increases the health risks to a particular neighborhood. If these microwaves can go through our walls, then they also go into our bodies, and no amount of tin foil on our windows, as suggested by Gordon Wozniak at our last council meeting, is going to protect us. 

So what is the way out of this horrible conundrum? 

We have to stand up for our democratic right to control the health of our community and protect our children and ourselves. Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna Free Union (BNAFU) believes that our city should not be intimidated by the threat of a lawsuit by Verizon or by nay-saying attorneys and technocrats who are afraid to challenge existing telecommunications law. We need to assemble a team of people who are passionate about this cause and who have legal knowledge from all angles: Is there no constitutional, environmental, or public interest law that could be brought to bear on this case? Has the whole issue of need vs. capacity and transmission of voice vs. film and music data been explored legally? We want our city officials to do EVERYTHING in their power to pressure the courts: We want them to use connections to Boalt Law School, to mayors and attorneys in other cities, to national Democratic Party officials and representatives to help us stand up for what is right. When we allow the corporations to muzzle the free speech of our government representatives, as The Telecommunications Act of 1996 does, then it is time for both moral courage and outrage.  

We saw that courage and leadership in Max Anderson, our council member, who spoke up for the people of South Berkeley at the October 23rd City Council meeting. He put forward a motion to support our local zoning board’s refusal to grant the antenna permit on U.C. Storage Building. Yet, because he mentioned his obligation to protect the health of his constituents, Verizon appealed once again to the federal court in Oakland to have our local ordinance immediately thrown out. We believe that our government officials, and city staff workers and managers should have the right to freely and publicly respond to the issues of health concerns without risking a lawsuit or compromising a positive outcome in court. The right to free speech should not be curtailed in anyway! The laws of the FCC are ripe for change by Congress but unless we denounce the Telecommunications Act, and take it to the courts- and the streets- Congress will not get the message. 

New technologies exist that do not emit RF radiation and are actually much faster. One such example is underground fiber-optics. From all I have read, I hope that wireless technology, which relies on radio frequency microwaves, goes the way of the Edsel. But more than that, I hope and pray that we are mistaken. Wouldn’t it be nice to have our cake and be able to eat it too? In the meantime, with cancer rates as high as they are, our bodies are saying NO. There are too many different kinds of environmental triggers for us to go into denial about this one. Our city council is still waffling on whether to grant Verizon a permit. Please support us by showing up once again-yes, folks, it’s a drag, but we need you once again- at Old City Hall at 7:00 on Nov. 6 to say to our representatives: DON’T SELL US OUT. STAND UP AND LEAD. 

As we come down to the wire at the Berkeley City Council this coming Tuesday evening, we face a dilemna that one city council after another around the country regularly faces. The telecommunications industry is shoving cell antennas into neighborhood after neighborhood with a very powerful economic and legal fist to back it up. The fist need only be raised when a community dares to seriously question a telecommunications companies’ corporate plan. This plan aimed at profitk results in pollution of our airways with continuous radio frequency radiation. In Berkeley’s case, Verizon threatens to eliminate our entire ordinance governing the siting of cell phone antennas, that is unless we bow down to their current demand for antennas at three separate Berkeley locations. Is this a form of economic blackmail? 

This corporate control creeps and slithers throughout our cities, slowly increasing invisible radiation and other forms of electro-smog into less affluent urban neighborhoods. Meanwhile the U.S. war machine murders civilians and lays waste to their cities and towns in countries like Iraq. The connection between the two shows up in Verizon’s collusion with the U.S. government in voluntarily mining and then quietly transmitting data, gathered through monitoring our private phone conversations, to our national government.  

The 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act has had the consequence of stripping local governments of any significant power to determine placement of cell phone antennas. The act also makes it impossible for our representatives to protect their constituents because it states that antenna permits cannot be denied on the basis of health. This federal law must be changed. But in order to bring about that change, community after community must find the moral courage to stand up. City Councils like Berkeley’s must find the wherewithal to back their communities both politically and legally. The Civil Rights law of 1964 never would have passed without the grassroots work of civil rights activists.  

A week and a half ago, thirty neighbors demonstrated in front of Mayor Tom Bates’ house to ask him to stand up against Verizon. The following evening, sixty citizens from all over Berkeley also took the time to attend a three hour public hearing to implore our City Council to stand up and lead. Following a and informed passionate and passionate speech by Councilmember Max Anderson, both the mayor and Donna Spring backed the Zoning Board’s denial of the Verizon application. Two more votes are needed this coming Tuesday to oppose Verizon once and for all.  

We neighbors care about our environment; we care about our community. We care about our children in ways that Verizon never will, in ways that the Piedmont developer and owner of the proposed site, Patrick Kennedy won’t either, apparently. Yet because of their economic and legal clout, both Verizon and its local landlord beneficiary have more to say about what our neighborhood needs than we do. This is neither fair nor democratic.  

South Berkeley does not need more cell phone antennas. That has been thoroughly documented.  

Support the Berkeley Zoning Board’s decision to deny Verizon twelve more antennas on South Shattuck Avenue: 

1. Join our demonstration at the Berkeley Verizon store on University and San Pablo this Saturday, November 3, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.  

2. Attend next Tuesday’s last City Council meeting at which a decision will be made to reject Verizon or to bow down to its demands. The meeting will take place Tuesday, November 6, 7 p.m. at Old City Hall, 2134 MLK Jr. Way in Berkeley. There will be an opportunity for any of us to speak at the beginning of the meeting. For more information, contact the Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union at: qubana99@hotmail.com. 

Sometimes I miss out on interesting natural phenomena. It wasn’t until last month, while cruising the posters at the biennial State of the Estuary Conference, that I learned about the water snake invasion of Lafayette Reservoir. I’d go check it out, but it’s too late; they’re all gone. Another exotic-species boom gone bust. 

These were diamondback water snakes (Nerodia rhombifer), to be exact, a reptile I know from Arkansas. I’ve seen them swimming lazily in a sluggish creek in a Little Rock park. They’re good-sized snakes (about three-and-a-half feet long), heavy-bodied, with a chainlike dorsal pattern, red eyes, and black tongues. Unlike the venomous—and equally aquatic—cottonmouth moccasin, their eyes have round pupils rather than catlike slits. Males can be identified by the projecting tubercles on their chins, although I was disappointed to learn that they do not tickle the females with them. 

As their name suggests, you’d find these guys in ditches, creeks, lakes, ponds, bayous, or swamps, from Alabama west to Texas and north into Iowa. They also get up into branches overhanging the water; I have to wonder if the cottonmouth that dropped into the boat in one my father’s fishing stories, prompting its immediate evacuation, wasn’t a diamondback water snake. 

They feed on fish and frogs for the most part, with the occasional cotton rat or small bird, hunting by smell: a few drops of fish extract in the water puts them in attack mode. Some have been seen trapping fish in their coils. Older individuals hang out with their mouths open and their tails anchored to a rock, facing into the current, waiting for something interesting to swim by. 

Like most water snakes, diamondbacks are foul-tempered critters. “If handled, they bite viciously and spray musk,” write Carl and Evelyn Ernst in Snakes of the United States and Canada. Which brings us to the question of what these non-California natives were doing in the reservoir. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a water snake for sale at the East Bay Vivarium; you’d need a special aquatic setup, and the snake would probably bite you when you tried to clean the tank. 

Lacking other explanations, though, let’s assume some dissatisfied snake owner dumped his (I think “his” is a given) erstwhile pets in the reservoir. This would have been some time before 1990, when two snakes found their way from Lafayette to the UC Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Soon thereafter parties of 5 to 10 snakes were observed basking on tules, reservoir banks, even piers. There were incidents. Some anglers were unhappy to discover a snake on the end of their fishing line. 

Responding to recreationists’ complains, EBMUD hired Wildlife Control Technology in 1996 to evaluate control methods. The contractor concluded that an “original estimate of 200 snakes made by park staff is realistic, and probably conservative.” Although the species is known to hibernate in the northerly parts of its native range, the reservoir snakes were seen sunning in January.  

WCT made its recommendations (favoring trapping over shooting or the more extreme step of draining the reservoir), but EBMUD never had to implement them. On a subsequent survey in 1999, a new outfit, ECORP Consulting, found large numbers of dead snakes, along with dead red-eared slider turtles, throughout the reservoir. Some of the casualties were reported to have a fungus-like growth in their respiratory tracts, although no further analysis was done and no specimens were preserved. El Niño was blamed, or credited, for facilitating the disease outbreak, if it was in fact a disease outbreak. Snake flu? 

And that may have been it. ECORP says there have been no confirmed water snake sightings at the reservoir since late 1999, despite occasional rumors. Oddly, there are other pockets of alien water snakes elsewhere in the state—southern water snakes near Folsom and Long Beach, northern water snakes near Roseville. But it appears the diamondbacks have died out at Lafayette. 

Which is how it often goes with exotic plant and animal species. They flourish for a while, and then something—predator, pathogen, weather—knocks them back, and sometimes out. Case in point: Vancouver, B.C., used to be overrun with crested mynahs, an East Asian relative of the talking variety. They were the dominant bird of the fast-food parking lot ecological niche. Then they dwindled to a remnant, and a couple of years ago the last of them expired. 

If you’re wondering why reservoir snakes would have been a bad thing, recall that diamondback water snakes eat frogs as well as fish. California’s frogs—red-legged, yellow-legged, Cascade—are on the ropes already. The last thing they need is a new predator. The water snakes would also likely have eaten or otherwise displaced our native aquatic garter snakes. Best to leave well enough alone. 

Every now and then I see a teenager in one of my trees. From a window I thought at first it might be a small UC student locationally adrift, in a striped shirt. A closer look showed it to be a young Cooper’s hawk, glaring down at me in comparably dauntless fashion. Thanks to Joe Eaton’s bi-weekly column, I can guess that it is drawn to the sparrows and finches at the thistle feeder, though the ducks keep an eye skywards when it appears, and my female cat skedaddles into the house. Smaller than the ducks, she is I hope still too large for the crow-sized Cooper’s. 

Predators are not the only problems to beset the gardener. Having finally fenced my vegetables and arranged paths around the raised beds for excellent access, I noticed the turnips behaving oddly, as though they were trying to get out of the ground. Instead of doing what I usually do, hope that time will cure all ills, I did what I recommend to others, dug around the turnips to see what was going on beneath them. 

To my horror, this vegetable bed was choked with fine feeder roots surely put out by the closest tree, a willow, although at a distance of 15 feet and with a pond between tree and vegetables, this seemed unlikely. Could the roots belong to a plum tree, fifteen feet away in the other direction? Indeed, when I finally plucked up courage to look around dispassionately, I realized that trees that a moment ago, it seemed, were mere saplings, had now grown tall enough to cast significant shadows for several hours each day. 

One of the best things about gardening is that in spite of the obstacles that constantly impede efforts, hope springs eternal in the gardener’s breast. For I knew that although I could dig out these intrusive fibrous roots and in their stead place a deep box with a fine wire mesh nailed across the bottom, although I might have to change the location of the vegetable plot, although I might as well re-design the whole garden while I’m at it—although I realized all those things, I knew that the timing was perfect: October. 

October is the start of the year for California plants. The seeds of native flowers that bloom so early in the year are poised to sprout at the first hint of rain. With a new vegetable-growing area of sun-baked clay, autumn is the time for requesting a sack or two of manure from local stables and covering the clay with a nice thick layer of it. Get a truck load if necessary, the stable owners will be thrilled. Top the layer with hay, leaves, grass trimmings and by next March, given a rainy season worthy of the name, the ground beneath will be in superb condition for spring growing. 

It is possible to sheet or trench compost directly in the vegetable bed as a way of increasing the workability of the soil and its nutritional value. For trench composting, a channel is dug along the middle of the bed, vegetable trimmings from the kitchen are placed in it, the earth dug out goes back in, and a layer of mulch is placed on top of that. If dogs or racoons are a problem, put a board over everything, weighted down with bricks. Sheet composting is identical, except that everything is on the surface rather than in a trench. 

When vegetables are grown in the same area year after year, close attention must be paid not just to maintaining an adequate balance of nutrients, but also to the earth’s texture, its tilth. Allowing a vegetable bed to lie fallow for a season, feeding it with manure for nitrogen and organic matter for texture, will help it to catch its breath, so to speak. For related reasons, those of diseases, it is necessary to rotate crops, especially those in the brassicaceae, or cabbage family, and in the solanaceae, in which family are tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and peppers. A fallow season can be part of a rotation plan. 

Having created a beautifully nourished and textured bed, it will still need overall maintenance, and this is where composting comes into its own. Much has been written about composting, most of it needlessly complex. It is not necessary, for example, to turn compost. Left alone for a year or less (depending on climate zone), microbes, earthworms and insects will do the job of converting kitchen trimmings, leaves, hay and so forth into that brown crumbly stuff sometimes called gardener’s gold. 

Quicker and easier is to use a container with a lid and a few air holes and introduce some red wriggly worms. These consume vast amounts of kitchen and garden material in a short time as they work or should I say worm their way up through it, leaving behind dense, friable, nutrient-rich compost. 

Some foods are unacceptable to worms, such as citrus and tomatoes (too acid). Toothless, they need a little grit, readily supplied by spent potting soil. Delicate rather than leathery leaves, no branches or pungent herbs, but plenty of other organic stuff is necessary to keep worms and kitchen trimmings well covered and at a moderate temperature. Water very lightly if all seems dry. 

Because it is so valuable, I use worm compost sparingly. After all, in theory my planting area has been well prepared. Just before setting out baby vegetables, I dig a little of this rich compost just under the surface of the bed, water it, and let it sit for a day. After setting in the seedlings, I side dress them with a little more. Then I water the plants, or puddle them in, as we rustics say. 

Compost provides balanced nutrition that plants can draw from according to their needs. It is a far cry from the forced feeding of liquid inorganic fertilizers such as superphosphate which, while producing sudden, even spectacular growth, does nothing for the texture of the soil. In no time at all, the earth will revert to clay. 

“Organic material” is by definition anything that once had life. This does not mean that anything can go into the wormless compost pile, either. Even if I ate it, I would not compost meat. It deteriorates quickly and attracts rats. Nor bread, for the same reasons. Fish on the other hand breaks down fast if covered with earth. As American Indians know, a fish head buried in a bed of corn is a natural fertilizer. I cannot imagine composting oil or, as an organic gardener, paper products, which contain chemicals or other additives of unknown kind. Eggshells add calcium, banana skins potassium. Sawdust and wood shavings, so long as they do not derive from plywood, and with the addition of a bit of nitrogen from manure to help decomposition, will soon improve texture. 

If only my teenage tree sitter were a vegetarian! But then I suppose he or she would only create yet another problem in the vegetable garden.  

A couple of weeks ago, the Metropolitan Greater Oakland (MGO) Democratic Club held a journalists’ forum on the first 200 days of the administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. 

During the discussion, one of the audience members asked San FranciscoChronicle East Bay columnist Chip Johnson to give his opinion on whether the local media as a whole was treating Mr. Dellums somewhat more harshly than we had his predecessor, Jerry Brown. 

Mr. Johnson, of course, has been the local journalist most consistently critical of Mr. Dellums. Most recently, the Chronicle columnist has taken off after the mayor on the crime and violence issue, most particularly over the number of police needed—or wanted—to curb Oakland’s crime problem. 

In an Oct. 5 column entitled “Robberies Shut Enterprise In West Oakland,” Mr. Johnson wrote, “When I interviewed Mayor Ron Dellums two weeks ago, he said he didn’t believe residents wanted a police force so large that it represented an oppressive presence on the streets of Oakland. His answer so intrigued me that I’ve asked dozens of people about it—citizens, businesspeople, friends, family members, everyone I could think of. So far, I’ve not found one person who agrees with him.” 

Mr. Johnson expanded on that theme a week later, writing in an Oct. 16 “It’s Time For Dellums to Get Real On Fighting Crime” column that “despite Oakland’s soaring crime rate and its sinking arrest rate, Mayor Ron Dellums is being dragged into a public debate about hiring more officers. Late last month, Dellums said he believed Oakland residents didn’t want a force larger than the 803 sworn officers authorized by a public bond measure … [but] it seems the public groundswell is causing Dellums to shift his position on this issue. What gets me most about our big-picture mayor is that he continually ignores the big picture. He talks on and on about tackling big ideas and empowering big visions while continually side-stepping Oakland’s biggest issue. Public safety is the big-picture issue, Mr. Mayor. Don’t you get it?” 

Mr. Johnson goes on to say that “Dellums’ lifelong liberal politics simply will not allow him to abandon the social remedies as part of any plan to address crime, and Oakland’s crime rate and increasingly anxious residents, are not going to let him ignore the other side of the equation. The point brought home again and again by residents who attended the weekend town hall meeting was that public safety and adequate staffing levels for the Police Department should be the mayor’s top priority.” 

And then, following the MGO meeting, in an Oct. 30 column entitled “All Across Oakland, Public Safety is the Issue, Mayor Dellums,” Mr. Johnson took up the bloody shirt once more, “In recent months, “ he writes, “as I’ve repeatedly beaten the drum for Mayor Ron Dellums to step up the fight on crime, hundreds of residents have sent me e-mailed notes with their tales of horror. … Public safety is the single-most-important item on Dellums’ to-do list—more important than any redevelopment project, social movement or existing political initiative. … Oakland residents and business owners have spoken clearly and eloquently so often—and in one voice—that the city’s leadership must act now.” 

But though he has been tough on Mr. Dellums, in his answer to the question at the MGO forum, Mr. Johnson denied that he had treated Mr. Brown differently from the way he is now treating the new mayor. “My job is to hold all politicians’ feet to the fire,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that hiring more police—over and above the currently-authorized 803—is the mayor’s most important public safety responsibility right now, even asking for a show of hands from the audience to prove that the community agreed with him. 

But did Mr. Johnson feel—or write—that way under similar circumstances during the Jerry Brown years? Well, not exactly. 

In 2002 and 2003, towards the end of Mr. Brown’s first term, Oakland experienced a sudden spike in violent crime. Most noticeable, Oakland murders jumped from an average in the mid-’80s between 1998 and 2001 to 113 in 2002 and 114 in 2003. Just like today, violent crime seemed to be the subject of the day in Oakland, and on everybody’s minds. 

During the period between January, 2002 and January, 2004, Mr. Johnson wrote 181 columns, eight of them specifically on the subject of general crime issues. 

I’d suggest you read the columns yourself for your own analysis. In my own analysis, while Mr. Johnson wrote about Oakland’s crime problem as a serious issue, calling 2002, for example, “a bloody year,” and saying flatly another time that “the killings on the streets of Oakland have got to stop,” the Chronicle’s East Bay columnist never put the blame for the problem on Mr. Brown’s shoulders as he is now doing on Mr. Dellums’. 

And sometimes, in fact, Mr. Johnson appeared to go overboard in gushiness in praising Mr. Brown for doing anything about crime, even things that didn’t protect the entire city, but only Mr. Brown’s image and his own neighborhood block. 

In the summer of 2003, when Mr. Brown was loudly proclaiming the fact that he was living in a condominium in the old Sears Building in the supposedly “tough” and “dangerous” uptown neighborhood at the corner of Telegraph Avenue and 27th Street, Mr. Johnson wrote two columns in the space of a month (“Brown Has A Ringside Seat For Neighborhood Crime—Drive-by Shooting Near His Apartment” on Aug. 8 and “The Mayor and the Mean Street—Brown Tackling His New, Tough Neighborhood” on Aug. 25) giving Mr. Brown props for living in the hood and trying to clean up the area around his front door.  

Mr. Brown’s “leisurely nighttime walks with his dog Dharma have been a lot more adventurous than they’d ever been along the Oakland waterfront,” Mr. Johnson wrote in the Aug. 25 column, for example. “Since a shooting occurred outside a karaoke bar near his home a few weeks ago, the mayor has brought every city agency within his reach— from the police department to the housing agency to the building department—to investigate the causes of blight and crime.” It seems to have escaped Mr. Johnson’s attention, or his criticism, that a man who had been in public life for decades—including serving two terms as governor of California and running for President of the United States—should discover the need to “investigate the causes of blight and crime” only after he moved in a neighborhood that had a little of both. At the same time, Mr. Johnson also ignored the fact that in the real violence areas and killing fields of Oakland—the Dog Towns and the Sunnysides and the lower Fruitvales—these anti-crime, anti-violence issues were not being attacked by the Brown Administration with the same zeal that they were being attacked on Mr. Brown’s own doorstep. 

And Mr. Johnson appeared to have sympathies for Mr. Brown’s challenges as mayor of Oakland that he does not now appear to have for Mr. Dellums. In January 2003, on the occasion of Mr. Brown’s second inaugural, Mr. Johnson wrote that “Brown aimed high when he swept into office, promising to fix the intractable problems of the Oakland Unified School District and put a lid on criminal activity. Four years later, he’s discovered that it’s a lot easier said than done. All the euphemisms about the hands-on work of a big-city mayor have come to pass, and Brown finds himself without the financial resources, influence and authority he held as governor.” 

Not that Mr. Johnson always went easy on Mr. Brown, it’s just that he wasn’t hard on Mr. Brown in the area of crime and violence. In July 2003, for example, Mr. Johnson wrote that the “biggest worst decision” of the Brown Administration was the firing of City Administrator Robert Bobb, with no mention of crime prevention as one of Mr. Bobb’s priorities. 

But Mr. Johnson did have concerns about crime and violence in 2002 and 2003, even if he didn’t seem to think those should be Mr. Brown’s biggest concerns, except that Mr. Johnson’s solutions at the time of the Brown Administration appeared to be 180 degrees the opposite of what he is saying now during the Dellums administration. 

It was in a March 13, 2002 column “Renaissance Doesn’t Reach City’s Poor—Police Chief May Have Solution To End Killings” that Mr. Johnson gave his most comprehensive view on how he thought Oakland’s crime and violence problem should be addressed during the Jerry Brown years. 

We quote, at length. 

Writing of Mr. Brown’s first mayoral term, Mr. Johnson said that “nothing has changed in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, where job opportunities are scarce, drugs are being sold from street corners, community spirit is waning and frustration is growing. And people are getting killed … Brown now wants a parcel tax to hire more police officers, an iron-fist approach to street crime and tighter controls on the city’s 11,000 parolees. That’s a rather predictable formula for tackling crime from a man who as California’s governor once suggested that the state launch its own satellites. What Oakland needs now is an idea as radical as that to stop the street killings before they drive the city’s murder rate higher, and its public image lower … For all that’s been said about a new, more efficient, creative local government, it’s [then] Police Chief Richard Word who is thinking outside the box this time. ‘I think the next step has to be reaching out directly to the youngsters we find on the corners who are selling drugs, not working and lacking educational skills,’ Word said … For his part, Brown has used the recent killing spree as a political soapbox to promote a parcel tax to hire more officers. … More police patrols will help law-abiding neighborhood residents for the time being, but … [I]f Brown wants to … engineer a turnaround that would be the envy of the nation, [he] will have to find a way to empower the poorest residents in a city where kids can look up at lavish hillside homes and dream—and sometimes scheme—on how to get there. “ 

Sounds like the same anti-violence programs Mr. Dellums is advocating today, the “social remedies” solution Mr. Johnson is now roundly criticizing the mayor for being unable to give up. 

Why, in Mr. Johnson’s view, were more police only a stopgap solution to Oakland’s crime problem under Jerry Brown, but now be-all and end-all under Ron Dellums? Hell if I know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Johnson yourself, about that. 

On November 14, 1901 an item in the Berkeley Daily Gazette informed: 

Swiss Chalets for Hillside Homes. 

Frederick H. Clark, secretary of the Homestead Loan Association of Berkeley and three kindred associations in San Francisco, is improving the property recently purchased by him in the University Terrace tract. This scenic plat is situated at the head of Channing way on a gentle declivity and is very beautifully located. 

Mr. Clark will build for Prof. G.H. Boke, and Margaret Deane [sic], handsome Swiss chalets which are the creation of Architect Meybeck [sic]. A.H. Broad, the contractor, will begin work at once. 

The article was referring to the houses at 23 and 25 Panoramic Way, only one of which—the former—was designed by Maybeck. It was the dwelling built for George H. Boke, a law instructor at the University of California, who at the time was residing with his wife and three children nearby, at 2630 Channing Way. Banker Frederick H. Clark was apparently the deed holder on both “chalets,” since Boke was never listed in the assessor’s records, and his neighbor, Margaret A. Dean (grandmother of Dan Dean, our former mayor’s husband) does not appear in those records until 1908. Both houses were completed on February 14, 1902. 

George Henry Boke (1869–1929) was born in Placer County, California. His father, Nick Boke, was an immigrant from the duchy of Saxe-Coburg in Bavaria. His mother, Orange Ann, was a mere kid of seventeen when she gave birth to him. At the time, the Bokes were living in Dutch Flat, a town settled by German miners in 1851. Nick worked as a store clerk. 

Ten years later, Orange was married to apiarist Jerry Moulton, and the family resided in Saticoy, Ventura County, where the fruit orchards provided ready fodder for Jerry’s bees. Nevertheless, the apiarist turned carpenter, and the Moultons trekked up north to Nelson, in Butte County. 

The road from working-class life in the sticks to a Berkeley law professorship, remarkable as it is today, was practically unheard of a century ago, and young George Boke passed through numerous stations along the way. In 1887, he graduated from the State Normal School at San Jose, obtaining a teaching certificate. After teaching for a short while in Modoc County, he became principal of the school at Newcastle, Placer County. 

The early 1890s found him a student at Berkeley, where he graduated in 1894, in the class of Julia Morgan and Frank Norris. By 1900, Boke had spent two years at Harvard, from which obtained an M.A. and later an LL.B.. Along the way he had married Grace Sophia Bray of San Francisco and fathered three daughters. 

On May 21, 1900, Boke was appointed instructor in jurisprudence at the University of California. By 1903, he was also the head of the YMCA night school. His trajectory at the university can be traced through city directory listings that show his rise from instructor to assistant professor, associate professor, and professor in the course of four years. 

In 1906, Boke was lured to Stanford to teach a course on property. By the following year, however, he was back at Berkeley and suggested to his students the desirability of forming an anti-graft league with branches in all American universities. The inspiration, reported the San Francisco Call on April 23, 1907, came to Boke after hearing a talk by Francis J. Heney, the special federal prosecutor who had been brought to San Francisco to prosecute Mayor Eugene Schmitz and Boss Abe Ruef for bribery. Speaking at a university meeting, Heney “declared that grafters flourished because only a few voters interested themselves in the business of the municipality, and the vast majority was ignorant of what was taking place. Professor Boke believes that college men should institute a movement to promote knowledge of civic affairs throughout the country, and at his suggestion a number of students are laying the foundation for an intercollegiate league, to be used as a weapon against municipal graft and all other sorts of grafts.” 

After the attempted assassination of a witness in the graft trial, a Citizens’ League of Justice was organized, and Boke agreed to become its executive officer. In his book “The System”: As Uncovered by the San Francisco Graft Prosecution (1915), Franklin Hichborn wrote, “In spite of the fact that he was jeopardizing his position at the State University by his course, Professor Boke did much effective work in bringing the conditions which confronted San Francisco squarely before the public.” 

Boke participated in the birth of the non-partisan Good Government League and in 1908 founded The Liberator, a weekly published by the Citizens’ League of Justice. He was also instrumental in raising funds for the new Boalt Hall of Law (now Durant Hall). When the building’s projected costs mounted 50% above Elizabeth Boalt’s bequest, Boke raised the balance by soliciting the lawyers of California. It is said that the Napa County lawyers’ association specified that its pledge would be paid after the harvesting of the raisin crop. 

As it turned out, Boke’s crusading did put a stop to his academic career when the reformers’ efforts began to implicate members of the U.C. Board of Regents. Although the Regents couldn’t fire Boke, he was shunted aside and spent the rest of his life between Carmel and San Francisco. While retaining the title of Professor of Law, he engaged in independent work, writing books and articles and speaking at legal gatherings. Although his friend Lincoln Steffens would posthumously paint Boke’s life as tragic, it was hardly as lonely and isolated as portrayed.  

Maybeck and Boke had much in common. Both were crusaders and lovers of amateur theatricals. In July 1910, Boke participated in Carmel’s first al fresco stage production, playing the prophet Samuel in Constance Skinner’s biblical drama David, mounted in a pine grove. “He was a striking, picturesque figure, admirably gowned and wigged in white,” marveled Walter Anthony in the San Francisco Call. 

Maybeck’s design for the Boke house was both traditional and advanced for its time. The upper story, clad in vertical redwood boards, extends two feet beyond the first floor, where the boards are horizontal. Two wings of a broadly overhanging roof part to admit a central gable with a pair of double casement windows. A trio of casements appears just below, in a square bay projecting from the first floor façade. On the north side, an open sleeping balcony is a reminder of hardier generations. 

The living and dining rooms are arranged in an open ell with no separating doors. Both are paneled in board-and-batten redwood, with exposed posts and beams and decorative bolster blocks. Atypically for Maybeck, the fireplace is small, with a simple bracketed wooden mantel and tile surround. The four bedrooms on the second floor are equally rustic, finished in redwood, originally stained a mossy green, and exposing the ceiling framework. 

The Boke house caused repercussions in Berkeley and beyond. An exact copy of it was built in Oakland. Maybeck’s office records indicate that duplicate plans were sent to Aberdeen, Washington in 1906 for the J. B. Elston house. Berkeley houses that appear to bear the Boke stamp are the neighboring Dean house (A.H. Broad, 1901); the Warren Cheney cottage (Carl Ericsson, 1902); the de Neiman house at 21 Hillside Court (builder unknown, 1906); and Carl Ericsson’s house at 1625 Jayne Court (1909). 

Boke’s tenure at 23 Panoramic Way was brief. From 1904 until 1913 or so, he rented homes at various locations in Berkeley, never again owning a house except the one in Carmel, built in 1906. His son Richard described it as a “modern” redwood house, which “shows somewhat the Maybeck influence.” 

Boke was succeeded at 23 Panoramic Way by Clifton Price (1867–1942), a professor of Latin who would later add to his holdings the Jerome C. Ford apartment house at 77 Panoramic (A.H. Broad, 1904) and commission Julia Morgan in 1912 to build another apartment house at 5–11 Panoramic. In 1920, he was recorded in the U.S. Census as sharing the 4-bedroom Boke house with his wife, three children, a brother-in-law, two cousins, and a servant. But the arrangement was short lived, as Price regularly moved his residence from one property to another. In 1924, Price married his second wife, Wilson Holden (1895–1979), who lived in the Boke house for the rest of her life. The current owners bought it from her estate in 1980. 

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

Photograph by Daniella Thompson.  

The George Boke house, above, at 23 Panoramic Way. George Boke raised a third of the building funds for the original Boalt Hall, below, now known as Durant Hall.

Mostly Natives is a classic, and worth a jaunt on a nice day. If you’re the sort of traveler who appreciates dramatic and various weather shows, that would include the average rainy spell; the rolling curtains and airborne leviathans of fog and cloud that unroll across the Richmond—San Rafael Bridge and lie in the folds of Marin County, alternately dazzling and shrouding you on the road are one of our particular local pleasures.  

Aside from being a retailer, Mostly Natives is a wholesale source of California native plants. When I see its tags in other nurseries, I take it as a sign of good buying practices. 

The retail stock is exciting to native-plant mavens: rare things like fawn lily and Sierra rose (I've seen three native rose species here), and merely unusual and handsome things like ninebark, ocean spray, the natives Iris macrosiphon and I. douglasiana as well as the more commonly found Pacific Coast Hybrid irises.  

There are more species of native bunchgrass than you can shake a stick at, and they're available as gallon-size or four-inch plants. Showy and useful non-native grasses and grasslikes such as those brass-colored carexes share display space with them, always labeled as to origin. 

Native shrub youngsters are here in the four-inch size, too, to stretch your dollar and allow flexibility in use. It’s a good idea to plant small when you can, because you don’t have to dig as big a hole—less labor and less disturbance of the soil—and a younger plant tends to suffer less from transplant shock. It’ll catch up to something planted at a larger size within a year or three.  

These people clearly know what they’re doing; the stock is healthy, questions get answered, and the informational tags are a horticulture course in themselves, with details like which plants are native to the Bay Area; what their cultural preferences are, vis-à-vis water, drainage, sun, and other details; what they’ll tolerate, for example, wind and salt spray near the ocean; and which ones do well in containers. There’s great information on the Web site, too. 

“Mostly” isn’t misleading, either; there are other plants here, a small but choice assortment, and generally as robust and inviting as the natives. Herbs we’ve picked up there over the years have included classics like lemon balm, and slightly adventurous things like Thai basil; when we dropped in there last month, though, there were fewer herbs on sale than usual. I suspect this might be a seasonal thing. 

The edibles are the sort of thing you want if you have precious little dirt space to squander. Prices are good for natives and exotics both. You can get soil amendments and tools here, too, if you can resist spending your whole budget on plants.  

If your timing and budget are right, you can also stop for barbecued oysters on the way along Tomales Bay, at Tony’s or (for, as I recall, more bucks) the newly refurbished Nick’s Cove. Otherwise, the little deli in Tomales has quite decent lunches and breakfasts and thoughtful service. 

Mostly Native Nursery 

27235 Highway 1, Tomales  

Wednesday–Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.  

Sunday 10 a.m–4 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday. 

(415) 878-2009 

www.mostlynatives.com

This is for my wife. Actually, it’s for wives and girlfriends everywhere. Here it is. I was wrong. Wait, I’ll say it again. I was wrong. How are you feeling? Giddy? Lightheaded? Well, don’t lose control. It’s one of these construction things. Not anything important like bedspreads, hair-do’s or Angelina’s latest fling. 

There are two things in particular I’d like to confess having done 180ºs about over years. The first is plywood. When I first started studying houses, it was my impressing that plywood was garbage and shouldn’t be used. As you’ll see, and as applies to each of the things we’ll discuss, there are good arguments for and against this product but let’s start with what’s good about it and what I missed on the first go-around. 

The funny thing about my original dislike of plywood is that I had no idea how bad construction materials were going to get. I could only wish that plywood was the worst. 

What I’ve learned in the many years since I first questioned this inovative material was that plywood would turn out to be one of the premier structural advancements in construction over the course of more than a century. 

Without plywood, it would be much harder and costlier to achieve the “shear strength” that we so easily gain in constructing buildings though it’s use. Shear strength is the ability to resist tearing forces. The forces that collapse buildings or rip walls apart in earthquakes, hurricanes and even in houses that are settling severely. Plywood is made by cutting a tree in a spiral fashion, much like unpeeling a roll of paper towels. This creates very large, thin sheets of wood. Sheets of the “unrolled” tree are then glued to one another at 90 degree angles to one another.  

By turning the sheets at an angle, the grain (where tearing is easiest) is run in opposing directions and greater strength is gained. The best plywood for shear resistance is one that has many layers turned against one another, such as the popular Structural One grade used in many of the best seismic retrofitting jobs.  

But there is a downside to plywood and it’s the very thing that turned me off from early on. Aside from just being ugly (I’m the beholder in this case), plywood doesn’t handle moisture very well. Left in the rain, it tends to warp (or buckle when nailed to a wall as if struggling for its freedom) and fungi have a happy time of it munching on the many openings created through the amount of exposure all that sawing creates.  

The more you saw up a piece of wood, the more easily digested it becomes. Cornflakes are easier to digest than whole kernels of corn and the more we chew up a piece of wood the more easily digested it will be by those that eat wood. The closer we get to making houses out of cardboard, the lower the tolerance for even small amounts of moisture and the ensuing party thrown by the fungal kingdom (look, that one’s doing the lambada!) 

So, in short, plywood is a very useful material that makes the construction of buildings, easier, cheaper and quite strong but more vulnerable to moisture and fungi. Use it but be careful to keep it dry.  

Next is drywall, aka sheetrock. My early reactions to this material were pretty miserable and I’ll confess that I’m still not in love with it but I do now recognize a couple of ways in which this material is pretty incredible. The foremost of these is its extraordinary ability to retard the advance of fire. Gypsum plaster contains trapped water molecules which boil off leaving a powdery residue. This process keep the building cool and protects the areas not yet ablaze during the progress of a fire. Plaster does this too but at a much great cost and the methodologies of installation are nearly lost in our money driven construction culture. That’s the other thing I have relinquish to this former foe, drywall is cheap and that’s not a bad thing. It means that more people in the world can have clean dry enclosures in which to live. Low cost isn’t a bad thing although I think we have to look at this from both large scale and long-range perspectives too. How sustainable is a system that relies so much on centralized mechanized processes.  

While there are many benefits to industrialization and many can benefit, we all have to be wary of who benefits and from these manufacturing methods and what happens to those who have nothing. All dialectic aside, I’ve come to see drywall as a reasonable, if mundane choice. I’d certainly like to see more variation in its use and more use of plaster, whether installed over drywall or other lathings (backings). That’s the origin of my dislike for the material, the lack of imagination in its use and the superlative ability of sheetrock to make every interior in the world look exactly the same. Like laminate floorings (e.g. Pergo) and counters (e.g. Formica) as well as viny floorings and wall coverings, my true argument is with our aesthetic, not the actual material itself. 

Another thing I DO like about drywall is that homeowners and lesser-skilled workers can also install it, albeit imperfectly. Anything that’s more democratizing is alright by me. 

A similar material used on the exterior of building is stucco. Also a plastering process, although this is properly called Cement Plaster because it contains Portland Cement, the same compound used in concrete. In fact, stucco is essentially the same product as concrete allowing for smaller and more uniform aggregate (rocks or sand). 

While I initially experienced stucco, in my O’ So Bored, L.A. youth as the symbol of the Plastic People (thank you Mr. Zappa), I now see stucco in very much the same way that I see drywall. The material is relatively easy to install and has low cost and relatively low environmental impact. While Portland Cement requires large amount of heat energy to produce and contributes somewhat to global warming, it’s hard to think of alternatives that are much better in today’s world. The good news is that better energy sources, such as hydroelectric power can lower these effects and there are also plans to begin burning some nasty things as fuel that we want to get rid of anyway. These include car tires, waste solvents, slaughterhouse wastes and plastic. 

While I initially saw stucco as boring, my arrival in the Bay Area has changed all that. Stucco and concrete can live glorious lives when crafted with vision as the masters of Deco, Usonian and Brutalism have shown us.  

It’s important to note that stucco as it exists today is a material that is often the source of construction mayhem. Common misinstallation errors too often lead to leaks and law suits so if you are going to DO stucco, make sure the design professional and builders are prepared to be all they be. While the stuccos and lead paints of yore were capable of retarding water intrusion, today’s building need to employ a second “drainage plane” behind the stucco to prevent moisture entry. 

If there’s a hero in today’s story, it’s Bernard Maybeck. For those of you who don’t know Mr. Maybeck, we probably don’t get to have a Julia Morgan (at least the one we know) without him and, in a time when the Beaux Arts are dying fast, Maybeck not only brings them back to us but he does so with steel-sashed industiral windows, cast-concrete and asbestos shingles. If you’ve never seen the First Church of Christ Scientist, just off People’s Park here in Berkeley, you’ve missed what at least one critic has called the most beautiful building in North America (A. Temko). 

What we (read I) can learn from this great master is that the materials are secondary. Design is always first. While I’m often wrong, I think, on this one thing, I’m probably right. 

TUESDAY, NOV. 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joanne Kyger and David Trinidad read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Joseph Lease and Lisa Robertson, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Joanna Macy discusses the newly revised “World as Love, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Cost is $10. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Vishten, fiddling and step-dancing, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

deMania Trio with Alex DeGrassi, Michael Manring and Chris Garcia at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 7 

FILM 

Behold the Asian: Videoworks by James T. Hong with the filmmaker in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Forces: Paintings and Calligraphy by Lampo Leong” Artist talk at 4 p.m., reception at 5:30 p.m. at IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th flr. 642-2809. 

“Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949” with author Wen-hsin Yeh, in conversation with Margaret Tillman and Allison Rottman at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Fritjof Capra discusses “The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Bay Area African Dance and Drum Festival Wed.-Fri. at 6 p.m. and all day Sat. and Sun. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. 415-378-4413. 

Albany Jazz Band Fall Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Ocean View Elementary School, 1000 Jackson St., Albany. Free. 524-9538.  

American Ballet Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$100. 642-9988.  

Dave Bernstein Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

The Jelly Roll Souls at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $TBA. 525-5054.  

Mikie Lee and Amber at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Patrick Street, Celtic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Jake Shimabukuro at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 8 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “La cuidad de las fotografos” on chile in the 1980s at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dahr Jamail reads from his new book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets $15. 548-0542.  

Javier O. Herta, author of “Some Clarifications y otros poemas” in a bilingual poetry reading at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Neva Carpenter reads from her memoir of growing up in El Cerrito “Harem Scarem in El Cerrito” at 10:30 a.m. at the El Cerrito Senior Center, 6500 Stockton Ave. 215-4340. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mills College Repertory Dance Concert Thurs at 7 p.m. and Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Mills College, Lisser Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. Free to members of the Mills College community. 430-2175. 

Holly Tannen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Palindrome at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Berkeley High School Jazz Combo and Ensemble at 7 p.m. at College of Alameda’s F Building Student Lounge, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway (Atlantic Ave.), Alameda. Free. 748-2213. 

8x8x8 Dance performance at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Andrian Gormley Jazz Ensemble at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Dionne Farris, R&B vocalist, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, NOV. 9 

THEATER 

Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley”Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Nov. 17. Tickets are $10-$12. 841-5580. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Altarena Playhouse “Morning’s at Seven” A family comedy by Paul Osborn Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Nov. 11. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre Cmpany“Sex” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 9. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Playhouse “Seussical, the Musical” Thurs.-Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 2 p.m., Sun. at 3 pm. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Dec. 2. Tickets are $18-$23. 665-5565. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org 

Berkeley Rep “After the Quake” at the Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Dec. 21. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “Every Inch a King” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Nov. 18. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., (at Moeser), El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132.  

Masquers Playhouse “Little Mary Sunshine” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

UCB Dept. of Theater, Dance, and Performance “Wintertime” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at the Durnahm Studio Theater, UC Campus., through Nov. 18. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-8827. t 

Women’s Will “Antigone” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. between Telegraph and Shattuck, Oakland, through Nov. 11. Tickets are $15-$25 sliding scale. 420-0813.  

Wing It Performance Ensemble “Hot Earth” An improvisaltional performance on gobal warming at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $20 if you drive, $15 if you carpool, and $10 if you leave your car at home. 465-2797. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Unbound Confession” Non-Representational Statements Group show of abstract works. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “Fabricando Tom Zé” Musica do Brasil at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8. 849-2568.  

“Hollywood Commandos” with filmmaker Gregory Orr in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

“The Mind is a Liar and a Whore” by Antero Alli, at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Cost is $6-$10. 548-2153. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny presents “An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Karla Brundage reads from her new poetry collection “Swallowing Watermelons,” at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 841-6374. 

Neva Carpenter reads from her memoir of growing up in El Cerrito “Harem Scarem in El Cerrito” at 6 p.m. at the IT Club Cafe, Cerrito Theater, 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 848-1994. 

Adam David Miller reads from “Ticket to Exile” at 6:30 p.m. at Marcu Books, 3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 652-2344. 

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Oakland East Bay Symphony with soprano Hope Brigss at 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway. For ticket information call 652-8497.  

Sarah Manning and Shatter the Glass Dinner and concert at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $40-$60. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

American Ballet Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$100. 642-9988.  

Babtunde Lea’s “Summoning of the Ghost” Tribute to THe NYC Village Gate at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Los Cenzontles at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

San Francisco Bay Area African Dance and Drum Festival at 6 p.m. and all day Sat. and Sun. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. 415-378-4413. 

Liz Carroll & John Doyle, Celtic fiddle and guitar, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

The Nomadics, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

SONiA & Disapper Fear at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

108, Ghenna, Lbal, Pulling Teeth at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $8. 525-9926. 

Sinclair at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

San Francisco African Drum & Dance Festival at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8-$10. 548-1159.  

One Struggle Band, Company of Prophets, The Attik at 7 p.m. at Café Axe Cultural Center, 1525 Webster, Oakland. Free. www.weekendwakeup.com 

Dionne Farris, R&B vocalist, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$26. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, NOV. 10 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Ingrid Noyes & Michael Harmon, Old time music with banjo and guitar at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Reflections” Art Reflecting Positive Energy by East Bay Women Artists. Opening reception at 7:30 p.m. at Alta Bates Hospital Gallery, 2450 Ashby Ave. Exhibition runs to Jan. 3. 204-1667.  

“Cultural Memories” Color pigment photographs by Mary Ann Hayden opens at Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St.and runs to Dec. 28. 644-1400. 

“Community Recipe Book” an exhibit documenting the interaction of Laotian elders and African American and Latino youth as they participated in the park’s art and gardening program. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. www.peraltahacienda.org 

FILM 

“Resisting Enemy Interrogation” films of the US Army Air Force at 6:30 p.m. and “The Memphis Belle: Story of a Flying Fortress” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

“A Shirtwaist Tale” on American labor history, American women’s suffrage, and American Jewish history, Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $15-$20. 848-0237, ext. 3. http://ashirtwaisttale.com  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm and Muse with Philip Rodriguez at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. 

Lydia Lunch and Arthur Nersesian read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Sam Cacas introduces his new novel “BlAsian Exchanges” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books, 2066 Univesity Ave. 548-2350. 

“Keep ‘em Flying” A discussion of issues of masculinity and identity in the films of the FMPU at 2 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive Theater. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nokuthula Ngwenyama, violin and viola at 7:30 p.m. at Regents Theater, Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $35-$40. 601-7919. www.fourseasonsconcerts.com 

American Ballet Theater at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$100. 642-9988.  

Roberta Piket and Eric km Clark in concert at 8 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 845-1350. 

Gary Wade, Unplugged at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. 704-9378. 

Works in the Works, a low-tech performance series for Bay Area performing artists to show newly created works and works-in-progress Sat. and Sun. at 7:30 p.m. at Eighth Street Studio, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10. 527-5115. 

Shadowdance 2007, Gothic and Tribal belly dance at 8 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-259-8629.  

Hecho in Califas with Upground and La Muñeca y Los Muertos at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Frankye Kelly & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Not an Airplane, Chris Jones, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Bay Area Guitar Summit with Dave Ricketts& Rob Reich, Teja Gerken, and San Francisco Guitar Quartet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

John Calloway & Diaspora at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

Charles Wheal & the Excellorators at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Ben Bernstein and Friends at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Iron Lung, Agents of Abhorrence, Never Healed at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $8. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Works by Teresa Brazen” Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

FILM 

“Land and Live in the Jungle” from films of the US Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit at 3 p.m. and “God Is My Co-Pilot” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mark A. Wilson on “Julia Morgan: Her Unique Place in American Architecture” at 2 p.m. at the Seldon Williams House in Claremont Court. Tickets are $25. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242.  

Day of the Dead Artists Talk with Abraham Ortega, Mariana Garibay and Lissa Jones at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. 238-2022.  

“Moku o Lo’e: A History of Coconut Island” with author P. Christiaan Klieger, at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

American Ballet Theater at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$100. 642-9988.  

Live Oak Concert with Jupiter String Quartet at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $12-$15. 644-6893.  

Community Women’s Orchestra “Women in Music” at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1331 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 463-0313.  

Zehetmair Quartet at 5 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $46. 642-9988.  

Upsurge, jazz and poetry, at 7 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Chinyakare Ensemble at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Bandworks at 1 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ed Reed at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18.. 845-5373.  

Marc Atkinson Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Angry Philosophers at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

MONDAY, NOV. 12 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alice Walker reads from “We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness” at 6 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Ira Cohen, Michael Rothenberg and Louise Landes Levi read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Ilana Simons reads from “A Life of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living Through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf” at 4:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

John Truby describes “The Anatomy of a Story: 22 Steps to Becomming a Master Storyteller” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Stuart Florsheim at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Theatrum Musicum, early Elizabethan consort music, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

UC Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Little Mary Sunshine, at the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond, is silly, jejune, puerile, even childish. It’s all of these things so successfully that it can be really funny. 

This contemporary “loving” parody of old-time operettas isn’t sugary or saccharine, it’s loaded with the equivalent of high fructose corn syrup. The valiant Masquers romp where Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy would fear to tread. 

With the invocation of the songbirds of “Indian Love Call,” it’s appropriate to mention the hushed awe of the audience as the curtain opens to reveal a panorama, obviously and well-painted (John Hull’s scenery, lit by Renee Echavez) of the mighty Rocky Mountains. It’s a brilliant background for the noble silhouette of a stoic Indian (not Native American—nor cigar store Indian, quite), Chief Brown Bear (played by D. C. Scarpelli with both sang-froid and feeling), searching for his adopted daughter, Little Mary Sunshine, to inform her “Forest Rangers come!” 

They march out in formation, newly arrived on foot from the Mexican border, on their usual jaunt to Canada. But all is not simple bucolia and carefree, if intrepid marching. Capt. “Big” Jim (an heroic, somewhat obtuse Tom Accettola) takes aside Corporal Billy (Coley Grundman, a real trouper in every sense) to tell him they’re on a secret mission of some hazard—the apprehension of renegade Kadota Indians—especially Yellow Feather (played, generically enough, by Mr. Scarpelli), estranged son of Brown Bear and adopted brother to Little Mary Sunshine. 

The troupe meets Little Mary herself, and (as played to true, gesticular, attitudinal perfection by Sue Claire Jones) she is everything her name conjures up, a wonder of nature (and dime novels).  

It transpires that she and Capt. Jim are long a would-be item. And Corporal Billy is stuck on Mary’s maidservant, Nancy Twinkle (a sly Michelle Pond), though Billy’s downcast at Nancy’s gadabout, man-hungry ways. And the men (Forest Rangers, that is: Douglas Braak, Chris Schwartz, Larry Schrupp and Frederick Lein) are embarked on courtships of Little Mary’s dainty guests, the young ladies from the Eastchester Finishing School (Anne Collins, Heather Morrison, Katie Swango and Linda Woody-Wood), who are visiting the West and wondering just how, well, unlady-like they’re really allowed to be. 

The plot doesn’t thicken as much as it congeals, with the introduction of further delightful stock types from the potboilers of yore: Mme. Ernestine, retired Viennese diva with twinkle in eye and voice (played with appropriate gravitas and dumplings by Ann Homrighausen); intrepid Fleet Foot, Indian guide dim of eye and vague of purpose (an unblinking John Wilson) and General Oscar Fairfax, ret. of the Philadelphia Fairfaxes (sic), a proper gent gallivanting in his touring car, wanting nothing more from a young lady (or ladies) than to be her dear Uncle Oscar (owlishly rendered in mock innocence by John Hull). 

There are exciting tableaux (as when Yellow Feather creeps through the audience, only to strike a menacing pose as Little Mary swoons into the capacious embrace of Capt. Jim). And tender moments: Mary, spied on by the wily Yellow Feather, scolding her pet cuckoo bird in the wild. And mayhem: Yellow Feather intent on having his way with Little Mary, struggling in locked combat with Capt. Jim or Corporal Billy (disguised as yet another Yellow Feather), at night in the great outdoors, while the rest of the cast drifts nonchalantly and cluelessly by, challenged only by the plot and raging nature, somewhere in the wings. But in the end, as predicted in the prologue, justice triumphs: the land reverts—and reverts—to the true at heart, and even the villains seem without a scratch. 

It might be said that the soul of the performance is in its over 20 musical numbers: “Naughty Naughty Nancy,” or (as Brown Bear disdainfully adopts Corporal Billy) “I’m a Heap Big Indian,” the General’s plea “Say ‘Uncle’” or his duet with Mme. Ernestine on lost youth, “Do You Ever Dream of Vienna?” or the endlessly reprised theme of PollyAnna-ish Little Mary, “Look for the Sky of Blue.” It might be said, but really can’t be, as these serviceable tunes merely conjure up, albeit cleverly, a veritable waterfall of disgorged schmaltz. 

What it’s really all about is what runs back in East Bay theater to the old Straw Hat Reviews of the late ‘40s—a bunch of game amateurs banding together to put on a show, sending up sacrosanct theatricality with gentle humor, and inviting us to join in the fun. Many in the cast and crew are longtime Masquers, and they put out the juice to entertain us—and obviously themselves in the bargain.  

Robert Love, Masquers managing director, Pat King, musical director presiding over his sextet in the pit, and choreographer Kris Bell have put it all together in an evening that’s full of schtick, tongue-in-cheek and a constant lark—or cuckoo. 

Sometimes I miss out on interesting natural phenomena. It wasn’t until last month, while cruising the posters at the biennial State of the Estuary Conference, that I learned about the water snake invasion of Lafayette Reservoir. I’d go check it out, but it’s too late; they’re all gone. Another exotic-species boom gone bust. 

These were diamondback water snakes (Nerodia rhombifer), to be exact, a reptile I know from Arkansas. I’ve seen them swimming lazily in a sluggish creek in a Little Rock park. They’re good-sized snakes (about three-and-a-half feet long), heavy-bodied, with a chainlike dorsal pattern, red eyes, and black tongues. Unlike the venomous—and equally aquatic—cottonmouth moccasin, their eyes have round pupils rather than catlike slits. Males can be identified by the projecting tubercles on their chins, although I was disappointed to learn that they do not tickle the females with them. 

As their name suggests, you’d find these guys in ditches, creeks, lakes, ponds, bayous, or swamps, from Alabama west to Texas and north into Iowa. They also get up into branches overhanging the water; I have to wonder if the cottonmouth that dropped into the boat in one my father’s fishing stories, prompting its immediate evacuation, wasn’t a diamondback water snake. 

They feed on fish and frogs for the most part, with the occasional cotton rat or small bird, hunting by smell: a few drops of fish extract in the water puts them in attack mode. Some have been seen trapping fish in their coils. Older individuals hang out with their mouths open and their tails anchored to a rock, facing into the current, waiting for something interesting to swim by. 

Like most water snakes, diamondbacks are foul-tempered critters. “If handled, they bite viciously and spray musk,” write Carl and Evelyn Ernst in Snakes of the United States and Canada. Which brings us to the question of what these non-California natives were doing in the reservoir. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a water snake for sale at the East Bay Vivarium; you’d need a special aquatic setup, and the snake would probably bite you when you tried to clean the tank. 

Lacking other explanations, though, let’s assume some dissatisfied snake owner dumped his (I think “his” is a given) erstwhile pets in the reservoir. This would have been some time before 1990, when two snakes found their way from Lafayette to the UC Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Soon thereafter parties of 5 to 10 snakes were observed basking on tules, reservoir banks, even piers. There were incidents. Some anglers were unhappy to discover a snake on the end of their fishing line. 

Responding to recreationists’ complains, EBMUD hired Wildlife Control Technology in 1996 to evaluate control methods. The contractor concluded that an “original estimate of 200 snakes made by park staff is realistic, and probably conservative.” Although the species is known to hibernate in the northerly parts of its native range, the reservoir snakes were seen sunning in January.  

WCT made its recommendations (favoring trapping over shooting or the more extreme step of draining the reservoir), but EBMUD never had to implement them. On a subsequent survey in 1999, a new outfit, ECORP Consulting, found large numbers of dead snakes, along with dead red-eared slider turtles, throughout the reservoir. Some of the casualties were reported to have a fungus-like growth in their respiratory tracts, although no further analysis was done and no specimens were preserved. El Niño was blamed, or credited, for facilitating the disease outbreak, if it was in fact a disease outbreak. Snake flu? 

And that may have been it. ECORP says there have been no confirmed water snake sightings at the reservoir since late 1999, despite occasional rumors. Oddly, there are other pockets of alien water snakes elsewhere in the state—southern water snakes near Folsom and Long Beach, northern water snakes near Roseville. But it appears the diamondbacks have died out at Lafayette. 

Which is how it often goes with exotic plant and animal species. They flourish for a while, and then something—predator, pathogen, weather—knocks them back, and sometimes out. Case in point: Vancouver, B.C., used to be overrun with crested mynahs, an East Asian relative of the talking variety. They were the dominant bird of the fast-food parking lot ecological niche. Then they dwindled to a remnant, and a couple of years ago the last of them expired. 

If you’re wondering why reservoir snakes would have been a bad thing, recall that diamondback water snakes eat frogs as well as fish. California’s frogs—red-legged, yellow-legged, Cascade—are on the ropes already. The last thing they need is a new predator. The water snakes would also likely have eaten or otherwise displaced our native aquatic garter snakes. Best to leave well enough alone. 

Every now and then I see a teenager in one of my trees. From a window I thought at first it might be a small UC student locationally adrift, in a striped shirt. A closer look showed it to be a young Cooper’s hawk, glaring down at me in comparably dauntless fashion. Thanks to Joe Eaton’s bi-weekly column, I can guess that it is drawn to the sparrows and finches at the thistle feeder, though the ducks keep an eye skywards when it appears, and my female cat skedaddles into the house. Smaller than the ducks, she is I hope still too large for the crow-sized Cooper’s. 

Predators are not the only problems to beset the gardener. Having finally fenced my vegetables and arranged paths around the raised beds for excellent access, I noticed the turnips behaving oddly, as though they were trying to get out of the ground. Instead of doing what I usually do, hope that time will cure all ills, I did what I recommend to others, dug around the turnips to see what was going on beneath them. 

To my horror, this vegetable bed was choked with fine feeder roots surely put out by the closest tree, a willow, although at a distance of 15 feet and with a pond between tree and vegetables, this seemed unlikely. Could the roots belong to a plum tree, fifteen feet away in the other direction? Indeed, when I finally plucked up courage to look around dispassionately, I realized that trees that a moment ago, it seemed, were mere saplings, had now grown tall enough to cast significant shadows for several hours each day. 

One of the best things about gardening is that in spite of the obstacles that constantly impede efforts, hope springs eternal in the gardener’s breast. For I knew that although I could dig out these intrusive fibrous roots and in their stead place a deep box with a fine wire mesh nailed across the bottom, although I might have to change the location of the vegetable plot, although I might as well re-design the whole garden while I’m at it—although I realized all those things, I knew that the timing was perfect: October. 

October is the start of the year for California plants. The seeds of native flowers that bloom so early in the year are poised to sprout at the first hint of rain. With a new vegetable-growing area of sun-baked clay, autumn is the time for requesting a sack or two of manure from local stables and covering the clay with a nice thick layer of it. Get a truck load if necessary, the stable owners will be thrilled. Top the layer with hay, leaves, grass trimmings and by next March, given a rainy season worthy of the name, the ground beneath will be in superb condition for spring growing. 

It is possible to sheet or trench compost directly in the vegetable bed as a way of increasing the workability of the soil and its nutritional value. For trench composting, a channel is dug along the middle of the bed, vegetable trimmings from the kitchen are placed in it, the earth dug out goes back in, and a layer of mulch is placed on top of that. If dogs or racoons are a problem, put a board over everything, weighted down with bricks. Sheet composting is identical, except that everything is on the surface rather than in a trench. 

When vegetables are grown in the same area year after year, close attention must be paid not just to maintaining an adequate balance of nutrients, but also to the earth’s texture, its tilth. Allowing a vegetable bed to lie fallow for a season, feeding it with manure for nitrogen and organic matter for texture, will help it to catch its breath, so to speak. For related reasons, those of diseases, it is necessary to rotate crops, especially those in the brassicaceae, or cabbage family, and in the solanaceae, in which family are tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and peppers. A fallow season can be part of a rotation plan. 

Having created a beautifully nourished and textured bed, it will still need overall maintenance, and this is where composting comes into its own. Much has been written about composting, most of it needlessly complex. It is not necessary, for example, to turn compost. Left alone for a year or less (depending on climate zone), microbes, earthworms and insects will do the job of converting kitchen trimmings, leaves, hay and so forth into that brown crumbly stuff sometimes called gardener’s gold. 

Quicker and easier is to use a container with a lid and a few air holes and introduce some red wriggly worms. These consume vast amounts of kitchen and garden material in a short time as they work or should I say worm their way up through it, leaving behind dense, friable, nutrient-rich compost. 

Some foods are unacceptable to worms, such as citrus and tomatoes (too acid). Toothless, they need a little grit, readily supplied by spent potting soil. Delicate rather than leathery leaves, no branches or pungent herbs, but plenty of other organic stuff is necessary to keep worms and kitchen trimmings well covered and at a moderate temperature. Water very lightly if all seems dry. 

Because it is so valuable, I use worm compost sparingly. After all, in theory my planting area has been well prepared. Just before setting out baby vegetables, I dig a little of this rich compost just under the surface of the bed, water it, and let it sit for a day. After setting in the seedlings, I side dress them with a little more. Then I water the plants, or puddle them in, as we rustics say. 

Compost provides balanced nutrition that plants can draw from according to their needs. It is a far cry from the forced feeding of liquid inorganic fertilizers such as superphosphate which, while producing sudden, even spectacular growth, does nothing for the texture of the soil. In no time at all, the earth will revert to clay. 

“Organic material” is by definition anything that once had life. This does not mean that anything can go into the wormless compost pile, either. Even if I ate it, I would not compost meat. It deteriorates quickly and attracts rats. Nor bread, for the same reasons. Fish on the other hand breaks down fast if covered with earth. As American Indians know, a fish head buried in a bed of corn is a natural fertilizer. I cannot imagine composting oil or, as an organic gardener, paper products, which contain chemicals or other additives of unknown kind. Eggshells add calcium, banana skins potassium. Sawdust and wood shavings, so long as they do not derive from plywood, and with the addition of a bit of nitrogen from manure to help decomposition, will soon improve texture. 

If only my teenage tree sitter were a vegetarian! But then I suppose he or she would only create yet another problem in the vegetable garden.  

TUESDAY, NOV. 6 

“An Unreasonable Man” A film on Ralph Nader at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

Independent Policy Forum: New Directions for Peace and Security with Carl P. Close, co-editor, “Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism” at 7 p.m. at The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Cos tis $10-$15. RSVP to 632-1366, ext. 118. 

“Summer of Love” film clips presented by Richie Unterberger at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel with Rabbi Arik Ascherman at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. 549-9447. 

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 

“What Not to Buy for Children for the Holidays” A panel discussion with Susan Gregory Thomas and Peggy Spear at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Mills College Student Union, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.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. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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

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

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 7 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Galen Cranz “Body Conscious Design” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

“HybridStand” film on new sustainable ideas, and talk by Mark Godley of Big City Mountaineers, at 6 p.m. at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave. 814-937-8216. 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon. Advanced sign-up is required; please call 594-5165.  

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 

THURSDAY, NOV. 8 

¡Salud! A documentary on Cuba’s health care system at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Discussion follows. Tickets are $5-$10. 601-0182.  

Presidential Mix It Up with representatives from the campaigns of the major Democratic candidates from 6 to 9 p.m. at Arsimona’s, 561 11th St. at Clay, Oakland.  

“Prayer of Peace: Relief & Resistance in Burma's War Zones” with Nyunt Than, president of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance, with a short film on KAren Refugees at 7:30 p.m. at Newman Hall, 2700 Dwight Way at College. 

Alameda Measure A Debate on “Should Article XXVI “Multiple Dwelling Units” of the City of Alameda’s Charter be changed to exclude Alameda Point” at 7 p.m. in the social hall of Twin Towers United Methodist Church, 1411 Oak St., Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org 

FRIDAY, NOV. 9 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kate van Orden on “Court Ballet and Politics in 17th Century France” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St.526-2925.  

“He Stood Up: The Mistrial of Lt. Ehren Watada” A documentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 

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. 

Womansong Circle Paticipatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m., potluck at 6:45 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing. Suggested donation $15-$20, no one turned away for lack of funds. 525-7082. 

Introduction to Fearless Meditation at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Donation $20-$30. 549-3733. 

SATURDAY, NOV. 10 

“Global Citizenship vs a New Arms Race: Can Peace Trump Hegemony?” with Jan Kavan, former Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic at 7:30 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Confernce Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. Free, donation accepted. www.alamedaforum.org 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Thankgiving for the Birds” featuring squash dishes, root vegetables, biscuits and apple cake, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $55 plus $5 material fee. to register call 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

March for Environmental Justice to stop Chevron’s proposed refinery expansion. Meet at noon at the Richmond BART Station parking lot to march to the Chevron refinery. 232-3427.  

Solo Sierrans Sunset Walk An hour walk, on paved trail, wheel chair accessible, through the Emeryville Marina Meet at 3:30 p.m. behind Chevy's Restaurant, by picnic tables. 234-8949.  

NAACP Berkeley Branch Meets at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. 845-7416. 

Modern Tantric Art Auction to benefit Himalayan Health Care. Preview at 6 p.m., auction at 8 p.m. at Yga Mandala, 2807 Telegraph Ave. Free, but RSVP requested. auction@tantricart.net 

Immigration Law Clinic Volunteer attorneys available to answer questions from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Temescal Branch, 5205 Telegraph Ave. at 52nd St., Oakland. Sponosred by the Charles Houston Bar Association. 205-9593. 

Promote your Music Using the Internet with Sarah Manning from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Community Room, 3rd flr., Berkeley Public Library 2090 Kittredge. 981-6233. 

“Creative Reuse Workshop” for Oakland students, (K-12), from noon to 4 p.m. at The Museum of Children’s Art, 538 Ninth St., Oakland. 465-8770, ext. 310. 

East Bay Waldorf School’s Annual Harvest Faire with games, crafts, entertainment and food from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 3800 Clark Rd., El Sobrante. 223-3570. 

Ongoing Vocal Jazz Workshop from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin at the corner of Masonic, Albany. 524-6797. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

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

SUNDAY, NOV. 11 

Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Workday Help us prepare habitat for California Least Terns, which breed at the refuge. Meet at 9 a.m. at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. 

“Julia Morgan: Her Unique Place in American Architecture” with author Mark A. Wilson at 2 p.m. at the Seldon Williams House in Claremont Court. Tickets are $25. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Green Sunday: Venezuela Report-back at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th, Oakland. Sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County. 

Laternenfest and Parade Join a tradition German celebration for the whole family from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bay Area Kinderstube Preschool, 842 Key Route Blvd (off Solano Ave), Albany. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Ruth Richards on “Creativity and Spirituality in Everyday Life” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

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.  

MONDAY, NOV. 12  

Berkeley Green Mondays A presentation on “Green Car Alternatives” with Bradley Berman at 7:30 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 848-4681. berkeleygreenmondays@gmail.com 

“Converting Plants to Fuel” with Chris Somerville of LBNL/Energy Biosciences Institute at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. 486-7292. 

“Stopping Wal-Mart” Joe Feller and Paul Seger discuss strategies for keeping Wal-Mart out of our communites at 7 p.m. at the Wiki Wiki Hawaiian BBQ, 9935 San Pablo Ave. 526-0972.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets at 6 p.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

ONGOING 

Donate the Fruit From Your Fruit Trees We will gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, the homebound and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in or very near North Berkeley and the fruit should be organic (no pesticides) and edible. This is a volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! Please email northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com or 812-3369. 

Bay-Friendly Gardening Offers Discounted Compost Bins to Alameda County residents. In addition to the bins, they also offer free workshops, videos, brochures, and answers to your compost questions. To order a bin call the compost information hotline 444-7645. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Nov. 6, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Nov. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed., Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Nov. 7, at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs. Nov. 8 , at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.

FRIDAY, NOV. 2 

THEATER 

Actor’s Ensemble of Berkeley”Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Nov. 17. Tickets are $10-$12. 841-5580.  

Altarena Playhouse “Morning’s at Seven” A family comedy by Paul Osborn Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Nov. 11. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

Aurora Theatre Company “Sex” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 9. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822.  

Berkeley Playhouse “Seussical, the Musical” Thurs.-Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 2 p.m., Sun. at 3 pm. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Dec. 2. Tickets are $18-$23. 665-5565.  

Central Works “Every Inch a King” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Nov. 18. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381.centralworks.org 

International Theater Ensemble A Propos of the Wet Snow” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Metal Shop Theatre, Willard Middle School, 2425 Stuart St. Tickets are $20-$30. 415-440-6163.  

Masquers Playhouse “Little Mary Sunshine” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Women’s Will “Antigone” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. between Telegraph and Shattuck, Oakland, through Nov. 11. Tickets are $15-$25 sliding scale. 420-0813. www.womenswill.org 

Youth Musical Theater Company “Man of La Mancha” Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m. at Longfellow Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $8-$15. 595-5514. info@ymtcberkeley.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Fiber Devotion” Joell Jones, soft sculpture, and Jeanne Jabbour, stitched drawings, on All Souls’ Day in honor of Día de los Muertos from 6 to 10 p.m. at 447 Twenty-fifth St., Oakland. www.oakopolis.org 

“Los Hilos de la Vida/Threads of Life” Latina-themed folkloric story quilts from Anderson Valley. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at WCRC Gallery, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 601-4040, ext. 111.  

“The Edge of Reality” Abstract paintings by Juanita Hagberg. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at The Gallery, Lavezzo Designs, 5751 Horton St., Emeryville. Exhibition runs to Nov. 30. 643-0553. 

“Four Masters of Origami” Works by Robert Lang, Bernie Peyton, Linda Mihara, and Peter Engel. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at K Gallery, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda. 865-5062. 

“Push Rewind: Maafa 2007” Closing reception at 6 p.m. at Inquiry Gallery, 2865 Broadway, Unit 2, Oakland. 641-715-3900, ext. 36800. 

The Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project Works by Frank Espada. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Photography Gallery, 406 14th St., lower level, Oakland. 465-8928. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ancient Roots/Urban Journeys Gallery talk with Aida Gomes on Dias de los Muertos at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. Free for teachers. 238-2022.  

Sam Keen describes “Sightings: Extraordinary Encounters with Ordinary Birds” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Michele Zackheim reads from her novel “Broken Colors” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Babtunde Lea’s “Summoning of the Ghost” Tribute to Miles, Cannon and Trane at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

“Side by Side” Performances by Anne Bluethenthal & Dancers, Dandelion Dancetheater, Deep Water Dance Theater, Facing East Dance & Music, and others, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. 925-798-1300.  

La Familia Son at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Illustrio, trio of clarinet, viola, and piano, at 7:30 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Donation of $15 requested. 

Keni el Lebrijano, guitarist at 7:30 p.m. at 6 Degrees on Solano, 1403 Solano Ave. Albany. Free, but reservations recommended. 528-1237. 

Stompy Jones, East Coast swing, lindy-hop, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

Lucy Kaplansky at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Stella Royale and Padraic Finbar Hagerty-Hammond at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Morning Line at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Inspector Double Negative, Missing Link, The Harvey Cartel at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Kinsella, Fri. and Sat. at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Femi at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$15. 548-1159.  

Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, NOV. 3 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Betsy Rose, songs to celebrate the fall season, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. 

Duo Amaranto, folk music in Spanish and English, at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Works of a Year in Mexico” Paintings by Juana Alicia. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928.  

“Disappearing Honey Bees” a Day of the Dead Altar by Margo Rivera-Weiss. Reception with the artist at 1 p.m. at the San Pablo Gallery, 13831 San Pablo Ave., Maple Hall, Civic Center, San Pablo.  

THEATER 

“A Shirtwaist Tale” on American labor history, at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Tickets are $15-$20. 848-0237, ext. 3.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Cheers to Muses Reading, contemporary works by Asian American women, at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

Poetry Flash with Kirmen Uribe, Elizabeth Maclkin, and John Felstiner at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Jamie Myrick portrays Zora Neale Hurston, author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6275. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading and contest from 3 to 5 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street. 527-9905.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Russian Romance” with Maria Mikheyenko, soprano, Dmitri Anissimov, tenor, Alexander Katsman, piano, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. at Durant and Bancroft. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Royal Dance” with Marion Verbruggen, recorder, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400.  

Volti “Adventures in Life, Love, and Longing” at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way.Tickets are $8-$20. 415-771-3352.  

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Fall Concert at 8 p.m. at Valley Center for the Performing Arts at Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are$12-$15. 849-9776.  

Sister Comrade An evening of words and music celebrating the lives of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $25-$28. 528-3043.  

Works in the Works, a low-tech performance series for artists to show newl works Sat. and Sun. at 7:30 p.m. at Eighth Street Studio, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $10. 527-5115. 

World Flute Fest from 1 to 5 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Donations accepted. 542-7517. 

The Ravines at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Irvin Mayfield and The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$42. 642-9988.  

“Nosotras” with Lichi Fuentes, Rosa Los Santos, Fernanda Bustamante, Gabriela Shiroma, and others, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $13-15. 849-2568.  

Mr. Lonesome & the Bluebelles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Caribbean Allstars, Renee Asteria at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Galaxy Band at 6:30 p.m. at Allegro Ballroom, 5855 Christie Ave., Emeryville. Cost is $5-$15. 655-2888.  

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Eric Von Radics & Mario DeSio at 7:30 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. at Alcatraz. Cost is $7-$10. 

Amy X Neuberg & her Cello ChiXtet at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Margie Baker & Friends at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $112-$15. 845-5373.  

Zoe Ellis with Maya Kronfeld at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

George Cotsirilos Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. 

John Howland Trio, Joel Streeter, Junior League at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Royal Hawaiian Serenaders at 9 p.m. at Temple Bar Tiki Bar & Grill, 984 University Ave. 548-9888. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Five Magpies” Works by Priscilla Birge, Barbara Hazard, Joanna Katz, Diane Rusnak and Sarah Whitecotton. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibition runs to Dec. 2. www.giorgigallery.com 

Thangka Painting Demonstration with Rinzing Gyaltsen Yongewa at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz introduces her new book “The Color of Jews: Racial Politics & Radical Diasporism” at 4 p.m. at Cafe Leila, 1724 San Pablo Ave. Donation $10. bay 

areawomeninblack@yahoo.com 

Daniel Lyons, who started the blog “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” reads from his new book “Option$” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra Fall Family Concert at noon at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. www.juliamorgan.org 

Shoko Hikage and Yoko Hirano-Itatani, koto, at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 845-1350. 

Young People’s Chamber Orchestra Autumn Harvest Concert at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $1-$5. 595-4688. www.ypco.org  

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Royal Dance” with Marion Verbruggen, recorder, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

Oakland Civic Orchestra at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lake 

shore Ave., Oakland. 238-7275. 

Per Tengstrand and Shan-Shan Sun, pianists, at 4 p.m. at Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Tickets are $30-$40. 601-7919.  

Oakland Lyric Opera “An Afternoon of Russian Romance” at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $18-$20. 836-6772.  

Live Oak Concert with William Beatty, piano, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893.  

“Desert Roots” World Beat Music at 7:30 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Tickets are $15-$20. 547-2424, ext. 211. 

Emeryville Taiko 10th Anniversary Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $25. 925-798-1300. 

Bruce Barthol at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Beep! The Michael Coleman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Trance Zen Dance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

MONDAY, NOV. 5 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Actors Reading Writers: “Family & Perspective: A Tribute to David Rich” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214,  

“And I Was Both Tongues” with Yael Kanarek, artist, at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565.  

Poetry Express with Lizz Bronson at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Nada Lewis at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

DeMania Trio with Alex DeGrassi, Michael Manring and Chris Garcia at 7:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, NOV. 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joanne Kyger and David Trinidad read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Joseph Lease and Lisa Robertson, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Joanna Macy discusses the newly revised “World as Love, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Cost is $10. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Vishten, fiddling and step-dancing, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

deMania Trio with Alex DeGrassi, Michael Manring and Chris Garcia at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 7 

FILM 

Behold the Asian: Videoworks by James T. Hong with the filmmaker in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Forces: Paintings and Calligraphy by Lampo Leong” Artist talk at 4 p.m., reception at 5:30 p.m. at IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th flr. 642-2809. 

“Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949” with author Wen-hsin Yeh, in conversation with Margaret Tillman and Allison Rottman at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Fritjof Capra discusses “The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Bay Area African Dance and Drum Festival Wed.-Fri. at 6 p.m. and all day Sat. and Sun. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. 415-378-4413. 

Albany Jazz Band Fall Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Ocean View Elementary School, 1000 Jackson St., Albany. Free. 524-9538.  

American Ballet Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $38-$100. 642-9988.  

Dave Bernstein Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

The Jelly Roll Souls at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $TBA. 525-5054.  

Mikie Lee and Amber at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Patrick Street, Celtic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

Jake Shimabukuro at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 8 

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “La cuidad de las fotografos” on chile in the 1980s at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dahr Jamail reads from his new book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets $15. 548-0542.  

Javier O. Herta, author of “Some Clarifications y otros poemas” in a bilingual poetry reading at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Neva Carpenter reads from her memoir of growing up in El Cerrito “Harem Scarem in El Cerrito” at 10:30 a.m. at the El Cerrito Senior Center, 6500 Stockton Ave. 215-4340. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mills College Repertory Dance Concert Thurs at 7 p.m. and Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Mills College, Lisser Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. Free to members of the Mills College community. 430-2175. 

Holly Tannen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Palindrome at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Berkeley High School Jazz Combo and Ensemble at 7 p.m. at College of Alameda’s F Building Student Lounge, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway (Atlantic Ave.), Alameda. Free. 748-2213. 

8x8x8 Dance performance at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Andrian Gormley Jazz Ensemble at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Dionne Farris, R&B vocalist, at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

From Bruce Barthol’s days as bassist with the original Country Joe and the Fish, to his three decades as resident composer for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, to playing for this year’s reunion of survivors of the Spanish Civil War’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Barthol’s been an unstinting fount of committed and humor songs and instrumental music.  

This weekend he performs solo at Freight and Salvage. 

Born at Alta Bates Hospital in 1947, Bruce Barthol’s mother was a social worker, his father a UC professor. He started playing guitar at 11, clarinet at 13, bass at 18—and joined his first band, the original Country Joe and the Fish, at age 18. They played their first gigs at the Jabberwock Coffee House, “next door to a house where I lived with Joe and Barry [Melton],” he said. 

Barthol played bass on the three-song EP the band recorded themselves, then on Electric Music For The Mind And Body, and the following two albums, as the group shot to international popularity. He left Country Joe and the Fish in 1968. 

Barthol became the Mime Troupe’s principal songwriter and lyricist in 1976, the same year he produced an album for former Blues Project guitarist (and longtime Berkeley resident) Danny Kalb. With the Mime Troupe, Barthol worked on over three dozen shows, from old favorites like the Factwino shows, to last year’s Godfellas. During those years, the Troupe received a Tony Award. Other awards Barthol’s shared in include an Obie, a Media Alliance Golden Gadfly, and a Gold Record. He’s been given two Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards. 

Somewhere along the line, Barthol said, he was a Yip Harburg Fellow at New York University, where he received his MFA in musical theater.  

After playing on Paradise with Ocean View, one of Country Joe’s many solo albums, and the appearance of a song on Barry Melton’s 1997 album The Saloon Years—as well as participating in Country Joe and the Fish reunions—Barthol joined Country Joe, Chicken Hirsch and David Cohen in The Country Joe Band in 2003.  

He later remarked, “It seems right to play together again—there’s a war going on; it’s more and more like 1968.”  

His song “Cakewalk to Baghdad,” after the notorious remark by Richard Perle, was a single for the group. Barry Melton, a public defender in Yolo County, was unable to commit to the new band, so Country Joe explained the foreshortened name: “We’re Fishless!” (Melton’s nickname). 

Other musicians Barthol’s played with include Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Barbara Dane, Rosalie Sorrells, Ralph McTell, Will Scarlet, Arlo Guthrie, Dave Getz, Scoop Nisker, Bobby Keys and Paul Dresher.  

He’s annotated an album of Spanish Civil War songs and co-wrote the score for Forever Activists, a documentary on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was nominated for an Oscar, as well as playing for the reunion of the Brigade at the City Museum of New York this year. 

Barthol has also played at the Arts Council in Berlin, and written music or songs for or performed with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Make-A-Circus, The Dick and Dubya Show, the LA Theater Center, Oberlin Dance Collective (ODC) and American Conservatory Theatre (ACT).  

Bruce Barthol performs solo at Freight and Salvage, 1111 Addison St., Sat. at 8 p.m. Tickets $18.50 advance, $19.50 at door. 548-1761.

John Cage’s groundbreaking music is often associated with Asian thought: the random throws of the I Ching, Taoist and Zen spontaneity. Tonight (Friday) at 8 p.m., at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave., a different side of Cage’s exploration of non-European music and philosophy will be heard, when dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni sings his “18 Microtonal Ragas.” Cuni, the first performer to prepare all of these ragas for full performance, sings in five different languages, accompanied by Werner Durand, drones and electronics, and Raymond Kaczynski and Federico Saliesi on percussion. Cage’s “Solo for Voice 58” will also be performed. Italian-born Cuni has been a sensation among Indian music listeners the past few years. The concert is presented by Other Minds, founded by Charles Amirkhanian (formerly of KPFA), in association with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Goethe-Institut, both of San Francisco. $25, www.brownpapertickets. com or (800) 838-3006. 

Berkeley filmmaker Connie Field has taken on a vast project in her effort to document the global movement against apartheid in South Africa over half a century. Have You Heard From Johannesburg? is a six-part series that examines the movement in stand-alone documentaries. Field has completed the first of them and is at work finishing the second. Apartheid and the Club of the West, which will eventually take its place as the fourth installment in the series, opens today (Friday) at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.  

The film follows the anti-apartheid movement in America, a grassroots movement that spanned more than 15 years and included the participation of the Congressional Black Caucus and countless protests at universities across the country, pressuring those institutions to divest themselves from all corporations that did business in South Africa. It’s a stirring story of the people overcoming the obstacles of political stasis, racism, corporate interests and the opposition of the Reagan administration in the pursuit of a moral stand against injustice.  

The film includes recent interviews with many of the central players in the drama, including Ron Dellums.  

APARTHEID AND THE CLUB  

OF THE WEST 

Produced and Directed by Connie Field.  

90 minutes. Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., San Francisco. www.roxie.com. 

www.clarityfilms.org.

On November 14, 1901 an item in the Berkeley Daily Gazette informed: 

Swiss Chalets for Hillside Homes. 

Frederick H. Clark, secretary of the Homestead Loan Association of Berkeley and three kindred associations in San Francisco, is improving the property recently purchased by him in the University Terrace tract. This scenic plat is situated at the head of Channing way on a gentle declivity and is very beautifully located. 

Mr. Clark will build for Prof. G.H. Boke, and Margaret Deane [sic], handsome Swiss chalets which are the creation of Architect Meybeck [sic]. A.H. Broad, the contractor, will begin work at once. 

The article was referring to the houses at 23 and 25 Panoramic Way, only one of which—the former—was designed by Maybeck. It was the dwelling built for George H. Boke, a law instructor at the University of California, who at the time was residing with his wife and three children nearby, at 2630 Channing Way. Banker Frederick H. Clark was apparently the deed holder on both “chalets,” since Boke was never listed in the assessor’s records, and his neighbor, Margaret A. Dean (grandmother of Dan Dean, our former mayor’s husband) does not appear in those records until 1908. Both houses were completed on February 14, 1902. 

George Henry Boke (1869–1929) was born in Placer County, California. His father, Nick Boke, was an immigrant from the duchy of Saxe-Coburg in Bavaria. His mother, Orange Ann, was a mere kid of seventeen when she gave birth to him. At the time, the Bokes were living in Dutch Flat, a town settled by German miners in 1851. Nick worked as a store clerk. 

Ten years later, Orange was married to apiarist Jerry Moulton, and the family resided in Saticoy, Ventura County, where the fruit orchards provided ready fodder for Jerry’s bees. Nevertheless, the apiarist turned carpenter, and the Moultons trekked up north to Nelson, in Butte County. 

The road from working-class life in the sticks to a Berkeley law professorship, remarkable as it is today, was practically unheard of a century ago, and young George Boke passed through numerous stations along the way. In 1887, he graduated from the State Normal School at San Jose, obtaining a teaching certificate. After teaching for a short while in Modoc County, he became principal of the school at Newcastle, Placer County. 

The early 1890s found him a student at Berkeley, where he graduated in 1894, in the class of Julia Morgan and Frank Norris. By 1900, Boke had spent two years at Harvard, from which obtained an M.A. and later an LL.B.. Along the way he had married Grace Sophia Bray of San Francisco and fathered three daughters. 

On May 21, 1900, Boke was appointed instructor in jurisprudence at the University of California. By 1903, he was also the head of the YMCA night school. His trajectory at the university can be traced through city directory listings that show his rise from instructor to assistant professor, associate professor, and professor in the course of four years. 

In 1906, Boke was lured to Stanford to teach a course on property. By the following year, however, he was back at Berkeley and suggested to his students the desirability of forming an anti-graft league with branches in all American universities. The inspiration, reported the San Francisco Call on April 23, 1907, came to Boke after hearing a talk by Francis J. Heney, the special federal prosecutor who had been brought to San Francisco to prosecute Mayor Eugene Schmitz and Boss Abe Ruef for bribery. Speaking at a university meeting, Heney “declared that grafters flourished because only a few voters interested themselves in the business of the municipality, and the vast majority was ignorant of what was taking place. Professor Boke believes that college men should institute a movement to promote knowledge of civic affairs throughout the country, and at his suggestion a number of students are laying the foundation for an intercollegiate league, to be used as a weapon against municipal graft and all other sorts of grafts.” 

After the attempted assassination of a witness in the graft trial, a Citizens’ League of Justice was organized, and Boke agreed to become its executive officer. In his book “The System”: As Uncovered by the San Francisco Graft Prosecution (1915), Franklin Hichborn wrote, “In spite of the fact that he was jeopardizing his position at the State University by his course, Professor Boke did much effective work in bringing the conditions which confronted San Francisco squarely before the public.” 

Boke participated in the birth of the non-partisan Good Government League and in 1908 founded The Liberator, a weekly published by the Citizens’ League of Justice. He was also instrumental in raising funds for the new Boalt Hall of Law (now Durant Hall). When the building’s projected costs mounted 50% above Elizabeth Boalt’s bequest, Boke raised the balance by soliciting the lawyers of California. It is said that the Napa County lawyers’ association specified that its pledge would be paid after the harvesting of the raisin crop. 

As it turned out, Boke’s crusading did put a stop to his academic career when the reformers’ efforts began to implicate members of the U.C. Board of Regents. Although the Regents couldn’t fire Boke, he was shunted aside and spent the rest of his life between Carmel and San Francisco. While retaining the title of Professor of Law, he engaged in independent work, writing books and articles and speaking at legal gatherings. Although his friend Lincoln Steffens would posthumously paint Boke’s life as tragic, it was hardly as lonely and isolated as portrayed.  

Maybeck and Boke had much in common. Both were crusaders and lovers of amateur theatricals. In July 1910, Boke participated in Carmel’s first al fresco stage production, playing the prophet Samuel in Constance Skinner’s biblical drama David, mounted in a pine grove. “He was a striking, picturesque figure, admirably gowned and wigged in white,” marveled Walter Anthony in the San Francisco Call. 

Maybeck’s design for the Boke house was both traditional and advanced for its time. The upper story, clad in vertical redwood boards, extends two feet beyond the first floor, where the boards are horizontal. Two wings of a broadly overhanging roof part to admit a central gable with a pair of double casement windows. A trio of casements appears just below, in a square bay projecting from the first floor façade. On the north side, an open sleeping balcony is a reminder of hardier generations. 

The living and dining rooms are arranged in an open ell with no separating doors. Both are paneled in board-and-batten redwood, with exposed posts and beams and decorative bolster blocks. Atypically for Maybeck, the fireplace is small, with a simple bracketed wooden mantel and tile surround. The four bedrooms on the second floor are equally rustic, finished in redwood, originally stained a mossy green, and exposing the ceiling framework. 

The Boke house caused repercussions in Berkeley and beyond. An exact copy of it was built in Oakland. Maybeck’s office records indicate that duplicate plans were sent to Aberdeen, Washington in 1906 for the J. B. Elston house. Berkeley houses that appear to bear the Boke stamp are the neighboring Dean house (A.H. Broad, 1901); the Warren Cheney cottage (Carl Ericsson, 1902); the de Neiman house at 21 Hillside Court (builder unknown, 1906); and Carl Ericsson’s house at 1625 Jayne Court (1909). 

Boke’s tenure at 23 Panoramic Way was brief. From 1904 until 1913 or so, he rented homes at various locations in Berkeley, never again owning a house except the one in Carmel, built in 1906. His son Richard described it as a “modern” redwood house, which “shows somewhat the Maybeck influence.” 

Boke was succeeded at 23 Panoramic Way by Clifton Price (1867–1942), a professor of Latin who would later add to his holdings the Jerome C. Ford apartment house at 77 Panoramic (A.H. Broad, 1904) and commission Julia Morgan in 1912 to build another apartment house at 5–11 Panoramic. In 1920, he was recorded in the U.S. Census as sharing the 4-bedroom Boke house with his wife, three children, a brother-in-law, two cousins, and a servant. But the arrangement was short lived, as Price regularly moved his residence from one property to another. In 1924, Price married his second wife, Wilson Holden (1895–1979), who lived in the Boke house for the rest of her life. The current owners bought it from her estate in 1980. 

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

Photograph by Daniella Thompson.  

The George Boke house, above, at 23 Panoramic Way. George Boke raised a third of the building funds for the original Boalt Hall, below, now known as Durant Hall.

Mostly Natives is a classic, and worth a jaunt on a nice day. If you’re the sort of traveler who appreciates dramatic and various weather shows, that would include the average rainy spell; the rolling curtains and airborne leviathans of fog and cloud that unroll across the Richmond—San Rafael Bridge and lie in the folds of Marin County, alternately dazzling and shrouding you on the road are one of our particular local pleasures.  

Aside from being a retailer, Mostly Natives is a wholesale source of California native plants. When I see its tags in other nurseries, I take it as a sign of good buying practices. 

The retail stock is exciting to native-plant mavens: rare things like fawn lily and Sierra rose (I've seen three native rose species here), and merely unusual and handsome things like ninebark, ocean spray, the natives Iris macrosiphon and I. douglasiana as well as the more commonly found Pacific Coast Hybrid irises.  

There are more species of native bunchgrass than you can shake a stick at, and they're available as gallon-size or four-inch plants. Showy and useful non-native grasses and grasslikes such as those brass-colored carexes share display space with them, always labeled as to origin. 

Native shrub youngsters are here in the four-inch size, too, to stretch your dollar and allow flexibility in use. It’s a good idea to plant small when you can, because you don’t have to dig as big a hole—less labor and less disturbance of the soil—and a younger plant tends to suffer less from transplant shock. It’ll catch up to something planted at a larger size within a year or three.  

These people clearly know what they’re doing; the stock is healthy, questions get answered, and the informational tags are a horticulture course in themselves, with details like which plants are native to the Bay Area; what their cultural preferences are, vis-à-vis water, drainage, sun, and other details; what they’ll tolerate, for example, wind and salt spray near the ocean; and which ones do well in containers. There’s great information on the Web site, too. 

“Mostly” isn’t misleading, either; there are other plants here, a small but choice assortment, and generally as robust and inviting as the natives. Herbs we’ve picked up there over the years have included classics like lemon balm, and slightly adventurous things like Thai basil; when we dropped in there last month, though, there were fewer herbs on sale than usual. I suspect this might be a seasonal thing. 

The edibles are the sort of thing you want if you have precious little dirt space to squander. Prices are good for natives and exotics both. You can get soil amendments and tools here, too, if you can resist spending your whole budget on plants.  

If your timing and budget are right, you can also stop for barbecued oysters on the way along Tomales Bay, at Tony’s or (for, as I recall, more bucks) the newly refurbished Nick’s Cove. Otherwise, the little deli in Tomales has quite decent lunches and breakfasts and thoughtful service. 

Mostly Native Nursery 

27235 Highway 1, Tomales  

Wednesday–Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.  

Sunday 10 a.m–4 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday. 

(415) 878-2009 

www.mostlynatives.com

This is for my wife. Actually, it’s for wives and girlfriends everywhere. Here it is. I was wrong. Wait, I’ll say it again. I was wrong. How are you feeling? Giddy? Lightheaded? Well, don’t lose control. It’s one of these construction things. Not anything important like bedspreads, hair-do’s or Angelina’s latest fling. 

There are two things in particular I’d like to confess having done 180ºs about over years. The first is plywood. When I first started studying houses, it was my impressing that plywood was garbage and shouldn’t be used. As you’ll see, and as applies to each of the things we’ll discuss, there are good arguments for and against this product but let’s start with what’s good about it and what I missed on the first go-around. 

The funny thing about my original dislike of plywood is that I had no idea how bad construction materials were going to get. I could only wish that plywood was the worst. 

What I’ve learned in the many years since I first questioned this inovative material was that plywood would turn out to be one of the premier structural advancements in construction over the course of more than a century. 

Without plywood, it would be much harder and costlier to achieve the “shear strength” that we so easily gain in constructing buildings though it’s use. Shear strength is the ability to resist tearing forces. The forces that collapse buildings or rip walls apart in earthquakes, hurricanes and even in houses that are settling severely. Plywood is made by cutting a tree in a spiral fashion, much like unpeeling a roll of paper towels. This creates very large, thin sheets of wood. Sheets of the “unrolled” tree are then glued to one another at 90 degree angles to one another.  

By turning the sheets at an angle, the grain (where tearing is easiest) is run in opposing directions and greater strength is gained. The best plywood for shear resistance is one that has many layers turned against one another, such as the popular Structural One grade used in many of the best seismic retrofitting jobs.  

But there is a downside to plywood and it’s the very thing that turned me off from early on. Aside from just being ugly (I’m the beholder in this case), plywood doesn’t handle moisture very well. Left in the rain, it tends to warp (or buckle when nailed to a wall as if struggling for its freedom) and fungi have a happy time of it munching on the many openings created through the amount of exposure all that sawing creates.  

The more you saw up a piece of wood, the more easily digested it becomes. Cornflakes are easier to digest than whole kernels of corn and the more we chew up a piece of wood the more easily digested it will be by those that eat wood. The closer we get to making houses out of cardboard, the lower the tolerance for even small amounts of moisture and the ensuing party thrown by the fungal kingdom (look, that one’s doing the lambada!) 

So, in short, plywood is a very useful material that makes the construction of buildings, easier, cheaper and quite strong but more vulnerable to moisture and fungi. Use it but be careful to keep it dry.  

Next is drywall, aka sheetrock. My early reactions to this material were pretty miserable and I’ll confess that I’m still not in love with it but I do now recognize a couple of ways in which this material is pretty incredible. The foremost of these is its extraordinary ability to retard the advance of fire. Gypsum plaster contains trapped water molecules which boil off leaving a powdery residue. This process keep the building cool and protects the areas not yet ablaze during the progress of a fire. Plaster does this too but at a much great cost and the methodologies of installation are nearly lost in our money driven construction culture. That’s the other thing I have relinquish to this former foe, drywall is cheap and that’s not a bad thing. It means that more people in the world can have clean dry enclosures in which to live. Low cost isn’t a bad thing although I think we have to look at this from both large scale and long-range perspectives too. How sustainable is a system that relies so much on centralized mechanized processes.  

While there are many benefits to industrialization and many can benefit, we all have to be wary of who benefits and from these manufacturing methods and what happens to those who have nothing. All dialectic aside, I’ve come to see drywall as a reasonable, if mundane choice. I’d certainly like to see more variation in its use and more use of plaster, whether installed over drywall or other lathings (backings). That’s the origin of my dislike for the material, the lack of imagination in its use and the superlative ability of sheetrock to make every interior in the world look exactly the same. Like laminate floorings (e.g. Pergo) and counters (e.g. Formica) as well as viny floorings and wall coverings, my true argument is with our aesthetic, not the actual material itself. 

Another thing I DO like about drywall is that homeowners and lesser-skilled workers can also install it, albeit imperfectly. Anything that’s more democratizing is alright by me. 

A similar material used on the exterior of building is stucco. Also a plastering process, although this is properly called Cement Plaster because it contains Portland Cement, the same compound used in concrete. In fact, stucco is essentially the same product as concrete allowing for smaller and more uniform aggregate (rocks or sand). 

While I initially experienced stucco, in my O’ So Bored, L.A. youth as the symbol of the Plastic People (thank you Mr. Zappa), I now see stucco in very much the same way that I see drywall. The material is relatively easy to install and has low cost and relatively low environmental impact. While Portland Cement requires large amount of heat energy to produce and contributes somewhat to global warming, it’s hard to think of alternatives that are much better in today’s world. The good news is that better energy sources, such as hydroelectric power can lower these effects and there are also plans to begin burning some nasty things as fuel that we want to get rid of anyway. These include car tires, waste solvents, slaughterhouse wastes and plastic. 

While I initially saw stucco as boring, my arrival in the Bay Area has changed all that. Stucco and concrete can live glorious lives when crafted with vision as the masters of Deco, Usonian and Brutalism have shown us.  

It’s important to note that stucco as it exists today is a material that is often the source of construction mayhem. Common misinstallation errors too often lead to leaks and law suits so if you are going to DO stucco, make sure the design professional and builders are prepared to be all they be. While the stuccos and lead paints of yore were capable of retarding water intrusion, today’s building need to employ a second “drainage plane” behind the stucco to prevent moisture entry. 

If there’s a hero in today’s story, it’s Bernard Maybeck. For those of you who don’t know Mr. Maybeck, we probably don’t get to have a Julia Morgan (at least the one we know) without him and, in a time when the Beaux Arts are dying fast, Maybeck not only brings them back to us but he does so with steel-sashed industiral windows, cast-concrete and asbestos shingles. If you’ve never seen the First Church of Christ Scientist, just off People’s Park here in Berkeley, you’ve missed what at least one critic has called the most beautiful building in North America (A. Temko). 

What we (read I) can learn from this great master is that the materials are secondary. Design is always first. While I’m often wrong, I think, on this one thing, I’m probably right. 

FRIDAY, NOV. 2 

Fiesta de los Muertos A fundraiser for the Dolores Huerta Foundation with music and dancing at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $35. Costumes encouraged. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Life and Debt” A documentary on the impact of globalization on local industry and agriculture in Jamaica at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St. Free. Not wheelchair accessible. 

Berkeley Public Library West Branch Grand Re-Opening from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1125 University Ave. with live music, storytelling and refreshments. 981-6278. 548-1240 (TTY). 

“Interested in the Future of Downtown Berkeley?” Walking tour with Matt Taecker, Principal Planner for Berkeley’s Downtown Plan from 3 to 5 p.m. Meet at Kroeber Fountain, UC Campus at 2:15 p.m. RSVP to calbussa@gmail.com  

California Historical Society Piedmont Avenue Tour with Gary Holloway, Fri. at 10 a.m. Sat. at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and Sun. at 2 p.m. Cost is $20-$25. For reservations call 415-357-1848, ext. 229.  

“Before the Rainbow Flag: California’s Gay History” with Jim Van Buskirk, author and former director of the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the SF Main Library, at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

Dia de los Muertos Craft program and stories from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.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. 

SATURDAY, NOV. 3 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of “Lower Codornices Creek” to explore the history of the creek area from early industry to WWII housing to recent restoration. Walk is from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. To register and for information on meeting place call 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc/ 

Healthcare for All Kids A MomsRising.org Event with Assemblymembers Loni Hancock and Mark DeSaulnier. Activities for the whole family from 11 a.m. to noon at Live Oak Community Center, 1301 Shattuck. www.momsrising.org/healthcareforkids 

Help Stop Neighborhood Radiation Protest Verizon's lawsuit against City of Berkeley from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Verizon store, 1109 University Ave, at San Pablo Ave. 

Councilmember Max Anderson’s Town Hall Meeting on public safety, youth services, health, education and opportunities in the community from 9:30 a.m. to noon at South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. at Ashby. 981-7130. 

Alameda Literati Book Fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with open mic all day at Al DeWitt O Club, 641 West Red Line Ave., Alameda Point, Alameda, at the former Naval Air Station at Alameda. 427-7974.  

Children’s Story Day at MOCHA Listen to “Snowflake Bentley” then make your own snowflake at 1 p.m. at The Museum of Children’s Art, 528 Ninth St., Oakland. Cost is $7. 465-8770. 

Samhain All Hallows Fundraiser with the Starlight Circle Players, art gallery, tarot readings, food and costumes contest, from 2 p.m. on at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar and Bonita. Tickets are $15-$35. 647-5268. www.starlightcircleplayers.com 

Political Affairs Readers Group “Immigration” A discussion led by David Bacon, at 10 a.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the Communist Party USA, Oakland Berkeley Branch. Articles available at www.politicalaffairs.com 

Sister Comrade An evening of words and music celebrating the lives of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker with Angela Davis and Linda Tillery at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $25-$28. 528-3043. www.sistercomrade.com 

Ongoing Vocal Jazz Workshop Sat. from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Abany Community Center, 1249 Marin at the corner of Masonic, Albany. 524-6797. 

Central Stage Open House A space for dance, theater, music, film, yoga, meetings, and more, at 6 p.m. at 5221 Central Ave. #A-1, Richmond. Please RSVP to mtaeed@aol.com 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, NOV. 4 

Cornucopia: A Celebration of Artistic and Cultural Diversity in West Berkeley A family event with live music, make-and-take art projects and market place, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Black Pine Circle School, 2016 7th St. Cost is $5, free for children under 10.  

The 25th Anniversary of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant Honoring attorney Marc Van Der Hout. International food and music from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Donations accepted. 540-5296. www.eastbaysanctuary.org 

Home Greywater Systems and EcoHouse Tour from 10 a.m. to noon or 1 to 3 p.m. in Berkeley. Cost is $15, sliding scale. Registration required. 548-2220., ext. 242. 

“DIRT: The Erosion of Civilizations” with Prof. David R. Montgomery on the evolution of landscapes, at 1 p.m. at UC Botanical GArden, 200 Centennial Drive. Registration required. Cost is $7, free for Garden members. 643-2755, ext. 03. 

Drumming Workshop with Dror Sinai at 5 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Cost is $25-$35. For registration information call 547-2424, ext. 211. www.KehillaSynagogue.org 

Writing Workshop for Teens with Debroah Davis at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Old Time Radio East Bay Collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 5 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. For more information email DavidinBerkeley at Yahoo.com. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Tom Meade on “Skillful Means in a Productive Enterprise” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

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. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, NOV. 5 

The Future of People’s Park A discussion of the assessment and planning study of People’s Park at 7 p.m. at Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Way. 643-5296. The report is available at http://communityrelations.berkeley.edu/mkthink_oct_2007_DRAFT_report.pdf 

The Jorde Symposium “Playing by the Rules in the Age of Terror” Professor Stephen Holmes will discuss how America misunderstands the terrorist threat and that the fight has been counterproductive to longstanding American values at 4 p.m. at Boalt Hall, Room 110, UC Campus. 642-7830. 

David Loeb on “Bay Nature” on the adventures of creating and sustaining the quarterly journal, at 7 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin, at Masonic. Free. 848 9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Johan Galtung on “The State of the World from a Mediator’s Perspective” at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $15. 232-4493. www.uucb.org 

Progressive Democrats of the East Bay General Meeting on real healthcare reform at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 601-6456. 

“Commonsense Pest Management in the Home and Garden” A presentation at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 10 to 11 a.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

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. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

Teen Chess Club meets at 3:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6280. 

TUESDAY, NOV. 6 

“A Unreasonable Man” A film on Ralph Nader at 6 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

Independent Policy Forum: New Directions for Peace and Security with Carl P. Close, co-editor, “Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism” at 7 p.m. at The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland. Cos tis $10-$15. RSVP to 632-1366, ext. 118. 

“Summer of Love” film clips presented by Richie Unterberger at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel with Rabbi Arik Ascherman at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. 549-9447. 

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 

“What Not to Buy for Children for the Holidays” A panel discussion with Susan Gregory Thomas and Peggy Spear at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Mills College Student Union, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.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. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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, NOV. 7 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Galen Cranz “Body Conscious Design” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

“HybridStand” film on new sustainable ideas, and talk by Mark Godley of Big City Mountaineers, at 6 p.m. at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave. 814-937-8216. 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon. Advanced sign-up is required; please call 594-5165.  

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 

THURSDAY, NOV. 8 

¡Salud! A documentary on Cuba’s health care system at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Discussion follows. Tickets are $5-$10. 601-0182.  

Presidential Mix It Up with representatives from the campaigns of the major Democratic candidates from 6 to 9 p.m. at Arsimona’s, 561 11th St. at Clay, Oakland.  

Alameda Measure A Debate on “Should Article XXVI “Multiple Dwelling Units” of the City of Alameda’s Charter be changed to exclude Alameda Point” at 7 p.m. in the social hall of Twin Towers United Methodist Church, 1411 Oak St., Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.  

ONGOING 

Donate the Fruit From Your Fruit Trees We will gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, the homebound and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in or very near North Berkeley and the fruit should be organic (no pesticides) and edible. This is a volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! Please email northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com or 812-3369. 

Bay-Friendly Gardening Offers Discounted Compost Bins to Alameda County residents. In addition to the bins, they also offer free workshops, videos, brochures, and answers to your compost questions. To order a bin call the compost information hotline 444-7645. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Nov. 5, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5510.  

City Council meets Tues., Nov. 6, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Nov. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed., Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Nov. 7, at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs. Nov. 8 , at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Nov. 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Nov. 8, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410.