Posted Thurs., April 3—The Berkeley-Albany-Emeryville NAACP Youth Council will mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King by reading his Letter from a Birmingham Jail at the Berkeley Public Library on Kittredge Street. 

Students, local clergy and community leaders will take turns reading to the public to celebrate the NAACP National Day of Nonviolence, created in 1999 to encourage the nation’s youth and fight against community violence. 

The list of people who will read include Michael Miller, local educational equity advocate; Belen Pulido-Martinez, member of Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA) and Rev. D. Demetrius Prather, former NAACP National Board Member.  

Participants will also share in reciting the Martin Luther King pledge of nonviolence.  

The event will take place today (Friday), April 4, at the Berkeley Public Library, Central Location, 2090 Kittredge St. at Shattuck from 1 p.m.–3 p.m. 

Contact Denisha DeLane at Baenaacpyouth@gmail.com or call 332-0040 

www.myspace.com/baenaacpyouth 

Posted Thurs., April 3—Under “friendly” but pointed pressure from community activists to fulfill a campaign pledge, Oakland Mayor Dellums has set a May 31 deadline to begin removing barriers to the hiring of formerly incarcerated people for City of Oakland jobs. 

In a statement read to a Tuesday afternoon Frank Ogawa Plaza “Ban the Box” rally, the mayor said that removing the requirement that job applicants reveal criminal convictions will begin in the city’s Public Works Agency, with other departments to follow. 

The “ban the box” slogan refers to the fill-in box on employment applications where applicants are asked to check if they have been convicted of a crime. Activists say an admission of a prior conviction knocks many, if not most, ex-offenders out of many jobs where their conviction status is not relevant, preventing them from making a living and in many cases forcing them back into criminal activity. 

Activists first began calling on Oakland to implement “ban the box” at a July 2004 Peace and Justice Community Summit held at Oakland’s First Unitarian Church on 14th Street, a few blocks from the City Hall site of Tuesday’s rally. At that time, Jerry Brown was mayor of Oakland. 

At a Maxwell Park Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council meeting in mid-March, Dellums told NCPC members that he had concentrated on his full policing plan in recent weeks, because “I wanted to take the police issue off the table” and move on to the issues of violence prevention.  

“Crime and violence are not solely a police issue,” the mayor said, noting that he now wanted to move forward “immediately” in the city to address the issues of “poverty, health care, education, and the revolving prison door. These issues have been neglected for a long time.” 

But at the City Hall rally of over 100 activists and community residents sponsored by Plan For A Safer Oakland—a coalition of organizations focusing on prisoners and formerly incarcerated issues—speakers said they wanted to make sure Dellums’ “immediate” meant exactly what it said. 

Many of the participants held signs with such slogans as “Jobs Not Jails” or “Stop Discriminating In City Hiring.” 

Responding to the announcement of the May 31 deadline for removing the conviction question from Public Works jobs, rally emcee Tony Coleman, of All Of Us Or None and the American Friends Service Committee, said “we’ve been promised before. It’s good to hear, but we’re going to keep up the pressure.” 

In a press release for the event, rally organizers put the blame for the delay in implementation of Dellums’ “ban the box” promise on Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly. While saying that Dellums had made the promise over a year ago to “remove the question about past convictions from city employment applications and to set aside city jobs for formerly incarcerated people,” Edgerly “has yet to implement this policy.” 

Privately, Dellums staffers tried to deflect the blame from Edgerly, who has announced her intention to resign. 

Dereca Blackmon, executive director of the Oakland-based Leadership Excellence youth training organization, told rally participants that activists would come back to City Hall on May 30, the eve of the Dellums deadline, to “visit.” “On June 2, we’ll hold another rally to either celebrate or to take it to the next level.” 

Blackmon said that the “number one problem named by politicians is crime,” and that “the number one solution is opportunity.” 

Dorsey Nunn, an organizer with All Of Us Or None organization, said that the cities of San Francisco, East Palo Alto, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, and St. Paul-Minneapolis had all banned the prior conviction question on their city employment applications. 

“I wish Oakland had been the first to ban the box,” Nunn said. “We’re only asking them to do nothing more than other cities have done.”  

Nunn called the conviction question “structural discrimination,” saying it was the same as prior employment questions that “asked ‘Are you a Negro.’” 

Also speaking briefly at the rally was 3rd District Councilmember Nancy Nadel, described by emcee Coleman as “a very good friend of us.” 

Nadel, who serves as chair of the city’s formerly incarcerated re-entry steering committee, said, “We have been trying to ban the box in Oakland for years, but it wasn’t until we got this mayor that we started to get movement. This is the first time we’ve gotten a definite date” for implementation. 

Nadel ran against Dellums for Oakland mayor in the 2006 election. 

Nadel also praised Reentry Employment Specialist Isaac Taggart, saying he “is doing a fantastic job.” Taggart was hired by Dellums in January of this year to coordinate the city’s effort to integrate formerly incarcerated persons back into the city. 

Tying down the exact number of formerly incarcerated individuals in Oakland is difficult, according to Oakland-based Urban Strategies Council Chief Executive Officer Junious Williams, Jr., but the number is enormous. 

Williams said that an estimated 6,000 individuals are released on parole into Oakland every year, with approximately 12,000 total parolees living in the city. He also said that there are 17,000 individuals on probation in Alameda County, 60 percent of them in Oakland. 

“We are not going to rebuild Oakland if we leave out large sections of the community,” Williams told rally participants. “If the pathway back into the community [from incarceration] is employment, then we have to have jobs. [Banning the box] is simple justice. It’s the right thing to do.” 

Posted Wed., April 2—Code Pink had the last laugh on April Fool’s Day, but the antiwar group preferred to call their little prank a “hope” instead of a hoax. 

The rumors circulating late Monday night about the Marine Recruiting Center at 64 Shattuck Square leaving Berkeley turned out to be what a lot of people had already suspected—an April 1 joke. 

Code Pink has been protesting against the recruiting station, which still has about a year and a half left on its lease, since September. 

A fake press release announcing an amicable agreement between the Marines and their landlord Sasha Shamszad—complete with what purported to be quotes from Shamszad and Michael Applegate, director of the Marine Manpower Plans and Policy Division—was posted on web sites maintained by Code Pink and the nonpartisan coalition group AfterDowningStreet.org, among others on Monday evening.  

“The phone was off the hook,” exclaimed Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, who crafted the mock release. “Channel 2, Channel 7, CBS News ... They all wanted to know if it was true. We kept making excuses, because we didn’t want to say anything before April 1. Something like that makes sense on April 1 you know, not March 31. Channel 2 actually ran with the story Monday evening but corrected it later.” 

Last year, as an April Fool’s Day joke, Code Pink announced that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had invited the group for tea after they had camped outside her house for a few weeks trying to speak to her.  

The Berkeley stunt, Benjamin said, was part of a national day of April Fool’s jokes aimed at bringing about positive change. 

Code Pink’s national leadership sent out an e-mail alert Tuesday morning with a letter from Rep. John Conyers detailing his heartfelt realization that impeachment hearings must begin.  

After that, AfterDowningStreet.org followed with an announcement that Pelosi had committed to stop any future bills to fund the war in Iraq.  

The 30 or so people who came out to hear landlord Shamszad and Applegate announce their agreement in front of the downtown Berkeley recruiting center Tuesday were not disappointed. Dressed in their signature cotton candy pink, Code Pink members played the roles of Shamszad and Marine Officer Peaceovic. 

“We are scaling down our manpower by 33 percent," said Code Pink supporter Tigbe Barry, who was playing Peaceovic. We will be scaling it down by 66 percent by April 15 and plan on full redeployment by April 30. This decision has nothing to do with the protests outside our recruiting station. We make decisions as part of a cost benefiting analysis of recruiting stations. We just came out with a national productivity study by office, and the Recruiting Center in Berkeley was in the bottom ten percentile. So even before we heard from our landlord, we had already made our decision to redeploy to a military friendly place.” 

“And where could that be?” asked a curious onlooker. 

“Tiburon, Tiburon,” chanted a few Code Pink members. 

No one from the recruiting office—which was locked and had its blinds drawn—came out to object to the make-believe press conference.  

“It’s open, but I don’t think they want customers right now,” said a Berkeley police officer. 

Code Pink spokesperson Zanne Joi popped a bottle of pink champagne along with Barry after the announcement. 

“Some call it April Fool’s Day, we call it hopeful April Day,” she said. “It’s a day to envision a world that’s not as crazy as today.” 

Posted Wed., April 2—The ten-day strike that hit Sutter Health's Bay Area hospitals ended Monday with the start of the 7 a.m. shift. 

Registered nurses for the two Alta Bates Summit medical facilities in Berkeley had walked out with the morning shift March 21, their third action since talks with the non-profit chain's hospitals had reached an impasse. 

The California Nurses Association, which represents RNs, announced in advance that the walkout would be for ten days, while the two earlier one-day walkouts were extended to five-day lockouts by Sutter, which said the extended period was needed to attract temporary replacements. 

While the first walkout was supported by licensed vocational nurses and other workers belonging to the United Health Care Workers West, the Service Employees International Union's California healthcare division, a subsequent dispute between the two labor organizations has since blocked cooperation between them. 

The SEIU split from the AFL-CIO umbrella in July 2005, along with the powerful Teamsters, and the two hospital workers' unions have emerged as bitter rivals nationally, with the CNA organizing as the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC). 

The NNOC has won votes in Nevada and Texas, becoming the first union ever to win a hospital organizing election in the Lone Star State on March 29 in Houston. 

CNA officials said the East Bay Sutter strike wasn't about wages, but about patient care standards and reductions in benefits, while Sutter charged the walkout was about increasing union membership and clout. 

Sutter has insisted on separate contracts with member hospitals and hospital groups, and while CNA originally sought a master contract with the chain, the union subsequently shelved the demand. 

With neither side giving after the latest walkout, further walkouts could lie ahead. 

Just what percentage of RNs stayed out or work remains an open question, with Sutter claiming early in the strike that less than 60 percent of nurses at the three Alta Bates Summit facilities-Herrick Hospital and Alta Bates Summit in Berkeley and Summit Medical Center in Oakland-had honored the picket lines. 

CNA spokesperson Shum Preston had blasted the claim as a lie. 

Neither Sutter Health nor CNA officials returned calls for this story.  

The transformation of Berkeley’s Elmwood commercial district into a trendy amalgam of restaurant row and upscale shopping district may be moving another step forward. 

One of the neighborhood’s oldest merchants is giving up the ghost, the former Elmwood Pharmacy, for decades the home of the now-vanished Ozzie’s. 

Shop owner Victoria Carter, the second generation of her family to own the business, is selling off her inventory, including the glassware of Ozzie’s, a popular soda fountain that occupied a fifth of her floor space. 

Asked on the record to confirm the closing, Carter declined comment Thursday, but was overheard telling a customer that she was closing in the near future. 

The building which houses the business and Mrs. Dalloway’s, a popular upscale bookshop, is owned by Hal Brandel, a Berkeley man who is also part-owner of Cafe Trieste’s Berkeley outpost at San Pablo Avenue and Dwight Way. 

Elmwood Pharmacy opened its doors in 1921. Carter’s father, who ran another drug store in the Elmwood, consolidated the two businesses in 1960, handing over the reins to his daughter 26 years later. 

Carter had signed a five-year lease three years ago, but closed her pharmacy business in August 2004. She told the Daily Planet at the time that prescription pricing dictated by insurance companies had made continued operation impossible. 

In the years since, the business, renamed Elmwood Health & Mercantile, offered over-the-counter medication and sundries, while Ozzie’s, a cherished neighborhood institution, struggled through a series of operators before finally closing for good last year. 

Just what will happen with the building remains in question, given that the city use permit for food service use covers less than a fourth of the floor area and the building has no provisions for full-service cooking. 

One neighbor, who declined to be quoted by name, noted that the building does not have handicapped accessible bathrooms nor space for walk-in refrigerators and other equipment needed by a restaurant.  

Food for Ozzie’s customers had been prepared on a plug-in electric griddle designed for home use. 

The building itself was constructed at the southwest corner of the intersection of College Avenue and Russell Street in 1921 by noted Berkeley builder John Bischoff. 

Fred Beretta took over ownership of Elmwood Pharmacy at the site two years later, and operated the business until 1960, when he sold to Carter’s father, who was then running his own drug store at the corner of College and Ashby, the site now occupied by Roma Cafe. 

Brandel, who has owned the building since the early 1980s, said he hasn’t received official word of the closing, “but I have heard it may close by the end of April or mid-May.” He said he’d heard of the possible closing from Dave Fogarty of the city’s economic development office. 

As for the future of the ground-floor commercial space, Brandel said nothing is certain, “though there are a few ideas floating around.” 

One possible notion “if we could work it out” would be to use part of the space, including the square footage allotment for the soda fountain, to extend the floor area of Mrs. Dalloway’s next door to the south. 

Brandel said one obstacle Carter had faced was that, unlike her father, she wasn’t a pharmacist, and she found it increasingly difficult to keep a pharmacist on her staff. 

“Finally she sold her customer list to Elephant Pharmacy,” he said. 

Ozzie’s legacy 

It was another crisis over the fate of Ozzie’s and Elmwood Pharmacy that gave rise to Berkeley’s short-lived program of commercial rent control. 

An announcement of a substantial rent increase in 1982 threatened to bring the imminent demise of the business and mobilized Ozzie’s regulars such as Marty Schiffenbauer and Barbara Lubin to circulate petitions headed “Save Ozzie’s” on behalf of a ballot initiative. 

Berkeley voters embraced the measure, which was then defeated seven years later when a more conservative state legislature outlawed commercial rent control. 

Ozzie’s was named for Charles Osborne, a World War II fighter pilot who took over the soda fountain in 1950 and became a beloved figure in the community. After he left Berkeley 13 years ago, several operators tried in vain to make a success of the fountain, but a short business day, high rents and lack of kitchen facilities may have combined to doom the enterprise..

Student power highlighted Cesar Chavez Day celebrations at Malcolm X Elementary School Friday. 

While youth activists across California rallied to close the state’s public schools to honor Chavez’s 81st birthday, Berkeley Unified marked the event through a day of learning. 

Third, fourth and fifth graders at Malcolm X pedaled away furiously on a bicycle-powered blender to whip up smoothies during their cooking and gardening class Friday before going on spring break on March 31 (Monday), when Chavez’s birthday was observed throughout the state. 

“Declaring a holiday on Cesar Chavez’s birthday would be counterproductive,” said district spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

“They wouldn’t be learning anything at all. The Berkeley Board of Education passed a resolution four years ago to declare it an in-school holiday as opposed to a holiday. It’s a day of learning and teaches our kids to reflect on our heroes. That’s more in keeping with the spirit of Cesar Chavez.” 

While students at Malcolm X learned about alternate energy, their peers at Thousand Oaks and John Muir Elementary schools held assemblies and dressed up as Chavez, Fred Ross and Dolores Huarte. 

But the biggest excitement was centered around the Byerly Bicycle Blender (www.bikeblender.com) at Malcolm X which utilizes the Xtracycle sport utility bicycle as its base. 

Used nationwide by public schools and corporations such as Clif Bar and Starbucks, the bike blender is designed to spin blender blades at over 10,000 rpm (revolutions per minute) which is equivalent to a household electric blender. 

“It’s an excellent way to educate kids about alternate ways to power a blender without electricity,” said Malcolm X gardening teacher Rivka Mason who received the American Institute For Public Service Jefferson Award last year. 

“It teaches them people power. When you peddle, the blender goes round and round. The faster you peddle, the faster the blade spins. It’s a form of service learning. Students get to reflect on what they are being taught in the classroom.” 

Mason usually hands out strawberry plants to students on Cesar Chavez Day every year, but a last minute ordering glitch called for a change of plans last week. 

As the students emptied frozen strawberries, apple sauce and cranberry nectar into the blender pitcher, Mason put in a word of caution. 

“Hands off the blender when it’s spinning,” she said. “We don’t want it to blow up on our face.” 

As the fifth graders lined up to take turns on the shiny red bike their excitement knew no bounds. 

“It’s so cool, I can’t believe we are using our hands and feet to make our own food,” said Anala Griffin, a fifth grader. 

“It’s a bit like Cesar Chavez. I learned in class that he worked on a farm. But it’s sad that he didn’t get paid much.” 

Her classmate Lydia Raag said it would be fun to have one in her house. 

“We are just trying to connect kids to what they eat,” said Ariana, an AmeriCorp volunteer who was helping Mason that afternoon. 

“There are so many possibilities. Some of them are learning about human energy for the first time.”

Once again the anti-war Code Pink ladies are squaring off with pro-war Eagles Up. This time it’s not dueling demos at the Marine Recruiting Center.  

It’s contradictory calls to go shopping.  

Eagles Up and Move America Forward folk want their allies to shop outside Berkeley until the City Council apologizes to the Marines for its opposition to military recruitment in Berkeley. 

Not to be outdone by the (mostly) leather-clad, Harley-riding Eagles Up crowd that has held demonstrations in Berkeley three times, Code Pink is promoting Berkeley businesses under the moniker “Businesses for Peace.”  

The organization’s kickoff is noon on Thursday at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way, and so far it has 30 local tax-paying businesses signed up. 

“We support the city of Berkeley’s mandate to ‘seek to resolve international disputes through collective international diplomacy and without war’ and we are proud to be part of an association of businesses committed to promoting a more peaceful world,” says a statement on the website www.businessesforpeace.org. There’s no membership fee.  

What boycott? 

While Eagles Up has put out a call to boycott the city, some doubt its effectiveness. 

“This boycott’s got no legs,” Councilmember Dona Spring told the Daily Planet last week. 

Spring pointed to the Lafayette War Veterans, which cancelled a charity golf tournament in Tilden Park slated for September. 

“Tilden’s not even in Berkeley,” said Spring. It’s located in the East Bay Regional Parks, which has its own governing structure. Concessions in Tilden Park, on Berkeley’s eastern border, pay no taxes to the city. 

“People doing this boycott don’t spend their money here,” said Zanne Joi, organizer for Code Pink.  

A case in point, some say, is Brian G. Dennard, San Diego-based businessman who on March 22 called on the Eagle Up demonstrators at the Marine Recruiting Center to support the boycott. Dennard is a partner in Reno-based Meridian Development Corporation, which is building a condominium project with a yacht harbor in Ensenada, Mexico. 

Dennard wrote Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates: “In that we/MDG Resorts are currently building a state of the art mega-yacht marina [in Ensenada], all of the suppliers of Marina equipment, all owners of yachts, all suppliers of yacht materials and supplies, all yacht brokers and all tangential yacht business purveyors will likewise be informed that we will not do any business whatsoever with anyone from the Berkeley area.” 

When queried by the Planet, Dennard declined to name suppliers with whom he cancelled contracts. 

Sen. Jim DeMint, R–South Carolina, hoped to jump on the boycott bandwagon, authoring a bill that would have handed Berkeley’s federal funds over to the Marines. It went down to defeat in mid-March. 

Shopping for peace 

The right-wing boycott effort resonated with Code Pink, one of the organizations that has been demonstrating against the war and against recruiting for the war outside the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center since September.  

“We decided to do a ‘buycott,’” Joi told the Planet.  

The idea behind the Businesses for Peace initiative is to get people not only to spend their money in Berkeley, which would offset any impact a boycott might have, but also to support city efforts to resolve conflict peacefully, she said. 

One of those signed up for Businesses for Peace is Andrea Ali’s Guerilla Café, an eatery in North Berkeley where one can feast on organic cornmeal waffles topped with organic strawberries while enjoying art exhibits. Currently on display is “Love Devotion Surrender,” photographs Emerson Matebele shot in Tibet. 

Ali is originally from Iraq and has family there. “As a business in Berkeley, we reserve the right to support the recruiters not being in Berkeley,” said Ali, who also displays an Obama for President sign in her window.  

There’s no “party line,” for those who sign up for Businesses for Peace. Berkeley Mills owner Gene Agress told the Planet that, while he believes the U.S. should not be fighting in Iraq, he says it is the right of the military to recruit in Berkeley.  

In addition to eating waffles at the Guerilla Café or purchasing custom-made sustainably grown hardwood goods at Berkeley Mills, one can support a Business for Peace by taking in the sounds of local jazz greats such as Faye Carol at Anna’s Jazz Island, picking up a loaf of fresh baked bread at Nabolom Bakery, or choosing a game at Eudemonia. 

Berkeley Chamber of Commerce CEO Ted Garrett told the Planet he hasn’t heard of Businesses for Peace, but he did interact with the Eagles Up group. On March 22, “I spoke to the group in Emeryville [before the Berkeley rally] and invited them back,” said Garrett who, at one time, had pictures of himself and an officer from the Marine Recruiting Center prominently displayed on the chamber website. 

Writing to the Eagles Up in an attempt to dissuade them from the boycott, Garrett said, “We ask everyone to try to separate the actions of the City Council and not harm the good, hard-working small business owners—most of whom do not live in Berkeley and therefore cannot vote in Berkeley. 

When 90-plus-year-old Fran Rachel came to the Berkeley City Council in February to plead for the body’s approval of an item supporting peace, the speaker caused Councilmember Betty Olds to recall how she and friends had kept their children out of the Vietnam War through subterfuge.  

Olds said that, thanks to the speaker, she changed her mind and voted to support the item. 

Despite its reputation for free speech—which dates from the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s—the Berkeley City Council only adopted liberal public speaking rules at the end of 2007. 

It took the threat of a lawsuit to do it. 

Before Gene Bernardi, Jane Welford and Jim Fisher of Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense (SuperBOLD) joined with the First Amendment Project of Oakland to threaten a lawsuit, only 10 people chosen by lottery were permitted to address the City Council at each meeting. 

On March 18, SuperBOLD received an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for Citizen Activism, based on its role in pressuring the council to change the rules and allow many more members of the public to speak at council meetings. 

First Amendment Project Attorney Sophia Cope wrote to the Berkeley city attorney in April of 2006: “The public comment lottery system improperly denies willing speakers the right to address the council and [library] board at public meetings and it improperly prevents certain agenda items from receiving public comment.” 

The First Amendment Project offered its services pro bono.  

After experimenting with various formulas for public speech, the council adopted new rules for public speaking at the end of last year. People may speak to every item on the council agenda if they wish. Five people can speak to items not on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting; others must wait until the end of the meeting. 

“SuperBOLD did an immense service by starting a lawsuit,” Councilmember Dona Spring told the Planet on Friday. 

Councilmember Linda Maio said she is of two minds on the new rules. “The speakers provide a good framework,” she said. At the same time, it makes the meetings longer. Maio said adding a third meeting to the two generally scheduled each month would not be a good solution since the break between meetings allows her time to study the issues. 

Bernardi said the new rules for public speaking are good—“when the mayor remembers to call for the public to speak”— but told the Planet she thinks the city ought to do better.  

If more than five people come to a meeting to speak on an item that is not on the agenda, some must wait until the end of the meeting, which may come as late as midnight. And meetings have been cut off without allowing the public to speak at the end. 

Bernardi says all speakers on non-agenda items should be able to address the council at the beginning of the meeting. 

She added that when there are large crowds that want to attend meetings, the meetings are not moved to a larger venue to accommodate them. “If [the public] can’t be in the council chambers, you can’t call it participatory democracy,” Bernardi said. 

Thanking SPJ for the award, SuperBOLD said: “The struggle for free speech continues and we hope this award will inspire the city of Berkeley to open its meetings to greater public participation and that it will inspire others to join us in this struggle.”  

A Superior Court judge ruled Friday that Oakland school boardmember Greg Hodge must be placed on the June 3 ballot for the City Council race in District 3, setting up what is expected to be a fierce election challenge to incumbent Councilmember Nancy Nadel. 

Judge Frank Roesch wasted no time in making his decision, ruling immediately following attorneys’ arguments in a Friday morning hearing that Hodge had substantially complied with the state election code in presenting the City of Oakland with a nominating petition containing the signatures of 50 registered voters in District 3. 

Roesch also ruled that Assistant City Clerk Marjo Keller had not acted improperly in the matter. 

The City Clerk’s office disqualified Hodge a week ago, ruling that his petition contained only 49 valid signatures. 

At issue was the signature of a Myrtle Street resident whose single dwelling has two legal addresses. The resident is registered to vote at one of the house’s addresses, but signed Hodge’s petition with the second address. Because the state election code requires that the addresses on the registration form and a candidate’s nominating petition have to be identical, Keller said she had no choice but to invalidate the signature. 

Following the judge’s ruling, Keller said, “I feel what I did was proper,” and was following state law. 

Hodge said he was happy about the judge’s order, adding, “I think the judge made a fair decision.” 

Besides Hodge, who represents District 3 on the school board, Nadel is being challenged by Covenant House Development Director Sean Sullivan, a political newcomer. 

More than 100 PTA members from the Berkeley public schools discussed ways to counter Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $4.6 billion state education budget cuts at a Berkeley High School Parent Teacher and Student Association (PTSA) meeting last week. 

The California PTA is scheduled to rally against the proposed cuts on April 24 in Sacramento, followed by visits to state legislators. 

PTSA President Mark van Kriekan encouraged PTA members to partner with educators, administrators, school board officials, and business and union leaders to organize the trips. 

The state PTA is also organizing local rallies throughout the state on April 25 and asking community members to take part in “Flunk the Budget Fridays” between now and the end of the month. 

“The way it’s coming out in the press is not hitting home with a lot of parents,” van Kriekan said. 

“The effect on every school district in the state, including Berkeley, will be devastating. California currently ranks 46th in the country in education spending and is $1,900 below the national average in per student funding. The governor is proposing to put us another $800 below the national average. Parents statewide will have to become active immediately if we are going to protect our children's education and prevent these cuts from happening.” 

Parents also discussed the possibility of putting an initiative on the November ballot to force the state to either make California 25th in per student funding or to mandate a change in how the state budget gets passed—from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority.  

“There's no better place to start this effort than here in Berkeley, but we cannot do this without your participation,” said state assembly member Loni Hancock, who is protesting the proposed cuts. 

Van Kriekan’s suggestion to create a “reach out for mediocrity campaign” to help the state become 25th in per student funding met with loud applause. 

“We need to look at this as an opportunity to defend public education,” said Berkeley PTA Council President Cathryn Bruno, who is trying to get 100 people to lobby in support of saving Prop. 98 outside Hancock’s office in El Cerrito on April 25. 

“We need to raise revenue,” she said. “New York is going after Amazon.com to raise sales taxes—we need to do something similar.” 

Berkeley Federation of Teachers Cathy Campbell emphasized that the state budget problem was not because of a spending crisis. 

“It’s because of a revenue crisis,” she said. 

Berkeley Unified sent out 55 pink slips to teachers and counselors two weeks ago. Final layoff notices are expected to go out on May 15. 

“We are the richest state in the richest country in the world. We should be raising revenue,” Campbell said. 

According to state superintendent Sheila Jordan, 15 of the 18 school districts in Alameda County will be unable to submit a balanced budget if the cuts occur. 

Although Berkeley Unified is one of the three school districts which will be able to present a balanced budget, the district is facing cuts of up to $3.5 million. 

“This is going to be the fight of our lives,” said Hancock. “I hope everybody realizes that.” 

For more information on the rallies e-mail Cathryn Bruno, Berkeley PTA Council President, at jefcat1991@sbcglobal.net 

or visit the California State PTA at www.capta.org.

The Berkeley Board of Education voted unanimously on Wednesday to declare the district’s Sixth Street property to be surplus.  

The Berkeley Unified School District lent the City of Berkeley the site at 2031 Sixth St. in exchange for use of the Old City Hall Building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way under a 20-year lease agreement that expires in 2009.  

The city then sublet the Sixth Street property to LifeLong’s West Berkeley Family Practice Center, which provides low-cost medical services to the uninsured and the sick. 

For the health center to remain at the Sixth Street site, the school district had to decide that the facility was not suitable for K-12 education. 

More than 50 seniors, parents and community members turned up at a recent public hearing on surplussing the property to support LifeLong’s existence at its current site. 

The school board’s Sixth Street Surplus Committee recommended to the board that the district work with the city to sell or lease the property for less than “fair market value.”  

Berkeley Unified is currently moving ahead with plans to relocate its administrative offices to West Campus, which is scheduled to take place over the next year. 

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) will look at remodeling the facade of the Roy O. Long Co. building at 2122 Shattuck Ave. 

Known as Bentley’s to many old timers, the building is on the State Historical Resources Inventory. LPC staff has asked the commission to comment on the project and recommends its approval. 

Designed by Edwin Lewis Snyder as a realty office for Roy O. Long, a prolific builder and seller of homes in Berkeley for almost three decades, the Spanish-Colonial Revival-style building dates to 1927. 

Snyder also designed a similar building on Allston Way which houses Cancun Restaurant. 

“They sold the most amazing array of colored tights—made for dancers when women’s stockings still required a garter belt—and fancy lingerie,” landmarks commissioner Carrie Olson told the Planet. “Mrs. Bentley watched you from the second you entered until the second you left.”  

The site now houses Amanda’s Restaurant, whose owner Amanda West said she wants to restore some old features and add some new ones to the building’s facade. 

1920 Tenth St. 

LPC will also vote on whether to landmark 1920 Tenth St., a two-story wood frame triplex designed in the vernacular Colonial Revival Style. The commission’s staff has expressed the opinion that the building does not meet the criteria for landmarking and should not be landmarked. 

For Wolfgang Homburger, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) provides the wrong solution to East Bay traffic and environmental concerns. 

A traffic engineer who served on the faculty of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies for 35 years, Homburger said projects that involve construction and lead to ceremonial ribbon-cuttings lure political figures far more than do projects that involve upkeep and maintenance. 

“When’s the last time you saw a ribbon-cutting for maintaining a building?” he asked members of the Berkeley City Commons Club, who had invited him to speak on East Bay transportation issues Friday. 

“AC Transit wants to spend capital funds,” he said, “which is money with a ribbon-cutting at the end.” 

Homburger said BRT makes sense in cities like Sacramento, Los Angeles and Pittsburg, where rights of way either follow abandoned rail lines or occupy new lanes built for the purpose. 

Taking away existing traffic lanes can only lead to political backlash, he said, citing the case of an experiment on the Santa Monica freeway where an existing lane was taken away for carpools and buses. “It lasted about 12 weeks,” he said. 

The BRT proposal now under consideration by AC Transit includes a proposal for creating a bus-only lane along Telegraph Avenue, a notion which has drawn the anger of neighbors and businesses along the thoroughfare. 

“I am very skeptical of the existing proposal,” he said, “though I am in favor of parts of it, including controlled traffic signals” and a new ticketing system that would speed up the entry of passengers onto the buses. 

Berkeley hasn’t grown since 1950, he said, nor has El Cerrito, while the populations of Richmond and Albany have declined, leaving Oakland the only city with some growth in the last half of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st. 

Bay Area transportation is complex, he said, with 30 agencies involved in running public transit systems, and only one, the privately owned Tiburon Ferry, operating independently of public financing. 

“I once advocated a birth control program for public agencies,” he said, smiling. “But our brightest graduate students are doing very well in them because there’s plenty of jobs.” 

And while traffic engineers and systems designers think in terms of creating works that last for decades, the public is far more fickle. “Pity a poor engineer who has built a facility for 50 years and after five years the public has changed its mind.” 

Another problem transportation system operators face is the thorny question of just who really does speak for the public. 

He cited one project in San Francisco, where a group of self-proclaimed public leaders called for and won a project to widen sidewalks at the expense of on-street parking. The moment jackhammers set to work, neighbors started asking what was happening, and within 48 hours the project had been abandoned. “It turned out that the people who worked with the city weren’t representative of the neighborhood,” he said. 

Successful transportation designs arise from working with neighbors, he said, citing the 1960s case of a 10 by 12 block business area of Richmond where owners wanted four-way stops at all the intersections. Instead, engineers worked with the neighborhood and came up with a system of street closure and forced turns that won wide support, ensuring the City Council’s approval. 

Some plans are so outrageous that failure is a virtual certainty. 

Consider the Reber plan, the creation of schoolteacher-turned-theatrical-producer John Reber, which would have resulted in the filling in of 20,000 acres of San Francisco Bay, transforming the East and South bays into freshwater lakes by two massive roadway-creating dams, one at the site of the Bay Bridge and the other stretching between Richmond and Marin. 

Part of the plan included creation of a shipping channel starting at Oakland and slicing through the heart of Richmond. 

That one didn’t even make it to the ballot box. 

Another ill-starred plan called for creation of the Southern Crossing, a span connecting San Francisco and Alameda which remained in the hopes of CalTrans planners as late as 2001. 

Of major plans proposed, one looks certain to be completed, the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, while another, an additional runway for San Francisco International Airport atop a trestle system anchored in the waters of the bay, remains a possibility, Homburger said. 

Proposals to extend the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s rails to San Jose are unlikely without a major cash infusion, he said, and on a grander scale, high-speed rail between the Bay Area and Los Angeles is probably a non-starter, given the lack of major population centers in between the two major conurbations. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) on Thursday approved the expansion of the Chevron gas station at the intersection of Shattuck and Ashby avenues, which includes turning the 24-hour retail kiosk into a 24-hour mini-mart. 

Some LeConte neighbors had complained that enlarging the gas station would increase traffic snarls at the intersection and increase panhandling in the area. 

Although the zoning board received several e-mails and a petition from a local neighborhood group against the proposed project, no one turned up to oppose it during the public hearing Thursday. 

ZAB Chair Rick Judd said there had been several misconceptions about the proposed project. 

“Some people thought that the business was owned by Chevron Corporation,” he said. “Others had the misconception that the store would sell liquor. When they found out that was not the case, I guess they lost interest.” 

“We are not corporate Chevron at all,” Keith Simas, a third generation-owner of the Chevron franchise Xtra Oil Company, told the board. “We want to create a safer environment for everybody, including ourselves. The police will be able to monitor the station better if we get rid of the kiosk from the middle of the site ... The 24-hour thing is really for baby-sitting the property throughout the night.” 

The proposed project calls for moving the existing kiosk to the northwest corner of the site and adding 600 square feet to it. 

“This will improve onsite circulation, organize the fueling pumps and provide disabled people with a safe access to the store,” said Muthana Ibrahim, the project architect. 

He added that the store would be locked at night and that the cashier would conduct business with customers through a dispensing drawer. 

“We want to modernize the station .... It’s got a very 1970s look to it now,” Simas told the board. 

The Leconte Neighborhood Association had voted against the proposed project, citing traffic and safety issues as well as competition with the Roxie Deli across the street. 

The city’s zoning ordinance does not regulate retail markets or impose limitations on the number of retail stores in the commercial south area district where the project is located.  

“I am not sure if I would be enthusiastic about supporting a new 24-hour service but it seems to me we are not increasing the nuisance,” said board member Sara Shumer. “In fact I am surprised that the city’s traffic engineer has said that the new use would not even require a traffic study.” 

Judd told the Planet that the proposed expansion did not meet the criteria for a traffic study. 

“It’s a very modest expansion,” said ZAB Secretary Steve Ross. “We don’t think there will be any significant increase in traffic.” 

Linda Olivenbaum, who was replacing commissioner Jesse Anthony on the board and is married to Councimember Max Anderson, in whose district the station is, voted against the project. 

“The project will entice traffic,” she said. “I live in the neighborhood and I think it will lessen the safety at that intersection. The store will not be an asset, it will attract unsavory activity at night.”

The East Bay Daily News, a free tabloid launched by the Knight Ridder chain in its final days before its takeover by the ANG chain, died a quiet death Saturday, two months before its third anniversary. 

The brief announcement came in the form of an anonymous editor’s note, which declared that the paper, founded May 20, 2005, was folding so that the Daily News Group could “focus on its core Peninsula papers.” 

One reason for its failure might be discerned in the response to a question about its closing posed to a UC Berkeley journalism professor. 

“Was that the little Knight-Ridder throwaway?” asked Tom Goldstein. “I live in El Cerrito, and if it circulated there, I’ve never seen it.” 

The paper began when the Knight Ridder chain owned the Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News. Knight Ridder was bought out by the Sacramento-based McClatchy chain, which then sold off some of its acquisitions to ANG, the chain owned by Dean Singleton which also owns the Oakland Tribune and Marin Independent-Journal. 

The local freebie was part of a group that also included free papers on the peninsula, including publications in San Mateo, Redwood City, Burlingame, Los Gatos and Palo Alto.  

All the papers in the Daily News operation shared most of their content, with the East Bay version adding stories culled from the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times, as well as extensive amounts of wire service copy and syndicated features. 

Berkeley stories were often written by reporters for the Tribune and Contra Costa Times and printed in all three publications. The paper had relatively few news rack boxes in Berkeley compared with the Daily Planet or the East Bay Express, two locally produced publications. 

Rumors started circulating around 7 p.m. Monday that the Marine Recruiting Center at 64 Shattuck Square had reached an agreement with their landlord Sasha Shamszad and that they would be backing out of Berkeley. These rumors, complete with what purported to be quotes from Shamszad and Michael Applegate, director of the Marine Manpower Plans and Policy Division, were posted on web sites maintained by Code Pink and the nonpartisan coalition group AfterDowningStreet.org, among others.  

Some observers speculated that the news might be an April Fool’s Day joke, since today is April 1. 

Last year, as an April Fool’s Day joke, Code Pink announced that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had invited the group for tea after they had camped outside her house for a few weeks trying to speak to her.  

Callers to the Code Pink office were greeted by a recorded message which said: 

“We have breaking news. We just heard that the landlord and the Marine Recruiting Center have come to an agreement about the marines leaving Berkeley and they are going to announce it tomorrow, Tuesday, at noon, in front of the Marine Recruiting Center. So come out and hear what the landlord and the marines have worked out. Peace, Love and War.” 

Code Pink’s protest against the existence of the Marine Recruiting Center since September has made national headlines over the past few months. 

When contacted by the Planet at around 7:15 p.m. Monday, Berkeley Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he had not received any information about the marines leaving Berkeley. 

“I was contacted by [television] media about half an hour ago about this but I don’t know anything about it,” he said. 

“I am just so thrilled and excited,” Code Pink spokesperson Zanne Zoi told the Planet in a telephone interview. 

“I am going to be there tomorrow with flowers and champagne. I could weep. We have been asking the Marines to respect the values of the citizens of Berkeley for a long time.” 

Zoi said Code Pink had received a press release informing them about the announcement. 

“The landlord said that the presence of the marines was sparking a controversy and affecting neighboring businesses. He said that it was costing the city a lot of money. He may have offered to buy them out. I think the marines were having a hard time recruiting people. I don’t care why they are doing it. I am just happy they are doing it.” 

Shamszad and Marine Recruiting Center Director Capt. Richard Lund could not be reached for comment before press time Monday.  

For updates on this story, check www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

The North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library is always jumping. Day or evening, most of the chairs in the reading rooms are full and all the computers are in use. Patrons sometimes are two deep at the counter where several of the branch’s 16 staff members check out books or answer questions. 

On a nice day, school kids (Berkeley’s biggest middle school is a couple of blocks away) congregate on the lawn or display their skateboard skills on the sidewalk. Streams of young children flow up the ramp or climb the nine steps. In the reading room or at the computers, teens are working on their homework. Or if it’s a Wednesday afternoon, heads may be bent over chess games, a club that was started by Will Marston, the teen librarian. 

Tara Rivera, who comes to Berkeley from Brooklyn, by way of jobs in several other library systems, has been North Branch’s head librarian since 2004. The perception that North Branch is a beehive of activity is supported by the figures. “We’re the busiest branch in the system with the highest circulation of materials and the largest number of reserves,” Tara points out. “We’re serving not only the Berkeley community, but people from Albany, Kensington, and El Cerrito as well.” 

In spite of the bustle, North Branch has a distinctive cozy feeling with its two fireplaces, deep window sills, and carved wood ceiling beams. But what most people notice about the interior is the bright painted rainbow that follows one of the two arches leading into the children’s section.  

“The story is that the legendary children’s librarian a generation ago, Starr Latronica, and her husband came in one weekend and painted that rainbow,” says David Howd, the present children’s librarian. 

Though David may not wear theme clothes like Starr did, in his 16 years as the branch children’s librarian, he is dangerously close to earning the title “legendary” himself.  

He has performed three story times a week for babies, toddlers, and preschool children. He also presides, with staff support, over the ever-popular summer reading program, which some years has more participants than the Central Library. 

“I also enjoy working with the Student Friends Program, a summer volunteer program for middle schoolers,” says David. “They do everything from washing books and shelving to writing thank you notes to those who donated prize gifts for the summer reading program. We often hear how much those notes are appreciated.” 

Tara points out that like all the staff, David is a generalist who also works at the adult desk (though he is seldom far from kid’s books as 43-47 percent of the library circulation is children’s materials). 

North Branch has its share of long-time employees. Anne-Marie Miller, a library specialist, has been with the system for 37 years, with many years on the reference desk at Central Library. At North Branch, along with her reference expertise, she also selects titles for the “Staff Picks” shelf, a feature so popular that she often has to restock the display more than once a day. 

And then there’s Vivian Vigil, a supervising library assistant who has been in the library for over 20 years. “Without Vivian, many of our circulation services would just fall apart,” says Tara. 

“I’m pleased to say that a year ago I helped create North Branch’s first adult book club. We call it the Book-Club-in-a Bag program with the books (and bags) supplied by the Friends of the Berkeley Public library,” she says. “For those with other interests, library specialist Lisa Hesselgesser has a knitting group and library aide Nga Trinh demonstrates the art of origami.” 

North Branch features the well-known quilt show where each year outstanding examples of local talent adorn the walls adding further to the warm ambience of the building. The show will return this spring after a two-year absence. 

“Sometimes, it feels like we’re drowning in our success,” Tara says. “Our little library building was built to accommodate 8,000 volumes and we now have just under 60,000 volumes in our collection.”  

The North Branch occupies a prominent corner on a triangular site bordered by The Alameda, Hopkins and Josephine streets. The Mediterranean-style building, flanked by four gnarled old olive trees, was designed by James W. Placek, the architect responsible for the Central Library.  

In 1921, a special library building tax funded the construction of the Central Library and the South Branch and Claremont Branch buildings. But when it was time to build the North Branch in 1936, funds were low. A depression-era Public Works Administration (PWA) grant made up the short-fall providing almost half the cost, but because of the budget constraints, a planned kitchen and club rooms had to be eliminated from the final plans. 

The first North Branch library began on another corner when in 1910 it occupied the upper floor of a Victorian building on the southeast corner of Vine and Shattuck. Before moving to its present home, the library had moved to the Penniman mansion at present-day Life Oak Park.  

Today’s building is full of charming details like the decorative panel of tiles below the front window, the wrought iron light fixtures flanking the main entrance, and the whimsical round windows high on the walls. 

Those who love and use North Branch look to the day when the library can expand on the buildable land behind the present building. 

Come May, the walls of the North Branch Library will be adorned with 50 to 60 quilts—the art pieces of local quilters who are participating in the 27th annual quilt show. “Sign-up will be starting soon,” according to librarian Debbie Carton, who is coordinating the show. “Look for notices at the North Branch; former exhibitors will receive their notices in the mail,” 

The show this year will be in memory of quilter Dorothy Vance who was one of the long-time exhibitors. She is remembered for injecting humor in her work with tongue-in-check comments stitched into her panels. 

An extensive catalog will tell the story of each quilt. The quilts will be on display from May 2 until May 28.

My friend Peter has mice. Not pet mice, but uninvited ones, who, he tells me on the phone, have snuck into his cupboards and are ravaging his dry goods quick as they can. Until he figures out the best way to get rid of them, do I want some of the food that the critters haven’t discovered yet? I tell him sure, and drive to his house where he loads up big bags of kasha and hot cocoa mix and rice vermicelli and penne pasta and more. I figure the kids will enjoy eating (and drinking) some things I don’t ordinarily buy, and I’ll save money on the grocery bill this month. 

At home my 18-year-old son wanders into the kitchen while I’m putting the unexpected bounty away in the pantry.  

“Lookit all this stuff I got from Peter,” I say.  

“Great,” he replies. “Too bad I won’t be around to eat it. I’m moving out this weekend.” 

I raise my eyebrows and turn to face him, stunned, the bag of Basmati rice I’m holding suspended above its shelf.  

“Really?”  

So my only son, the one who implored me to adopt my foster daughter nine years earlier so he’d have a sibling to love; the one who was once found to have a nearly genius I.Q.; the one whose diagnosis two years earlier almost resulted in my own emotional collapse, calmly tells me that his best friend, who has a nice two-bedroom place in another part of Berkeley, has invited him to move in. 

I set down the rice. My head is filled with a thousand thoughts. The big one: is he ready? Of course many people leave home at 18. Many go far away. Yet fewer move out while on a regimen of medications that not only help them stay mentally balanced, but may affect their sleep, anxiety level and physical well-being should they miss a dose. Fewer move out who have a single mom (prone to depression herself) who .asks twice daily, “Did you remember to take your meds?”  

When the answer is yes, which thankfully it is almost always these days, I breathe an inward sigh of relief, and I thank the Greater Powers—again—that the impact of my son’s mental illness on my little family is finally easing its grip. 

I think about how difficult it might be for my 11-year-old daughter when her big brother goes. She won’t have anyone around to fake-strangle her, or walk her to Walgreens for hot Cheetos or candy when I’m not around to say no junk food. The little house could seem big with just the two of us. Maybe my daughter won’t know what to talk to me about. At least she won’t be able to say I’m paying more attention to her brother, which I suppose I was for a while, especially around the time he started saying things like he wished he could just go out to the desert and die.  

I think about packing up his stuff in my Honda and driving across town. It’ll probably take a few trips. My son doesn’t have a car and doesn’t want to get a license. So we’ll load his TV and video games and computer and school books into my car. We’ll put his bicycle on the bike rack. He’ll probably want to take his laminated poster of Jimi Hendrix smoking a joint, and his map of the world and his Italian peace flag and his vitamins. I haven’t asked him if he wants to keep the brown paper bag that holds all his empty medication bottles. Once he said he wanted to make an art piece with them, but he hasn’t yet. Another time he said he wanted to make a series of chairs from sticks, and he did make one—decorated with feathers as well—and it’s perched on a shelf in the living room. I hope he lets me keep it there. He made it not long after his last hospital stay, when his face was pale as water and his hands shook nearly all the time. I love its fragile beauty. He’s come so far since then.  

I’m not worried about his new place having mice like Peter’s does, so I think I’ll give him some of the food to take. If he invites his sister and me over for dinner once he gets settled in, I bet it’ll taste spectacular.  

Posted Fri., March 28—A Superior Court judge ruled today that Oakland school boardmember Greg Hodge must be placed on the June 3 ballot for the City Council race for District 3, setting up what is expected to be a fierce election challenge to incumbent Councilmember Nancy Nadel. 

Judge Frank Roesch wasted no time in making his decision, ruling immediately following attorneys’ arguments in a Friday morning hearing that Hodge had substantially complied with the state election code in presenting the City of Oakland with a nominating petition containing the signatures of 50 registered voters in District 3. 

Roesch also ruled that Assistant City Clerk Marjo Keller had not acted improperly in the matter. 

The City Clerk’s office disqualified Hodge a week ago, ruling that his petition contained only 49 valid signatures. 

At issue was the signature of a Myrtle Street resident whose single dwelling has two legal addresses. The resident is registered to vote at one of the house’s addresses, but signed Hodge’s petition with the second address. Because the state election code requires that the addresses on the registration form and a candidate’s nominating petition have to be identical, Keller said she had no choice but to invalidate the signature. 

Following the judge’s ruling, Keller said, “I feel what I did was proper,” and was following state law. 

Hodge said he was happy about the judge’s order, adding, “I think the judge made a fair decision.” 

Besides Hodge, who represents District 3 on the school board, Nadel is being challenged by Covenant House Development Director Sean Sullivan, a political newcomer. 

The ongoing battle over the future of West Berkeley won’t be a quick campaign, city planning staffers promised Wednesday. 

That may be good news for a diverse assortment of stakeholders, ranging from woodworker John Curl to real estate broker Don Yost and recycler Mary Lou Van Deventer. 

While the city’s plan for “increased flexibility” in West Berkeley zoning seemed headed for a fast-track approval, planner Alex Amoroso said that any changes to the zoning codes created to support the West Berkeley Plan will be made only after extensive consultation with stakeholders. 

No one on the city staff seemed ready for Planning Commissioner Helen Burke’s proposal to hold a public workshop, but the city’s Land Use Manager Debra Sanderson said she has been consulting with stakeholders in one-on-one meetings and in small groups. 

The push for zoning changes comes at a time when Mayor Tom Bates has allied with mayors of other East Bay cities to form a Green Technology Corridor of cities eager to capture the entrepreneurial fallout from synthetic fuel research and other endeavors at UC Berkeley and its affiliated Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

During the recent Berkeley Energy Symposium, investment fund mogul John Doerr—a colleague of Al Gore’s and Colin Powell’s in the green tech funding business—spoke of trillions of dollars to be made from “green” technologies. 

Doer is a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), which recently recruited both Gore and Powell. 

But does the lure of promised riches from high-tech green threaten another, more basic form of green, the one the mayor so recently praised when the city released its green-collar jobs report? 

That document, prepared by San Francisco State professor Raquel Pinderhughes, praised the kinds of jobs offered by green businesses like the recycling efforts of Van Deventer’s Urban Ore, bike repair shops, public transit and print shops that use organic inks and recycled papers. 

Those jobs offer the best chance for minorities, people with limited education and people with past brushes with the law to find jobs that pay enough in wages and benefits to support a family. 

The high-tech jobs, by contrast, draw from a much narrower and better educated work force. 

“I encourage you to take a deep breath, pause and allow stakeholders to comment,” said Yost. “The issues are very complex, and they all deserve to be heard.” 

Some changes are straightforward and could be quickly accomplished with little disagreement, said Curl, “but other issues are more complex and will take a long time to vet thoroughly.”  

The first step toward progress on solutions, he said, would be to separate out the simpler issues where there is broad agreement among stakeholders. 

Curl and Van Deventer are members of WEBAIC, the West Berkeley Alliance of Artists and Industrial Companies. Curl, WEBAIC staff member Rick Auerbach and others met with Yost to prepare their own alternatives to the suggested changes formulated by Principal Planner Allan Gatzke. 

Larry Hayes, however, said action was needed soon because two properties his company owns were built atop dividing lines separating the MULI (manufacturing and light industrial) and C-W (commercial and warehouse) zones. Because fire regulations call for firewalls between the two uses, and zoning codes prescribe and proscribe different uses in the two zones, leasing the buildings becomes difficult, with one property remaining vacant for six years. 

Bernard Marszalek, marketing manager for West Berkeley’s Inkworks print shop collective, said that two issues covered in the commission’s West Berkeley tour earlier this month—large sites and zoning problems—were distinct concerns and shouldn’t be conflated. 

A WEBAIC activist, Marszalek said he wasn’t opposed to development but that growth should occur within the context of the West Berkeley Plan. 

On behalf of the Sierra Club, Zoning Adjustments Board member and city housing commissioner Jesse Arreguin read a letter from Kent Lewandowski, the club’s Northern Alameda County group chair, who offered an endorsement of the plan’s support of recycling businesses critical to help the city reach its zero waste goals. 

Losing recycling businesses and green- collar jobs would force the companies to the Central Valley, resulting in the loss of green-collar jobs for the city and increased traffic congestion, Lewan-dowski said. 

George Williams, a former San Francisco planning official who was sitting in for absent commissioner David Stoloff, said he wanted to see more concrete proposals from the staff, including examples of policies on industrial retention from other cities. 

“San Francisco and Oakland are struggling with this,” he said, urging the staff to give the commissioners definitions of manufacturing used in other jurisdictions. 

Commissioner Patti Dacey said that while she appreciated that Sanderson and others on the city staff were meeting with stakeholders, it was also important for commissioners to have access to them. 

Commissioner Larry Gurley said that meetings between stakeholders and the commission would be premature before the stakeholders themselves got together and reached a consensus on key issues. 

For more background on the issues, see the city’s web page on the subject at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=10764. WEBAIC has its own web pages at www.webaic.org, and the Green Collar Jobs report is available online at ellabakercenter.org/page.php? pageid=26&contentid=350.

Planning commissioners Wed-nesday voted to conduct a transportation study on the impact of narrowing Shattuck Avenue from four lanes to two to make way for a proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lane. 

The vote wasn’t an endorsement of AC Transit’s controversial BRT program, but it did set the parameters for a transportation study required for the Downtown Area Plan’s environmental impact study. 

Planning commissioners are reviewing the plan, the culmination of two years’ work by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee, before sending it on to the city council with their own parallel recommendations. 

The nine-member Planning Commission has already overruled one vote by the downtown committee majority, voting two weeks ago to call for a study that could be used to undermine DAPAC’s proposed height limits on new downtown construction, which the City Council has now approved. 

City planning staff, with the help of consultant Bill Delo of the IBI Group, determined that the DAPAC proposal to reduce both Shattuck Avenue and Oxford/Fulton Street to single lanes in each direction would overtax Milvia Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, as well as the two narrowed thoroughfares. 

City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said the city had only enough funds to study one of the alternatives. In the end, commissioners opted to have the transportation study consider only the narrowing of Shattuck, since it’s the city’s main business street and a focus of the plan. 

While AC Transit would be required to do its own study on the effects on Shattuck traffic if the bus route runs down the street, planner Matt Taecker said Transportation Commission members had objected to delaying the survey because “it’s our main street, and we don’t know at the end of the day” which route BRT will take. 

City planning staff is recommending that the study include all other features adopted by DAPAC, including the diversion of both lanes of Shattuck onto the western side of Shattuck Square, which is now used only for southbound traffic, and the closure of Center Street to through traffic between Shattuck and Oxford. 

The eastern lanes would be used primarily to serve the hotel planned for the northeast corner of the Shattuck/Center Street intersection and businesses located along the two-block stretch that ends at University Avenue. 

Commissioners will work their way through the plan’s chapters with the goal of completing their review of their own revisions by Sept. 10. 

First up on the list is the plan’s section on economic development, now scheduled for Apr. 23, followed in turn by historic preservation on May 14, with the Landmarks Preservation Commission scheduled to provide its own input to commissioners two weeks earlier. 

Development standards 

Commissioners also voted to hold an April 9 public hearing on development standards governing the size of new mixed-use buildings, so the city can enact ordinances before the June 3 general election vote on two opposing measures that could radically alter development policies throughout California. 

Propositions 98 and 99 are rival initiatives that target eminent domain policies, with the former heavily bankrolled by developers and apartment owners and the latter supported by municipalities and counties as well as tenant advocates. 

Prop. 98 is a reincarnation of Proposition 90, a 2006 ballot measure that was defeated by a narrow 52/48 margin. 

Both 90 and 98 bear the fingerprints of the same coalition of forces that led to the passage of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative approved by 65 percent of California’s voters. One of the major sponsors of 98 is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, named for Prop. 13’s most famous advocate. 

Precisely what effects the measures would have remains an open question, said planner Alex Amoroso, who prepared a report that Commissioner Gene Poschman had repeatedly urged city staff to produce. 

“It will either have draconian effects or it will have minimal effects, depending on who you talk to,” Amoroso said of Prop. 98. 

“It could make us obsolete,” said Commissioner Helen Burke, “so it is very important.” 

“It could definitely put a crimp in certain career paths,” quipped Amoroso. 

He said the most dire predictions contend that the initiative would impact zoning by decreeing that “any rule that limits a person’s ability to make as much as possible off a piece of property would be considered an encumbrance and a take-back,” susceptible to costly litigation. 

“No one really understands what the implications are because the language is so ambiguous,” said Commissioner Susan Wengraf. 

DAPAC member Patti Dacey joked that passing the proposed limitations makes sense as a way “to get some insurance that I can do my nuclear-waste-dump/pig-farm.” 

The commission will hold its hearing April 8 on the same two proposals that went to the City Council before the November 2006 election. 

One proposal came from the Density Bonus Subcommittee, composed of members of the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Planning and Transportation commissions, while the second and more developer-friendly measure was proposed by city planning staff. 

In the end, councilmembers opted for the staff version. 

If Prop. 98 fails at the polls, the ordinance would quickly expire, leaving the commission precisely where it is today: struggling to come up with their own version of a density bonus ordinance. 

The measures would decide the size and scale of mixed-use apartment-over-commercial buildings that developers could erect in the city. 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan has told the commission that some elements of the subcommittee version would impose illegal limits on developers, a point hotly disputed by most of the members of the disbanded subcommittee. 

ZAB member Bob Allen has attended most of the commission meetings on the proposal, and Planning Commissioner Wengraf was chair of the group. One subcommittee member, David Stoloff, opposed the recommendations.

The marathon Berkeley City Council meeting on Tuesday night began on a high note, with staff playing a Pete Seeger CD lauding Berkeley’s efforts to reduce its waste stream. Lyrics were written by Zero Waste Commission members and Seeger wrote the tune.  

If it can’t be reduced 

Audience: If it can’t be reduced 

Re-used, repaired 

Audience: reused, repaired 

Rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled … 

Hoo-ray for the City of Berkeley, hooray for the City of Berkeley and its Zero Waste Commission … 

Zero Waste commissioners, however, pointed out to the council after the brief songfest that, despite lofty goals, Berkeley still does not forbid stores to use plastic bags, and it lacks recycling services for apartment dwellers. 

The council began its sessions at 5 p.m., with a workshop on possible ballot measures, but made no decision on what to place before the voters. It approved a condominium conversion ordinance revision, with a promise by staff to address outstanding questions in September. It approved a study on the economics of building heights and placed additional restrictions on smoking in commercial areas. 

New taxes 

At the workshop on potential ballot measures, the city’s swimming pools brought out more than a dozen people who walked or wheeled up to the public forum microphone to ask the council to place funding for a therapeutic warm pool—or combined warm pool and neighborhood pool upgrades—on the November ballot. 

But new swimming pool taxes may compete with proposals for ballot measures supporting police, fire, youth violence reduction, storm-water infrastructure upgrades and branch library improvements. 

The council, however, decided to delay its decision on what to place on the ballot—possibly a combination of various proposals—to wait for the results of a survey that David Binder Research of San Francisco will conduct in April to determine what taxpayers are willing to fund and how much they’re willing to pay. 

Jeff Egeberg from the Public Works Department showed the council slides of flooding in West Berkeley, a result of the city’s crumbling storm-drain system. Extensive repairs would take new taxes, he said.  

Recreation Manager Scott Ferris discussed a possible recreation ballot measure and spoke about the need to refurbish the 40-year-old neighborhood swimming pools as well as building a new therapeutic warm pool. He also brought up the skateboard park question, because the five-year-old skate park, which cost the city some $800,000, has numerous cracks. 

“Did we get screwed by the company?” asked Councilmember Betty Olds, referring to the contractors. 

“I’m not sure who screwed up,” responded Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, who was head of the parks department when the skateboard park was built. “We’re looking at the engineering company for possible future litigation.” 

“In the long-term, a full rebuild of the Skate Park is needed and a bond measure may be the best funding option at this time,” said the staff report that accompanied Ferris’ presentation. 

The question of a possible library bond measure was raised by Library Director Donna Corbeil, who pointed to the needs of the four branch libraries and a possible new branch at the Ed Roberts Campus, at the Ashby BART station.  

Councilmembers cautioned that if the city asked for too much, voters could reject everything, as they have in the past. 

Condo conversion 

The discussion of revising the condominium conversion ordinance began around 10:30 p.m. and went on for about an hour, with numerous speakers representing property owners on hand. They said they had felt left out of the loop in earlier discussions. 

In the end, the council voted 7-1-1 for non-controversial changes in the ordinance that would streamline the conversion process. Councilmember Betty Olds abstained and Councilmember Gordon Wozniak voted in opposition.  

Questions of modifying the 12.5 percent conversion fee will be taken up in September.  

One significant change in the ordinance the council approved is that all work completed without permits in a unit must be disclosed. Repairs would be required only for health and safety code violations. 

“It’s a piecemeal approach,” said David Wilson, one of those who spoke in support of property owners. “It omits the key fee issue.” 

Height study 

Councilmembers approved 6-1 the expenditure of $40,000 for a study of the relationship between building height and developer profits. The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee had rejected a staff-backed plan to build 16-story “point towers” in the city center, along with a proposal for an economic analysis to see if the proposed Downtown Plan could cover costs of proposed improvements without reviving the rejected high-rise zoning as a way of increasing fees from development. 

However, a majority of Planning Commission members voted to ask the City Council to authorize the planning staff to hire a consultant to do the study anyway, and the council agreed to do so. 

Councilmember Dona Spring opposed the measure and Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Betty Olds were absent for the vote.  

“It should be referred to the budget process like every other item” requiring city funding, Spring said, arguing that the study was simply a way to allow developers to build high. 

“They’ll say it’s unprofitable unless they go to 18 stories,” she predicted. 

161 Panoramic Way 

A divided council voted 5-3-1 to deny the appeal of the Panoramic Hill Neighborhood Association, which opposed construction of a home at 161 Panoramic Way. The neighbors said the new home would create dangerous conditions, especially while it was being built. Numerous conditions were placed on developer Bruce Kelley’s project, but that did not satisfy neighbors. 

Councilmembers Kriss Worthington, Gordon Wozniak and Max Anderson voted in opposition; Spring abstained. 

The council also: 

• voted 7-2 to approve making the half-time civic arts coordinator position full time, beginning in July. Councilmembers Linda Maio and Wozniak voted in opposition. 

• unanimously approved an ordinance adding smoking restrictions in all commercial areas, part of the city’s Public Commons Initiative, which also includes prohibitions of lying on the sidewalk. The new ordinance, which will go into effect 30 days after the second reading on April 22, was lauded as an advance for Berkeley, which pioneered no-smoking sections in restaurants. Advocates for the homeless, however, say that the ordinance could be selectively enforced. 

• approved, just minutes before midnight, an item urging the Chinese government to end its violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations in Tibet. Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli and Gordon Wozniak abstained.  

“I don’t think this is appropriate for a city government to get involved in,” Wozniak said. 

The council is now on a four-week spring break. It will meet next on April 22.

The Berkeley city attorney’s office’s draft Sunshine Ordinance—supposed to provide citizens with greater access to local government—has been scheduled for a public hearing at the Berkeley City Council on April 22 . 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz has asked City Attorney Sarah Reynoso to provide him with a copy of the proposed ordinance by this week.  

“I brought it back because it was time,” Kamlarz said. “It [the draft] has been on the website for people to see for a while now. Based on the input we have had so far, it’s time we did something. I want to take it to council for some kind of closure.” 

The city has been trying to implement a Sunshine Ordinance since 2001, when at the request of Councilmember Kriss Worthington, the City Council asked Kamlarz and then-City Clerk Sherry Kelly to look into improving the city’s sunshine policies, including the adoption of a Sunshine Ordinance. 

Kamlarz told the Planet last week that the city had made some improvements to public access of information since then, including providing live and archived videostreams of City Council, Redevelopment Agency, Berkeley Housing Authority and Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) meetings, and uploading entire packets of meeting reports, agendas and minutes on the city’s website. 

“We have implemented bits and pieces from the draft ordinance over the last few years,” he said. “We are tweaking it a bit at this point to see how we can include all the suggestions and comments.” 

Sunshine ordinances—which have been adopted by San Francisco, Oakland, Benicia and several other cities—require local agencies to make extra efforts to conduct public business in the open beyond the requirements of state law. 

Berkeley’s proposed Sunshine Ordinance—drafted by former City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque—has been criticized in the past. 

Councilmembers Worthington and Dona Spring have both complained that Albuquerque’s proposal was full of loopholes. 

“We did not progress as a city with Manuela Albuquerque at the helm,” Spring told the Planet. “Now the question remains whether we are going to get a true Sunshine Ordinance. Will it be easier for the public and myself to get information from the city?” she asked. 

A citizens’ group—comprised of representatives from the League of Women Voters, SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense) and other community members—has been meeting for almost a year to review Albuquerque’s 21-page draft ordinance. 

“We want to take the good things in it and make it better,” said Dean Metzger, one of the group’s members and a former Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) commissioner. “The two most important things about the Sunshine Ordinance are public participation and open meetings. Right now, you are totally at the discretion of the ZAB chair or the mayor to allow you to speak. We don’t have any rules laid out for rebuttal. This makes it very difficult to have a real discussion.” 

The group split into three smaller teams focused on separate issues: meetings, records and enforcement. Each group researched sunshine ordinances adopted by San Jose, San Francisco and Benicia, Metzger said.  

Representatives from both San Francisco and Oakland told the group that the biggest problem was that these laws were not enforceable, he said.  

“There’s no teeth in any of them,” Metzger said. “If you are a public official and you don’t follow the ordinance, there is no penalty. The only way you can get compliance is by taking the city to court. But how many people want to spend the time and the money to do that? We are trying to make the ordinance actually mean something.” 

The citizen group is trying to get its own draft ordinance to the City Council to be considered along with the city manager’s proposal but wants more time to complete its work. 

“We are about two-thirds of the way through,” Metzger said. “There are 27 people in the group. We meet twice a month but are trying to accelerate it to once a week to finish our draft. The controversial part is the enforcement of the sunshine ordinance itself. I can’t think of any city whose Sunshine Ordinance has enforcement. San Jose’s ordinance is probably better than most, because it calls for more open meetings.” 

A few community members suggested establishing a committee to oversee the ordinance at a sunshine ordinance public workshop last year. Kamlarz responded that such a commission would not have any power unless the measure was put before voters as a charter amendment. 

To view the city’s draft ordinance visit: http://www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=5476 

For more information on the citizens’ group send an email to : drm1a2@sbcglobal.net 

The question of how best to police protesters surfaced over the last few months as anti-war and pro-war groups stepped up demonstrations at the downtown Marine Recruiting Center and other Berkeley venues.  

At its meeting Wednesday evening, the Police Review Commission appointed a subcommittee to review and consider revising the Berkeley Police Department’s crowd-control policies. Commissioners also decided to hold a forum on May 14 where the public will be able to speak and the police chief and city manager will follow up on complaints made at a March 13 meeting that neither attended. 

At the March 13 meeting, where police were accused of overreacting to demonstrators, including pushing some down on the ground and failing to give clear direction, the public asked for immediate changes in crow-control techniques, as the five-year anniversary of the war was to take place March 19, with several demonstrations planned.  

Commissioners Bill White and Michael Sherman attended meetings with police, city staff and protesters prior to the March 19 demonstrations. 

Videos shot by members of the public at earlier demonstrations showed police pushing demonstrators with batons—some forcibly—without the protesters having been asked to vacate the area.  

“I asked if a warning could be given,” Sherman told the commissioners, explaining, however, that he was told that if a dispersal order is given, arrests have to follow if the order is ignored. Police did not want to do that, he said. 

Sherman said discussions in meetings with city staff also focused on the role played by city employee Greg Daniel, whose title is Code Enforcement Supervisor. Daniel was called to the Marine Recruiting Station on March 13 by police to enforce code violations related to objects placed on the sidewalk, which observers said resulted in increased tensions.  

A collision between Zanne Joi of Code Pink and Daniel—which Joi says was intentional and Daniel’s supervisor, Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, says was inadvertent—resulted in Joi’s landing on the ground in the street. Joi told the Planet Thursday she has made a complaint to police (who refused to acknowledge that she had made a citizen’s arrest at the time) and is waiting to see whether police will send the complaint to the district attorney. 

Sherman told the commission he spotted Daniel again at the March 19 World Can’t Wait demonstration: “On Wednesday he showed up again. He took out his pad [to write up citations]. There was a line of police with him.”  

Sherman said the plan had been to diffuse tensions, not increase them, which the code enforcement officer was likely to do. Sherman said he made a quick call to Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna and immediately after that, Daniel left the area.  

Police Chief Doug Hambleton told the commission that satisfying the public had been a challenge. 

“We’ve been feeling like we’re caught in the middle,” he said, explaining that there are concerns from three distinct groups: the anti-war protesters, the pro-military group and the business community.  

“They all said we’re not doing our job,” he said, joking that therefore they must be doing something right.  

Hambleton addressed the question of objects placed on the sidewalk. “The police department is not the principal enforcer for objects on the sidewalk,” he said. Sound permit enforcement comes from the Environmental Health Division in the Health and Human Services Department. 

“All departments are meeting on this,” he said.  

Commissioners said they thought policing went well during the anti-war demonstrations March 19 and the pro-war demonstration the following Saturday.  

Hambleton added that four Code Pink women had been arrested Monday when they entered and refused to leave the recruiting center. He said they praised the jail conditions and even got hot vegetarian meals. (A Daily Planet call to Code Pink confirmed this.) 

The Planet asked the chief to explain some differences perceived in policing the anti-war and pro-war demonstrations. For example, there appeared to be fewer officers Saturday for the larger pro-war crowd.  

“The numbers [of police] are based on the anticipated crowd size and anticipation for conflict,” the chief said. The information police had for the Wednesday demonstration indicated it would be larger, he said.  

The chief spoke to the issue of helmets worn at the 24-hour Feb. 12 demonstration and counter-demonstration in front of the Council Chambers. “We prefer not to have the helmet on; we put it on when we perceive hostility.” 

The perception of hostility can depend on whether the crowd is yelling at you, he said. Video clips of at least two demonstrations show demonstrators standing at close range to officers and shouting at them.  

Asked about whether police feel more comfortable with pro-war groups than pro-peace demonstrators, Hambleton said it’s easier to be with people who shake hands and comply with requests than with “people cussing at you.”

The Community Energy Services Corporation board voted Wednesday to hire Kim Malcolm, an administrative law judge with 25 years’ working experience at the Public Utilities Commission, as its new executive director.  

She will retire from the commission in mid-April and take up her new post at that time. 

The previous CESC director left after accusations surfaced last year that she had misused funds. The city has hired an outside firm to investigate. 

“What a fit!” commented Tim Hansen, secretary-treasurer of the board. 

The approximately 20-year-old nonprofit has an unusual relationship with the city. Its board is the city’s Energy Commission; each member of the City Council and the mayor make one appointment. The commission meets as the board for about 30 minutes each month.  

Now it looks like the CESC will sever relations with the city, Hansen said. The city and CESC have hired attorneys that are working on the amicable separation. 

“They always said wait until Manuela retires” to sever relations, Hansen said, noting that under present conditions “the board can hardly function.” City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque retired late last year. 

There is no attorney on the board  

and only two board members have experience in nonprofits, Hansen said. “There’s no heavyweight for fundraising, and we can’t recruit board members,” he said. 

CESC is a $2.2 million nonprofit with numerous programs relative to energy conservation, including contracts with Berkeley to do Residential Energy Conservation Ordinance inspections for homes that will be sold and Commercial Energy Conservation Ordinance evaluations for commercial properties being sold. 

Among her qualifications, Malcolm lists experience in state energy efficiency programs, said Ruth Grimes, chair of the Energy Commission. “We’re so excited she’s coming,” Grimes said. 

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente has pulled in more than $81,000 in his bid for re-election to his fifth-district central East Oakland City Council seat, far overshadowing any other campaign fundraising in contested races in five City Council districts and three Oakland Unified School Board districts. 

The office of the Oakland City Clerk recently released campaign contribution and expenditure reports in City Council and school board races. 

De La Fuente has raised eight times the money of Fruitvale realtor Mario Juarez, who has picked up $10,500 in contributions in his bid to unseat the veteran councilmember. 

The Daily Planet did not receive campaign finance reports for the two other District 5 challengers, small business owner Beverly Blythe and community development consultant David Wofford. 

De La Fuente’s lead in the fundraising race was part of a trend in which incumbent City Councilmembers are outraising their challengers, though none of them by as wide a margin as the council president. 

In Council District 1 (North Oakland), incumbent Jane Brunner outraised her opponent, public safety activist and Berkeley city employee Patrick McCullough, $7,654 to $906 between Jan. 1 and Mar. 17, the most recent report filing period. But with $27,386 carried over from contributions made before the first of the year, Brunner holds an even larger cash advantage over McCullough, with $26,881 cash on hand to McCullough’s $570. 

In Council District 3 (West Oakland/ Downtown), incumbent Nancy Nadel holds a $19,656 to $8,124 advantage over her only certified challenger, Covenant House Development Director Sean Sullivan. But Nadel is awaiting an expected Friday morning Superior Court decision on whether or not District 3 OUSD School Board member Greg Hodge will be allowed into the race after the Oakland City Clerk’s office ruled that he was one signature short of the 50 needed to qualify for the ballot. Hodge’s fund-raising totals were not available from the City Clerk’s office at the time this story was written. 

In Council District 7 (far East Oakland), incumbent Larry Reid reported only $950 raised since the first of the year, compared to $4,165 by his opponent, community activist Clifford Gilmore. But Reid carried over $5,259 raised before the first of the year, leaving his campaign with a cash balance of $4,828 to Gillmore’s $3,407. 

With incumbent At-Large Council-member Henry Chang deciding not to run for reelection shortly after local power broker State Senate President Don Perata gave his support to another candidate—District 1 School Board member Kerry Hamill—there was no runaway leader in fundraising among the five people competing for Chang’s old seat. 

Hamill has raised $7,997 and had $7,773 cash on hand at the end of the mid-March reporting period. 

AC Transit At-Large Director Rebecca Kaplan had the largest amount of contributions—$20,517—but contributed $7,600 of that herself. In addition, Kaplan has spent $10,000 of her cash total with The Next Generation campaign consultants of Oakland, leaving her with $7,112 cash on hand in mid-March. 

Former AC Transit Director and Oakland attorney Clinton Killian raised $8,199 in the last reporting period. But Killian also loaned his campaign $10,000, leaving him with the largest cash balance of the contenders: $18,187. 

The fourth challenger, Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods co-founder Charles Pine, raised $3,735 during the last reporting period, leaving him with $3,531 on hand. 

The Daily Planet did not receive campaign contribution reports for the fifth At-Large challenger, Oakland volunteer Frank Rose. 

Oakland school board 

In the Oakland Unified School District 1 race (North Oakland) to replace the retiring Hamill, parent activist Jody London was a somewhat surprising fundraising leader over educational philanthropist Brian Rogers, with the two candidates taking distinctly different fundraising paths. London raised $16,309 during the last reporting period, leaving her with a cash balance of $17,605, while Rogers raised $13,150, leaving him with $9,813 in the bank. Of London’s 82 individual contributions, 57 came in amounts of $100.  

Rogers, on the other hand, paid little attention to getting money from outside sources, giving $10,000 to his own campaign. No campaign finance contribution report was made available for the campaign of a third challenger, writer Tennessee Reed, the daughter of writer Ishmael Reed. 

The Daily Planet did not receive fund-raising totals for OUSD District 3 (West Oakland), where community building consultant Jumoke Hinton Hodge (the wife of board member Greg Hodge) and community program manager Olubemiga Oluwole Sr. are competing. No fundraising totals were received for the OUSD District 7 (far East Oakland) race, where incumbent Alice Spearman is being challenged by Acts Full Gospel Church Associate Pastor and Acts Christian Academy principal Doris Limbrick and Beverly Williams of East Oakland. 

Oakland City Attorney John Russo and 5th District (central East Oakland) OUSD Board member Noel Gallo are running unopposed for reelection.

The Berkeley Board of Education had its first look Wednesday at Berkeley Unified’s proposed budget reductions in the face of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $4.6 billion in cuts from the state education budget over the next two years. 

Based on the proposed cuts, Berkeley Unified stands to lose approximately $3.7 million in general fund revenue next year. 

According to a presentation by Deputy Superintendent Javetta Cleveland Wed-nesday, the district will need to cut $3.2 million from its unrestricted general fund budget and any programs that receive a general fund contribution, to deal with the lost revenue. 

“We wanted to make sure the cuts did not affect student performance, did not jeopardize student safety and could be legally supported,” she said. “We did not want the cuts to cost the district in the future or jeopardize the purpose of Measure A.” 

Measure A, the school parcel tax that renewed two school measures—Berkeley School Excellence Project (BSEP) and Measure B—won a decisive victory last year, ensuring that the current level of school funding in Berkeley would be extended for 10 more years.  

Cleveland stressed that the recommendations were a preliminary list, which would be reviewed by Superintendent Bill Huyett’s Budget Advisory Committee over the next month. 

The superintendent will take the recommendations of his Budget Advisory Committee to the school board in May, after which the board will adopt the final budget on or before July 1. 

The district’s list of recommendations includes a one-time freezing of vacant positions ($100,000), reducing the amount of general funds needed to fund release periods ($140,000)—this supports the district’s compliance with PE time requirements—and reducing general fund contribution to food services ($150,000), special education ($500,000) and transportation of its students ($200,000). 

Some school board members ex-pressed concern about the proposed cuts to special education. 

The district also recommended reducing some certificated and classified employee positions—which amounted to $727,680—from the general fund. 

Berkeley Unified sent out 55 potential layoff notices to teachers and counselors two weeks ago to prepare for the governor’s proposed cuts. 

According to Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) President Cathy Campbell, 10 counselors at Berkeley High School received pink slips, including the only two college counselors at the school.  

Berkeley Technology Academy saw one teacher receive a pink slip. 

Among the three middle schools, Willard was the worst hit, with five classroom teachers, one art teacher and one counselor receiving potential layoff notices. 

Longfellow Middle School saw one of its teachers and both counselors receive potential layoff notices. One counselor at King Middle School received a possible layoff notice. 

“Berkeley Unified recently hired three districtwide math coaches,” said Campbell. “One got a layoff notice; the other two were on a temporary contract and were released. It’s really unfortunate, especially because our area of greatest weakness in state testing is math. It’s an area of need.” 

In the elementary schools, potential layoff notices were also received by teachers at Malcolm X (four), Emerson (three), LeConte (three), Oxford (five), Cragmont (one), Washington (four), Jefferson (three), Thousand Oaks (one), Rosa Parks (one). 

Four classroom teachers and one art teacher at Berkeley Arts Magnet received pink slips. 

The district will be sending out final layoff notices on May 15, as required by state law. 

BFT will be organizing a community rally to protest the governor’s proposed cuts in front of the district headquarters at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way on Wednesday, April 9, at 5 p.m.  

Teachers who received pink slips are expected to speak at the event along with district employees and parents.

The University of California Board of Regents voted unanimously Thursday to appoint Mark Yudof, currently head of the University of Texas system, to lead the 10-campus UC system. 

The appointment was made at a regents meeting at the UC San Francisco-Mission Bay campus. 

Richard Blum, who chairs both the UC Board of Regents and the search committee, said in a statement, “I am delighted that Mark Yudof has agreed to lead the UC system and serve as its next president. 

“I cannot think of a more qualified person to meet the day-to-day challenges and provide the long-term vision that is needed at this time in the university’s history,” said Blum. 

Yudof, 63, will replace current UC President Robert Dynes, who last August announced his intention to step down no later than June 2008 after nearly five years in the position.  

Yudof’s appointment is effective this summer, with the exact date to be determined. He will get a compensation package valued at $828,000 for the 2008-09 academic year.  

“I am deeply honored by this appointment. The University of California stands as a model for the world, creating tomorrow’s leaders and innovators and helping to solve many of society’s most pressing problems,” Yudof said. 

He added, “I can think of no greater personal privilege than to have the opportunity to lead this remarkable institution.” 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “The regents have made a terrific choice in selecting Mark Yudof to be the next president of the University of California. As one of the nation’s most important and respected university leaders, Mr. Yudof has a proven record of great achievements.” 

“I am confident that his broad range of executive and academic expertise will serve the university and the people of California well,” Schwarzenegger said of the appointee. 

Yudof has served as chancellor of the University of Texas system since 2002 and UC officials describe him as one of the leading figures in American higher education. 

He heads one of the largest university systems in the country, with 15 campuses, 185,000 students and an annual operating budget of $10.7 billion. 

Yudof previously was president of the University of Minnesota.  

Before serving as chief executive in Minnesota, Yudof was a faculty member and dean and provost at University of Texas at Austin for 26 years.  

Yudof, a native of Philadelphia, earned a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Law Institute, and a member of the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, an appointment President Bush made in 2006.  

The University of California includes more than 220,000 students, 170,000 faculty and staff, and an $18 billion annual budget at its 10 campuses throughout the state. 

The UC system also is involved in managing the U.S. Department of Energy’s national laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore and Los Alamos, N.M.

The School of Social Justice and Ecology (SSJE) at Berkeley High School will round up its first Green Career Week with a career fair today (Friday) in the Jacket Gym. 

Open to all high school students, the fair will host booths for more than a dozen participants, including Save the Bay and Elephant Pharmacy. 

Established two years ago as a small school within Berkeley High, SSJE is known for learning expeditions that go beyond the classroom. 

In the past, students have worked on habitat restoration in the bay and dissected banana peels and bubble gum wrappers from their school’s trash cans for better recycling. 

“The idea behind this career week was to show students how they can continue in this theme even after they graduate,” said SSJE teacher Kate Trimlett who helped organize the event. “There’s a whole bunch of opportunities to join the green world or work in social justice today. We want to give kids a push in the right direction.” 

Throughout the week, experts on green businesses practices, sustainable architecture and community health gave hour-long lectures to students followed by question-and-answer sessions about career choices. 

Sophomores Anthony Vaili and Darrian Perry discovered their love for green buildings during a session on green businesses with Chris Avant, president of the Federal Building Company. 

“He went from being a laborer to owning the company,” said Anthony. “All his offices are made from recycled materials. His vehicles run on biodiesel. I want to do the same when I grow up.” 

Darrian, 15, told the Planet that he had learned about the uses of solar panels and other “eco-friendly” appliances for the first time Monday. 

“Sure, I heard about them before, but I didn’t know how they worked,” he said. “Now I am more conscious about the environment and the community. I want to start my own green business one day.” 

Students received career tips from businesses as varied as Oakland Releaf—a tree planting business—and Alameda County’s Office of Rehabilitation. 

“When we studied climate change last week, students got to play with solar panels and learned about alternate fuels at AC Transit,” Trimlett said. “This is taking things to a whole different level. They are getting business cards from professionals and some have even signed up for an internship this year.” 

Since SSJE will be sending out its first graduating class next year, internships will be crucial for seniors. 

The school’s curriculum focuses on science, humanities and math to prepare students for careers in engineering, science and social justice. 

“The kids are definitely asking some good questions,” said Lisa Thompson, a SSJE parent and nurse practitioner at La Clinica de la Raza. “I think this will open them up to more volunteering opportunities ... Help them to focus on one area. This is the time when students start thinking of jobs. Instead of working at Burger King after graduating from high school, they could work at the Ecology Center.” 

UC Berkeley conservation and resource studies major Dale Dualan was preparing to talk with students about his work with Global Community Monitor Wednesday. Dualan spent time with West Berkeley residents last year to help set up an air monitor to test emissions from Pacific Steel Casting. 

“A career fair helps to present high school students with the issue because it’s real,” he said. “It’s in your home, in your neighborhood. I hope my experience will motivate the kids and provide them with some insight. I am not here to advocate anything, it’s all about students developing their own opinion.” 

“All the discussions interest me,” said Olivia Dolorier, a tenth grader. “I don’t just want to work for a big corporation and earn money. I want to do something to give back to the community.” 

More than 35 students came to a session with Alameda County’s Behavioral Health Care Services Rehabilitation Director Theresa Razzano, who heads a program which helps people with mental illnesses get jobs. She encouraged the students to apply for jobs in community health services. 

“What advice can you give us about our career choice?” asked Sadiqua Bynum, a freshman. 

“You want to engage in as many life experiences as possible,” Razzano said. “Every life experience you have gives you a different flavor. You can go stack cans at a grocery store, but does that make your heart beat faster? That’s the question you need to ask yourself.”

A few weeks ago, Youth Spirit Art Works hosted a novel event, described by director Sally Hindman as an “artists reception and art making event” at Sweet Adeline Bake Shop, a cafe on 63rd and Adeline streets.  

At long tables set up on the street, people painted messages promoting health care on tiles to be used in decorating traffic turnarounds in south Berkeley. Inside the cafe visitors viewed an exhibit (which will remain through the end of March) of some of the works of the participants in the Youth Spirit Art Works program. Berkeley City Councilmember Max Anderson came and spoke of the “outpouring of community energy and talent here that makes me very proud to represent this district.” 

Operating out of the art studio on the Berkeley Technology Academy campus, Youth Spirit Art Works provides a place where young people can learn about art and create their own art, where they can use art to bring about social change, where they can get school credit and earn some money.  

Specifically for homeless and low income young people between the ages of 16 and 25, Youth Spirit Art Works is modeled after YaYa (Young Aspirations, Young Artists), a New Orleans furniture painting program that was founded in 1988. That program has changed the lives of thousands of young people as well as being a hugely successful business enterprise. 

Sally Hindman, founder and director describes the multifaceted program. One area of activity, she said, is “taking old recycled furniture, chairs that people have thrown out, tables that people have donated and having youth turning them into art.”  

The young artists will get half the money from everything that is sold and, Hindman said, “let me just say that art furniture is pricey.”  

Between two dozen and three dozen young people come to the studio at B-Tech every day. The morning session is for B-Tech students who get class credit for participating, and then the afternoon is open to others. The program is an opportunity for the teenagers to be creative, to explore new ideas, and it also is a serious learning experience.  

Hindman describes the mission of the program: to “empower and transform the lives of youth by giving them experience, skills and self-confidence to meet their full potential.”  

On a recent afternoon, one girl decorated her chair with painstakingly detailed flowers, another did hers by splattering paint inspired by Jackson Pollock, whose work one of the staff members introduced her to. Student Charles Hutson painted an impressive lion head on a table to go with the claw feet on the bottom of the table. 

Ryan McAllister, 20, found it difficult to work on furniture so he chose to paint pictures instead. His delightful paintings are on the walls at the cafe. His mother says that he has been drawing almost all his life. He attended Children’s Learning Center in Alameda from first grade through high school and at some point a social worker referred him to the Youth Spirit program.  

His paintings are cartoons, inspired, he says, “by the Japanese animation cartoons and video game characters.” Most of his pictures are of girls, some accompanied by biographies he has created. There is one of a girl from outer space who “just wanted to see what Earth was like and make new friends.” She looks just like an Earth girl except that she has a tail. “She might even find romance here,” he said. 

The tile painting project is another part of the Youth Spirit Art Works program. The project, called Beautiful South Berkeley, is focused on decorating street benches, barricades and turnarounds with the tiles. 

The tile art centers on the theme of health and is being done in conjunction with Health Access Coalition—which is working for health care reform— and with the city of Berkeley Department of Public Health.  

“(We’re) using art-making in the community as a vehicle for doing public education around health care,” Hindman said. “We have a 20-year disparity between the life span of a white person versus a black person. So we’re trying to work with people using the leadership of youth in order to promote health in south and west Berkeley.” 

Another program is planned for the future—to engage artists who have gained experience through Youth Spirit to teach art in the local elementary schools.  

“What this is about is meeting people where they are and working with them and recognizing that,” Hindman explains. “Some people have some limitations in what they’re able to do and this allows them to really blossom in their own way.” 

My husband and I chose a Montessori School for our children because of small classes, low teacher-student ratios and a belief that our children’s imagination and curiosity should inform if not guide their education. We somehow managed to make every conceivable parenting mistake. 

Our son began first grade, we thought happy and prepared to learn. So we forced him to do his homework in spite of his tears and protestations. We assumed his teachers wouldn’t give him work he couldn’t do. Then we got a report card stating his teacher’s concern about our son’s motor development because of the difficulties he had copying words. He had also begun to quietly refuse to do assignments in class, he could not finish activities in the time allotted and he frequently looked and acted confused or distracted. 

My husband and I redoubled our efforts to get our son to complete his school assignments. His frustration and our anxiety built and built. His younger sister who learns quickly and brags incessantly began to pass her brother in many areas. Since we could get little help or guidance from their school, we began looking into programs and testing. A neighbor who had two children who needed special help sent us to the Raskob Institute. 

After two thousand dollars and ten hours of testing we got a detailed report informing us that our child learned quite normally but that he had anxiety about learning. They also politely suggested that developmentally inappropriate materials and teaching might be contributing to the problem. We hired a learning specialist through Raskob and our son made rapid academic gains, and more important, his confidence and calm happy ways returned. 

In spite of all evidence and expert advice, we tried to keep both children in their private school. We had long painful meetings, we had written plans, we had good intentions, and we got bad advice and still could get little or no accommodation for our son or family. 

In a fit of sheer frustration we called the Oakland Unified School District enrollment office looking for two openings for our children. The enrollment office found us a school with spaces for both of our children. We transferred to Oakland public schools with low expectations and high anxiety. 

When we paid a visit to our children’s new school, Mr. Stenger, the principal, listened to our concerns about our son and then pointed out that “all children learn differently; our job is to find the best way to teach them.” He had no reservations about having our children and our family thrust on him mid-year in an emotional and academic panic. He also told us to speak directly and openly with our children’s teachers. 

We left a huge packet of reports, test results and questions in our son’s new teacher’s box. Ms. Haruyama called us the same night and had read the materials. She knew more about teaching and learning than most of the experts we had worked with. Our son’s comfort and ease with writing and math began to improve dramati-cally after only a few weeks in her class. 

Our daughter began to complain, “My mother gave me to public school and put me in kindergarten.” Her teacher, Miss Pessin caught me in the hall and said, “Your daughter’s a good reader but she has a tendency to sight read, so I put her in a small group to work on the phonics.” 

My hard-case daughter then began to complain that her class work was too easy; the next day she came home with a huge stack of homework assignments. We haven’t heard a complaint since. 

Our children couldn’t have more different learning styles, but Kaiser Elementary teaches them both effortlessly. Embracing diversity doesn’t just mean throwing different people together and treating them the same. It means having wildly different children and meeting their different needs so they can all excel. 

Our children adore their teachers, their principal, the parents and other staff and their classmates. They love the freedom to be themselves and to learn in their own ways. The Oakland public schools have created a wonderful place for our children.

Five students from Berkeley Technology Academy (B-Tech) will fly to New Orleans Sunday as part of a week-long spring break arts and culture trip to help Hurricane Ka-trina victims and to mingle with local artists. 

The teenagers belong to South Berkeley-based Youth Spirit Art Works—a new interfaith nonprofit involved in providing jobs and training to homeless and at-risk young people. 

The teenagers competed with 50 of their peers in their art program to paint the most chairs, and won the trip as a award. 

Although six students qualified to participate in the trip, only five of them will be able to make it, said Sally Hindman, executive director for the organization. 

The group will meet with young artists from the New Orleans-based arts non-profit Young Aspirations, Young Artists (YaYa) to discuss their work and exchange ideas. 

“We are very excited about this opportunity to meet with so many talented artists,” said Hindman, who will be accompanying the students on the trip. “They have so much to teach these kids. We will attend YaYa arts workshops, tour their New Orleans studio and shop, and meet the YaYa board.” 

The group will also spend a day volunteering for Habitat for Humanity to help with Katrina clean-up efforts. 

“I am very excited about volunteering in the clean-up,” said B-Tech sophomore Charles Hutson, one of the winners. “I want to go and help rebuild homes and stuff.” 

Hutson said he had never picked up a brush until he became involved in the arts program at Youth Spirit. 

“I had never painted anything in my life before,” he said. “I was a bit nervous painting chairs, but it was cool in the end.” 

Founded in 2006, Youth Spirit works with 16- to 25-year-old youth from schools, shelters and youth programs to paint chairs, create murals and participate in other community arts activities. 

Although the trip is costing the organization $9,500, individuals and local businesses have stepped in as sponsors. 

“We are paying only $2,680,” said Hindman. “We will be living at the United Methodist Church. Our food will be provided by Narsai David and Ann Cooper. We also received five free plane tickets.” 

The group will also have their artwork featured in the Youth Spirit Artworks March exhibit at the Sweet Adeline Bake Shop, 3350 Adeline St., till Monday. 

To support Youth Spirit Artworks, checks can be sent to: YSA, c/o CIF of San Francisco Fdn., 225 Bush Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco CA.  

See www.youthspiritartworks.org for information about its art programs.

The obits are everywhere this week: “Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.”  

That’s Eric Alterman, reprising in the New Yorker what he’s been saying for a while now in his regular column in The Nation. 

It’s certainly true that exactly five years ago today, when the O’Malley family assumed responsibility for publishing the Berkeley Daily Planet, we never imagined that it would be quite so difficult to make our efforts break even financially. At that point many newspapers were still considered cash cows, promising and often delivering very handsome returns on investments. Even four years ago, as Professor Alterman notes, things still looked rosy to many.  

The hard facts were in Editor and Publisher on Friday, in a story by Jennifer Saba: 

“The newspaper industry has experienced the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years. 

“According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4 percent ....compared to 2006—the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.” 

That’s the bad news. The good news, to paraphrase Mark Twain, is that the rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated.  

The best thing about never having gotten enough revenue from advertisers to pay our costs is that we don’t miss it as much as we would have if we’d ever actually gotten it, if you can follow that twisted syntax. In fact, the paper is bigger and better than ever, yet the subsidy we provide is down somewhat. 

Of course, our operation is a lot leaner than that of typical metro papers in their heyday. The top executives (that would be Mike and me) aren’t taking home six figure salaries (or any salaries at all for that matter.) We wish we could afford to pay more to our staffers, but since we can’t, we don’t. Along with our readers, we appreciate the excellent work they continue to do regardless.  

And we haven’t lost our sense of mission. Partly, perhaps, this is because those folks who probably are up to something, the ones whose hands are in the public pocket at every opportunity, have from day one delighted in spreading rumors about the paper’s imminent demise. Sheer cussedness has impelled us to prove them wrong. 

We’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished. The Planet has won all sorts of awards, the latest being the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.  

Our ace reporters have broken a great number of notable stories—the biggest accolade is same stories’ subsequent (unattibuted) appearance in the metro dailies. Our feature writers and columnists are among the best in the business. Many people rely on the Planet’s comprehensive community and arts calendars to plan their weeks. We’ve pioneered the concept of giving our readers plenty of space to analyze events in their own voices and from their own perspectives, now much the vogue in Internet publications like the Huffington Post.  

Ah yes, the Internet. Being blamed, everywhere, as we write, for causing the demise of print papers. Alterman’s piece contains extensive descriptions, presumably for the benefit of non-web-savvy New Yorker readers, of the most popular “news” sites on the Internet, with the Huffington Post leading the way.  

Why the ironic quotes? Well, up until now there’s been precious little original news reporting done for web-only daily papers. A lot of what people see when they look to the Huffington Post, Google News or the equivalent to find out what’s happening is just links to articles in the diminishing number of print dailies. 

But someone has to pay reporters. Huffington has just hired a few of them, but still has, last I checked, fewer reporters than the Berkeley Daily Planet employs. And our defined universe is a lot smaller than theirs. 

Nonetheless, Internet publication is one very fine way of getting the news out, once real reporters have collected it. Here at the Planet we’re starting to figure out how to take advantage of the opportunity. We’ve maintained the word “daily” in our title since the beginning, even though we’ve not been able to publish new content every single day, but it’s finally possible to do that thanks to the Web.  

Regular online readers might have noticed by now that we’re putting up new stories almost every day on our website, berkeleydailyplanet.com. Most of these will eventually appear in newsprint, but you can get your news fix early online.  

What community papers like ours excel at is reporting in depth on topics of mainly local interest, especially land use decisions. That’s our sweet spot, one that metro dailies are leaving to us as they downsize because of declining ad revenues and falling profits. Without additional printing and distribution expenses, we will be able to devote still more of our resources to comprehensive daily reporting of what our readers need to know. 

There are good reasons, too, why advertisers are increasing flocking to the web. Computer search engines allow willing buyers to connect with eager sellers in no time at all. That’s why the Planet’s advertising sales department is working on enhancing the role of our online paper to function as a powerful directory which can easily be accessed by consumers who want to find and support local businesses.  

As we go to press, we’ve learned that the East Bay Daily News, one of the many pubications acquired by the Media News conglomerate in the last year or so, is being shut down by its corporate masters. Some good reporting and photography, against all odds, has been done by those who worked there during its brief existence, but sophisticated East Bay newspaper readers just weren’t looking for a publication which featured “What is Hannah Montana’s real name?” in a prominent location on the front page. 

Someone called to ask if we’re going to have our annual celebration of the anniversary of our first publication, which is, fittingly, today, April 1. We are, but we’ve postponed the open house to a later day, Mayday, May 1, when we can expect better weather, since we now have so many friends we need to be able to spill outside into the backyard. (And perhaps this is the moment to acknowledge the contribution to our success of our gracious landlord, Bob Sugimoto, who has lived upstairs for most of these five years and has provided us with fresh tomatoes from his plants out back every year since we’ve been here. )  

An old writer friend, Michael Rossman, sent us a letter recently reminding us how lucky we are to be able to undertake this great adventure: 

“...how I envy you, in the best of ways, for being so enabled to live out a dream—quirky, idiosyncratic, substantive, modest-scaled, real. How fortunate you are, how fortunate you have made yourself, to be able just (amongst all other responsibilities) to sit there writing discursive, intelligent surveys and probes and nudges into so wide a variety of civic, citizenly, and humane affairs. In endless industry, fascination, and enjoyment, or so it seems; I’m sure I’m not just projecting....you are so consistently sensible and wide-reaching that this (for me) easily excuses your occasional quirks of focus and reaction, and leaves me with a sense of local, home-grown civic comfort to know your voice reaches so many so regularly in our small canton. And more personally with a little vicarious thrill of pleasure each time I see how you’ve enjoyed yourself doing it again.” 

He’s pretty nearly got it right. He’s missed some of the more difficult moments in this peculiar enterprise, but we know we’re lucky to be here, and we do often enjoy ourselves. That’s why we’re still around, despite all odds, still having fun most of the time. And why we expect to be here for a while longer, god willing and the creeks don’t rise. 

—Becky O’Malley 

Our friend the J-School professor has directed our attention to a 2005 interview with Michael Smith, a reporter for the Sunday Times of London, which ran in the Washington Post on June 16, 2005. She’s been using it as a text in a news reporting class.  

Smith, you may or may not remember, led the press coverage of the top-secret British documents which were leaked to the press in the spring of 2005, starting with his report on the Downing Street Memo. These documents suggested that the Bush administration jiggered the intelligence reports about what was going on Iraq at the time of the invasion in 2002, and that, according to the Post article, “actions at the United Nations were designed to give legal cover to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.” 

This quote from the interview with Smith caught her eye, or more accurately sent chills down her spine: 

Michael Smith: “We’re stuck over a barrel now. The Geneva Convention says that if you occupy a country, you have to leave it able to govern itself and protect itself. The Brits will stick to that I am sure but we will see a drawdown of troops in the U.K.-controlled sector because it is much more peaceful and getting to the point where it needs to be able to govern itself. But when will Iraq be repaired enough for us all to leave? I suspect it will be a long time yet.” 

Just about two years out, that comment seems to have been prophetic. The British mostly withdrew from Basra City last fall, when they thought they’d gotten things approximately in order, and now all Hell is breaking loose—again. So talk of further British withdrawals from the area is being toned down, the Brits being a reasonably responsible bunch.  

Here’s what Caroline Wyatt, the BBC’s defense correspondent, said yesterday: “Having gone into Iraq in 2003 shoulder to shoulder with Washington, London cannot be seen to be abandoning its ally prematurely—nor leaving the people of Basra in the lurch.” 

What implications does this have for the election campaigns now underway in our own country? Wyatt again: “Britain’s future plans for its forces in Iraq also depend on another key election —that in the U.S., and the decisions made by America’s next leader on U.S. troop levels in Iraq.”  

Well, yes. How will the next U.S. administration deal with the mess we’ve made in Iraq?  

We ran Smith’s Geneva Convention quote past a former U.N. employee who has worked in humanitarian programs and studied international law.  

“The Geneva Conventions?” she said with a somewhat bitter laugh. “How long has it been since the United States paid any attention to the Geneva Conventions?” She pointed out that the Bush administrations—both of them—have taken pride in ignoring the Geneva Conventions, citing the writings of law professor Jordan J. Paust on the topic. One of his many law review articles starts out this way:  

“If one focuses on the January 25, 2002 Memorandum for the President by White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush’s subsequent decisions and authorizations, there is evidence of the initiation of a Common Plan to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions.” This particular article primarily concerns the maltreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, justified by the administration’s reliance on a memorandum addressing possible war crime responsibility and designs for attempted avoidance of international criminal responsibility that was co-authored by Berkeley’s own JohnYoo. But the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude to the Geneva Conventions is similarly reflected in the mess it’s made in Iraq. The Brits might care about what they’re leaving behind, but we Yanks don’t seem to be worrying about it.  

Colin Powell—does anyone remember him?—had his own shorthand version, the Pottery Barn Rule: if you break it, you’ve bought it. But since Powell turned out to be the witting or unwitting vehicle for the phony baloney at the U.N. in 2002, no one pays any attention to him any more. 

There are just three possibilities for the next president of the United States: two lawyers and an old soldier. We could also throw in anothr lawyer, Ralph Nader, for humor if we want. None of them has any real experience of the kind that’s going to count if this country plans to try to fix what we’ve broken in Iraq.  

McCain talks grandly about winning the war, but what on earth could that mean? He doesn’t even seem to know exactly who our soldiers are fighting, for which he’s been roundly scolded, but do they themselves know who they’re fighting? How could they? What would “winning” mean? Would it mean, perhaps, causing peace to reign throughout the land, with our soldiers as police? Our police can’t even make peace in Oakland, or even in Richmond, so how can we make peace in Iraq? 

All three—or four—candidates are falling all over each other to establish who knew first that the invasion was a mistake. Obama seems to win that one, and Nader’s also in the running. But we’re in the soup now, whoever’s responsible. 

Mrs. Clinton wants us to believe that this race is about who will react fastest in the next crisis (the red phone commercial), but in actuality both she and McCain were quite a bit too fast on the draw in the last one, with disastrous consequences. And none of the four has had any relevant experience in the real world of international crises anyhow.  

We’re left with Smith’s question hanging in the air: When will Iraq be repaired enough for us all to leave? Who’s to judge? How will we know when it’s happened? Or maybe we should just pull out right away, leaving the hapless Iraqis to shoot it out until only a few are left standing. 

It’s time for all the candidates to stop bickering about how we got where we are, and to make some concrete plans for what we should do next. The simplistic solutions of the Cindy Sheehans of the world, just bring the troops home and forget about the Iraqis, aren’t enough, but McCain’s frequently quoted estimate that we’ll need a hundred years to make peace in Iraq is too awful to contemplate. 

Clinton and Nader have spent most of their lives in the adversarial environment of the practice of law, and McCain’s principal experience is with war, not with peace. Of the four frontrunners, only Barack Obama has had any experience at all with the tedious nuts and bolts of governing in a civil society. His years in the Illinois legislature, where he was exposed to many of the problems of corruption and self-interest which Iraqis will face if they ever have a chance to reconstruct their nation, should stand him in good stead in that regard. It’s time for him to get to work with whatever advisers he can muster to advance a real plan for doing more than just declaring victory and pulling out of Iraq, though we must do that as well.  

Tacitus, the historian of an ancient empire too much like our own, quoted a speech by a citizen of a territory conquered by the Romans, the British chieftain Calgacus: Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. “To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”  

That’s not the peace we want to leave behind us in Iraq. How can we do better? 

BAM / PFA BUILDING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Toyo Ito’s rendering of the proposed art museum, the sidewalk on Oxford Street in front of the museum is filled with people. But that sidewalk is empty today, and the rendering shows nothing that will attract all those people. 

In the rendering, the Oxford Street facade of the museum is made up of blank white walls rising up behind small lawns with abstract sculptures on them. Anyone who understands how to create lively urban places can predict that this will be an empty, unused space. 

If we want this to be a lively space, we should replace the small, unusable lawns with cafe seating, and we should add a couple of stands nearby selling coffee, tea, and food. 

Artsy architects are attracted by blank white walls rising up behind small lawns, but ordinary people are not. If we want people here, we need something that will attract people. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

A BIKE FOR BILL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My friend, Bill, at North Berkeley Senior Center just had a second bike stolen at the senior center. It was securely locked to the bike rack in front of the senior center. I got the second bike for Bill from a friend who had an unused biked in his garage because his kids upgraded to more expensive, mountain bikes. 

Bill is an 81-year-old, low-income senior, and the bike was his sole source of transportation. This seems like a very mean thing to do. I understand that saws are available now that cut through metal like butter, and/or there are jacks that can open a lock. 

Anybody out there have an unused bike they would like to donate to Bill? 

Thank you for your consideration. 

Catherine Willis 

• 

EAGLES UP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It was invigorating to see Berkeley’s spirit of protest alive in the Eagles Up and MAF protests on Telegraph Avenue last week. The demonstration seemed to bring out the full diverse range of the pro-war contingent, from the overweight bikers to the slightly less overweight bikers. The fact that most of these people made the trek with a debilitating medical condition makes it all the more impressive. 

That is, I assume they all had invisible debilitating medical conditions. Since the army’s maximum enlistment age is 42, and these guys were “pro-war,” I can’t think of any other reason why they wouldn’t be in Iraq holding a rifle, or at least in military training somewhere. I just think the Daily Planet should have made a bigger deal over the heroism these young and middle-aged men showed by rising from their wheelchairs to travel to Berkeley and stand up for what’s right. 

Hooray for Eagles Up, MAF, and above all: Hooray for America. 

James Wiseman 

Albany 

• 

IN HARM’S WAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When American soldiers die in Iraq, do we punish the medics and doctors who try to save them? 

No, we recognize that our soldiers are in harm’s way, their injuries are often catastrophic, and sometimes no amount of medical intervention, even the truly heroic, will keep them alive. 

The children in our poorest neighborhoods, under the freeways, closest to the toxic dumps, living with the most crime and the fewest police, with more liquor stores than supermarkets, more check cashing businesses than banks or savings and loans, where good job opportunities are as rare as good health care—the children of these neighborhoods are also in harm’s way, living on the front lines, subject to catastrophe. 

To punish the teachers and schools that struggle to educate these children makes no more sense than punishing a doctor for not saving the victim of a roadside bomb.  

The destructive effects of extreme poverty cannot be cured by our schools alone. 

This does not absolve our schools of responsibility, but it means that our schools can only provide part of the solution. 

The tactic of blaming schools for the educational divide in California is a way to avoid taking responsibility for the malignant neglect of our poorest communities. 

Governor, step up. 

Drop your plan for a ten-percent budget cut to education. 

Drop your plan to punish so-called low-performing schools. 

Help California get out from under the misguided constraints of the No Child Left Behind Act. 

Instead, lead the way in supporting our teachers with adequate resources. 

Face the fact that new revenue will be required. 

Proposition 13 gutted the education system in California, and some kind of adjustment is necessary. 

Our most prosperous businesses and our richest citizens have been contributing too little for too long. 

We have wealthy school districts where the community is able to supplement state funding with lavish private contributions. And we have school districts where the meager state funding is all they’ve got. Your current proposal punishes the schools with the greatest need and the least money. 

We can’t continue to neglect and then punish our state’s poorest families. The fate of all our children is bound up together. 

Please raise the budget for education in California. There are children in harm’s way, and they need help. 

David Schweidel 

• 

THANKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At about 9:30 this morning, my doorbell rang and through the crack in the curtain I saw silver badges on dark blue uniforms. After a frantic search through some questionable escapades in the late 1960s, my mind returned to the present and my heart resumed a normal beat. As I opened the door, my eyes focused on a familiar object in one of the officer’s hands. What is your name? He asked. I answered honestly. Do you have any identification? He said. I said that all my identification was (I hoped) inside the wallet he was holding. He handed it over and asked me to check the contents to see if everything was inside. Everything was. Even the $24.73 I had left after Fosters Freeze last night. Even my Kaiser card and my recently replaced debit card. Even the tiny silver pen that had come with my brand new Levenger wallet. The officers, who were growing more handsome by the minute as they stood there on my patio, explained that a woman on Grant Street had found it and turned it over to them without even opening it.  

Thank you, honest woman. Thank you, handsome policemen. 

Martha Dickey 

• 

STATE OF EDUCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Only a couple weeks ago, over 10,000 teachers were informed that they would be laid off to partially account for California’s 4.4 billion dollar budget deficit. Gov. Schwarzenegger, who had strongly advocated for education prior to his election, needs to consider the long-term effects of this plan. The lay-off of 10,000 teachers while our population continues to grow will lead to large increases in class size. Second, the dismissal of teachers, increasing classroom sizes and the huge cuts to education will lower student’s test-performance on standardized tests, which will limit the amount of funding students will receive at the Federal level. California is already 47th of 50 in per pupil funding for education, this cut will surely bring California down the final notches for last place. Lastly, the worst hit schools will be those who can least afford it, the most needy children, with the weakest PTAs, which are least able to adjust their budgets and to fundraise. Our students are the working class of the next generation; our failure to support them is a failure to secure the economy and social health of our community in upcoming years. Sacramento needs to find another way to address this budget issue other than at the expense of our students. These cuts are a bandage, and a dirty one at that, it will worsen the situation in the long term.  

In the meanwhile, local government must address the local needs of their community and their schools while standing up for those teachers being so unjustly hit. Berkeley Unified school district is laying off over 50 of its teachers. While there are other districts which are extremely hard-hit, I am very disappointed in Berkeley’s response to the situation. Districts such as San Francisco and Oakland have been working hard locally to ensure that the students in their community do not suffer due to budget decisions made at the state level, not to mention to ensure that their teachers do not have to face the insult of being tossed aside. Local government needs to make education among its top priority, they need to step in to protect our children’s educations and they need to advocate for our students and our teachers as our elected officials.  

Debra Wong 

• 

PANORAMIC WAY PROJECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In your March 28 report on what the council did, Judith Scherr showed her lack of knowledge about a project at 161 Panoramic Way. She wrote in part, “The neighbors said the new home would create dangerous conditions, especially while it was being built. Numerous conditions were placed on developer Bruce Kelley’s project, but that did not satisfy neighbors.” 

A simple search of earlier Planet articles would reveal much information as to why there has been so much opposition to the project. The 3,000-square-foot, exceedingly steep lot is in a subdivision that was created when developers paid no attention to the topography of the area. Developers were also not required by law to put in the infrastructure. Anyone who has driven up Panoramic Way knows that there is a stretch of road that is functionally one way but has two way traffic just past the hairpin curve at Dwight Way. Panoramic Way is the only paved road to access the neighborhood.  

While in the past the city has required individual property owners to widen the road, and build the house from the property line, the city is not requiring developer Bruce Kelley to do that. They allowed a slightly less than 1,500-square-foot house. The current zoning is the most restrictive in the city. Minimum lot size has been 9,000 square feet since Feb. 13, 1975. Kelley’s lot in an antiquated subdivision is “grandfathered.” Unfortunately, we are not living in the late 1800s. There were no cars at the time the lot was created. We do not use horses nowadays. 

One of the councilmembers voting against the appeal, Betty Olds, stated at the hearing that she used to drive up the road to visit her friend, Doris Maslach and that the Kelley project will widen the road. Olds seemed to have forgotten that Mr. Steve Maslach testified that his father, retired UC Provost George Maslach, had a stroke and his transport to the hospital was delayed because the narrow section of the road was blocked. Getting to the hospital as quickly as possible is essential when a person has a stroke. Mr. Maslach died. And Old’s friend, Doris Maslach, moved off the hill because of continual problems with the narrow section of the road. The council also seemed to have forgotten the Berkeley/Oakland firestorm of 1991 when 25 people died. Some of them died on a narrow Oakland road, Charing Cross that was blocked by a stalled car. The council also forgot that Safety Commissioner Dick White testified that it took a fire engine 14 minutes to drive to the 300 block of Panoramic Way. The council apparently did not read that Berkeley fire officials have told individual residents that the area is not a safe one to live, even thought the Fire Chief testifies that the area is safe.  

As a former member of the Zoning Board I know that it is easy to stipulate conditions. However, my experience is that the city does not enforce the conditions. In fact, the city does not enforce the zoning once the project is built and a certificate of occupancy signed.  

Ann Reid Slaby 

• 

FORGIVE EVERYONE 

FOR EVERYTHING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We see and hear the news about everything from the war to the economy, public shootings, etc. 

My suggestion: Forgive Absolutely Everybody for Absolutely Everything. Just clear out all the resentment from your body and mind! Clear out all the anger, fear, “hard feelings,” etc. It helps to make a written inventory a la Step 4 of Alcoholics Anonymous. “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Of course, you can’t take this step out of context with the other 11 steps. Anymore than you can remove a heart from a human or animal, and expect either the heart or that person or animal to survive long apart. 

I kid you not. 

Clearing all resentment, anger, bitterness, abject fear of people or financial insecurity out of your body and mind, leads to great lovemaking, not to mention miracles of all kinds. Cures cancer, makes needed money appear right when you need it. Even helps prevent unjust evictions or foreclosures. Did I mention it is faster than a speeding locomotive and can outrun a bullet? All you need now is the cape.... 

Linda M. Smith 

Human angel, former Berkeley resident, Queen of Her Own Universe (or Mind, same thing), and sexual healer extraordinaire (yes I am one of those people who thinks that Sexual Healing Cures War and Loneliness.... and mighty proud of it, too!) 

P.S.: I forgive you, Berkeley, and all of America and the World, for all those times when you or I behaved in less-than-Godlike and glorious ways..... I AM God’s orgasm.... 

• 

MESSAGE OF THE DAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

War is over. 

U.S. budget is balanced. 

Bush and Cheney finally come clean and admit, that yes, the war in Iraq is all about oil. 

Anti-tax Republicans state that they will stop gifting the rich with tax breaks. 

Fundamentalist and evangelical anti-abortionists say they will stop interfering with a woman’s right to choose. 

Racists and white supremists will stop hiding their egregious activities under the guise of God, country and patriotism. 

Anti-gay activists will adhere to Christ’s teaching; love thy neighbor as thy brother. 

Gas prices will dip below $2 a gallon this summer. 

The real estate industry swears off greed and unconscionable loans. 

April Fools Day! 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

West Berkeley, according to a West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC), John Curl, Rick Auerbach and their host of experts at a recent meeting on the West Berkeley Plan and Sustainablity Berkeley, is a thriving industrial area in balance with the economy and the environment, supporting artists and living wage jobs.  

They claim there are 7,000 well-paid industrial jobs in West Berkeley. This portrayal of West Berkeley is far from accurate. What little facts they had did not represent the real employment figures or land use in West Berkeley. The presentation was glaring in its lack of specifics and in ignoring the real uses and changes going on in West Berkeley. 

What’s the nature of this change? The simply reality is that in the last 20 years, large-scale blue collar industry has disappeared from West Berkeley and much of the Bay Area, making way for new well-paying jobs across many sectors that are changing the face of the Bay Area economy and the economy of Berkeley particularly. The change and potential of new manufacturing businesses in West Berkeley—pharmaceutical processing, lab and research along with innovative and unique small manufacturing companies such as Timeworks and Berkeley Mills, Swerve, Meyer Sound, Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, Trumer Pils—all reflect specialization, smaller scale and a focus on unique, highly valued products with a national or international customer base. 

According to the figures from the City of Berkeley, the total number of jobs in West Berkeley’s zip code 94710 went from 16,321 to 15,540 between 2001 and 2007—a small decline of 5 percent. But digging into the statistics reveals a bigger story— where jobs are growing and where they are shrinking. In the manufacturing sector, jobs declined from 5,003 to 3,880—a decline of 22 percent—and warehousing jobs went from 65 to 0. The remaining manufacturing jobs are mostly with Pacific Steel which has 700 well-paying jobs and the others are mostly at Bayer with over 1,600 well-paid technical folks in the pharmaceutical manufacturing line reflecting the single largest manufacturer in Berkeley. What does this really say? Most of the old manufacturing jobs are leaving or have left Berkeley. So, where did the other growth come from? In areas across the board in wholesale trade, professional/scientific jobs (almost 2,500 total jobs in 144 businesses) office related occupations, construction, arts and entertainment. These stats show West Berkeley in the midst of change with a diverse influx of workers and skills. New jobs are going to be in a wide variety of areas and they do not displace industry they replace dying industries. What’s wrong with this? The reality is these businesses provide a range of employment for highly valued occupations that support the city’s economy. 

In addition, Berkeley has a unique position in both the Bay Area and the United States. We are home to a leading university. It’s pioneering research into alternative fuel technologies and performing leading biotechnology and bioengineering research that will lead to new creative start-ups in Berkeley—if they can get the zoning and space. Otherwise, these new businesses will move to Emeryville, Richmond or out of the area. The link between the University and the potential for West Berkeley is immense. It doesn’t stop there. Tippet Studios, a leading animation house, and the new Fantasy Media Center provide opportunities for new art and media companies to flourish with well-paying jobs that will support other businesses and support services in West Berkeley.  

The West Berkeley Plan was painstakingly laid out to basically reflect the uses of the 1940s and 1950s industrial era, when industrial manufacturing really peaked in the East Bay. Those businesses are gone reflecting large shuttered and abandoned facilities such as Flint Ink, MaCally Steal. The realities of this changing demand makes it a necessity for Berkeley’s economic well being to evolve the zoning to reflect new realities of work and industry. This should not be a battle between office and high-end residential on one hand and small business, artisans and residential on the other, as is so often portrayed. It’s about allowing a good mix of uses, small business and large working together to create a healthy and prosperous community with new opportunity. Yes, we need artists and plumbing supply houses and sheet metal fabrication shops and lumber yards. No one wants these to go away! 

But the old paradigm of industrial uses as the backbone of “livable wage” jobs is gone and not coming back. We are in an era of global change with new technologies and responsive, innovative creative small businesses like furniture manufacturers, artists studios and craft chocolate makers working side by side with new green fuel research labs, animation studios and bioscience laboratories. 

Yes, its time for a change. Let’s look at where the demand is coming from and support a variety of new truly green uses and mixed uses that will build a strong and viable Berkeley and Bay Area of the future. 

West Berkeley resident, property owner and business owner Steven Donaldson is a member of the West Berkeley Business Alliance. 

It is not good enough for a presidential candidate to have the right views on the issues, they must not associate with anyone deemed offensive. This is the sort of intolerance and witch hunting that the media does in the United States to knock anyone down for any reason.  

It is not so much that the American people necessarily feel that way, but the press and the media have decided to obsess about the offensiveness of Obama’s minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and to make it into a decisive issue.  

It is unfortunate that the presidential race, having started out on such lofty ground when Clinton and Obama began their competition, has sunk so low, down to the level where it is normally expected to be during these sordid political contests. We have three candidates who will do or say essentially anything that will get them an advantage. If doing or saying the thing reflects badly on their character, they will get someone else supposedly not connected to them to say it whose actions they can disavow knowledge of. If it looks bad for Clinton or Obama to sling the mud personally at the other, they’ll get someone lower down to do it who they can say was acting on their own. This campaign has turned into a free-for-all slugfest in which the dirtiest fighter prevails. It’s good to watch on occasion, but on a nightly basis like we’re getting is a bit much.  

It is flawed logic to believe that because Obama’s minister has views that are hard for mainstream, white Americans to digest, Obama has the same beliefs because he admires the minister or is in the minister’s parish. I’m Jewish and that doesn’t make me have the same beliefs as all Israelis. I can’t stand Leiberman, and I disagree with plenty of other Jews, some of whom I don’t even like. I have had friends who have held beliefs I’ve regarded as completely bogus. Just because you know and like someone, it doesn’t mean that you have to believe the same things as they.  

People who are more ignorant can’t get the idea of separating the belief from the person. They can’t get the idea that you are not soiled by who you know. It is too bad that politicians must seek the vote of the ignorant people as well.  

You might believe I’m writing this article in support of Obama. (In fact, my favorite candidate is Clinton until such time as Obama gets the nomination, and then I become an Obama supporter.) I simply don’t want so much silliness going on when the candidates could be chosen for better reasons.  

I suggest that the democrats get to work at finding some dirt on McCain. God knows who McCain could have shaken hands with! The democrats should focus on the fact that there is no reason to stay in Iraq. That we are an infectious force--one which maintains the diseased state. Take the focus off of who everybody knows.  

Obama should deliver a clear and concise rebuff, hopefully in an irate manner, to the misdirected issue of merely knowing someone with the wrong beliefs.  

Jack Bragen is a Martinez resident. 

The town hall forum on the future of Media and the Pacifica Network, beautifully moderated by JR of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) Block Report and held at Eastside Cultural Center in East Oakland on Friday (March 21) might be a watershed—or it might not.  

Powerless communities—of color and poverty, from East Bay to San Francisco were well represented and the program was educational on a number of different levels—about new media technology and its potential and about the tactics being used to continue the freeze out from Corporate Media of the working class, the voices of the poor and powerless. The panelists were not a group of outsiders to KPFA/Pacifica—unlike members of the Wellstone Democratic club who joined KPFA recently at the encouragement of their Club’s leadership only to back the elitist “interim” leadership and “professional” programmers at the station. This panel included Bay View Newspaper publisher Willie Ratcliff, a former member of the KPFA Station Board, Rainjita Yang-Geesler, staff coordinator of the KPFA’s First Voice Apprenticeship Program, Tiny of Poor News, also a producer and programmer at KPFA, Eloise Rose Lee of Media Alliance an organization long allied with the station, Renita Pitts of TEMPO, and Shahram Aghamir, representing KPFA’s unpaid staff organization (UPSO). (For readers who have not kept up with the KPFA story, the station’s interim management—now in power two years--recently and arbitrarily squashed the rights of the Unpaid Staff, the volunteers who weekly give so much time and energy to keep KPFA going, by decertifying their long existent Un-Paid Staff Organization as their legitimate representative).  

Tiny told the crowd how Poor News has been the only game in the country producing quality programming from the poor themselves, and particularly from the undocumented and most powerless people through Poor’s acclaimed educational institute. Under the guidance of Poor their students have learned writing and radio production and perfected a high level of skill in presenting their stories from the “I” perspective, yet KPFA managers attacked them for “using too much Spanish” and removed some of their vital programming time just when important programs about the real conditions of the undocumented were about to be aired. Rainjita Geesler and JR reflected a similar story about how this Forum was to have been broadcast on KPFA’s First Voice program live until, two days before the event, the interim program manager, Sasha Lilley stepped in and decided that, like a censor, she would have to review and edit the program tape before it could air, even though the moderator is a regular programmer who knows all the FCC rules.  

It was a revelation to this writer—as a KPFA listener member and contributor—to learn from Shahram Aghamir of the UPSO that as many as 75 percent of the programs on the airwaves at 94.1 FM are produced by volunteers (approximately 180 in all). Hearing this startling 75 percent statistic about a radio station that takes in several million dollars a year, I have an obvious question. How can an essentially self appointed group of paid staff back an “interim” leadership/management who would take away all rights to representation in station management decisions from most of the people who make it possible for KPFA to be on the air? If more than half of the staff there are volunteers and they are said to have no rights to elected representation as a group whatsoever, doesn’t this sound like a throwback to the feudal relations of the dark ages—of lords and vassals? 

But let me go on to my main point—how communities of color and those living oppressed in poverty, exploited by the likes of Lennar Corporation, Blackwater, KBJ, ICE, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco political power structure, and Capitalism in general, can get their voices heard by the public at large, and in particular through KPFA.  

KPFA recently broadcast the Winter Soldier Investigations organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War that ran three days in a Washington DC suburb. Over 200 vets and some active duty soldiers who oppose the war showed real heart. Fifty speakers took the risk of confessing their participation in war crimes and crimes against the people of Iraq, showing how brutality and oppression are a systematic part of the entire operation. As we well know, when the torture crimes at Abu Ghraib were exposed no ranking officers were charged only a handful of low ranking GIs—the bad apple story. The Iraq Vets Against the War are real heroes to take the risk of being attacked themselves in order to help build a GI movement against US aggression and occupation of others’ lands. KPFA did the right thing to help promote their cause and the struggle against this war. But that movement today has no permanent place at KPFA. And likewise two other nationwide movements of exceptional importance to forming a national movement that can effectively resist Capitalism’s predations—and its monopoly on power, organization, Media, and communication in general--have no regular radio shows. Those other two movements are the Prison Rights Movement and the Immigrants Rights Movement. Due to space considerations I can’t detail why I believe these three movements are of such particular importance for all of us, but there are lots of reasons every reader can think of. Who is being singled out for oppression by the police, courts, Media, fascist laws and why? Each of these three movements is based in the oppression of the most powerless people, people who are being scapegoated and used to divide our nation into feuding gangs. And each of these movements is forming to try and end the divisions between nationalities and ethnicities to try to unite us in defense of the rights of the most victimized among us.  

I have no doubt that in the long run KPFA can not work for or represent the local communities around the Bay Area unless we assure that it promotes the voices of the voiceless communities themselves. But the way to make that possible on the local level, I think, is not to begin with a defense of the rights of local communities. Instead we ought to unite everyone behind the critically necessary national movements by forcing KPFA to give each of them programs in Prime Time: a program for each of the GI resistance Movement, for the Prison Rights Movement and for the Immigrants Rights Movements. Those radio programs need to be organized from within those movements, not as reports “about” them by outsider journalists. Without doubt, groups like the First Voice Apprentices, La Onda Bajita, the Immigrants Rights Network, Critical Resistance, TEMPO and Poor News Network (to list some of the most obvious resources available) are in a good position to train the technical expertise within those movements to help them produce such shows. I say that the time has arrived for such a simple unifying program demand as these three programs to unite our disparate communities so that paid staff-appointed managers and their upper middle class supporters can not divide and conquer, as they have so far done successfully. Faced with many communities united they will have to concede the correctness of these programmatic demands. If we can see these changes come to fruition, a unified movement will be in position to advance local programming concerns for specific oppressed communities and groups. A firm foundation will help us enlist those communities in the fight to make KPFA a more representative beacon for change because such new programs as these three will attract many thousands of new listeners.  

Marc Sapir is a Berkeley resident.

CHENEY’S EPIGRAPH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For those with weak stomachs who missed ABC-TV’s weekend interview with Dick Cheney, held during his latest “surprise!” visit to Iraq, he offered up the best one-word apology for the last seven years: “So?”  

So? Martha Raddatz’ request to compare the rectitude of Bush foreign policy to citizen discontent over the military-industrial incursion in Iraq (home of the Garden of Eden), damned them (us) for our tidal “fluctuations” of polled opinion. Now that’s a new one. 

Wouldn’t “So?” make a great epitaph on Cheney’s marker? 

Phil Allen 

• 

GREEN WASTE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m a life-long resident of Berkeley and I’m not a huge fan of Berkeley attitude. However one thing that I was very pleased to see was the weekly pick-up of green debris waste. Berkeley is known for being green, so being able to recycle food waste is a great idea. 

Today was our garbage and debris pick-up day, so I was shocked to see that the garbage collectors put my green debris bin into the same truck as the garbage. If I go to the trouble of separating out the green debris, then I expect the garbage people to keep them separate also. Berkeley appears to be green on the surface only. In actuality, it’s just another garbage dump. 

Kathy Fong 

• 

ECO-CITY KILLS ITS OWN TREES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Coming home after being out of town for a few days, I found half the trees on my street severely damaged from curb renovation work. In some cases, an area the size of the entire stem and top root diameter was chain-sawed open several feet deep into the soil, which, most likely, will result in tree death. I knew the city was planning to repave the road, but no one had notified us that they were planning to deeply cut into the stems and root systems of the 70-plus-year-old oak trees lining Deakin Street. There was no safety hazard whatsoever associated with our curbs. 

I am appalled that Berkeley of all places, a city claiming to be a model for green living and sustainable urban design, would—consciously or by negligence—threaten the survival of its own beautiful tall street trees. Not only are we losing yet another piece of nature and habitat, we are also contributing to global warming by destroying our urban carbon sinks and natural cooling capacities. A City officially committed to greenhouse gas reduction must watch more closely to what is happening to its own trees. 

I am grieving not just for these trees but also for the state of this world. This senseless damage symbolizes what is happening to our planet. Every time I look out the window at my oak tree, I am again reminded that we are cutting off our own life support system. While the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, while we mindlessly take measures to improve the “urban quality of life” and continue our consumption habits as usual, the diameter of damage keeps expanding. The leaves of my oak tree are still green today, the tree may even survive another year or two, and by the time we see its leaves turn brown in spring and fall off in summer, it will already be on the verge of death.  

This oak tree’s wounds are this world’s wounds, they are my own wounds, and my child’s wounds. My 9-year-old daughter said “I can hear the tree cry.” And I cry with her because I have no way of knowing whether our children will survive the consequences of our own stupidity. 

Barbara Widhalm 

• 

WORDS FROM CHAVEZ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On March 31 we celebrate the birthday of the late Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers. Hopefully this will a national holiday some day, for Chavez was a true American hero. 

Chavez fought for the rights of all beings, not just the farm workers. Unbeknownst to many of his followers, Chavez was a long-time vegetarian for ethical reasons. One of my most treasured possessions is a letter he wrote to me on Dec. 26, 1990 in support of my animal welfare efforts. It contains these insightful words: 

“Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people. Racism, economic deprival, dogfighting and cockfighting, bullfighting and rodeos are cut from the same fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves.” 

Words to live by. 

Eric Mills, coordinator 

Action for Animals 

Oakland 

• 

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wish I could just ignore the war and get on with my life. But I am a citizen of this country, which means that the war in Iraq is being waged in my name. They say that the surge is working. What about all of the people who are being killed each day? 

The only explanation is that leaders like Dick Cheney actually want everything to be in chaos, so that their privatized oil and security firms can make bundles of money. They have projected their own psychological issues onto society at large, and their screwed-up heads have lead them to create a screwed-up world. 

I hope when Barack Obama is president, and Bill Richardson is either vice president or secretary of state (he gets to choose), that they ask John Edwards to be our attorney general. Edwards could lead the investigations into all of the wrongdoing, and we can get the Bushes and Cheneys some psychological help after we put them in jail. 

Tom Kennedy 

San Francisco 

• 

COVERAGE OF WAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Please continue to give the Iraqi war the maximum amount of coverage. It is so very important to keep us all alert to the terrible costs of this monstrous war. All wars are signs of moral failure, none more so than this one. We must think every day of the lives lost, the lives ruined, the excruciating pain felt by the wounded in their bodies and by their loved ones in their hearts. We must try to share that pain by taking some action, every day, to protest and to urge others to do the same. That applies to us all, of course, but no one has a larger responsibility to do this than you, our media. It is your cross, and you must bear it. The rest of us must help you as we can. 

Kay Lawson 

Professor Emerita of Political Science, San Francisco State University 

Member, Grandmas Against the War 

• 

OBAMA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

All Easter weekend long, we heard radio voices weighing in on Obama. How do white people feel about his blackness, how do black people feel about his whiteness? Absent from the discussion is any awareness of what he’s actually done. Where has he landed his punches? During Obama’s brief political career thus far, what issues has he acted on? Much has been made of his pastor’s disparaging comments about America and 9/11. So is that really Obama? Did he spend his young senate days hanging with the fringe wing of the Democratic party that pushes 9/11 conspiracy theories? Did he lend his voice to the view that 9/11 was America’s just comeuppance? No. If anything, Mr. Obama was a bit timid as a young senator, watching in dismay as his idealistic bits of legislation got watered down over time. 

Obama himself is a bit of a Rorschach Test, in that commentators superimpose on him what they think should be there. For this reason, Obama is often linked to Black Liberation Theology. This is silly, because he was never a radical. In his youth, he never went through a Chicago Seven phase, all fist-pumping, Bobby Seal haircuts and incendiary speeches. If anything, Obama was an eager but cautious Harvard law student with an eye on social justice issues, but apt to keep his options open. Not “options open” in a cynical sense, not soft-pedaling his views, but rather, living according to a belief that brash, extreme opinions only alienate those who might otherwise be your allies. Like many young black leaders, Obama saw the limitations of racially-charged politics, the futility of replacing one racial stereotype with another. Thus, he would find ways to discuss inflammatory issues in reasonable, nuanced tones. 

It looks like this year, America has a candidate that prefers to shed light, rather than heat. Are we up for it? If Obama loses, it won’t be because he’s black. It’ll be because America’s not ready for a President that talks to you as if you have a brain. 

Joy Apperson 

• 

HISTORY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Bush-Cheney administration has done tremendous damage to our country. The war, the debt, the flouting of the Constitution, increase of Islamic enemies... Quite probably the worst administration in U.S. history. It will take much to begin to recover after them. Unless Congress at least starts the process of Impeachment, history will take a very dim view of the Congress, and us for not demanding it do so. 

Harry Gans 

• 

WAR POLICY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“For the most part, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have identical voting records on Iraq,” says the National Journal. Yes, before becoming a senator, Obama spoke out against giving Bush the authority to send troops to Iraq and that is to his credit. But, in a real sense that was an easy thing to do. What I think is much more telling is how Obama has voted since joining the Senate. If he is truly committed to getting us out of Iraq, shouldn’t he have voted against funding the military so that we might not be able to keep our troops there? One cannot oppose the war and yet support keeping our troops in Iraq.  

Irving Gershenberg 

• 

A REAL PUBLIC PLAZA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I saw Walter Hood present his ideas for a public space on Center Street at a Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meeting last year. Immediately after his talk, I went up to speak to him about my primary concerns about his initial concept: There wasn’t enough space for a true public plaza that could accommodate large groups, and there weren’t nearly enough trees. He was so dismissive of my suggestions that I knew right then that such features would not be present in his final proposals. That has indeed come to pass (Daily Planet, “Two Designs Promise Center Street Changes,” March 21). 

It’s not really Mr. Hood’s fault, after all. He’s been asked to do the impossible. A long and narrow space—like a street—just does not function well as a central gathering and performance space. And we do sorely need a central public plaza downtown. That is the one change that could really bring people back to our city center. One nearby example of a highly successful public square project can be found in Portland, Oregon. Done right, a public plaza works to bring a community together. 

So, here’s what I propose: Leave the street alone. It’s working pretty well, and the businesses are getting patrons, and it is quite lovely with the trees and the sunlight that shines on it. Instead, let’s put the new university art museum completely underground. And then on top at ground level, we can put a wonderful public square with a large assembly space, plenty of grass and trees, and lots of places for people to sit comfortably. In other words, a real public square. And if not here, let’s find another location with adequate space for the concept. 

But please, let’s not just change the paving of a narrow strip of land from asphalt to textured blocks, and add a water fountain or a couple little pools, and call it a public square. It will not be one. You can call a pig a palomino as many times as you want, but that doesn’t really increase its chances of winning the Kentucky Derby, does it? 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

TWO QUESTIONS  

AND A SOLUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I don’t understand the outrage to Rev. Wright’s speech. He accused the United States of being racist from the beginning. Can anyone deny that land, freedom, and lives were stolen from Native Americans as soon as Europeans landed here? Soon after that, Africans were kidnapped and held as slaves, cruelly treated to enrich the slaveholders. Chinese laborers were used to build the railroads, then denied human rights. European factory workers were exploited and worked in wretched conditions. Japanese citizens were held in concentration camps because of their ancestry. Today, people of Mexican and Arabic descent are often persecuted. Sounds like racism to me. Resentment would be the mildest reaction to expect 

Another question: In what way do some people think that the marines are protecting my freedom of speech and behavior? From whom? No, thank you. 

The solution to budget cuts, school layoffs, health care shortages, and deficits of all kinds....... (drum roll please) cancel the war! Use the trillion or so dollars for sane, helpful purposes! 

Ruth Bird 

• 

OXFORD STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Toyo Ito’s rendering of the proposed art museum, the sidewalk on Oxford Street in front of the museum is filled with people. But that sidewalk is empty today, and the rendering shows nothing that will attract all those people. 

In the rendering, the Oxford Street facade of the museum is made up of blank white walls rising up behind small lawns with abstract sculptures on them. Anyone who understands how to create lively urban places can predict that this will be an empty, unused space. 

If we want this to be a lively space, we should replace the small, unusable lawns with cafe seating, and we should add a couple of stands nearby selling coffee, tea, and food. 

Artsy architects are attracted by blank white walls rising up behind small lawns, but ordinary people are not. If we want people here, we need something that will attract people. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

WHITE CONSERVATIVE  

CHRISTIANS PREACH HATE, TOO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a registered Green, I don’t condone the remarks that Senator Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, made, but I have read, seen and heard about white conservative Christian pastors preaching more hate than Wright does. They describe people who don’t have a God in their lives as being “Godless.” It is not surprising since they have a long history of preaching hate in the name of Christianity. 

For example, several centuries ago, the majority of these white Christian pastors condoned the racist atrocities toward American Indians in this country. The Pequot Indians in New England for example, were massacred because their religion, according to the majority of these white Christians, is heathen, and that they are “Godless.” 

Also centuries ago, the majority of these white conservative Christians condoned the enslavement of African Americans in this country. After the Civil War and through the end of the 1960s they also condoned the lynching of black men who flirted with white women, and they supported Jim Crow. Someone should denounce the hateful rhetoric by these white conservative Christians. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

WARM POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Unified School District directors are about as nice to the warm pool community as Israel is nice to its neighbor, Palestine. Iffy. 

BUSD directors have announced in the press they intend to take any new advice of a (charrette) committee of professionals about revising the BHS south-of-Bancroft master plan as seriously as our U.S. president takes the advice of protesters and peace-lovers around the world, including the new democratic majority in Congress: that is to say, not at all. 

All the great and warm effort and time expended by Superintendent Mclaughlin to help the warm pool community are as nothing to the president of the board of directors at BUSD. 

All the agreements and contracts by the board and Super Jack prior to His Coming are as nothing to the president of the board, regarding maintenance, parking, crosswalk, continued existence where now located ... of the warm pool at BHS. 

All communication about flawed reports are as nothing to the board of directors regarding the value of the warm pool and the old gym at BHS. 

All efforts to speak to the BUSD board are as nothing to the board and their president re the value of the warm pool. 

I could go on but maybe the reader begins to understand how I feel on the subject. Pessimistic. 

Reportedly the committee in question is intent on suggesting reasonable alternative(s) to the truly awful master plan in question. 

However, just as our dictatorial president seems intent on wrecking the U.S. government and U.S. economy to get his way, I anticipate the BUSD president to respond to rational pressures to save buildings and money ... with irrational total negativity, as usual. 

Terry Cochrell 

• 

JOHN McCAIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What do you know about Republican presidential candidate John McCain? 

John McCain is another “war president” in waiting, cut in the mold of George Bush. 

Ex-POW McCain urged President Bush to veto a bill that would have banned waterboarding torture. 

McCain wants to make Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. 

John McCain has flip flopped on most hot button issues since he began his run for president. 

John McCain believes women should be prosecuted if they have abortions. (San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 24.) 

McCain wants to fill the Supreme Court with more social conservatives like John Roberts and Samuel Alito. 

The League of Conservation Voters gave McCain a zero percent rating on his environmental votes last year. 

“I am a very superstitious person” he recently said. McCain is wholeheartedly behind Bush’s pre-emptive war syndrome. 

“Superstitious people are possessed by panic and they produce it,” said Voltaire. 

I’ve yet to hear any new ideas from John McCain, just more of the same. 

With John McCain as the next president America would go from the frying pan into the fire. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

EDITOR’S NOTE: On March 18, the Society of Professional Journalists held their annual Freedom of Information banquet in San Francisco. Recipients included Berkeley’s own Daily Planet for Community Newspaper and SuperBOLD for Citizens Activism. Following is the text of SuperBOLD’s acceptance speech, delivered by Gene Bernardi. 

The SuperBOLD Steering Committee, Jim Fisher, Jane Welford, Peter Warfield and myself, Gene Bernardi, was very surprised, but delighted to be the recipients of the Citizen’s Freedom of Information Award. Super Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense is actually an offshoot of BOLD, a group of Berkeley Public Library employees concerned about the radio frequency ID tags attached to all the library’s books and materials. SuperBOLD took on the more overt activities that the library employees avoided for fear of retaliation from the then current library director. 

In the process of watchdogging the Board of Library Trustee meetings, we discovered violations of the Brown Act; for example, routinely using a lottery system to restrict the number of speakers. This same method, also used by the Berkeley City Council, was not only a constraint on the freedom of speech of many members of the public, but also it prevented the opportunity for each item on the agenda to be addressed by the public, a clear violation of the Brown Act. The success we have had, so far, would not be possible if the First Amendment Project had not taken our case and threatened to sue the City of Berkeley. Additionally, the coverage by the Berkeley Daily Planet was essential to building public awareness. 

The city dispensed with the lottery and Mayor Bates began “experimenting” with public comment procedures. In some respects, the new procedures exceeded our expectations. Now, public comment is allowed for each item on the agenda. However, the mayor is arbitrary and selective in his implementation of the new procedures. After a year of Mayor Bates’ “experimenting,” SuperBOLD pushed for the codification of the new procedures. Unfortunately, the resolution approved by the City Council gave short shrift to public comment on those community concerns not on the agenda. Such comment is now allowed to occur after the City Council meeting has been adjourned, clearly a violation of the Brown Act. 

Another concern we have is the cordoning off of the Berkeley City Hall with police to prevent members of the public from entering the City Council meeting when a large number of people is expected to attend. This, instead of arranging for a larger venue! 

On Feb. 12, the night the City Council was revisiting the Marine Recruiting controversy, there were at least 135 police from the Alameda County Sheriff and the Oakland Police Departments in front of City Hall in addition to the Berkeley Police cordon. This is hardly conducive to “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It is SuperBOLD’s position that an environment conducive to free speech, and a truly participatory democracy, cannot be wholly achieved in Berkeley without a lawsuit. 

The struggle for free speech continues and we hope this award will inspire the City of Berkeley to open its meetings to greater public participation and that it will inspire others to join us in this struggle. 

As a former Officer of Marines, I wish to make some comments on this fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, some of which will no doubt be controversial. During the Winter Soldier hearings two weeks ago in Washington D.C., a question was raised about why not many active or retired officers are speaking up against the war. There is indeed a reason for this, and it has to do with simple survival. Those officers on active duty, of course, risk the end of their careers. But those of us who are retired tend to gravitate toward the corporate world, who by the way, are the greatest beneficiaries of this war. Speaking from my own personal experience, to openly speak out against the Iraq war risks termination from one’s employment, potential bankruptcy, and social ostracism. 

Next I will bring up something that’s also been on my mind, and it’s the anti-war movement itself. While I from the beginning have vehemently opposed this unmitigated disaster in Iraq, I’m still not a pacifist, and do have many disagreements with the organizations who’ve taken it upon themselves to coordinate this movement. Their leadership cadres tend to come from a left radical activist background, and they take stands and actions which alienate many people who would otherwise support us. A good example of this are the recent attempts to shut down the Marine Corps Officer Selection Office in downtown Berkeley. And to openly disagree with these people brings forth rebukes which rival those of the right wing pro-war supporters whom they profess to despise. With individuals such as these guiding its direction, its perfectly understandable why the anti Iraq war movement continues to be marginalized. But further, I will say that the American public itself is to blame for this war. Our so-called “lifestyle” is at the root of this. The American economy’s dependence on cheap oil, and the consumer economy that goes with it, require wars like this to continue. Even in communities such as Berkeley and San Francisco, who call themselves “progressive,” one sees the same hyper-consumptive way of life that perpetuates these foreign wars. And it is these same people who do not want to make the connections, as it would call into question their very existence. As a result, brave men and women lose their lives, their limbs and their sanity while some affluent liberal drives their Volvo to their weekend anti-war rally, screams their outrage, and feel they have done something good. Simply put, the American people are unwilling to abandon their wasteful way of life which consumes so much of this planet’s resources and justifies expeditionary wars such as this one. 

Unless we break the hold of corporations and the national security state over our lives, wars like this present one will inevitably continue to happen. As I’ve always believed that one should never bring up a problem without suggesting a solution, I’ll offer some ideas as to what must be done even before this Iraq misadventure comes to its inevitable conclusion.To start with, two Supreme Court decisions must be overturned: Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific, which gave corporations the same rights as a human being, and Buckley vs. Vallejo, which declared money to be free speech. Also, the National Security Act of 1947, which created the present militarized nation state, needs to be radically amended so as to stop the abuses of clandestine government agencies. While I do believe in the need for America to be able to defend itself, I will nevertheless say that 

these unelected unaccountable institutions must be brought to heel if we are stop the recent spate of undeclared and illegal military adventures. 

To paraphrase the words of Lincoln: A democracy and a corporate national security state cannot coexist.  

Berkeley resident John F. Davies is a former U.S. Marine. 

I am just astonished at the media for treating this democratic race as still somewhat viable for Hillary Clinton. Short of some devastatingly egregious blunder on the part of Obama’s campaign, there is virtually no chance for Hillary to win this nomination based on pledged delegates. The statistics are completely against her; she would have to win close to 70 percent of all remaining primaries to gain on Barack Obama’s pledged delegates. But despite all these unignorable facts, the media has many people duped into thinking that this campaign is a nail biter. Who are they fooling—or rather—who are these fools who believe this charade?  

The idea that the super delegates will somehow overturn the will of the voters and go against the pledged delegates by Clinton’s democratic cohorts is not only arrogant but downright undemocratic and delusional. If there was any scenario which could be construed as grave for Obama’s campaign which would have helped Hillary Clinton, it was the one which plagued his campaign few weeks ago regarding his ex-pastor: thanks mostly to Fox network’s repeated playback of the most sensational clips ad nauseum. 

The Democratic Party has some vim and vigor for the first time in a long while in this presidential election; but all that seems to be waning away under the dark shadow of campaign negativism. If Hillary Clinton were a true stateswoman, she would simply bow out in dignity and let the party prevail. This would allow the nominee to focus their campaign and resources on the already nominated Republican candidate. But instead her campaign keeps redefining the idea of a win and the predetermined rules of the campaign to drag out this nomination race into infamy. 

Who are the overseers of the rules of the campaign and the Democratic Party? The sniping and attacking have reached the nadir of same party politics, but the worst attacks have come from her campaign and her surrogates, the sort of attacks you expect from the other party. The atmosphere and the tone of the campaign is so demoralizing, that one begins to wonder if there is any acrimony left for the general election. 

When all the candidates signed an agreement not to campaign in Michigan or Florida at the behest of the DNC, it should be honored by all parties. She didn’t take her name off the ballot in Michigan like everyone else and coincidentally showed up in Florida for a fundraiser on the eve of the primary. But now that Hillary Clinton is behind in delegates and behind in popular votes, suddenly she has become a strong advocate for franchising the voters from those two states, and says she never made any such agreements? But it is more than just about signing an agreement; it speaks volume about the candidate’s integrity. When a candidate is willing to lavish experience accolades on the opposition party’s candidate to undermine one of her own party’s candidate then it is quite evident we are dealing with a person who is a political cannibal. 

I am reminded of college parties where a churlish invitee would usurp all his, less than perfect, Don Juanian graces to court someone, and then would linger unwelcomed until the end of the party without the prospect of meeting anyone, and all the choice alcohol would be consumed down to the dregs, leaving the host wishing he/she hadn’t invited him. 

Rizwan A. Rahmani is an Oakland resident.

Since the invasion of Iraq the United States has occupied that nation for five years. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, 4 million have become refugees, tens of thousands have been rounded up and incarcerated in hell holes called prisons, and millions more suffer on a daily basis, while the Bush regime brags how it is bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East. In Afghanistan the U.S. occupation has been even longer with similar suffering for the people of that country. War with Iran could be launched any day by the United States, creating an unimaginable catastrophe for the people of Iran and the world. 

Do you wonder from where such wars come? Are they just the result of “electing” a bad president? Or are they rooted in the workings of the economic system known as imperialism, and don't we need something different? What is that something? And how will it be created? 

Well these and other questions were addressed on March 22 at Berkeley’s Black Repertory Theater by one of Berkeley’s own, Bob Avakian. Avakian grew up in Berkeley in the ’50s and ’60s, attending Berkeley High and UC Berkeley. He went on to become the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party. I went to the well-attended event where there was a presentation and discussion of Avakian’s new synthesis re-envisioning revolution and communism. 

I know a lot of the readers are now rolling their eyes and saying something to the effect of doesn’t this Theisen know that communism is dead and so is the possibility of radically transforming the world into something better. But is this true? Why? Are we only faced with adapting to the “new world order” announced by Bush I in the ’90s and well on its way to creation by Bush II in this century? Must we live in a world of torture and imperialist wars, where due process and other legal rights are relics of the past in order to guarantee our “safety?” 

Or is there a possibility of a better world where the lives of millions of children are not cut short by curable diseases; where hellholes like Guantánamo do not exist; where nooses are only displayed in museums; where immigrants are welcome guests and not hunted fugitives; where women are allowed to control their own bodies without fear of domestic violence, rape, or a government telling them they must remain pregnant; where youth are not treated as either criminals or commodities; and where the earth itself is not seen as commodity to be used and destroyed in the pursuit of profit. 

I have dreamed of a revolution that can set about ending these horrors and meeting the pressing needs of the people. But that is not enough? Revolutions have occurred before, but then have been turned into their opposites. A truly emancipatory socialism must lay the basis, and take concrete steps, toward a society where people consciously change the world and themselves, in a society of freely associating human beings and where the need for any kind of state has been surpassed. 

In that light, Bob Avakian has done path-breaking work to go beyond even the best of the previous socialist societies and re-envisioned a socialism that is both visionary and viable. Avakian’s new synthesis comes out of 30 years of hard, scientific work. It recasts and recombines the positive experience so far of the communist movement and of socialist society, while also learning from the negative aspects of this experience. This “new synthesis” has tackled a whole realm of questions, including: 

How does the new revolutionary power maintain power and maintain it as a power worth keeping? How does it not just survive in a world dominated by imperialism, but do that as a base area for further revolutions? 

What would be the role of individual rights, civil society, and politics outside the purview of the state? What would be the role of a constitution and elections? Why would this re-envisioned socialism not only tolerate, but foster, dissent? 

What would be the relation between scientists, artists, and intellectuals carrying out urgent work to meet the most pressing needs of society and, at the same time, pursuing work, experimentation, and exploration not tied to those kinds of immediate goals? How would the age-old division between those who work with ideas and those who are locked out of that, be overcome—in a way that does not sacrifice but actually enhances vibrancy and intellectual ferment throughout society in unprecedented ways? 

What is the importance of a fearless attitude toward the truth and what have been the shortcomings and blinders in regard to this in the communist movement as it has developed? 

How does this new synthesis both continue on the path first charted by Marx, Lenin, and Mao while going beyond it, in new and crucial ways? 

What is the importance of taking Bob Avakian’s new synthesis out into society? What does all this have to do with how to prepare for revolution? What difference does it make if the people who will make the communist revolution get involved in wrestling with what it is all about and the means to make it? 

Berkeley had often been on the cutting edge of change since the ’60s. The free speech movement was born here. The recent debate around the Marine recruiting station has stirred the nation and the world. It is only fitting that a discussion involving the future development of humankind should also take place in Berkeley. 

Since I was a child I have dreamed of a different and better world. I have had enough of the new world order. Have you? Check out this new synthesis and start to change the world by going to the websites: rwor.org or engagewithbobavakian.org. 

Kenneth J. Theisen is an Oakland resident and political activist. 

In his remarkable March 18 speech, “A More Perfect Union,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama directly addressed the racial aspect of his campaign that, up until the preceding week, had largely been in the background. While the overt reason for the speech was the inflammatory remarks of Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, it also responded to right wing hate messages recently picked up by the Clinton campaign, suggesting America isn’t ready for a black president. 

Polls indicate that 62 percent of Americans believe the United States will accept a black president. Nonetheless, since it became clear that Sen. Obama was a serious contender for the Democratic nomination, many have suggested the poll results were a reflection of political correctness, as respondents didn’t want to tell pollsters about their latent racism. And, as her desperate presidential campaign careens through Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton seems increasingly willing to suggest she is more electable than Obama because, while she may be a woman, she’s the “right” color. 

Residing in Berkeley, I know no one who admits to being a racist and none of my friends has said they won’t vote for Obama because he’s black. Nonetheless, I’ve had acquaintances volunteer that someone in their family, a close friend, or “the guys back home” would never vote for a black candidate for president. I’m curious to know who these people are. Perhaps they’re the 13 percent of Americans identified in the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll who believe Sen. Obama is a Muslim. Or, they may be the 14 percent who responded they would have some reservations about making Obama the first African-American president. But, there could be a simpler explanation; these bigots may constitute a significant element in the 32 percent of Americans who approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president: died-in-the-wool conservatives who are stuck in a dysfunctional way of viewing race, the Bush administration, and our democracy. 

What these polls make clear is there are two competing views of Barack Obama. Some see him exclusively as a black candidate and believe he has received preferential treatment to get where he is. Others see him as the embodiment of the American myth of “the triumphant individual.” Obama’s life has many of the elements of the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches fables: he was raised by his mother and grandmother, worked his way through college, became a community organizer, attended Harvard Law School and became the first black president of the Law Review, and returned to Chicago where he was a successful civil rights attorney and author before entering politics. His first book, Dreams from My Father, is considered an American masterpiece. 

Many observers note the parallels between Barack Obama’s life and that of America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. Both came from humble surroundings; Lincoln lost his mother when he was nine; Obama’s father left when he was two. Both are tall, lawyers, and began their political careers in the Illinois legislature. Lincoln also wrote his own speeches. 

Sen. Obama knew his presidential campaign would hinge on his response to the videos of Reverend Wright’s sermons, so he personally wrote the March 18 speech. Thus, the values and themes expressed in “A More Perfect Union” represent Obama’s true beliefs.  

His core message was contained in these lines: “Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have… white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze—a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.” “A More Perfect Union” was not restricted to the issue of race. It was Obama’s prescription for a better America based upon a transformative politics of unity, a politics where, “all Americans … realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.” His speech was a call for a new populism, an appeal for Americans to unite against conservative policies that have divided us by race, gender, religion, and sexual preference in order to wage class warfare, to “favor the few over the many.” 

Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address concluded with an appeal to “the better angels of our nature” and Barack Obama has repeated this call. Indeed, many of the themes Lincoln sounded 148 years ago echo in Obama’s speech: the need for Americans to remember the values of our nation’s founders—all men are created equal—and stand together against injustice. And like many of Lincoln’s speeches, “A More Perfect Union” was an appeal for unity and reconciliation. 

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

Mark your calendars: the annual spring surveys of endangered wildflowers at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge are coming up. This year’s dates are April 9-10 for the Contra Costa wallflower and May 14-15 for the Antioch Dunes evening primrose.  

You don’t have to be a trained botanist to participate. You just need to be able to identify these showy plants (not a problem), use a clicker to tally your observations, and walk a straight-line transect without stepping on any rarities. Ron and I did it last year, and highly recommend it. For more information, contact U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manager Susan Euing at (510) 521-9624, or susan_euing@yahoo.com. 

This place, which has fascinated me for years, is the first (and so far only) federal wildlife refuge established for plants and insects. It protects a remnant patch of sand that was scoured off the Sierra by glaciers some 40,000 years ago and deposited by the wind. The wallflower and the evening primrose evolved into distinct species here, hundreds of miles from their nearest relatives, and  

occur nowhere else in the wild. 

That’s also true of the refuge’s third marquee species, the Lange’s metalmark butterfly (Apodemia mormo langei), a northern outlier of a mostly tropical family. The metalmarks have their own survey, in later summer during the adults’ brief flight season. They spend the rest of their life cycle as larvae, either noshing on naked-stem buckwheat, their only food plant, or waiting out the dry months in a dormant state. 

In an evolutionary sense, the dunes are like an island on the land. Like the Galapagos or the Canaries, they have their suite of unique species, many of them insects. During World War II, entomologists at UC Berkeley found their field trips curtailed by gasoline rationing. The Antioch Dunes were about as far from Cal as they could get. So, making a virtue of necessity, they did a thorough inventory of the dunes’ insect life, and described a bunch of new species. I’ve been told that the scientists adopted one of the local watering holes during the war years. An entomologists’ bar is something I wish Gary Larson had drawn. 

For some reason, Life magazine, of all venues, showcased the insects of the dunes in a 1957 article, with foldout paintings by the German artist Walter Linsenmaier. (I’ve been rummaging through piles of old magazines in antique stores for years, hoping that issue would turn up, but no luck.) Growing up in Little Rock in the ’50s, I found the old Life, with its earth-history, evolution, and human-origins series, a window on a larger world. Lord knows I wasn’t getting that stuff in school; this was still post-Snopes and pre-Sputnik. 

Sadly, many of those unique species haven’t been recorded for decades. The dunes have been subject to many abuses, beginning with large-scale sand mining. Dune sand went into the bricks that rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Parts of the dunes became vineyards. Even after federal protection began in 1980, the area was vulnerable to fires and vandalism. The refuge was closed to the public (except for docent-led tours) after 1986, when fans of Humphrey the errant whale trampled the rare plants. 

A Nature Conservancy source lists some of the casualties: the Antioch Dunes shieldback katydid (Neduba extincta), the Antioch cophuran robberfly (Cophura hurdi), the Antioch sphecid wasp (Philanthus nasalis). These creatures vanished long before there was any kind of endangered species process. They would have been out of luck with the California Endangered Species Act anyway, since it precludes the listing of insects. 

But the insects are not all gone. It turns out that the specialized pollinator of the Antioch Dunes evening primrose—a solitary bee called Sphecodogastra antiochensis—is still around. It’s another Dunes endemic, a member of a bee genus associated with evening primroses. The nearest relative of S. antiochensis occurs in Merced County, 70 miles to the southeast of Antioch. 

These bees fly around sunrise and sunset. As their flight season progresses, they forage for pollen in the morning and nectar in the evening. Efficient collectors, they can gather a full pollen load in less than a minute. The pollen is used to provision larvae in wax-lined brood cells in the dune sands, although it appears that the larvae can develop without evening primrose pollen. A single female may establish as many as 31 cells.  

S. antiochensis has no protected status, but the Xerces Society—an estimable organization dedicated to the conservation of insects and other invertebrates—includes it in its Red List of endangered pollinating insects. For now, its survival may depend on the FWS personnel and volunteers who plant out nursery-raised evening primroses to augment the natural population. Antioch Dunes, like many other threatened places, must be tended like a garden-bees and all.  

When historians look back on the war in Afghanistan, they may well point to last December’s battle for Musa Qala, a scruffy town in the country’s northern Helmand Province, as a turning point. In a war of shadows, remote ambushes, and anonymous roadside bombs, Musa Qala was an exception: a standup fight.  

On one side was the Afghan National Army, the U.S. 82nd Airborne, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On the other the Taliban. When the fight was over, the U.S.-led coalition had “won.” What they had “won” was a town shattered by B-1 and B-52s bombers, A-10 attack planes, Apache helicopters, AC-130 gunships, and artillery barrages.  

According to NATO, “Operation Snake” killed hundreds of Taliban. According to the London Times, British mop-up forces found one dead insurgent. No one knows how many civilians died in Musa Qala. NATO claims none were killed. The locals say more than 40 died.  

A Taliban spokesperson, Qari Ypousuf Ahmadi dismissed the significance of the battle: “Losing Musa Qala doesn’t mean that we will stop fighting.” 

Indeed, it has not. Last year was the deadliest since the 2001 invasion, with more than 6,200 Afghan deaths. Suicide bombs have increased eight fold, roadside bombs are up 24 percent, and diplomats are warned not to dine out in the country’s capital, Kabul.  

“The number of districts in which the Taliban operates exploded last year,” says John McCreary, former senior intelligence analyst for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. “This is the first year they have managed to sustain over 100 attacks per month for a whole year since they started to climb back. One hundred attacks per month used to be a surge figure. Now it is the new norm.” 

In fact the number of attacks is averaging 548 a month. According to the United Nations, it is too risky to send aid teams into one fifth of the country. “The river appears to be running backward,” one analyst told the Financial Times. 

What happened at Musa Qala happens in virtually every province in the country: The insurgents move in, hand out money skimmed from the lucrative opium trade, drive out or intimidate local government forces, and through roadside bombs, midnight mortar attacks and ambushes, force NATO troops to bunker down in fortified camps.  

When the United States or NATO finally go on the offensive, the coalition’s lack of troops means they must rely on artillery and air power, which translates into a greater number of civilian casualties. Louise Arbour, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, says that civilian casualties caused by military activity has reached “alarming levels” this past year. “These not only breach international law but are eroding support among the Afghan community for the government and the international presence, as well as public support in contributing states for continued engagement in Afghanistan.” 

That erosion is accelerating. Polls indicate that the British and Australian public wants their troops out, and in Canada, only the minority Conservatives support the war. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel—her eyes on polls indicating widespread antipathy for the war—recently said she has “absolutely no time” to consider redeploying Germany’s troops to the war-torn south. 

Only the French and the United States have agreed to send more troops, the former just a handful, and the latter 3,200. According to the United States’ counterinsurgency doctrine, Afghanistan would require 400,000 troops to pacify, although the country’s history suggests that even that number is probably wildly optimistic. The United States and NATO currently have 43,000 troops in Afghanistan.  

In a blow to the current push for more troops, the Netherlands decided it would withdraw all its soldiers by 2010. “The Dutch decision,” says the German newspaper Der Spiegel, “may set a precedent, raising concerns among NATO military leaders over a possible domino effect. If only one major NATO country yields to domestic pressure and decides to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, it could set off an avalanche.” 

The possibility of an “avalanche” has so panicked the Bush administration that it sent Gates to Europe. “I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European Security,” said Gates in arguing for more troops. 

But Afghanistan was sold to the allies not as a war, but an international aid mission. “We are in the south [of Afghanistan] to help and protect the Afghan people reconstruct their own economy and democracy,” former British Defense Secretary John Reid told the Financial Times back in 2006.  

However, according to the aid organization Oxfam, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is “comparable with sub-Saharan Africa,” and U.S. and NATO troops find themselves in the middle of a war with a significant section of the population. 

“The Taliban is growing and creating new alliances not because its sectarian religious practices have become popular, but because it is the only available umbrella for national liberation,” says Pakistani historian and political commentator Tariq Ali. “As the British and the Soviets discovered to their cost in the preceding two centuries, Afghans never like being occupied.” 

Certainly that is the message the Taliban is putting out. “We’re fighting to free our country,” says Mullah Mohammad Omar, “We are not a threat to the world.” 

Some of our allies are also beginning to question the Bush administration’s one dimensional portrayal of the Taliban as a tightly disciplined, international terrorist organization. “There is a hard core of Islamic extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority of people we are engaged against are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons,” says British army chief, General Sir Richard Dannatt. “We will need to deal with and eventually reconcile the elected government with the majority of these people.” 

That approach has found little resonance in Washington, where a “victory” in Afghanistan is seen as central to the war on terrorism. “What is happening in Afghanistan and beyond its borders can have even greater strategic long-term consequences than the struggle in Iraq,” intones the Atlantic Council of the United States. 

While some NATO countries are hedging their bets in Afghanistan, the United States is already going “beyond its borders” and launching attacks into Pakistan. Unmanned Predator aircraft have killed several Taliban leaders, along with scores of civilians, and the United States is squeezing the Pakistani government to move its military into the Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier to pacify Taliban forces. 

Fred Kagen of the influential American Enterprise Institute recently urged the Bush administration to surge troops into Afghanistan and threaten Pakistan with air strikes. 

Rather than suppressing the Taliban, however, this stepped up militarism has unified the Pushtuns—the heart of the Taliban—on both sides of the border, and local tribes have inflicted thousands of casualties on the Pakistani Army, rocketed the provincial capital of Peshawar, and spread the insurgency into the rich Swat Valley.  

“There is no way for NATO to win this war,” says Tariq Ali bluntly. 

That conclusion should hardly come as a surprise. As British correspondent Ronan Thomas notes, “Strategic success in Afghanistan has often been envisaged by outside powers—British, Soviet and now Coalition forces—but rarely if ever achieved.”

Back South, they say that if a single buzzard passes over your rooftop, don’t pay it no mind. But if you see a couple of them circling, you best check out in the yard. They’re most likely looking for easy pickings. 

Not that I’m calling San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson and political consultant and columnist Clint Reilly buzzards, but both of them—seemingly independently, but you never know—have suddenly come up with the idea that outgoing State Senate President Don Perata ought to be Oakland’s next mayor. 

Now where in the world did Mr. Johnson and Mr. Reilly get that idea, one wonders. 

In mid-February, Mr. Johnson wrote a column that criticized Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums for being out of town and, therefore, failing to address a recent rise in murders and violent crimes in the city. A discussion on whether or not that constitutes a valid criticism of Mr. Dellums by Mr. Johnson will have to wait until another time. But way, far down in the column, Mr. Johnson mentions Mr. Perata as someone he believes would be a good alternative to Mr. Dellums. “[Mr. Perata] will be termed out of office next year and has his own future to look out for,” Mr. Johnson writes, “and if Dellums isn’t up to the job, his seat might be a good fit for a veteran East Bay politician.” 

That seems like unintentionally insightful writing on Mr. Johnson’s part, the fact that Mr. Perata as Oakland mayor is all about Mr. Perata and where he needs to land after hopping out of Sacramento, rather than what is needed for Oakland. Keep that point in mind as we move closer to the Oakland 2010 mayoral election. 

A month later, Mr. Reilly writes in a column reprinted in several Bay Area newspapers that it is Oakland that needs Mr. Perata. In fact, he says in the column’s title, “Perata is Oakland’s hope.” 

“Oakland’s leadership crisis troubles me,” Mr. Reilly writes, adding that “today, Oakland suffers from the bewildering rhetoric and bumbling policies of Mayor Ron Dellums. No American politician more clearly evidences the impotence of ideological rhetoric as a prescription for curbing urban violence than Dellums. His bombastic sermons echo Fidel Castro. At times, the most violent parts of his city resemble an American Baghdad. Dellums is painfully out of touch with the law enforcement best practices that have turned around other big American citites.” 

But relief is in sight, Mr. Reilly informs. 

“Oakland is fortunate to have one of California’s most able politicians protecting its interests in Sacramento,” he goes on, noting that this able politician is Don Perata. After a recitation of what he says is Mr. Perata’s history and accomplishments, Mr. Reilly concludes that “Oakland desperately needs a nuts-and-bolts mayor to fix its ongoing problems. There is no better political mechanic operating today than Don Perata.” 

As Samuel L. Jackson said in “Pulp Fiction” before he and John Travolta lit up the suburban drug dealer, allow me to retort. I have a somewhat different measure of leadership. 

My first and foremost standard for leadership is that if a leader sends troops into battle, the leader sticks around to make sure things are going all right, makes adjustments if things are going wrong, and takes the full consequences if things go disastrously. Most important, a good leader doesn’t leave the troops stranded. By that standard, Mr. Perata is not a poor leader. He’s not even a leader at all, but a man who has a history of ducking for cover and looking out for his own interests when the going gets tough. 

I cite two examples, and let you be the judge. 

In the mid-’90s, Mr. Perata was one of the major players in crafting the complicated deal that brought the Raiders football team back to Oakland. The Raiders came back, but it is universally accepted that it was a bad deal for the taxpayers of Oakland and Alameda County, costing us millions of dollars a year in money. In Oakland, in fact, the term “Raider deal” is synonymous with government inefficiency and corruption, one of the main reasons why many Oakland residents stopped trusting City Hall. 

In a 2003 article about one of the many lawsuits between the Raiders, Oakland, and Alameda County over the deal—a lawsuit in which the Raiders tried unsuccessfully to get Perata to testify—the Oakland Tribune wrote that “Raiders attorneys want Perata … to testify because [he] served as county supervisor when the county and city were negotiating to bring the team back from Los Angeles. [He was] instrumental in appointing members to an independent body that negotiated the Raiders deal and in pushing for approval of the final deal…” 

“Perata’s ties to the case are based on his longtime friendship with Ed DeSilva, an Alameda County contractor who was lead negotiator in the Raiders deal for the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Board,” the 2003 Tribune article went on to say. “The board was created as an independent body of local business leaders to run the Coliseum Complex. DeSilva, who has bankrolled many Perata election campaigns, was appointed to that board by the county supervisors, at Perata’s request. … Perata’s connection to the case also stems from his previous employment at the Oakland Football Marketing Association, a group formed to sell tickets to Raider games. Perata was hired by the group after he lost a campaign for state controller in 1994.” 

Mr. Perata’s hands, in other words, were all over the Raiders deal. 

Has Don Perata ever acknowledged any errors in the Raider deal? Never, to my knowledge. What steps has the State Senator taken to mitigate the damage done to Oakland and Alameda taxpayers by that deal? To my knowledge, again, none. In fact, Mr. Perata distanced himself so completely from the Raiders deal that other local politicians—Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and former Alameda County Supervisor Mary King—more often get blamed for the deal, while Mr. Perata’s name is rarely mentioned. 

Mr. De La Fuente, in fact, continues to try to get relief for Oakland from the results of the Raiders deal, an example of how leadership should act when an error is made. 

A second example of Mr. Perata’s failure of leadership when things fall apart is in the state takeover of the Oakland Unified School District. 

It’s widely known that Mr. Perata sponsored the 2003 legislation that authorized the OUSD state takeover. But in an April, 2003 column, I wrote about how this was not the first time Mr. Perata sought state seizure of the Oakland schools.  

“Back in 1998,” I wrote in the 2003 column, “[Mr. Perata] called for the firing of then-Superintendent Carol Quan because of Oakland’s habitual low student test scores, on-campus crime, discipline problems and substandard textbooks and instructional technology. He also cited poor fiscal management, but poor fiscal management in 1998 terms didn’t mean overspending the budget, but rather a bloated downtown bureaucracy and not enough money for direct-education things like teacher salaries and counselors. And if the OUSD School Board didn’t fire Quan, Perata said he would … sponsor a bill to have the state take over administration of the Oakland Public Schools. In fact, at the time, he said he was already drawing up such legislation.” 

Mr. Perata’s pressure—along with that of then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown—eventually led to the firing of Ms. Quan, and to the hiring of Dennis Chaconas as Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District. But after the 2003 OUSD budget shortfall—and, many in Oakland have speculated, after Mr. Chaconas’ failed to go along with Mr. Perata’s proposal to sell the valuable OUSD administrative headquarters to private developers—Mr. Perata led the way in the state legislature for California to take over Oakland’s schools. 

That story has been told many times. It is what happened afterwards—and, more important, what did not happen afterwards—that is key to the understanding of Mr. Perata’s leadership, or lack thereof. 

Under the legislation written by Mr. Perata, the state-hired OUSD administrator was supposed to clear up OUSD’s financial difficulties, while leaving intact the education reforms put in place under Mr. Chaconas. Instead, the state administrator did exactly the opposite. Under state administration, OUSD went deeper in debt than when it was when the state took over, while the state administrator fiddling and tinkered with the education plan, turning the Oakland school district into a vast educational experimental ground. For years, parents, teachers, and OUSD school board members complained that the state administration was not acting as it should, and that things were going terribly wrong in Oakland under state control. One of the things going wrong was that there was no clearly-defined way for Oakland to win back control of its school district, meaning the state was free to run Oakland schools until the state decided it was tired of the job. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Perata, who was deeply involved in telling Oakland how we should run our schools when we were running our own schools, suddenly lost all public interest in Oakland’s schools after the state took over, a takeover that he had long threatened and advocated. 

In other words, when the citizens of Oakland had to face bad consequences over the results of an action by Mr. Perata, Mr. Perata “booked” (to use a phrase from the Oakland streets.) 

Was there another course? 

After his election to the 16th Assembly District in 2006, Sandré Swanson showed us that there was. While never interfering with the state administration of OUSD, Mr. Swanson focused attention on how that administration was being carried out, while passing legislation that made it possible for an orderly and more predictable return to local control. 

Mr. Swanson did this as a first-term Assemblymember. It is something the powerful Mr. Perata could have done in his position as President of the California State Senate, but chose not to. 

A last point, before we go. Mr. Perata also has a reputation of “eating his young”-tossing aside loyal protégés, that is, when his political ambitions get in the way of theirs. Thus, he has kept a loyal former 16th District Assemblymember Wilma Chan waiting for several years while Mr. Perata got a willing judge to grant him more than his share of time in the Senate District 9 seat, making Ms. Chan’s run against sitting 14th Assemblymember Loni Hancock an uphill battle. Loyalty to those who are loyal to you is another leadership quality I value, one that Mr. Perata does not appear to hold. 

For myself, I will need a lot more convincing that—in Mr. Johnson’s words—Oakland would be a “good fit” for Mr. Perata, at least if that term is meant to mean of some benefit for Oakland. Otherwise, right now, it sounds like something we need to demand a prophylactic for, while bracing ourselves against the wall. 

Back in the late 1960s I had lunch in Regent’s Park in London with the editor of the RIBA Journal. As we strolled around in that lovely landscape, he gestured to the new Post Office Tower, a novel “foreign object” rising above the grand old trees and Regency terraces. Almost 600 feet high, crowned by a revolving-view restaurant and hung with satellite dishes, it was a living insult to any passionate contextualist. “I don’t dislike it,” said my colleague, “but it quite takes away that special joy of London—a collection of distinct neighborhoods.” 

His observation returns to my mind when I try to assess the impact, on a Berkeley resident, of the promised “made-over” skyline already appearing on Rincon Hill, not to mention that feverishly touted developer’s dream, the future Transbay Tower. For although London and San Francisco are very different, they face similar threats, particularly loss of unique character. London is loved for its historic river, ancient buildings, and enviably livable Georgian streets and squares, not for Cesar Pelli’s 800-foot Canada Tower, frowning down on the otherwise lively new Docklands. Similarly, San Francisco is adored for its European ambiance and breathtaking views of bridges, water and dramatic headlands, not for the Bank of America’s dark brooding (ex-)world headquarters, or its companion folly, the Transamerica pyramid. 

Living in Berkeley from the mid-’50s, one watched the pastel city across the bay change from a friendly, low-to-midrise affair, spread over recognizable hills, to a pincushion of corporate towers obliterating the beloved topography. By the late 1960s, the city’s planners and shapers had realized the threat to adjacent Telegraph Hill and North Beach, and, cleverly if brutally, steered the new Embarcadero Project—that “city within the city”—into walling-off further highrise expansion north of its narrow towers. 

In the 30-some years since that bold intervention, this vibrant business-area, now expanded south beyond Mission, has filled up with a good number of well-designed structures that look as though record-breaking height was not an aim. One could list Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s granite-faced (ex-)Crocker Tower at 1 Montgomery, their elegant “teardrop” building at 388 Market, or the glassy European-looking design at 101 2nd St. Though claustrophobic in places—think Bechtel’s overshadowed park—this impressive miniature Manhattan is made more bearable by its increasingly handsome public waterfront. To many of us who still regard San Francisco as our cultural downtown, this expanded financial district feels like a fait accompli, to be left in peace for a bit while other more pressing projects are tackled—like making a superb job of Mission Bay.  

As happy regionalists, many of us sustain an active interest in promoting neglected Oakland, aiding struggling Richmond, or saving dear old Berkeley from headlong “smart growth”! Thus it comes as an unwelcome distraction in this time of endless war and looming economic disaster to find San Francisco—or its political leadership—so totally gung-ho about a higher than ever downtown. 

While I write this I am looking at the February 2007 issue of San Francisco Magazine, whose striking cover is an aerial view of an impressive wood study model, with an “improved” Financial District in the foreground. All the buildings painted white—I count 22—are either proposed, approved, or under construction. SO far so good, except that a handful of them—the much-discussed Transbay Tower, the adjacent Twin Towers 2, and a few others—rise above all else, upsetting the unity and balance of the whole, while inevitable raising the ante for future development across the greater area. The recent completion of a 60-story apartment tower on Rincon Hill is startling proof that this new developer-planner alliance means business. 

In itself, the great southward expansion begun in 1986 when city residents voted to encourage high buildings beyond Market Street, seems natural and inevitable, protecting the established character of Nob Hill, Russian Hill and North Beach, while re-vitalizing a decaying old industrial terrain. The alarming thing, however, is not expansion, but an almost sudden obsession with competitive skyscraping! Seemingly out of the blue, Renzo Piano’s Twin Towers aim to be the nation’s third and fourth tallest buildings, while the promised marvel close-by, rising above a “Grand Central Station of the West” will dominate even those, if unrestrained egos prevail. 

One would like to think, that something as tall as the 1,250-foot Empire State Building—an image already invoked—would receive deep design attention, but so far, the architectural picture is not encouraging. Some time ago, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the regional body created in 2001 to bring about the construction of a new super transit terminal on the site of the obsolete bus station at First and Mission, devised a limited competition between three major developers and their chosen architects. The design teams were Richard (now Lord) Rogers, one of Britain’s high-tech stars, in internationally famous Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and Cesar Pelli, architect of many prestigious giants including the 1,483 foot Patronas (twin) Towers in Malaysia. 

Apparently the competition program mandated a huge attention-getting skyscraper crowing a grand, partially underground transportation interchange. Suddenly, eccentric little San Francisco, always delighted to not be Manhattan, has declared itself the West Coast rival! The three teams worked frantically away, and on Monday, Aug. 6 of last year, their large, impressive models were unveiled in City Hall before an admiring crowd of officials, TV crews, and interested public. The designs were intriguing as elegant models are always are, but disturbing—three extravagantly tall commercial towers posing as sculpture! None of them equaled the best work of their famous lead-designers. To me, the Richard Rogers entry—four separate buildings bung inside a giant “erector-set” frame, looked the most promising. SOM’s offering, the next best, seemed to strive too hard to be exciting, rising from a dented pyramid into a twisty, hard-to-comprehend shaft, but the Pelli design was way the most disturbing. Claming elegance through simplicity, it posed as a well-behaved glass tower, but with a strangely weak form, curving in as it ascended. An emasculated blow-up of Cleopatra’s Needle, it will be seen by detractors, if built, as a giant, shiny phallus, exacerbated by attention-getting height. Ranging from 1,200 to 1,375 feet, all three towers are way taller that the 770-foot Bank of America World HQ—still downtown’s dominant landmark. 

A few days after the unveiling, the Transbay Authority’s advisory committee voted in favor of the sleek “respectable” Pelli design. A couple of weeks later, the Authority itself seconded their choice, and there for the moment we are stuck. perplexed design professionals, and people just plain uncomfortable with ego-built sky-high towers. But at this early stage, all is far from lost. The daunting task of financing an ambitious multi-level terminal in the crowded middle of San Francisco, is lengthy and far from assured. To many, the whole concept, especially the location, sounds frighteningly centralist and vulnerable, evoking visions of terrorist attack and seismic disaster, but even without these familiar fears, there are powerful cultural reasons for resisting this “madeover” skyline. 

Collectively we remain the captive audience of our everyday surroundings. Paris of the great boulevards, Florence, Georgian Bath, etc., created a sense of order and predictability, of civic belonging and social pleasures. At best they were eminently livable. You didn’t have to commute from Walnut Creek to work on California Street, and in those lowrise cities, unusual height was reserved solely for buildings of civic or religious importance—the church spire or the dome of city hall. Even today, almost anybody looking up at the West Front of Notre Dame will find it more inspiring than forty levels of identical office floors. 

Alas, the only “cathedral” in the city’s Financial District is that secular novelty the Transamerica Pyramid, but that apart, the gleaming office towers and highrise hotels paraded along Market Street or enjoyed from the quiet splendor of Yerba Buena Gardens, range from pretty good to excellent without competing for record breaking height. Think of Timothy Pfleuger’s Art Deco Pacific Telephone Building on new Montgomery Street—no Sears Tower, yet a celebration of verticality that even after 83 years playfully enhances Mario Botta’s squat SFMOMA. As civilized architecture, Pfleuger’s modest-sized jewel, or its current equivalent—think of the city’s new, eminently non-slick Federal Building—is worth a dozen 1,300-foot featureless glass shafts, which brings me back to my opening comments. 

Apropos their huge flamboyant Transbay Tower entry, Crag Hartman, SOM’s chief designer, said a the public presentation, “in a single stroke, this design will redefine for the world San Francisco’s architectural, urban, and environmental intentions.” With all due respect for the power of bold statements, my gut response is “God help us,” for six or eight such assertive monsters would mesmerize a captive audience of millions. Large numbers of us, looking across the bay from Berkeley or Oakland, Richmond or Sausalito, at our “city on a hill” would rather not be continually reminded of World Trade, multi-million dollar condos with “world-class” views, or worse perhaps, tomorrow’s commute! 

With more bad economic news being revealed daily, I think even those of us who aren’t planning to sell, buy, or refinance a house are getting rather nervous. It’s come to the point where one starts to wonder how surreal it could get, given that some lenders are suddenly deciding to cancel or freeze home equity lines of credit, even for borrowers who have made all their payments on time, or are refusing to subordinate to new first mortgages, making it impossible for people to refinance.  

It makes one want to go through the loan papers to make sure the first mortgage doesn’t have some hidden clause which basically says, “We’re the bank and if we suddenly decide we need the whole $415,000 we lent you then we’ll send you a letter to that effect and you’ll have 30 days to pay up.” 

Funny thing, these are the very same banks that only a year or two ago were encouraging people to use their houses like ATMs for vacations, college tuition, or paying off their high interest rate credit cards. Not to mention encouraging “cash-out” refinancing where people were encouraged to take out a loan for more than they needed—say an extra hundred thousand—because the bank would make more income on a larger loan amount. But now that their complicated financial schemes are going to hell in a handbasket, suddenly it’s our fault. 

There’s been a good deal of finger-pointing, naturally. Some like to blame the victims, saying they never should have been given loans, it’s their fault they didn’t read the fine print, surely they realized they wouldn’t be able to afford the payments when their adjustable loan adjusted. It’s easy to believe this if you’re one of those people who is terribly financially savvy, or someone lucky enough to have owned their house since, oh, 1964 (back when only one income was often enough, and the payments only took 30 percent of it).  

I’m sure it’s true that there are many people who probably should not have been allowed to buy a house—the people whose credit scores suggested that handling money was maybe not their strong suit. If the only loan you can get is an adjustable loan linked to a volatile index that adjusts every three months and starts at 9 percent when prime fixed-rate loans are going for 5.5 percent, then that might be a clue that you shouldn’t be buying property.  

On the other hand, some lender was happy to make that loan, and then sell it in the secondary mortgage market, and is not now willing to drop the interest rate on it, in order for the borrower to continue to be able to pay it. And there may have been a mortgage broker who arranged the deal, and was happy to take 1 percent of that $500,000 up front as payment for doing so. He or she may have been honest enough to tell you it was a bad loan, but probably wasn’t honest enough to tell you shouldn’t be buying the house. 

But I can tell you about reading the fine print. I’ve owned 11 houses, and I’ve read lots of loan documents. Various laws have been passed that tried to make them more consumer-friendly and easy to understand—but they aren’t. They are all about covering the lender’s rear and kicking yours. Lawyers were involved in the writing of them—need I say more? I’m pretty sure the documents for my home equity loan don’t actually say, “There may come a day when the economy has gotten so screwed up and we’re feeling so paranoid that even though we promised you could borrow this money from us on these terms we’ve decided that you can’t, and actually, whatever you’ve already borrowed we’d like back immediately even though we said you didn’t have to pay us back for 10 years.”  

Another scapegoat has been “stated income” or “no documentation” loans. I have no doubt that many people either outright lied or least fudged their assets a bit. (It’s harder to fudge your credit score, although there are various sleazy ways to do so, and I’m sure some people used them.) But many of those loans went to people who, like me, are self-employed.  

Before stated income loans came along, self-employed people often had to either: have a spouse with a job, get a co-signer with a job, or spend the three years before they wanted to buy a house purposefully NOT taking all the income tax deductions they were actually entitled to in order to make their income look better to a lender. Interestingly enough, the other prime candidates for “no doc” loans are rich people who don’t want the lender to know many specifics about their financial situation. In any case, these loans are already becoming unavailable. 

Then the PMI companies (private mortgage insurance—which you have to pay on most loans if the down payment is less than 20 percent) announced that they have redlined ALL of California, as well as several other states. Great. So now, in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the U.S, you’ll have to be able to cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars for the down payment in order to get a loan.  

For instance, under the higher conforming loan limits that were temporarily put into place ($729,750 instead of $417,000), you could pay $912,000 for the property, but you’d have to put down $182,400. Even on a lower priced house, say $450,000, you’d still have to cough up $90,000. As usual, things are easy if you’re wealthy, but they suck for the rest of us. I hope you weren’t under the impression the Fed cares about what happens to regular people. I guess we should be happy the rates are actually coming down on existing home equity lines of credit—mine is now at a lower rate than my first mortgage! 

The good news? Prices have dropped pretty significantly. That may last a while, but it won’t last forever. The Bay Area is still a desirable place to live. If you want a house for $35,000, move to South Dakota. Otherwise, if you have a fabulous FICO score, a lot of cash, a high-paying job, and you plan to stay in the house for a while, now is probably a good time to buy. 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Kitchens and other bungalow books.

All you gardeners within striking distance of northwest Berkeley: Here’s your chance to be influential. Westbrae Nursery on Gilman Street changed hands in January and just had an official Grand Opening. Jeff Eckhart, who owns the business now along with his sister Chris Szybalski, told me he has a few definite ideas about new directions and he’s open to more.  

One thing that has already surprised him is the number of edibles people want—vegetable seedlings and such—so he might give more space to those. There’s already a decent stock of ornamental and kitchen-garden seeds, but I noticed that the number of herb starts as well as the veggie sixpacks was considerably reduced from before the turnover.  

One pleasant surprise was finding succulents—just a few, including a Hesperaloe whose name I’ve forgotten—from the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek. That’s a trend I’d like to encourage because they certainly have interesting plants out there. It’s the first place I ever saw the gorgeous Antioch Dunes evening primrose in bloom, just for an offhand example. Westbrae has a direct pipeline now: Szybalski volunteers at the garden.  

There’s clearly an interest in succulents, demonstrated by a good bunch of little bitty ones on display including a few I don’t think I’ve seen before. If you like originality, that’s a good way to go; lots of plant families seem to have crazy aunts in the succulent attic.  

Another new aspect to the nursery is the “fountain court,” with traditional Euro-drooling sculptured types and some really handsome newer forms such as twisted black columns with alternately polished and rough surfaces for the water to run down to a cobbled base. The sounds these make are more subtle, too, than a spout-into-pool fountain’s.  

The new nursery owners have a little less space to work with, as some of the lot has been reclaimed by its landlord. Still, there’s room for a perfectly hilarious spiral-trunked whitebark birch. Eckhart says he intends to feature more such high-drama focal plants. He’s already got lots of foliage color, spiky, domed, umbrella-shaped, and other arresting forms.  

Goodlooking flowering stuff too, arranged on compact tiered tables in inspiring combinations. At the gate was a short, lush tree peony with the biggest blossoms I’ve seen on that plant. Annie’s Annuals is still well-represented. 

Houseplants, soil amendments, containers (and Paradise Pottery is right next door), trellises, and tools including Felco pruners are there already. If you want to have a nursery that fits your garden, go on over there and tell Eckhart and Szybalski what you want.  

If you cherish the weird and wonderful, you have two more of Merritt College’s Saturday plant sales this spring to check out: April 12 and May 10, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. The propagators up there lean toward Mediterranean-climate plants: Californian, Australian, South African, well-adapted here.  

Westbrae Nursery 

1272 Gilman St, Berkeley 

526-5517  

http://www.westbrae-nursery.com 

Closed Mondays 

Tuesday-Saturday 9 a.m. 5 p.m. 

Sunday 9 a.m. 4 p.m. 

Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Department 

12500 Campus Drive, Oakland 

436-2418 

www.peralta.cc.ca.us 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet.

I don’t know about you but I’m a person that’s very expert at feeling sorry for myself. If it’s not done my way, I’m grouchy. If they didn’t know what I wanted or anticipated how I was going to respond, I feel slighted. I’m not proud of it but that’s just the kind of gigantic baby I am. Waaaa. That’s why I volunteer. 

I don’t volunteer in order to set the world aright. The world can probably get along fine without me. No, I do it for myself. Volunteering, especially when I choose the right venue has the capacity to take me out of the “Poor Me”s faster than pretty much anything I can think of. So when I talk about Rebuilding Together (a.k.a. Christmas in April), understand that I don’t want you to help them … I want you to let them help you.  

I first encountered Christmas in April (now Rebuilding Together) in the winter of 1993 as a much younger general contractor and a person used to facing struggles alone. The model that they employed was something I really needed to learn and still need much reminding of that many hands make light work. 

The leadership of our own local Rebuilding Together—Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville (RTABE), including Executive Director June Lee at the helm, takes responsibility for figuring out who needs help on their home (that’s what they do), what will be done (painting, flooring, roofing) and who can get it done (you). 

Helping out with RT doesn’t require any building skills but you’ll gain some if you show up. Teams are built around a “House Captain” who organizes a body of work for a deserving homeowner (usually elderly, disabled or lacking the means to adequately care for their environs). If you volunteer, you’ll be assigned to a house captain who will show you how to paint a room or to lay a vinyl floor.  

You’ll never be asked to do a job that’s beyond your comfort zone but you can choose to work with someone (or several someones) more skilled than yourself to your own educational benefit. For many of us, tackling something new is less about the specific data involved than the sheer drop, the act of doing something completely new. Installing a handrail with a couple of trained volunteers is a great way to break through the fear and discover that, yes, you can do home repairs too. 

If you have more skill, RT is a great way to share those skills while meeting new people and just having fun. You can get plenty of help from lesser skilled people to do what you might normally do alone and there are very specific time and money constraints so you don’t have to worry about getting sucked into the Contractor Vortex of Eternal Malaise (and yes, I do have the T-shirt, thank you very much). 

Instead, the RT experience can be one in which you meet new people, share some laughs and experience the good feeling that comes from helping someone that could never afford what you normally purvey and a lot of these people are audibly and visibly grateful. 

If you know nothing at all about construction and never want to feel the thrill of a paint brush or hammer in your hand, you can still join a band of similarly comported brethren (& sistren) hauling the junk out of someone’s backyard or garage. Who knows, you may go home inspired to do the same with your own excess junk. 

While RT can use you for planning over the next few weeks, the main event is actually One Day. And now, you say “Hey, I can do One Day” and then you call June and tell her (or one of the other cool people over at RTABE) that you’re good for one day and you’ll take an X-LG for your shirt (we all get neat shirts because we’re a team!). 

You know, I can’t guarantee that you’ll learn how to build a deck in one day (that’s probably not going to happen) or how to paint like a pro , but I can make a promise that for one day, you’re far less likely to think about how cruddy your circumstances are. How rotten it is that your Volvo makes that noise, that your kids won’t finish their homework or that your portfolio is down.  

A day spent helping someone who can’t walk, who’s house is in really bad shape or who doesn’t have the money to buy a light bulbs might be just the medicine you need to come home and say “Wow, I have it good.” (by the way, bring your kids. They might end up feeling that way too). 

April Rebuild Day is the 26th of the month, the last Saturday in April. There are also Prep Workday’s on the 12th and 19th if these work better for you, or if you just need more cheering up! 

Eric Hoffer said “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” I don’t think I agree. Seems to me that it’s a one to one relationship. One day spent in pursuit of another’s betterment is one day in which yours is assured. 

Hope you see you all there. 

Rebuilding Together—Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville Executive Director June Lee. She or her staff can be reached at 644-8979.

TUESDAY, APRIL 1 

FILM 

“Goff in the Desert” by Heinz Emigholz 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 

“Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women” Discussion and readings with the editors and authors at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

Time Out Quartet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet & The Open World Jazz Octet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 

FILM 

“Il Posto” with lecture by Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Zachary Mason reads from his new novel, “The Lost Books of the Odyssey” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Chris Hedges on “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Jessica Ling, April Paik, Quelani Penland at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. 

Berkeley Symphony with Laura Jackson, conductor, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$60. 841-2800.  

The Very Hot Club of Berkeley at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

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

Turlu, Balkan, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. 

Rumbache at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Ezra Gale Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Palimpsest: Exploring the Layers” A mixed-media exhibit by Kate Swoboda on display in April at Gaylord’s Coffee & Tea, 4150 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. www.kateswoboda.com 

FILM 

Cine/Spin: “Simon of the Desert” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Jessica Fisher at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Artist Support Group Speaker Series with Rene de Guzman, Senior Curator, Oakland Museum, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $8-$10. 644-6893. 

Michalel Krasny on his new autobiography “Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio” at 7:30 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra with Stuart Canin, guest concertmaster, at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$42. 415-357-1111.  

Sean Hodge with High Heat, Matthew Hansen, Fauna Valetta at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054.  

Eda Maxym & the Imagination Club, with Stephen Kent at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Jazz Mechanics at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Sitar and Tablo Duo at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373.  

Shawn Shaffer & Karen Sudjian-Lampkin at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ise Lyfe, Rico Pabon, Big Dan in a fundraiser to help Oakland students travel to Puerto Rico at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Absolutely Zippo a zine (publication) party at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman. 525-9926. 

The Creations at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Latin Giants of Jazz, featuring members of the Tito Puente Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Collie Budz at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $18-$20. 548-1159.  

Divasonic with Celeste Lear at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 4 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Chicago” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 12. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “The Trojan Women” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 11. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Conservatory Theatre “The Turn of the Screw” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at 999 East 14th St., San Leandro City Hall Complex, near BART, through April 27. Tickets are $20-$22. 632-8850. 

Masquers Playhouse “Tartuffe” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through April 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Shotgun Players “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” by George Bernard Shaw. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through April 27, at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Teen One Acts Festival with the winners of the Teen writing competition Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theater, 2017 Addison St. Tickets at the door ate $6-$12. 647-2917. 

TheatreFirst “Future Me” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $23-$28. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

CHILDREN 

Splash Circus “Inspiruption: In Case of Emergency, Open Mind to Release Circus” Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Head Over Heels Gymnastics, Spur Alley, off 45th St., btwn Hollis and Doyle, Emeryville. Tickets are $10-$15.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Nature Study” Three Bay Area artists working with nature as a subject and/or medium. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Earth Days” Works by Carrie Lederer, Irene Imfeld and Andrew Kaluzynski. Reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Runs through May 3. 663-6920. 

“Protest in Paris 1968” Photographs by Serge Hambourg. Artist talk at 5 p.m. at PFA Theater Gallery. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Second Nature” Paintings of San Francisco artist, Elizabeth Garsonnin, and artist Doron Fishman of Oakland. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at NoneSuch Space, 2865 Broadway at 29th St, 2nd Fl, Oakland. 

FILM 

EarthDance: Short Attention Span Film Festival at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Chris Vitiello and Mary Burger read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Miriam Chase and Remi Barron, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

Jonathan Rosen explores our paradoxical relationship to nature in “The Life of the Skies Birding at the End of Nature” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Tim Wise, anti-racism activist and author at 7:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $12 - $20 sliding scale 800-838-3006. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lacey Baker and The Black Diamond Blues Band at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Citywater: The Music of Steve Mackey at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Dan Zemelman Quartet at 8 p.m. at The Berkeley Hillside Club 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 845-1350.  

Orquesta d’Soul at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568.  

Europa Galante “Music Before 1850” at 8 p.m. at First Congreagational Church, Dana and Durant. Pre-perfomance talk with musicologist John Prescott at 7 p.m. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. 

RoShamBo & Guests, all a cappella night at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Inner Visions, reggae tribute to Mikey Dread at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Solo Piano Night, with Fred Weed, Nannick Bonnel, Carol Belcher, and Hadley Louden at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Anton Schwartz, jazz saxophone, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Carol McComb & Kathleen Larisch at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Braindrill, Scarecrow, Arise, Zombie Holocaust 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. 

Red Summer at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$15. 548-1159.  

Code Name: Jonah at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 5 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Bonnie Lockhart, guitar and vocals at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Splash Circus “Inspiruption: In Case of Emergency, Open Mind to Release Circus” Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Head Over Heels Gymnastics, Spur Alley, off 45th St., btwn Hollis and Doyle, Emeryville. Tickets are $10-$15.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Open Range” The art of Douglas Light, Michele Hofherr and Scott Courtenay-Smith. Artist reception at 6 p.m. at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

“La Scuola di Antonio Holdsworth” Group show of paintings by Daniel Altman, Marvin Dalander, Susan Feiga, Lynne Hillock, Anthony Holdsworth, Tracy O’Neill, Michael Selvin, Ariella Seidenberg, Sally Stewart, Rolayn Tauben, O’Brien Thiele, April Watkins. Reception at 2 p.m. at The Art of Living Center, 2905 Shattuck Ave. 848-3736.  

THEATER 

San Leandro Players “Redwood Curtain” Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at San Leandro Museum Auditorium, Casa Peralta, 320 W. Estudillo Ave., through May 4. Tickets are $10-$15. 895-2573. www.sanleandroplayers.org  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Rachel Corrie Speaks” A dramatic reading of her journals by her mother and father and numerous young women peace activists, with original music by composer and cellist Matthew Owens, at 8 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $12-$15. 848-6767, ext. 609. www.kpfa.org  

Bay Area Poets Coalition Open Reading at 3 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. Free. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

“Jingletown Junction” Works by ten artists from the Jingletown neighborhood. Artists’ talk at 1 p.m. at ProArts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. www.proartsgallery.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Coronation & Victory” Works by Handel and Purcell, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400. 

“Sekar Jaya” Music and dance of Bali st 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$18. 925-798-1300. www.gsj.org 

Anthony Brown’s Asian American Orchestra at 3 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

The First Berkeley Piano Competition at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Burlesque ‘n Brass with Hot Pink Feathers and Blue Bone Express at 9 p.m. at Café Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave. 763-7711. 

Rachel Sage in Concert with child friendly activities available and the concert will be preceded by a magic show by Zappo the Magician at 1 p.m. at University Village, 1123 Jackson St., Albany. 867-8632. www.rachaelsage.com  

Sweet Honey in the Rock, African-American female a capella ensemble, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$58. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Bolokada Conde, West African drummer at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Darryl Rowe & His Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Backyard Party Boys, Betsy Maudlin & the Maudulators, JJ Schultz at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $10. 644-2204.www.twangcafe.com  

Eliyahu & Qadim, mystical music o fthe Near East, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Sotaque Baiano at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Doppler Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Susan Werner at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Harish Raghavan Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

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

DCOI, Static Thought, Knuickle Puck 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. 

The Latin Giants of Jazz, featuring members of the Tito Puente Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, APRIL 6 

CHILDREN 

Hank Hooper CD Release Party for Children (and their Families) at 2 p.m. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda. Cos tis $5-$15 per family, sliding scale. www.rhythmix.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Legacy of Berkeley Parks: A Century of Planning and Making” opens at Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St, and runs through May 17. 981-7546. 

“Through My Eyes” A photography exhibit by Ann Kraynak. Opening reception at 1 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3218. 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dennis Fritzinger reads from “Earth National Park” a new book of poetry at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center Bookstore, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 227. www.kirklumpkin.com 

Joe Fisher talks about Balinese Art at 3 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chamber Music Sundaes with San Francisco Symphony members and friends at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door are $18-$22. www.chambermusicsundaes.org 

Telemann Celebration concert by Florilegia at 3 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Free, but donationa accepted. 526-0722. 

San Francisco Choral Artists “Music Home-Grown” at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $9-$28. 415-979-5779. www.sfca.org 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Coronation & Victory” Works by Handel and Purcell, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-392-4400. 

Animal Crackers! Funny Songs & Delicious Desserts Music by Gershwin, Whitacre, PDQ Bach, at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $15-$20. 525-0302. 

John Santos Quintet “What is Jazz Anyway?” at 4 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15, children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Swedish Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$58. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

W. Allen Taylor & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Train Wreck Riders, Kemo Sabe, The Skinny at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $10. 644-2204.www.twangcafe.com  

Bandworks at noon at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Jarrett Cherner Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Claudia Schmidt at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$1920.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Call & Response” Works from Richmond High School and the National Institute of Art & Disabilities opens at NIAD, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

FILM 

New Digital Films from Palestine and Lebanon “The Roof” with filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, in person at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PACES, with poet Alan Bern and choreographer and dancer Lucinda Weaver at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Piedmont Ave. Branch, 160 41st St., Oakland. 597-5011. jmurphy@oaklandlibrary.org 

Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium “text, Slides and Videotapes” with artist Kota Ezawa, at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565. http://atc.berkeley.edu 

Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey reads from “Blowing on Embers: Stories for Hard Times” at a brown bag lunch, at 12:30 p.m. at the Edith Stone Room of the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Steve Hinshaw describes “Breaking the Silence: Mental Health Professionals Disclose their Personal and Family Experiences of Mental Illness” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express 6th Anniversary with Kathleen Daly at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Slide Hampton in an interactive presentation at 7 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$25, no one turned away. www.BrownPaperTickets.com/event/3087 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Debbie Poryes Trio at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

“No secret’s better kept than the secret everyone guesses.” That secret finally breaking through to its unaware—and unwilling—beneficiary is the story of Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, now on the Ashby Stage in a crisp new Shotgun Players production, with Shaw’s double-edged barbs at the double standard zinging around the auditorium. 

That realization, and what an independently minded late Victorian young lady come of age, like Shaw’s Vivie (in a fine portrayal by Emily Jordan) does with it, rivets the audience’s attention as the tightly wound plot unravels, revealing new nuances and secrets corollary to the principal one: What’s a girl to do, after leaving Cambridge with a sterling reputation in mathematics, when she discovers her mother, a mostly absent figure who provided for her and put her through school—is an old courtesan and businesswoman, in the hospitality business of running a string of bordellos across Europe? 

That the play, originally written in 1893 but banned from the stage until 1925, doesn’t seem dated to an audience today, as do many other socially aware spectacles of yore, is a tribute to Shaw’s cutting wit. It is also a testament to the penetrating quality of his dramaturgy, derived from Ibsen, which takes the formula of the modern commercial play (with its “arc” of emotional build-up and anticipation of a climax) and stiffens it with the Socratic sense of demonstrating the terms of a problem completely by arguing out its different points of view.  

Plato, who canonized that method in his Dialogues, was originally an aspiring tragedian. And when all is said and done, after the gusts of laughter have died down, it’s the genuine tragedy that remains. It’s a tragedy of independence won from stand-offs (not wars) between generations and between sexes, a Pyrrhic victory. The heroine divests herself of the shady business of the past, amid a welter of emotional promises and admonitions, to devote herself, ironically, to the shiny, if sterile, beacon of the commercial world, with a flippant “Goodbye, Frank!” It’s not Nora fleeing from her dollhouse, but it’s an irreparable split nonetheless. 

Vivie’s mother, the madame herself, is portrayed by longtime Shotgun star Trish Mulholland with all Mrs. Warren’s no-nonsense “vulgarity,” the result of coolly going from being a scullery maid in a Temperance establishment, to waitressing, and finally into management as a whorehouse keeper. 

Her old and seemingly stodgy bankroller, Crofts, is portrayed knowingly by John Mercer, another Shotgun Player, who makes an offer to the daughter. “Crofts ... only has one subject,” Vivie’s told when she complains. 

Vivie’s would-be lover, Frank, whose part Joseph O’Malley plays with tart insouciance, recognizes both Mrs. Warren’s questionable metier and Crofts’ corrupt gambit, despising him, though without prejudice, as it were, saying “There’s a freemasonry among the thoroughly immoral.” His father, Reverend Gardner, a social-position-obsessed clergyman, turns out to be an old familiar of madame Warren. 

Then there’s Praed, “old Praddy,” whom Nick Sholley brings off appropriately with a too discreet, overly delicate air. A Ruskin sort of chap, Praed believes in the power of Art and of Beauty—and a detached discretion—as a bulwark against the unpleasantness of the world, provided of course that one has the means to take a convenient tour of Italy. 

The show’s very well cast, and all show themselves at their best—in some cases, even better. Susannah Martin’s direction keeps the pacing brisk and funny with anticipation maintained at the right level to cash in on the reversals and double reverses in the plot. Shaw turns social hypocrisy back on itself with gusto, dryly exposing the true incestuousness of such a milieu, in which (as filmmaker Sam Fuller put it once, discussing war films and the causes of war at the PFA), everyone has an excuse: “If I didn’t do it, somebody else would.” 

Like most contemporary productions of Shaw, this one misses the way his characters know just who they are so well that they acquire a figural stature. Characters like these can make Euripidean rhetorical statements which transcend the situation of the play, making telling points in the guise of wit, somewhat as Shaw’s fellow Irishman Oscar Wilde did. This attribute, and the way it can be used politically, attracted Brecht to Shaw, who demonstrated that one could craftily stylize seeming realism to go beyond itself, . 

Here the actors occasionally half-turn to the audience to declaim, not quite in soapbox style, but using just enough oratory. Shaw always cuts both ways, so the springloaded irony of Mrs. Warren’s exclamation turns back on itself and on the beliefs of its onstage and offstage listeners: “Lord help the world if everybody took to doing the right thing!”

Mark your calendars: the annual spring surveys of endangered wildflowers at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge are coming up. This year’s dates are April 9-10 for the Contra Costa wallflower and May 14-15 for the Antioch Dunes evening primrose.  

You don’t have to be a trained botanist to participate. You just need to be able to identify these showy plants (not a problem), use a clicker to tally your observations, and walk a straight-line transect without stepping on any rarities. Ron and I did it last year, and highly recommend it. For more information, contact U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manager Susan Euing at (510) 521-9624, or susan_euing@yahoo.com. 

This place, which has fascinated me for years, is the first (and so far only) federal wildlife refuge established for plants and insects. It protects a remnant patch of sand that was scoured off the Sierra by glaciers some 40,000 years ago and deposited by the wind. The wallflower and the evening primrose evolved into distinct species here, hundreds of miles from their nearest relatives, and  

occur nowhere else in the wild. 

That’s also true of the refuge’s third marquee species, the Lange’s metalmark butterfly (Apodemia mormo langei), a northern outlier of a mostly tropical family. The metalmarks have their own survey, in later summer during the adults’ brief flight season. They spend the rest of their life cycle as larvae, either noshing on naked-stem buckwheat, their only food plant, or waiting out the dry months in a dormant state. 

In an evolutionary sense, the dunes are like an island on the land. Like the Galapagos or the Canaries, they have their suite of unique species, many of them insects. During World War II, entomologists at UC Berkeley found their field trips curtailed by gasoline rationing. The Antioch Dunes were about as far from Cal as they could get. So, making a virtue of necessity, they did a thorough inventory of the dunes’ insect life, and described a bunch of new species. I’ve been told that the scientists adopted one of the local watering holes during the war years. An entomologists’ bar is something I wish Gary Larson had drawn. 

For some reason, Life magazine, of all venues, showcased the insects of the dunes in a 1957 article, with foldout paintings by the German artist Walter Linsenmaier. (I’ve been rummaging through piles of old magazines in antique stores for years, hoping that issue would turn up, but no luck.) Growing up in Little Rock in the ’50s, I found the old Life, with its earth-history, evolution, and human-origins series, a window on a larger world. Lord knows I wasn’t getting that stuff in school; this was still post-Snopes and pre-Sputnik. 

Sadly, many of those unique species haven’t been recorded for decades. The dunes have been subject to many abuses, beginning with large-scale sand mining. Dune sand went into the bricks that rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Parts of the dunes became vineyards. Even after federal protection began in 1980, the area was vulnerable to fires and vandalism. The refuge was closed to the public (except for docent-led tours) after 1986, when fans of Humphrey the errant whale trampled the rare plants. 

A Nature Conservancy source lists some of the casualties: the Antioch Dunes shieldback katydid (Neduba extincta), the Antioch cophuran robberfly (Cophura hurdi), the Antioch sphecid wasp (Philanthus nasalis). These creatures vanished long before there was any kind of endangered species process. They would have been out of luck with the California Endangered Species Act anyway, since it precludes the listing of insects. 

But the insects are not all gone. It turns out that the specialized pollinator of the Antioch Dunes evening primrose—a solitary bee called Sphecodogastra antiochensis—is still around. It’s another Dunes endemic, a member of a bee genus associated with evening primroses. The nearest relative of S. antiochensis occurs in Merced County, 70 miles to the southeast of Antioch. 

These bees fly around sunrise and sunset. As their flight season progresses, they forage for pollen in the morning and nectar in the evening. Efficient collectors, they can gather a full pollen load in less than a minute. The pollen is used to provision larvae in wax-lined brood cells in the dune sands, although it appears that the larvae can develop without evening primrose pollen. A single female may establish as many as 31 cells.  

S. antiochensis has no protected status, but the Xerces Society—an estimable organization dedicated to the conservation of insects and other invertebrates—includes it in its Red List of endangered pollinating insects. For now, its survival may depend on the FWS personnel and volunteers who plant out nursery-raised evening primroses to augment the natural population. Antioch Dunes, like many other threatened places, must be tended like a garden-bees and all.  

TUESDAY, APRIL 1 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Docent Training for Tilden Nature Area Learn to assist the naturalists in providing interpretive programs at the Little Farm and narure area gardens, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $35. Application required. For information call 544-3260. 

Freight & Salvage New Home Groundbreaking Celebration at 10:30 a.m. at 2020 Addison St., with music by Suzy Thompson and friends. RSVP to 547-8248  

“A Dream in Doubt” A documentary that asks “What happens to the American dream when you look like America’s enemy?” at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Taxes and Personal Finance” discussion group at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley JCC at 1414 Walnut St.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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

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

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masoni Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 

Microfinance: A Global Tool to Reduce Poverty An interactive workshop for low-income entrepreneurs to secure loans and create income opportunities especially for womenat 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Sponsored by Calvert Foundation. 622-0202 ext. 203. 

“Under the Sea” A workshop for children to learn about how animals adapt to waves and predators, and how tide pool animals survive, from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall fo Sceince, Centennial Drive. Cost is $6-$9. 642-5132. 

“The Carlyle Connection” A documentary about the world of private equity banking and the involvement of the Bush family, the Saudi Royal family, the Bin Laden family and others, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Introduction to Triathlon” with Jane Booth at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Cycling Lecture with Dick Powell, organizer of European bicycle tours, at 7 p.m. at Velo Sport Bicycles, 1615 University Ave., enter at 1989 California St. RSVP to 849-0437. 

Kaleo and Elise Ching explain “Chi and Creativity: Vital Energy and Your Inner Artist” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books on Solano Ave. 525-6888. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

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

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

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, APRIL 3 

A Question of Conscience: Military Perspectives on the “War on Terror” A panel discussion with Col. (Ret.) Lawrence B. Wilkerson, U.S. Army; Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch, U.S. Marine Corps; Lt. Col. (Ret.) Stephen E. Abraham, U.S. Army Reserve, at 5 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. 642-0965. www.hrcberkeley.org 

Candlelight Vigil Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King at 7:30 p.m. at the Chapel, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 849-8329. 

Introduction to Urban Permaculture Permaculture designers from the Ecological Division of Merritt College's Landscape Horticulture Dept discuss what's possible in a city at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext.233. ww.ecologycenter.org 

“Explaining the Inexplicable: Suicide Bombers’ Motivation as the Quest for Personal Significance” with Prof. Arie W. Kruglanski, Univ. of Maryland at 7:30 p.m. at Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center, UC Campus. 642-4670. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club at 6:45 p.m. at at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline.  

FRIDAY, APRIL 4 

EarthDance: Short Attention Span Film Festival at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Prof. Edouard Mayoral on “Recent Changes in the European Union and Some Consequences of These Changes.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 524-7468.  

Tim Wise, Anti-Racism Activist and author of “White Like Me; Reflections of Race from a Privileged Son” and “Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White” speaks at 7:30 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St.. Tickets are $12-$20 sliding scale. 800-838-3006. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 pm. at the Berkeley Puplic Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

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, APRIL 5 

Healthy Communities, Healthy Planet Sponsored by the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at First Unitarian Church, 685 14th St., Oakland. Cost is $30 at the door. www.transcoalition.org 

Teens Touch the Earth Learn about caring for the environment while earning community service credits, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline. For ages 13-19. Registration required. 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

“Rachel Corrie Speaks” A dramatic reading of her journals by her mother and father and numerous young women peace activists, with original music by composer and cellist Matthew Owens, at 8 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $12-$15. 848-6767, ext. 609. www.kpfa.org  

Alameda County Office of Education Credentialling Fair for individuals interested in becomming a credentialed teacher in California, from 9 a.m. to noon at 313 West Winton Ave., Conf. room 142, Hayward. 670-4224. www.acoe.org 

Jack London Aquatic Center Ergathon Atheletes take turns on a Concept2 rowing machine and pull non-stop for 12 hours, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Jack London Aquatic Center by the Oakland Estuary. You can sponsor a rower, or row yourself. 208-6067. 

Latin Giants of Jazz: Sam Burtis and Sonny Bravo Clinic and master class from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Cost is $20-$50, Students, $10, youth up to age 15, free. 836-4649. 

“Passport to the East Bay Wine Trail” featuring eight winery tasiting rooms in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville, from noon to 5 p.m. Tickets are $30-$35. www.eastbayvintners.com 

Politcal Affairs Readers Group meets to discuss excerpts from Gerald Horne’s forthcoming book “Blows Against the Empire: US Imperialism in Crisis” at 10 a.m. at Niebyl Procter Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417. www.marxistlibr.org 

CopWatch Training Learn your rights when stopped by police, officers, as well as how to observe and document police misconduct, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Free. 548-0425.  

“Spring Blooming Perennials” with Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

Auditions for the Woodminster Summer Musicals for adult singers and dancers of all ages and children who appear to be 8-10. For deatils see www.woodminster.com/Webpages/opportunities.html 

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.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 6 

Family Pond-tacular Learn about metamorphosis as your explore the ponds with naturalist Meg Platt, from 10:30 a.m. to noon in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Family Footprints Learn about animal tracks and see what you can spot with naturalist Meg Platt, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Historical Society 30th Anniversary from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Reservations required. berkeleyhistorical@yahoo.com 

The Crisis at KPFA and Pacifica A community forum with speakers Maria Gilardin, Les Radke, Joe Wanzala, from 2 to 6 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst at M L King Way. www.peoplesradio.net/ 

events.htm 

“What it Takes to Get Your Book Published” with Alan Rinzler at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Friends and Family Day celebrating the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. 549-6950. 

“US Labor, Chinese Workers and the Meaning of International Labor Solidarity” with Ellen David Friedman at 12:30 p.m. at SEIU Local 1021, 447 29th St., Oakland. Enter at rear between Telegraph and Broadway. Suggested donation $5-$10.  

“Kiss My Wheels” A film about a nationally ranked wheelchair basketball team at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., 3rd Flr. 981-6107. 

Films from the Center for African Diasporic Culture “Cubamor” at 6 p.m. and “Favela Rising” at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10 for each film, or $15 for both. 849-2568. 

Old Time Radio East Bay Collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 5 p.m. at a private home in Richmond. For more information email DavidinBerkeley at Yahoo.com. 

Home Graywater Systems Slideshow & Tour Learn about the permitted greywater system at the Ecohouse. We will discuss the principles and process of safely irrigating with shower, bathroom sink, and laundry waste water. The workshop includes a 1 hour slide show presentation of greywater design and the application process. Tours at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Pre-registration required. Cost is $15 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds. 548-2220 ext. 242. ecohouse@ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Rep’s Family Series, a monthly theater workshop for the entire family from 11. a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Free, but bring a book to donate to the library at John Muir Elementary School. 647-2973. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace 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 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Robin Caton on “Compassion and Well-Being” 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 4 to 8 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577.  

MONDAY, APRIL 7 

El Cerrito Green Party Happy Hour at 8 p.m. at The Sky Lounge, 10458 San Pablo Ave, north of Stockton St. 526-0972. 

Yah Village Community Circle with children from Hoover Elementary School who have created Super Heroes who stand against violence at 6:30 p.m. at St. Mary’s Center, 925 Brockhurst St., Oakland. www.ahc-oakland.org 

“Castoffs” Knitting Group meets at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

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

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

ONGOING 

E-Waste Recycling St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County accepts electronic waste including computers, dvd players, cell phones, fax machines and many other ewaste products for disposal free of charge at many of its locations throughout Alameda County. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600.  

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., April 2, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs. April 3, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., April 3, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., April 3, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., April 3, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.

FRIDAY, MARCH 28 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Chicago” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 12. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

“Amor Cubano” Written and performed by Maceo Cabrera Estevez at 8 p.m. through Sat. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568.  

Berkeley Rep ”Wishful Drinking” with Carrie Fisher, at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St., through March 30. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Masquers Playhouse “Tartuffe” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through April 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031.  

Shotgun Players “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” by George Bernard Shaw. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through April 27, at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“My Sister, My Sister” A personal response to homelessness, poetry by Zelma Brown, Photography by Meredith Stout. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Screening of “Walking in My Shoes” at 8 p.m. Show runs to April 25. 601-4040, ext. 111. 

“Peace is Possible” Works by artists who are changing the world through creativity, Wavy Gravy and Carolyna Marks. Reception at 7 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717d 4th St. 527-0600. 

“Pet Art” from Expressions Gallery on display at Just Pet Me Country Club, 2545 Broadway, Oakland to June 30. A portion of the proceeds from art sales with be donated to the Berkeley Humane Society. 500-5595. 

“Beyond the Studio: Community Collaborations” Exhibition of works by students in the Arts and Consciousness program on display to April 5 at Joh F. Kennedy’s University Arts Annex, 2956 San Pablo Ave., 2nd flr. 486-8118. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Silberg and Thomas Centolella, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

David King Dunaway reads from the revised edition “How Can I Keep From Singing? The Ballad of Pete Seeger” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

R.Black discusses his art and new book “Futura: L’Art de R.Black” at 7:30 p.m. at Book Zoo 6395 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 654-BOOK. 

Morton Felix and Stanford Rose, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$44. 925-798-1300.  

“David Rogers: Guitar and Lute” at 7:30 p.m. at The Pro Arts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$18. 868-0695.  

Thomas Pandolfi, pianist, at 8 p.m. at The Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. 845-1350. 

Lisa B Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Sambada, Afro, Brazilian, funk, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054.  

Beth Waters at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

House Jacks at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Jessica Rice, Sacred Profanities at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe. 595-5344. 

The Dave Stein Bubhub at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Slydini at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Julie Dexter, Jordana, R&B, at 8 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

David Sanborn at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $35-$40. 238-9200. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 29 

CHILDREN  

East Bay Children’s Theater “The Emperor’s New Clothes” at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $10. 655-7285.  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Rafael Manriquez, songs in Spanish, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4-$5. 849-2568.  

Music with Melita and Sarita at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Earth Days” Works by Carrie Lederer, Irene Imfeld and Andrew Kaluzynski, opens at 1 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Through May 3. 663-6920. 

“Beneath the Surface” Paintings and works on paper by Liz Mamorsky, assemblage sculpture by Paul Baker. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at The Float Center Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, #116, Oakland. 535-1702. 

Fresh Paint 3.5 Group show closing reception from 2 to 4 p.m. at Montclair Gallery, 1986 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. 339-4286. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Vladimir Guerrero, author of “The Anza Trail and the Settling of California” at 1 p.m. at Lakeview Library, 550 El Embarcadero, Oakland. 238-7344. 

Elizabeth Rosner, Berkeley author, speaks about writing at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College, Ave., Oakland. 597-5017. 

Jodi Picoult reads from “Change of Heart” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books at 2201 Shattuck, next to the almost open new store. 559-9500.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

West Coast Blues Hall of Fame and Awards Show, performances and party, from 7 to 11 p.m. at Oakland Mariott City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $30. 836-2227. www.bayareabluessociety.net 

Harmonie Universelle “Musikalische Ergotzung” at 8 p.m. at St. Johns Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $22-$25. 528-1725. 

Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet and Orchestra “Swan Lake” at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988.  

Davide Verotta, piano, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

The Dry Umbrella Tour with Seattle artists, Carrie Clark and Camille Bloom at 8 p.m. at Epic Arts Studios, 1923 Ashby Ave. Suggested donation $7.  

Ray Obiedo Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Unreal Band, The Itchy Mountain Men at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Khe Note at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Bill Kirchen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Zoe Ellis/Maya Kronfeld, swing, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

The Return of The P-PL at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Five Eyed Hand at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Beyond the Pattern: The Quintessence of Fashion” celebrating applied handwork, embroidery, and lace. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles, 3163 Adeline St. 843-7178.  

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

“Spring into Life” A street-long exhibit of art by children and youth along College Ave. from Broadway to Russell St. Kick-off party at 1 p.m. at Glitter & Razz, 5951 College Ave., Oakland. 814-8127.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mark Fischer “Where Nature, Science and Art Meet” A presentation on Whalesong Art at 1 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

“Contemporary Art in Cuba” with Terry McClain at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Our Own Words” Friends of Negro Spirituals will celebrate the release of its Negro Spirituals Oral History DVDs and transcripts to the public at 3 p.m. at Mills College in Lisser Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 869-4359. 

Berkeley Opera “L’Elisir d’Amore” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$44. 925-798-1300.  

Isadora Duncan’s Legacy With dancer Lois Flood and historian Joanna Harris at 2 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Suggested donation $15. 843-8982. www.hillsideclub.org 

Susan Matthews, organ, at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 684-7563. 

Oakland Civic Orchestra at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Free. 238-7275.  

Berkeley Symphony’s “Under Construction” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Tickets are $10-$20. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org  

Junius Courtney Big Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Morris LeGrande at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Mamadou & Vanessa, African, at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Carrie Newcomer, Krista Detor at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, MARCH 31 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Berkeley: A City in History” with author Chuck Wollenberg at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6241. 

Ernest Bloch Lecture with Steve Mackey on “Whim and Rigor: Rethinking Musical Influence: Rock-tinged Lecture” at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864.  

Poetry Express Open mic on “women role models” at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Classical at the Freight: Kay Stern & Friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. 

Tia Caroll & Hard Work at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, APRIL 1 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women” Discussion and readings with the editors and authors at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

Time Out Quartet at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet & The Open World Jazz Octet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 

FILM 

“Il Posto” with lecture by Marilyn Fabe at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Zachary Mason reads from his new novel, “The Lost Books of the Odyssey” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Chris Hedges on “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Jessica Ling, April Paik, Quelani Penland at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. 

Berkeley Symphony with Laura Jackson, conductor, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$60. 841-2800.  

The Very Hot Club of Berkeley at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

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

Turlu, Balkan, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. 

Rumbache at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Ezra Gale Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Palimpsest: Exploring the Layers” A mixed-media exhibit by Kate Swoboda on display in April at Gaylord’s Coffee & Tea, 4150 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. www.kateswoboda.com 

FILM 

Cine/Spin: “Simon of the Desert” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Jessica Fisher at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Artist Support Group Speaker Series with Rene de Guzman, Senior Curator, Oakland Museum, at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Cost is $8-$10. 644-6893. 

Michalel Krasny on his new autobiography “Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio” at 7:30 p.m. at the JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Century Chamber Orchestra with Stuart Canin, guest concertmaster, at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $28-$42. 415-357-1111.  

Sean Hodge with High Heat, Matthew Hansen, Fauna Valetta at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054.  

Eda Maxym & the Imagination Club, with Stephen Kent at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Jazz Mechanics at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Sitar and Tablo Duo at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373.  

Shawn Shaffer & Karen Sudjian-Lampkin at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ise Lyfe, Rico Pabon, Big Dan in a fundraiser to help Oakland students travel to Puerto Rico at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Absolutely Zippo a zine (publication) party at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman. 525-9926. 

The Creations at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Latin Giants of Jazz, featuring members of the Tito Puente Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Collie Budz at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $18-$20. 548-1159.  

Divasonic with Celeste Lear at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Friends of Negro Spirituals will celebrate the public release of their Negro spirituals oral history DVD set, “In Our Own Words: The Negro Spirituals Heritage Keepers,” on Sunday afternoon at Mills College. 

The first 10 DVDs are each 50 minutes long, with an interview with a “heritage keeper,” discussing their memories of learning about “slavery-born songs,” and the ways they have kept the songs alive in the Oakland-area community. The DVDs will be available through the Mills College Library, the Oakland Main Library History Room and the African-American Library in Oakland, as well as to the public. 

Sunday’s program will be hosted by  

storyteller Diane Ferlatte and will feature old-time community and contemporary choral singing of spirituals, an African dance performance and the release of a compilation DVD as well as the individual oral histories. 

Sam Edwards founded the Friends of Negro Spirituals with Lyvonne Chrisman in 1998. 

“Lyvonne and I recognized the great absence of efforts to preserve Negro spirituals in the culture of local communities, especially after hearing Moses Hogan,” Edwards said. “The goal was and always has been to educate the public on what we call the Negro spirituals folksongs—“the family jewels” handed down from 1865 to keep alive the power they have, the ways the slaves used them for their survival, by voicing the sentiments that carried the  

spirit of protest, religion, of celebration, and reinforced them in the community. That was the motivation behind our getting started.” 

Edwards talked about the heritage keepers: “Not all are musicians; some are everyday people. Everybody makes a different contribution. Some inspire their children through their own infectious feeling for the songs. We can no longer keep Negro spirituals alive through the oral tradition. The heritage keepers are selected by a committee of five or six in recognition of the work they have done for preservation in the Oakland community.” 

He described two of the better-known heritage keepers, Doug Edwards (no relation) and Helen Dilsworth. 

“Doug Edwards has been a popular jazz programmer on KPFA radio for 28 years,” he said. “The past five or six years, he’s included Negro Spirituals on his show, playing jazz renditions, classical versions and the more folk renderings. Equally as important, he’s allowed us to put programs about Negro Spirituals on his show, been a major supporter and consultant, providing contacts with others, which helps us do our mission. He’s been doing a lot that thanks to his airwaves reaching people in populations we wouldn’t be able to.” 

About Dilsworth, Edwards said: “[She is] a professional soprano and music teacher at San Francisco City College for 15 or 20 years, who teaches Negro Spirituals to her students and sings them in Oakland and many other parts of the world with her beautiful, beautiful voice, in what I call the classical style ... she’s very religious, as well as conscious of the importance of both the history of Negro Spirituals and their continuity in the present day. She’ll lead the group or community-type singing, how the slaves used to do it.” 

Edwards noted that classical singer and Negro Spirituals recording-artist Robert Sims, who appeared to great acclaim in a Friends of Negro Sprituals concert with Odetta in 2006, will be performing April 4 at the Four Seasons-Oakland. 

For further information or to leave an e-mail address for updates, go to www.dogonvillage.com/negrospirituals/ or call 869-4359. 

box: 

Friends of Negro Spirituals 

Oral History DVD release event 

free admission 

Sunday 3 p.m. 

Mills College, Lisser Hall  

5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland 

Because you are blind, you would rather others didn’t see.” The name of Tartuffe, Moliere’s creation, the title role in the most famous of French comedies, has become synonymous with religious hypocrisy. The Masquers have put up a fast-moving and very funny contemporary take on the play that made the Sun King laugh, using a flexible verse translation by Ranjit Bolt, now on at their playhouse in Point Richmond.  

It starts with a frozen tableau of a fam-ily in hilarious turmoil. When the spell is broken, the spiel begins, with Loralee Windsor as old Madame Pernelle laying down the law to the rest of the family. She’s a true believer, exhorting them to honor the itinerant preacher whom her son, pater familias Orgon (Robert Love, Masquers managing director), has become enthralled with and taken in by, alarming all but grandma Pernelle. The case for the prosecution is ably stated with slashing attitude and wit by maid Dorine, in a juicy and uproarious rendering by Alexaendrai Bond. 

“Your father clearly has gone insane;/ the Tartuffe bug has bit his brain!” she says. As the iambic tetrameter syncopates and the plot thickens, everyone talks about Tartuffe, but in the style of the older stage, we don’t see his face on stage (save a pious photo, framed on the bookshelf, praying with whitening knuckles) until well into act one. When he enters, dressed like a mortician in basic black with a violet display handkerchief, Keith Jefferds puts in perhaps his best performance, with unctuous voice and beady eye brightening at every chance to scavenge or usurp the fleshly wealth of the rich he preys on, a freelance spiritual adviser, a marvelous skulking coyote. 

When he and his pigeon General Orgon get together, it is a hysterical biddy session, what Orson Welles wryly dubbed “heterosexual camp.” The two strut and mince in mutual absorption, with Orgon wanting to give the hand of his beautiful young daughter (Laura Morgan as Mariane) to the preacher, instead of to her intended Valere (Greg Milholland). He evens offers to adopt Tartuffe as his sole heir. 

The situation seesaws back and forth, with Jefferds’ Tartuffe handling each denunciation with self-suffering jiu-jitsu, while turning the other cheek to smirk. He displays all the tricks of the televangelists, though with little of their cornpone. 

Finally, Orgon’s wife Elmire (Beth Chastain), for whom Tartuffe lusts, figures out a scheme to “pull his wool from your eyes,” to reveal the plaster saint as a randy sponge. Declaring “without scandal, there is no sin,” Tartuffe does a striptease, a not-so-saintly Chippendale’s routine. But the tables turn, then turn again, with a surprise cameo by the portrait of a very contemporary kind of political thespian. 

As the cast regards the visage of the actor-pol, someone intones: “we give thanks to our great leader/For saving us from bottom feeders.”  

Paul Shepard, formerly of UC Berkeley, has directed his cast well, ending up with an ensemble. Still, there are some inconsistencies and a few shrill notes. Even Robert Love at one point picks up the palsy of bobble-headedness from the young men of the Masquers. 

But it’s a rich show overall, far better at tapping Moliere’s comic wealth than the usual halfhearted, pumped-up academic and festival versions, which are often more hangdog than doggedly funny. It’s willing to worry the bone of language and situation until it yields up the marrow of humor, something more than slapstick with a happy ending.  

TARTUFFE 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through April 26 at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond.

Back in the late 1960s I had lunch in Regent’s Park in London with the editor of the RIBA Journal. As we strolled around in that lovely landscape, he gestured to the new Post Office Tower, a novel “foreign object” rising above the grand old trees and Regency terraces. Almost 600 feet high, crowned by a revolving-view restaurant and hung with satellite dishes, it was a living insult to any passionate contextualist. “I don’t dislike it,” said my colleague, “but it quite takes away that special joy of London—a collection of distinct neighborhoods.” 

His observation returns to my mind when I try to assess the impact, on a Berkeley resident, of the promised “made-over” skyline already appearing on Rincon Hill, not to mention that feverishly touted developer’s dream, the future Transbay Tower. For although London and San Francisco are very different, they face similar threats, particularly loss of unique character. London is loved for its historic river, ancient buildings, and enviably livable Georgian streets and squares, not for Cesar Pelli’s 800-foot Canada Tower, frowning down on the otherwise lively new Docklands. Similarly, San Francisco is adored for its European ambiance and breathtaking views of bridges, water and dramatic headlands, not for the Bank of America’s dark brooding (ex-)world headquarters, or its companion folly, the Transamerica pyramid. 

Living in Berkeley from the mid-’50s, one watched the pastel city across the bay change from a friendly, low-to-midrise affair, spread over recognizable hills, to a pincushion of corporate towers obliterating the beloved topography. By the late 1960s, the city’s planners and shapers had realized the threat to adjacent Telegraph Hill and North Beach, and, cleverly if brutally, steered the new Embarcadero Project—that “city within the city”—into walling-off further highrise expansion north of its narrow towers. 

In the 30-some years since that bold intervention, this vibrant business-area, now expanded south beyond Mission, has filled up with a good number of well-designed structures that look as though record-breaking height was not an aim. One could list Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s granite-faced (ex-)Crocker Tower at 1 Montgomery, their elegant “teardrop” building at 388 Market, or the glassy European-looking design at 101 2nd St. Though claustrophobic in places—think Bechtel’s overshadowed park—this impressive miniature Manhattan is made more bearable by its increasingly handsome public waterfront. To many of us who still regard San Francisco as our cultural downtown, this expanded financial district feels like a fait accompli, to be left in peace for a bit while other more pressing projects are tackled—like making a superb job of Mission Bay.  

As happy regionalists, many of us sustain an active interest in promoting neglected Oakland, aiding struggling Richmond, or saving dear old Berkeley from headlong “smart growth”! Thus it comes as an unwelcome distraction in this time of endless war and looming economic disaster to find San Francisco—or its political leadership—so totally gung-ho about a higher than ever downtown. 

While I write this I am looking at the February 2007 issue of San Francisco Magazine, whose striking cover is an aerial view of an impressive wood study model, with an “improved” Financial District in the foreground. All the buildings painted white—I count 22—are either proposed, approved, or under construction. SO far so good, except that a handful of them—the much-discussed Transbay Tower, the adjacent Twin Towers 2, and a few others—rise above all else, upsetting the unity and balance of the whole, while inevitable raising the ante for future development across the greater area. The recent completion of a 60-story apartment tower on Rincon Hill is startling proof that this new developer-planner alliance means business. 

In itself, the great southward expansion begun in 1986 when city residents voted to encourage high buildings beyond Market Street, seems natural and inevitable, protecting the established character of Nob Hill, Russian Hill and North Beach, while re-vitalizing a decaying old industrial terrain. The alarming thing, however, is not expansion, but an almost sudden obsession with competitive skyscraping! Seemingly out of the blue, Renzo Piano’s Twin Towers aim to be the nation’s third and fourth tallest buildings, while the promised marvel close-by, rising above a “Grand Central Station of the West” will dominate even those, if unrestrained egos prevail. 

One would like to think, that something as tall as the 1,250-foot Empire State Building—an image already invoked—would receive deep design attention, but so far, the architectural picture is not encouraging. Some time ago, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the regional body created in 2001 to bring about the construction of a new super transit terminal on the site of the obsolete bus station at First and Mission, devised a limited competition between three major developers and their chosen architects. The design teams were Richard (now Lord) Rogers, one of Britain’s high-tech stars, in internationally famous Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and Cesar Pelli, architect of many prestigious giants including the 1,483 foot Patronas (twin) Towers in Malaysia. 

Apparently the competition program mandated a huge attention-getting skyscraper crowing a grand, partially underground transportation interchange. Suddenly, eccentric little San Francisco, always delighted to not be Manhattan, has declared itself the West Coast rival! The three teams worked frantically away, and on Monday, Aug. 6 of last year, their large, impressive models were unveiled in City Hall before an admiring crowd of officials, TV crews, and interested public. The designs were intriguing as elegant models are always are, but disturbing—three extravagantly tall commercial towers posing as sculpture! None of them equaled the best work of their famous lead-designers. To me, the Richard Rogers entry—four separate buildings bung inside a giant “erector-set” frame, looked the most promising. SOM’s offering, the next best, seemed to strive too hard to be exciting, rising from a dented pyramid into a twisty, hard-to-comprehend shaft, but the Pelli design was way the most disturbing. Claming elegance through simplicity, it posed as a well-behaved glass tower, but with a strangely weak form, curving in as it ascended. An emasculated blow-up of Cleopatra’s Needle, it will be seen by detractors, if built, as a giant, shiny phallus, exacerbated by attention-getting height. Ranging from 1,200 to 1,375 feet, all three towers are way taller that the 770-foot Bank of America World HQ—still downtown’s dominant landmark. 

A few days after the unveiling, the Transbay Authority’s advisory committee voted in favor of the sleek “respectable” Pelli design. A couple of weeks later, the Authority itself seconded their choice, and there for the moment we are stuck. perplexed design professionals, and people just plain uncomfortable with ego-built sky-high towers. But at this early stage, all is far from lost. The daunting task of financing an ambitious multi-level terminal in the crowded middle of San Francisco, is lengthy and far from assured. To many, the whole concept, especially the location, sounds frighteningly centralist and vulnerable, evoking visions of terrorist attack and seismic disaster, but even without these familiar fears, there are powerful cultural reasons for resisting this “madeover” skyline. 

Collectively we remain the captive audience of our everyday surroundings. Paris of the great boulevards, Florence, Georgian Bath, etc., created a sense of order and predictability, of civic belonging and social pleasures. At best they were eminently livable. You didn’t have to commute from Walnut Creek to work on California Street, and in those lowrise cities, unusual height was reserved solely for buildings of civic or religious importance—the church spire or the dome of city hall. Even today, almost anybody looking up at the West Front of Notre Dame will find it more inspiring than forty levels of identical office floors. 

Alas, the only “cathedral” in the city’s Financial District is that secular novelty the Transamerica Pyramid, but that apart, the gleaming office towers and highrise hotels paraded along Market Street or enjoyed from the quiet splendor of Yerba Buena Gardens, range from pretty good to excellent without competing for record breaking height. Think of Timothy Pfleuger’s Art Deco Pacific Telephone Building on new Montgomery Street—no Sears Tower, yet a celebration of verticality that even after 83 years playfully enhances Mario Botta’s squat SFMOMA. As civilized architecture, Pfleuger’s modest-sized jewel, or its current equivalent—think of the city’s new, eminently non-slick Federal Building—is worth a dozen 1,300-foot featureless glass shafts, which brings me back to my opening comments. 

Apropos their huge flamboyant Transbay Tower entry, Crag Hartman, SOM’s chief designer, said a the public presentation, “in a single stroke, this design will redefine for the world San Francisco’s architectural, urban, and environmental intentions.” With all due respect for the power of bold statements, my gut response is “God help us,” for six or eight such assertive monsters would mesmerize a captive audience of millions. Large numbers of us, looking across the bay from Berkeley or Oakland, Richmond or Sausalito, at our “city on a hill” would rather not be continually reminded of World Trade, multi-million dollar condos with “world-class” views, or worse perhaps, tomorrow’s commute! 

With more bad economic news being revealed daily, I think even those of us who aren’t planning to sell, buy, or refinance a house are getting rather nervous. It’s come to the point where one starts to wonder how surreal it could get, given that some lenders are suddenly deciding to cancel or freeze home equity lines of credit, even for borrowers who have made all their payments on time, or are refusing to subordinate to new first mortgages, making it impossible for people to refinance.  

It makes one want to go through the loan papers to make sure the first mortgage doesn’t have some hidden clause which basically says, “We’re the bank and if we suddenly decide we need the whole $415,000 we lent you then we’ll send you a letter to that effect and you’ll have 30 days to pay up.” 

Funny thing, these are the very same banks that only a year or two ago were encouraging people to use their houses like ATMs for vacations, college tuition, or paying off their high interest rate credit cards. Not to mention encouraging “cash-out” refinancing where people were encouraged to take out a loan for more than they needed—say an extra hundred thousand—because the bank would make more income on a larger loan amount. But now that their complicated financial schemes are going to hell in a handbasket, suddenly it’s our fault. 

There’s been a good deal of finger-pointing, naturally. Some like to blame the victims, saying they never should have been given loans, it’s their fault they didn’t read the fine print, surely they realized they wouldn’t be able to afford the payments when their adjustable loan adjusted. It’s easy to believe this if you’re one of those people who is terribly financially savvy, or someone lucky enough to have owned their house since, oh, 1964 (back when only one income was often enough, and the payments only took 30 percent of it).  

I’m sure it’s true that there are many people who probably should not have been allowed to buy a house—the people whose credit scores suggested that handling money was maybe not their strong suit. If the only loan you can get is an adjustable loan linked to a volatile index that adjusts every three months and starts at 9 percent when prime fixed-rate loans are going for 5.5 percent, then that might be a clue that you shouldn’t be buying property.  

On the other hand, some lender was happy to make that loan, and then sell it in the secondary mortgage market, and is not now willing to drop the interest rate on it, in order for the borrower to continue to be able to pay it. And there may have been a mortgage broker who arranged the deal, and was happy to take 1 percent of that $500,000 up front as payment for doing so. He or she may have been honest enough to tell you it was a bad loan, but probably wasn’t honest enough to tell you shouldn’t be buying the house. 

But I can tell you about reading the fine print. I’ve owned 11 houses, and I’ve read lots of loan documents. Various laws have been passed that tried to make them more consumer-friendly and easy to understand—but they aren’t. They are all about covering the lender’s rear and kicking yours. Lawyers were involved in the writing of them—need I say more? I’m pretty sure the documents for my home equity loan don’t actually say, “There may come a day when the economy has gotten so screwed up and we’re feeling so paranoid that even though we promised you could borrow this money from us on these terms we’ve decided that you can’t, and actually, whatever you’ve already borrowed we’d like back immediately even though we said you didn’t have to pay us back for 10 years.”  

Another scapegoat has been “stated income” or “no documentation” loans. I have no doubt that many people either outright lied or least fudged their assets a bit. (It’s harder to fudge your credit score, although there are various sleazy ways to do so, and I’m sure some people used them.) But many of those loans went to people who, like me, are self-employed.  

Before stated income loans came along, self-employed people often had to either: have a spouse with a job, get a co-signer with a job, or spend the three years before they wanted to buy a house purposefully NOT taking all the income tax deductions they were actually entitled to in order to make their income look better to a lender. Interestingly enough, the other prime candidates for “no doc” loans are rich people who don’t want the lender to know many specifics about their financial situation. In any case, these loans are already becoming unavailable. 

Then the PMI companies (private mortgage insurance—which you have to pay on most loans if the down payment is less than 20 percent) announced that they have redlined ALL of California, as well as several other states. Great. So now, in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the U.S, you’ll have to be able to cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars for the down payment in order to get a loan.  

For instance, under the higher conforming loan limits that were temporarily put into place ($729,750 instead of $417,000), you could pay $912,000 for the property, but you’d have to put down $182,400. Even on a lower priced house, say $450,000, you’d still have to cough up $90,000. As usual, things are easy if you’re wealthy, but they suck for the rest of us. I hope you weren’t under the impression the Fed cares about what happens to regular people. I guess we should be happy the rates are actually coming down on existing home equity lines of credit—mine is now at a lower rate than my first mortgage! 

The good news? Prices have dropped pretty significantly. That may last a while, but it won’t last forever. The Bay Area is still a desirable place to live. If you want a house for $35,000, move to South Dakota. Otherwise, if you have a fabulous FICO score, a lot of cash, a high-paying job, and you plan to stay in the house for a while, now is probably a good time to buy. 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Kitchens and other bungalow books.

All you gardeners within striking distance of northwest Berkeley: Here’s your chance to be influential. Westbrae Nursery on Gilman Street changed hands in January and just had an official Grand Opening. Jeff Eckhart, who owns the business now along with his sister Chris Szybalski, told me he has a few definite ideas about new directions and he’s open to more.  

One thing that has already surprised him is the number of edibles people want—vegetable seedlings and such—so he might give more space to those. There’s already a decent stock of ornamental and kitchen-garden seeds, but I noticed that the number of herb starts as well as the veggie sixpacks was considerably reduced from before the turnover.  

One pleasant surprise was finding succulents—just a few, including a Hesperaloe whose name I’ve forgotten—from the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek. That’s a trend I’d like to encourage because they certainly have interesting plants out there. It’s the first place I ever saw the gorgeous Antioch Dunes evening primrose in bloom, just for an offhand example. Westbrae has a direct pipeline now: Szybalski volunteers at the garden.  

There’s clearly an interest in succulents, demonstrated by a good bunch of little bitty ones on display including a few I don’t think I’ve seen before. If you like originality, that’s a good way to go; lots of plant families seem to have crazy aunts in the succulent attic.  

Another new aspect to the nursery is the “fountain court,” with traditional Euro-drooling sculptured types and some really handsome newer forms such as twisted black columns with alternately polished and rough surfaces for the water to run down to a cobbled base. The sounds these make are more subtle, too, than a spout-into-pool fountain’s.  

The new nursery owners have a little less space to work with, as some of the lot has been reclaimed by its landlord. Still, there’s room for a perfectly hilarious spiral-trunked whitebark birch. Eckhart says he intends to feature more such high-drama focal plants. He’s already got lots of foliage color, spiky, domed, umbrella-shaped, and other arresting forms.  

Goodlooking flowering stuff too, arranged on compact tiered tables in inspiring combinations. At the gate was a short, lush tree peony with the biggest blossoms I’ve seen on that plant. Annie’s Annuals is still well-represented. 

Houseplants, soil amendments, containers (and Paradise Pottery is right next door), trellises, and tools including Felco pruners are there already. If you want to have a nursery that fits your garden, go on over there and tell Eckhart and Szybalski what you want.  

If you cherish the weird and wonderful, you have two more of Merritt College’s Saturday plant sales this spring to check out: April 12 and May 10, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. The propagators up there lean toward Mediterranean-climate plants: Californian, Australian, South African, well-adapted here.  

Westbrae Nursery 

1272 Gilman St, Berkeley 

526-5517  

http://www.westbrae-nursery.com 

Closed Mondays 

Tuesday-Saturday 9 a.m. 5 p.m. 

Sunday 9 a.m. 4 p.m. 

Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Department 

12500 Campus Drive, Oakland 

436-2418 

www.peralta.cc.ca.us 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet.

I don’t know about you but I’m a person that’s very expert at feeling sorry for myself. If it’s not done my way, I’m grouchy. If they didn’t know what I wanted or anticipated how I was going to respond, I feel slighted. I’m not proud of it but that’s just the kind of gigantic baby I am. Waaaa. That’s why I volunteer. 

I don’t volunteer in order to set the world aright. The world can probably get along fine without me. No, I do it for myself. Volunteering, especially when I choose the right venue has the capacity to take me out of the “Poor Me”s faster than pretty much anything I can think of. So when I talk about Rebuilding Together (a.k.a. Christmas in April), understand that I don’t want you to help them … I want you to let them help you.  

I first encountered Christmas in April (now Rebuilding Together) in the winter of 1993 as a much younger general contractor and a person used to facing struggles alone. The model that they employed was something I really needed to learn and still need much reminding of that many hands make light work. 

The leadership of our own local Rebuilding Together—Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville (RTABE), including Executive Director June Lee at the helm, takes responsibility for figuring out who needs help on their home (that’s what they do), what will be done (painting, flooring, roofing) and who can get it done (you). 

Helping out with RT doesn’t require any building skills but you’ll gain some if you show up. Teams are built around a “House Captain” who organizes a body of work for a deserving homeowner (usually elderly, disabled or lacking the means to adequately care for their environs). If you volunteer, you’ll be assigned to a house captain who will show you how to paint a room or to lay a vinyl floor.  

You’ll never be asked to do a job that’s beyond your comfort zone but you can choose to work with someone (or several someones) more skilled than yourself to your own educational benefit. For many of us, tackling something new is less about the specific data involved than the sheer drop, the act of doing something completely new. Installing a handrail with a couple of trained volunteers is a great way to break through the fear and discover that, yes, you can do home repairs too. 

If you have more skill, RT is a great way to share those skills while meeting new people and just having fun. You can get plenty of help from lesser skilled people to do what you might normally do alone and there are very specific time and money constraints so you don’t have to worry about getting sucked into the Contractor Vortex of Eternal Malaise (and yes, I do have the T-shirt, thank you very much). 

Instead, the RT experience can be one in which you meet new people, share some laughs and experience the good feeling that comes from helping someone that could never afford what you normally purvey and a lot of these people are audibly and visibly grateful. 

If you know nothing at all about construction and never want to feel the thrill of a paint brush or hammer in your hand, you can still join a band of similarly comported brethren (& sistren) hauling the junk out of someone’s backyard or garage. Who knows, you may go home inspired to do the same with your own excess junk. 

While RT can use you for planning over the next few weeks, the main event is actually One Day. And now, you say “Hey, I can do One Day” and then you call June and tell her (or one of the other cool people over at RTABE) that you’re good for one day and you’ll take an X-LG for your shirt (we all get neat shirts because we’re a team!). 

You know, I can’t guarantee that you’ll learn how to build a deck in one day (that’s probably not going to happen) or how to paint like a pro , but I can make a promise that for one day, you’re far less likely to think about how cruddy your circumstances are. How rotten it is that your Volvo makes that noise, that your kids won’t finish their homework or that your portfolio is down.  

A day spent helping someone who can’t walk, who’s house is in really bad shape or who doesn’t have the money to buy a light bulbs might be just the medicine you need to come home and say “Wow, I have it good.” (by the way, bring your kids. They might end up feeling that way too). 

April Rebuild Day is the 26th of the month, the last Saturday in April. There are also Prep Workday’s on the 12th and 19th if these work better for you, or if you just need more cheering up! 

Eric Hoffer said “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” I don’t think I agree. Seems to me that it’s a one to one relationship. One day spent in pursuit of another’s betterment is one day in which yours is assured. 

Hope you see you all there. 

Rebuilding Together—Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville Executive Director June Lee. She or her staff can be reached at 644-8979.

FRIDAY, MARCH 28 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Wolfgang Homburger, Inst. of Transport Studies, UCB, on “The Past and Future of Transportation in the Bay Area” 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.  

“How to Enter an Iris Show” A hands-on demonstration by a panel of experienced iris growers, at 8 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the Sydney B.Mitchell Iris Society. Free. http://bayareairis.org 

“Friendly Persuasions” A film about Quaker life in Indiana during the harsh realities of the Civil War at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, Sacramento and Cedar St. berkeleyfriendschurch.org 

“Phoenix Dance” A new film by Karina Epperlein on a journey from loss to faith, trust at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar St. Discussion follows.  

Radical Eco-Feminist West Coast Spring Tour A two hour presentation on radical eco-feminism and environmental ethics at 7 p.m. at Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.risingtidenorthamerica.org 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 pm. at the Berkeley Puplic Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Pot luck at 7 p.m. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Kol Hadash Humanistic Shabbat at 7:30 p.m. at the ALbany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. 428-1492. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 29 

Winks and Wags: A Singles Event for Pet Lovers with music and activities for humans and dogs from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Just Pet Me Country Club, 2545 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $20-$25. Benefits the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society. 845-7735, ext. 19. www.berkeleyhumane.org 

National Nutrition Month, with cooking demonstrations, free samples and free recipes, at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Compost give-away from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., bring your own container. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Memorial Service to Celebrate the Life of Dr. John Dillenberger, theologian, author, and founding President of the Graduate Theological Union at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Reception to follow in the church’s Large Assembly Room. 

Sprouts Gardening Project Help out in the Kids’ Garden from 10 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages three and up. 525-2233. 

Compost Give-Away at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market Bring your own container-two buckets are suggested or large garbage bags. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK Jr. Way. For backyard amateur gardeners only. Sponsored by the Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org/bcgc 

Groundbreaking for New Community Garden in Richmond at noon at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, off Macdonald Ave. Activities include a baking contest, garden hat decorating contest and stories for children at 11 am. in the library. 620-6561. 

Ocean View Community Garden Opening Albany residents interested in a garden plot will be assigned one by lottery. Priority given to apartment dwellers. Lottery tickets distributed beginning at 11 a.m., lottery begins at noon at 900 Buchanan St., behind the Teen Center and tennis courts. Annual fee $50. 559-9283. 

Vernal Vistas Hike in Claremont Canyon A steep 1.5 mile hike with panaoramic vistas at the end. From 3 to 4:30 p.m. Bring water and a snack to share. For information on meeting place call 525-2233. 

“Lewis and Clark, the Corps of Discovery: A 200-Year Retrospective” The history and biology of the Lewis and Clark voyage with a focus on the 176 plants they discovered. From 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Park Botanic Garden. Cost is $10-$20. Registration required. 841-8732. www.nativeplanets.org 

Vegetarian Cooking Class: Demystifying Tofu and Tempeh From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $49, in advance, plus $5 food/materials fee, due on day of class. Registration required. 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com  

“The Anza Trail and the Settling of California” with author Vladimir Guerrero at 1 p.m. at Lakeview Library, 550 El Embarcadero, Oakland. 238-7344. 

Common Agenda Regional Network Meeting on reordering federal priorities from the military to human and environmental needs, at 2 p.m. at Peace Action West, 2800 Adeline at Stuart. 524-6071. 

Community Plant Exchange from noon to 4 p.m. at 3811 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Bring plants that need pruning or dividing. For more nformation or if you need help digging up a plant call 866-8482. plantexchange@hotmail.com 

“Accent Plants for the Garden” at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off 7th St. 644-2351. 

Radical Eco-Feminism Workshop with Portland Animal Defense League, Rising TIde North America and Stumptown Earth First at 7 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave. stephanie@ 

RisingTideNorthAmerica.org 

Dharma Realm Buddhist Young Adults Spring Conference on Insight & Happiness on the Buddhist Path, Sat. and Sun. at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley Ave. RSVP to www.drby.net 

“Understanding Chronic Fatigue” at 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharm, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

39th Annual UC Open Taekwondo Championship with open ceremony at 8:30 am. and competition at 9 a.m. at Walter A. Haas, Jr. Pavilion, UC Campus. Cost is $5-$8. 642-3268. www.ucmap.org 

Teen Knitting Circle at 3 p.m. in the 4th Flr Story Room of the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Bring your own needles in size 8. 981-6107. 

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 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 30 

Hike Around Jewel Lake A good first hike for the young trekker to learn about the lake and its flora and fauna, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. For information on meeting place call 525-2233. 

“Breaking the Silence: Israeli Soldiers Talk about Their Occupation Experiences” at 7 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Suggested donation $5-$20, no one turned away. 465-1777. 

“Iraqi Civil Resistance” Bill Weinberg reports on Iraqi trade unions, women’s organizations, and neighborhood assemblies opposed to the US occupation at 10 a.m. at Niebyl Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. 

“A Taste of Ethiopia” A fundraiser and cultural event to benefit high school construction for The Merit Academy in Addis Ababa, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Mills Furniture Showroom, 2830 Seventh St. Cost is $25, sliding scale donations at the door. 415-235-5467. 

Jewish Music Festival “Community Dance Party” with Jewish dance specialist Bruce Bierman at 4 p.m. at JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $12-$15. 848-0237. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Films for a Future “What Babies Want” at 2 p.m. at the Edith Stone Room, Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. Discussion follows. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Tom Morse on “Natural Openness: Direct Knowing” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 31 

“Berkeley: A City in History” with author Chuck Wollenberg at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6241. 

Berkeley Housing Authority Annual Plan Public Hearing at 6 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/BHA/default.html 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

TUESDAY, APRIL 1 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Docent Training for Tilden Nature Area Learn to assist the naturalists in providing interpretive programs at the Little Farm and narure area gardens, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $35. Application required. For information call 544-3260. 

Freight & Salvage New Home Groundbreaking Celebration at 10:30 a.m. at 2020 Addison St., with music by Suzy Thompson and friends. RSVP to 547-8248 jeanshirk@freightandsalvage.org 

“A Dream in Doubt” A documentary that asks “What happens to the American dream when you look like America’s enemy?” at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Taxes and Personal Finance” discussion group at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley JCC at 1414 Walnut St.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

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

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

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masoni Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2 

Microfinance: A Global Tool to Reduce Poverty An interactive workshop for low-income entrepreneurs to secure loans and create income opportunities especially for women, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Sponsored by Calvert Foundation. 622-0202 ext. 203. 

“Under the Sea” A workshop for children to learn about how animals adapt to waves and predators, and how tide pool animals survive, from noon to 2 p.m. at Lawrence Hall fo Sceince, Centennial Drive. Cost is $6-$9. 642-5132. 

“The Carlyle Connection” A documentary about the world of private equity banking and the involvement of the Bush family, the Saudi Royal family, the Bin Laden family and others, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Introduction to Triathlon” with Jane Booth at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Cycling Lecture with Dick Powell, organizer of European bicycle tours, at 7 p.m. at Velo Sport Bicycles, 1615 University Ave., enter at 1989 California St. RSVP to 849-0437. 

Kaleo and Elise Ching explain “Chi and Creativity: Vital Energy and Your Inner Artist” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books on Solano Ave. 525-6888. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

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

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

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, APRIL 3 

A Question of Conscience: Military Perspectives on the “War on Terror” A panel discussion with Col. (Ret.) Lawrence B. Wilkerson, U.S. Army; Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch, U.S. Marine Corps; Lt. Col. (Ret.) Stephen E. Abraham, U.S. Army Reserve, at 5 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. 642-0965. www.hrcberkeley.org 

Introduction to Urban Permaculture Permaculture designers from the Ecological Division of Merritt College's Landscape Horticulture Dept. discuss what is possible in a city at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. 548-2220, ext.233. ww.ecologycenter.org 

“Explaining the Inexplicable: Suicide Bombers’ Motivation as the Quest for Personal Significance” with Prof. Arie W. Kruglanski, Univ. of Maryland at 7:30 p.m. at Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center, UC Campus. 642-4670. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club at 6:45 p.m. at at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline. nam 

aste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

ONGOING 

E-Waste Recycling St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County accepts electronic waste including computers, dvd players, cell phones, fax machines and many other ewaste products for disposal free of charge at many of its locations throughout Alameda County. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600.  

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Housing Authority Annual Plan Public Hearing Mon. Mar. 31, at 6 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. www.ci.berkeley. 

ca.us/BHA/default.htm