A California Superior Court Judge has voided the City of Oakland’s approval of the controversial Oak To Ninth development project, sending the project back to the Oakland Planning Commission and the City Council for a new round of environmental impact report certification and commission and council votes. 

In a 55 page decision issued last Friday, Judge Jo-Lynne Q. Lee agreed with the claims of a coalition of neighborhood and environmental activists that the Oak To Ninth EIR had not adequately addressed the issues in several key areas, including cumulative impact of past and present projects, traffic impact, and seismic risk mitigation. 

At the same time, the court ruled that the City of Oakland had properly considered alternatives in its EIR before concluding that much of the massive Ninth Avenue Terminal, the largest existing building on the Oak To Ninth site, could be largely dismantled for the project.  

The ruling comes at a time when Oakland will be losing its longtime Director of Planning, Claudia Cappio, who oversaw the original approval process in the Oakland Planning Commission and in Oakland City Council for the Oak To Ninth Project. A spokesperson in the Oakland City Administrator’s office confirmed that Cappio has turned in her resignation, though a date for her leaving her position has not been set. 

“For me, personally, it’s going to be a devastating loss,” Public Information Officer Karen Boyd quoted Adminstrator Deborah Edgerly as saying. “It’s going to leave a big hole in our operation.” Boyd called Cappio a “great presence” and “an incredible worker.” 

Cappio, who was recently injured while riding her bicycle, was not available for comment. 

Last week’s Superior Court ruling was on two lawsuits filed separately in the summer of 2006 but later consolidated, one by the Coalition of Activists For Lake Merritt (CALM) and Oakland architect progressive and activist Joyce Roy, seeking to overturn the EIR, and one by the Oakland Heritage Alliance seeking to keep the Ninth Avenue Terminal from being essentially destroyed even if the project itself were approved. 

The Oak To Ninth project, which seeks to rebuild a stretch of aging Oakland waterfront property along the estuary just south of Jack London Square, was controversial from its inception, and became an issue both in last year’s mayoral election and in the later District Two election between incumbent Pat Kernighan and challenger Aimee Allison. 

The final language of the ruling will be issued sometime after mid-December, and the parties will have 60 days after that date to file an appeal. The lead attorney for Oak To Ninth developer Signature Properties, Steven M. Bernard of Balgley & Bonaccorsi of Newark, California, was out of the office for the rest of the week and unavailable for comment on whether Signature would encourage the city to appeal. 

The ruling comes after some 25,000 pages of documents from the city's original planning approval process were submitted to the court, as well as over 200 pages of written legal argument submitted by all sides. 

The Superior Court ruling comes barely a week after plaintiffs voluntarily dropped a separate lawsuit that challenged the Oakland City Attorney's throwing out of petitions calling for a vote on the Oak To Ninth Project. 

A spokesperson for Mayor Dellums said the mayor has not yet read Judge Lee's decision, which was issued on Friday but not available until late Monday, and said that the mayor would not comment until he had the chance to read the report and consult with staff. 

Alex Katz, Communications Director in the City Attorney's office, said that "in legal terms, it's a split decision, but a win for the city." Katz said that the court agreed with the city on 14 of the specific EIR complaints made by the plaintiffs, and with the plaintiffs on 10 issues. "We see that as positive," he said, adding that he believed the city can resolve the EIR complaints upheld by the court "relatively easily." 

Katz conceded, however, that the decision means a new Planning Commission and City Council vote, which now gives opponents a second chance to gather signatures for a ballot referendum if they don't like the outcome. 

Meanwhile, the EIR lawsuit plaintiffs themselves had always argued that they did not want to stop the Oak To Ninth project entirely, but wanted modifications. The judge's ruling now gives them that opportunity. 

Because of that, the EIR lawsuit plaintiffs were ecstatic about Judge Lee's ruling. 

“I’m feeling great. I’m dancing,” Joyce Roy said. “It’s such a bad project on so many levels in so many ways.” 

Naomi Schiff, president of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, said that while “we’re sorry that the judge doesn’t think the salvaging of the Ninth Avenue Terminal is important,” she added that “my understanding is that all the city approvals are voided, and that this gives everyone a chance to take a second look at this project, including the terminal.” 

And even Oakland League of Women Voters president Helen Hutchinson, who had sounded drained and disappointed last week when announcing the Oak To Ninth Referendum Committee’s decision to withdraw its separate lawsuit, was decidedly more upbeat in reacting to the EIR victory. 

“In many ways, the ruling justified our decision to call for a referendum on the project.” Hutchinson said. 

Arthur Levy of Levy, Ram & Olson LLP of San Francisco, the Oakland Heritage Alliance attorney, said that he was “disappointed with respect to the Ninth Avenue Terminal,” but “extremely pleased, overall, at the outcome of the ruling. We’re hoping that the project will be improved as it comes back through the planning approval process.” 

Levy said that he had not yet talked with OHA officials about the possibility of appealing the court’s Ninth Avenue Terminal findings to the California Appeals Court. 

And Brian Gaffney of San Francisco, attorney for CALM and Roy, also said he was pleased with the ruling, adding that the decision left Signature Properties with three options: going back through the EIR process, filling in the sections that the judge ruled were incomplete or unaddressed, appealing the ruling, or trying to work out a settlement with the plaintiffs that could bring a modified form of the project to the Planning Commission and City Council. Gaffney called any Signature appeal “risky.” “An appeal could take a year and a half to get through the Appeals Court,” he said, “and if they lost, they would still have to go through all of the city processes again to get approval for the project.” 

If the proposed 3,100-residential unit, 200,000-square-foot commercial space development Oak To Ninth project does go back through the Oakland planning process, it will find a landscape distinctly different from when the project was approved on a 6-0 City Council vote in the summer of 2006. 

In 2006, Jerry Brown was mayor of Oakland. Brown was a strong supporter of the Oak To Ninth Project, and considered it a key part of his plan to bring commercial development and 10,000 new residents to the general downtown Oakland area. Ron Dellums is mayor of Oakland now, elected on a campaign platform of bringing all sides to the table in deciding development issues, as well as using the city’s development approval powers to promote the city’s diversity. 

Asked to comment on Dellums’ views on the development and diversity issue during last year’s mayoral campaign, president Mike Ghielmetti of Signature Properties, the developer of Oak To Ninth, told the Oakland Tribune a little dryly “There’s a great deal of concern in the development community. The remarks were not taken well.” 

The Ed Roberts Campus—an easily accessible center where disabled people will find legal advocacy and housing help, learn computer skills, find specialized day care, practice fitness routines and meet friends for coffee without the barriers most local cafes present—may have found the last $9 million it needs to start construction on the project that began 12 years ago. 

Funding for the project, however, could pit Aquatic Park advocates against the project for the disabled, as Mayor Tom Bates has proposed using funds for the center which were previously earmarked for a sound wall between the park and freeway. 

A Metropolitan Transportation Commission committee approved $4.5 million last week, contingent on matching funds. The full MTC will vote on the allocation on Nov. 28.  

Bates, an MTC commissioner, is asking the City Council to agree to spend another $2 million on Nov. 27, $500,000 from the city’s general fund capital budget and $1.5 million from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) in a fund previously earmarked for the sound wall project. 

The sound wall was approved by the council in 2000, but was never fully funded by CalTrans. 

In addition to the new amount which Bates proposes allocating, the council voted on Oct. 23 for another $500,000 contribution, to come from Berkeley’s Housing Incentive Financing Program funds, aimed at improving transportation. BART has agreed to add $2 million.  

That would give the project the $44 million it needs to break ground next summer. 

Dimitri Belser, president of the Ed Roberts Campus board and the executive director of the Center for Accessible Technology, has been working on the project for more than a decade. Seven nonprofit organizations that focus on disability have come together to form the larger nonprofit ERC. Collaboration among the groups is the key to making the project go, Belser told the Planet on Friday. The member nonprofits are: Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program, Center for Accessible Technology, Center for Independent Living, Computer Technologies Program, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Through the Looking Glass, and World Institute on Disability. The project will be owned by the ERC. 

The organizations don’t duplicate, but “dove-tail services,” Belser said. 

Speaking about the project in an interview last month, CIL Executive Director Jan Garrett, vice president of the ERC board, said: “It will be a model. People will come from around the world to see it.”  

Councilmember Dona Spring told the Planet Friday that she supports the ERC, but is concerned about using the sound wall funds for that purpose. Before the city approves the allocation, Spring said, Aquatic Park users should be consulted.  

The barrier envisioned was to be a “living” sound wall, made of earth and plantings. While Caltrans funded the project at $1.5 million, real costs were in dispute at the time and Caltrans never approved the project, although the City Council supported it. 

“There’s no reason why we should not push for money for Caltrans to complete the sound wall,” Spring said.  

Aquatic Park advocates Mark Liolios, of EGRET (Environmental Greening, Education, and Restoration Team) and Lisa Stephens, member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, both said they were surprised when a reporter told them of the proposal. Both said they thought the sound wall project was still in the pipeline of projects to be done. 

“This is scandalous,” Stephens told the Planet. “They’re required to do something.”  

If the funds are approved and the project goes forward, the Ed Roberts Campus will be built on the eastern parking lot of the Ashby BART station. The lot will be redesigned so that no parking spaces will be lost, Belser said.  

In addition to offices each organization will have, the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program is planning to build a fitness center. “It will be the first ever fully accessible fitness center,” Belser said.  

The child development center will be run by Through the Looking Glass, which supports parents who are disabled. Meeting rooms are to be fully accessible, with smaller rooms that could open into a large one that could seat several hundred people.  

Forty HazMat professionals battled toxic gunk on the treacherous Berkeley Marina rocks as part of the Cosco Busan Oil Spill Response Monday. 

Their only weapon: hand towels. 

The city stopped deploying volunteers to rescue birds and clean up the Berkeley shoreline Monday to give the O’Brien’s Group, the private recovery firm hired by Cosco Busan owner Regal Stone Ltd., an opportunity to clean its beaches. 

Community members can still sign up at californiavolunteers.org for future volunteer opportunities. 

“We can’t have the volunteers and the contractors working on the same spot. There are liability issues involved for the contractors,” said William Rogers, interim director for Berkeley’s Parks Recreation and Waterfront Department. “They are being paid by the owners of the ship to do the cleaning. The community worked diligently, but there’s still a lot of oil out there that’s difficult to see from the shoreline. The professionals should really be the ones cleaning it.” 

Regal Stone Inc.—which leased the ship to South Korea-based Hanjin Shipping for the voyage—is also providing Tyvek coveralls, gloves, shoe protection, bags, and disposal containers for the cleanups. 

Rogers added that although the clean-up was slow, the situation had improved. 

“Volunteers have pulled over 100 bagfuls of pebbles, vegetation and other hazardous waste,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been able to clean up as well if it hadn’t been for them. Unfortunately, the situation with the birds is not great. There has been an increase in the number of dead birds found and a decline in the number of alive birds.” 

Dr. Kirsten Gilardi, supervisor for the makeshift bird rescue center set up by the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the Marina, said that the pattern was typical. 

“The further you get into a situation like this, it is expected that there will be more dead birds,” she said, packing rescue essentials into a pick-up truck. “The birds are ingesting the oil while picking at their feathers and sometimes when the oil dries up they are unable to move.” 

Gilardi added that the rescue center was working independently to send volunteers to search for birds. 

The Department of Fish and Game released 38 birds into Pillar Point Harbor Friday afternoon, the first of hundreds taken to the International Bird Rescue and Research Center to be saved. 

Berkeley deployed two hundred volunteers to clean eight beaches Saturday including Virginia Beach, Brick Yard Cove and Albany Beach.  

Officials from the Department of Fish and Game delivered the HazMat trainings for the city.  

Rogers said that although the city had responded to the spills independently at first, it was now being advised by the incident command center at Treasure Island. 

“Some other cities were concerned about liability when the spill happened,” he said. “But Berkeley decided earlier on to train its folks and deploy them and make sure they were supervised. Berkeley felt this was an acceptable risk.” 

Fifty volunteers turned up Sunday, some with towels, others with pets and families in tow.  

Although the Marina had opened to boat traffic Thursday, the piers were still deserted. Crabbing equipment lay inside the boats untouched.  

“I am not using my boat right now,” said Michael Lamb, a boat-owner at the Berkeley Marina. “We have been asked not to wash our boats ... I leave it to the experts to make the decisions. I hope to use it next week.”  

City Manager Phil Kamlarz along with councilmembers Linda Maio and Darryl Moore toured Berkeley’s coastline Sunday. 

“It looked better than I thought until I came to the northern end,” Maio, dressed in an orange life-vest, said. “Some of the oil residues have stuck internally to the rocks and the HazMat crews are working to remove them.” 

“We are hoping that the teams will come around the houseboats and clean the scum,” said Moore. 

Families could be spotted along the shoreline looking for distressed birds, some braving the rocks to flag their location. 

Kamlarz—who declared a state of emergency Thursday—said that the smell of oil had receded from the bay. 

“There’s still a lot of residue from Skates on the north to the Yacht Club,” he said. “Same for the F and G docks ... People should put their dogs on leash and stay away from the sick birds. Two volunteers were recently injured in the Marina ... We want the professionals to take over now.” 

Jeff Topic, site supervisor for the HazMat crew contracted by O’Brien’s, said the teams had been working since Thursday. 

“We are scraping the oil off the rocks and using a rag to wipe it off,” he said. “That’s the best way. All my people go through 40 hours of training ... All of them have had spill experience before.” 

Dressed in steel-toed knee-high boots, safety glasses and gloves, the crew has cleaned more than three-quarters of a mile since Thursday. 

Shawn Weaver and Lawrence Davis had been wiping oil off the rocks for twelve straight hours. 

“It’s not time for break yet,” Weaver said. “We’ll be here for as long as it takes.” 

Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz took several emergency actions after the Nov. 9 oil spill. In a specially called meeting Monday afternoon, the council retroactively approved the measures:  

• Dogs at the Marina, Aquatic Park and all waterfront and shoreline areas of the city must be restrained by a leash of no more than six feet within 250 feet of the water. (Dogs can continue to be off-leash in the specially designated area of Cesar Chavez Park, however.) 

• Humans are prohibited within 50 feet of the shoreline, except at designated volunteer assembly areas. 

• Boat washing is prohibited, except for commercial vessels with written permission of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

While trained volunteers had been cleaning the shoreline, at present cleanup in Berkeley is restricted to professionals cleaning rock areas.  

“There are 75 people today [in Berkeley] working on the rock areas,” Kamlarz said. “We’re asking volunteers to stay away and let the professionals deal with the rocks.” 

No new volunteer trainings are scheduled, Kamlarz said. The city has lists of people who have been trained. After several days of high tides, the city may again need trained volunteers to work at the shoreline. 

If people find injured or oily birds, they should not approach them, but call 981-6720. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington added that the state’s delay notifying cities of the spill should be investigated.  

“The impact of the spill will last days, weeks, even years,” he said. “If the state had a faster response, we could have decreased the negative impact. We need to ask what caused the delay.” 

—Judith Scherr 

An Alameda County Superior Court judge awarded thousands of dollars in damages to a group of West Berkeley neighbors Friday who sued Pacific Steel Casting for loss of use and enjoyment of their property and mental distress. 

Judge Dawn Girard ruled that nine of the 19 plaintiffs who filed the small claims case in August 2006 would each get between $2,100 and $5,100 because of the “private nuisance created by Pacific Steel,” and “a real and appreciable invasion of the plaintiffs’ interests.” 

No judgment was awarded in any of the children’s cases. Girard dismissed five other adult cases for lack of appropriate paperwork. 

Elizabeth Jewel of Aroner, Jewel and Ellis, the public relations firm for Pacific Steel, told the Planet that the Gilman Street foundry was disappointed by the rulings and would appeal it. 

Lead Plaintiff Tom McGuire called the judgment “a victory for the small guys.” 

“It’s not about the money,” he said. “It’s a moral victory because we were able to stand up to the company that has been polluting with impunity and thumbing the community for decades. It’s like giving them a black eye. Let them appeal if they want to. They can spend more money and drag it through court.” 

Most of the plaintiffs complained of a burnt-copper-like smell which some said could be toxic. 

“This is a history that runs very long,” said Brant Bellamon, who rents an apartment close to the foundry. “They operate out of three plants now ... The molten metal goes airborne from Plant 3. I can smell it from my apartment every day. It’s one of the worst particulate matters. I am pleased with the judgment but it’s not over yet. We have won the battle but not the war.” 

The steel foundry recently settled a lawsuit with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and installed a $2 million carbon absorption unit on Plant 3 to reduce emissions and odor. 

It also settled a lawsuit with Communities for a Better Environment which requires it to install an air filtration system. 

Since the nuisance lawsuit was filed in small claims court, the parties were not allowed to be represented by lawyers. Attorney Kathleen Aberegg from Neighborhood Solutions advised them on the case. 

“I was responsible for the opening and closing statements,” said McGraw. “Each of us had to go before the judge and represent our own case.” 

Pacific Steel was represented by Barry Scott, the company’s human resource manager. 

According to McGuire, the judge awarded homeowners in the West Berkeley neighborhood a larger amount than the renters. “She gave all the homeowners $5,100 each with one exception. The renters received $3,600 each.” 

McGuire rented a house in West Berkeley in 2004 but moved to a different neighborhood seven months later. 

“My wife and I lived in the line of fire of the factory,” he told the Planet. 

“The minute we moved in, we knew something was wrong. Although I live in the North Berkeley Hills now, I can still smell the burning metal on my way to work. When we heard about this lawsuit, we decided to join on principle.” 

Air monitors set up by a group of West Berkeley residents in May to detect emissions from Pacific Steel Casting reveal high levels of the toxic metals nickel and manganese. 

According to Mark Cherniak, an independent international health expert, the levels of nickel and manganese found in the samples taken near the West Berkeley steel foundry were hundreds of times higher than considered safe by the World Health Organization. 

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District released Pacific Steel’s long-awaited health risk assessment report to the public in October and will be accepting comments until Jan. 31. 

Campus police have escalated their campaign against the tree-sitters at UC Berkeley Memorial Stadium, making arrests Sunday and Monday in the protest that began nearly a year ago. 

The university also sent word to the Alameda County Superior Court judge that the university intends to cut branches at the stadium grove that are being used to help send supplies to the arboreal protesters. 

An attorney who is representing environmentalists struggling to save the threatened grove said that no decision should be made without a meeting of all parties in the action now pending before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller. 

Zachary Running Wolf, who launched the protest last Dec. 9, was arrested for the eighth time at 4:07 p.m. Sunday, while another member of the protest’s ground support crew, Arthur Fonseca, was arrested four hours earlier and booked on suspicion of resisting arrest and violation of a court order. 

Running Wolf was charged with violation of a court order and resisting arrest and taken to Berkeley’s city jail to join Fonseca—who was also served with an order barring him from campus for the following seven days. 

Ayr, who has been instrumental in organizing ground support for the protest, was arrested early Monday afternoon. 

Both Ayr and Fonseca were arrested within minutes after they had helped provide the tree-sitters with food and supplies, said Doug Buckwald of Save the Oaks at the stadium. 

“Ayr went to International House to use the restroom, and he was seen by a police spotter. When he came out, a police cruiser had blocked the sidewalk and he was handcuffed and taken away,” Buckwald said. 

Running Wolf, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor last Novem-ber, had just been released Friday from the Alameda County jail at Santa Rita. 

Wozniak’s visit 

Berkeley City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak met at the grove Monday afternoon with campus police and Dan Mogul of, the university’s executive director of public affairs. 

Wozniak represents the council district closest to the site of the protest, and his constituents include the residents of Pano-ramic Hill who are fighting the project in court. 

“My visit was prompted by concerns of some of my constituents who wanted to keep the tree canopy intact along Pied-mont Way to implement the vision of Frederick Law Olm-sted,” Wozniak said. 

Considered the founder of American landscape architect and the designer of New York City’s Central Park, Olmsted designed the Piedmont Way streetscape, which is a City of Berkeley landmark. 

“Some of the branches they want to cut are pretty big, and it would have a major impact on the appearance of the streetscape,” Wozniak said, noting that some campus officials have been actively working to help restore Olmsted’s vision for the street. “I don’t see any particular way for a win/win situation at this point. It’s pretty much a stalemate right now.” 

Wozniak said the university apparently wants the judge to give them an option that would allow them to cut the branches, a point Mogulof confirmed Monday afternoon. 

The university official said that there will be no changes in the university’s handling of events at the grove “pending notification that the judge in Hayward (Miller) has arrived at a ruling,” Mogulof said. 

Given that the judge has promised 48 hours advance notice of her decision, no decision is likely before the week’s end, he added.  

Asked if the university intended to cut off supplies to the protesters, Mogulof said, “We have neither the physical pieces nor the personnel in place to hermetically seal off the area.” 

In the same letter announcing the plan to cut branches, Kelly L. Drumm of UC’s Office of General Counsel wrote to Judge Miller Friday, asking her to delay issuing her ruling until next week. 

“UC Berkeley Police Chief Victoria Harrison requests that the court not issue its decision before Nov. 26 ... to ensure the campus has adequate police staffing to respond to potential incidents resulting from a decision in this case,” Drumm wrote. “Chief Harrison and Chancellor Birgeneau believes (sic) that adequate officer staffing is necessary to ensure the safety of police officers and civilian security officers given recent events at the oak grove involving the tree sitters and their supporters.” 

Drumm cited last Wednesday’s tense confrontation between campus police and protesters as the deciding factor in the university’s decision to cut branches at the grove. 

Officers resorted to their batons after protesters set out to cut the dual fence lines erected to surround the grove. 

“The university intends to cut/trim the limbs/branches that compromise the security line and create safety risks to officers,” Drum wrote. “The proposed pruning would not compromise the health or integrity of the trees, which are outside the proposed footprint of the (gym) and are not covered by the injunction.” 

Dose of irony 

Michael Lozeau, the attorney who represents the Panoramic Hill Association in the multi-party lawsuit challenging the four-story mostly underground gym and office complex the university plans at the grove site, said Monday that he is somewhat bemused by the university’s fencing policies. 

“The university said it needed to build the fences to protect the tree-sitters from the 60,000 to 70,000 fans who attend” football games at the stadium. 

“But the season ended last week, so who is there to protect them from?” Lozeau mused. 

Noting that the university had gone to court to win an injunction barring support for the tree-sitters, Lozeau wondered why the university had erected the fence to safeguard those same tree-sitters. 

“That certainly seems like support,” he quipped. 

“We never said it was just about protecting them,” said Mogulof. 

On a more serious note, Lozeau said he wondered if the university planned to tear down the fence if construction is allowed to proceed, given its assurances to the court that it would do nothing that advanced the gym project until Miller had ruled. 

Among the issues Judge Miller is being asked to decide is whether or not the university followed the steps mandated in the California Environmental Quality Act before UC’s Board of Regents approved construction of the gym project and the environmental review that encompassed it and other projects dubbed the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

With the impediments removed to the Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker’s plan for 12-hour shifts and dividing the city into three districts, community police advocates both inside and outside the Dellums administration are hoping that the way is now clear for the administration to move forward on a proposed Comprehensive Public Safety Plan as well. 

The plan, which was forwarded to Mayor Ron Dellums last summer, calls for the Dellums administration to implement community policing by fully staffing the city’s 57 problem-solving officer slots, bringing the number of civilian Neighborhood Services Coordinators to 30, organizing Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils (NCPCs) in all 57 beats and using them as the primary public safety contact within each beat, and layering the delivery of all of Oakland’s public-safety-oriented services through the already-existing Service Delivery System (SDS). 

Dellums has not made a final decision on the entire package, and some of the components are certain to be controversial. Advocates hope, however, that the plan will eventually unite all sides involved in Oakland’s currently raging public safety discussion and disputes under one programmatic umbrella. 

Public Safety Task Force co-convener Jason Victor Serinus said by telephone this week that moving to a comprehensive, integrated community policing plan is necessary “to deal with the roots of the crime problem in this city. I was surprised to learn when I started working with the task force that community policing is the law in Oakland, but it’s never been fully implemented.” Instead, Serinus said that the city is currently operating on what he called the “Keystone cops model. Meaning no disrespect to the police officers involved, someone reports a problem in East Oakland, so the city sends officers running out there to deal with it. And then someone says, ‘Holy shit! We’ve got a problem out in West Oakland,’ and the city turns around and sends the officers over into West Oakland. We’ve got officers constantly running back and forth, back and forth, putting blankets on the flames, but never getting at the root cause of the problems. That’s the reactive form of policing. The essence of community policing is the opposite; it’s proactive.” 

Serinus said that currently, Problem Solving Officers (PSOs) are not able to fully operate in their role as the centerpiece of the city’s community policing strategy. 

“They’re getting constantly pulled off their community policing activities to deal with immediate crime situations,” Serinus said. “They’re not able to take a long-range overarching look at the causes of crime. Therefore, the solution is to lock up more and more young black and brown people.” Serinus called that strategy similar to the federal and state model “which always needs to identify an enemy and then either lock up or kill the enemy, and then you ‘solve’ the problem.” 

A July report from the Community Policing task force on the Comprehensive Public Safety Plan released to Dellums says that Oakland’s community policing program “presently … sits in abeyance, stalled in labor negotiation sessions between city management and the Oakland Police Officers Association. A major issue is the proposed change from the present 4-day/10-hour work shift to a 3-day/12-hour shift.” 

Chief Tucker in July 2007 wrote, “twelve-hour shifts are an integral part of the plan to achieve true community policing.”  

Last week, that roadblock was lifted when an impartial arbitrator ruled that the Oakland Police Department could institute its shift from the 10-hour work shift to the 12-hour work shift.  

Tucker now plans to divide the city into three distinct police geographic zones, each of which is to be run by an individual commander, with officers restricted to the zone in which they are assigned. Under current police operations, police are constantly shifted from beat to beat, with no continuity or time for individual officers to understand the nuances of their individual areas. Tucker says that among other things, the 12-hour shift makes the geographically based staffing model possible. 

In a prepared release following the arbitrator’s decision, Dellums called the decision “a breakthrough for Oakland—we can finally move closer to true community policing.” 

But how much of the proposed Comprehensive Public Safety Plan will actually be adopted and eventually implemented remains to be seen. 

The plan envisions PSOs working full time in each of the city’s 57 beats to identify potential and actual public safety problems, both by walking the beats themselves on a daily basis and observing conditions and talking with individuals as they go along, and through regular meetings with the beat’s NCPC. 

The public safety proposal projects the NCPCs as the major community liaison portion of the program. Since only a handful of the city’s 57 beats have functioning NCPCs, the proposal envisions the PSOs organizing NCPCs in their beats where none currently exists. 

Both of those concepts may stir up controversy over the proposal. In the past, several of the NCPCs have been criticized in some community activist Oakland circles as being too close to the police and for promoting a “tough on criminals” approach to crime prevention, and having uniformed police officers actively organizing the NCPC in their beat can only be expected to increase that criticism. 

As the PSOs gather information on public safety problems in their beats, the Comprehensive Public Safety Plan proposal envisions them as bringing their concerns to Service Delivery System (SDS) units set up in each of the city’s six police service areas (PSAs). 

The six SDS units, currently operating under the city administrator’s office and consisting of roughly 10-12 police beats apiece, consist of service providers from all of the city’s public service agencies, including those responsible for such things as street lighting, community and economic development, and nuisance abatement. PSOs are expected to funnel their public service-related requests through these regular SDS meetings and then to make sure that those requests are actually implemented in their beats. 

Currently, the SDS units meet once a month. Advocates of the Comprehensive Public Safety Plan want those meetings to increase in frequency, possibly to as often as once per week, and want the meetings to include representatives of the various violence prevention organizations funded through Oakland’s Measure Y so that they become planning and sounding boards for all local violence prevention services in the city. 

Advocates also want the civilian Neighborhood Services Coordinators to play a more active role in both the communities and in the SDS meetings and follow-up. 

“That’s not happening now,” Serinus said. 

He described a recent situation in his own community to illustrate the current gaps in the system. 

“Two months ago, we had a young man killed near 27th Avenue,” Serinus said. “Young people held a vigil at the site for several days, but eventually the vigils began to drift into drinking and then roaming thought the community.” Serinus said that he understood how drinking became involved. “It’s a way to deal with the grieving process. For many people, it’s the only way. This entire city is grieving. We have suffered so many murders, and there’s no way to channel it.” 

But Serinus said that the vigil eventually got out of hand and broke into neighborhood disturbances, and after a window was broken and fights broke out, he and other neighbors had to call 911 for police to come in to disperse the gatherings. 

“But that wasn’t what was needed, it’s just what the situation made necessary,” Serinus said. “What was needed, initially, was the city to send out grief counselors for these young people to give them a way to channel their feelings. There’s so much that could have been done to help them, and the problem would not have not gotten out of hand.” 

Serinus said that if the proposed comprehensive community police plan were in effect, requests for counseling services—either from the city or from the Measure Y violence prevention organizations—could have immediately been coordinated through the area problem solving officer. 

“We need to have a common vision and a common strategy” in attacking public safety problems, Serinus said. “In addition, clear lines of communication are essential among all the agencies and organizations involved.”

Scott Slaughter, 31, of Oakland lost his life Thursday morning when he crossed the train tracks north of the Berkeley Amtrak Station on his way to his job at Truitt & White, located near the tracks on Hearst Avenue. 

Slaughter was talking on his cell phone and watched a train pass going south, but was hit by the Chicago-bound California Zephyr at 8:12 a.m. going in the opposite direction, according to Vernae Graham, Amtrak spokesperson. 

This was an eerie reminder to Berkeley Councilmember Linda Maio of the death in June of Bread Project founder Lucie Buchbinder, 83, at a train crossing in Jack London Square. Similarly, Buchbinder was talking on a cell phone, waited for one train to pass and was struck by another going in the opposite direction. 

“It takes three football fields [distance] to stop the train,” Graham told the Planet.  

The city does not have statistics available on pedestrians killed by trains in Berkeley. According to Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit that provides rail safety education, there were six pedestrians killed by trains in Alameda County in 2005 and seven in 2006. From January through July 2007 there have been three such deaths in the county. 

With a new police department computer system, the city will do a more efficient job of tracking such accidents, Maio said. 

Speaking on Monday, Maio said she had not yet been briefed on the accident, but said there may need to be a prohibition against trains passing each other from two different directions in an urban setting. Or trains may need to be elevated when they pass through cities, she said. 

“There have been two accidents like this—it should be a wake-up call,” Maio said.  

In September, at Maio’s behest, the City Council voted to have a study conducted on the feasibility of mandating a quiet zone in Berkeley, where trains are not allowed to sound their horns. Rail safety issues within the city will be evaluated in that study being conducted by WilburSmith Associates. 

Operation Lifesaver provides rail safety education to interested groups. The organization can be reached through their website at www.oli.org. 

(Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles on implications of the just-concluded $500 million agreement between UC Berkeley and BP. Part two will be published Friday.) 

In the hands of British oil giant BP, the $500 million biofuel research deal at UC Berkeley’s Energy Bioscience Institute could change the face of the world. 

That’s the one thing critics and admirers agree on. The program has been hailed by supporters as either “our moon shot” or—in reference to a more controversial chapter of UC Berkeley’s history—“our Manhattan Project.” 

While the Manhattan Project reshaped the realm of world politics and the Apollo program shaped generations of new technologies, EBI’s record-breaking corporate academic partnership that was finalized last week—should it fulfill the promises of its boosters—will transform landscapes across the globe. 

Powerful evidence that agrofuels—crops farmed for fuel—are changing the face of the earth comes from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory website. 

Consider the satellite photo of the Bolivian Chaco, the second largest South American old-growth forest. Vast star-shaped patterns repeat in quilt-like patterns, consuming the Chaco with cleared fields planted with genetically modified soybeans—a food crop grown not to feed humans but to fuel their cars and trucks with ethanol. 

BP’s image 

BP has sought to recast its image from British Petroleum to BP plc, and is selling itself as “Beyond Petroleum.”  

But by whatever name, BP is the same multinational which has plotted coups in the Mideast and bankrolled paramilitary terrorists in Latin America. In its earlier incarnation as Anglo-Iranian Oil, BP triggered the CIA-planned coup that overthrew Iran’s first elected government. 

It is the same company fined $373 million last month in criminal and civil penalties by the U.S. Department of Justice for: 

• polluting the Alaskan wilderness by failing to maintain the Alaskan Pipeline; 

• killing by criminal negligence 15 workers and injuring another 170 when a Texas City, Tex., refinery exploded on March 23, 2005; and 

• conspiring to corner the propane market for much of the eastern U.S. in the middle of winter in 2004. 

BP’s offshore ownership and worldwide focus required a special waiver from the Department of Energy (DOE) to allow it to partner with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which had recently executed an agreement with UC Berkeley requiring research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to be aimed at domestic industries. 

The waiver was based in part on the program’s promise of energy independence for a nation embroiled in conflict, actual and threatened, with the world’s major petroleum-producing lands. 

Third World crops 

While UC Berkeley and LBNL—along with their project’s third partner, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—have hailed EBI as a project designed to make the U.S. energy independent, BP is frank to say its own interests are global. 

BP envisions that crops developed by Berkeley and Illinois scientists will be grown across the globe but concentrated in the tropics. 

Which is precisely what critics have claimed from the start. 

Tad Patzek, a Berkeley engineering professor and former scientist for Shell, reports that there are slave camps on Brazilian plantations where sugar cane is grown for ethanol. And UC Davis doctoral student Kregg Hetherington says he witnessed firsthand the killings of two campesinos challenging the spread of agrofuel soy plantations in Tekojoja, Paraguay, describing the events in the July 24, 2005, ACTivist Magazine. 

Monsanto Corporation, which owns many of the patented strains of genetically modified soybeans grown in the global South, also provided millions of dollars in research funding for Mendel Biotechnology, the private startup founded by EBI Director Chris Somerville. 

BP’s scientist 

As controversy spread about the impact of agrofuel plantations in South America and Africa, BP’s own chief scientist admitted that oil companies have blemished records when it comes to protecting the environment and the rights of indigenous people. 

His remarks came during a June 13 breakfast gathering sponsored by the U.S. Energy Association, a video of which has been available on the internet. 

“BP is a global company,” said Steve Koonin, a nuclear physicist on leave from his post as provost of the California Institute of Technology. “And of course, while the U.S. may be currently 25 percent of worldwide petrol use or crude use, there’s a whole other world out there. And so we are interested in feedstocks and fuels for many different locales around the globe.” 

As for where those crops will be grown, Berkeley scientists and university and LBNL officials have stressed that their goal is an energy-independent U.S., with fuels created from fibrous crops grown on currently marginal soils. 

Asked if the company was looking at Africa, Koonin was frank, telling the energy association meeting: “If you look at a picture of the globe ... it’s pretty easy to see where the green parts are, and those are the places where one would perhaps optimally grow feedstocks. 

“Beyond the physical and economical considerations, there are social considerations when you march into the undeveloped or developing parts of the world with large-scale enterprises,” he said. “We are familiar with that to some extent in the oil business ... We don’t do it well all the time. We’re trying to do it better.” 

FRIDAY: Land worries and critical questions.

The Berkeley Board of Education held back last week from approving Emeryville-based Baker Vilar Architects to plan the demolition of the Berkeley High School old gym due to the lack of a timeline for the project. 

The board voted unanimously for the firm to design the school’s new bleachers and asked district staff to prepare a timeline for the demolition of the gym.  

The district will pay Baker Vilar $900,000 from the bond fund for the projects. 

School board vice president John Selawsky said he had received calls from community members concerned about the lack of a specific timeline for the projects. 

“There is not much information here,” he said. “We should pay attention to them separately as it’s a two-way process. The public deserves some notification.” 

The first two phases of the Berkeley High School South of Bancroft Master plan—which include construction of a bleacher building with athletic lockers underneath, the construction of a small facilities building off Channing Way, a small set of bleachers and restrooms on the west side of the football field, and the demolition of the old gym and existing bleachers—were approved at a school board meeting in September. 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence said that the demolition was a long-term process. 

“I do understand the concern and the need for information but nothing is going to happen here within the next three months that’s going to affect the demolition of the gym,” she said. 

Board member Karen Hemphill asked for the name of the contractor who would be doing the actual demolition. 

“I haven’t seen a contract yet,” she said. “I have been to that gym. It would be good option to maximize whatever can be salvaged.” 

The State Historical Resources Commission unanimously approved the nomination for the Berkeley High School campus to be listed on the National Register as a historic district earlier this month. The proposed historic district includes the old gym, itself the subject of a landmarking battle. 

The Friends Protecting Berkeley’s Resources—the group responsible for writing the nomination—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 master plan. 

Warm pool users are also opposed to the proposed demolition, which they feel threatens their use of the pool. 

Berkeley High principal Jim Slemp, along with a group of high school administrators, teachers, parents and students, was responsible for selecting Baker Vilar from among four firms. The firm took over the King Dining Commons project in April after its original architect defaulted on the contract causing delays and additional costs of up to $46,000. 

Mostly they play for the pure fun of it.  

“You’re playing around with your friends,” said volleyball player Charlotte Carver.  

“It’s fun to dive all over the floor,” said Carla Globerson-Lamb, one of the team captains. 

The popular game, invented in 1895 by a physical education director at the Holyoke, Mass., YMCA, is played by pick-up teams in the park and in the Olympics. When a team plays sloppily, coaches call it “family reunion volleyball.”  

A lot of the game is taken up with touching and bonding rituals. When players score—hit the ball into the floor on the opponent’s side—they make a circle with their arms around one another. When they lose a point—hit the ball into the net or out of bounds—they make a circle anyway. 

“It’s part of team chemistry,” said Coach Brenda Bertram. “If they did something well, they celebrate. If they did something wrong, they talk about it.” 

She says men aren’t the same. “There are a few huggers, but mostly it’s high-fives and hand slapping. In American culture it’s considered taboo for men to hug each other.”  

Globerson-Lamb said the lost-a-point huddle is devoted to encouragements such as “‘That’s O.K., we got the next one.’ We always support each other, no matter what.”  

Often the players are long-time friends, playing together  

in clubs in the spring and summer, giving Berkeley a big advantage.  

“Some people are more privileged,” Globerson-Lamb said, referring to Berkeley’s relative affluence. “If you have money, you can play out of school.”  

Berkeley rarely loses and usually is the league champion. At a recent game, Berkeley players huddled 20 or 30 times. Their opponents never did. Energy accumulated on the Berkeley side until it was palpable. You didn’t have to know the score or what the game was about to know they would win. 

Coach Bertram said she saw it too. It’s hard to understand—that people can gather, each with a portion of energy, and then ungather, each with a greater portion.

A Berkeley woman tearfully pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that she murdered her 9-year-old son at their Shattuck Avenue home last month.  

Misti Hassan, 31, who was dressed in red jail clothes and sobbed as she nodded to about 25 family members and friends who came to her brief appearance in Alameda County Superior Court, is scheduled to return to court Jan. 29 for a pretrial hearing on charges that she murdered Amir Hassan at her apartment at 3011 Shattuck Ave.  

An Alameda County sheriff’s deputy became upset when Hassan’s boyfriend waved to her and handcuffed him, hauled him out of the courtroom and arrested him for allegedly illegally communicating with an inmate.  

Berkeley police found Amir dead when they went to the apartment shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 10 after getting a tip from San Jose police. They said he may have been dead for up to 36 hours.  

Misti Hassan was suffering from cuts to her arms and neck and was taken to a local trauma center, where she was treated for non-life threatening injuries, Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said.  

Hassan later was taken to the John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro, where she was arraigned Monday. Since then she was transferred to the Alameda County in Dublin, where she’s still being held.  

Authorities have indicated that Hassan may have suffered from mental illness, and Berkeley police say that a friend of Hassan’s told authorities that Hassan phoned her the morning of Oct. 10 to report that Hassan said she killed Amir with klonopin, an anti-anxiety medication.  

People close to the case also have indicated that Hassan may have been upset that Amir’s father, Chad Reed, was seeking custody of Amir and that her boyfriend had recently broken up with her.  

Outside court today, Hassan’s attorney, Lewis Romero, declined to comment on whether her mental competency will be an issue in defending her against the murder charges. Romero told the large group of people who came to court on Hassan’s behalf that, “Your support is the healing she needs.”  

Romero said, “This defense will be about transcending the norms, transcending the jail walls and transcending the law.”  

He said Hassan “is an unusual human being” and “can’t do it without the love and intelligence of the community.”  

Romero said the arrest of Hassan’s boyfriend shows that the court staff “is discomforted with the sense of love” displayed by Hassan’s supporters.  

He said Hassan’s boyfriend “will be OK.”  

Alameda County sheriff’s officials weren’t immediately available for comment.

Editor’s note: This story ran in an incomplete version in the Nov. 16 issue. It is reprinted here in its entirety. 

As a local movement to censure U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein for supporting Michael Mukasey’s nomination for U.S. Attorney General began, more than 200 students gathered in front of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza Wednesday to witness a waterboarding demonstration. 

The noon-time rally, organized by World Can’t Wait and local activists, was staged to protest the appointment of Judge Mukasey, who has dodged questions of whether waterboarding terrorists could be considered torture. 

During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey refused to take a stand against the act, stating, “If it [waterboarding] amounts to torture, it is not constitutional,” and “hypotheticals are different from real life, and in my legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical.” 

Mal Burnstein, California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus co-chair, wrote the resolution to censure Sen. Feinstein and is circulating it at party meetings. 

“She is supporting a man who refused to renounce the right of the president to resort to torture and who refused to recognize waterboarding as a form of torture,” Burnstein said.  

“She has not supported the principles of the Democratic Party for years. She voted for the war in Iraq and voted to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit despite his clear record of racism and gender discrimination ... That’s three recent examples. It’s about time we should censure her.” 

The resolution, unanimously endorsed by the East Bay for Democracy Democratic Club, will be sent to the Democratic Party Executive Board this weekend as it meets in Anaheim. MoveOn.org an-nounced Thursday that it was also supporting the resolution to censure Feinstein. 

At the rally Wednesday, Joe Tugas, an Iraq War veteran, was taken up on the Sproul stage, hooded and handcuffed and placed on a waterboard. Volunteers dressed in army fatigues covered his face with a towel and poured several gallons of water on it. 

“Stop it, Stop it” cried out several students from the crowd, as the water continued to fall. 

Rising from the wooden board wearing an orange jumpsuit, Tugas described the incident as one of the scariest experiences of his life. 

“We did this to make a point about the torture that’s being carried out,” said Giovanni Jackson from World Can’t Wait. “The students really got a sense of what torture really is. It’s important that they take a stand against war, torture and the whole direction our government is going ... especially since this university has a professor John Yoo, who is responsible for writing the country’s torture policy.” 

Curious students flocked to the scene and asked questions about waterboarding. 

Organizers informed them that Tugas had been wearing a protective mask at the time of the demonstration, to prevent the water from entering his lungs. 

“I think that the debate about waterboarding is misleading,” said Troy Sanders, a second-year UC Berkeley Peace and Justice student. “Anytime you waterboard, you threaten someone’s life. Our bipartisan system has put a very bad regime in place. As far as I know, no studies have shown that torture actually works. People just give you information that you want to hear.”

As a local movement to censure U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein for supporting Michael Mukasey’s nomination for U.S. Attorney General began, more than 200 students gathered in front of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza Wednes-day to witness a waterboarding demonstration. 

The noontime rally, organized by World Can’t Wait and local activists, was staged to protest the appointment of Judge Mukasey, who has dodged questions of whether waterboarding could be considered torture. 

During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey refused to take a stand against the act, stating, “If it [waterboarding] amounts to torture, it is not constitutional,” and “hypotheticals are different from real life, and in my legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical.” 

Mal Burnstein, California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus co-chair, wrote the resolution to censure Sen. Feinstein and is circulating it at party meetings. 

“She is supporting a man who refused to renounce the right of the president to resort to torture and who refused to recognize waterboarding as a form of torture,” Burnstein said.  

“She has not supported the principles of the Democratic Party for years. She voted for the war in Iraq and voted to confirm Judge Leslie Southwick for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit despite his clear record of racism and gender discrimination.” 

The resolution, unanimously endorsed by the East Bay for Democracy Democratic Club, will be sent to the Democratic Party Executive Board this weekend as it meets in Anaheim. MoveOn.org announced Thursday that it was also supporting the resolution to censure Feinstein. 

At the rally Wednesday, Joe Tugas, an Iraq War veteran, was taken up on the Sproul stage, hooded and handcuffed and placed on a waterboard. Volunteers dressed in army fatigues covered his face with a towel and poured several gallons of water on it. 

“Stop it, Stop it” cried out several students from the crowd, as the water continued to fall. 

Rising from the wooden board wearing an orange jumpsuit, Tugas described the incident as one of the scariest experiences of his life. 

“We did this to make a point about the torture that’s being carried out,” said Giovanni Jackson from World Can’t Wait. “The students really got a sense of what torture really is. It’s important that they take a stand against war, torture and the whole direction our government is going for ... especially since this university has a professor, John Yoo , who is responsible for writing the country’s torture policy.” 

Curious students flocked to the scene and asked questions about waterboarding. 

Organizers informed them that Tugas had been wearing a protective mask at the time of the demonstration, to prevent the water from entering his lungs. 

“I think that the debate about waterboarding is misleading,” said Troy Sanders, a second-year UC Berkeley Peace and Justice student. “Anytime you waterboard you threaten someone’s life. Our bipartisan system has put a very bad regime in place. As far as I know, no studies have shown that torture actually works. People just give you information that you want to hear.” 

The $500 million pact between UC Berkeley and one of the world’s largest oil companies went into effect Wednesday, though research covered by the contract started months ago. 

The grant may be the largest single corporate funding of academic research in history. 

BP will fund both academic and corporate researchers at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

While the last signature was gathered only this week, actual work began perhaps as early as in June. Funded by the British oil company, UC Berkeley has already sent researchers to Africa and India in search of crops and places to plant them. 

UC Regents voted in March to build a new research facility to house the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), BP’s chosen name for the project that university officials described as “the first public-private institution of this scale in the world.” 

But the final sign-offs on the research project took eight more months to win, including the clearances of campus, the University of California, corporate and governmental officials. 

The agreement officially runs from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2017 unless Berkeley and its partners chose to end it earlier because they determine “continued association with EBI was not in accord with its fundamental principles.” 

The university can also opt out if there is a change of control at BP. And BP can withdraw at any time after July 1, 2010, if the company determines the project is no longer technically or commercially viable. 

The agreement will provide “at least” $35 million a year for open research at the public institutions, with initial funding of $17 million through Dec. 31. Funding of $10 million is due within 30 days of the signing. 

Initially, research will be conducted in Calvin and Hildebrand halls on the UC Berkeley campus, moving to the specially-created Helios Building at LBNL when it opens in 2010. 

BP will lease space for its own proprietary, controlled-access research lab, to be housed initially in the third floor of Calvin Hall, a building earmarked for demolition to make way for the university’s Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

The oil company will pay an annual rent of $101,322, with a provision for a 5 percent annual increase. 

The project will involve a wide range of academic disciplines, and program officials have already solicited and received proposals from faculty at both universities and the lab. 

Proposals in 

According to a statement by the university released Wednesday, the initial call for preproposals produced more than 250 responses from the three institutions. 

“About 85 preproposals were subsequently invited to submit a full proposal, and they are currently being evaluated. Awards are expected to be announced this fall, and another round of proposals will be solicited in spring 2008,” according to university spokesperson Robert Sanders. 

“We are very pleased that the institute’s journey to develop new, cleaner sources of energy has begun,” Somerville said in a prepared statement. “Our mission is to harness the potential of bioenergy, to make discoveries and to help them become commercially viable so they can benefit the world. The institute will also examine the social, economic and environmental implications of using cellulosic biofuels to meet a significant proportion of the earth’s energy needs.” 

Cellulosic fuels are derived from plant fiber, rather than the more easily recovered sugars harvested from the crops like soybeans and corn for production of ethanol. 

EBI will also look into engineering microbes to create new fuels from coal and to recover oil from depleted wells, according to the grant proposal. Another phase of the program will look at discovering new ways to capture and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.  

While the university has portrayed EBI as a program designed to make the United State independent by using marginal croplands to grow non-food plants for fuel, BP Chief Scientist Steve Koonin told the USEA that the company’s goal is a program that creates crops focused on tropical climates, though research will also develop plants for all climate zones. 

A nuclear physicist, Koonin spearheaded the process that led to the choice of Berkeley among five company-selected candidates. He is currently on leave from his post as provost and intellectual property manager for the California Institute of Technology. 

BP is the company known for decades as British Petroleum. 

The master agreement and other documents are available on the university’s Internet site at www.berkeley.edu/news/ media/releases/2007/11/14_ebisigning. 

shtml  

Critics of BP and its role on campus have charged that the company’s plans to use genetically modified plants and microbes threaten Third World countries, which are least able to resist the intrusions of multinational corporations. 

Control questions 

John Simpson of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) said he was particularly concerned because the contract gives BP more control of the EBI and research than envisioned in the original proposal. 

In its original and winning proposal, Berkeley proposed creating a governance board that would give three seats to representatives of public institutions and two to the oil company. But the final contract gives four seats to each, leading to potential ties. 

“BP can thwart any action they wish,” said Simpson. “And given the despicable record of BP, which killed 15 of its workers in Texas and spilled oil all over Alaska because of unreasonable cost cutting, why should we believe the oil giant would act in good faith? They have demonstrated time and again that they act only in their own narrow interest.”  

The board can hire and fire the EBI’s director and deputy director, but it can only vote up or down on the entire slate of research projects proposed by EBI’s executive committee. 

The executive committee is composed of nine members, with eight from the public bodies. The chair is Somerville, with UIUC’s Steve Long as deputy director. BP has one representative on the nine-member committee, Paul Willems, BP Technology’s Vice President of Energy Biosciences. 

The public institutions have agreed to grant BP a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to patent rights, and up to 180 days, if needed, to negotiate for exclusive rights on an invention developed by public researchers or in public/BP collaborations. The company can also negotiate for a time-limited option period of up to a year (with additional extensions possible). 

Before public researchers are allowed to copyright, publish or otherwise disseminate their findings, they must be submitted first to BP at least 30 days before release to allow the company to see if any of BP’s proprietary information has been included and to see if BP wants the researcher to file a patent application—which would add up to another 60 days before publication. 

For exclusive rights to non-proprietary research patents BP opts to exploit, the agreement caps basic payments at a maximum of $100,000 a year, though larger amounts could be negotiated. If other patents are determined to be “substantially similar,” they would also be licensed at no additional cost to the company.  

The company also retains the option to license software created under the agreement. In biotechnology, computer programs play an increasing role in project development and can also be expected to play critical roles in the operation of any plants or factories exploiting the technology developed by EBI. 

BP also receives royalty free rights—if possible—to use any “background inventions” or software created by public researchers and used to create new inventions under the EBI research agenda, with per-patent payments capped at $20,000 for one invention or $50,000 for multiple inventions needed to develop a product. 

Asked for a comment on the announcement of the signing, UC Berkeley Microbiologist Ignacio Chapela responded, “Very little else to note for the moment. Perhaps only to note the genius of whoever named the file of the agreement signed: it is called ‘Final Execution’.” 

The title refers to the document posted on the university’s website. 

Lab EIR 

Members of the public will be able to review plans for the Helios Building and a second structure being planned at LBNL during the Dec. 12 meeting of the city Planning Commission. 

LBNL officials will make a presentation from the draft environmental impact reports on the two buildings during the meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.

The only sound along the deserted shoreline at the Berk-eley Marina Wednesday was the clattering of pebbles inside Carole Rathfon’s double-layered plastic bag. 

Rathfon, like hundreds of trained volunteers from all across the East Bay, had been out since 10 a.m. cleaning the oil that had tarnished the bay and its wildlife after the Cosco Busan crashed into a Bay Bridge tower and spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel last week. 

Some state and city officials compared the lack of emergency response to the Katrina disaster. Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz said Berkeley had been one of the first cities to respond to the spills. 

“The Coast Guard was saying not to let anyone that didn’t have HazMat training go out, and that they would be sending their own staff,” Kamlarz said Thursday. “But we didn’t wait for them. We had our own trained folks and we sent them out Friday. I am really proud of the way the city reached out and coordinated with the Oiled Wildlife Care Network and carried out clean-up efforts.” 

Capt. William Uberti, the Coast Guard disaster commander responsible for the spill’s initial response, was replaced by Capt. Paul Gugg Thursday after the agency admitted that it had mishandled drug tests of the ship’s crew. 

Although Kamlarz declared a seven-day local emergency on Thursday, he lifted the city’s six-day ban on boat traffic at the Marina, but warned that the situation could change at any minute.  

Boat owners have been prohibited from washing their boats in the bay. 

Kamlarz also banned off-leash dogs in the Marina, Aquatic Park and all waterfront and shoreline areas of the city except Cesar Chavez Park. 

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, chair of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources, the principal committee of jurisdiction for issues related to the state’s response to oil spills, expressed concern about the significant delays and lack of communication between responsible agencies and local governments at an emergency oversight hearing in Emeryville Thursday. 

“This oil spill is a wake-up call for the Bay Area,” she said. “For a spill of relatively small size it has quickly spread out of control, impacting not only the waters and wildlife of the bay, but also the Pacific Ocean and our coastal beaches. It is imperative that the committee hold this hearing to evaluate how we can strengthen the state’s role in ensuring that this never happens again, and, if it does, we are more effective in our response.” 

William Rogers, the Berkeley’s Parks Recreation and Waterfront interim director, said the Coast Guard, the Department of Fish and Game and the EPA had declared the beach in front of Shorebird Park one of the worst impacted areas. 

“Hopefully, another team will be down soon to make a full assessment and send cleanup crews,” he said. 

Trained staff from the Oiled Wildlife Care Network have set up a trailer near the harbormaster’s office where hundreds of oiled birds are being brought every day to be transported to the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center in Cordelia. 

City employees and volunteers dropped by at the trailer by the hour to report sightings of sick or dead birds Wednesday. 

“Who do I report an oily but chirpy bird at the F dock, slip 12 to?” asked a marina dockhand excitedly. 

“It’s getting to a point that the birds are eating and digesting the oil and not surviving,” said Kent Carpenter from the city’s parks and recreation department. “We are focusing on partially oiled birds for survival right now ... It’s tough because they keep fleeing to the small islands when people try to catch them. Sometimes sea lions get the oil in their mucous membrane, but they tend to survive.” 

Many volunteers were disappointed at being turned away while others expressed anger at the Coast Guard’s slow response. 

“While we wait for the government to get their act together, there will just be that many more things getting fouled,” said Steve Rathfon, Carole’s husband. 

“The progress in getting these bureaucratic agencies moving along continues to be slow, as people keep pointing fingers at each other. The Coast Guard says ‘we responded quickly’ but it seems to me that things could have been done faster. How could they have missed the amount of fuel getting into the water?” 

The U.S. Coast Guard incorrectly estimated the spill at 140 gallons at the time of the accident and did not inform Bay Area authorities about the correct figure until later in the day. 

As the elderly couple from Oakland painstakingly picked up one soiled pebble at a time in the afternoon sun, an oily sheen was visible along the shoreline. 

“Bunker oil is the worst of it all,” Carole Rathfon said, pointing to the tar-like substance sticking to the rocks on the shore. “During the HAZMAT training we were told that there’s all kind of carcinogens in it ... It’s basically sludge. If they had put booms around the spills earlier then it wouldn’t have spread to the shores.” 

Rogers said the city was deploying its volunteers to clean up beaches all over the Bay Area.  

“They are going as far north as Pt. Richmond and as far south as Radio Beach,” he said. “I think the thing that’s wonderful is that the volunteers were mobilized immediately.” 

Down at the Nature Center—transformed into a triage station—a flurry of activities kept volunteers busy. 

Berkeley resident Lydia Greenspan, 80, was registering volunteers while Suzanne Conrad from Albany stacked burlap bags, towels, brown paper bags and pink flags to identify oiled birds. 

“I love the bay and the birds in it,” Lydia said from her wheelchair. “And I had to get down here to help.” 

Denise Brown, the city’s volunteer coordinator, said that “runners”—drivers to carry the birds from the marina trailer to the Cordelia bird rescue center—were in demand. 

“The city will be doing another training for cleaning beaches at the West Berkeley Senior Center at 8 a.m. Saturday,” she said. “We need unflavored electrolyte powder, fluid or drinks, pillowcases, bottled water, towels, flashlights with AA batteries, masking tape, felt-tip markers and heating pads to keep birds warm and dry before they are transported ... Any little thing would help.” 

Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee. 

Dressed in HazMat gear, Oakland resident Carole Rathfon picks up soiled pebbles from the Berkeley Marina shoreline Wednesday with her husband Steve.  

Richmond residents expressed concern this week at the failure of state and federal officials to rescue oiled birds from the Rich-mond shoreline. 

Angry letters and emails poured into community e-forums as city officials tried to assure residents that they were working to address the problems. 

Lisa Owens Viani, a Richmond resident, said that she had spotted only a couple of trained officials on the shoreline between Pt. Isabel and Pt. Richmond last week. 

“Why is Richmond always left for last?” her email to Council-member Tom Butt’s e-forum  

on Tuesday questioned. “There was one guy from the Oil  

Spill Response network and a Contra Costa HazMat team member who helped us with equipment. They told us they weren’t allowed to buy a boat, otherwise they would have been able to put in a deep water boom. With those exceptions, there has been no Coast Guard, no one cleaning the shore except us ... Can you get us some real help, not just guys who stand around in uniform, shooting the breeze?” 

The city, which has no jurisdiction or resources to address oil spill cleanup or rescue birds, has participated in the incident command center and monitored the shoreline. 

Pt. Richmond was included among the beaches closed to residents by regional authorities. 

Community members complained to Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin that volunteers were being turned away from the shoreline, but no alternatives were provided by state and federal authorities to rescue the birds. 

“In response to why there are no booms in Marina Bay or Pt. Richmond, the Fish and Game biologist said more than once that they have to make a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ about which areas to protect, and clearly Richmond was not a priority for them,” said Richmond homeowner Tonni Hanna in her e-mail to the mayor. “This does not seem to have to do with a lack of funds, since the governor has allocated unlimited funds to the clean up, but rather a lack of preparedness.” 

McLaughlin issued a letter this week urging residents to show up at her office on Friday to discuss the creation of a Richmond Shoreline Defense Corps. 

According to the letter, the meeting would be an opportunity to re-group and address volunteer clean up efforts and prepare for future potential environmental disasters. 

The meeting will take place at the mayor’s office, 1401 Marina Way South, Richmond, today (Friday) at 10 a.m. 

Richmond residents can call the State Office of Emergency Services at 1-800-852-7550 to report oil slicks. 

To report oiled or sick birds, call 877-823-6926, 707-207-0380, or 415-453-1000.

The question of who will implement the East Bay Smart Solar Program, funded by the Depart-ment of Energy with matching city money, brings to the fore the question of how government engages nonprofits and other organizations—for better or worse—to do work it cannot or will not do. 

For example, the Community Energy Services Corporation (CESC), a nonprofit that was to have played a prominent role in the Smart Solar project, according to the original February 2007 grant application, has been quietly eliminated from the plans.  

“There are doubts about its capability at this time,” Neal De Snoo, Berkeley’s energy officer, told the Planet in a phone interview last week.  

De Snoo, however, was quick to praise the Smart Solar team effort that will include the nonprofit Build It Green (BIG), UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, the cities of Oakland and San Francisco and others. The effort is expected to add hundreds of solar energy systems to East Bay homes and businesses. 

Nonprofits often bring exper-tise and resources city staff does not have. “Cities rely on them,” De Snoo said. “There’s a variety of people stepping up to play a role.” 

At the same time nonprofits are not under state mandates to share information with the public. Nonprofit workers, unlike city employees, often lack union protections: they may be paid considerably lower wages and lack benefits and job security. Nonprofit employees may be hired among friends or acquaintances of organization staff, without the kind of objective search civil service rules mandate.  

Volunteer community boards of small nonprofit corporations may oversee work and budgets with less rigor than a municipality might do.  

In Berkeley, the city often hires nonprofit corporations without going through the competitive bid process. At the Nov. 27 City Council meeting, the nonprofit Build It Green will be offered a $50,000 sole-source contract to begin work on the Smart Solar project, which, in its pilot phase, will facilitate the installation of solar systems for some 25 Berkeley residents and small-to-medium businesses. In its later stages, the program is expected to drive the siting of some 200 solar energy systems annually throughout the East Bay. 

Smart Solar partners 

In its original February 2007 grant application to the Department of Energy, the city named the groups it planned at the time to work with on the project: CESC, Sustainable Berkeley, Build It Green and UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. (RAEL is directed by Daniel M. Kammen, also a member of the committee overseeing the collaboration between UC Berkeley and BP, formerly British Petroleum.) 

Contracts or agreements with the city are necessary to formalize the relationships. The contract with Build It Green, if approved by the City Council, will be the first given under the Smart Solar grant. 

The grant application also names large corporations and financial institutions to be invited to work with the city on the project. They include SunPower (formerly PowerLight), a large solar company now in Berkeley but planning a move to Richmond, BP, Mechanics Bank, Wells Fargo and others. 

The Smart Solar program differs from plans to create a solar financing district recently publicized by the mayor’s office. The financing district is to be put together with some of the same partners named in the Smart Solar project, including Build It Green and the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. The city has applied for an Environmental Protection Agency grant and expects about $160,000 to do groundwork on that project. 

While the two grants are separate, some of the work may eventually be accomplished in tandem, De Snoo said.  

The initial phase of the Smart Solar project is designed as a pilot in which about 25 Berkeley home and business owners contract through the project for solar panels and solar hot-water heating systems. This part of the program is funded by a $200,000 Department of Energy grant and a $370,000 city match that includes an $80,000 cash match from the city’s energy office and an $108,000 in-kind match that will include city staff time and indirect services.  

The Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab will contribute the work of two doctoral students. 

Smart Solar incentives 

The pilot program is intended to attract property owners by lowering the cost of contracting and equipment for installation of solar panels and solar hot-water systems. The price will become affordable by “aggregating projects, contracting and financing,” says a Sept. 18 city staff report.  

“If successful, [the project] will also generate business for private solar power companies and increase the number of local jobs,” the report says. 

According to the February grant application, studies show property owners hesitate to purchase solar energy systems because they lack technical expertise, which makes them uncomfortable choosing a contractor and negotiating the work. 

Smart Solar is intended remove the uncertainty. “A trusted, knowledgeable third party is responsible for specification, sales, bundling incentives and financing, contractor selection and management, and quality control,” the grant application says. “By essentially removing the contractor or its sales agent, and thus the profit motive, from the point of sale, the owners’ agent provides more accurate and consistent financial assessments and claims.”  

CESC was to have played the role of the trusted, knowledgeable third party. Now that CESC will not be participating in the contract, the city will either play that role itself, or contract out for it, De Snoo told the Planet. 

In the first phase of the project, Build It Green will be charged with doing some of the groundwork, including assembling focus groups to identify the needs of recipients and the barriers that keep them from participating. BIG also will keep attendance lists and minutes, Katy Hallbacher, BIG program manager said Thursday. 

BIG is a nonprofit corporation located in downtown Berkeley that began as the Green Resource Center, launched in 1999 by the city, working with Architects Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility and the Sustainable Business Alliance. In 2005 the Green Resource Center merged with a mostly builder-contractor-oriented group, Bay Area Build It Green. 

The BIG board includes contractors and suppliers including the Truitt and White director of marketing, the Johns Manville senior territory manager, the president of solar installer Sun Light and Power, the territory manager for Building Materials Distributor, Inc. and a number of professions involved in green construction, according to the BIG website. 

None of the professionals on the board will get project contracts, De Snoo told the Planet. 

Technical expertise for the project will come from the Department of Energy. 

Once the pilot is complete, the full program of 200 solar installations annually in the East Bay is to be launched without DOE funding under the management of East Bay Energy Watch—a partnership among several nonprofits, the cities of Berkeley and Oakland and PG&E; EBEW is managed by the Berkeley-based for-profit corporation QuEST, Quantum Energy Services & Technologies, Inc.  

Sustainable Berkeley 

Sustainable Berkeley, a collaborative founded last year among UC Berkeley representatives, environmental consul-tants, and environmental nonprofits including CESC, may play a role in the Smart Solar project, but “no resources are dedicated to them,” De Snoo told the Planet Thursday. 

SB may do work under an existing contract, however. Through a city grant, SB certifies businesses and restaurants as green. According to the February grant application, the organization will be “contacting targeted businesses, housing sector-specific events and conducting a media outreach campaign.”  

A Nov. 5 amendment to the application says the city and SB will hold a Smart Solar kickoff “to market program to potential customers.” 

SB, which is not a nonprofit and whose grants go through fiscal sponsor CESC, came under media and community scrutiny earlier in the year, when it tried to play a major role in implementing the city’s greenhouse gas reduction plan. Criticisms of the group included its closed meetings (in response SB opened its steering committee meetings), the hiring of a board member as paid interim executive director and the attempt to get a city grant to hire consultant Timothy Burroughs to coordinate the city’s greenhouse gas reduction program. 

(The city decided not to give SB the funds to hire Burroughs “due to legal questions [on the relationship] between Sustainable Berkeley and CESC,” De Snoo told the Energy Commission at the time. Instead, the city’s energy office hired Burroughs directly.) 

In a mid-October meeting with interim CESC director Pat St. Onge and program managers Maria Sanders and Pat Canada, Sanders responded to a question about Sustainable Berkeley, saying “Sustainable Berkeley has gone into hiatus. We [CESC] are continuing their contracts.” Sanders said she was referring to the contract to certify green restaurants. 

It appears, however, that SB is active, with Sanders listed as an CESC board member in a Sept. 2007 internet post on SB’s website. 

And a call Wednesday to a number posted on the SB website was answered by Leila Khatapoush, who identified herself as a Sustainable Berkeley staff person, working on the green restaurant initiative. 

During the meeting with the CESC staff, St. Onge said the 1013 Pardee St. office was not shared with other organizations, however Khatapoush told the Planet she was working out of that office. Neither St. Onge nor Sanders could be reached Thursday for further clarification. 

Why CESC’s out 

CESC fell out of favor with the city after its executive director allegedly took advantage of the agency’s home repair program to have a hot-water heater installed in her home and also used Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds for “non-allowable indirect costs,” St. Onge said. 

The director was fired in August by the non-profit corporation board, which is the City Council-appointed Energy Commission.  

All CESC programs continue uninterrupted, St. Onge told the Planet in the group interview last month. She downplayed the extent of the allegations, as did board member Tim Hansen in a separate interview Wednesday. 

Although De Snoo said CESC wouldn’t take part in the Smart Solar project because of the investigation, he praised its accomplishments. “CESC is doing great work for the city and the community,” he said. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz told the Planet that because the CDBG funds in question came through the city, it is investigating internally and is in the process of hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations. Over the course of more than a month, Kamlarz and other city officials have declined to name the outside investigator, saying they want to wait for an agreement on the contract scope of services. 

Asked why CESC was written out of the Smart Solar grant, given the interim director’s opinion that the improprieties were minor, Kamlarz asked: “Who told you they were minor?” leaving questions hanging about the extent of the damage.  

A number of people told the Planet that it is time for the city commission and the nonprofit to separate themselves. Ruth Grimes, Energy Commission and CESC Board chair said the arrangement is unsatisfactory, because the board has only about 20 minutes each month to spend on CESC matters.  

In an e-mail response to a request for CESC’s 2006 budget, St. Onge indicated the limits of oversight that the Energy Commission-CESC board has had: “The board was not presented with budgets in the past, and therefore, never approved them,” she said, noting she is preparing a budget for board approval Dec. 5. 

Board member Tim Hansen became secretary-treasurer for the CESC after the director was fired and the treasurer, an outside consultant, left. He said separating CESC from the city would be an important step toward getting a nonprofit board that could dedicate adequate time and resources to the job of oversight and support of the organization. 

“We’re hamstrung” by our relationship to the city, CESC program manager Sanders told the Planet. “We’re asking the city lawyer if we can divorce from the city.”

DAPAC approved a limited-height mandate for the downtown Berkeley plan, dividing their Monday night vote between a majority who felt they’d compromised enough and a minority who wouldn’t approve anything without an economist’s imprimatur. 

Their vote reaffirms last week’s decision to oppose the call by city staff for approving 16-tower apartment towers as a way to spur revitalization of the city center. 

Members voted 11-1-8 for a land-use chapter that will keep most downtown buildings at 85 feet, while allowing four at 100 feet, four more at 120 and two high-rise hotels which could rise 100 feet higher. 

(One member, Linda Schacht, had been inaccurately recorded by city staff as voting in favor of the chapter; she had abstained.) 

Their decision reaffirms the vote they took last week on heights, which passed 13-7-1, only after a plan calling for an option with two point towers had failed on a 10-11 vote. 

Only Billy Keys voted in opposition Monday night, while the earlier opponents, led by Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee Chair Will Travis and joined by Planning Commission Chair James Samuels, abstained. 

Commercial buildings, with higher ceilings for offices, generally contain fewer floors than structures of the same height built for housing. Eighty-five feet could accommodate a high-ceilinged ground floor store space beneath five floors of housing, but, typically, only four floors of offices over a floor of stores. 

A 100-foot building would house seven floors of apartments over a commercial base, while the 120-foot structure would accommodate nine floors of living units over the retail base. 

Architect Jim Novosel said more floors of offices could be accommodated if the lower heights per floor used in the Great Western (or Power Bar) Building were applied. 

Buildings used for classrooms need even higher ceilings and fewer floors. 

Monday’s vote was the last controversial decision remaining for the committee, which has one final session scheduled before it reaches its City Council-mandated end Nov. 30. 

Their decision upholds the chapter draft prepared by a DAPAC subcommittee which had struggled to forge a compromise between the factions.  

Abstainers said they couldn’t vote for a plan that promised public benefits that couldn’t be realized if height restrictions and the cost of providing those benefits scared off would-be developers. 

The majority who voted for approval, spearheaded by Rob Wrenn, chair of the subcommittee that drafted the chapter, and Juliet Lamont, the environmentalist who has emerged as a political force during the two years DAPAC has been meeting, said they had made enough compromises, giving up a five-story height limit and making other concessions in hopes of reaching a compromise. 

Planners next 

After DAPAC’s final vote, the plan will go to city planning staff for final semantic tweaking before it passes on to planning commissioners, who will offer their own recommendations in tandem with the committee’s version. The final decision is up to the Berkeley City Council UC Berkeley retains veto power. 

The university’s say in the plan, as well as its partial funding of the planning process, is part of the agreement signed between the city and the university to settle a lawsuit challenging the university’s plans for expanding into the heart of Berkeley’s commercial district. 

Heights and historic buildings have triggered the two most heated battles during DAPAC’s two-year effort to hammer out a new plan for the city’s ailing commercial center. 

In contrast, DAPAC members, following their lengthy discussion and divided vote on heights, voted to spend only minutes tweaking and adopting—by a unanimous vote—the final draft of the plan’s sustainability chapter. 

Generally, the same forces coalesced along the opposing battlelines for both of the controversial issues, with Juliet Lamont’s calm passion and Gene Poschman’s analytical skills on the winning side. 

Members of the majority included Jesse Arreguin, Patti Dacey, Lisa Stephens, Wendy Alfsen, Helen Burke and James Novosel, an architect who provided graphic augmentation for Poschman’s numbers-heavy analyses. 

The dominant voices in the minority were those of Samuels, Travis and Dorothy Walker, along with Terry Doran and Jenny Wenk. 

Samuels was the only member who abstained from voting on the plan’s historic preservation chapter when the final draft came up for a decision Oct. 17, while other critics voted with the majority.  

FAR, coverage 

While critics of the winning proposal spoke mainly of heights, they also raised concerns that the proposal’s limitations of lot coverage and building mass could also discourage developers. 

One issue concerns the floor-to-area ratios (FAR) embodied in the chapter. Simply put, the FAR is a number that compares total square footage of floor space in a building with the total square footage of the lot on which it is built. 

An FAR of 1 could be reached by a one story building that covered all of a lot, or a four-story building that covered a quarter of the lot’s surface. Basically, the higher the building’s FAR, the more massive the structure. 

The chapter approved Monday calls for FARs of 4.0 for 65-foot buildings, 4.9 for 85-foot buildings, 5.6 for 100-foot buildings and 6.5 for the four 120-footers. Those figures are limited to portions of buildings from the ground level up; subsurface levels aren’t counted. 

Lot coverage means simply the percentage of a lot that is covered by the building’s ground floor. 

While many of today’s downtown structures—the Gaia Building, for example—have 100 percent lot coverage, the new plan sets an absolute limit of 90 percent for buildings between 66 and 100 feet tall, and 80 percent for buildings of 101 feet or more. 

Buildings at 65 feet could win an exemption from the 90 percent maximum by paying an in-lieu fee to create open space elsewhere in the downtown if their lot were small or the project involved historic buildings. 

“What we have done is to create a combination of height restrictions, FARs and lot coverage that constitutes a de-facto downzoning of downtown,” said Walker, a retired UC Berkeley development executive. 

Samuels agreed, calling the chapter’s requirements “a step backwards.” 

“Ridiculous,” said Wrenn, adding that the new plan greatly expands the downtown beyond the boundaries of the existing 1990 plan, raises base heights to 85 feet and allows construction of 10 buildings even taller, including two hotels taller that the controversial point towers. 

When it came down to the show of hands, Wrenn’s side carried the day. 

Final meeting  

DAPAC’s final meeting will begin at 7 p.m. on Nov. 29, when members will take up any of city staff’s last-minute tweaks to the language of chapters the committee has already approved. 

The meeting will be held in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The chapters themselves will be posted at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/ dap/reports.htm.

The Memorial Stadium confrontation between tree-sitters and campus officialdom heated up Thursday, marked by three arrests and a fence breach. 

What began as a late-night gathering of protesters ended up in a heated confrontation between campus police and protesters working to breach the double line of fences surrounding the grove which has been occupied for the last 11 months by tree-sitters. 

In the end, two police officers were taken to the hospital to have their eyes washed after one of the protesters reportedly threw a liquid at them and three protesters were taken away in handcuffs. 

All three were cited for violating a civil restraining order issued by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Keller. 

In addition, tree-sitter Aleksey Maromy-guin was charged with trespass with intent to damage property and resisting arrest. He was also served with an order to stay off campus for the next seven days. 

Nathan Pitts was charged with four counts of battery on a police officer and one count of resisting arrest, while Clara Luna was charged with three counts of battery on a police officer and one count of resisting arrest. 

Doug Buckwald, organizer for Save the Oaks at the Stadium, said campus police have escalated confrontation at the grove by trying to “starve out the tree-sitters.” 

But Dan Mogulof, executive director of the university’s Office of Public Affairs, said the university is not trying to cut off supplies, and is pursuing the same policies it has for the last several months. 

Buckwald is one of the plaintiffs challenging the high-tech gym and office complex the university hopes to build where the grove now stands, along with the City of Berkeley, City Councilmember Dona Spring, neighborhood activists and two environmental organizations. 

While Buckwald said officers at the scene were carrying shotguns and using batons, Mogulof said that he was only aware that officers brought out their batons when they came to the defense of officers who had been attacked after they tried to stop protesters from cutting the fences. 

The confrontation developed after a two dozen or more protesters, including Native Americans who contend that the grove is a sacred Ohlone burial ground, arrived to conduct a ceremony and send up supplies to the tree-sitters. 

Mogulof said that the university will continue its current policies at the grove until Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller rules on the action brought by the city and others which is now pending in her court. 

Until then, university officers will be notifying tree-sitters and their supporters that the injunction issued by Judge Keller applies to them, “and we will abide by the court order,” he said.  

Mogulof has said that the university’s policies may change if Judge Miller issues a ruling that will allow the university to start construction on the Barclay Simpson Student Athlete High Performance Center. 

“It’s unfortunate that the university police are allowing their department to be used as a political tool to further UC’s massive development plans,” Buckwald said. 

Campus police also arrested another protester in an earlier fence-cutting incident, said Mogulof. 

Zachary Running Wolf, who initiated the tree-sit by climbing into the branches on Big Game day last year, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with vandalism and trespassing. 

“This is a clear issue of racial profiling and targeting of a well-known Indigenous activist,” said Ayr, who has been working to assist the tree-sitters since the protest began. 

“I’m out,” said Running Wolf Thursday afternoon after two days in jail. “That’s my eighth time going to the pokey for the tree-sit.” He was also served with a stay-away order and a notice of the injunction. 

Running Wolf said he was actually trying to stop the cutting of the fence by infiltrators who were trying to provoke incidents that could adversely influence Judge Miller in her ruling. 

Meanwhile, a crew from Tri-City Fence Company was busy repairing the damage to the university’s enclosures at the grove Thursday afternoon, adding a layer of barbed wire at the top.

Berkeley officials said they plan to submit a work plan for dredging Aquatic Park lagoon to the State Water Resources Control Board for approval, according to city and state officials. 

The city’s Public Works Department dredged the lagoon at the north end of the park and dumped sludge along the shoreline last week without requesting a permit from the state water board. Local environmentalists and city officials complained that the sludge—likely toxic, they said—was dumped on a popular bird watching site and adjacent to one of the main wading-bird foraging spots.  

The approximately 30 truckloads of spoils dumped near the west end of the park near the Berkeley Rowing and Paddling Club have been covered by black plastic sheets and burlap bags to prepare for rain. 

Loren Jensen, supervising engineer at Public Works, said that W.R. Forde, the contractor hired by the city for the dredging, was responsible for testing the spoils. 

“We are waiting for the test results to come back to figure out where we are going to dispose [ of the sludge],” he said Wednesday. 

The lagoon is dredged every 15 years to clear out debris around the tidal tubes and to clean out the Strawberry Creek storm drain in order to improve circulation. The procedure costs the city about $80,000, which is taken from the General Fund. 

Jensen acknowledged that the contractors hired by the city had not used proper methods for disposing of the sludge. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that the city was testing the sludge independently and coordinating with Lauren Marcus Associates, the consultants hired by the city to advise the Aquatics Park subcommittee on future projects, to determine the sludge’s impact on the park’s natural habitat and its proper disposal. 

Brian Wines, who oversees permits for Alameda County at the state water board, told the Planet that a permit for dredging was required for the project, but none had been obtained. 

“When you disturb the sediments, it increases the turbidity of the water,” he said. “Particles tend to get into the gills of some fish. Sometimes the water gets cloudy and it affects the sight of the fish and prevents them from finding their prey. In some cases when you dredge buried sediments which have very low levels of oxygen, it can reduce the level further.” 

Berkeley Councilmember Darryl Moore—whose district includes the park—told the Planet this week that he was disappointed that the city had refrained from adding a time-critical item concerning the Aquatics Park dredging to the Nov. 27 City Council agenda. 

“It’s very disturbing that the city did not get a right permit for the dredging and dumped the sludge in an inappropriate area,” he said. “The city manager has told me that he will address my concerns through a report at the City Council meeting. But I am not sure if that report will be able to address all my concerns. If that’s the case then I will move it to an action item. I want to know who’s to blame.” 

Jensen said that the State Water Resources Control Board and the Army Corps of Engineers—the two regulatory bodies responsible for issuing dredging permits—had told project manager Hamid Kondazi that a permit wasn’t required, but he couldn’t provide any documentation to support that claim. 

“It’s important we find out how to prevent this from happening in the future,” Moore said. “The city must act quickly to ensure that potential hazardous waste is stored properly and that any environmental impacts due to improper handling of this waste is minimized before there is any further damage to the delicate ecosystem in the Aquatic Park.” 

He added that he wanted to see the specific guidelines given to the contractor on how to conduct the dredging. The Planet has requested a copy of the contract but has yet to receive a reply. 

Although the city’s website reveals that W.R. Forde was paid $83,450 for dredging a storm drain at Aquatic Park, Jensen said the work was not to clean a drain but rather to improve the water quality of the lagoon. 

Claudette Ford, director of public works, said at the City Council Agenda Committee meeting Monday that she disagreed with the use of the term dredging for the park lagoon project.  

She said that her department was working with the regional water board to find out what happened and resolve the issue. Ford did not return calls from the Planet for comment.

A three-year-old business assessment district that had become controversial with some of its members was voted off the Avenue at last week’s Solano Avenue Association (SAA) board meeting. 

The SAA is the nonprofit corporation that managed the Solano Avenue Business Improvement District, established by the Berkeley City Council to market businesses on Solano and to upgrade the street’s appearance. 

But there had been growing opposition to the district. When a reporter informed Greymura Miller, owner of shoe shop Feet of Dreams, of the board vote, she said: “It’s probably a good thing.”  

Not everyone benefits from the district, Miller said, ”It should be voluntary.”  

Business assessment districts are established by city ordinance. Fees are mandatory for those whose businesses are located within the district boundaries. Solano Avenue fees ranged from $65 to $500 annually depending on the business location, size and category.  

The BID raised about $29,000 annually. Albany merchants joined the Solano Avenue Association voluntarily. The difference between the voluntary and mandatory membership was problematic for some. 

About 80 merchants signed petitions in December of last year opposing the district. Business owners representing more than half the total assessment value would have had to sign on to the opposition, but those opposing represented only $14,000 out of $34,000, not enough to force the district’s demise. 

But the continued dissent among some of the merchants over the question pushed the board to capitulate rather than fight. “There were a few disgruntled people who objected. It was not worth the fight.” said Jan Snidow, owner of Powder Box Salon and member of the SAA and (formerly) BID boards. 

“I’m very sad; it was a good idea,” Snidow said, noting the volunteer board members “worked tirelessly” to produce some of the events that bring crowds to Solano Avenue—the Halloween Party, Christmas and spring events, the Solano Stroll. 

Snidow said she thinks most the Berkeley merchants will pay the fees as voluntary membership dues to the SAA. 

While one of the frequent arguments against the district has been that not everyone benefits from BID services equally, Snidow pointed out that the assessment is similar to property taxes. She said she pays school taxes but has no children. “Maybe one of the children will be a future president,” she said. 

Technically, the BID still lives. The board resigned and there is no assessment. That’s less complicated than demolishing the district, said Dave Fogarty, economic development manager.

Berkeley planning commissioners voted to clamp down on liquor stores that started selling spirits before the city instituted its current zoning policies. 

Three new ordinances are aimed at 44 of the city’s 86 liquor merchants who are allowed to make package sales for carrying off the premises. 

Since 1981, the city has required anyone starting a new “off-sale” business to apply for an alcohol sales use permit, which requires a hearing before the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB). 

But merchants already in business were grandfathered in, and it is they who are the focus of the new ordinances, which face yet another hearing before the commission before they’re handed over to the city council. 

Since the ordinances directly result from a Jan. 30 referral by the City Council, passage is likely. 

Impetus for the legal changes come from BAPAC, the Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition, and its representatives were first to speak at the hearing. 

Lori Lott, a South Berkeley resident, said a number of grandfathered businesses are currently not in use, including a site at the southeast corner of University and San Pablo avenues that she would like to see barred from further use as a liquor vendor. 

Ed Kikumoto of the Alcohol Policy Network, who is serving as a policy advisor to BAPAC, addressed a second aspect of the proposals, a provision that would allow any Berkeley resident to bring a public action against a vendor. 

“This is an opportunity for private citizens to use the regulatory mechanisms on their own behalf,” he said. 

Nancy Holland, a neighborhood activist added her voice in support. 

The first of the three proposed ordinances would allow ZAB to move against non conforming uses and buildings that have been closed for at least 90 days, rather than the one year specified by the current law. 

The ordinance would make exceptions for businesses that shut down to make repairs that don’t change the nature or size of the business and restorations following fires and other disasters. 

Liquor retailer Mohammed Mosleh said the ordinance should include a provision that would cover when a store owner was unable to open because he was hospitalized. 

In the end, commissioners stuck with most of the proposed language, but added a provision for a public hearing during which both the owner and public would be allowed to testify. 

Committee members also approved the public nuisance provision, while adding a provision that an action could only be brought after the city failed to act during the 30 days after the complaining citizen had given notice to the merchant and the city, or if the city had failed to diligently prosecute the violations. 

The third measure eases one restriction against an on-sale permit for restaurants with incidental beer and wine sales, allowing a use permit to an operator who has had only a single complaint or violation if the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) doesn’t object and concerns of neighbors are given due consideration. 

ABC licensing requirements are separate from those of the city, though Land Use Planning Manager Debra Sanderson said the agency has worked in close cooperation with the city.

Arguing that the California Department of Transportation did not adequately assess impacts on the environment in its plans to add a fourth bore to the Caldecott Tunnel, attorneys Stuart Flashman and Antonio Rossmann have filed a petition in Alameda County Superior Court in an attempt to get Caltrans to modify its plans. 

The petition, responding to CalTrans’ Environmental Impact Report on the project, was filed on behalf of the Tunnel Fourth Bore Coalition, consisting of the Rockridge Community Planning Council, the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association, the North Hills Phoenix Association, the Parkwoods Condominium Association and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. 

Coalition members claim that Caltrans failed to consider adverse impacts of construction for four years, particularly on nearby schools, the permanent impact of noise and increased speeds and traffic volumes, with accompanying air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions and the fourth bore’s inducement of new traffic growth.  

The petition also says the transportation department failed to consider alternatives, such as increasing public transportation. 

Flashman told the Daily Planet he believes CalTrans may be willing to negotiate rather than going to court. 

The city of Oakland has sued Caltrans separately over the project. The Berkeley City Council passed a resolution in opposition to the fourth bore, but did not file a suit against it.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown told a gathering of California county leaders in Oakland this week that global warming was the single most important issue of our time, that the California Environmental Quality Act was a “key environmental milestone” in fighting the greenhouse gas emissions that are much of the cause of global warming, and that counties which do not address such emissions in their CEQA environmental impact reports face a likelihood of being sued by his office. 

The attorney general, who has become an environmental crusader since returning to statewide office last year, then jokingly admitted, “When I was mayor of Oakland, I tried to abolish CEQA. I didn’t want to have to fill out all those reports. But that was then. This is now.” 

Several in the crowd of county representatives gathered at the Oakland Marriott Convention Center on Tuesday afternoon briefly laughed with Brown and then stopped, and it was not certain if they thought they were joining him in laughing at himself, at Oakland, or at themselves. 

Brown was one of several major speakers at a luncheon gathering at the Marriott, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, State Senate President Don Perata, and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. County representatives were in Oakland and Alameda County this week for the annual meeting of the California State Association of Counties. 

The attorney general sued San Bernadino County last April over allegations that the county’s newly-written General Plan EIR failed to analyze the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment or propose mitigations for such effect. The attorney general’s office and San Bernadino County later settled. 

That contrasted sharply with Brown’s stance six years ago, when he was mayor of Oakland and rushing to fulfill a campaign pledge to building housing for 10,000 new residents in the downtown area. At Brown’s request, Oakland’s then-Assemblymember Wilma Chan authored state legislation (AB436) that placed a four-year exemption on CEQA-mandated EIR’s in certain large, downtown Oakland residential development projects. At the time, Brown joked  

to columnist Chip Johnson  

that environmental protections weren’t needed in downtown Oakland because "I haven't seen any spotted owls or snail darters in downtown Oakland." 

On Tuesday, the attorney general expanded on his reasoning that environmental protections were not needed for urban areas, saying that “in the city, we don’t worry about things like congestion. We want noise and traffic congestion. That’s part of the urban experience. It’s not like in places like Shasta County, where you want to keep it more pristine.” 

Brown’s remarks at the CSAC luncheon were sandwiched in the middle of some sparring-at-a-distance between two of the state’s political heavyweights, Governor Schwarz-enegger and State President Perata. 

On Tuesday morning, in an article “Perata Criticizes Governor On Spill; State Senator Accuses Schwarzenegger Of Hamstringing Oil Spill Cleanup Efforts,” the Oakland Tribune reported that Perata “blamed Schwarzenegger for leaving key agencies understaffed, rendering the state’s ability to respond to last week’s massive oil spill, in Perata’s view, almost nil.” 

The paper also reported that Perata planned to reintroduce legislation, vetoed by Schwarzenegger this year, to strengthen regional water boards, adding that “Perata said the legislation would improve the state’s ability to prevent oil spills and punish those responsible.” 

In his remarks to the county representatives, Schwarzenegger made no mention of the Tribune article, instead referring to Perata with veiled praise.  

“I’ve been meeting constantly with Senator Perata over the past year,” the governor said. “In fact, I’ve been seeing him more than I have been seeing my wife. I do want to say, though, that Senator Perata is not as good looking as my wife.” 

In his later remarks, Perata responded in kind, praising Schwarzenegger for his “energy and enthusiasm” in attacking California’s problems, and then adding that “the governor is so enthusiastic, if he was a horse, we’d need to give him a urine test to see if he’s on something.” 

For his part, Schwarzenegger said that he and key state legislators are close to an agreement on the language of a bond measure to improve the state’s water infrastructure, and is hoping to seal a deal that can put a bipartisan $10 billion water measure on the February Presidential ballot. 

“We all agree that we need conservation and flood control, but the trick is to find that sweet spot in the negotiations” between one and the other, the governor said. Schwarzenegger added that he is not interested in a water bond that improves the state’s infrastructure in what he called “incremental stages. We should do it all now. If we do it in incremental stages, it will still take twenty years for the projects to be completed, and then it will be too late to go back to the voters to ask for more money to complete the restructuring.” 

Schwarzenegger was the first speaker at the luncheon, and left immediately after speaking, a fact Perata later alluded to. 

“Schwarzenegger said he wanted to talk about water, and then he left,” Perata said. “That’s not uncommon.” Calling the shoring up of the state’s water infrastructure “probably the hardest area to tackle, that’s why we saved it for last,” Perata made no response to the governor’s assertions that a deal was close on a water bond measure, instead choosing to criticize Schwarzenegger for not spending fast enough that infrastructure bond money already authorized. 

Noting that California voters authorized billions of dollars in infrastructure bond measures last November, Perata said that he was “a little bit put off that we have only allocated $78 million dollars of the bond money so far. We aren’t spending enough of it. If you give us the authority to spend money and we don’t spend it, people get cranky.” Perata said that “when we come back to the voters and ask for more money for more projects, they will ask us, ‘What happened to the money we authorized for the last projects?’” 

The California Senate Education Committee has scheduled a public hearing in Oakland next month on the State Department of Education and procedures for return to local control of school districts in state receivership. 

The hearing, to be held at the Oakland City Council chambers on Monday, Dec. 3, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, was requested by State Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland), and is being coordinated by his office. 

The Senate Education Committee hearing is separate from the hearings scheduled to be held next year by the Assembly Select Committee on School Takeovers, chaired by Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland). The first of those hearings is tentatively scheduled for January in Sacramento, and at least one of the Assembly Select Committee hearings will be held in Oakland, as well. 

A spokesperson for Senator Perata’s office said that the Senator “wanted to hold a public hearing to examine the role of the Department of Education in bringing financial stability to local school districts under state control. He wants to lay out the state’s role in restoring fiscal solvency to those districts, and to develop timelines and benchmarks.” 

Both Perata’s office and a representative of the Senate Education Committee said that while the hearing would be held in Oakland, the focus would not be exclusively on Oakland Unified, but on all of the state’s public school districts currently under some form of state control. 

Perata authored the original state legislation in 2003, SB39, which put the Oakland Unified School District under state control, where the district currently remains. 

Swanson authored a bill this year, AB45, that would have brought more certainty to the process of returning local control to OUSD, taking it out of the discretion of the State Superintendent’s office and leaving it solely to the recommendation of the state’s education watchdog and intervention agency, the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT).  

Perata served as floor manager of the bill in the Senate, which passed both the Assembly and Senate, but was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

The Senate Education Committee hearing in Oakland next month will take testimony from three panels, one of them composed of representatives of statewide organizations, including the California Education Department and FCMAT, as well as two panels composed of representatives of areas where school districts are currently under state control. Oakland Unified School District Board President David Kakishiba has been invited to testify at one of the panels, but the rest of the panel’s list has not yet been finalized. 

There will be no opportunity for the public to speak at the Senate hearings. 

This week, Swanson said he was “in full support” of the Senate Education Committee hearings.  

Kakishiba said, “I think the public hearing is a good step forward.”  

The school board president said that AB1200, the original legislation that authorized the state to take over local school districts, “has a lot of weaknesses that need to be addressed. It takes a one size fits all approach to problems in school districts.” 

During the 2003 Assembly debate over the Oakland Unified takeover bill, SB39, several Assemblymembers pointed out that AB1200 was geared specifically towards districts in which fiscal malfeasance had been practiced by either the local school district administration, the local school board, or both, adding that the legislation’s complete stripping of power from the Oakland Unified School Board did not seem appropriate because no such malfeasance was alleged in Oakland’s fiscal problems.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and sundry. It’s the custom of the place to gather together family and friends and enjoy a lavish meal, to celebrate—well, to celebrate having family and friends and lavish meals. My Puritan ancestors in New England usually get the credit for popularizing the custom, with occasional nods to the generosity of their Native American neighbors, though Virginians and even Canadians also had Thanksgiving events early on. When you think about it, it’s a Puritan kind of thing at its theological heart, a tribute to how nice it is to be among the Elect, to be one of those lucky souls predestined for salvation, as per the beliefs of the first settlers who landed on Plymouth’s rocky shores. Due credit is given to the creator for choosing the right folks to save, of course.  

Over the years some new customs have grown up which include the less fortunate in the banquets. Institutions like the St. Vincent de Paul dining room in Oakland and the Alameda County Food Bank will provide even poor and homeless people with nice dinners on Thursday. But the not-so-attractive aspects of the Pilgrim thanksgiving still cast their shadows over our civic culture. 

An anonymous correspondent forwarded me an item from the draft agenda for the first Berkeley City Council meeting after Thanksgiving with this comment: “Looks like Mayor Bates wants to play Scrooge to the homeless for this year’s season of giving.”  

That’s right, the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative is back, just in time for the holidays. It’s still a shapeless mish-mash of carrots and sticks, with no clear purpose and no plausible solutions to the real problems which exist on city streets here and everywhere else in this country. 

The problem it purports to solve is the reluctance of the Saved, those who will go home to nice Thanksgiving dinners on Thursday, to be confronted on the street with the disorders of the Unsaved, the unlucky among us. The Mayor, for example, once told a radio host that he is made uncomfortable by a Street Spirit vendor who approaches him as he’s on the way to partake of the abundance which is the Berkeley Bowl.  

Street Spirit sellers are the elite among the homeless, people who can keep it together well enough to buy papers to resell for a bit of pocket cash. The ones I know are for the most part cheerful, energetic and even clean. Our favorite is the tall, robust African-American woman with graying dreads who hangs out at the Tuesday Farmers’ Market (which, by the way, has better produce than the Bowl.) She has a nickname and a quip for everyone, and she reads her paper before she sells it, so she can tell you what the best pieces are.  

If you can’t deal with Street Spirit vendors like her, you’ll really be frightened by the genuinely down-and-out, the street dwellers who may smell of alcohol or worse, the people who can’t even tell you to have a nice day when you look away from their outstretched hands. The guy on Shattuck who can’t talk at all but just stands on a corner howling his anguish is unnerving, perhaps even worse than the one who screams intelligible obscenities at passers-by.  

No one can deny that there are too many people with unsolved problems on the street. The Commons-for-Some proposal on the draft agenda references the need for social services and bathrooms and asks for higher parking fees to pay for them, but the only concrete action called for is passing new ordinances which penalize smoking on the street and lying around on the sidewalk. A lawyer who sometimes defends people accused of such crimes tells me there are already plenty of laws like these on the books to harass street people, and the Berkeley police have started enforcing them with even more enthusiasm ever since this new proposal first surfaced.  

If you are going to be able to sit down to a pleasant table on Thursday, you might devote a few minutes to thinking about how lucky you are. That’s what you really are, you know, lucky—the theological construct of predestination is just a fancy description of luck plus divine intervention. Some of us are saved, but some are not. Some are housed, others are a paycheck or two away from homelessness. Some of us are in our right minds most of the time, others lost their wits long ago through no fault of their own. Some have managed to parlay a comfortable middle-class upbringing into comparative wealth, others started on a lower rung of the ladder and now have slipped off altogether.  

Very little about how we’ve ended up is our own doing. 

Another correspondent is a woman who has lived in an apartment downtown for many years. She’s gotten to know and like many of the regulars on the street, even those who seem scary when you first encounter them. She writes this week: “It is important for us to speak up on this issue.” 

She’s organized the “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” Singers to urge the City Council to temper justice with mercy. They first serenaded the workshop on the proposal, held a month or so ago, which only a couple of councilmembers bothered to attend for even a few minutes. Here’s her plan to try to get their attention on the 27th: 

“We will assemble on the steps of Old City Hall at 6 pm and sing until time to go in to the meeting. Please send this on and try to enlist as many people as possible. This attempt to criminalize poverty is a cruel attack by a heartless city leadership on some of the neediest among us.”  

Songsheets include not only the classic song with words by Yip Harburg, but some Woody Guthrie selections—everything easy to sing even for the tone-impaired. If you are lucky enough to enjoy a nice Thanksgiving, you might be moved to add your voice to theirs at 6 p.m. on the 27th. 

—Becky O’Malley 

An e-mail from an old friend chided me recently for this space’s seeming pre-occupation with local land use issues (and with opera). He pointed out that serious national matters like Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s inexcusable endorsement of Michael Mukasey deserve attention too, and he’s got a point. Luckily here in Berkeley we’ve got a good number of writers, some better than me, to keep track of Feinstein’s lapses, and they’re doing a sterling job, so we are off the hook.  

Why are we so preoccupied with land use? At my age, despite any efforts I might make, I won’t personally be using land in Berkeley for more than a couple of decades longer, even in the best case that I live as long as my parents have. If things get bad enough, I could afford to go elsewhere. Someone’s children and grandchildren will be living here, but they won’t necessarily be mine. So why do I care? 

Deep down, it’s because I believe that the ability and responsibility of citizens to shape the environment around them is central to the American democratic tradition. For those of us who have always lived in cities, the built environment that we’ve inherited is just as important as the untouched natural environment outside of urban areas. Those of us who care about such things are fond of quoting John Ruskin, who labored long and hard in 19th century England to stop the demolition of ancient buildings. Here’s a sample, contributed by Jane Powell in response to local efforts to gut the Landmark Preservation Ordinance: “Old buildings are not ours. They belong, partly to those who built them, and partly to the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead still have their right in them: that which they labored for… we have no right to obliterate.” 

But conserving the best of the old is only part of the story. The other legacy which we have the obligation of preserving for future generations is more intangible: the space, the views, the street amenities which we’ve inherited along with the buildings. A number of years ago there was a push to build a new subdivision on the hill above Claremont Canyon. Some of us who look up at that hill got to work to stop it by persuading the East Bay Regional Park district to accept stewardship of the property. The park board held a hearing. There our then-supervisor, the late John George, who was a powerful orator in the old African-American church style, spoke of coming to Berkeley for the first time and being reminded of the biblical phrase “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.” He urged the board to preserve that view for future flatlanders, and they did so.  

The views of hills from the flats, not just the view of the flats from the hills, are again at risk. In recent meetings a coalition of Downtown Area Planning Commissioners who don’t always agree on everything have put together a compromise land use plan which passed by a respectable majority, but which is already under attack by development interests even before the ink is dry.  

On the facing page we’re reprinting a bit of e-mail sent to DAPAC which has been in general circulation over the last week. It is the clearest evidence imaginable for the charge that there has been a struggle in Berkeley in the last few years between local citizens and advocacy planners on the public payroll for control of the city’s soul.  

Mark Rhoades, a recently resigned planning department staffer, expresses in it his obvious contempt for the plans which have been made by generations of Berkeley residents, which he was supposed to be faithfully administering while he worked for them. He’s entitled to his own opinion now that he’s a private citizen, but as a public servant his attitude was all wrong, and this e-mail shows it. And even more important, his reasoning then and now is equally poor. 

The minority members of DAPAC (including Rhoades’ wife, a recent appointee), in a last ditch effort to save their beloved 16-story buildings, advanced the argument that hoped-for improvements in downtown amenities couldn’t be paid for without much more and bigger building construction. That is supposed to produce the “impact fees” Rhoades’ letter alludes to, though even he admits that these haven’t panned out so far. He says “it is all simple math and the data is [sic] out there.”  

Well, the data is (or are) indeed out there, and he’s wrong. There have been many studies ever since Proposition 13 was passed, long long ago now, which show that new development almost always costs more to service than it returns in revenue. The whole darn state is now (poorly) supported by retail sales taxes, which is why we have so many new shopping malls.  

The Daily Planet hereby offers a prize of a $100 gift certificate, to be used at any downtown restaurant or theater, for anyone who can prove that an influx of new residents and/or office buildings downtown can pay for itself—can pay the city more than the cost of providing the services and infrastructure it will need. An additional bonus prize of another $100 gift certificate will be awarded for further proof that any such development can ever produce a surplus which can be employed for public amenities like a creekside plaza on Center Street. 

And this is where I part company with my friends who voted with the DAPAC majority to compromise on “just a few” extra-big buildings. The oldest negotiating tactic in the book is to ask your opponents first to list everything they might want from the deal, and then to argue that they can’t get it without approving what you want yourself. The majority votes on DAPAC came from the civic-minded people who are interested in public benefits: transit, open space, low-income housing. They’ve been convinced that somehow allowing big buildings downtown will make all this possible.  

I think the old bait-and-switch deal might just still be at work. We’ll get the two 20-story hotels, all right, but the city will waive the hotel tax—that deal is already under study by developer-funded consultants with the city council’s blessing. And the buildings will end up being more than half condos instead of taxable hotel rooms.  

But then, I’m a cynic. It’s in my job description. 

veterans day 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Written on Veterans Day 2007 

“Time will not long remember us.” A. Lincoln, Gettysburg Address 

This letter addresses the grove of trees near Memorial Stadium Berkeley. 

We write this letter to remember the Veterans of WWI—especially those Cal graduates who served this country and are remembered at Memorial Stadium Berkeley. We note that the stadium, and the grove of trees surrounding it, are there for this purpose: to be a memorial. Mindful of the past and remembering these and other veterans, we decry the high human cost of all wars. We also decry removal or defacement of memorials to these veterans. 

So that these Cal graduates and veterans may be remembered, we urge that this grove of trees near Memorial Stadium not be removed to suit the University’s “immediate” and current priorities. 

Krishna Seshan,  

Veteran for Peace, Class of 1975 

Darwin Poulos, 

Class of 1982 

Roy Nordblom,  

Former Marine and  

Veteran For Peace 

Los Altos 

• 

HOUSING SURVEYS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Each year the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) makes funding recommendations to the City Council for Housing Urban and Development, Community Development Block Grant funds for various community services such as: 

Public/Community Facility Im-provement, i.e., accessibility; Emer- gency Shelter Services, i.e., facility improvement; Housing Services, i.e. accessibility, emergency home repair and emergency relocation. 

Part of the process of making funding recommendations is receiving feedback from the community. In the past, public hearings conducted by the HAC and City Council have been our main sources of community input. 

This year the HAC is distributing a short survey to better understand our entire community’s views on the funding we oversee. The one page form offers an opportunity to prioritize the type of projects to be funded, to comment on currently funded projects and to give your suggestions about unmet needs in the com-munity. 

If you’d like to take part in the survey, you can fill out a form at any Berkeley public library, the Housing Department on the second floor of City Hall, 2180 Milvia Street or online via the City of Berkeley Housing Department home page: www.cityofberkeley.info/housing/ Default.htm. Choose either the RFP link or the direct link to the HAC survey in the same box. 

There is also a direct link from the RFP page to the HAC survey as well: www.cityofberkeley.info/housing/communityaction2yr/default.html 

Vincent Casalaina 

Commissioner,  

Housing Advisory Commission 

• 

BIKE INFRINGEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As I was locking my bike to a signpole in downtown Berkeley today, two policewomen got out of their car which they’d just parked next to the pole. The told me that I “might or might not get a ticket for doing that.” I’ve been riding a bike in Berkeley for 35 years and had never heard that, so I exclaimed in amazement “You mean it’s illegal to do this?” They said yes, and added that it made it hard for them to get out of their car. 

We live in a town with a lot of cyclists and nowhere near enough bike racks. Global warming and the need for alternative fuels and means of transportation are uppermost in the media and people’s awareness. Given all that, doesn’t it seem insane to have a law which discourages bike riding? 

Carol David 

• 

warm pools 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Master Bates’ latest public display of moral fecal matter re: his refusal to let disabled and senior users of the warm pool speak early in the agenda is yet another disclosure of what the man’s all about.  

His manic emphasis on the city’s green proposals reveals still another pattern as well. Democratic Party (read DLC) strategy for the ’08 elections is to brand themselves as environmental leaders and throw a few eco-bones to the faithful who, apparently, can’t think of who else to vote for.  

The trade-off for the eco-bones will be DP support for reconfiguring the Middle East under various spins; growing income disparities that won’t bring forth legislative calls for progressive tax legislation; loss of single payer health care; the continued herding of minority youth into the prison system. Indeed, our very own Loni Hancock voted for the last round of prison construction funding in Sept. But maybe we’ll all have solar panels.  

The solutions are out there. One tiny example: Berkeley could have installed portable toilets for the homeless and others who need them years ago. But with a smiley green face, the Democrat political class will do what they can to maintain the status quo. To deeply challenge it would mean losing their jobs. 

Maris Arnold 

• 

PACIFIC STEEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Pacific Steel Casting, the long-time East Bay polluter and Berkeley embarrassment, lost a major consolidated small claims action in court this week. They now owe tens of thousands of dollars in damages to the plaintiffs who have been affected for years by Pacific Steel’s runaway pollution. This significant loss in court will open floodgates of litigation against Pacific Steel from the thousands of residents who have had to put up with the nuisance for decades. Health data is being collected to assess the damage from Pacific Steel emissions, and community testing continues to reveal dangerous levels of emissions. Pacific Steel will of course throw a lot of money at their high-priced lawyers and a PR firm to try to weasel out of the whole thing, or spin it in a way that is somehow profitable to the family that owns this private company. Mayor Bates and Council member Linda Maio, will probably still continue their hand waving, and somehow try to appear concerned but be unable to do anything about it. And of course, Pacific Steel will play every trick in the book, even continue to play the “race” card and claim this is a fight between black residents and Latino workers or some other such nonsense. But no amount of spinning can hide the truth: Pacific Steel Casting is a nasty polluter that has poisoned a neighborhood for decades, and now they have to pay for it. Watch closely, they just might slip out of town and leave the city of Berkeley with its very own toxic superfund site. For a list of public information sources about Pacific Steel pollution, health problems, or legal issues, contact CleanUpPSC@yahoo.com 

Andrew Galpern 

• 

ARGONAUTIKA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ken Bullock dismisses Mary Zimmerman’s Argonautika as “a banal pastiche.” Even the wonderful Atley Loughridge gets the stick: “badly miscast as Medea.” If, on the strength of this, you’re tempted to pass it up, read Robert Hurwitt’s review (“sheer genius”) in the Chronicle (9 November). If you can’t get to Argonautika at the Rep, he says, you should head east to catch it there. My vote’s with him: this is a terrific production and a great ensemble. Don’t miss it! 

John Parman 

• SERIOUS ENTERTAINMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

These days, the line between entertainment and seriousness is hopelessly blurred ... Has it always been so? I think not. Modern media in its need for viewership and readership, i.e., to make a profit, makes wankers of us all. It’s almost impossible to resist. Barry Bonds, the Reiser thing, is Gore too fat? Superficial conflict after superficial conflict ... all entertaining us ... all addicting us to the next day’s scandal. In the olden days when Paul Revere rode around announcing the approaching Brits ... and when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address, etc. ... the line between entertainment and seriousness wasn’t blurred. Oh, to turn to days of yesteryear, when out of the west came the hoof beats of the mighty horse Silver and the Lone Ranger (if memory serves) screamed “Hi-Oh Silver Away!” ... But, alas, those days are gone forever, as Tonto knows. 

Robert Blau  

• 

REPUBLICANS EVERYWHERE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

State of Republican politics. GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson says he would have sided with Terri Schiavo’s parents and kept their brain-dead daughter alive. 

Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution, the basic principle in nature. 

Front-runner Rudy Giuliani says if he were president he would select anti-abortion Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and John Roberts. 

Candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain are anti-abortionist and pro-war as ever. What an oxymoron: Save the fetuses and squander adult lives. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley

Oregon has a Bus Rapid Transit system called the “Emerald Express” operating on a five-mile route between Springfield and Eugene. This bus system is generally regarded as a successful transit project, and transportation planners in Alameda County should pay careful attention to several important factors that have contributed to its success. Steve Geller mentioned some of these factors in his commentary “Bus Rapid Transit Success in Oregon” (November 2), but downplayed or neglected others. I think it is important to have a more complete picture. 

One thing we can learn from Oregon’s experience is that a BRT system does not need to use exclusive, bus-only lanes along its entire route to be successful. In Oregon, transportation planners decided to balance the need for improved bus service with the need to maintain traffic flow on their streets—and it works. Exclusive bus lanes are used only in areas where they will not cause disruption and diversion of traffic off of main roads into residential areas. In more developed areas, the buses share lanes with other cars and trucks. Only 60% of Oregon’s BRT route is in dedicated lanes, while the remaining 40% is in mixed-flow lanes. 

Second, riding on the “Emerald Express” BRT buses between Springfield and Eugene is free! This is a proven method to increase bus ridership, and if that is really our goal, we could do it here right now—without paying for the hugely expensive $400 million BRT infrastructure. Alternatively, we could provide Eco-Passes for all Berkeley residents to make bus travel possible at very low cost. Eliminating the need for fare collection also speeds up bus service and decreases air pollution, because buses spend less time idling at stops. 

Third, very few parking spaces were eliminated for Oregon’s BRT system. Over the entire five-mile route, less than ten parking spaces were eliminated. The Oregon transit representative I spoke with on the phone assured me that they would have had far greater difficulty getting their BRT system implemented if they had displaced parking to any significant extent. Contrast this approach with AC Transit’s current proposal that calls for the elimination of 75% of the parking on Telegraph Avenue between Woolsey and Dwight, and the removal of many heavily-used spaces downtown. Recent experience shows us that this parking reduction would cause significant disruption in business patronage in these areas. 

Fourth, the bulk of the seating on the “Emerald Express” is perimeter, bench-style seating—to make it easier for seniors and disabled passengers to get into and out of the seats. This is precisely the kind of passenger-preferred seating that has been entirely eliminated on AC Transit’s new Van Hool buses—to the displeasure of many longtime bus riders. Comfort is one of the factors that affects people’s transportation choices, and AC Transit’s decisions in this regard are actually discouraging people from traveling by bus. Sadly, these are the very same buses they intend to use on the BRT line. 

And last but not least, Oregon transportation planners realized that the choice of engines for their vehicles should be environmentally responsible, so they use hybrid-electric buses. AC Transit, in contrast, has just purchased many new diesel-powered buses for its fleet, and they will be in service for many years to come. So, if you live near a Rapid Bus stop, your neighborhood will experience higher levels of particulate air pollution from diesel exhaust. Fine particulate air pollution is implicated in diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, heart disease, and lung cancer. 

Oregon transportation planners have worked with the public to develop a bus system that has many benefits and few detriments. In our own East Bay, unfortunately, AC Transit has adopted an autocratic, cram-it-down-our-throats approach that has alienated many neighborhood residents and business owners. 

It’s shameful, really, how poorly AC Transit responds to public input. Often, it seems, it even works in defiance of the public’s wishes. Eliminating bus routes, making schedules more inconvenient, limiting the use of transfers, failing to coordinate with other transit agencies—and buying more and more of the highly unpopular, painfully uncomfortable Van Hool buses—are all decisions made by AC Transit to the detriment of its customers. AC Transit apparently cares far more about its own pie-in-the-sky plans to compete with BART than it cares about the needs of the average bus-riding citizen. 

At every single public forum I have attended about the East Bay BRT proposal, skeptics have vastly outnumbered BRT supporters. Even so, the BRT proposal continues to move forward, propelled by an elite, inner group of planners and advocates who want to tell us how to run our lives. And this occurs despite the fact that AC Transit’s own Draft Environmental Impact Report shows that BRT will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and will convert only a small percentage of automobile drivers to public transit! 

Make no mistake: All of the time and money AC Transit has poured into this deeply-flawed BRT proposal has diverted millions of dollars from other important public transit needs. Enough is enough. Let’s stop this BRT mistake now. It’s time for AC Transit to work with the community to develop practical and effective transportation solutions. 

Sasha Lilley is right that KPFA needs dialogue, not demonization (Commen-tary, Nov. 13). But dialogue can be effective only if it’s honest; if not, demonization is sure to prevail. Unfortunately, parts of her commentary are anything but honest. 

Consider, for example, what she writes about the issue of demonstration an-nouncements. First, she says “people,” whom she does not name, have asserted in the pages of the Planet that the station’s interim managers “have prohibited the announcement of demonstrations on KPFA’s air.” She then declares this allegation “patently false” and, as proof, cites a couple of demonstrations she and Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio personally promoted on the air. 

What Lilley writes is perfectly true—the allegation she lays out is false. But it’s a straw man—a charge no one has made. As she surely knows, the issue is not that KPFA never promotes any demonstrations on the air, but that it lacks a systematic mechanism, without undue restrictions, that would ensure that any progressive group could publicize marches and rallies, even if the event doesn’t have a champion in senior management. 

If you question whether this is a real problem, I suggest a glance at the web page (http://kpfa.org/psa/) where the station posts its guidelines on public service announcements. There you will see, in plain English, the restrictions that are the heart of the issue: 

• “All events must be submitted by an organization that qualifies as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Service Tax Code 501 (c)(3).” 

• “Organizations are allowed one announcement per month.” 

• Announcements of several kinds of events, notably including “Rallies/ Demonstrations,” “cannot be accepted!" 

The only alternative the guidelines offer is the station’s “community calendar,” which is aired several times every day. The problem with that solution is that the guidelines for the calendar (http://kpfa. org/calendar/) require that items be submitted at least three weeks in advance—a rule that excludes many, probably most, rallies and demonstrations. 

This is by no means a mere technicality. Last year, as Congress was about to adopt the horrendous Military Commissions Act (aka the torture law), a group I’m part of called Act Against Torture called a demonstration in protest at the offices of Feinstein, Boxer, and Pelosi—and we couldn’t get it announced on KPFA because we’re not a 501(c)(3) and we  

hadn’t scheduled it three weeks in advance! That experience was hardly unique—I myself have personal knowledge of rallies and other events concerning Haiti, Palestine, immigrant rights, and even the war in Iraq that weren’t announced on KPFA because of one or another of the station’s restrictions. 

Yes, there’s a way around these obstacles: If you have personal connections to station insiders, or you find a programmer who takes a fancy to your cause, you might get a one-time mention of your event on his or her show, but that’s hardly a fair or adequate solution. 

As a listener representative on the Local Station Board—a body charged under the Pacifica by-laws “to work with station management to ensure that station programming fulfills the purposes of the Foundation and is responsive to the diverse needs of the listeners (demographic) and communities (geographic) served by the station,” I offered what I thought was a co-structive solution: a resolution calling on the interim program director and the interim general manager to establish a “political calendar,” separate from the community calendar, for progressive events that don’t qualify under the station’s current restrictive rules; to create simple ways for activists to submit events for this new calendar by phone, e-mail, or the web; to post the calendar on the KPFA website; and to direct the news department to announce events from it daily, as part of regular newscasts. 

(If you want to read the resolution for yourself, write me at henry@norr.com; maybe someday it will be posted on the station’s website, but don’t hold your breath.) 

Last month the LSB adopted this resolution by a vote of 13-0 with three abstentions. A month later, the station’s interim managers have not offered a word in response—except the commentary from Ms. Lilley that ducks and distorts the issue. 

Is that the kind of dialogue KPFA really needs? 

Henry Norr is a professional journalist with a long resum´e.

Have you ever debated which was more essential to your Thanksgiving table—the mashed potatoes or the stuffing? Have you gone without turkey dinner all together? This is the reality facing numerous families in our community. Thanksgiving brings families together to celebrate a bounty of food. For many low-income families, Thanksgiving brings lean fixings as they struggle with the high cost of living in the Bay Area. A recent report released by the California Budget Project stated that in order to meet basic needs including health care, a family of four needs to earn more than $77,000 annually. Most Food Bank recipients live on a fraction of that and are continually faced with harsh choices—food or gas? Food or rent? 

Many families have turned to the Alameda County Community Food Bank and rely on a steadfast network of emergency food providers this holiday season. This year, they join 35 million Americans that turned to emergency food assistance, even before gas and milk prices spiked again. 

Calls to our food helpline have increased by 46 percent over the past year. The number of single mothers contacting the Food Bank has increased by 60 percent, children account for 37 percent of our client base, seniors make up 14 percent and most families contacting us are working but don’t earn enough to make ends meet. 

While our dedicated helpline manager and her group of loyal volunteers refer record numbers of callers to an emergency food bag or hot meal site, a number of our agencies report running out of food. The Food Bank’s food resources were taxed when we started the year. Our inventory, which used to be a robust 2 million pounds, now hovers around a million pounds. This means that more Food Banks like ours rely on community support—during the holiday season and throughout the year. 

After the decorations come down, hunger persists and is an ongoing threat to community health that requires long-term solutions. We ask you to help by donating money, food and time to our Food Bank or a nearby emergency food provider. But please don’t stop there. To put an end to hunger, we must work together to advocate for improvements in government nutrition programs, like the Food Stamp and School Meal programs that will help hungry families even when the holidays are over. Please call your State Senator to ask that they pass a new farm bill with substantial improvements to the food stamp program; we ask that you visit our website at www.accfb.org to learn more about hunger and how you can help. 

Having enough to eat on Thanksgiving—and the day after—should not be a privilege. 

Suzan Bateson is the executive director of the Alameda County Community Food Bank.

In its normal holiday tradition, St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County has begun preparation of its annual Thanks-giving Day holiday meal. The SVdP’s Free Dining Room, located on 23rd Street in Oakland, is the oldest and only facility in Alameda County to provide hot meals to homeless and low-income adults and children seven days per week. During Thanksgiving, the SVdP of Alameda County prepares a holiday meal consisting of turkey with all the trimmings to provide a seasonal meal for those in need. Approximately 1,000 meals will be served with almost as many adults and children in attendance to partake of those meals. 

In addition, SVdP of Alameda County’s volunteers come in full-force to help with food preparation, serving and clean-up. SVdP of Alameda County logs 88,000 volunteer hours per year, and partners with many corporations to develop community relationships. 

St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County offers numerous services to homeless and low-income adults such as the Women and Children’s Visitation Center, the Men’s Guidance Center, and the new Kitchen of Champions Culinary Program, a transitional employment program (KOC students will be helping to prepare and serve the meal). 

For more information, please contact Colleen Miller at 510 636-4255 or go to www.svdp-alameda.org. 

Colleen Miller is Director of Development and Communications, Society of St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County.

CLEANUP PART II 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is a clarification. The oil clean up events described in my Nov. 13 article “By Any Means Necessary” took place over the weekend, prior to the availability of officially sanctioned training. At this point, I urge all interested volunteers to try and get into one of the official sessions. 

But that said, it’s a shame these training were not offered immediately after the spill. In the early days it was quite easy to get large quantities of oil out of harm’s way, with little fuss or special equipment. With each passing day the tar balls are breaking into smaller pieces, getting harder, getting tangled in debris, or stuck on rocks, and requiring a much more intense and messier cleanup. Joggers and dogs have returned to these partially cleaned beaches, mashing the oil deeper into the sand, and tracking it onto the Bay Trail (and then back into our community). 

If you’re not cleaning up the oil, please stay away from it. Oil is on every beach, and every part of the shore, though it’s not always apparent at first glance. 

And remember: The Cosco Busan brought tons of inexpensive consumer goods to our stores. Chances are you bought something from the ship this week. 

Bryce Nesbitt 

Kensington 

• 

BUNKER FUEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Like many other Berkeley residents, I went down to the Marina to see the oil slicks and the dirty sea birds. It was depressing. But I don’t think I want to sign any petition to ban bunker fuel. The accident wasn’t caused by the oil, but by radar failure and control confusion on the ship’s bridge, abetted by fog. 

Freighter watching is a hobby of mine. I ride the 63 bus out to the Alameda Ferry Terminal, where there’s a good view of container ships at the docks. I’ve seen plenty of ships like Cosco Busan come and go, bringing low-priced goods from across the Pacific and carrying our goods over there. The passage across the bay and under the bridge is not terribly dangerous, but it does require careful attention. 

Yes, bunker fuel is cheap, and yes, it’s dirty. But if we want to require the container ships to use a higher grade fuel, we will drive up the costs of those trans-Pacific goods we so enjoy. And we could still spill the higher-grade fuel. 

We are willing to tolerate tanker trucks going at high speed on our highways, even after a major accident. We are willing to tolerate diesel trucks idling at the Oakland docks. 

We are willing to tolerate a huge number of cars on our roads, carrying only the driver. We resist riding public transit. Some of us don’t want to expand public transit if it involves any loss of parking or car lanes.  

We can’t bring ourselves to fully ban cigarette smoking. We are content with having high-fat meals available in our fast-food restaurants. 

I think we may as well put up with the bunker fuel and the container ships. They are part of the lifestyle we want to lead. 

Steve Geller 

• 

REPEATING HISTORY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Spanish-speaking immigrants all around us. The ones doing the menial jobs that most Americans don’t want to, or don’t have the time to do, are the descendants of what once was the world-class Spanish Empire. What happened to this center of culture, wealth and power? Spain’s overreaching military ambition with the then-unbeatable Spanish Armada failed; that broke its military and its bank.  

Recent news informs us a record-breaking loss of American lives has been racked-up in Iraq this year, and in a different story, Bush’s administration of our government has slumped us to an all-time, mind-boggling, record-breaking national debt of $9 trillion.  

Those who don’t know history, George, are doomed to repeat it. Those in Congress who enable Bush’s ignorant policies doom us all.  

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

A MATTER OF CHOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is a reply to Jerry Landis who wrote in Nov. 13 Daily Planet that there are more unhealthy things than cell phone antennas. For instance, he wrote putting a cell phone next to your ear; I have the choice not to do that and I do not do so. He wrote breathing near Center and Shattuck; I do not have to be there. He wrote eating a burger and fries; I have the choice not to eat them. He wrote standing near your microwave oven; I do not have such an oven. He wrote drinking Coke; I do not drink such beverages. He wrote voting for Republicans; I have the choice to vote for Cindy Sheehan.  

For all the things he wrote in his letter, I have the choice to do what I wish. One thing Mr. Landis does not understand is that people who do not use cell phones will be bombarded by radiation. They do not have the choice to avoid this radiation. The keyword is choice, sir. Using a cell phone is an artificially created need that fits very well with consumer societies. One thing I know is that I do not wish to be irradiated since others like to talk nonsense on their cell phones. Perhaps, you can put a set of antennas on your roof, Mr. Landis. 

Helena Bautin 

• 

AC TRANSIT NO. 19 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you’re concerned about the operation of the 19 line on Cedar Street and believe that residents along the Cedar corridor have a right to bus service, please come to a meeting being held by AC Transit at the North Berkeley Senior Center on Thursday, Nov. 15 at 6 p.m. and speak in favor of the operation of the line on weekends and weekdays. 

The Sierra Club is supporting the full operation of this line on Cedar Street on weekdays and weekends. Some residents do not want the bus to operate on Cedar St. and have sued AC Transit in the past in order to stop the service. Please come to the joint meeting on Thursday to speak in support of the No. 19 bus line if you can. 

Len Conly 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was sad to see that rather than advance the discussion on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Berkeley/Oakland, Charles Siegel chose to attack my intelligence, or lack thereof. Sad yes, but not surprised. This seems to be standard operating procedure these days in the Bay Area; attacking the person rather than just agreeing to disagree. 

For those readers who are bit more open-minded, my bona fides are as follows: I have worked 15 years in the transit industry. I’ve been a conductor at Amtrak, and a bus operator at VTA and AC Transit. I’ve been in the trenches working with the public, not behind a computer screen. Does Mr. Siegel have more experience than I? As much? Any? 

My observations were based on operating a bus on the routes of the proposed BRT, having seen the traffic when a small portion is blocked by road work or something as simple as a delivery truck. 

My dislike of transit experts stems from the simple fact that neither I, nor any of my coworkers I’ve spoken with, have ever had any of these experts actually ride the bus with us and ask our opinions. No “study” or computer simulation can match actually being in the bus. Those readers who ride the bus regularly should ask their operators if they’ve ever been consulted as to route changes, traffic patterns etc. 

I am a believer in mass transit, and not just because I earn my living in it. But I also believe that the overriding goal of any mass transit project should be to move the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost, and to not cause such pain to people who must drive (and yes there are people who must drive), business owners ,etc., that there is a backlash against future transit projects. 

I think that this issue could be put to rest with very little cost. Take some moveable barriers and block off the two center lanes from say Telegraph and Ashby to Telegraph and 40th Street and International and Fruitvale to International and High Street. Then actually observe the traffic in real time before hundreds of millions of dollars are spent. 

Dean Lekas 

• 

DEMOCRACY 101:2 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A lot of people have it stuck in their head that this is a Republic, but not a Democracy. I wonder how many of you believe that. I wonder how many times the city attorney has told you that. In any case it is not true. Decisional law is still on our side. It was established narrowly, with dissents from the right-wingers on the court. Indeed, it is the responsibility of the Supreme Court to define such a matter of constitutional law. Here is the declaration that is now settled law on this matter: 

From U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995) 779, 821: 

As Chief Justice John Marshall observed: “The government of the union, then, . . . is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat., at 404-405. 31 Ours is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” —Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863).  

This is not just a matter of conceit or a lot of hot air, although it might sound that way. It actually intends to establish that, even though it is not spelled out in the Constitution, Democracy is implicit throughout that document. It does not mean to say, in the Bushian/Orwellian/Albuquerqueian sense, that no matter how fascistic or anti-democratic the government actually becomes, it is nonetheless to be regarded as perfect in our own estimation. It is sad that this even has to be stated, but of course it does, because we are now living in a thoroughly Orwellian era wherein such idiocies are now commonplace. Just lift that cell phone up to your ear and you will know immediately what I am talking about. You will feel like a different person—take our word for it. 

Peter Mutnick 

• 

ANIMAL WELFARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Californians have a long history of supporting reasonable animal welfare reforms, and citizens now have a chance to take a further step toward that goal by qualifying and then passing a ballot initiative—the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act—to stop the most inhumane treatment of animals raised for food. 

This moderate measure merely requires that animals on farms be allowed to turn around and extend their limbs. On industrial-type factory farms, even this most basic standard of humane treatment is often violated. This ballot measure will prevent three of the most extreme forms of confinement in animal agribusiness: veal crates for calves, battery cages for egg-laying hens, and gestation crates for breeding pigs. 

Californians for Humane Farms is in the process of collecting 650,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the November 2008 ballot. California citizens can help by visiting www.HumaneCalifornia.org and signing up to volunteer. Even animals raised for food deserve humane treatment. 

Wayne Pacelle 

President and CEO 

The Humane Society of the United States 

Washington, D.C. 

• 

ROBERSTON, GUILIANI 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Guiliani for president? Birds of a feather flock together. Guiliani was busy committing adultery (Isn’t that why evangelicals hate the Clintons), getting divorced for the third time and rooming with a gay couple. Pat Robertson, religious icon of the fundamentalist right, blamed Hurricane Katrina on America’s wanton ways—urged the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez—and said that liberal judges are a greater threat to America “than a few bearded terrorists who fly (planes) into buildings.” 

The Republican base is composed of anti-abortionists, anti-gay activists and social conservatives. Both Guiliani and Robertson want to retain power and the White House at any cost, so the meeting of minds and the bending of conventions. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

• 

ABAG’S DEVASTATING  

IMPACT ON BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I stand corrected by Revan Tranter, former executive director of ABAG (Nov. 9). ABAG didn’t “loan” Patrick Kennedy $72 million for apartment buildings which he sold for $150 million to a mega-corporation. ABAG was merely the issuer of the debt instruments (loans).  

I’d like to remind (or inform) people of the pattern of corruption surrounding this complex money-funneling venture. As reported in a letter to this newspaper in 2003, then-Zoning Officer Mark Rhoades signed a document stating that all permits had been obtained for the Touriel Building—prior to the hearing at which said permits were to be approved. This was done in order to enable Kennedy to secure, by the relevant deadline, financing issued (but not loaned) by ABAG. 

At the time, Kennedy was widely believed to have bought influence over our City Council through campaign contributions. It is rumored that he openly declared, “I bought ‘em fair and square.” 

Some Berkeley citizens tried to figure out the approval process for the financing of his projects. The loans were apparently approved at meetings which were noticed only in a newspaper that could not be purchased anywhere in Berkeley. We learned this too late to be able to inform the decision makers about what was occurring in Berkeley.  

I hope that Mr. Tranter will try to encourage ABAG’s financial experts to approve funding for worthy institutions like Lifelong Medical Center (which actually helps people), rather than for developers who will simply unload the projects to corporations, and pocket the profit. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

IMPEACH CHENEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On April 24, U.S. Representative and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich introduced H. Res. 333, calling for the impeachment of Vice President Richard B. Cheney for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” in violation of Article II, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution. The bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary and languished there. Isn’t it time to put impeachment back on the table? The text of the articles of impeachment and the supporting evidence can be found at Kucinich’s website: http://kucinich.house.gov. 

HR 333 charges that Cheney manipulated the intelligence process to fabricate a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and has openly threatened aggression against Iran without any real threat to the United States. HR 333 does not include charges relating to Cheney’s role in drafting the permissive standards on torture, his role in the illegal rendition program whereby detainees were transferred to foreign countries for torture, the outing of Valerie Plame, or his role in the illegal NSA spying scandal, which he has vigorously defended.  

Why articles of impeachment against Cheney and not Bush? Actually, most of us believe that Cheney has been the acting president all these years. If Bush were impeached, then Cheney would become president. However, as one jokester observed, if Cheney were impeached, that would make George Bush president. 

Isn’t it time for our politicians and the public to have real, open debate about the worst presidency in U.S history? Kucinich’s articles of impeachment are an excellent place to start. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

• 

SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS, OR SCHOOL OF THE ASSASSINS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On hearing the name “School of the Americas,” it’s understandable that many people will assume that this refers to an educational institution of high academic standards. Nothing could be further from the truth! The SOA is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Ga. Over its 59 years it has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare. These graduates have used their skills to wage a war against their own people. The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred by those trained at the School of Assassins. In Colombia and the Andean Region, our taxpayer money is paying to escalate a civil war and strengthen a military with a horrible human rights record.  

In 2001 SOA renamed itself the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” no doubt hoping to improve its image. But the trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned continues—i.e., on Feb. 21-22, 2005, eight members of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in Uraba, Colombia, were brutally massacred. 

So the question is: Why in God’s name is our country condoning and 

supporting this brutal organization? Is there nothing we can do to stop the SOA and its ruthless disregard for human rights? Yes, my friends, there is something we can do. We can join the Father Bill O’Donnell Social Justice Committee in a candlelight vigil in solidarity with the SOA Watch protest of the teaching of torture at Ft. Benning. This simple remembrance of the many victims of the SOA will be held Sunday, Nov. 18, at 5 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison Street, Berkeley. Bring a candle and gather on the steps, joining others determined to bring down the School of Assassins! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

CAL AND BP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am dismayed and disgusted to learn that the Energy Biosciences agreement was signed today between Cal and BP. As a third-generation Cal alum, my pride in our great public institution has just been kicked down a few notches. It seems unconscionable that I, a California taxpayer, will be barred from entering secret, locked, “proprietary research facilities” now being built on public lands. The signing of this agreement confirms how much significant sectors of Cal faculty and administrators are stuck in the thrall of their own prestige, paychecks, or the marketing expertise of the former Anglo-Persian Oil Company (est. 1909).  

Instead of trying to manipulate nature and science to squeeze ever more exploitation out of both, Prof. Somerville and his Institute should be dedicating themselves to questioning the root cases of our current energy crisis: over-consumption, and Western feelings of ownership over the earth’s abundance. This is the real academic inquiry, and may require collaboration with fields as broad as politics, environmental studies, sociology, economics, development studies, and philosophy. All resources should be brought to bear in considering why Americans consume so much and how we can learn to consume less (without exporting our bad habits around the world). If Cal’s scientists can answer these questions, they will have solved the energy crisis and provided a great service to humankind.  

Of course, this type of deeper research could prove challenging while in partnership with one of the world’s worst companies for environmental and human rights abuses. Questioning consumption is the ultimate taboo for a retail company like BP, which is why this fundamental issue is not addressed anywhere in the 114-page agreement. I regret that my university has chosen sales over scholarship at this crucial juncture in economic and environmental history. Finally, I wonder what the institute researchers and administrators plan to buy with their big BP bonuses—new cars?? 

Nina Kahori Fallenbaum 

Cal alum 2000 

Tokyo, Japan 

• 

SHOP WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The fast-approaching gift-giving season gives Berkeleyans a wonderful opportunity to support fair trade and justice. Dec. 1 and 2, the annual International Holiday Crafts Fair will feature beautiful items made by artisans working in development projects that improve the lives of people in Haiti, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Kenya, Kurdistan and many other nations. 

Many of the artisans are refugees, most working in cooperatives. Many are women, who are single heads of families. They often create crafts at home, earning a decent living while caring for their children. Our purchase of traditional artwork also helps to preserve indigenous cultures. 

Instead of giving mass-produced, corporate marketed items, this year we can make an active choice to reach out to help others, a powerfully positive way to shop, and at the same time to give more meaningful gifts to loved ones. 

The Fair takes place Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 1-2, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days, at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana Street, Berkeley. ebsccraftsfair@yahoo.com. 

Melody Ermachild Chavis 

Will we outsource the National Monument, 

Or maybe our main White House occupant? 

With the barred Iron Curtain, 

Are we really certain 

We’ll ever regain our own government? 

—O.V. Michaelsen 

BERKELEY MARINA HAIKU 

Nov. 9-11, 2007 

White heron on rock— 

Does he contemplate oil sheen 

on water? Black globs? 

Hong Kong container 

ship spills oil into our Bay— 

cheap goods at high price. 

White pads in water 

soak up 58,000 

gals. of oil. Nice try. 

Gorgeous blue day, but 

not one white sailboat in sight. 

Only great ships move. 

If Monet lived here, 

he would die for light like this— 

white clouds, white oil tanks. 

Oiled bird in water 

twirls, trying to groom itself. 

We can only watch.  

—Judy Wells 

The Biggest Game in Town is Mayor Tom Bates’ favorite—Deals for Developers. 

Former Real Estate Broker and Sacramento politician Bates has the skills and connections to change the skyline and friendly, sunny, small-town feeling of Berkeley. 

He is forcing big development on Berkeley, the third-densest city in California north of Los Angeles. Our density is in tall dorms near campus, and compact historical neighborhoods with little bungalows and many children. 

Our city was wisely designed as a walkable, sustainable university town but our mayor wants to transform it with high density. How high? The Bates/UC Hotel project was up to 225 feet last week and now has a sister incubating. 

Over-densification will destroy Berkeley’s mature trees, and gardens in setbacks and small spaces between homes, where bees and hummingbirds thrive and salamanders sleep under stones. Natural areas are critical for the health of people and our Planet. Consider the cooling greenery, warming sunlight, openable windows, and walkability of Berkeley. These are important reasons why Berkeley uses half the energy of other cities. 

Our caring citizens want a Zero Carbon Footprint now, and we could get there quickly if we did not have to spend our lives fighting Mayor Bates’ Deals for Developers. 

Soon after election in 2002, Mayor Bates admitted that his top priority was to get Berkeley developed. He therefore would not help us save the Berkeley Adult School. We later discovered that the school was already planned to become another developer opportunity-site. 

Bates’ development strategy allows (encourages) University sprawl beyond all its campus boundaries. The mayor has never lobbied for growth limits for UC, or for saving our trees, which remove carbon gasses from the air and make the oxygen we breathe. 

Part of Bates’ strategy is to let almost everything in town go, thus decreasing land values. The neglect causes blight, a finding for Redevelopment. This gives the developers the chance to buy land at rock bottom prices. 

Letting our town decline causes friends to sell their homes and leave Berkeley, adding hefty property transfer taxes to city coffers, 15 million last year, a much larger amount than city sales tax revenue! So the city makes more turning over property than from protecting it. 

Other deals for developers include waiving their taxes and fees; selling city land worth millions like the Oxford Street Parking Lot for a dollar—and easements on Center Street Garage. Meanwhile our mayor knows that lack of parking is killing our shopping and movie theaters downtown and that UC Berkeley is planning its own shops and three movie theaters in a huge Downtown Art Museum. 

Bates created the DAPAC, Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee, which is working to greatly expand the university’s holdings in our downtown, both horizontally and vertically! Many members seem to have conflicts of interest. A mysterious Technical Advisory Committee meets with staff, but is unknown to the rest of DAPAC except those in the University Property Subcommittee, CIUP, led by Dorothy Walker, former UC property manager. 

Three Tech Advisory members are: Real Estate Broker John Gordon; Jay Keasling of UCB and LBN Labs of GMO and Biodiesel fame, and Deena Belzer, specialist in TOD (transit-oriented development), another Bates specialty. 

Recently DAPAC surreptitiously passed a plan to build high-density housing on the Berkeley Way parking lot. Yet they plan to let the university build 1000 parking spaces in the heart of downtown near BART. Although UC has eco-passes for students and staff, DAPAC is allowing UC all this new parking, while they are eliminating our city-owned parking, and forcing residents to shop in other cities. 

UC can make over 5 million per year on 1000 parking spaces. We could be making revenue from the Oxford Lot to clean up downtown, restore bike cops and guides, and have a Solar Shoppers Shuttle. 

How does Bates get away with this? Under his leadership the city seems to do every trick in the book, fast and furious: “Sunshine” a moving target, “Bates and switch,” multiple meetings simultaneously, short notice, no notice, secret meetings, hot meetings during holidays, council meetings on half the Tuesdays with 30 important items jamming the Consent Calendar. Here’s an example from the Oct. 23 City Council meeting: “Consent Calendar item No. 1 (of 29) Second Reading: “Sale of Center Street Garage Setback Easement to SNK Captec Arpeggio.” This is an easement into the airspace of the city-owned garage, so the 10-story Arpeggio Building can have windows on its west side. The appraised value of the easement was $850,000 (neither reading included copies of the appraisals). This reading was missing the report explaining the rationale for yet another Developer Deal—mayor and council sold the easement to Arpeggio for just $200,000. 

Enough already? There’s more to come. These are just a few clues to The Biggest Game in Town. 

Merrilee Mitchell is a Berkeley civic watchdog and a former candidate for Berkeley City Council. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This correspondence between Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee staffer Matt Taecker and former city land-use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades was sent to the DAPAC and has been circulating on the Internet for the last week. 

From Matt Taecker: 

To enhance the economic feasibility of a 6-story Downtown, what if the special requirements kicked in at 85’ rather than 65’ (i.e. LEED Gold etc.)? Could be enough to make lower buildings more cost competetive than taller. No need to respond. Just food for thought. 

—Matt  

From Mark Rhoades: 

Subject: Re: An Idea 

To: “Taecker, Matthew” 

Cc: DAPAC 

Date: Friday, November 9, 2007, 10:59 AM 

I have to reply as the former Planning Manager, given my direct experience with policy and implementation over the last ten years. The standard that you are referring to is an academic endeavor that will have no essential or effective meaning in the Downtown, and certainly is not going to achive the many great things that have been discussed. If we want to create a standard that is academically appealing we should make the standard LEED Platinum certification for buildings over 65 feet. The problem is that we will never actually achieve this “vision.” Berkeley has not seen a single six or eight story building privately constructed in the last ten years (and without having specifically done the research - I believe in the last 30 years). There will not be a six or an eight story building constructed in the future (one DAPAC architect briefly proposed a six story building last year but that project was revised DOWN to five stories - we should ask why). The GAIA building is essentially a nine story building with 100% lot coverage. The Arpeggio is a nine story building with 100% lot coverage. What the DAPAC voted for Wednesday night is a continuation of the five story product that HAS been built over the last 11 years (all four or five of them). Even if there had been some modest level of impact fees collected (and I do believe that those margins were modest) we would not have achieved any of the objectives called for in the existing plan. 

I guess the response from the DAPAC majority is, “we’ll see in eight years.” What we get as a result is a front row view of our Downtown continuing to languish just as it has for the last 30 years. Those that have been here long enough will tell you just that. It is all simple math and the data is out there. The last DT Plan failed to provide any real vision, and now this one will too (this new recommendation will actually be a downzoning, as the last DT Plan was, given the coverage standards being considered). I think that the population, generally, could see this for the travesty that it is. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a referendum if the PC and the CC don’t step in and provide the necessary leadership, as unpopular as it may be in some circles. As a DAPAC member said a few weeks ago, this is not the time for caution and fear, this is a time for real vision because there is too much at stake in the world around us. Many supposed environmental proponents seem to have forgotten the “act locally” part of the addage that has been so popularized on Berkeley bumper stickers.  

Let’s all remember - University Avenue was downzoned with the implementation of the UASP design guidelines. It has been almost four years since that language took effect. How much new economic investment through “appropriate” infill development has been achieved? None. There are no applications submitted either. No one is even talking about projects on University Avenue. All the projects recently constructed or approved were done so under the FORMER standards. Those hoping for the market to adjust to the zoning should sit back for a long rest. 

—Mark Rhoades, AICP 

In his Nov. 9 letter, Jeffrey Jensen of North Oakland is unsatisfied with nebulous crime-fighting plans and bigger-picture orations from Mayor Dellums. 

I believe my Oakland neighbors and Mayor Dellums share a blind spot. They don’t confront the primary impetus for violent crime in our communities. 

It is trite but telling to compare the consequences of our unrealistic drug laws, and the squandering of resources on their enforcement, with the societal distortions of the Prohibition era. 

Drugs are as easy to buy as pie. Consumer demand, pushing against government repression of supply lines, has drafted an army of urban entrepreneurs who, because they operate outside the law, must self-select for violence and territorial dominance. The resulting nihilistic subculture is reinforced and romanticized as the vendors are cycled through our banal penal system. Indigent drug users fill the largest number of our jail cots, but do not receive the support and treatment we need them to have.  

Urban police departments can’t recruit enough officers. What mentally healthy person with alternatives would choose to be part of law enforcement efforts that are obscenely misdeployed at the Sisyphean task of rifling through glove compartments, dresser drawers, and pocket lint? An insane number of officers spends insane amounts of money and time surveilling and infiltrating the sellers, then staging elaborate armed raids. Millions are laboriously prosecuted and imprisoned, but ultimately without benefit to us. 

We readily tolerate, regulate, and tax alcohol and tobacco. As the two most widely addictive substances on earth, they together cause the lion’s share of social dysfunction, illness, and mortality. We protect and encourage the use of alcohol: wine tasting tours, cocktail parties, drinks served on airplanes, entire aisles at upscale groceries lined with booze. On campuses, habitual binge drinking is the order of the day. Sometimes we penalize those who misuse this freedom: drunk drivers, domestic brawlers, or smokers who light up in elevators. Why do we pretend we are preventing crack addicts from smoking rocks, or high school students from snorting up crushed Adderol tabs, when this happens all around us right now? 

The gross overcrowding in our jails and prisons, and the disproportionate expense of running our whole justice system, could be literally halved if we end drug prohibition, then regulate and tax recreational drugs exactly as we do liquor and tobacco.  

I have a dream...that someday I will go to a beautifully laid out organic farm in a nearby county, and spend the afternoon leisurely tasting its spicy and sweet, artistically packaged varietals of marijuana. I inhale not from a burning joint, but from a well-engineered and tastefully designed vaporizer, tranquilly gazing at the sunset with my well-heeled fellow connoisseurs. The economic stimulation to local coffers expands the commonweal. 

I have another dream...that the crack addicts in my neighborhood go into the same corner store where they now line up to buy tobacco and alcohol, and safely complete all their purchases. This without risk to me, and without subsidizing the criminal enterprises that poison our streets with violence.  

I dream that our jails and prisons house only those who commit real crimes on real victims; that there they receive education, self-awareness training, and humane psychiatric care; and are released if and when they’re prepared to live peacefully among us. 

I dream that police officers, relieved of the tedium and ugliness of drug-busting, achieve a resurgence in both their numbers and morale, as idealistic young people are attracted to the profession. I dream that we the people, our rights to privacy and autonomy restored, gladly pay the taxes on the green herbs at our local shops. 

Jackie Wilson is an Oakland resident.

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau, 

Last year, prior to the start of the tree-sit protest at Memorial Oak Grove, hundreds of students and community members delivered to your office stacks of petitions signed by thousands of concerned citizens, students, staff, and faculty asking you to help save the oaks and build the new training facility in an alternate location so that we could all achieve a positive outcome. We asked for a meeting with you to discuss the matter. We never received a response. 

Since that time, the dispute has escalated into a major confrontation that has garnered international media attention and polarized our community. In the absence of dialogue, protestors have dug in their heels to protect a beloved space that is sacred to many people (especially the Native community), while the UCPD has escalated its actions and arrests.  

Recently, UC announced its intent to forcibly extract the tree-sitters. As the history of tree-sit protests makes clear, extraction is very dangerous for all parties and involves serious risk of injury or death. At least one of the long-term tree-sitters is a UC Berkeley student. That people’s lives are in jeopardy must be of enormous concern to everyone.  

Regardless of the litigation outcome, we support the tree-sitters protecting the grove until UC chooses to pursue an alternate location for the training facility. We also want to hear what you have to say and we hope that through constructive dialogue understandings will be reached, solutions will be found, and conflict will be transformed.  

We request an in-person meeting with you as soon as possible. We understand that ASUC President Van Nguyen attempted to initiate a community dialogue on this matter in September, and you declined because of the pending litigation. As you know, the judge is expected to render her verdict any day. When she does, no matter how she rules we ask you to meet with us as well as other concerned parties, such as UC administrators, the UCPD, representatives of the tree-sit protest, and Berkeley city residents. We request that an unaffiliated, neutral third party facilitate the meeting. We believe that the Chancellor of a public university has a responsibility to hold dialogue with students and community members about important matters, even (or especially) when he disagrees with their views. Considering that the oak grove protest has the potential to literally become a matter of life and death, we hope you will seize this opportunity to engage in a constructive dialogue. The worst that can happen is such a meeting will not change anything. We hope that at a minimum we will emerge with more respect for each other’s perspectives, and in the best-case scenario we can cooperate to prevent the loss of life and limbs and develop creative solutions.  

Recently, Cal public affairs director Dan Mogulof stated, “We are going to leave no stone unturned in an effort to find a peaceful solution to this situation.” That’s only possible with real dialogue.  

Current conflicts in the world teach us that when violence is used to resolve a conflict, everyone suffers. Let’s set a better example for our community and the world. 

Let’s talk. 

Emma Fazio, Jessica Karadi, Christina Oatfield, and Marcella Sadlowski are UC Berkeley students and members of the Free Speech Free Trees Student Coalition (www.freespeechfreetrees.org).

It is human nature to form our opinions out of small bits of available information, a large dose of personal experience, with random bits of stuff we’ve heard from other sources thrown in; that’s how we figure out the world. Unfortunately, all too often we form our opinions based on too little information combined with too much “stuff we’ve heard”—and that’s how we wind up with bigotry and prejudice. 

For instance, when you drive by Metro Lighting in West Berkeley and see picketers holding signs that say “Union Busters” and the like, you might assume that the owners have been unfair in some way to their employees. Because labor unions are good, right? And only business owners who have mistreated their employees would wind up with picketers, no? However, this is a situation where too few facts are mixed up with too much “stuff”; no employees have been wronged, no union has been busted. The true victims are Metro’s owners, Lawrence Grown and Christa Rybczynski, who are under siege by a group of former employees who, amazingly, are attempting to take over their hard-won, sustainable business. Waves of anxiety are rolling up and down San Pablo Avenue, because every small business owner knows what’s going on, and each of them knows they could be next. 

Lawrence and Christa, architects with green leanings, opened the business in their basement with credit cards. Metro is a certified green business, and three years ago they went into debt outfitting their leased space with solar panels. Their handcrafted lighting fixtures have been so popular that they have been able to hire craftspeople and sales associates; their salespeople receive an average of $17 an hour, their craftspeople up to $19 an hour. Full-time employees receive fully paid health benefits, vacation, sick, and holiday pay, plus matching retirement funds. I can think of few businesses of this size—or larger—who offer employees compensation this rich, or show this much dedication to community and environmental responsibility. 

So what on earth went wrong at Metro Lighting? It is apparently a situation where the owners, striving to be generous and compassionate, practically “gave away the store.” They let performance issues slide, forgave infractions, continued to pay for full-time benefits for an employee whose schedule had changed to part-time; being kind seemed more important than sticking to the rules. Lawrence and Christa even co-signed a mortgage with one of their employees to help him become a homeowner; he has returned the favor by defaulting on the mortgage, forcing them to pay it. Unfortunately, all of this largesse led to employees with feelings of entitlement; some even came to believe that they had as much right to own the business as the people who had built it with hard work, risk-taking and creativity. 

And the accusations from the picketers? Union busting, lockouts, ageism, toxic waste exposure, unsafe working conditions, unfair wages… you will see that these were all fabricated to support a plot which brings new meaning to the words “hostile takeover.” So, union busting. What would you do if several of your workers walked into a staff meeting one morning with a representative from the Industrial Workers of the World and announced that your store was now under their aegis? No discussion, no election, no communication with the National Labor Relations Board, no card check, no indication that the other employees wanted to join? What if they demanded a 100 percent wage increase? How about if they demanded that employment be unconditional—no performance requirements whatsoever? Amazingly, each of these things really happened. 

Now, what would you do if you said words to the effect of “we need to make sure that everyone wants a union” and “a 100 percent wage increase would cause the business to go under, but we’ll start a new bonus plan” in response to these things and they told you “you’d be sorry,” and staged work slow downs and work stoppages and blew off mandatory staff meetings? How about if one day, in the midst of all this, a fully trained employee was performing the routine task of disposing of a slightly noxious chemical substance (akin to lye), and the agitating employees decided that this was the perfect time to stage a walkout, and to accuse you of exposing them to hazardous waste? Yes, this also happened, and visits from the City of Berkeley’s Toxic Management Division (no toxic release found) Cal OSHA (2 visits, no violations), Workers’ Compensation Loss Prevention (no issues) and environmental consultants (no hazards found) yielded no violations, but this group of disgruntled employees insists they were exposed to toxic waste; the inspectors were “incompetent.” These same employees say they were “locked out” of work; they actually had their own keys and could have entered at any time. In short, it’s a nightmare. 

I direct your attention to the constitutional preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World, which can be found at www.iww.org/en/node: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common….Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, (and) abolish the wage system…” Yes, the true intention of the pickets is not to improve their working situation; it is to take over Metro Lighting, or to drive them out of business trying. And they intend to do it by getting YOU to help by boycotting the business. Just another one of those “only in Berkeley” moments that people love to roll their eyeballs over, I know. And it would be comical – except that it is destroying the lives, mental health, and business of the Rybczynski-Growns, decent people in the finest Berkeley tradition. 

Unions are supposed to protect the powerless from having their rights trampled on, but in this situation, the people most in need of protection are not blocking the entrance to Metro Lighting dressed in jackboots, menacing the customers. 

We here in Berkeley have a long and proud history of “speaking truth to power.” If you wish to continue the tradition, perhaps this is a good time to go shopping for a lighting fixture. Lawrence and Christa could use your support. 

Christine Staples is a West Berkeley resident.

My previous column about the birds Joseph Grinnell observed on the UC Berkeley campus drew a response from Allison Shultz, a recent graduate who is now the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’s Centennial Coordinator (more about that below.) Shultz said that for her senior thesis, she replicated surveys done on campus by Margaret Wythe between 1913 and 1927, and by Charles Sibley and Thomas Rodgers in 1938-39. Her results reveal significant changes among those data points. “I saw that the number of species didn’t change much over the years—it actually went up a little—but the community composition changed,” she explains. 

Who were these people? Margaret Wythe was co-author, with Grinnell, of the 1927 Directory to the Bird-Life of the San Francisco Bay Region. She started working for Grinnell at the MVZ in 1912, earning 35 cents an hour. After receiving her Master’s degree, she was promoted to Assistant Curator of Birds in 1925. Wythe was on the Museum’s staff at least into the 1940s, when she prepared the distribution maps for The Distribution of the Birds of California by Grinnell and Alden Miller.  

Charles Sibley came to Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1937, spent part of his World War II service collecting birds in the Solomon Islands, and returned to UC for his PhD under Miller in 1948. He taught here for a couple of decades before moving to Yale. Sibley, a controversial figure who died in 1998, was on the cutting edge of biochemical studies of the evolutionary relationships of birds. He was the one who determined that New World vultures were actually storks of a sort, and that mynahs and mockingbirds were next of kin. Charles Sibley was not related to field guide author/artist David Sibley. 

Thomas L. Rodgers, another of Alden Miller’s students, seems to have been more of a lizard man, although he was the lead author of the article he and Sibley published in the Condor. 

As to methods, Wythe kept meticulous notes on the birds she observed for 14 years, using a workman’s time book. “It looks like an Excel spreadsheet,” says Allison Shultz. Sibley and Rodgers monitored birds for a shorter period, and apparently in a more limited area. Their surveys were bounded by Oxford on the west, Hearst on the north, the Campanile on the east, and Allston on the south. They made morning, noon, and evening walks through that area, recording all bird encounters. 

Shultz says she tried to mimic what Sibley and Rodgers had done, but using point counts instead of line transects. She also examined old photographs to document changes in landscaping on the campus, and mapped the location of buildings in 1939 versus 2006. Her study ran from October through March, so she may have missed some migrants and summer visitors the earlier study recorded. 

Between Wythe’s counts and the Sibley-Rodgers survey, the wrentit—a chaparral-haunting bird, more often heard calling than seen—disappeared from the UC campus. Other species, like the American kestrel, declined. But overall species composition was relatively stable. 

From 1939 to 2006, though, there were dramatic changes. New species appeared: Cooper’s hawk, red-shouldered hawk, mourning dove, white-throated swift, Nuttall’s woodpecker, American crow, common raven, chestnut-backed chickadee. These are not all necessarily nesting records, although Shultz suspects the swifts are nesting on some of campus buildings, maybe the Campanile.  

And there were losses. Sibley and Rodgers saw California quail on almost half their survey days. That species is completely gone now. So are the American kestrel and American pipit. Shultz also reports the disappearance of the spotted towhee, but my friend John Sutake, a keen observer, recalls seeing them recently when he was UC’s lead groundskeeper; maybe they were missed in the resurvey. 

It’s interesting that Shultz found no exotic house sparrows, Eurasian starlings, or rock pigeons in her survey area. “The Cooper’s hawks might keep the pigeons down,” she speculates. 

She also had only a few sightings of white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows, both common winter birds elsewhere in Berkeley. 

The gains and losses reflect an altered habitat. “A lot of open area and scrubby places had been removed,” Shultz says. “The Botanical Garden was where Memorial Glade is now until 1924, and some plants were left there until 1960.” Bushes and scrubby areas were removed in the ‘70s and ‘80s for safety reasons. There are also more, and larger, buildings now. 

Shultz describes plans for further surveys. In connection with the Museum’s centennial, the Grinnell Project is revisiting Joseph Grinnell’s study transects all over the state. Transects through Lassen Volcanic and Yosemite National Parks have been completed, and show significant patterns of range shifts by small mammals in response to climate change.  

If funding is available, the Project will be extended to parts of the Bay Area. “We’ll find qualified observers, have them follow a standard protocol, and enter their observations in an online database,” Shultz explains. Sounds like a great opportunity to get out there with your binoculars and do some Citizen Science. Watch this space for more information. 

Development battle opponents are often depicted as pro-development on one side, anti-development on the other, but that’s almost always a mischaracterization. Just as it would be virtually impossible for someone to be in favor of all development, regardless of what that development happens to be, you never run into someone who is against any and all development. The questions for both sides always is: what type of development are we talking about? Where will it be located? And, probably most important, what portions of the community will it benefit? 

When Jerry Brown was mayor of Oakland, bless his heart, he was wonderfully successful in casting all of the battles over his various development proposals as pro-development/anti-development, charging that anyone who stood in opposition to what he had put on the table was interested in a stagnating, moribund Oakland that would eventually sink back into the Lake Merritt tidepool and estuary marshlands from which it had been wrought. And so, rather successfully, Mr. Brown managed to avoid most public scrutiny over what exactly his proposals would do, and who they would do it to. 

With the benefit of hindsight, now that the former mayor has left the building, we have begun to get a clearer picture. 

Mr. Brown responded to three political imperatives, two of them generated from inside Oakland, one of them generated from without. 

The outside imperative was that California has begun to see the end of the suburban sprawl-building policies of the last 50 years and it is not pretty, for any number of reasons, and the state is now returning to its original core cities to house the expected continued boom in population. The inside imperative is that Oakland residents are running out of places to live inside Oakland, and Oakland residents are tired of having to cross the city boundaries into San Leandro, Alameda, Emeryville, and other nearby communities to do their big-ticket shopping. 

To “solve” all three imperatives, we all remember, Mr. Brown proposed his flying-phrase 10K Development plan, in which he would encourage the building of units in Oakland’s downtown-uptown core to house 10,000 new residents. 

There were always two flaws to 10K, if its intent was to satisfy the Oakland two-thirds of the three imperatives. The first was that the uptown and loft area (2nd, 3rd, and 4th street) developments were always geared more towards people who did not live in Oakland at the time the developments were put up, thus not satisfying the demand of resident Oaklanders for more housing stock for themselves and their children. The second was that 10K was always a two-parter, with the residential component to come first, and the commercial development to follow. How the commercial development was supposed to happen was never quite spelled out in detail, and Mr. Brown, as we said, has moved on to higher calling, leaving his successor, Mr. Dellums, to sort out the pigs (you’ll have to see Terry Gilliam’s movie “Time Bandits” to understand that reference). 

In many ways, at least as far as Oakland is concerned, we are no better off than we were eight years ago. There are residences available or in the building stage for 10,000 new citizens, true, but those new citizens are going to be needing and demanding city services, and city government economics in the post-Proposition 13 years dictates that residential development is always a net loss for a city. City services for citizens, in other words, cost more than the tax revenue brought in by residency. It’s only commercial or job development that is a net tax revenue gain for cities. That’s why tiny Emeryville, with its massive shopping centers and high-tec campuses, is able to do so much for its citizens, per citizen, while the much larger Oakland, with more citizens, is able to do less. 

So in many ways, the Dellums Administration must look afresh at Oakland’s commercial development landscape, as if the eight years of loft district and uptown development never happened. If the question is, where should the administration best concentrate its efforts to increase Oakland’s commercial package, the answer is the same as it was eight years ago: in Oakland’s existing neighborhood commercial districts. 

Let’s revisit the old arguments. 

Cities—whether it be in America or Europe or in ancient times along the Nile or Tigris-Euphrates—almost always begin with transportation-friendly trading centers—often at a crossroads or along a river or, in our case, beside a bay—that later develop into larger commercial centers that, in America, at least, we begin to call “downtown.” That was the case with Oakland, and for the first hundred years of its existence, the city maintained a downtown commercial core that was the shopping center of the East Bay. That core was lost for a variety of reasons—too detailed and numerous to go into in this column—and with a few notable exceptions, Oakland’s downtown has remained largely retail-vacant in the past twenty to thirty years. 

This has been the source of concern for city officials, as Oakland has lost massive amounts of tax revenue to the malls at Hilltop, Emery Bay, Southland, South Shore, BayFair, and the like. But it has also been the source of no small measure of civic embarrassment and shame. Cities have traditionally been defined by their commercial downtown core, after all, and Oakland, toiling ever in San Francisco’s giant shadow, has often felt without such a downtown—no disrespect intended, and forgive me in advance if there is—like a woman having gone through a radical mastectomy. 

Thus the long and continued drive and cry in Oakland—preceding the Jerry Brown years—for a downtown commercial revitalization. 

But if we separate that feeling of “sense of worth” about a city having or not having a vibrant downtown commercial core, this drive and cry does not make nearly as much sense. Why does it matter where high-end retail is located in Oakland, so long as it is located somewhere accessible to the population? 

And that is where Oakland’s existing neighborhood commercial centers enter the picture. 

Oakland has three distinct levels of such centers. 

The first are thriving and close to going over the top as major commercial centers, with a wide variety of retail, service shops and restaurants and an enormous amount of foot and vehicle traffic. Among those I would count Lakeshore/Grand Avenue, the Fruitvale, the often-overlooked Chinatown, and probably Montclair Village as well. The second level would be those commercial centers revolving around supermarkets and restaurants and smaller retail and shops, such as the Laurel and College Avenue and Piedmont Avenue. The third would be the struggling—Eastmont Mall, Foothill Square, and the Acorn Shopping Center. 

Instead of looking to commercially develop the downtown area—where we are still waiting for people to move in—I would suggest concentrating on the neighborhood commercial centers where Oakland residents already live, and where a pattern of shopping has already been established. 

Such a strategy would involve using city resources to improve the business climate in the neighborhood commercial centers that are already thriving, while simultaneously rescuing and rebuilding those that are on the verge of collapse. 

For the thriving neighborhood commercial centers, access—meaning transportation—appears to be one of the major impediments for growth. Try finding a parking place at peak hours around Grand Avenue or in Chinatown or along Piedmont Avenue--it can be virtually impossible, and the prospect of parking in an insecure location and having to walk several long blocks to your destination is often what drives prospective shoppers or restaurant visitors to the more convenient parking lots of Emery Bay. 

Given the current problems of congestion, it is understandable that residents of the neighborhoods surrounding these successful centers would be reluctant to have them grow. 

Increased parking in the neighborhood commercial districts, first and foremost, then, is something the city should be studying, planning, and moving forward with. 

But public transportation should not be overlooked. 

AC Transit used to well-serve Oakland’s neighborhood commercial areas, but the district long ago ran low on money, and began cutting back on service. When BART was built, it was designed to move people from the suburbs to work, with stops in the downtown commercial centers and the malls. Oakland’s neighborhood commercial centers—with exceptions like the Fruitvale or Chinatown or the neighborhood surrounding the MacArthur BART Station—were almost entirely left out. 

Unfortunately, AC Transit, with its proposed Bus Rapid Transit project, would replicate that problem, laid out on a route that touches on several of the commercial centers that BART currently hits—downtown Berkeley, downtown Oakland, the Fruitvale, BayFair in San Leandro—while going far from the neighborhood commercial centers in Oakland that BART bypasses as well. 

AC Transit is a necessary core component of our public transportation system, hurting for money, and they are looking at BRT as a way to get an infusion of needed federal funds. But the Federal Transportation Agency’s new policy of encouraging public transportation along commercial corridors—while commendable in theory—is the kind of micro-managing from Washington that our conservative friends are so often, and often correctly, complaining about. Sometimes, such as in Oakland, the commercial and population centers are not along the major thoroughfares—Telegraph Avenue and International Boulevard, in this instance—but are tucked away in pockets on MacArthur Boulevard or College Avenue. 

My guess is that if the money was there to expand its service back to fully-serving those outlying commercial areas as it once did, AC Transit would do so. But the transit agency is not able to change federal policy on its own to allow for more local flexibility in meeting the goal of public transit serving commercial districts, and only a concerted, joint city-transit lobbying effort would stand a chance. 

The struggling commercial centers of Deep East Oakland and West Oakland are a different matter, of course, one that cannot be solved by simply figuring out a way to make room for more people to get there. 

But it’s here, in the neighborhoods, where Oakland’s commercial future lies, and where the concentration should be placed during the remaining three years of Mr. Dellums’ first term. If major retail wants to follow Mr. Brown’s 10K into downtown Oakland, I certainly wouldn’t turn it away. But if I were running Oakland, it is unto the hills—and down in the flatlands—where I would turn my eyes for commercial development. That is from whence cometh our help. 

Thus endeth the lesson. 

Mystery is the reverse side of history. Berkeley, a city chock-full of historic houses, naturally has its share of mysteries—interesting structures about whose origin little or nothing is known. 

Berkeleyans who enjoy exploring the town will have seen the lone pink Italianate Victorian standing at 2212 Fifth Street just south of Allston Way. Even those who don’t get about too much should be familiar with the grand Colonial Revival house guarded by two majestic palm trees at 1905 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (formerly Grove St.), just below Hearst Avenue. 

Despite decades of research at the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, nobody knows who designed these two houses and by whom they were built. 

But the houses have more than mystery in common: they also share a history, having been the successive homes of one prominent family, whose head was an imposing figure in local affairs as well as in state politics. 

The pink Italianate, now clad in asbestos shingles but originally clapboarded, was one of three similar but not identical houses built circa 1877 on the site of John A. Carbone’s future orchid nursery. The other two were located at 728 Allston Way and 2213 Fifth Street. The three were first mentioned on February 2, 1878 in the Berkeley Advocate, which announced that “the three fine houses built by the Berkeley Real Estate Union, and situated nearly opposite the [Standard] soap factory have been sold to a Chicagoan, who intends to make his home in Berkeley.” 

The Berkeley Real Estate Union was located on the northwest corner of University and Shattuck Avenues. The manager was M. McDonnell, who lived in San Francisco. The company existed only in 1877 and 1878, and during the first six months of 1877 it advertised regularly (sometimes weekly, sometimes daily) in the Oakland Evening Tribune, offering “houses built and sold on the installment plan” and “land for sale in all parts of Berkeley.” 

The man who bought the three houses was one Charles Montgomery, a speculator who never became a Berkeley resident. By the following year, he had sold the houses to three different men, speculators like himself, who also turned over the properties within a year to other buyers who did the same. For a while, at least one (and at times all three) of the houses belonged to realtor Walter M. Heywood, son of West Berkeley’s lumber magnate Zimri Brewer Heywood (1805–1879) and the trustee of his estate. 

In 1889, the Berkeley directory first listed Berkeley’s town clerk, Charles H. Spear, as living at 2212 Fifth Street. He may have rented the house in 1887, after marrying Tillie Rose Guenette (1870–1952), daughter of pioneer West Berkeley blacksmith and wagon-maker Peter Guenette. Spear’s widowed mother Elizabeth lived with the couple, and the house was registered in her name when the Spears purchased it in 1890 or ’91. In its dozen years of existence up to that point, the house had eight successive owners, of whom the Spears were the very first to occupy the premises. Their three children were born here between 1887 and 1891. 

Charles Henry Spear (1862–1928) was born in Sonora, Tuolumne County, to Bostonian parents. His father, Frederick Augustus Spear, ran a pharmacy there until 1864, when he was appointed druggist to the State Insane Asylum in Stockton. Eventually the Spears moved to Oakland, and in 1882 they arrived in West Berkeley, where Frederick opened a drugstore on the corner of University Avenue and Fifth Street. He died in 1885. 

By 1892, Charles Spear was a notable enough figure to merit a biography in The Bay of San Francisco (Lewis Publishing Co.). He would be the subject of many others in the future, but this version is probably the most accurate: 

Charles H. Spear was educated in the schools of Stockton until 1876, when on the removal of the family to Oakland, he went to work in San Francisco as messenger for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and some two years later as collector for the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company with whom he remained nearly three years. In 1881 he worked for L. M. McKenney & Co., directory publishers, and in 1882 went to Sacramento, where he spent nearly two years as bookkeeper for the H. T. Holmes Lime Co. He was Assistant Postmaster of West Berkeley in 1884, and Postmaster in 1885, conducting also a drug, book and stationery store. In 1885, in partnership with John Rooney, under the style of Rooney & Spear, he also carried on a general store. In 1887 he bought out his partner, and in 1888 sold out all his trading interests. Meanwhile he had been elected Town Clerk, in 1886, entering on the discharge of his official duties in May of that year; and he has been re-elected to that office every year since. 

Spear’s seven-year stint as town clerk ended in May 1893. He went into the real estate business and the following year was elected Alameda county recorder. In February 1900, California governor Henry T. Gage appointed him port warden in San Francisco. The appointment reflected Spear’s intensive involvement in Republican politics. 

In addition to being a member of the Berkeley Republican Club’s executive committee and a trustee of the West Berkeley Improvement Club, Spear also co-managed the 1900 congressional campaign of Alameda County Assessor Henry P. Dalton, a friend and associate of former Oakland mayor Dr. George C. Pardee. (Dalton was plagued by scandals throughout that year and lost the election. In 1911 he would be convicted of bribery and imprisoned at San Quentin, a few cells away from Abe Ruef, who was serving 14 years in connection with the San Francisco graft cases.) 

In 1902, Spear acted as chairman of the state’s Republican campaign committee, which helped put Pardee in the governor’s mansion. The reward was not long in coming: on March 25, 1903, Spear came into “possession of the honors and emoluments attaching to the office of president, State Board of Harbor Commissioners,” as the San Francisco Call succinctly put it. Despite its title, the board’s power was confined to the port of San Francisco, which was owned and managed by the state. 

Midway through his four-year term, Spear had to confront the supreme challenge of dealing with the devastation wreaked by the 1906 earthquake and fire. He passed with flying colors, according to the report of Commander Charles J. Badger of the U.S. Navy, who was in charge of the flagship Chicago _and of the Sixth Marine District of San Francisco. “Spear,” wrote Badger, “immediately responded and his intimate knowledge of all the details of water-side affairs, his wide acquaintance with the local business community, his energetic endeavors to restore normal business conditions in the shipping district in the shortest possible time and his sound and loyal assistance merit the highest praise.” 

Only after Spear’s term ended did it come to light that his administration was not without internal problems. In February 1907, the U.S. Treasury Department asked for the resignation of the port’s deputy surveyor and its customs appraiser on grounds of bad bookkeeping. It was further revealed that “bickering is constant between various departments, the heads of which are barely on speaking terms with each other.” 

Having returned to the private sector, Speak busied himself with real estate investments. The family was now ensconced in a large and handsome new house at 1905 Grove Street. Built in an elaborate Colonial Revival style, it was a showplace and the center of much political activity. 

No contract or completion notices have been found for this house, but assessor’s records and city directory listings indicate that it was constructed in 1904. The architect may have been William H. Wharff (1836–1936), who designed a number of other Colonial Revival residences in the neighborhood, including his own house at 2000 Delaware Street. Wharff’s best-known Berkeley building, the Masonic Temple on the corner of Bancroft and Shattuck, was erected a year later and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

In 1909, Spear was a mayoral candidate in the Berkeley elections but was soundly trounced by Beverly L. Hodghead of the Good Government League. This rivalry did not prevent Spear from joining mayor Hodghead in opposing a proposed annexation of Berkeley to Oakland. On Aug. 26, 1910, the Oakland Tribune reported that “Charles H. Spear is opposed to consolidation because he does not wish to see the pure, ideal government of Berkeley swallowed up in the Babylonian wickedness of Oakland.” The initiative went down to defeat at the ballot box on Sept. 15, 1910, with Berkeley casting 4,009 to 1,402 votes to reject consolidation. West Berkeley was the only district that voted for annexation. 

In 1923, Spear was a member of the campaign committee to institute a council-manager form of government, which Berkeley adopted that year. Also in 1923, Spear was reappointed president of the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, this time by governor Friend W. Richardson. He retired in 1925 after accepting the position of harbor manager in Los Angeles. 

After suffering a heart attack in February 1927, Spear resigned from his Los Angeles job. Returning to Berkeley, he and Tillie lived in a suite at the Whitecotton (Shattuck) Hotel until his death on March 7, 1928. Two days later, he was buried with Masonic rite in Mountain View cemetery. Among his honorary pall bearers were San Francisco mayor James Rolph and former California governors Pardee and Richardson. 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson. 

This grand Colonial Revival house at 1905 MLK Jr. Way was built for Charles H. Spear in 1904. 

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

Annie’s Annuals sent me a promo e-mail a week or two back. Not spam; I’ve put my name on Annie’s mail list because I want to know when the Annies do interesting stuff.  

Annie’s has been around a few years, and survived at least three moves to what should be a more secure location. Gardens, nurseries, plants in general don’t get no respect, and lots of the size Annie’s needs keep getting sold and paved over for shopping malls and bloated housing developments.  

Annie’s is selling holiday tchotchkes, yes, but the main focus of this nifty cottage industry is plants. Annie’s is a fashion-starter. Plants from all over the world show up here, get grown out and tested and sold wholesale—you’ll see them showing up under their great information tags at other nurseries around the area—and, to those savvy enough to find the place, retail. They’re not cheap but the prices are fair and a good investment and they’re always interesting.  

I’m personally fond of Annie’s for all sorts of reasons, including the personalities there. But the big ace bell-ringing golden reason is that this is that unfortunately rare creature, a propagating nursery. Since Annie’s does sell wholesale, plants from there get shipped around in their whole half-grown potted state but the focus is something that gets forgotten in mass marketing and Mallworld: the miracle of living things is that they produce more living things.  

Annie’s doesn’t need to import a containerload of nifty Mediterranean-climate plants from South Africa, or even a truckload of California natives from down the road a piece. To propagate, you put your seed in some dirt or your cuttings in some sand, add water and kindly conditions, and wait a bit. Hallelujah, you get plants!  

And when they grow up enough, look: More seeds, more cuttings, more plants! You can clone an unusual flower and have a whole patch of it. You can also get carried away and homogenize half the civic plantings in the state with it, but here’s where an interest-driven small place like Annie’s makes its own controls. Something else interesting comes along and it all just gets to be too much fun to innovate, and you can’t be bothered to devote an acre or two to baby Sameol’ dittooides.  

A sense of play is vital to good work. Oh yeah. 

Buying everything at Target, we get to forgetting both what resources go into cheap imported crap—what kind of insanity drives international trade as it exists now, and how can we bear to let it destroy what we love?—and how generous the living planet actually is.  

We get air and water and wonderful things to eat and drink and see and smell and hear and feel, and we actually have to do very little to “earn” it. We can have the fun stuff like coffee and chocolate, even; importing doesn’t have to happen in the destructive, wasteful way it does now. All we have to do is, first, not screw it up.

Dash it all! It seems to take so blasted long to get clothed for the office these days, what with button-hooking the boots, those darned gaiters, buttoning those trousers all the way up and then there’s all the layers. My tailoring bill has become absolutely astronomical and my dresser takes a good 45-minutes ironing my shirt, cravat and those endless four-fold handkerchiefs. Perhaps one day, a man will be able to wear only three layers when flagging his Hansom cab to the office, but for now we must plod through, chin high and suffer silently. 

If your chimney could speak, it would say something to this effect and well it should. It’s positively Victorian, you know. 

Brick chimneys are truly a thing of the distant past and have about as much to do with modern living as watch fobs and snuff. Not that I have much against Victorian things. I actually adore them but there are more serious issues afoot than antiquation. Brick chimneys are singularly illogical and ill-fit for the building and habitation of houses and it’s time we put them away, especially if you live near an active fault-line. 

Brick chimneys are like built-in vacuum systems, no more or less romantic than that. They are built-in devices designed to serve a specific function in the home. They are exactly as automatic, efficient and seismically safe as was possible at the time they began insinuating themselves into the fabric of housing so many hundreds of years ago. 

Open fires were the state of the art up until about 200 years ago when a range of alterative heating methods began to come on the scene. Our own Ben Franklin (patron saint of building inspection) invented a class of heating and cooking devices know by his name and this is just one of many inventors who began the process of leading us away from the brick hearth. Nevertheless, the hearth lived on well into the 20th century, changing only to save builders money as it began changing into the sheet metal, poured cement and a range of other novel materials. 

They remained because of our attraction to fire. We still long to dance around the bonfire in the village center or cozy up beside the hearth with someone special (Good dog! Now, Stay). Fire is in our hearts and, as we face the dark time again this winter, it gives us something that only cold weather and long nights can, something deep in the bones that forced air heating can not address. 

So, to be clear, I do not oppose fire. I love it. We all love fire but I would suggest that the days of this particularly cumbersome, expensive and dangerous accoutrement of architecture are done and it is time to move on. I even believe this to be true for older homes (with some few notable exceptions). 

Clearly, fire itself is dangerous and if we are to have fires, they should be contained in a way that minimizes the dangers. Carbon monoxide is a product of fire, however, this concern can be addressed readily enough by the mass use of CO detectors. Every living space should have one. ‘Nuff said. 

Next is the danger that a house will catch fire while using one. Brick fireplaces can become internally cracked in such a way as to allow fire to contact wood framing and inflame the house. While regular and diligently performed inspections can prevent this occurrence, they simply don’t get done. I am not in favor of any system that is based on a) individual responsibility (and memory) for maintenance to prevent fire and death or b) a high level of ability for every service person.  

Frankly, I’m not that worried about the chimney repair personnel. They generally seem an able lot. It’s the owners I’m concerned about. Very few get their chimneys examined or cleaned on a regular basis and a serious accumulation of creosote (a tar-like build-up) can cause a chimney fire and a crack in the wrong place can burn the house down.  

Another concern is the welfare of the environment. Chimneys put out significant levels of particulate emissions and add to air pollution. The particles are quite small and contribute to lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses. As a result, modern requirements for fireplaces are extremely stringent compared with our Victorian era fireplaces and nothing of that sort can be built today in most communities. 

Lastly, there’s that nasty matter of earthquakes. As I’m far too prone to report, we have had no earthquake in any of our lives that is nearly as large as the one that occurred in 1868 on the Hayward fault in the East Bay and this is a likely match for the one we’re waiting on; 4.0 earthquakes (the ones we get from time to time) are roughly 1/30,000th the size of the one we’re waiting on; 7.0 earthquakes take chimneys down. New ones, old ones and anything that looks like one (e.g. That old brick flue that’s running up the wall between the kitchen and dining room). When we get our earthquake, it is likely to take virtually all of them down, no matter how well they’re built. 

For this reason, I recommend that the ones that are inside the house, as opposed to those that run up the exterior, be taken down or reduced in height so as to decrease the degree of harm they pose during that big quake. 

Modern equivalents for fire often seem sorry when compared to the beauty of our old fireplaces and I would turn back on myself and stand in defense of at least a few of the really spectacular ones regardless of the earthquake issues. If you have Clinker brick (the ones that appear melted and odd shaped, often projecting out of the wall plane), it might be worth the risk to keep them and enjoy them as long as possible.  

If you’re willing to spend the money, Clinker or any old brick can be reinstalled over a ductile false-work and withstand fairly large earthquakes although it’s hard to recommend such efforts for all but the most historically or aesthetically profound examples. Like our chap in his 7 piece suit, it’s essential that we keep a few museum examples (as well as a few Gossford Parks) but move on to more practical means of heating and communion for the rest. 

As to that communion. I do think that fire belongs in the home, but how do we do it. In a time when global temperature and CO2 levels continue to rise, it’s not reasonable to be cutting down trees and burning them without some small consideration for the particulate and gases released. Pellet stoves and inserts are far more conservative and create a nice, albeit tiny fire. Gas fireplaces certainly lack the verve and magic of a roaring open fire but do provide a safe and convenient equivalent that one might actually use many more days each year. Further, these same gas fire places can utilize room thermostats and function as real heating for small houses or apartments. Wood burning inserts for stoves have catalytic converters today (not unlike the ones in cars) that reduce particulate and burn a small supply of wood for a longer time, thus decreasing their eco-unfriendliness. 

Even the wood burning fireplaces of today (often called zero-clearance for their ability to install right against wooden framing) are a somewhat more efficient and a better choice than great-grandmother brick. 

I like this move toward backyard fires that I’ve seen lately. Chimineas and fire pits seem to be growing in popularity today and it’s awfully nice to sit about a noisy, dancing fire with a gang of friends sharing the tales of the week.  

I say we start taking them out in the street and bring out the drums. Wait, I think I still have that loin cloth! (Good thing it’ll be dark. This is something you don’t want to see!) 

Tectonic Time Bomb 

Big news in the papers recently: USGS seismic scientists have discovered that the Hayward Fault has had a major rupture every 140 years, on average, since the year 1315. In case you wonder: we’re in the 140th year since the last one. 

Devastation in the Bay area from a 6.7 quake would be enormous. The scientists, however, think that a 7.3 Hayward quake is quite possible: a huge difference in energy and shaking.  

Could this be a good time to prepare? Do you have emergency kits at home and in your cars? Extra water and food? Installed an automatic gas shut-off valve at home? Secured your furniture? 

Make your home secure and your family safe. 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing and kit supply service. Contact him at 558-3299 or see www.quakeprepare.com to receive semi-monthly e-mails and safety reports.  

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Site Revamped” Paintings by Marty McCorkle and Rachel Dawson opens at the Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411.  

FILM 

“Film and Video at CCA: Relational Aesthetics” with filmmakers in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tri Tip Trio at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

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

Kasper/Sherman Quartet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Brian Bromberg’s Down Right Upright All Stars at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 21 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Babshad at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

La Verdad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Mo’ Fone at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mikie Lee and Amber at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Brian Bromberg’s Down Right Upright All Stars at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, NOV. 22 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Mundaze Acoustic at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, NOV. 23 

THEATER 

Anteres Ensemble “Human Voice” by Jean Cocteau at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $25. 415-531-8454. www.AntaresEnsemble.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 

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. ccct.org  

Impact Theatre “A Very Special Money & Run Winter Season Holiday Special” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

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, through Dec. 15. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Wilde Irish Productions “The Children of Lir” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., through Nov. 24 at Gaia Arts Center, 2116 Allston Way. Tickets are $10-$12. 841-7287. www.wildeirish.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Women’s Will “Christmas Memories” readings of Christmas Classics Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at the Pardee Home Museum, Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15. 420-0813. www.womenswill.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Raffi Garabedian, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

David Jacobs-Strain at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Sulky Darky, Tiger Fight at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

The Steve McQuarry Group at 8 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave.  

The Revtones, 1/4 Mile Combo at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Married Couple at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Tuck & Patti at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Made In Equilibrium” works by Michele Elizabeth Lee, Brady Nadell and Ross Drago. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ABCo Artspace, 3135 Oakland, Oakland. www.abcoartspace.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Women’s Will “Christmas Memories” readings of Christmas Classics at 8 p.m. at the Pardee Home Museum, Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15. 420-0813. www.womenswill.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dan Zanes & Friends at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $16-$26. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Barbara Dane and Her Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Marimba Pacifica, Los Bros with guests at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Mere Ours, Tyler Whitmore at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Gary Zellerbach with Georgianna Krieger on saxophone at 8 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave.  

Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Maya Kronfeld Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Nathan Clevinger Group, Jon Arkin Trio at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

David Jeffrey’s Jazz Fourtet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 25 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chamber Music Sundaes featuring San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends, at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$22, at the door. www.chambermusicsundaes.org 

Pulse Brasil at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

David Grossman “Bach for Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Eliyahu & Qadim at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Steve Shaffer and friends at 8 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave.  

MONDAY, NOV. 26 

FILM 

“Live at the Rainbow” Bob Marley & the Wailer’s 1977 show at 8 p.m. at Elmwood Theater, 2966, College Ave. at Ashby. Cost is $10. 433-9730. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alix Olson and friends perform from “Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Judith Thurman reads from “Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Poetry Express Between the Holidays Erotic Poetry Night at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Classical at the Freight with Trio Concertino at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. 

Babshad Jazzz at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

Musica ha Disconnesso, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Louie Romero y su groupo Mazacote at 8:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

“Appropriate for children—enchanting for adults”: It’s rare that such a formula pans out for both parties. But Wilde Irish’s staging of The Children of Lir, going into its second and final weekend this Friday through Sunday at the Gaia Arts Center, off Shattuck on Allston, fulfills that pledge on the cover of their program, the proof being the presence of so many kids, as rapt as the adults at last Sunday’s matinee.  

The Children of Lir is an old Irish story, told by bards and shanachies, then canonized in writing when much of the rest of Europe was undergoing the Dark Ages.  

It’s one of “The Sorrows” of Irish storytelling, and as it deals with the aftermath of one people being conquered by another and the bondage through transformation of the heirs of the older folk, it’s been used as an allegory of Ireland under “the rule of the Saxon.”  

Projected at the rear of the Gaia stage and pictured on the program is the sculpture in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin of a quartet of swans in flight upwards, and four human forms emerging, as if crawling, beneath them. 

The Children of Lir has many of the fabulous, yet matter-of-fact qualities of fairytale and folk stories, those popular reactions to oligarchic myth, which preserve the story, yet often play with, even reverse mythic meaning. There’s a king deprived of what he believes is his rightful ascendancy over his peers and his children, whose birth by a bride offered in atonement assuages him, and the transformation of the four children into swans by a jealous step- 

mother. 

The swans, who sing and cry out “in better Irish” than the folk who adore them, are condemned to their shape for 900 years, equal to the length of English rule of Ireland. They stick together, for “to lose each other is worse than losing human shape,” and are rescued by an Irish saint in this Christianized version (old Celtic tales were preserved in manuscript by monasteries)—but the old people and places and ways are gone with passing time. 

Wilde Irish stages the tale a little like a mummer’s play, with Ian Boyle, Siobhan Doherty, Amanda Prendergast, Martin Waldron and Ken Slattery in costume, facing the audience, and alternately telling the story and speaking in character.  

There’s music and song by the performers, and stepdancing at the climax, all beautifully integrated. Breda Courtney, a founder of Wilde Irish, has adapted the old narrative, shoehorning in a little of the story of St. Patrick and his use of the shamrock to explain the Trinity, in away that strikes a bargain between archaic and modern, old and young.  

It’s crystal clear, as was the original, in text and delivery, each player bringing a different mood to it, all blending together.  

A version of the tale may be found in a Dover reprint—and online—from Joseph Jacobs’ More Celtic Fairytales. Lir corresponds to the Welsh Llyr, seagod and unisputed king, whose children are heroes of The Mabinogion. Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear is thought by some to be a namesake of Lir/Llyr. 

There’s a convivial, holiday tone to the piece, which runs just an hour, perfect for the end of autumn and start of winter. Wilde Irish’s own holiday show, A Joycean Christmas, premieres Dec. 15 at Gaia Arts, which the company refers to as their new home. There’ll be more of Myths and Sagas, too, they promise—maybe “Deirdre of the Sorrows” or “Sweeney Astray”?  

In any case, it’s good to have this Berkeley institution in residence once more. 

Box 

The solo show has become a staple of the theater scene, overlapping into film and TV, ever since Emlyn Williams, Hal Holbrook, James Whitmore and Julie Harris took the stage in the ’50s and ‘60s to play Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Will Rogers (et al!) and Emily Dickinson.  

But these pioneering shows, of character actors impersonating historical figures soliloquizing before or speaking to an audience, have an even more theatrical predecessor—Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice (1930), revived by Antares Ensemble this weekend at the Berkeley City Club, in which an unnamed woman talks to her lover on the phone, maybe for the last time, in a sometimes playful, sometimes desperate game to keep that voice (unheard by the audience) on the line, her hopes and illusions alive. 

According to Angelique Devoine, Antares’ Parisienne dramaturge for this production, Cocteau wrote The Human Voice for his close friend, the great chanteuse Edith Piaf, whom Devoine knew. Piaf, alas, never played the role, but over the decades since it premiered at the Comedie Francaise, it’s been done by Ingrid Bergman (both on film and record), Simone Signoret, Anna Magnani, Carmen Mora and Liv Ullmann.  

Cocteau’s play also has the distinction of inspiring composer Francis Poulenc’s last opera. 

It’s an emotional tour-de-force, but also a carefully and cleverly crafted piece of theatrical art, not a banal slice of life with a technological prop or a one-woman soap opera. As she waits for the call, speaks with charm, ingratiatingly or with anguish to her unseen, unheard lover, the audience can see the expression on her face contradict her voice, catch the funny and touching mannerisms that can’t be broken down into electric impulses and sent over the wire. 

Antares, a Berkeley-based company, has introduced a new wrinkle with the performance of Shruti Tewari as the forlorn woman on the phone. Best known in the South Bay, where she notably appeared in TheatreWorks’ Baby Taj, Tewari was in Golden Thread’s Island of Animals in Fremont last year. She has also performed classical dance here and in her native India. Tewari’s performance in The Human Voice—as seen at a house performance last year—goes beyond both ethnic typecasting and “non-traditional casting” in her creation, under the direction of Antares’ founder Anne Novak, by adding to the cosmopolitan character of the woman, stylizing mannerisms from Tewari’s own background, even adding some endearments in Urdu. 

Novak, who studied theater at the Cours Florent in Paris, and Tewari were both enthusiastic about the fusion of a French play performed by an Indian-American actress; their enthusiasm spills over into the many details, the emotional color and the unexpected humor of Cocteau’s little masterpiece. Tewari splendidly alternates and blends melancholy and playfulness, bringing out the theatricality of life itself, as the woman effectively stages her own tragedy with her hopes and fears, sometimes reminiscent of the piquant tone, the charm—the delicious agony of the ghazal, love song of Moghul India, still enormously popular today. 

The show runs for five performances, Friday through Sunday, as a benefit for the American Concert Association Scholar-ship Fund. It’s the perfect chamber play for the theater salon in the venerable, Julia Morgan-designed City Club. Tewari’s character could easily have lived in such a mansion—or, rare bird that she is, sung in such a gilded cage, over the instrument of the technological age which first transmitted the private conversations of the home over distances and into public space.  

Jean Cocteau, collaborator and friend to Picasso and Stravinsky, to Massine and CoCo Chanel, is probably best known in America for his film of Beauty and the Beast. In his greatest film, Orpheus, Cocteau’s conceit had the inspiration for surreal poetry come over a car radio in the voice of a dead young poet. He called his sped-up adaptation of Antigone “an aerial photograph of the Parthenon.” With The Human Voice, written originally for the star of the gramophone, the conceit is the reverse: the secrets of the heart spilling out in what at first seems just banal chatter, overhearing one side of a phone call. 

My previous column about the birds Joseph Grinnell observed on the UC Berkeley campus drew a response from Allison Shultz, a recent graduate who is now the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’s Centennial Coordinator (more about that below.) Shultz said that for her senior thesis, she replicated surveys done on campus by Margaret Wythe between 1913 and 1927, and by Charles Sibley and Thomas Rodgers in 1938-39. Her results reveal significant changes among those data points. “I saw that the number of species didn’t change much over the years—it actually went up a little—but the community composition changed,” she explains. 

Who were these people? Margaret Wythe was co-author, with Grinnell, of the 1927 Directory to the Bird-Life of the San Francisco Bay Region. She started working for Grinnell at the MVZ in 1912, earning 35 cents an hour. After receiving her Master’s degree, she was promoted to Assistant Curator of Birds in 1925. Wythe was on the Museum’s staff at least into the 1940s, when she prepared the distribution maps for The Distribution of the Birds of California by Grinnell and Alden Miller.  

Charles Sibley came to Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1937, spent part of his World War II service collecting birds in the Solomon Islands, and returned to UC for his PhD under Miller in 1948. He taught here for a couple of decades before moving to Yale. Sibley, a controversial figure who died in 1998, was on the cutting edge of biochemical studies of the evolutionary relationships of birds. He was the one who determined that New World vultures were actually storks of a sort, and that mynahs and mockingbirds were next of kin. Charles Sibley was not related to field guide author/artist David Sibley. 

Thomas L. Rodgers, another of Alden Miller’s students, seems to have been more of a lizard man, although he was the lead author of the article he and Sibley published in the Condor. 

As to methods, Wythe kept meticulous notes on the birds she observed for 14 years, using a workman’s time book. “It looks like an Excel spreadsheet,” says Allison Shultz. Sibley and Rodgers monitored birds for a shorter period, and apparently in a more limited area. Their surveys were bounded by Oxford on the west, Hearst on the north, the Campanile on the east, and Allston on the south. They made morning, noon, and evening walks through that area, recording all bird encounters. 

Shultz says she tried to mimic what Sibley and Rodgers had done, but using point counts instead of line transects. She also examined old photographs to document changes in landscaping on the campus, and mapped the location of buildings in 1939 versus 2006. Her study ran from October through March, so she may have missed some migrants and summer visitors the earlier study recorded. 

Between Wythe’s counts and the Sibley-Rodgers survey, the wrentit—a chaparral-haunting bird, more often heard calling than seen—disappeared from the UC campus. Other species, like the American kestrel, declined. But overall species composition was relatively stable. 

From 1939 to 2006, though, there were dramatic changes. New species appeared: Cooper’s hawk, red-shouldered hawk, mourning dove, white-throated swift, Nuttall’s woodpecker, American crow, common raven, chestnut-backed chickadee. These are not all necessarily nesting records, although Shultz suspects the swifts are nesting on some of campus buildings, maybe the Campanile.  

And there were losses. Sibley and Rodgers saw California quail on almost half their survey days. That species is completely gone now. So are the American kestrel and American pipit. Shultz also reports the disappearance of the spotted towhee, but my friend John Sutake, a keen observer, recalls seeing them recently when he was UC’s lead groundskeeper; maybe they were missed in the resurvey. 

It’s interesting that Shultz found no exotic house sparrows, Eurasian starlings, or rock pigeons in her survey area. “The Cooper’s hawks might keep the pigeons down,” she speculates. 

She also had only a few sightings of white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows, both common winter birds elsewhere in Berkeley. 

The gains and losses reflect an altered habitat. “A lot of open area and scrubby places had been removed,” Shultz says. “The Botanical Garden was where Memorial Glade is now until 1924, and some plants were left there until 1960.” Bushes and scrubby areas were removed in the ‘70s and ‘80s for safety reasons. There are also more, and larger, buildings now. 

Shultz describes plans for further surveys. In connection with the Museum’s centennial, the Grinnell Project is revisiting Joseph Grinnell’s study transects all over the state. Transects through Lassen Volcanic and Yosemite National Parks have been completed, and show significant patterns of range shifts by small mammals in response to climate change.  

If funding is available, the Project will be extended to parts of the Bay Area. “We’ll find qualified observers, have them follow a standard protocol, and enter their observations in an online database,” Shultz explains. Sounds like a great opportunity to get out there with your binoculars and do some Citizen Science. Watch this space for more information. 

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 

“Darwin’s Nightmare” A film on the food supply and the global commodities trade at 6:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, at Arch. www.agrariana.org/film-series 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Middle School Book Group at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 4th floor, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. 

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

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 21 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets 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. 

After-School Program Homework help, drama and music for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 22 

Food Not Bombs Thanksgiving Feast Pot-luck at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Thanksgiving Vegan Potluck Sponsored by the East Bay Vegans from 2 to 5 p.m. in North Berkeley. RSVP to 213-3250. Howarddy2@att.net  

FRIDAY, NOV. 23 

Golden Gate Audobon Society Walk along the Berkeley Waterfront Meet at noon behind Seabreeze Market at the corner of University Ave. and frontage Rd. Heavy rain cancels. 845-5908. 

“Speaking Truth in the Teeth of Power” with Ward Churchill at 7 p.m. at AK Press, 674A 23rd St., between MLK and San Pablo, Oakland. Suggested donation $5. 208-1700. www.akpress.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. 24 

The Icarus Project Five Year Anniversary Party Community potluck and story-sharing at 6 p.m. at AK Press 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. 

13th Annual Womyn of Color Arts and Crafts Fair featuring artists and craftswomen selling their original, handcrafted works, including paintings, clay sculptures, textiles, jewelry, wearable art, and more Sat. and Sun. from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios Sat and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.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. 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 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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. 25 

Solo Sierrans Sunset Walk at the Martinez Regional Shoreline Meet at 3:30 p.m. at the old Amtrak Station near railroad crossing, off Ferry for a leisurely stroll along scenic shoreline and marina, with an optional stop later for dinner. For info call 925-458-0860. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612.  

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan’s “little castle” at 1:15, 2:15, and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Free, donations welcome. 883-9710. 

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 Robin Caton on “Developing Inner Balance” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 . 

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. 26 

“Iraq: Status Report and Options” with Stephen D. Biddle, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations at 4 p.m. in the Lipman Room, 8th flr, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-7747. 

Pools for Berkeley meets to discuss the results of the visioning committee, and November 2008 ballot possibilities to improve Berkeley aquatics at 7 p.m. at City of Berkeley Corporation Yard, Public Meeting Room, 1326 Allston Way. www.poolsforberkeley.org 

“Rising Tides: Helping Coastal Cities Adapt to Sea Level Change” with Kristina Hill, Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, at 7 p.m. at 112 Wurster Hall, UC Campus. 642-4942.  

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

FRIDAY, NOV. 16 

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.  

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.  

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.  

Impact Theatre “A Very Special Money & Run Winter Season Holiday Special” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

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. Through Dec. 15. 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. theater.berkeley.edu 

Wilde Irish Productions “The Children of Lir” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m., through Nov. 24 at Gaia Arts Center, 2116 Allston Way. Tickets are $10-$12. 841-7287. www.wildeirish.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Gift of Art” Group show of mixed media, paintings and sculpture. Reception at 6 p.m. at Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St. 549-1018. 

FILM 

“The Roe’s Room” with filmmaker Lech Majewski in persom at 7 p.m. and “Glass Lips” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Hecho in Califas Yosimar Reyes, poet and He(R)evolition, written and performed by Julia Grob at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dorothea Lasky and Eric Baus read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Bloch Lecture Series “The Castrato in Nature” with Prof. Martha Feldman at 4:30 p.m. at 125 Morrison Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864.  

The Magpies Poetry Reading by Judy Wells, Dale Jensen, Ralph Dranow and Barbara Hazard at 7:30 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. at Ashby.  

Ha Jin talks about “A Free Life” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

Sasha Cagan introduces “To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal about Us” with a “List Slam” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloway’s, 2904 College Ave.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco City Chorus performs Mendelssohn’s “Walpurgisnacht” and Durfle’s ‘Requiem” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-701-7664. www.sfcitychorus.org 

Peace Nick with Roy Zimmerman, satirical songwriter, at 8 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $10-$20, $30 for reception at 6:30 p.m. and show. 525-0302, ext. 306. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Marvin Sanders, flute, Lena Lubotsky, piano at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$76. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Babtunde Lea’s “Summoning of the Ghost” The Art of the Organ Trio with Delbert Bump at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Mamadou & Vanessa Sidibe, Walter Strauss Trio with Stephen Kent at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Studio Band at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Tempest at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Loop Station at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Renee Asteria and Ruben Quinones at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

R&B Free Jazz Gospel Supreme 80 at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Guttermouth, Red Handed, United Defiance at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

The P-PL at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Forrest Day, The Zazous, Deraj the Scatterbrain, Celcius 7 at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$8. 548-1159.  

Tina Malia and Lisbeth Scott at 7:30 p.m. at Sacred Space at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. Cost is $20-$25. 486-8700. 

Bird Head, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Gato Barbieri at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $24-$28. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 17 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Melissa Rivera, bilingual children’s songs, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568.  

The Bubble Lady at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Box Art Benefit Auction to benefit a Youth Fellows Initiative at Pro Arts at 6 p.m. at 550 Second St. 763-9425.  

“Cultural Memories” Color pigment photographs by Mary Ann Hayden. Reception at 5 p.m. at Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St. 644-1400. 

New Work by Susan Anson and Michelle Echenique Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2407 4th St. 549-1543. 

“Exhibit 17: Attention to Detail” Photographic images by Jill Thomas and Lori Nunokawa. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Art Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit #116., Oakland. 535-1702. 

Artists Reception at 2 p.m. at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Avenue, #4. 421-1255. 

“Made In Equilibrium” Works by Michele Elizabeth Lee, Brady Nadell and Ross Drago opens at ABCo Artspace, 3135 Oakland, Oakland. www.abcoartspace.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Visions of Peace & Justice Slideshow and discussion celebrating the publication of “Visions of Peace & Justice: 30 Years of Political Posters from the Archives of Inkworks Press 1974-2007” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. www.inkworkspress.org 

Taubman Piano Seminar with John Bloomfield, Robert Durso, Marc Steiner, others from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sat. and Sun. at Berkeley Piano Club. 2724 Haste St., Berkeley. Suggested donation $110 per day in advance. 523-0213. eswarthout@sbcglobal.net 

“Performing Past and Present” Robert Lepage in conversation with Prof. Anthony J. Cascardi at 7 p.m. at UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Ave. 643-9670. 

art+activism=artivism A discussion on the intersection between arts and community action at 2 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Free. 849-2568.  

William Moor and Jenny Drai read in celebration of the first issue of the poetry journal “Sorry 4 Snake” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Theo Gangi introduces “Bang Bang” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Kitty Burns Florey on “Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Shawna Yang Ryan reads from her debut novel “Locke 1928” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chaskinakuy Andean village music at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com/2007-2008.html 

Chora Nova “Homage to Saint Nicholas” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, at Dana and Durant. Tickets are $10-$18. www.choranova.org 

Kalbass, Alafia Dance Ensemble Haitian Vertieres Celebration at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Taubman Faculty Piano Concert with John Bloomfield, Robert Durso, Marc Steiner, Elizabeth Swarthout, Rebecca Bogart, and Debbie Poryes at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. Suggested donation $20. 523-0213.  

La Monica “The Amorous Lyre: Virtuoso Sonatas and Cantatas of 17th Century Italy” at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College. Tickets are $10-$27. 528-1725.  

University Chorus at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988. 

CUBAHIA! music and dance from Cuba and Brazil at 8 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon St. Oakland. Tickets are $24-$27. 1-800-504-4849.  

Rockinghorse, acoustic rock, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Mamaz, Rebel Diaz, The Getback Crew, hip hop at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Haitian Cultural Extravaganza with Kalbass, Alafia Dance Ensemble and Haitian rap artist J-W, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054.  

Beltaine’s Fire, Scott Simon at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Will Blades Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

House Jacks at 5 and 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Greg Murai & Everyday Wisdom at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Cari Lee & the Saddle-ites, rockabilly, country-jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

Debby Gipsman with Lisa Zeiler, Alyn Kelley and Phil Gorman at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Shook Ones, Easel, Final Flight at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 18 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Works of a Year in Mexico” Paintings by Juana Alicia. Gallery talk by the artist at 3 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

“Works by the late Susannah Fiering” from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita.  

Photographs of Hill Tribe Women in Northern Thailand by Adrienne Miller. Artist talk at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6241. 

“Silent Light” photographs and prints by Jo-Anna Pippen. Reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Albany Community Center Foyer Gallery, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. 524-9283. 

Cambodian Women’s Quilt Project from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Kensington Farmers’ Market, 303 Arlington Ave. 684-6502. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“The Knight” with filmmaker Lech Majewski in person at 4:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Day of the Dead Gallery Talks with artists Joaquin Alejandro Newman and Lisa Ramirez at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Tomás Saraceno: Microscale, Macroscale, and Beyond: Large-Scale Implications of Small-Scale Experiments. Artist talk at 3:30 p.m. at Gallery 1, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

Iroquois Storytelling with artist-illustrators, music and dance at 2 p.m. Other activities at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at Fourth Street Studio, 1717d Fourth St. 527-0600.  

Dogs Party with Editors of The Bark, Cameron Woo and Claudia Kawczynska, at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Dogs welcome, biscuits will be served. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jonathan Rhodes Lee, harpsichordist, performs J.S. Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier, Book I at 4 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

Canciones en Noviembre with Anne Shapiro, mezzo, Duo Trujillo, piano and guitar, at 4 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Donation of $15 to aid Latin American Suzuki Scholarship Fund. 654-4053. 

Madeline Eastman, jazz vocalist at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $15. 228-3218. 

BAY-Peace Open House & Youth Performance Showcase and a chance to support young people who are fighting back against military recruiting and war, from 2 to 5 p.m. at 470 Fruitvale Ave, Oakland. 809-7416.  

Cornelius Cardew Choir, new and experimental choral classics, at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Tickets are $10. 644-6893. 

Cuarteto Latinoamericano in celebration of Jorge Liderman’s 50th Birthday at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34. 642-9988.  

Dan Paul, singer, songwriter, guitarist at 5 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., Point Richmond. Donation $10. 236-0527.  

UC Berkeley’s Danceworx Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $9 at the door.  

Grupo Falso Baiano at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island,2120 Allston Wa. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Felonious with DJ Zeljko, Balkan dance, at 8 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0237, ext. 139. 

Koko de la Isla, Flamenco Open Stage, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Maria Muldaur at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $21.50-$22.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, NOV. 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Recent Landscape Photographs by Rob Reiter” opens at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Cathy Wilkerson describes “Flying Too Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Robert Hass reads from “Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Tellabration! Storytelling by the Stagebridge Theater Company at 3 p.m. at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St at 27th. Tickets are $10-$15. 444-4755.  

Poetry Express with Boundless Gratitude, plus Mark States birthday celebration, at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

West Coast Songwriters Competition at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761  

Pepe y su Orquesta at 8:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Site Revamped” Paintings by Marty McCorkle and Rachel Dawson opens at the Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411.  

FILM 

“Film and Video at CCA: Relational Aesthetics” with filmmakers in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tri Tip Trio at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

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

Kasper/Sherman Quartet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Brian Bromberg’s Down Right Upright All Stars at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 21 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Babshad at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

La Verdad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Mo’ Fone at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mikie Lee and Amber at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Brian Bromberg’s Down Right Upright All Stars at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Awash with the spray of the yet-unconquered sea, the stage at Berkeley Rep (designed by Daniel Ostling) represents the wooden ships and wood palaces of preclassical times, as the cast does the heroes, demigods, goddesses, kings, witches and nymphs from legend that move through. 

This is the changing world described in the post-Homeric panoply of polished scenes from the Argonautika of Apollonius of Rhodes, with Latin variants from Gaius Valerius Flaccus, as rendered by Mary Zimmerman, who’s adapted and directed what could be called a postmodern cover of the epic of the first heroic voyage to the East (ominous predecessor to the Trojan War), the winning of the Golden Fleece by the Greeks, and the tale of the love and later disaffection of Jason and Medea. 

It all starts out innocently enough with a young man (Jake Suffian as Jason), on his way to bid his uncle happy birthday, helping an old lady by carrying her across a raging stream and losing a sandal in the process. 

But the old lady is Hera, Queen of the Gods (a sly Christa Scott-Reed) in disguise; the sandal is pinned to the bed of the stream by the lance of armed Athena (Sofia Jean Gomez), and the uncle is the hypochondriac king (Allen Gilmore), who has usurped his brother’s throne, and sends the well-wishing nephew on an impossible quest because he’s heard a single-sandalled caller will be the death of him.  

The opening vignette of Hera in disguise on Jason’s back (and coquettishly swivelling around, her legs round his hips, to face him) is a good beginning, which seems to bode well for the tone of a story, a collection of episodes, that sprawls over two millenia back to its bookish sources, and maybe as much again before to some of its legendary sources. 

The same holds true for the beginning of the second act, when Hera and Athena huddle with an ingenuous Aphrodite (Tessa Klein, delightfully funny) to get her support and that of her spoiled brat, Eros (Ronette Levenson) to literally stick Medea (Atley Loughridge) with the disconcerting love-pangs of desire for Jason. Her powers will be at his disposal in the impossible contest set by yet another king, Medea’s father Aietes (Soren Oliver), to impede him from swiping the treasured Fleece. 

The delicious convocation of the goddesses, Aphrodite attended by a buff archaic hairdresser, has the comic air of suburban housewives in a sitcom gossipping and cooking up a scheme, yet something rare and fabulous—timeless—about it. 

In an interview published in the program, Zimmerman talks about how she adapted all that sprawling material through compression, working out ways of staging with the cast in mind during a month-long rehearsal period, opening herself up “to the voice of the text,” and sometimes making crazy, impolite, even unconsidered choices, like an arrow shot in the dark. 

Zimmerman’s spiel seems refreshing, compelling even, coming from the Mac-Arthur Fellow who penned hits like Journey to the West and Metamorphoses. In effect, she’s saying that she aims at what Byron and Pushkin, in particular, canonized as the choice modern approach to involved, episodic traditional material: the ongoing improvisation. 

Unfortunately, the results are the opposite of the inventive lightness improvisation should be. Not that Zimmerman’s staging is heavy; it’s a banal pastiche, a grab-bag of all the familiar (even cliched) “presentational” theatrics, performance art and story-telling devices made popular since the ’60s and ’70s. 

The cast of 14 gets little chance to really act or perform except in snatches, otherwise moving around a lot en masse. Besides Scott-Reed and Klein, Soren Oliver is noteworthy for pumping a lot of juice into the part of Hercules, written as a boffo jock. Loughridge seems badly miscast as Medea. Zimmerman’s relation to her sources, which seems mediated by schemata from Joseph Campbell concerning heroic quests for self-knowledge and maturity, seems about the same as a screenwriter thrown into a last-minute rewrite, and her ruminations, even the script itself, have the air of tossing out ideas in a story pitch. 

Onstage, Argonautika rocks back and forth between the forced glee of banal, contemporary sarcasm and an awkward, uneasy pantomime of ancient piety, or of romance in bygone times. There’s not much space for irony once the insouciant plot gets cranked up and running, only to end abruptly in a rushed, premature denouement telling of the various tragic fates of the Argonauts (omitting some of the most interesting in common) and the more familiar tragedy of Medea killing Jason’s young bride and their children, which in true cinematic fashion Zimmerman alludes to, citing the Argonautika as its “prequel.” 

Zimmerman tries to preserve the magical wonder of her material, yet make it contemporary. The result is a kind of tabloid pastiche, but lacking intimacy (which seems to be another of the adaptor’s goals), which the originals achieved through finished, detailed tableau-like episodes, each a compressed cameo story in itself. Zimmerman begins each act with something like this, but the definition of scenes unravels in over-reaching yet banal attempts to improvise, to put the spin, the time stamp of the moment, on a story that’s already proved timeless. 

ARGONAUTIKA 

Berkeley Rep 

2025 Addison St. 

though Dec. 16 

647-2949 

www.berkeleyrep.org 

The New Italian Film Festival, playing this week at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco through Sunday, offers a rich course on the best new filmmakers in Italian film. After this weekend, most of these films will likely never be shown again with English subtitles or ever be released on DVD in the United States.  

On Friday, the films shown are Shelter (6:45 p.m.), a story about a lesbian couple finding a teenage boy hiding in their luggage after a trip to Tunisia, and The Ball (9:15 p.m.), about a boy grappling with growing up with his free spirit single mother.  

Saturday’s movies are One Out of Two (2 p.m.), about a confident lawyer hospitalized with a mysterious illness; Italian Dream (4:30), a suspense and romance story; Me, and the Other (7 p.m.), in which a man suspects a friends of being a terrorist, and Salt Air (9:15 p.m.), about a prison counselor who discovers a new client is his father.  

The festival will close on Sunday with Any Reason Not to Marry? (noon), a movie about a young couple planning a wedding, Shelter (2:30 p.m.), and Flying Lessons (5:15 and 9:15 p.m.), a tale of two Roman teenagers traveling to India. The winning film of the festival, determined by the audience, will be announced at the City of Florence Awards reception at 8 p.m.  

Tickets $11, 1 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco. www.sffs.org or (925) 866-9559.

Our image of Charlie Chaplin is a simple one: a daft little man in baggy clothes, with bowler hat and wicker cane. He’s just a comedian—a silly clown.  

But embodied in that simple outline is an extraordinarily complex figure, both on and behind the screen. Charlie is a tramp, yet with a refined air; he’s a prickly loner who shuns societal norms, yet who longs for love and acceptance. And Chaplin the man bore his own set of contradictions: the Brit who came to embody American comedy; a hero to the masses and a darling of the intellectual set; a lowly comedian who strove for artistic heights; a man who lived for the adulation of the crowd while simultaneously professing to be terrified of his audience.  

Pacific Film Archive is presenting a broad overview of the mercurial comedian’s work through Dec. 19. The retrospective covers all of Chaplin’s feature-length work and a handful of his earlier short films. A few will be presented as part of PFA’s “Matinees For All Ages” series of Saturday afternoon screenings, which come complete with free Fenton’s ice cream in the courtyard after the show. 

The series begins at 2 p.m. Sunday with one of the comedian’s greatest achievements. The Kid (1921) was his first foray into feature-length filmmaking and a breakthrough work in its blending of slapstick and sentiment, a mixture that would become Chaplin’s signature. The 60-minute film will screen along with a shorter comedy, The Pilgrim (1923). 

In the 1910s, screen comedians generally made short films, known as “two-reelers,” a reel running roughly 10 minutes. These were the hors d’oeuvres of the cinema experience, shown along with newsreels and cartoons before the feature. Most two-reelers consisted of knockabout slapstick and it was thought that such antics could not be sustained over the course of a full-length feature. Chaplin, however, from the beginning of his solo career in 1914, had set a new standard for slapstick, slowing the pace and establishing character, not roughhouse, as the primary source of comedy. By the time he made The Kid, his Little Tramp character was beloved the world over for his anarchic antics and impish temperament.  

Chaplin had started his film career with Mack Sennett’s Keystone studio before setting out on his own under the auspices of Essanay Studios here in the East Bay. After 14 films with Essanay, Chaplin negotiated a more lucrative and artistically independent contract with Mutual, where he made a dozen two-reelers that firmly established his reputation as the prevailing comedian of his day. This was his most concentrated and fruitful period, with each of the 12 films building on the achievements of its predecessor.  

When Chaplin left Mutual for First National, he didn’t do it for the money, nor for creative control, for he had plenty of both. What he sought was time; his new contract would relieve him of the pressure of turning out films on a predetermined schedule. He would finally have room to breathe.  

Enter Jackie Coogan. Chaplin had seen the 4-year-old boy performing with his father in a music hall and immediately signed the child for his next film. In Coogan Chaplin found his first and only true co-star, the only performer with whom he would share the screen as an equal. Coogan gave one of the screen’s truly great child performances and immediately established himself as a star. 

When Chaplin outlined the film’s plot and revealed to a colleague his plan to bring drama to low comedy, he was told it couldn’t be done, that each form required purity, and as a consequence at least one half of his story was bound to suffer. 

The Kid begins with the Tramp wandering alone through back alleys where he stumbles upon an abandoned baby and reluctantly adopts the child as his own. Here, for the first time, the Tramp seems to live a truly normal domestic existence as he raises Jackie until authorities come calling a few years later, taking the child from him by force. Again, Chaplin presents us with the Tramp as the perennial outsider, in the world but never part of it. In the end Charlie seems to gain entry into civilized society, but the image is somewhat incongruous as Chaplin intentionally leaves the conclusion ambiguous. 

With The Kid, Chaplin raised the emotional level to a new high, introducing true drama to his work. In the process he delved further into his own memories of childhood in an orphanage in the slums of England. The result was a deepening of the character of the Tramp in a film many critics consider his most successful creation—a near-perfect blending of pathos and humor. All of his films, Chaplin later noted, received mixed reviews, except for The Kid—for decades it was his one unanimously proclaimed triumph. 

Chaplin would of course go on to even more ambitious work. His later work would include three more masterpieces (The Gold Rush, The Circus, City Lights), two great but flawed films (Modern Times, The Great Dictator), and two solid late-career films (Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight). But The Kid holds a special spot in the Chaplin canon, for it represents the first full flowering of a mature artist.  

The Pilgrim 

Chaplin’s remaining films for First National during this period are something of a mixed bag, ranging from ambitious satiric slapstick (Shoulder Arms, The Pilgrim, A Dog’s Life) to simple two-reelers in the vein of his earlier work (Payday, A Day’s Pleasure), and one failure (Sunnyside). He was gradually lengthening his films, venturing into more complex comedic territory, but The Kid took so much of his time that he was obliged to crank out a few simpler films to satisfy distributors and theater owners.  

The Pilgrim is one of the better films from this era. It is essentially a classic Chaplin two-reeler expanded to four reels. Chaplin sets up the situation with superb efficiency. Within two minutes we have the basic outline: Escaped convict Charlie has traded his prison clothes for the unattended frock of a bathing priest. When Chaplin, in the minister’s clothing, arrives at the train station he finds himself in a series of hilariously unnecessary chases before boarding a train and stumbling into a fortuitous situation when he arrives in a Texas town and is mistaken for the long-awaited new preacher.  

Chaplin peppers the action with numerous sight gags that recall the convict’s unruly past. When he stands at the ticket window at the train station, he reflexively grasps the bars as though it were a cell. Out of habit, he crawls underneath the train as a stowaway before a conductor takes his ticket and guides him to a proper seat. When expected to deliver a sermon while masquerading as the Reverend Pim, he takes a drink from a glass of water and props his elbow on the podium while his foot reveals the character’s predilection for the wild life by searching habitually and in vain for a bar on which to rest.  

Though The Pilgrim doesn’t aim for the sort of emotional depth of The Kid, Chaplin again manages to straddle two worlds. His Tramp is both criminal and hero, a troubled outsider who strives for respectability—at least when respectability comes in the guise of alluring leading lady Edna Purviance. In the end he is released along the Mexican border by a benevolent sheriff, yet as he stands on Mexican soil and casts his arms wide in celebration of his freedom, a pack of desperadoes leaps from the underbrush and begins firing guns at one another—hardly a hospitable environment in which to start anew. Thus the Tramp flees by running gingerly along the border, one foot in each country, as always a citizen of the world, but without a home of his own.  

“Wow.” The word permeates The Life of Reilly, a new film of a one-man show by the late actor Charles Nelson Reilly. And with each utterance of the word, we get the sense that it’s the only time when this consummate entertainer is not totally in control of his performance. The word just seems to seep out, almost reflexively, at quiet moments during the show. It is as though Reilly himself is still marveling at his own past, reliving his memories, experiencing the formative events of his life all over again, but with the wisdom and awe of an older man keenly aware that he was too young to fully appreciate the depth, the pain, the humor and the madness of his life as he was living it.  

Charles Nelson Reilly was first and foremost a stage actor, on Broadway and off, as well as a comedian, director and acting teacher. But he had always dreamed of being on television, and that’s how he is best remembered, as a familiar face in dozens of television sitcoms, commercials, and, in the 1970s, as a flamboyant wit on campy game shows. He died earlier this year from complications of pneumonia at the age of 76. 

From 2000 to 2003, Reilly toured the country with a critically acclaimed one-man show entitled Save It for the Stage. Later, after Reilly had retired the show, directors Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson persuaded the actor to revive it for just one night so that they could capture it on film. The three-hour show was re-fashioned in the editing room into a 90-minute film that opens this week at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley.  

It is easy to see how this compelling performer could carry a live show for three hours, yet it is also understandable that the film’s producers would consider that a bit too long for a movie version. But one thing is clear: 90 minutes is just not enough. Reilly is outstanding—his performance is by turns hilarious and tragic, sarcastic and solemn, incredulous and insightful. Hopefully the DVD version will contain the full show, or at least a plentiful sampling of what was cut.  

Reilly took his original title, Save It for the Stage, from a repeated saying of his mother’s, an abrupt conversation-ending rebuke meant to discourage her son from discussing the family’s tragedies and secrets. And save it he did, for decades, until, in his golden years, he used it as the source material for this hilarious tour-de-force of confessional theater.  

Reilly’s performance is full of surprising twists and turns. Laugh lines are followed by poignant moments of pain and doubt. Dramatic scenes are punctuated by sudden outbursts and comic asides. “That’s called a dramatic turn,” Reilly informs the crowd at one point, with mock self-congratulation. “Very few actors can do that.” 

Reilly is just far too whimsical and self-deprecating an actor to play it straight. Every time he lures us into the story with his dramatic talents, he jolts us out of it with his humor, stepping outside the show to comment on the performance, on the staging, on the audience’s responses to the material. Humor is the lifeblood of the man and of the show. 

But when he speaks of the saving grace of laughter, Reilly doesn’t speak of it in philosophical terms; he doesn’t talk of recognizing the cosmic absurdity of life, though the implication is there, and lingers after the show’s conclusion. For a man with Reilly’s background and ambition, there was little time to sit back and marvel at God’s sense of humor. Instead he was developing his own, using it to battle against the precarious circumstances of a man of a particular upbringing, with a particular sexual orientation, chasing a particular dream in a particularly public arena.  

His youth was spent in a world of bitterness, recrimination and tragedy. Reilly’s mother was harsh and unyielding, prone to smashing the dreams of others before they could even take shape. She made her husband refuse Walt Disney’s invitation to collaborate in the great animator’s transition to color films; she tried mightily to foil her son’s ambition to act, first in grade school, then as an adult. Reilly’s father, crushed by unemployment and the missed opportunity of partnering with Disney, slipped into despair and institutionalization along a slope lubricated with alcohol, forcing his wife and son to move in with an extended family that included a lobotomized chain-smoking aunt.  

And when Reilly finally escaped from the madness and made his way to New York City, he was brought low at what he thought was the peak when the president of NBC extended the courtesy of bringing Reilly to the dizzying heights of his lofty Manhattan office only to tell the would-be star face to face that “they don’t allow queers on television.” 

So surely the man can be forgiven for having been too preoccupied to appreciate the absurdity of the universe. He had rent to pay. Laughter wasn’t a form of existential consolation; it was a survival mechanism, a crutch, a tool with which to survive from minute to minute and from day to day. But he had the talent and good fortune to transform that survival mechanism into a career—a career that ends with The Life of Reilly—a rousing artistic peak. 

Image: The late Charles Nelson Reilly on stage in his final performance.

Mystery is the reverse side of history. Berkeley, a city chock-full of historic houses, naturally has its share of mysteries—interesting structures about whose origin little or nothing is known. 

Berkeleyans who enjoy exploring the town will have seen the lone pink Italianate Victorian standing at 2212 Fifth Street just south of Allston Way. Even those who don’t get about too much should be familiar with the grand Colonial Revival house guarded by two majestic palm trees at 1905 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (formerly Grove St.), just below Hearst Avenue. 

Despite decades of research at the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, nobody knows who designed these two houses and by whom they were built. 

But the houses have more than mystery in common: they also share a history, having been the successive homes of one prominent family, whose head was an imposing figure in local affairs as well as in state politics. 

The pink Italianate, now clad in asbestos shingles but originally clapboarded, was one of three similar but not identical houses built circa 1877 on the site of John A. Carbone’s future orchid nursery. The other two were located at 728 Allston Way and 2213 Fifth Street. The three were first mentioned on February 2, 1878 in the Berkeley Advocate, which announced that “the three fine houses built by the Berkeley Real Estate Union, and situated nearly opposite the [Standard] soap factory have been sold to a Chicagoan, who intends to make his home in Berkeley.” 

The Berkeley Real Estate Union was located on the northwest corner of University and Shattuck Avenues. The manager was M. McDonnell, who lived in San Francisco. The company existed only in 1877 and 1878, and during the first six months of 1877 it advertised regularly (sometimes weekly, sometimes daily) in the Oakland Evening Tribune, offering “houses built and sold on the installment plan” and “land for sale in all parts of Berkeley.” 

The man who bought the three houses was one Charles Montgomery, a speculator who never became a Berkeley resident. By the following year, he had sold the houses to three different men, speculators like himself, who also turned over the properties within a year to other buyers who did the same. For a while, at least one (and at times all three) of the houses belonged to realtor Walter M. Heywood, son of West Berkeley’s lumber magnate Zimri Brewer Heywood (1805–1879) and the trustee of his estate. 

In 1889, the Berkeley directory first listed Berkeley’s town clerk, Charles H. Spear, as living at 2212 Fifth Street. He may have rented the house in 1887, after marrying Tillie Rose Guenette (1870–1952), daughter of pioneer West Berkeley blacksmith and wagon-maker Peter Guenette. Spear’s widowed mother Elizabeth lived with the couple, and the house was registered in her name when the Spears purchased it in 1890 or ’91. In its dozen years of existence up to that point, the house had eight successive owners, of whom the Spears were the very first to occupy the premises. Their three children were born here between 1887 and 1891. 

Charles Henry Spear (1862–1928) was born in Sonora, Tuolumne County, to Bostonian parents. His father, Frederick Augustus Spear, ran a pharmacy there until 1864, when he was appointed druggist to the State Insane Asylum in Stockton. Eventually the Spears moved to Oakland, and in 1882 they arrived in West Berkeley, where Frederick opened a drugstore on the corner of University Avenue and Fifth Street. He died in 1885. 

By 1892, Charles Spear was a notable enough figure to merit a biography in The Bay of San Francisco (Lewis Publishing Co.). He would be the subject of many others in the future, but this version is probably the most accurate: 

Charles H. Spear was educated in the schools of Stockton until 1876, when on the removal of the family to Oakland, he went to work in San Francisco as messenger for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and some two years later as collector for the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company with whom he remained nearly three years. In 1881 he worked for L. M. McKenney & Co., directory publishers, and in 1882 went to Sacramento, where he spent nearly two years as bookkeeper for the H. T. Holmes Lime Co. He was Assistant Postmaster of West Berkeley in 1884, and Postmaster in 1885, conducting also a drug, book and stationery store. In 1885, in partnership with John Rooney, under the style of Rooney & Spear, he also carried on a general store. In 1887 he bought out his partner, and in 1888 sold out all his trading interests. Meanwhile he had been elected Town Clerk, in 1886, entering on the discharge of his official duties in May of that year; and he has been re-elected to that office every year since. 

Spear’s seven-year stint as town clerk ended in May 1893. He went into the real estate business and the following year was elected Alameda county recorder. In February 1900, California governor Henry T. Gage appointed him port warden in San Francisco. The appointment reflected Spear’s intensive involvement in Republican politics. 

In addition to being a member of the Berkeley Republican Club’s executive committee and a trustee of the West Berkeley Improvement Club, Spear also co-managed the 1900 congressional campaign of Alameda County Assessor Henry P. Dalton, a friend and associate of former Oakland mayor Dr. George C. Pardee. (Dalton was plagued by scandals throughout that year and lost the election. In 1911 he would be convicted of bribery and imprisoned at San Quentin, a few cells away from Abe Ruef, who was serving 14 years in connection with the San Francisco graft cases.) 

In 1902, Spear acted as chairman of the state’s Republican campaign committee, which helped put Pardee in the governor’s mansion. The reward was not long in coming: on March 25, 1903, Spear came into “possession of the honors and emoluments attaching to the office of president, State Board of Harbor Commissioners,” as the San Francisco Call succinctly put it. Despite its title, the board’s power was confined to the port of San Francisco, which was owned and managed by the state. 

Midway through his four-year term, Spear had to confront the supreme challenge of dealing with the devastation wreaked by the 1906 earthquake and fire. He passed with flying colors, according to the report of Commander Charles J. Badger of the U.S. Navy, who was in charge of the flagship Chicago _and of the Sixth Marine District of San Francisco. “Spear,” wrote Badger, “immediately responded and his intimate knowledge of all the details of water-side affairs, his wide acquaintance with the local business community, his energetic endeavors to restore normal business conditions in the shipping district in the shortest possible time and his sound and loyal assistance merit the highest praise.” 

Only after Spear’s term ended did it come to light that his administration was not without internal problems. In February 1907, the U.S. Treasury Department asked for the resignation of the port’s deputy surveyor and its customs appraiser on grounds of bad bookkeeping. It was further revealed that “bickering is constant between various departments, the heads of which are barely on speaking terms with each other.” 

Having returned to the private sector, Speak busied himself with real estate investments. The family was now ensconced in a large and handsome new house at 1905 Grove Street. Built in an elaborate Colonial Revival style, it was a showplace and the center of much political activity. 

No contract or completion notices have been found for this house, but assessor’s records and city directory listings indicate that it was constructed in 1904. The architect may have been William H. Wharff (1836–1936), who designed a number of other Colonial Revival residences in the neighborhood, including his own house at 2000 Delaware Street. Wharff’s best-known Berkeley building, the Masonic Temple on the corner of Bancroft and Shattuck, was erected a year later and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

In 1909, Spear was a mayoral candidate in the Berkeley elections but was soundly trounced by Beverly L. Hodghead of the Good Government League. This rivalry did not prevent Spear from joining mayor Hodghead in opposing a proposed annexation of Berkeley to Oakland. On Aug. 26, 1910, the Oakland Tribune reported that “Charles H. Spear is opposed to consolidation because he does not wish to see the pure, ideal government of Berkeley swallowed up in the Babylonian wickedness of Oakland.” The initiative went down to defeat at the ballot box on Sept. 15, 1910, with Berkeley casting 4,009 to 1,402 votes to reject consolidation. West Berkeley was the only district that voted for annexation. 

In 1923, Spear was a member of the campaign committee to institute a council-manager form of government, which Berkeley adopted that year. Also in 1923, Spear was reappointed president of the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, this time by governor Friend W. Richardson. He retired in 1925 after accepting the position of harbor manager in Los Angeles. 

After suffering a heart attack in February 1927, Spear resigned from his Los Angeles job. Returning to Berkeley, he and Tillie lived in a suite at the Whitecotton (Shattuck) Hotel until his death on March 7, 1928. Two days later, he was buried with Masonic rite in Mountain View cemetery. Among his honorary pall bearers were San Francisco mayor James Rolph and former California governors Pardee and Richardson. 

Photograph by Daniella Thompson. 

This grand Colonial Revival house at 1905 MLK Jr. Way was built for Charles H. Spear in 1904. 

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

Annie’s Annuals sent me a promo e-mail a week or two back. Not spam; I’ve put my name on Annie’s mail list because I want to know when the Annies do interesting stuff.  

Annie’s has been around a few years, and survived at least three moves to what should be a more secure location. Gardens, nurseries, plants in general don’t get no respect, and lots of the size Annie’s needs keep getting sold and paved over for shopping malls and bloated housing developments.  

Annie’s is selling holiday tchotchkes, yes, but the main focus of this nifty cottage industry is plants. Annie’s is a fashion-starter. Plants from all over the world show up here, get grown out and tested and sold wholesale—you’ll see them showing up under their great information tags at other nurseries around the area—and, to those savvy enough to find the place, retail. They’re not cheap but the prices are fair and a good investment and they’re always interesting.  

I’m personally fond of Annie’s for all sorts of reasons, including the personalities there. But the big ace bell-ringing golden reason is that this is that unfortunately rare creature, a propagating nursery. Since Annie’s does sell wholesale, plants from there get shipped around in their whole half-grown potted state but the focus is something that gets forgotten in mass marketing and Mallworld: the miracle of living things is that they produce more living things.  

Annie’s doesn’t need to import a containerload of nifty Mediterranean-climate plants from South Africa, or even a truckload of California natives from down the road a piece. To propagate, you put your seed in some dirt or your cuttings in some sand, add water and kindly conditions, and wait a bit. Hallelujah, you get plants!  

And when they grow up enough, look: More seeds, more cuttings, more plants! You can clone an unusual flower and have a whole patch of it. You can also get carried away and homogenize half the civic plantings in the state with it, but here’s where an interest-driven small place like Annie’s makes its own controls. Something else interesting comes along and it all just gets to be too much fun to innovate, and you can’t be bothered to devote an acre or two to baby Sameol’ dittooides.  

A sense of play is vital to good work. Oh yeah. 

Buying everything at Target, we get to forgetting both what resources go into cheap imported crap—what kind of insanity drives international trade as it exists now, and how can we bear to let it destroy what we love?—and how generous the living planet actually is.  

We get air and water and wonderful things to eat and drink and see and smell and hear and feel, and we actually have to do very little to “earn” it. We can have the fun stuff like coffee and chocolate, even; importing doesn’t have to happen in the destructive, wasteful way it does now. All we have to do is, first, not screw it up.

Dash it all! It seems to take so blasted long to get clothed for the office these days, what with button-hooking the boots, those darned gaiters, buttoning those trousers all the way up and then there’s all the layers. My tailoring bill has become absolutely astronomical and my dresser takes a good 45-minutes ironing my shirt, cravat and those endless four-fold handkerchiefs. Perhaps one day, a man will be able to wear only three layers when flagging his Hansom cab to the office, but for now we must plod through, chin high and suffer silently. 

If your chimney could speak, it would say something to this effect and well it should. It’s positively Victorian, you know. 

Brick chimneys are truly a thing of the distant past and have about as much to do with modern living as watch fobs and snuff. Not that I have much against Victorian things. I actually adore them but there are more serious issues afoot than antiquation. Brick chimneys are singularly illogical and ill-fit for the building and habitation of houses and it’s time we put them away, especially if you live near an active fault-line. 

Brick chimneys are like built-in vacuum systems, no more or less romantic than that. They are built-in devices designed to serve a specific function in the home. They are exactly as automatic, efficient and seismically safe as was possible at the time they began insinuating themselves into the fabric of housing so many hundreds of years ago. 

Open fires were the state of the art up until about 200 years ago when a range of alterative heating methods began to come on the scene. Our own Ben Franklin (patron saint of building inspection) invented a class of heating and cooking devices know by his name and this is just one of many inventors who began the process of leading us away from the brick hearth. Nevertheless, the hearth lived on well into the 20th century, changing only to save builders money as it began changing into the sheet metal, poured cement and a range of other novel materials. 

They remained because of our attraction to fire. We still long to dance around the bonfire in the village center or cozy up beside the hearth with someone special (Good dog! Now, Stay). Fire is in our hearts and, as we face the dark time again this winter, it gives us something that only cold weather and long nights can, something deep in the bones that forced air heating can not address. 

So, to be clear, I do not oppose fire. I love it. We all love fire but I would suggest that the days of this particularly cumbersome, expensive and dangerous accoutrement of architecture are done and it is time to move on. I even believe this to be true for older homes (with some few notable exceptions). 

Clearly, fire itself is dangerous and if we are to have fires, they should be contained in a way that minimizes the dangers. Carbon monoxide is a product of fire, however, this concern can be addressed readily enough by the mass use of CO detectors. Every living space should have one. ‘Nuff said. 

Next is the danger that a house will catch fire while using one. Brick fireplaces can become internally cracked in such a way as to allow fire to contact wood framing and inflame the house. While regular and diligently performed inspections can prevent this occurrence, they simply don’t get done. I am not in favor of any system that is based on a) individual responsibility (and memory) for maintenance to prevent fire and death or b) a high level of ability for every service person.  

Frankly, I’m not that worried about the chimney repair personnel. They generally seem an able lot. It’s the owners I’m concerned about. Very few get their chimneys examined or cleaned on a regular basis and a serious accumulation of creosote (a tar-like build-up) can cause a chimney fire and a crack in the wrong place can burn the house down.  

Another concern is the welfare of the environment. Chimneys put out significant levels of particulate emissions and add to air pollution. The particles are quite small and contribute to lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses. As a result, modern requirements for fireplaces are extremely stringent compared with our Victorian era fireplaces and nothing of that sort can be built today in most communities. 

Lastly, there’s that nasty matter of earthquakes. As I’m far too prone to report, we have had no earthquake in any of our lives that is nearly as large as the one that occurred in 1868 on the Hayward fault in the East Bay and this is a likely match for the one we’re waiting on; 4.0 earthquakes (the ones we get from time to time) are roughly 1/30,000th the size of the one we’re waiting on; 7.0 earthquakes take chimneys down. New ones, old ones and anything that looks like one (e.g. That old brick flue that’s running up the wall between the kitchen and dining room). When we get our earthquake, it is likely to take virtually all of them down, no matter how well they’re built. 

For this reason, I recommend that the ones that are inside the house, as opposed to those that run up the exterior, be taken down or reduced in height so as to decrease the degree of harm they pose during that big quake. 

Modern equivalents for fire often seem sorry when compared to the beauty of our old fireplaces and I would turn back on myself and stand in defense of at least a few of the really spectacular ones regardless of the earthquake issues. If you have Clinker brick (the ones that appear melted and odd shaped, often projecting out of the wall plane), it might be worth the risk to keep them and enjoy them as long as possible.  

If you’re willing to spend the money, Clinker or any old brick can be reinstalled over a ductile false-work and withstand fairly large earthquakes although it’s hard to recommend such efforts for all but the most historically or aesthetically profound examples. Like our chap in his 7 piece suit, it’s essential that we keep a few museum examples (as well as a few Gossford Parks) but move on to more practical means of heating and communion for the rest. 

As to that communion. I do think that fire belongs in the home, but how do we do it. In a time when global temperature and CO2 levels continue to rise, it’s not reasonable to be cutting down trees and burning them without some small consideration for the particulate and gases released. Pellet stoves and inserts are far more conservative and create a nice, albeit tiny fire. Gas fireplaces certainly lack the verve and magic of a roaring open fire but do provide a safe and convenient equivalent that one might actually use many more days each year. Further, these same gas fire places can utilize room thermostats and function as real heating for small houses or apartments. Wood burning inserts for stoves have catalytic converters today (not unlike the ones in cars) that reduce particulate and burn a small supply of wood for a longer time, thus decreasing their eco-unfriendliness. 

Even the wood burning fireplaces of today (often called zero-clearance for their ability to install right against wooden framing) are a somewhat more efficient and a better choice than great-grandmother brick. 

I like this move toward backyard fires that I’ve seen lately. Chimineas and fire pits seem to be growing in popularity today and it’s awfully nice to sit about a noisy, dancing fire with a gang of friends sharing the tales of the week.  

I say we start taking them out in the street and bring out the drums. Wait, I think I still have that loin cloth! (Good thing it’ll be dark. This is something you don’t want to see!) 

Tectonic Time Bomb 

Big news in the papers recently: USGS seismic scientists have discovered that the Hayward Fault has had a major rupture every 140 years, on average, since the year 1315. In case you wonder: we’re in the 140th year since the last one. 

Devastation in the Bay area from a 6.7 quake would be enormous. The scientists, however, think that a 7.3 Hayward quake is quite possible: a huge difference in energy and shaking.  

Could this be a good time to prepare? Do you have emergency kits at home and in your cars? Extra water and food? Installed an automatic gas shut-off valve at home? Secured your furniture? 

Make your home secure and your family safe. 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing and kit supply service. Contact him at 558-3299 or see www.quakeprepare.com to receive semi-monthly e-mails and safety reports.  

FRIDAY, NOV. 16 

Iraq Moratorium Action from 2 to 4 p.m. at the corner of University and Acton. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Assoc. and the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Don Gibbs on “The Surprising China” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“When the Levees Broke: An American Tragedy” Parts 3 and 4 of Spike Lee’s documentary a 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 

“Day of Empire” with Amy Chua, Prof. of Law, Yale Law School on the world’s hyperpowers, at noon at 145 Dwinelle, UC Campus. 642-7747. 

Community-Seekers’ Fair Presentation on how to find and evaluate an ecovillage or other kind of intentional community, at 7:30 p.m. at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave. Donation $15-$20. RSVP at www.norcalcoho.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. 17 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour of “In Celebration of Berkeley’s Downtown Parks” Led by Steve Finacom. 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/ 

Berkeley Path Wanderers explores Oakland’s historic paths and stairways. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Morcom Amphitheater of Roses entrance, 700 Jean St., off Grand Ave. for a hilly walk in Grand Lake and Trestle Glen neighborhoods. 848-9358.  

Plant Natives on Berkeley Paths with Friends of Five Creeks and Berkeley Path Wanderers. Meet at 10 a.m. at the bottom of lower Glendale Path, Glendale Ave. at Campus Dr. Light picnic follows. 848-9358.  

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets to discuss Berkeley’s vision of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) with Gregory Harper, President of AC Transit’s Board of Directors, at 9:15 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 2407 Dana St., Room 208, second flr. 

Visions of Peace & Justice Slideshow and discussion examining the role of political posters and graphics as mass communication tools for social justice movements, celebrating the publication of “Visions of Peace & Justice: 30 Years of Political Posters from the Archives of Inkworks Press 1974-2007” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. www.inkworkspress.org 

Arts and Crafts Benefit Show from 11:30 to 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5. Early admission at 10:30 a.m. for $20.  

Fall Plant Sale at Merritt College from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Landscape Horticulture Grounds, 12500 Campus Drive, Oakland. 531-4911. www.merrittlandhort.com 

Basic Gardening Techniques Learn soil preparation, planting techniques, mulching choices and pruning dos and don’ts at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. www.magicgardens.com 

“Facing State Violence: Truth, Justice and Healing” A conference sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Cost is $40-$80, scholarships available. 415-565-0201, ext. 24. www. 

afsc.org/pacificmtn/default.htm 

Jobs, Housing & Justice in Oakland A community meeting on developing the good jobs, affordable housing, and healthy communities that Oaklanders need. Registration begins at 9:30 a.m. at St. Anthony’s School Gym, 1500 15th St., Oakland. Conference runs to 2 p.m. Lunch will be served. Childcare and translation will be available. RSVP to 893-7106, ext. 20. 

Green Career Conference with the Solar Living Institute from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the UC Campus. Cost is $100-$175. RSVP to 707-744-2017. http://www.solarliving.org/workshops 

Ecovillages, Cohousing Neighborhoods, & Intentional Communities A conference from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $45-$75 sliding scale. To register see www.norcalcoho.org  

“Screwed Pooch” with author Jan Millsapps on Laika the Russian dog who rode Sputnik 2 as the first creature to orbit Earth at 6:45 p.m. at Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. 336-7300.  

Common Agenda meeting on reordering federal priorities from the military to human and environmental needs at 2 p.m. at Peace Action West, 2800 Adeline. 527-9584. 

The Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale with vintage, collectible and rare books and a silent auction, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Albany Library/Community Center, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

California Writers Club, meets to discuss “Two Writers and a Publisher, the Latest News” at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square, Oakland. 272-0120.  

A Sufi Celebration “Hidden Angles of Life” with lectures meditation poetry and music at 7 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. 866-393-1706. :www.sufiassociation.org 

Mr. Potato Head Beauty Pageant Create your own potato personality, for all ages, at 1 p.m. at The Museum of Children’s Art, 528 Ninth St., Oakland. Cost is $7. 465-8770. 

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. RSVP to 228-3207. 

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.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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. 18 

Family Explorations: Tales and Traditions of CA Indians with storytelling and hands-on activities from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“Acknowledging the Legacy: Rethinking Thanksgiving” Artists and activists discuss the complex history of Thankgiving and the legacy of US colonialism and genocide against Native Americans at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$25. 849-2568.  

Kindergarten Information Reception for preschool parents to learn about Berkeley public schools from 4 to 6 pm. at Easton Great Hall, 2401 Ridge Rd. Free but RSVP to 644-6244. 

“Solar Hot Water Heater Workshop” from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St. Enter via the garden entrance on Peralta. Cost is $15, sliding scale, no one turned away. 548-2220, ext. 242. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. info@eastbaylabyrinthproject.org 

George Pauley Memorial at 4 p.m. at Caffe Mediterraneum, 2475 Telegraph Ave. Bring stories and memories to share. 848-2995. 

“What is Post-Modernism, and Why is it so Threatening to Marxism—or Is It?” at 10 a.m. at NPML, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland. 595-741. 

East Bay Atheists meets to view and discuss a video of two talks from the American Atheists April Convention, at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 3rd Floor Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. 

Dharma Dialogue with Catherine Ingram, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, at 7 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. www.eastbayopencircle.org  

BAY-Peace Open House & Youth Performance Showcase and a chance to support young people who are fighting back against military recruiting and war, from 2 to 5 p.m. at 470 Fruitvale Ave., Oakland. 809-7416.  

Seedball Making Learn how to mold clay, compost and seeds into small balls to be dried and scattered, perhaps in a neglected vacant lot. The seeds are protected until the seedball gets wet in the rain, and the seeds are ready to grow. From noon to 3 p.m. at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave. Bring your own cup, if possible, and a bag or box to carry home your seedballs. Children welcome. 655-8252. http://digcity.coop/greencitygallery/ 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

MONDAY, NOV. 19 

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock on Public Service Brown bag lunch at 12:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“Solar 101 for Homeowners” A presentation by Jay Hermon, solar energy consultant at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

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

TUESDAY, NOV. 20 

“Darwin’s Nightmare” A film on the food supply and the global commodities trade at 6:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, at Arch. www.agrariana.org/film-series 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Middle School Book Group at 4 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 4th floor, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. 

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

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 21 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets 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. 

After-School Program Homework help, drama and music for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 22 

Food Not Bombs Thanksgiving Feast Pot-luck at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Thanksgiving Vegan Potluck Sponsored by the East Bay Vegans from 2 to 5 p.m. in North Berkeley. RSVP to 213-3250. Howarddy2@att.net  

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., Nov. 19, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 644-6128 ext. 113.  

City Council meets Tues., Nov. 20, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., Nov. 21, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344.  

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed., Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487.