Posted Sat., April 19—Pacific Steel Casting’s appeal of a small claims court decision which went against the company in November began this week, and is expected to go on for the next two months, a spokesperson for the steel foundry told the Planet Friday. 

The west Berkeley-based steel foundry filed an appeal on Dec. 6 in the Alameda County Superior Court against a judgment which awarded $35,000 in damages to a group of West Berkeley neighbors who sued Pacific Steel Casting for loss of use and enjoyment of their property and mental distress.  

“The company disagreed with the decisions made by the judge,” said Elisabeth Jewel of Aroner, Jewel and Ellis, the public relations firm representing Pacific Steel. “They will be appealing all of the judgments in each of the small claims cases.” 

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

A majority of the plaintiffs had complained of a burnt-copper-like smell which they believed could be toxic. 

Lead plaintiff Tom McGuire had called the judgment “a victory for the small guys” after the November hearing. 

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jacquelyn Tabor heard only McGuire’s case Wednesday, to determine how the remaining eight cases would proceed. 

“I think PSC is grasping at straws, sucker punching, anything to put up the facade of a case to wipe the toxic egg off their face.” McGuire told the Planet. 

“There is so much evidence that foul odors and noxious emissions are and have been emanating from their smokestacks that to deny it or try to defend it is folly.” 

Since the defendants’ expert witness in small claims would not be available for the trial, McGuire said the group had brought in local activist LA Wood. 

“We’re going to have to win this case based on our own strong and compelling testimony,” he said. 

Judge Tabor is retired and is returning to court only for this particular case. The hearing would take longer than usual since she will only be working on the case every Wednesdays, Jewel said. 

Pacific Steel settled a lawsuit with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and installed a $2 million carbon absorption unit on Plant 3 to reduce emissions and odor last year. 

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

Drivers who park at Berkeley’s pay-and-display parking meters could soon be shelling out money until 10 p.m. if Mayor Tom Bates and two city councilmembers have their way. 

The new metering stations, which allow payment with coin or credit cards, currently charge parkers from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Under the proposal by the mayor, Dona Spring and Laurie Capitelli, the meters would offer extended parking times from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. and permit multiple hours of parking at night.  

The move would be part of the city’s agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next 42 years as mandated by Berkeley voters when they passed Measure G in 2004. 

Part of the funds would be directed to arts and to developing alternative transit modes. 

Spring said that given the limited choices for raising revenues for the city’s downtown Arts District. “This is a good option.” 

With live stage and film theaters and restaurants the main evening draws to downtown Berkeley, the extension of metered hours offered a way both to raise more funds for downtown public amenities and to encourage people to leave their cars in favor of public transit, she said. 

“The downside is that it will discourage some people,” Spring acknowledged. 

The new plan would also increase the number of pay-and-display meters downtown. Spring said it was Downtown Berkeley Association Executive Director Deborah Badhia who proposed extending the program to side streets, beyond the initial proposal to limit the extended hours only to slots on Shattuck Avenue.  

The item is on the agenda for Tuesday night’s council meeting, but only in the form of a request to City Manager Phil Kamlarz to direct the staff to develop a plan and cost analysis of the proposal.

A county judge has rejected the contentions of a legal challenge by Berkeley homeowners to the approval of the so-called “Trader Joe’s” building in downtown Berkeley, paving the way for construction. 

In a tentative ruling issued Tuesday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch rejected the claims by Stephen Wollmer and other plaintiffs allied as Neighbors for a Livable Berkeley Way. 

The five-story Old Grove building, otherwise known as Trader Joe’s, will feature 148 units of housing over ground-floor commercial and parking areas stretching the block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way between University Avenue and Berkeley Way. 

The building’s nickname comes from its promised primary commercial tenant, the popular and non-union grocery chain. 

Wollmer had charged that the Zoning Adjustments Board violated the city’s own zoning ordinance, an allegation specifically rejected by Roesch in his decision. 

The judge also rejected the claim that the approval violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which requires a full vetting of a project’s potential harm to natural and built environments. 

Wollmer contended that the city improperly gave developers Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald a bigger project with more market-rate apartments for providing grocery store parking rather than for creating new units at reduced rates for low-income tenants, which is the intent of the state density bonus law. 

He had also challenged approval of setbacks from adjacent residential properties and charged that the city’s actions in approving the project effectively allowed staff to create arbitrary rules without prior Planning Commission or City Council approval or review under CEQA. 

But Roesch’s tentative ruling, which awaits only the judge’s signature on a final decision draft prepared by the victors, tersely rejected his arguments without explanation. 

Wollmer told supporters, “The neighbors are considering the possibility of an appeal of the decision, as there are new areas of discretion, placing all Berkeley citizens at risk of an increasingly capricious Planning Department and the current pro-developer City Council.” 

That action would come well before the June 1 date that the developer Chris Hudson said has been set for demolition of the strip mall that now occupies the site. 

The city contends that the density bonus rewards developers with extra size for their buildings over and above that allowed in city zoning ordinances in exchange for public benefits that aren’t restricted to housing. 

The intent of the additional size is to compensate developers for the costs of providing the benefits, which in the past have been mainly in the form of housing for those otherwise unable to afford decent accommodations in the community. 

The Trader Joe’s project, Wollmer contends, “established new areas of discretion for the city to approve projects they consider to be in their current definition of ‘public good’ whether or not they conform to the letter of state or city law.” 

Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan said he wasn’t surprised at the judge’s decision. “After the hearing it seemed pretty clear which way he was going to go,” he said. 

Cowan said he will be preparing a full statement of conclusions, which he’ll submit to Wollmer and Stuart Flashman, the attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the action. 

At that point, either the losing side will agree with Cowan’s draft or a further hearing will be held to work out the final version. 

“Hopefully this will dispense with some of the density bonus arguments we’ve been dealing with for some time,” Cowan said. “It all depends on whether they appeal.”

The race to succeed Don Perata as the Senator from California’s 9th State Senate District—already one of the feistiest of the campaign season—got a little testier last week as former 16th District Assemblymem-ber Wilma Chan traded direct mail and e-mail charges with her opponent, current 14th District Assembly-member Loni Hancock. 

Chan, who held a $100,000 lead in cash on hand ($507,000 to $406,000) at the last campaign finance reporting date a month ago, has been on the offensive against Hancock. Earlier this month, Chan filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, charging that Hancock has illegally used her assemblymember officeholder account to pay a campaign staff member. Hancock has denied the charge. 

This week, in an e-mail to supporters, Hancock took issue with a mass surface mailing sent out by Chan, a mailing Hancock characterizes as a “classic hit piece.” 

In the Chan mailing, which is posted with no date on Hancock’s website, Chan seeks to separate herself from Hancock, saying, “Many have said Loni and I are alike. … While Loni and I have similar voting records, I have consistently taken on tough issues and have been successful in passing important legislation while Loni has not. I have also been willing to take risks for many progressive causes while Loni hasn’t.” 

Chan also charges that “In six years in the legislature, Loni did not pass one piece of major environmental protection.” 

After giving what she calls “a few examples” of her own progressive record, Chan then criticizes Hancock for promising to run a “clean money” campaign while at the same time refusing to join Chan in rejecting funds that “allow special interests to funnel money to political campaigns while avoiding campaign limits and donation disclosure rules.” 

In an e-mail rebuttal sent out early this week, Hancock calls Chan’s “clean money” pledge a “cheap publicity stunt,” saying that Hancock has already “signed the official California pledge (Prop 34) agreeing to limit spending in her Senate campaign to $724,000,” while Chan has not. 

While the charge that Hancock should have signed Chan’s money pledge is a matter of opinion and open to the interpretation of the individual voter, it is difficult to determine what the Chan campaign means by Hancock not passing “one piece of major environmental protection” during her six years in the legislature. Perhaps “major” is the operative word. 

In her e-mail rebuttal, Hancock cites several environmental laws which she says she has “successfully passed,” including AB1296 (establishment of the San Francisco Bay Water Trail, 2005, in which Hancock is listed as the main author), AB442 (strengthening toxic site remediation), AB2960 (continuation of volunteer program to improve parks and restore creeks and waterways), and AB1873 (expanding and making permanent Recycling Market Development Zones to develop products and businesses using recycled materials). 

While neither Hancock nor Chan have the blustering, larger-than-life presence and personality of Don Perata, Chan’s main problem in the race to succeed Perata is an issue of out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Hancock still serves in the Assembly and will do so until the end of this year, and is able to use that position to keep in the public eye, both speaking out in the press on various pieces of legislation and holding public conferences on major issues in Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, the key cities in the district.  

For her part, Chan had a meteoric rise in the legislature after her 2000 election to the assembly, serving as the Assembly Majority Whip in 2001-02 and the Assembly Majority Leader in 2003-04. 

Chan was very much in the local headlines in those years, and was gearing up for a run for the State Senate in 2004 when Perata’s original term was scheduled to run out. When Perata won a favorable Superior Court judge’s ruling to serve another term, Chan was left floundering and, for the two years between 2006 and 2008, was without a public forum to keep in the public eye.  

Despite requests from citizens to postpone the public hearing on the Berkeley city attorney’s draft sunshine ordinance—designed to provide citizens with greater access to local government—the City Council Agenda Committee refrained from rescheduling it. 

The hearing will be held Tuesday at the City Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Julie Sinai, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates, told the Planet Wednesday that although the mayor had not supported the postponement of the public hearing, he had agreed to hold off the first reading of an ordinance until June 10. 

Sinai said that Bates had refused to delay the hearing since the council had been discussing the ordinance for a number of years. 

The city has been working on 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 an ordinance.  

“The City Attorney’s 26th draft was posted on the city manager’s website for public comment from October 2007 through March 2008,” Sinai said in an e-mail to the Planet. 

According to Sinai, the draft was also e-mailed to the council’s March 2007 Sunshine Ordinance workshop panelists—including Californians Aware General Counsel Terry Francke, Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville League of Women Voters President Jinky Gardner, American Civil Liberties Union Police Practices Policy Director Mark Schlosberg and Planet staff reporter and Northern California Society of Professional Journalists member Judith Scherr in October. 

The city manager’s website posted the revised draft incorporating the public comment received online in the beginning of April, Sinai said. 

Bates’ decision to hold the public hearing next week met with protests from a citizens’ group—comprised of representatives from the League of Women Voters, SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense) and other community members—who have been meeting for almost a year at the League office to review former City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque’s 21-page draft ordinance.  

In a letter to the mayor on March 31, the four workshop panelists requested a 90-day extension on the hearing. 

“We have been working on an alternate draft since June,” said Gardner. “We are almost close to being done and we need a little bit more time than Tuesday. The sunshine ordinance is fundamentally important for citizens. With the ordinance, the city is taking open government one step further than the two state laws—the Brown Act and the Public Records Request Act—which address it.” 

The citizens’ group said that the mayor had wrongfully accused them of meeting outside of public view. 

“We all know that’s not true,” said Dean Metzger, a member of the citizens’ group. 

Metzger said Bates had asked the League of Women Voters to form a citizens’ group to review Albuquerque’s sunshine ordinance draft at the March 2007 workshop. 

Bates had also asked Francke to draft a new ordinance which he said would be compared with the city attorney’s draft. 

“I think the real reason is they don’t want to see our draft,” Metzger said. “The league sent out a general e-mail to the public inviting citizens to meet in their office in May. Anyone could have joined our meetings at any point. We have not excluded anyone. The meetings were not posted but people could check with the League of Women Voters and get their name on the list.” Meeting notices have been e-mailed to a long list of recipients, not all of whom chose to participate in meetings. 

Sinai defended the mayor’s decision. 

“The city attorney’s office called Terry Francke in March to inform him that it was going back to Council on April 22,” she said. “Mr. Francke told the Acting Assistant City Attorney [Sarah Reynoso] that he could not comment on anything because there was another group working on a new ordinance and he was not at liberty to tell her who they were—but he would pass on the information and have someone contact her.” 

Bates said at Monday’s meeting that adequate time and opportunity had been provided for public review and input, and that an additional hearing would be scheduled if necessary. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington called Bates’ decision an insult to the community volunteers reviewing the draft ordinance. 

“The mayor asked all these people to sit down and work on an ordinance,” he said. “This group has spent hundreds of hours on it. We are lucky to have so many people working to make the sunshine ordinance strong and effective. We need a sunshine ordinance, not a twilight ordinance.” 

Councilmember Dona Spring said she supported the citizens’ group request for postponement. 

“The group deserves to be heard,” she said. “We are not going to have a good ordinance without them. The council needs to compare it to Albuquerque’s draft which no one has spoken in favor of. Some of what the citizens’ group wants may be a legislative nightmare but we need it to be debated in public. The group is asking for too much exposure, that’s where the tension lies.” 

Gardner said that effective enforcement was missing from the city attorney’s draft ordinance. 

“What I’d like to see is the process be put in a more open arena with representatives from the citizens’ group, local businesses and the council,” she said. 

Councilmember Linda Maio said at Monday’s meeting that the hearing was being held next week because Planet staff reporter Scherr had pushed the council to move ahead with the ordinance, something that Scherr denied. 

“It’s absolutely wrong,” Scherr, who is on vacation until Tuesday, said in a telephone interview Thursday. “I am anxious to have a Sunshine Ordinance, but I am anxious to get a good sunshine ordinance. Of course I have been pushing for this for a long time but I thought that Albuquerque’s draft needed a lot of work.” 

Maio did not return calls for comment from the Planet. 

Spring said the city was rushing to establish an ordinance because it was campaign season. 

“It seems clear why Mayor Bates wants to force through a weak ordinance,” said Doug Buckwald, who attended Monday’s meeting. “He wants to put it in his campaign literature under his accomplishments for his upcoming mayoral election.” 

Sinai said a 90-day extension would mean a six-month delay since Council would be on recess from late July to mid September. 

“The mayor’s goal is to complete this process by the council’s 2008 summer recess,” she said in her e-mail. 

Francke said he was not sure why the process had to be completed by summer recess.  

“The issue has been on and off since 2001, so I don’t know what the hurry is now,” he said. “If the council really wants serious public participation, it would respect the request of the two dozen people working on it. Other than the mayor’s reason there are no legal or practical reasons to rush through this.” 

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  

California Student Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) members joined UC Berkeley faculty and the Associated Students of the University of California on the steps of the Martin Luther King Student Union Tuesday to demand open textbooks in colleges across United States. 

Brandishing a poster comparing high-priced textbooks with free open textbooks, the group released a petition signed by 1,000 professors from 300 colleges announcing their preference for high-quality, affordable textbooks—including open textbooks—over what they said were “expensive commercial textbooks.” 

Open textbooks, which are still at a fledgling state, are complete, reviewed textbooks written by academics that can be used online for free. 

“What sets them apart from conventional textbooks is their open license, which allows users flexibility to use, customize and print the textbook,” said UC Berkeley geography major and CALPIRG member Genki Hara, who worked on the open textbook petition this semester. 

Hara said that open textbooks were used at some of the nation’s largest institutions, including the California community colleges and the Arizona State University system, as well as universities such as Harvard, Caltech and Yale. 

According to a study by the Government Accountability Office, students spend on an average $900 per year on buying textbooks, which is a quarter of tuition at an average four-year public university and nearly three-quarters of tuition at a community college. 

“I spent $750 to $900 in my freshman year on textbooks,” Hara tols the Planet. “It was a financial burden since I support myself and rely on financial aid. Open textbooks are much more affordable and some of them have equivalent quality compared to conventional textbooks.” 

Hara said although none of his current classes have incorporated open textbooks, most of his professors used online materials as course reading. 

Proponents of open textbooks also argue that publishers update textbooks every two or three years, which they said was unnecessary. 

UC Berkeley geography lecturer Darin Jensen spoke in favor of open textbooks. 

Although Jensen doesn’t use open textbooks for his class on cartographic representation, which teaches how to make maps, he has given his students an alternative to buying textbooks for the last seven years. 

“I provide my students with a reader which has content from textbooks and articles,” he said. “Making course content available to students for free is great. I would love to use open textbooks, but it is not available in my discipline. The textbook industry has a stranglehold on students’ textbooks. They dictate what content is available to students and what they put in their textbooks. Teachers are constrained by what publishers want. We should be doing our best to make course content available to students easily.” 

Jensen uses an authorized reader service to steer clear of breaking copyright infringement laws. 

“The last time I checked, the list price for the textbook required for Geography 183, the course I teach, was $98,” he said. “My reader costs $28. That’s a savings of $70. The students incur the printing charges, but they can print out only the pages they need.” 

Although open textbooks face several challenges, including the shortage of online materials, CALPIRG students have escalated their criticism of textbook publishers recently. 

“I understand that publishers need to make profit but I feel like they are really putting a monopoly on the market and forcing students to pay obscene prices for books,” said UC Berkeley junior Pardeese Ehya, who recently transfered from a community college. 

“At my community college enrollment kept dropping because the cost of text- books was often more than that of tuition.” 

Ehya, who is majoring in Mass Communications, said he spent $250 on textbooks this semester at UC Berkeley. 

“None of my classes uses open text books but I was able to find an open text book endorsed by an East Coast private school which I have often used for one of my courses,” he said. 

The Berkeley Unified School District rescinded 35 of the 55 potential layoff notices it sent out to teachers and counselors last month in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to cut $4.8 billion from the state education  

budget. 

The district’s Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Lisa Udell told the Planet Thursday that 26 teachers and nine counselors had been brought back from possible termination. 

“It’s great news,” said Berkeley Board of Education President John Selawsky. “Hopefully we will be able to remove more people from the list of layoffs. We are not going to know anything more about the state education budget until the governor’s May revise [of the budget], so we are working on this end to minimize layoffs.” 

A layoff hearing took place at Berkeley Technology Academy Wednesday for the 20 teachers still with pink slips, Udell said.  

An independent administrative law judge presided over the hearings to determine the order of seniority for the teachers who are in danger of losing their jobs. 

“The whole point is to provide teachers with due process as mandated in the state Education Code,” said Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Cathy Campbell.  

Campbell said she was hopeful the district would be able to rescind all the potential layoff notices. 

“While it’s encouraging that the district was able to bring back so many teachers, the fact remains that we are in this position because we have a governor who is willing to sacrifice teachers, students and education to balance our budget,” she said. “For every teacher the district brings back, it means something else will not be funded. It’s not like new money is being brought in. Our kids are going to be paying the price for these choices.” 

Teachers at Berkeley High and Willard Middle schools are the most affected by the current list of layoffs. 

Two art teachers and four counselors—including three academic counselors and one college career advisor—at Berkeley High still have layoff notices. 

At Willard, three teachers and one part-time art teacher still have their pink slips. 

Others on the potential layoff list include one teacher from B-Tech, two teachers at Oxford Elementary School, one teacher at Emerson Elementary School and one at LeConte Elementary School. 

“Just because they have received layoff notices doesn’t mean they will be laid off,” said Udell. “The final notices will be sent out on May 14. Our goal is to bring everybody back before then.” 

A majority of the teachers on the potential layoff list were hired this year, Udell said.  

“These are all very good teachers,” she said. “It’s very difficult for me because I respect every one of them and the work that they do for our district.” 

The state education code mandates that the district retain certain positions, including those with credentials pertaining to bilingual cross-cultural language and academic development, specially designed academic instruction in English and certain advanced degrees.  

Special education and single-subject credentialed teachers, including those teaching math and science, will be retained in the 2008-2009 school year regardless of their seniority.  

A list of classified employees who will receive potential layoff notices is to be delivered to the school board on April 23.

A Berkeley woman who admitted murdering her 9-year-old son will spend at least nine years in prison, under terms of a plea bargain announced Wednesday. 

Misti Mina Hassan has acknowledged the killing of her son, Amir, a student at Emerson Elementary School at the time of his death Oct. 10. 

Police learned of the death after Hassan called a friend in San Jose to say that her son was dead and she had been injured. 

The friend called San Jose police, who in turn notified officers in Berkeley, who found Hassan and the body of her son in their apartment at 3011 Shattuck Ave. The Alameda County Conroner estimated the youth had been dead for as long as 36 hours. 

Hassan was suffering from superficial self-inflicted wounds to her wrists and neck when police found her. 

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Venus Johnson said Hassan had agreed to the plea bargain, which was approved by Superior County Judge Edward Sarkisian, Jr. last Friday. 

Johnson said Amir Hassan died of multiple drug toxicity, but declined to identify which drugs were involved, except to note that they did not include Klonopin, the powerful anti-convulsant medication Misti Hassan had told her friend that she had used to kill her son, along with an anti-depressant. 

Hassan had initially pleaded not guilty to the murder but withdrew her plea before agreeing to the sentence handed down, which was to serve at least 85 percent of an 11-year sentence. 

She made no effort to enter a plea based on mental impairment, Johnson said. 

The youth’s death had sent shockwaves through his classmates at school and through the South Berkeley neighborhood where he was well known to local merchants, whom he often assisted in their chores. 

Brian Bloom, the deputy public defender who represented her in the case, did not returned calls by deadline Thursday.

Rejected by the mayor and the Berkeley City Council’s agenda committee Monday, competing proposals for a new city density bonus ordinance are back on the schedule for Tuesday night’s meeting. 

Mayor Tom Bates, following recommendations from city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks, said there was no need to rush either of the measures through, dismissing the impetus cited by the Planning Commission for adopting a new city law before the statewide election June 3. 

Gene Poschman had urged his commission colleagues to pass an ordinance so a city law would be in place in case Proposition 98 passed. The vaguely worded state measure would limit eminent domain actions, but critics say it could do far more—potentially stripping state and local governments of their powers to create new land use regulations limiting development. 

On a 5-4 vote April 9, the commission endorsed a set of recommendations drafted by a special subcommittee formed of members of the Zoning Adjustments Board and the Planning and Housing Advisory commissions. 

The subcommittee started because of concerns of Zoning Adjustments Board members about the scale and mass of mixed use projects on the city’s major thoroughfares, which city staff told them they had no choice but to approve.  

The council later added members of the two other commissions, and the subcommittee’s report was forwarded to planning commissioners before the 2004 general election, when Prop. 90, a more explicitly draconian predecessor to Prop. 98, was on the ballot. 

Commissioners rejected the subcommittee proposals in favor of a more developer-friendly city staff alternative. Both versions included a sunset clause that would render the law void if Prop. 90 failed—as it did. 

The commission wasn’t able to come up with a permanent ordinance in the intervening months, so Poschman pushed for a repeat of the 2006 effort, with two versions to be sent to the council, both with sunset provisions. 

But during the April 9 meeting, he convinced a majority to recommend the subcommittee version, on the grounds it would give the council more flexibility for creating a revised version should Prop. 98 pass. Commission Susan Wengraf, who had chaired the subcommittee, cast the decisive vote. 

To make it onto the statute books before the June election, a density bonus ordinance needs two hearings, making the upcoming session Tuesday the last date to start the legislative ball rolling.  

But the mayor dismissed the need for action, and none of the other members present objected to his call. 

Councilmember Dona Spring said she tried to get City Manager Phil Kamlarz to list the item on the agenda, but, she said, he wouldn’t put anything on the ballot without the approval of the agenda committee, even with a Planning Commission vote asking the council to take up the issue. 

“I and Kriss Worthington and Betty Olds have been trying to get it on the agenda for the April 22 meeting,” said Spring Wednesday afternoon. “So far Tom has us stymied.” 

But all that had changed by Thursday morning, after Councilmember Linda Maio intervened. 

It was Maio, who had gone along with the mayor’s decision to keep the Planning Commission’s referral off the agenda, who later made sure that the measures were restored to the agenda by agreement between Bates and Kamlarz. 

“We’re glad she changed her mind,” said Jesse Arreguin, Housing Advisory Commission chair. 

While current polls show Prop. 99, an alternative and less draconian measure, leading Prop. 98 in the polls, there’s big money behind 98 and, Spring said, “that can do a lot to change things in a month before the election.” 

Arreguin agreed. “They have a huge war chest and a lot can change in a few weeks,” he said. 

The housing activist said he is working with others to develop a campaign against Prop. 98 in Richmond, El Cerrito and other cities that don’t have organized campaigns against the measure, and a Berkeley group is also being formed by Rent Board Commissioner Lisa Stephens.  

Both 98 and 99 purport to limit the power of state and local governments to seize private land by eminent domain, banning its use to aid private developers. A U.S. Supreme Court decision which upheld the use of eminent domain to take homes in New London, CT, to build a shopping mall was the catalyst for the recent string of ballot measures.  

One famous beneficiary of eminent domain actions is George W. Bush, who helped engineer an eminent domain action in Arlington, Texas, to seize private land to build a stadium and entertainment complex for the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bush’s personal fortune was made when he later sold his interest in the club. Eminent domain has frequently been used to assemble parcels for sports facilities. 

But Proposition 98 is accused by opponents of going much further than needed to save private homes, setting in place mechanisms for eliminating all vestiges of rent control in the state. Those provisions have produced cash for its campaign coffers from landlords and their lobbyists, another concern for housing activists like Arreguin. Critics also charge it could be used to block water projects. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said that according to the council’s own rules the agenda committee never had the power to dismiss the Planning Commission’s request. 

“The committee does not have the power to stop a recommendation of a city commission from appearing on the agenda,” he said. “Even if they voted unanimously, they have no power over an item from a commission.”

On Wednesday afternoon the State Assembly’s Agriculture Committee heard four bills and one resolution concerning the State’s plan to eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM) by aerial-spraying the Bay Area and Central Coast counties with a pesticide called CheckMate.  

Hundreds of residents of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties reported various illnesses and negative health symptoms immediately following the aerial spraying of those counties last fall. The state plans to resume spraying Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in June and to begin spraying the Bay Area counties Aug. 1. 

Concerned Californians from all over the Bay Area, as well as from Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, packed the AG Committee hearing room to voice their opposition to the spray plan and to express their support for the legislation before the Agriculture Committee. When Chairwoman Parra invited members of the public to voice their support for one or all of the bills related to the LBAM spray plan, approximately 250 people stepped up to the microphone to state their names, home town and support for the bills. Many added a plea to the committee member: “Please don’t spray us.”  

Although several were members of environmental or health advocacy organizations, the majority seemed to be individuals motivated by concern about their health and that of their families. There were many mothers with small children, working people who had taken the day off to make the trip to Sacramento, and elderly citizens including one 91-year-old woman, people with asthma and people with chemical sensitivities. It took half an hour for the committee to hear the public comment with the speakers rotating among three microphones. 

Opposition to two of the bills was presented by representatives of the Western Growers Association, the California Grape and Fruit Tree League, the California Chamber of Commerce, the Wine Institute, the California League of Fruit Processors, the California Agriculture Council and the California Association of Wine Grape Growers. 

Assemblymember Laird (D, Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties), in presenting his proposed legislation, said that his office had received more public input on the LBAM spray plan than on any other issue in his legislative career.  

The bills that passed were AB 2763 (Laird) and AB 2765 (Huffman). AB 2763 requires early planning for responses to invasive plant and insect species. Potential pest control treatments would be disclosed well ahead of time and subjected to greater scrutiny than they now receive. AB 2765, which requires full disclosure of pesticide ingredients, examination of alternatives to aerial spraying, and a public health assessment of the risks of aerial spraying, passed, but does not require disclosure of the formulation of the pesticide. These bills now head to the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Neither of them was opposed by the agriculture industry. 

ACR 117 (Laird) also passed. This resolution calls on the state to address the unresolved health, scientific, and efficacy issues concerning the 2007 light brown apple moth eradication effort. 

According to Laird’s spokesperson, “Whether any of these efforts will succeed in derailing the feds’ trade-agreement-driven plan to spray for the moth this summer in Santa Cruz, Monterey and the Bay Area counties remains to be seen.” 

The bills that would have required the State to consider public input before aerial spraying, opposed by the agriculture industry, failed to pass out of committee, despite Chairwoman Parra’s declaration that “We have to bring the people to the table” on the LBAM issue. AB 2764 (Hancock) would have prohibited aerial spraying of urban areas without a governor-declared state of emergency. The current eradication program only needs approval by CDFA staff who are not directly responsible to the voters. The purpose of AB 2764 was to increase accountability by making the highest elected official in the state directly responsible to the population being sprayed, but the opposition prevailed by convincing the committee that this would amount to politicizing an issue best handled by appointed officials. 

AB 2892 (Swanson) would have required the State to obtain the approval of a community to be sprayed through the electoral process before conducting aerial spraying of pesticides over an urban area.  

The Swanson bill, AB 2892, generated the most controversy. Assemblymember Berryhill predicted that if the light brown apple moth gets into the Central Valley, it would be “Armageddon” for California agriculture. Assemblymember Swanson made the point that there are other methods that might be just as effective as aerial spraying, and potentially less harmful to human health, but they have been rejected as too expensive. He predicted that his constituents will not consent to four or five years of being sprayed, that people will insist on being heard when it comes to protecting the lives of their children. Swanson insisted that the people to be affected directly by the spray must be brought to the table on the issue.  

One of the proponents of the Swanson bill was a man named Mike De Lay, an insurance agent from Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula. De Lay is a Republican and a self-described conservative who does not normally challenge the government. But both he and his wife, an asthmatic, were made sick by the spray, and she had to leave the area for several months. Delay shared pictures drawn by children in Monterey County depicting their fears of being sprayed again. 

Swanson summed up by declaring “The debate will not stop here regardless of the vote.” 

For more information about the State’s position on the LBAM program, see www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/PDEP/lbam/lbam_main.html. For information from groups opposed to the spray see www.stopthespray.org/ and www.lbamspray.com/. 

Berkeley’s landmark Wells Fargo Building has been sold to a company owned by the heirs to the Hills Brothers Coffee fortune. 

The new owner is Bollibokka Shattuck LLC, a subsidiary of the Bollibokka Land Company, which was incorporated in Nevada in May 2007 and is headquartered in Mill Valley. 

Leighton J. Hills, the company’s legal agent of record, lives in Mill Valley, while other members of the family live in Santa Rosa, Colusa, Reno and Farmington, Conn., according to legal filings. 

Hills did not returned calls, and details of the sale, including purchase price, were not available. 

Asked if Seagate Properties, the former owners, had sold the venerable Berkeley building, a receptionist for that company answered, “Yes, we have.” Calls left with Seagate for further comment were not returned. 

Bollibokka lists the building on the home page of their Internet site at www.bollibokka.com. 

According to the site, the Bollibokka Land Company was founded in 1904, though the corporation as it now exists was formed in Nevada in April 1935. For more than a century the firm owned land on the McCloud River, where it ran a private fly-fishing operation, the Bollibokka Club. 

The property, which was sold in 2006 for a reported $30 million, is adjacent to Wyntoon, the baronial resort built by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. 

According to their website, the land company “is in the process of building a portfolio of commercial real estate properties” and cites only one purchase to date, “an acquisition of the Wells Fargo Bank building in Berkeley.” 

Seagate still retains other properties in the city, including the ELS office building at 2030-2040 Addison St., the Berkeley Promenade at 2061-2065 Center St., the former National Guard armory at 1950 Addison St., and their newest acquisition at 2850 Telegraph Ave. 

“Wow,” said City Councilmember Dona Spring when she learned of the sale. “That just shows that downtown real estate continues to be a hot commodity.” 

Spring, who represents the district on the council, compared the sale to last year’s $147.4 million sale of the seven downtown apartment buildings owned by developers Patrick Kennedy and David Teece. 

Designated a city landmark in 1984, the building was completed in 1925, designed by Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr. and originally named the Chamber of Commerce Building for its primary tenant. 

Spring is the building’s number one fan, noting wryly “that it makes up in height for what it lacks in aesthetics.” 

The councilmember said she believes the new owners will probably have to do a significant amount of retrofit to bring the offices up to contemporary standards. 

“The last time I was in the building, I noticed that it was pretty antiquated,” she said. 

Berkeley Economic Development Director Michael Caplan said he hadn’t heard of the transaction before a reporter called, “but I had heard rumors on and off about a possible sale. When you have large property transactions, it means an infusion of transfer tax to the city, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

Posted Wed., April 16—A Berkeley woman who admitted murdering her 9-year-old son will spend at least eight years in prison under terms of a plea bargain announced Wednesday. 

Misti Mina Hassan had acknowledged killing her son, Amir, a student at Emerson Elementary School at the time his death on Oct. 10. 

Police learned of the death after Hassan called a friend in San Jose to say that her son was dead and she had been injured. 

The friend called San Jose Police, who in turn notified officers in Berkeley, who found Hassan and the body of her son in their apartment at 3011 Shattuck Ave. 

Hassan was suffering superficial self-inflicted wounds to her wrists and neck when police found her. 

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Venus Johnson said Hassan had agreed to the plea bargain, which was approved by Superior County Judge Edward Sarkisian, Jr. last Friday. 

Johnson said Amir Hassan died of multiple drug toxicity, but declined to identify which drugs were involved, except to note that they did not include Klonopin, the powerful anti-convulsant medication Misti Hassan had told her friend that she had used to kill her son, along with an antidepressant. 

Hassan had initially pleaded no guilty to the murder, but withdrew her plea before agreeing to the sentence handed down, which was to serve at least 85 percent of an 11-year sentence. 

She made no effort to enter a plea based on mental impairment, Johnson said. 

The youth’s death had sent shockwaves through his classmates at school and through the South Berkeley neighborhood where he was well-known to local merchants, whom he often assisted in their chores.

Posted Wed., April 16—The Berkeley Unified School District rescinded 38 of the 60 potential layoff notices it sent out to teachers and counselors last month in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to cut $4.8 billion from the state education budget. 

District spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Planet Tuesday that 31 multi-credentialed teachers and seven counselors had been brought back to the district. 

“It’s great news,” said Berkeley Board of Education President John Selawsky. “Hopefully we will be able to remove more people from the list of layoffs. We are not going to know anything more about the state education budget until the governor’s May revise [of the budget], so we are working on this end to minimize layoffs.” 

A layoff hearing is scheduled to take place over the next few days for the 22 teachers still with pink slips, Selawsky said. It will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Technology Academy, 2701 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

An independent administrative law judge will preside over the hearings to determine the order of seniority for the teachers who are in danger of losing their jobs. 

“The whole point is to provide teachers with due process as mandated in the state Education Code,” said Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) President Cathy Campbell. “The district starts by presenting the layoffs and explaining the reasons behind them. BFT’s lawyer will question any discrepancy between the teacher’s employment history and the district’s personnel records.” 

Campbell said she was hopeful the district would be able to rescind all the potential layoff notices. 

“While it’s encouraging and very thrilling that the district was able to bring back so many teachers, the fact remains that we are in this position because we have a governor who is willing to sacrifice teachers, students and education to balance our budget,” she said. “For every teacher the district brings back, it means something else will not be funded. It’s not like new money is being brought in. Our kids are going to be paying the price for these choices.” 

The state education code mandates that the district retain certain positions, including those with credentials pertaining to bilingual cross-cultural language and academic development, specially designed academic instruction in English and certain advanced degrees.  

Special education and single-subject credentialed teachers, including those teaching math and science, will be retained in the 2008-2009 school year regardless of their seniority.  

A list of classified employees who will receive potential layoff notices is to be delivered to the school board on April 23. 

While laughter at a funeral might seem incongruous, then so was Jay Walter. Speaker after speaker described a man both outrageously public and exceedingly private. 

The Berkeley firefighter and paramedic remembered in an extraordinary gathering at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church was recalled as a sharp but gentle wit who could walk up to strangers and utter outrageous remarks. 

Yet he was also a man so private that even his closest friends knew almost nothing about his childhood, nor that he had won one of the nation’s highest military honors for gallantry in combat, the Silver Star. 

Firefighters from Fresno to Santa Rosa converged on Berkeley Saturday morning, marching through the city’s streets, accompanied by a pipe-and-drum team and a gleaming enameled wagon, drawn by a pair of magnificently groomed horses, which carried the flag-draped coffin. 

And as the procession neared the church, they passed beneath an arch, formed by two extended ladders from fire trucks, from which hung a massive U.S. flag. 

Walter died April 6 of pancreatic cancer, a death presumed by law to have been caused by chemical exposures incurred during his work. He had served with the Berkeley Fire Department for 15 years. 

“He was very private,” said Berkeley Fire Department Chaplain Ron Falstad, his voice breaking. 

All his close friends knew about Walter’s years before he became a firefighter was that he had been born in Westwood in 1953, and had gone to live with an uncle after his parents died when he was still a child. 

They knew he had joined the army’s Special Forces while still a teenager, and had been honorably discharged in 1974 with a Purple Heart. 

“That was all we knew until this morning,” Falstad said, when they discovered the Silver Star in his medals box. 

Walter served in the 5th Special Forces Group, the most highly decorated American unit in the Vietnam War, and Falstad said he wondered whether Walter’s reticence about his own history stemmed from the childhood trauma of losing both parents, or from things seen during his years at war. 

Falstad said Walter consistently declined opportunities for promotion and only in 2001 did he accept a step up to apparatus operator. 

While he was shy about his past, he was anything but in public. Falstad recalled times when he had variously introduced himself to unsuspecting members of the public as a ballerina, a pea farmer, a hair stylist, a private investor and a professor of law. 

Friends never quite knew when he was kidding, as when he claimed proficiency in sundry languages. So Falstad was intrigued when during a fire at Bayer’s West Berkeley headquarters a senior Bayer official muttered something that sounded like a “a very unfriendly German expression” after muttering in English about possible losses of a million dollars a day from any ensuing shutdown until the facility passed the fire inspector’s muster. 

At that point Walter stepped up and launched into a rebuttal in fluent German. 

The assembled mourners burst into laughter at the reminiscence. 

Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor said her first impression on meeting Jay Walter was “Who is this guy?” And to say that Walter had a sense of humor, she said, was an understatement. 

Walter was a firefighter who often called those he had treated as a paramedic, Chief Pryor recalled. 

Dave Sprague, a colleague who also serves as president of the Berkeley Fire Fighters Association, drew laughs when he described Walter as “one of those guys who was an expert on any subject, even if he knew nothing about it,” and a master of impressions as well. 

Lt. George Fisher, a retired firefighter who had overseen Walter, drew more laughs when he said, “It was just when I wasn’t paying attention that he sometimes went astray.” 

“There were a thousand Jay stories,” Fisher said. 

After Berkeley firefighters responded to an alarm at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school, they found a gathering of lawyers, judges and appellate court justices had been evacuated from a meeting in progress. 

After the alarm was cleared, Walter walked into the lecture hall and called the meeting to order. 

“Then he commenced to give a speech laced with legal lingo ... the theme was that every person deserves a second chance,” Fisher said. “When it was over, they all stood up and cheered.” 

Beneath the outrageous exterior, colleagues recalled, was a firefighter dedicated to his craft. 

As a Special Forces Pathfinder, Walter had first trained as a medic, following up on his return to civilian life with paramedic training at UCLA’s Los Angeles Medical Center. 

He met his future mate Gerri Schmutz when he became her first paramedic partner in 1978, and they married four years later. 

In 1985, the couple moved to Morgan Hill, where they both volunteered for service with the fire department, which he joined full time three years later. He was hired by the Berkeley department in 1993, working as a paramedic until his promotion to apparatus operator in 2001. He served on a wide range of special teams, and worked with rescue dogs. 

Walter is survived by his spouse, a daughter, Roslyn, and a granddaughter, Addison. 

And as a packed house at a Berkeley church demonstrated Saturday, he will be sorely missed. 

When the services at the church ended, signaled by the ceremonial tolling of the last alarm—where three colleagues each rang a silver bell three times—and a final prayer, the firefighters headed to Brennan’s Irish Pub for another tradition, the wake. 

While Berkeley’s firefighters honored their fallen colleague, the city was still well protected, Mayor Tom Bates said before the procession began. Firefighters from neighboring cities, including retired brass, were staffing Berkeley’s fire stations until after the ceremonies. 

Among those present for the procession were the mayor, Assemblymember Loni Hancock and City Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore.  

And not even the solemnity of the moment could stop the business of politics. Shortly before the march through Berkeley’s streets began, a Berkeley police sergeant walked up to Hancock to ask, “You’ll be coming to us soon for an endorsement?” 

Results from testing water collected from the Berkeley Aquatic Park last week after a sewage spill showed no contamination, city officials told the Planet Monday. 

The shoreline from Bancroft Way to Carleton Street, which was off limits to the public for a week, will be reopened today (Tuesday). 

A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare’s Berkeley campus on Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of the Aquatic Park.  

The city’s Environmental Health Manager Manuel Ramirez told the Planet that the city had determined the spill amount to be approximately 1,170 gallons of sewage. 

“The spill is on the small scale, when compared to the millions of [gallons of] sewage spilled in Marin County recently,” he said. “The final test results show there was no impact from the sewage, so we will be taking off the signs prohibiting contact with water Tuesday.” 

The spill, which occurred from a city-owned blocked pipe, carries human waste and clean water from Bayer's administrative buildings at 800 Dwight Way, Bayer Community Outreach Manager Trina Ostrander told the Planet. 

Bayer’s Berkeley campus, located next to Aquatic Park, is the company’s global center for hemophilia and cardiology pharmaceuticals, and manufactures Kogenate, a large protein pharmaceutical that treats hemophilia.  

Ostrander said that a couple of Bayer employees had discovered the spill and notified the campus emergency response team.  

Ramirez said that prohibiting human contact with water in the area most likely affected was a precautionary measure. Human feces can contain fecal coliform bacteria, which produce pathogens that could infect humans.

A week after the newly empowered Oakland School Board announced that they had made their choice for an interim superintendent, controversy over the move continued to simmer. 

At its April 9 meeting—a day after the signing of a memorandum of understanding with State Superintendent Jack O’Connell giving the board the power to hire a superintendent—the board announced its intention to hire Roberta Mayor, chief management analyst for the Fiscal Crisis and Management Team (FCMAT) monitors that have been overseeing the monitoring of OUSD’s finances during the five years of state control. 

The board is currently in contract negotiations with mayor who, if she takes the one-year interim position, will start employment on July 1. 

The decision was made on a 4-3 closed session vote (David Kakishiba, Alice Spearman, Gary Yee, and Greg Hodge aye, Noel Gallo, Kerry Hamill, and Chris Dobbins, no). 

At the same time, the board is moving forward with a second piece of authority handed over in the O’Connell MOU—the hiring of an independent auditor. That process is expected to begin with deliberations in the district’s audit committee within the next few weeks. 

Part of the controversy revolved around confusion over the manner in which the mayor announcement was made. 

During discussion following a report on state administrator responsibilities, Noel Gallo indicated that an interim superintendent had been hired. After one public speaker—former California Teachers Association Executive Director Ward Roundtree—indicated that the board had announced that there were no reportable actions coming out of the executive session immediately preceding Wednesday’s meeting, board President Kakishiba said that the decision had been made at a special executive session that originally convened on April 4 and was adjourned and reconvened twice in the following days. Kakishiba then went on to make the announcement of Mayor 

The question raised immediate concerns about possible notice violations under California’s Brown Act. But a review of board agendas currently available on the OUSD website shows that the matter was properly noticed and agendized, with the sole item on the April 4 closed session agenda the item of “Superintendent of Schools” listed under “Public Employee Appointment.” 

But with sensitivity over local involvement in a district that has been without local power for five years, whether or not the choice of Mayor was politically proper, rather than merely legally proper, is another matter. 

On the Oakland Public School Parents e-mail list, reaction against the appointment was swift. 

“Why is our school board going directly to the lapdog of the state (FCMAT) to choose an interim superintendent?” wrote North Oakland parent activist Christopher Waters. “This supposedly impartial third-party agency has facilitated the state takeover agenda and timeline for the past five years so that they have been expressly on Jack O’Connell’s terms, and nobody else’s. Was there not some agreement amongst Oaklanders that major reform is needed regarding the autocratic nature of the current structure for state takeovers? Why is our board putting their newly regained authority and trust right back into the hands of the state?” 

And another parent, JG, wrote, “It is a great concern that the school board did not take the time to arrive at a candidate that they could all agree upon. What’s the hurry? Is this an example of more ‘shoot from the hip’ type of decisions that we can expect from the board in the future? This was a wonderful opportunity for the school board to demonstrate to the public that they can be thoughtful about their decisions and take the time that it takes for a decision as important as this. Here we go again!” 

And Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen-Jones, who called the mayor’s decision “truly dismaying” in a posting to the parents group e-mail list immediately after the decision, had not changed her position a week later. 

“I was disturbed by the way it came out,” Olsen-Jones said in a telephone interview. “The public perception [of hiring someone from FCMAT] is that this is like having the fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t know where they are going to find the quarter of a million dollars and benefits to hire her for one year. Something is going to have to be cut. It all feels very messy. It does not look like something done in an open, transparent process. It’s not what the board needed on its first public relations piece [after winning two more areas of local control].” 

As for Mayor herself, Olsen-Jones said, “all I know about her is seeing her at board meetings when she presented the FCMAT report. I was impressed with the fact that she is a stickler for detail. Her reports came out very hard on the state in the area of fiscal control. She personally may end up being the best person for the job. Who knows?” 

Meanwhile, in separate interviews, two of the board members who voted for the Mayor contract negotiations defended their choice. 

“I think it’s a shrewd move,” District 7 Director Alice Spearman said. “We needed somebody who knew what’s been happening in Oakland since the state takeover.”  

Spearman also said she did not believe Mayor would have allegiance to FCMAT once she comes over to the district, saying that “she’s very loyal to the board.” 

And District 4 Director Gary Yee said the decision to hire an interim superintendent was made, in part, because of the confusion that would have resulted in district operations if they had not. 

Currently, state administrator Vince Matthews runs Oakland Unified, taking orders directly from State Superintendent Jack O’Connell. Had the OUSD Board chosen not to hire an interim superintendent, Matthews would have worked under the direction of the board in the areas of community relations and governance, personnel management, and facilities management—the three areas that have been returned to local control—while continuing to work under O’Connell’s direction in the two areas still under state control—fiscal management and pupil achievement. 

Complicating the matter would be that Matthews would serve as trustee in the three areas under local control, with ultimate state-sanctioned veto power over decisions if, in his opinion, they threatened the fiscal integrity of the district. In effect, Matthews would be in a position of answering to both the state and the local board in three local governance areas. 

“I think that Matthews is an honorable person,” Yee said. “But I think it would be a difficult task—virtually impossible—for him to represent both the state and the local board at the same time. We prefer to have someone who answers only to us.” 

Yee said the decision to hire Mayor was based, in large part, that board members did not want the interim superintendent to spend much of her year in office being brought up to speed on the details and history of Oakland’s financial situation. The lack of senior staff longevity has been a particular problem in Oakland under state control, with most in senior management having only two to three years experience in the district. 

Yee said he hopes that some of the bad feeling over the manner in which the Mayor appointment was announced will be smoothed over in the search for Oakland’s permanent superintendent, which is expected to start in earnest this summer. 

“We want to have a thoughtful community engagement process in this decision,” Yee said. 

Spearman agreed, saying she expects that community members will be invited to sit on the interview team for the permanent superintendent. 

“We want to know, what does the community want in the new superintendent,” Spearman said. “It’s been so long since we’ve had to make a decision like this, we want to make sure that the community is comfortable with the decision we make.” 

A week after the newly empowered Oakland School Board announced that they had made their choice for an interim superintendent, controversy over the move continued to simmer. 

At its April 9 meeting—a day after the signing of a memorandum of understanding with State Superintendent Jack O’Connell giving the board the power to hire a superintendent—the board announced its intention to hire Roberta Mayor, chief management analyst for the Fiscal Crisis and Management Team (FCMAT) monitors that have been overseeing the monitoring of OUSD’s finances during the five years of state control. 

The board is currently in contract negotiations with mayor who, if she takes the one-year interim position, will start employment on July 1. 

The decision was made on a 4-3 closed session vote (David Kakishiba, Alice Spearman, Gary Yee, and Greg Hodge aye, Noel Gallo, Kerry Hamill, and Chris Dobbins, no). 

At the same time, the board is moving forward with a second piece of authority handed over in the O’Connell MOU—the hiring of an independent auditor. That process is expected to begin with deliberations in the district’s audit committee within the next few weeks. 

Part of the controversy revolved around confusion over the manner in which the mayor announcement was made. 

During discussion following a report on state administrator responsibilities, Noel Gallo indicated that an interim superintendent had been hired. After one public speaker—former California Teachers Association Executive Director Ward Roundtree—indicated that the board had announced that there were no reportable actions coming out of the executive session immediately preceding Wednesday’s meeting, board President Kakishiba said that the decision had been made at a special executive session that originally convened on April 4 and was adjourned and reconvened twice in the following days. Kakishiba then went on to make the announcement of Mayor 

The question raised immediate concerns about possible notice violations under California’s Brown Act. But a review of board agendas currently available on the OUSD website shows that the matter was properly noticed and agendized, with the sole item on the April 4 closed session agenda the item of “Superintendent of Schools” listed under “Public Employee Appointment.” 

But with sensitivity over local involvement in a district that has been without local power for five years, whether or not the choice of Mayor was politically proper, rather than merely legally proper, is another matter. 

On the Oakland Public School Parents e-mail list, reaction against the appointment was swift. 

“Why is our school board going directly to the lapdog of the state (FCMAT) to choose an interim superintendent?” wrote North Oakland parent activist Christopher Waters. “This supposedly impartial third-party agency has facilitated the state takeover agenda and timeline for the past five years so that they have been expressly on Jack O’Connell’s terms, and nobody else’s. Was there not some agreement amongst Oaklanders that major reform is needed regarding the autocratic nature of the current structure for state takeovers? Why is our board putting their newly regained authority and trust right back into the hands of the state?” 

And another parent, JG, wrote, “It is a great concern that the school board did not take the time to arrive at a candidate that they could all agree upon. What’s the hurry? Is this an example of more ‘shoot from the hip’ type of decisions that we can expect from the board in the future? This was a wonderful opportunity for the school board to demonstrate to the public that they can be thoughtful about their decisions and take the time that it takes for a decision as important as this. Here we go again!” 

And Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen-Jones, who called the mayor’s decision “truly dismaying” in a posting to the parents group e-mail list immediately after the decision, had not changed her position a week later. 

“I was disturbed by the way it came out,” Olsen-Jones said in a telephone interview. “The public perception [of hiring someone from FCMAT] is that this is like having the fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t know where they are going to find the quarter of a million dollars and benefits to hire her for one year. Something is going to have to be cut. It all feels very messy. It does not look like something done in an open, transparent process. It’s not what the board needed on its first public relations piece [after winning two more areas of local control].” 

As for Mayor herself, Olsen-Jones said, “all I know about her is seeing her at board meetings when she presented the FCMAT report. I was impressed with the fact that she is a stickler for detail. Her reports came out very hard on the state in the area of fiscal control. She personally may end up being the best person for the job. Who knows?” 

Meanwhile, in separate interviews, two of the board members who voted for the Mayor contract negotiations defended their choice. 

“I think it’s a shrewd move,” District 7 Director Alice Spearman said. “We needed somebody who knew what’s been happening in Oakland since the state takeover.”  

Spearman also said she did not believe Mayor would have allegiance to FCMAT once she comes over to the district, saying that “she’s very loyal to the board.” 

And District 4 Director Gary Yee said the decision to hire an interim superintendent was made, in part, because of the confusion that would have resulted in district operations if they had not. 

Currently, state administrator Vince Matthews runs Oakland Unified, taking orders directly from State Superintendent Jack O’Connell. Had the OUSD Board chosen not to hire an interim superintendent, Matthews would have worked under the direction of the board in the areas of community relations and governance, personnel management, and facilities management—the three areas that have been returned to local control—while continuing to work under O’Connell’s direction in the two areas still under state control—fiscal management and pupil achievement. 

Complicating the matter would be that Matthews would serve as trustee in the three areas under local control, with ultimate state-sanctioned veto power over decisions if, in his opinion, they threatened the fiscal integrity of the district. In effect, Matthews would be in a position of answering to both the state and the local board in three local governance areas. 

“I think that Matthews is an honorable person,” Yee said. “But I think it would be a difficult task—virtually impossible—for him to represent both the state and the local board at the same time. We prefer to have someone who answers only to us.” 

Yee said the decision to hire Mayor was based, in large part, that board members did not want the interim superintendent to spend much of her year in office being brought up to speed on the details and history of Oakland’s financial situation. The lack of senior staff longevity has been a particular problem in Oakland under state control, with most in senior management having only two to three years experience in the district. 

Yee said he hopes that some of the bad feeling over the manner in which the Mayor appointment was announced will be smoothed over in the search for Oakland’s permanent superintendent, which is expected to start in earnest this summer. 

“We want to have a thoughtful community engagement process in this decision,” Yee said. 

Spearman agreed, saying she expects that community members will be invited to sit on the interview team for the permanent superintendent. 

“We want to know, what does the community want in the new superintendent,” Spearman said. “It’s been so long since we’ve had to make a decision like this, we want to make sure that the community is comfortable with the decision we make.” 

In the 400 years since the first slavery ships docked on the Virginia coast, the African-American Freedom Movement has raised up a continuing series of larger-than-life leaders—Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X. But arguably the most talented of that group, but perhaps the least appreciated, remembered, or studied, is the man whose 110th birthday anniversary is being celebrated this month—Paul Robeson. 

In honor of that anniversary, the City of Oakland is hosting a month-long exhibit in the rotunda of City Hall, featuring memorabilia from the diverse aspects of Robeson’s public life. 

The exhibit was developed by the Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, which is looking for a permanent home for these artifacts. 

Included are photographs, facsimiles of album covers and theater playbills, and excerpts from Robeson speeches and letters. 

Last week, on Robeson’s April 9 birthday anniversary, the City of Oakland sponsored a two-hour reception and Robeson tribute in the rotunda, including speeches and performances by Tayo Aluko, a British actor currently touring America performing a one-man play called Call Mr. Robeson, and Vukani Mawethu, a locally based multi-racial choir specializing in South African freedom songs. 

In his speech to the gathering, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums called Robeson a “brilliant, incredible human being.” Clarence Thomas, a leader in the local International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said that Robeson “paved the way for people like Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, who continue to protest in spite of their celebrity.” 

The son of a minister who escaped from Southern slavery into New Jersey, Robeson began his public career in 1917 and 1918 as a football star at Rutgers College. Thirty years before Jackie Robinson broke the color bar in Major League Baseball, only 50 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, in a time when African-American athletes in white institutions were a distinct rarity, when the Ku Klux Klan marched openly down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and when Southern lynchings of black citizens were common, Robeson won All-American honors, as well as 15 varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. 

But his greatest early fame came in the area of entertainment. 

The 1920s was the tail-end of America’s minstrel show era, in which African-Americans were portrayed as lip-smacking, eye-rolling, chicken-eating buffoons. Into this era came the immensely dignified Robeson, who dominated the areas of singing and acting for the next 20 years in a combination that no other American performer has ever matched.  

He was an accomplished stage actor—the first African-American to play Shakespeare’s Othello—and appeared in 11 feature films, several of them in starring roles. At 296 performances, his 1943-44 Othello was the longest-running Shakesperian production in the history of Broadway. But it was in the area of singing that Robeson showed his greatest talents. An almost stereotypical baritone, Robeson brought negro spiritual music out of the churches and shouting halls and into the concert halls, and his rendition of the song “Ol’ Man River” in the 1920s musical Showboat—later saved for posterity in the 1936 movie—is one of the greatest single musical performances in American history. 

One of the artifacts in the Oakland City Hall exhibit shows the transition of Robeson from entertainer to Freedom Movement leader. 

Reproduced is the original Oscar Hammerstein score for “Ol’ Man River,” including the following lines: “Niggers all work on de Mississippi, niggers all work while de white folks play.” Robeson sang those words in his original 1928 Showboat performance, but later objected, refusing to include them in his recorded versions, and “niggers” was eventually changed to “darkies” and then to “colored folks.” By the time Motown’s Temptations made the song as part of their 1960s performances, race was scrubbed entirely, with the group singing “Here we all work, while the rich folks play.” 

But more important, Robeson eventually changed the African-American attitude in the song from dismissive to defiant. 

Among Hammerstein’s original words are “Tote that barge! / Lift that bale! / Git a little drunk, / An’ you land in jail...” and the powerful closing lament “Ah gits weary / An’ sick of tryin’; / Ah’m tired of livin’ / An skeered of dyin’.” In his later performances, Robeson pointedly changed “git a little drunk” to “show a little grit,” and transformed the whole weary, dispirited passage to “But I keeps laffin’/ Instead of cryin’ / I must keep fightin’; / Until I’m dyin’.” 

The changes were no accident or aberration. 

Beginning in the late 1920s, Robeson became active in both the African-American freedom movement and the world labor movement, lending his presence and the power of his performance to both causes. In the midst of the Depression, fighting for progressive and radical causes drew little attention in America—there was so much of it going around—but a 1937 Robeson concert tour in the Soviet Union did. 

By 1941—in actions that prefaced the 1960s-1970s FBI “Cointelpro” program that isolated and, in some cases, eliminated African-American leaders—FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover had labeled Robeson a subversive, and had begun a campaign to discredit Robeson and remove him as an influential national and international figure. 

Ironically, Robeson was being attacked by the United States government for making friendly contact with the Soviet Union at the same time the United States government was allying itself with the Soviet Union in the war effort against Nazi Germany. 

Robeson fought back. 

In the two decades between the 1940s and the 1950s when his concerts were being canceled and he was put on the “blacklist”—the unofficial list of “radical” and “subversive” entertainers whose careers the FBI and many Congressional leaders attempted to end—Robeson turned his attention to singing almost exclusively for labor and African-American freedom causes. 

One of the photographs in the Oakland City Hall exhibit shows a 1942 singing performance to shipyard workers on the Port of Oakland docks. Robeson also gave several concerts at UC Berkeley. 

Tucked away in the Oakland City Hall exhibit is a small item, easily overlooked, which shows one of Robeson’s most important actions. The item is a reproduction of the “We Charge Genocide” petition delivered by Robeson to the United Nations in 1951, in which the United States is charged with the systematic genocide of its African-American citizens. The petition brought worldwide attention to the condition of African-Americans in a way that had not occurred since the abolitionist movement of the slavery era 100 years before, and predated by a decade the international attention to the black Cause that accompanied the civil rights movement. The editor of the pamphlet that accompanied the petition was William L. Patterson, an African-American UC Berkeley graduate whose family settled in Berkeley and other parts of the Bay Area. 

The Paul Robeson exhibit in the Oakland City Hall rotunda continues through April 30. 

Jupiter Beerhouse and Restaurant’s proposed expansion into adjacent Café Panini would replace the cafe, zoning officials told the Planet Monday. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) unanimously approved the expansion permit last week to extend Jupiter’s operations into the exterior and interior space of Café Panini at 2115 Allston Way. 

Jupiter owner John Martin purchased Café Panini from its previous owner. Martin also owns the Triple Rock Brewery in North Berkeley and operates the Bear’s Lair Pub at UC Berkeley. 

Café Panini and Jupiter share a common entrance on Trumpetvine Court, a commercial courtyard and passageway accessible from both Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way.  

ZAB secretary Steve Ross said the new permit would apply Jupiter’s existing conditions to its new space, including an extension of its alcohol license and hours of operation. 

According to the zoning staff report, the proposed expansion area has never been open for dinner or sold alcohol in the past. 

Panini, which is open from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for lunch everyday, allows customers use of its garden courtyard. Jupiter’s current hours of operation are from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. 

The staff report also states that the project would expand an “existing, marginal business” by extending its food and drink offerings and making its hours consistent with that of Jupiter. 

The report cites Martin as saying that the cafe had four owners in the last 16 years and provided minimal economic return for all of them. 

Calls to Martin for comment were not returned. 

City Economic Development Director Dave Fogarty confirmed that the cafe would close after Jupiter expands into its space. 

“It won’t be a separate cafe anymore,” he said. “It wasn’t doing very well. It did well 10 years ago under one of the managers. It became a hot spot and then slowly dwindled.” 

The staff report says Jupiter has shared access and patio seating with the site of the proposed project for many years. 

The development involves interior modifications to the expanded space, including the construction of a bar and reconfigured interior seating.  

The proposed project site consists of two parcels of land—2181 Shattuck Ave. and 2115 Allston Way—which were developed to make Trumpetvine Court suitable for outdoor dining and small musical performances.  

The one- and two-story buildings on the property cover less than 75 percent of the combined lot area, and the outdoor space has been developed into an outdoor dining area with arbors, decks and patios furnished with tables and chairs. 

Right across Allston Way from Cafe Panini is the Gaia building, which includes Anna’s Jazz Island. 

Although zoning staff has not received any letters of objection for this project, there are several objections from neighbors about noise for a pending application for legalizing outdoor music at the site.  

Martin is working with the city and an acoustical engineer to address these concerns, and this application is scheduled to appear before the board in the next two to three months.  

Although the Berkeley Police Department supports Jupiter’s expansion, it has discouraged an increase in outdoor amplified music at Jupiter in response to multiple noise complaints from a neighbor regarding the musical performances in the patio at night. 

Berkeley’s City Council Monday spurned a Planning Commission proposal to have a city density bonus law in place in the event Proposition 98 passes in the statewide June 3 election. 

Planning Commissioners voted 5-4 last Tuesday to send the council a recommendation that it pass a proposal developed by members of three city commissions so the city would have a measure in place in case the statewide initiative passes. 

The council had passed a staff-recommended counterproposal before the November 2006 election when a similar statewide measure was on the ballot. 

Housing Advisory Commission Chair Jesse Arreguin said Mayor Tom Bates told the other four councilmembers present at Monday’s agenda committee meeting that no ordinance was needed because polls showed that Proposition 98 was likely to fail. 

None of the councilmembers present—Linda Maio, Laurie Capitelli, Max Anderson and Gordon Wozniak—spoke up for the ordinance, so it wasn’t given a place on the agenda for the April 22 council meeting. 

That effectively killed any chance of putting a new measure in place before the election, since passage of an ordinance requires two public hearings, said Arreguin. 

While Proposition 98 ostensibly limits eminent domain actions and would end the last vestiges of rent control in the state, critics say it could effectively end most efforts at regulating development in California. 

The density bonus, mandated by state law, allows developers to expand their projects by 35 percent over local limits in exchange for providing affordable housing to low-income tenants. 

Concerns over the scale of projects prompted Zoning Adjustments Board members form a subcommittee to draft a proposed measure that would given them some control over projects, and the City Council subsequently expanded it to include members of the Housing Advisory and Planning commissions. 

The council’s action doesn’t forestall its direction to the Planning Commission to come up with a city density bonus ordinance, the subject of ongoing discussions by that body. But should Proposition 98 pass, the existing policies criticized by ZAB members would remain in place until the full implications of Proposition 98 become clear, something that may require courtroom action and appeals before the dust finally settles.

Construction begins Wednesday on the new guest house at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

The announcement came in Monday’s edition of “Today at Berkeley Lab,” the facilities daily online newsletter. 

The 25,000-square-foot, 60-bedroom, four-story guest house will house up to 73 researchers and students working on projects at the lab. 

The facility will have a permanent staff of eight. 

The three-story structure would house 44 “standard” bedrooms, 12 larger rooms and four “studio suites.” 

While the structure’s overall height is officially listed as four stories, plans reveal that most of the structure is only three floors, with a small raised section in the middle of the building. 

The $10.9 million structure is being built under provisions of the lab’s 1987 Long Range Development Plan, rather than the current plan.

Berkeley Technology Academy’s (B-Tech) hour-long discussion on youth violence with Barrios Unidos co-founder Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez Friday was the first of many events the school hopes to host for its Latino students, who make up 45 percent of the school’s population.  

“We want to show these kids that there are people out there just like them,” said B-Tech principal Victor Diaz. “Like Nane said, there’s nothing our kids are going to say that he hasn’t experienced.” 

Alejandrez, who has lost 14 family members to what he described as “the madness of inner-city America,” also co-chairs the Urban Peace and Justice Summit, a national organization that works to unite African-American and Latino gangs. 

A national urban peace organization based in Santa Cruz, Barrios Unidos arose from the Mexican-American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. It is also home to the Cesar E. Chavez School for Social Change—an alternative school for at-risk youth modeled on the principles of its namesake. 

A small group of B-Tech students listened intently as Alejandrez recounted his story on Friday. 

“I am the son of migrant farm workers, born in a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi,” he began. “I stabbed the first kid when I was 13 years old. I shot another guy when I was 15. I almost killed a guy when I was 17 ... And it went on and on and on. In the late 1960s, I was sent to Vietnam to fight a war I knew nothing about. None of the people there called me a ‘dirty Mexican’ I realized all these brown people looked like me. There were so many similarities.” 

Like many young men of his generation, Alejandrez came back from the Vietnam War addicted to heroin. 

“I assaulted a man and almost killed him when I was 27 and I went to prison for 7 years,” he said. “I called out to Cesar Chavez to put me back in university. With the help of someone who believed in me, I was able to return to UC Santa Cruz. I left the violence in 1977 but couldn’t shake off the drugs.” 

Today Alejandrez is a changed man, and it is a transformation he wants to inculcate in the lives of those around him. 

“We need more people like Nane out there,” said Santiago Casal, who helped organize the event as a member of the Berkeley Cesar Chavez Commemoration Committee. “People who are championing social justice and challenging the powers that be.” 

The Berkeley Cesar Chavez Commemoration Committee invited Alejandrez to speak at B-Tech as part of this year’s Cesar Chavez commemoration period celebrations, which begins with the Spring Equinox and continues until the anniversary of his death on April 23. 

B-Tech seniors Jose Franco and Cassandra Perez said they had been inspired by Alejandrez’s speech. 

“There’s not a whole lot of Latino speakers at our school,” said Cassandra. “This is the first time for me. It’s like they are considering us more. Most of the speakers are African-American. It’s cool to learn about other people’s history, but we are like, ‘What about us?’ And now it is “Yeh! it’s about us.” 

Both students said they had encountered violence firsthand. When asked about their role models, Jose and Cassandra named their parents. 

“I grew up feeling really alienated from Berkeley High School,” Jose said. “They think we are juvenile delinquents, but we are not. We are just like them. We just get more help here.” 

B-Tech student support services staff Ariana Casanova said the school was gradually helping Latino students get their lives back together. 

“There’s definitely a larger number of Latino students here this year,” Casanova, who works with 25 Latino students, said. “These are students who left Berkeley High because they didn’t like the environment there or had behavioral problems. Most of them had given up on life, but now 90 percent of them are talking about going to college. We definitely need more resources, especially in mental health to deal with drug and alcohol use, and more after-school programs.” 

A prosecutor told jurors today that they should convict Christopher Hollis of murder for firing shots that killed his close friend Meleia Willis-Starbuck, a popular Berkeley High School graduate and Dartmouth College student. 

In his opening statement in Hollis’s trial, prosecutor Elgin Lowe said Hollis acted with conscious disregard for human life when he fired multiple shots and wound up killing Willis-Starbuck, who was 19 at the time, near the intersection of College Avenue and Dwight Way in the early morning hours of July 17, 2005. 

Lowe said Hollis, a 25-year-old Hayward man, and two other men responded to her call for help after she and several women friends were confronted by several UC Berkeley football players. 

Hollis’s attorney, Greg Syren, admitted that Hollis fired the shots that took Willis-Starbuck’s life, but he told jurors that Hollis should only be convicted of manslaughter. 

Syren said Willis-Starbuck’s death was “the kind of tragedy that occurs when someone makes a rash, stupid decision while in possession of a gun.” 

Syren said the incident was “a tragedy of immeasurable perceptions and elevated this case to Shakespearean proportions.” 

He said the incident was “like a Greek tragedy played out on the streets of Berkeley.” 

Hollis attended Berkeley High School with Willis-Starbuck and the two were such close friends that they called each other “brother” and “sister.” 

A red Pontiac Firebird collided head on with a Berkeley public school bus carrying five students from John Muir Elementary School at 3:50 p.m. Friday. 

According to a Berkeley Police Department report, the Firebird was headed southbound on California at Stuart streets and had a young girl riding on the hood of the car. 

The school bus was north bound on California at Stuart. 

When the Firebird’s driver turned left to head east, the car struck the bus on its front left and became stuck under it. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics, five Berkeley police officers, two Berkeley traffic control officers and three California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers responded to the accident. 

Berkeley police rescued the driver. No one in the car was injured. None of the five students on the bus was injured. 

Although the bus driver suffered an injury to his lower back, he denied medical transportation. He was later sent to Kaiser’s emergency department. 

Campus evacuation 

Smoke pouring from the heating system ducts at UC Berkeley’s University Hall forced evacuation of the building Monday morning, reports Berkeley Fire Department Deputy Chief Gil Dong. 

And while no one was injured in the incident, which resulted from burning insulation after a fan motor burned out, an ambulance trip did result from the call that firefighters answered at 8:44 a.m. 

Just after the first engine arrived, a van pulled up with an another kind of emergency: A woman inside was in labor and about to give birth. 

“An ambulance took the woman to the hospital, and she gave birth before they could get her to the birthing room,” said the deputy chief. “I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl,” he added. 

Staff and students were allowed back into University Hall after a floor-by-floor search determined the cause of the smoke and the smoking motor was neutralized. 

Station blaze 

Firefighters had been summoned to the vacant gas station at the southeast corner of the intersection of Ashby and Telegraph avenues four hours earlier Monday, where they found a fire burning inside the building, as well as sleeping bags and other possessions belonging to homeless folk who had been camping within. 

No estimate of building damage was made since the structure has already been slated for demolition, while Dong said a value of $2,500 has been placed on the possessions burned up in the fire. Their owners were nowhere around by the time the engines arrived.

Robbery 

On April 7 at 9:10 p.m., a 50-year-old Berkeley man was walking home alone in the area of Woolsey and Claremont when three or four young men robbed him. An older light brown Sedan drove by him slowly, stopped and a man got out and walked towards him. Then, he said that the robbers rushed him, with one man grabbing him around his neck and the rest pushing him to the ground. They took a backpack with a laptop computer and a silver iPod. The men ran off westbound on Woolsey. The man suffered an injury to his left foot and had to limp home to call police. He was treated at a local ER.  

Another robbery: 

On April 8 at 7:49 p.m., a 23-year-old El Cerrito man was walking east on Channing from MLK Jr. Way when two men robbed him. One had his hand in his jacket pocket and pointed it towards the man’s stomach as if there was a gun in the pocket. The El Cerrito man tried to walk away, but one of the perpetrators followed him and tried to take his wallet out of his back pocket. He ran, trying to get away from the men who were chasing him. As he ran, he called 911 on his cell phone and gave his location to police. Officers arrived as the suspects fled into the 1900 block of Channing Way and they caught one 20-year-old Oakland man, arrested him and charged him with robbery. The second man escaped. 

Purse thief 

On April 7, at 9:10 p.m., a 29-year-old Berkeley woman was walking southbound on Piedmont near Stuart when two men stole her purse, which contained an Italian passport, credit cards, two cell phones, and some cash. She said she noticed two male suspects in their late teens approaching her. One man walked up to her and grabbed her purse, which she was carrying on her right shoulder. The other suspect stood and watched. The man pushed her to the ground and pulled her purse away, causing the strap to break. Both men walked south and got into a dark car.  

As Earth Day approaches, Berkeley’s ever-growing Earth Day celebration is scheduled to take place this Saturday in newly-renovated Martin Luther King Park, right between the two city halls, Old and New, and next to the Farmers’ Market. It’s a perfect location to consider a few facts about sustainability, today’s buzz word for doing whatever we can not to harm Mother Earth any more than we already have. 

The New City Hall, more formally the Civic Center Building, the former Federal Land Bank building, a substantial edifice from the 1930s, stands witness to the enormous benefits of adaptive re-use of existing buildings. This topic was covered in exhaustive and entertaining detail in a recent lecture, Sustainable Stewardship:Historic Preservation’s Essential Role in Fighting Climate Change, which was delivered in Berkeley by Richard Moe, the President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. You can read the whole thing, complete with elegant illustrations, at http://berkeleyheritage.com/speeches/richard_moe.html.  

But the national organization has posted a tight summary of the facts on which Moe’s talk was based on its website, under the title is “Facts about Preservation and Sustainability: Why Our Existing Buildings and Neighborhoods Matter.”  

The key statistics bear repeating here verbatim: 

The Costs of Building Construction and Demolition: 

• The United States is responsible for 22 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, though we have only 5 percent of the world’s population. In the United States, building construction and operations account for 48 percent of Greenhouse gas emissions.  

• It takes a lot of energy to construct a building—for example, building a 50,000 square foot commercial building requires the same amount of energy needed to drive a car 20,000 miles a year for 730 years.  

• We are much too inclined to think of our buildings as disposable, rather than a renewable resource. A 2004 report from the Brookings Institution projects that by 2030 we will have demolished and replaced 82 billion square feet of our current building stock. Since it is estimated that there are about 300 billion square feet of space in the United States today, that means we anticipate demolishing nearly one third of our building stock in the next 20-25 years.  

• It will take as much energy to demolish and reconstruct 82 billion square feet of space (as predicted by the Brookings study) as it would to power the entire state of California—the 10th largest economy in the world with a population of about 36 million people—for 10 years.  

• If we were to rehab even 10 percent of this 82 billion square feet, we would save enough energy to power the state of New York for well over a year.  

• Construction debris accounts for 25 percent of the waste in the municipal waste stream each year. Demolishing 82 billion square feet of space will create enough debris to fill 2,500 NFL stadiums.  

Energy Efficiency of Historic and Older Buildings: 

It is often assumed that older and historic buildings are “energy hogs” and that it is more environmentally friendly to demolish these buildings and construct new energy efficient buildings than to preserve these existing buildings. However, recent work indicates otherwise. 

• Recent calculations indicate that it takes about 65 years for an energy efficient new building to save the amount of energy lost in demolishing an existing building.  

• Far from being energy hogs, some historic buildings are as energy efficient—or more so—than buildings constructed in later decades. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency finds that buildings constructed before 1920 are actually more energy-efficient than those built at any time afterwards—except for those built after 2000.  

• In 1999, the General Services Administration examined its building inventory and found that utility costs for historic buildings were 27 percent less than for more modern buildings.  

• Not all historic and older buildings are as sustainable as they should be—indeed, many are not. But an increasing number of case studies demonstrate that historic buildings can go green. 

None of this is hard to understand. So why do some otherwise progressive politicians seem determined to defy green logic by voting time and again to throw away valuable older stuctures in favor of new construction? The Berkeley City Council members, who rejoice in trying to appear greener-than-thou at every juncture, have even passed a revisionist version of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, which, if it’s not overturned by referendum voters next November, will substantially weaken protection and re-use of existing buildings.  

Other politicians try the same thing: “He is criticized by the left for his coziness with property developers and by the preservationists for his willingness to transmogrify the traditional ...skyline with new highrises—both of which policies he defends as levers for prying affordable housing out of developers.”  

Sound familar? No, it’s not Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, it’s London Mayor “Red Ken” Livingstone, described by Calvin Trillin in a recent New Yorker. There’s a peculiar blindness which some—though not all—who would like to call themselves progressives demonstrate when it comes to the very urgent environmental topic of conserving our urban heritage and taking advantage of the sunk energy cost which the built environment embodies.  

Others, thank goodness, do seem to manage to be real environmentalists, even advocates of the much-abused smart growth concept, while still working diligently to save and reuse older buildings. Richmond Councilmember Tom Butt is a good model, in business with a green architecture firm and at the same time a prime mover behind saving treasures great (the Richmond Plunge) and small (a modest railroad building now adapted as a bank office.) Berkeley School Board President John Selawsky, who ran for office as a Green, should take a leaf from Butt’s playbook and figure out how to adaptively re-use Berkeley High’s old gymnasium and the warm pool it houses. 

But some self-described progressives just don’t get it. We got a letter recently from an old-line Berkeley leftist, now working with the Progressive Caucus inside the Democratic Party, which illustrates the other side of the coin: “Organized in 2005, we have put into the platform of the C[alifornia] D[emocratic] P[arty] single payer health insurance, out of Iraq, public financing of elections, and other progressive measures. We are proud of our accomplishment in a few short years, but realize we have a long way to go. If the D[aily] P[lanet] were less fixated on Berkeley land use, KPFA and Bates-bashing, it might have noticed the caucus.” 

KPFA fans and critics will have to take care of themselves, but we wish that the old-school progs, both Red Ken and our local critic, could understand that urban land use issues, not only preservation but zoning and density, are every bit as important for modern progressives as health insurance. For many of us, our homes are our only financial asset, and if an awful development next door reduces the value of this investment we’re in serious trouble. Ignoring this fact is elitist at best. And Livingstone’s idea that highrises are levers for prying affordable housing out of developers has been disproven time and again, most recently in San Francisco, where the affordable housing advocates are up in arms about their city’s failures in that respect. 

As for the Bates-bashing, the mayor makes his own record and has to answer for it. He loves to wrap himself in the green mantle, but seems entirely ignorant of the facts quoted above. The emasculation of the LPO was his baby, and he’s still its biggest fan. His developer buddies are undoubtedly building their war chest for the fall referendum already.  

His most recent gaffe was his attempt to keep the city council from hearing the very crucial report on how to correct Berkeley’s problems with the state’s density bonus, which was produced by an improbable consensus of Zoning Adjustment Board members and planning commissioners who seldom agree on anything.  

Cooler heads seem to have prevailed, so the council will get the report on Tuesday after all. Alas, it comes too late to save the neighbors of the Trader Joe’s monstrosity. They will have to pay for this massive intrusion into, yes, their backyards, with loss of some of the value invested in their homes and some of their precious sunlight.  

But at least the council will now have the opportunity to hear what the commissioners have learned. Perhaps, just perhaps, at least five councilmembers will be paying attention on Tuesday, and maybe they can do something to prevent the same thing from happening again. But don’t count on Bates being one of them. After all, it’s not easy being green.  

THE IRS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While we’re all thinking about the IRS, have other people noticed that, although we’re penalized and charged whatever interest it pleases for a late payment, it pays no interest at all on the withholding and prepayments it collects? Deposited in any bank it would make some interest, and the government, I’m sure, uses it in ways that make a lot more for it than we get in our local banks. 

Isn’t that our money? Shouldn’t we be credited that amount? 

Ruth Bird 

• 

TELEGRAPH NUISANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For more than a decade now, we the street vendors, merchants, shoppers, and residents on the block of Haste and Telegraph, have been forced to endure a group of out-of-towners who invade our city nearly every Saturday with their message of hate. I’m talking about the Bay Area Outreach Ministries. With amplifiers blasting so loud that you can hear it two blocks away, they harangue us with their message that we’re all going to hell if we don’t believe the same beliefs as them. Even worse is the no-talent on the guitar who uses the amplifiers for a bully-pulpit to play the same five dull, inane songs that he’s been playing week after week, year after year. Just one of those blowhards that you know will never get tired of the sound of his own voice. We are now collecting signatures on a petition to get the city to do something about these pests. Please drop by any weekend on the corner of Haste and Telegraph and sign our petition. 

Ace Backwords 

• 

TALK IS CHEAP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If the whining of a few vocal NIMBYs manages to stop Bus Rapid Transit, Berkeley will be the laughingstock of California. It will send the message that the city of Berkeley, for all of its talk about saving the planet, is unwilling to actually do anything to reduce our automobile dependence. 

Jacob Berman 

• 

BERKELEY HYPOCRITES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley hypocrites. Don’t you love them? 

Residents of Berkeley are all for stopping global warming, stopping pollution, and stopping the war—until it actually means doing something. Yes, we’re for mass transit, but not if it means eliminating a traffic lane for our beloved gas-guzzlers or losing some parking spaces for our hallowed automobiles. 

And, of course, Code Pink, in order to protest the War for Oil needs a humongous, polluting truck and a free parking spot for it in front of the Marine recruiting office. What a laugh! 

Mark Johnson 

• 

PAUL ROBESON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Halfway through his otherwise excellent article on the Paul Robeson birthday celebration, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor made the double mistake of characterizing Robeson as “an almost stereotypical baritone.” In the first place, Robeson was not, strictly speaking, a baritone. The two of us, who remember the profundity of the first two notes of Robeson’s “Old Man River,” were ready to say that he had one of the greatest bass voices of the twentieth century. 

When we looked him up in the Grove-Norton Encyclopedia of Music, however, we found that it called him a bass-baritone. And then we remembered how he soared up to the final “Old man” at the end of that song, and we realized that he had risen into the baritone range at that point. But the bass part of his voice must never be ignored. 

Furthermore, there was nothing stereotypical about Paul Robeson. His voice, his extensive musical repertoire, and his versatility as a performer set him apart from the other singers and actors of his day. Both of us had the privilege of seeing and hearing Robeson in person. In the spring of 1944 Virginia was present when he played the role of Othello for a Des Moines audience and she listened to that unforgettable voice say Shakespeare’s heart-piercing lines. 

In 1952 Henry heard Robeson sing spirituals and Russian folk songs at a small gathering in Palo Alto to raise funds for refugees from the Spanish Civil War; (Franco was still very much in power). At that time, Henry recalls, Robeson seemed a true bass, a worthy heir to Fyodor Chaliapin. 

But we don’t wish to quibble. Thank you and Mr. Allen-Taylor for an enjoyable article about an important occasion. 

Henry Anderson 

Virginia Foote Anderson 

• 

JUBILEE ACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Thursday, April 16, the House of Representatives voted 285 to 132 to pass the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation (HR 2634). This strong bipartisan legislation urges expanded debt cancellation to impoverished countries that need it to meet the Millennium Development Goals and provide much needed clean water, health care without fees, and food to its people. 

Just two months ago, President Bush made an historic trip to Africa to review the progress of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) and other administration-sponsored development programs in the region. He observed and praised increased investment health care and education, made possible by MDRI debt cancellation. 

Right now, Haiti, the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere, is suffering from a food shortage. Its citizens are literally starving for justice. The Associated Press reports that many Haitians are eating cookies made of dirt to stay alive. And this year, the Haitian government is scheduled to pay more than $1 million a week to the World Bank and Inter-American Bank to repay money these banks loaned to the Duvalier regime. An amendment included in the Jubilee Act urges the Bush administration to work to immediately cancel or stop the payments of these debts. 

Debt cancellation is an essential element of any real, long-term development progress in Africa and Haiti. The Jubilee Act, which now moves to the Senate for consideration, should be supported by our Senators. The act provides debt cancellation for more poor nations and would help put an end to the kind of irresponsible lending that caused crippling debt burdens in the past. 

Tom Luce 

• 

RADIO FREQUENCY RADIATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How much radio frequency radiation is your home receiving? A few of us who live near UC Storage in South Berkeley and near the French Hotel in North Berkeley are about to find out, for our homes anyway. The battle over the siting of cell phone antennas in Berkeley is far from over. This Friday, starting at 11 a.m., a group of South and North Berkeley neighbors will be observing and monitoring the measurement of ambient RF radiation around UC Storage at 2721 Shattuck Ave. Later Friday afternoon we will head for the French Hotel at 1538 Shattuck Ave. for more measurements. 

Last month Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union (BNAFU) convinced the City Council to pay an outside firm, EMF Services, to take before and after antenna installation measurements of RF radiation at the above two locations. 

The history of this struggle goes back over two years. During that time, Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board twice rejected the Verizon/Nextel cell antenna application for 2721 Shattuck Ave. This past November, however, the City Council caved in to Verizon’s demand to install eleven antennas at 2721 Shattuck. The council apparently had considered it no small matter that Verizon Wireless had launched a 65 page lawsuit against the city in federal court. So the council, with five out of nine votes in favor, overturned the ZAB decision rejecting the Verizon/Nextel application.  

BNAFU is currently suing the city, Verizon, and Patrick Kennedy, the owner of UC Storage, in Alameda Superior Court. Our goal is to stop the installation altogether.  

This Wednesday, Nov. 23, at 7 p.m., we will also be present at the Berkeley Planning Commission meeting at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst and MLK. On the agenda is a proposed new cell antenna ordinance for Berkeley. 

If you would like to join us, today, Friday, or this coming Wednesday, call 849-4014. If you want more information about our group or about the RF radiation issue we are so concerned about, you can e-mail us at: jllib2@aol.com. You can also Google the “Bioinitiative Report” to look at one of the latest comprehensive, research-based summaries of the dangers of cell phone antennas. 

Michael Barglow 

• 

SPEEDO CHEATS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

speedo cheats 

Have you heard about the other Olympic story? Speedo has a swimsuit that boosts swim times 1-2 percent, and the U.S. team will use them. The suits considerably increase buoyancy. Something like 45 of the 46 records broken recently have been with the new suit. Some countries have contracts with other swimsuit manufacturers and so they won’t be able to use them. The Olympic committee has agreed to allow the new suits to be used in China—from my point of view an unfair and unsportsmanlike decision. Should we boycott Speedo? If you want to read more about this, go to: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=oly&id=3343795#. 

Estelle Jelinek 

• 

IMAGE COUNTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a world in which image counts, the city of Berkeley is losing the battle to maintain its image. Berkeley no longer offers people a genuine hope for freedom and peace. Certainly, nobody looks to this city as a problem solver to our environment woes. The efforts to deny the People’s Park to the people and the attempted closure of its flea market are in part a strong indication of the direction in which the city is headed. Very definitely, the sustained efforts to remove the downtrodden from its vicinity cannot be counted as liberalism in any sense of that word.  

By contrast, the city’s inclination to protect authority figures is a clear indication of what image it wishes to cultivate. The theft of several bags of drugs stolen by police from their department and yet nobody - nay not a single one – has been prosecuted speaks volumes of a Bush/Cheney type privilege. As if this is not terrible enough we now learn that the cops have killed an elderly woman. This is not the first time that Berkeley cops have killed women. However, it is a stark reminder that this a repressive police force is exactly what conservatives are seeking to quell any dissent in this country. 

Evidently, Berkeley’s residents lack of involvement in its city’s affairs has come back to haunt them. Already the city is under the rule of a sovereign entity—the University of California. UC’s Board of Regents, which is an out and out dictatorship, has hijacked the city and enjoys control of most of it downtown plans. Notably, its proposed developments are not only tax free. Nay it requires that the residents foot the bill. 

As a further insult, the university has chosen to prostitute itself to BP—yes the selfsame oil pollution company. The scheme apparently aims to bring a cleaner solution to the fossil fuel problem. This arrangement smacks of the same circumstances in which a tobacco company was exposed today for funding cancer research at another university. Such research is tainted because of the conflict in interest. Besides, who in his or her right mind can believe that BP wants to give up its profits in the oil industries because they care about you and me? Now, they really cared they would be supporting the electric cars and all the other feasible solutions that are already out there.  

More than ever, it is important to note that the Berkeley residents’ actions to bless or banish the anti-liberal stance of UC to aligning itself with BP is a test of just how conservative they are willing to become. The fact that Mayor Bates is in favor of that unholy alliance is already another blow to the city’s image.  

Zachary Runningwolf

Sunshining (making public) city government in Berkeley has been a long and daunting task. Sometime in early 2001-2003 Kriss Worthington held a series of public meetings to begin the process of writing a sunshine ordinance for Berkeley and its citizens. This effort was followed up with the city staff drafting an ordinance. Consensus could not be found, but in March of 2007, Mayor Bates called a special council meeting to hear from the community and a panel of four people considered to be experts in sunshine laws on its reactions to staff draft no. 24. 

The panel consisted of Terry Franke of Californians Aware; Jinky Gardner, president of the League of Women Voters; Judith Scherr of the Society of Professional Journalists; and Mark Schlosberg of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. 

The Sunshine Ordinance was placed on the May 8, 2007 information calendar and on May 20, 2007 a draft ordinance and matrix of issues was to be posted on the city’s website along with notice of a subsequence public meeting. 

In May 2007 Mayor Bates asked the League of Women Voters to form a group of citizens to review the staff sunshine ordinance, draft no. 24, and bring back to the City Council an ordinance for the city of Berkeley. The League sent a general e-mail to the public inviting interested citizens to meet in their office on May 30, 2007. This was the beginning of the public group’s review of staff’s draft no. 24. 

It became clear that the staff draft needed to be supplemented if real open government was to be achieved in Berkeley. 

Since that day in May of 2007 a group of citizens has met twice a month and now every week to try to complete an ordinance that is friendly to the citizens of Berkeley. It has taken this long because the group has studied sunshine laws that exist or are being proposed in many other cities in California. 

Terry Franke lives near Sacramento and is considered the expert in sunshining government in California. He has donated his time to our group and the citizens of Berkeley. 

The review of other cities’ sunshine ordinances and the supplement being written to staff’s draft no. 24 are 30—60 days away from completion and need another 30 days for editing. In March 2008 it was announced that the city would put staff draft no. 25 on the council agenda of April 22, 2008 for public comment and possible action. It was only when staff called Terry that the League learned about draft no. 25 and the proposed agenda item. Terry along with the other members of the original panel wrote to Mayor Bates and the City Council requesting a delay of 90 days so the group could finish its work. 

On April 14, 2008 the council Agenda Committee met. After public comment, Mayor Bates told the group that it had been given plenty of time to complete its work and that draft no. 25 on been on the city’s website for a month with no community recorded comments. 

Mayor Bates also accused the group of meeting outside of the public (in secret). This is not true, the group has grown to almost 30 citizens and all meetings have been scheduled at the League office and open to anyone wishing to attend and participate. 

What the citizens of Berkeley are left with is a staff draft which, if adopted, will keep the status quo in place, and Berkeley will continue to have a government of backroom deals, pre-determined legislation without adequate public discussion and little if any way to obtain documents, except through the courts.  

Any sunshine ordinance (and there are none we could find) that is worth the paper it is written on must have a valid and workable enforcement segment. 

If the Agenda Committee (Mayor Bates, Linda Maio, and Gordon Wozniak and other councilmembers) wish to keep Berkeley from having a sunshine ordinance that will actually bring sunshine to Berkeley they are doing a good job. If you want an open government and want to help, call your councilmembers and ask them to support the proposed postponement request so our work can be completed. 

Dean Metzger is president of the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association.  

As Hillary Clinton continues to wage vicious attacks on likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama, many have suggested that John McCain now has a good chance to win the November election. But political reality says otherwise. Consider that in 2004, when the economy was not a national problem and public opinion remained almost equally divided on Iraq, a relatively weak Democratic presidential candidate came within 50,000-100,000 votes in Ohio from defeating a Republican incumbent benefiting from an unprecedented turnout of conservative voters. Ohio will go to the Democrats in 2008, as will Colorado, Iowa, and likely Virginia, three states Bush won in 2004. John McCain is on the wrong side of both Iraq and the economy, and there is no chance that voters will elect a candidate who will implement George W. Bush’s third term. 

A surprising number of progressives are convinced that John McCain will be our next president. This is partly attributable to a hard-earned pessimism about national politics, but is also based on the erroneous view that voters will focus on personality and cultural issues rather than on health care, the economy and Iraq. 

2004 spells Democratic victory in 2008 

Ironically, those most pessimistic about the Democrats chances point to the 2004 race, which, in fact, provides evidence to the contrary. 

George W. Bush entered the 2004 campaign with a decent national economy, and with voters still split over the wisdom of invading Iraq. His campaign had also amassed record new voter registration of Christian evangelicals in key states like Florida (the Bush campaign boosted Republican registration in 2002, while Democratic-linked groups did not begin huge voter reg drives until 2004). 

Bush’s Democratic opponent, John Kerry, never had a strong grassroots base. Kerry won the nomination in what in retrospect appears to be a particularly weak field, which had an obscure Vermont governor named Howard Dean as its longtime frontrunner. 

Try as he might, John Kerry could never get away from his patrician background. He was a true war hero who courageously spoke out against the Vietnam War upon his return from combat. 

But Kerry showed no such fire during his lengthy Senate career. And his efforts to relate to rural voters by proving he was a longtime hunter—he even discussed how he split apart doves—did no more to establish himself as a “regular guy” than did Hillary Clinton’s recent attempt to effectively portray herself as most happy when crouched in a duck blind. 

Kerry soundly defeated Bush in the three presidential debates, and galvanized the nation’s progressive activist base, but Kerry was not a candidate who could win the southwest, mountain and Midwest states that Bush won in 2000 and would win again in 2004. 

Despite all these limitations, Kerry would have defeated Bush but for record turnout in conservative parts of Ohio, and an intensive effort by the Republican Secretary of State to limit black voter participation. 

If Republicans nearly lost the presidency with an incumbent president, a decent economy and with many Americans still believing that Iraq was behind 9/11, the party has at best a remote chance to keep the White House in 2008 with a deep recession, rising gas prices, continued chaos in Iraq, and a strong Democratic opponent. 

Latinos increasingly favor Democrats 

Since 2004, both Latinos and young people have dramatically increased voter turnout and have shifted toward the Democratic Party. 

As recently as 2000, the national Republican Party viewed Latinos as part of its future political coalition. Media disinformation about the 2004 Latino vote implied a pro-Bush shift that did not exist, but the facts notwithstanding, a “message” from that November was that the Latino vote was still up for grabs. 

But after Congressional Republicans passed legislation to turn millions of undocumented Latino immigrants, and those that provided services to them, into felons, Latino voters moved en masse to the Democratic Party in November 2006. 

John McCain was the Republican Senate sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform, and his campaign manager has argued that this should attract Latino voters. He’s kidding himself. Latinos continue to see the Republican Party as anti-immigrant, and Latinos are projected to cast at least 70 percent of their votes for Democrats. 

That’s why the Democrats are a deadlock cinch to win the former red state of Colorado in 2008, and will likely win New Mexico, which Bush took in 2004. Republicans will even have to prop up McCain in Texas, whose Latino voters are both increasing in number and in their preference for Democrats. 

Young people now favor Democrats 

In the November 2006 elections, young voters significantly increased both turnout and their preference for Democrats. Based on the enthusiasm generated among young people toward the Obama campaign, these trends will continue in November 2008. 

This demographic group is not focused on a single state or region, but will increase the Democratic vote across the nation. Young voters could make the difference in states like Virginia, which has been leaning Democratic but went for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. 

It’s the economy, stupid 

James Carville is a tired Clinton hack, but his famous four-word analysis of the 1992 election also applies this year. The Party occupying the White House cannot win another four years with a bad economy, and it looks like the U.S. economy will be in a particularly bad place this November. 

Last Friday, the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan found that consumer confidence is at its lowest point in over twenty-five years. And a recent Pew report found that a smaller percentage of Americans said they were better off now than five years ago than at any time during its 44 years of polling. 

Adding to this woeful economic environment is McCain’s recent assertion that he doesn’t really know much about economics, and his claim that the government should not help distressed homeowners facing foreclosure. Voters in November are not going to give Republicans four more years of running the economy. 

Hopelessness in Iraq 

Americans have lost interest in Iraq, and are increasingly angry over the billions we are spending there. But McCain sees great progress in Iraq, and is asking voters to support his plan to keep troops in Iraq if not for 100 years, at least for the indefinite future. 

Voters are not going to elect a president who supports continuing the Iraq War. Some held their breath and reluctantly voted for the pro-war Bush in 2004, but the public has lost any sense of a link between “terrorism” and the civil war in Iraq. 

George W. Bush has driven the nation into such a deep ditch that even the combined efforts of John McCain and Hillary Clinton cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again. 

Barack Obama will trounce McCain, and then it will be up to the grassroots and netroots to prevent the media and elite institutional forces from sabotaging his presidency.  

Randy Shaw is the editor of BeyondChron.org.

Standing at the corner of Vine on Saturday morning, I look south down a vibrant Shattuck Avenue thronging with pedestrians. They fill the sidewalks and spill out across busy traffic to claim and use the grass median strip (illegal though that is.) That so many people risk tickets and traffic to create a 21st Century town square illustrates once more the deep human need for shared public spaces. Then I turn around to look north towards Rose Street. I see a perplexing expanse of impermeable asphalt and concrete, starkly contrasting with the view to the south.  

I came to North Shattuck in the summer of 1966 landing in a lovely old flat above what would, the following summer, become a coffee shop opened up by an immigrant named Alfred Peet. My roommates and I shopped in the neighborhood…groceries at the Coop and Lucky’s (which is now Long’s)…miscellany at Bill’s Drugs (which later moved to Lucky’s and is now Black Oak Books and a real estate office). We did our laundry where the beautifully restored Earthly Goods now stands. There was no Chez Panisse, no Walnut Square and no Cheeseboard. I don’t remember Saul’s although my budget precluded dining out much. 

One thing I do remember was walking down to Vine and Shattuck to catch the F bus to San Francisco (and a date with my future wife) viewing all those cars and asphalt and, I might add, two gas stations. I often thought…too many cars…too much asphalt. Of course, dozens of years earlier I would have seen a coal yard for the steam train and three sets of tracks that served the neighborhood. The train system was eventually dismantled, and we were left with this curious island of space that has challenged planners ever since. 

I began thinking about this because of the city’s Draft Pedestrian Master Plan, released to the public last month. (Though the public comment period has closed, I do encourage residents of Berkeley to review the draft online at www.altaplanning.com/berkeleypedestrianplan. There are discussions to come at both the commission and Council level.) An unexpected consequence of the Draft Plan’s recent release has been renewed discussion about the creation of pedestrian-friendly public space on North Shattuck between Vine and Rose. As I hear once again from people who hold a range of opinions about the concept, I think it would be useful to make a quick review of how we got here, much of which took place before my time on the Council. 

In 1995 the Public Works Department received funds for public improvements along the North Shattuck corridor. A public participation process resulted in the neighborhood business group recommending that some of the funds be used for a circulation/design study focused on the section of Shattuck between Vine and Rose. An ad-hoc committee was formed of residents, businesses and representatives from six city commissions—Planning, Transportation, Public Works, Landmarks, Disability and Design Review—to develop a conceptual design. The committee met six times in 1998-1999 and held three public workshops including a walking tour of the neighborhood. It completed a Draft Conceptual Design Plan in July 2000. After a public hearing the Planning Commission modified the conceptual plan to enhance its pedestrian focus and traffic calming measures from Delaware Street to Rose, with a pedestrian plaza, the project’s focus, at the confluence of asphalt and sidewalk just south of Rose Street.  

The City Council unanimously approved the plan on Jan. 16, 2001. Some of the plan’s minor recommendations were enacted as part of the roadway and sewer repair, including the mid-block crossing near the post office and some of the street trees. But ultimately, as many plans do, it collected dust on a shelf until momentum and capital could be put together to continue the project.  

Flash forward to 2004…almost 40 years after my initial arrival at Walnut and Vine. One fine October day I’m walking along Shattuck, enjoying a car free avenue all the way from Rose to Delaware—a temporary commons if you will. It’s the Spice of Life Festival. As I stroll north toward Rose I think again…too much asphalt…cars taking up too much space…and way too little space for people. 

After I was elected to the City Council in the fall of 2004, I learned about the conceptual plan that had been vetted through public process and adopted by the council. The North Shattuck Association, whose business and property owner members tax themselves to pay for pedestrian improvements and maintenance in the district, were eager to pursue the plan and contributed organizational time and seed money to flesh out a more specific design. A group of volunteers carried on the planning effort and organized to begin fundraising with the approval of the council. In 2005 and again in 2006 the council unanimously reaffirmed its earlier support for the concept of a public space in the area. 

Certainly the process has run off track. Because so many years have passed since it began our memories of the history of the project have grown faint leading to concerns by some that matters such as parking, traffic circulation and business impacts have not been and are not being duly considered as the crucial issues they are. The inclusion of the plaza concept in the Draft Pedestrian Master Plan was a legitimately responsible decision by planners who must routinely include related and formally adopted area plans in planning documents of greater scope. My hope is that they amend the plan to reference not just the plaza, but the entire 2001 plan that describes pedestrian amenities and safety improvements along the length of Shattuck from Delaware and to Rose.  

I do hope at some future time we can continue this discussion of pedestrian-oriented space without preconceived notions as to the design, with mutual respect and with a shared commitment to bring improvement to our neighborhood, as the community members did in the late ’90s. We have a template for the creation and positive impacts of public space every Thursday in our thriving farmers’ market, and annually with the Spice of Life Festival. And soon, Safeway hopes to bring more vitality to our pedestrian experience by reorienting its new market towards Shattuck Avenue. We can expand those moments to celebrate our community in a 21st century public commons, or we can continue to make believe that a grass covered median strip is a pedestrian mini park. 

City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli represents Berkeley’s District 5.  

It is past time for the city of Berkeley to complete its long-delayed civic improvements in the North Shattuck commercial district. Approximately eight years ago, after intensive community involvement, a program of modest, incremental, civic improvements was created and approved by the community and the city council. That program became stalled when Planning Commission member David Stoloff initiated his “grand” North Shattuck Plaza plan. Mr. Stoloff’s scheme is dead, but the problems remain. Among those is the necessary redesign of the intersection at Shattuck Avenue and Vine Street.  

The current design of that intersection is murderously and poorly conceived. The city has planned pedestrian bulb-outs there, which will make walking across that intersection much safer. In the last 20 plus years, that intersection has been the site of least two pedestrian deaths. My youngest son saw one of those accidents, where a young pregnant woman was torn in half. There have been many more less horrific accidents, and many more near misses.  

While it’s just a hop across the crosswalk for the young and agile, for those moving more slowly it is a journey too dangerous and too far, with too many distracted motorists gunning desperately for that ‘last’ parking space. Like many elderly in our neighborhood, my 82-year-old mother-in-law refuses to attempt to cross Shattuck Avenue at Vine Street if she can’t begin her journey immediately upon the light turning green. She’s not alone. I see elderly pedestrians standing out in traffic regularly at that intersection.  

Complicating the problems is that Safeway has announced it plans to double its size in North Berkeley. Less than a block away, this will dramatically and dangerously increase both pedestrian and automotive traffic at the intersection of Vine and Shattuck. 

Again returning to the plan already designed and approved eight years ago, the barren, useless and underutilized concrete peninsula in front of Coldwell Banker’s realty firm is too small to be effectively re-purposed and too large to be wasted as no more than a plinth for newspaper stands. That wasteland is a perfect place to transition from the current, sad strip-mall aesthetics to something more environmentally friendly, more pedestrian friendly and more attractive for all of the users of this community. Make it greener, make it safer, make it better looking and more useful!!! 

Any revitalization of North Berkeley’s critically important shopping district must also address the disgraceful condition of the sidewalk fronting the shops along the eastern side of Shattuck Avenue between Vine and Rose streets. So many contractors have hacked into it over the decades that it more resembles a washboard than a place to stroll. 

Additionally, now that Saul’s Deli and Masse’s Pastries offer outside seating, the width of the sidewalk is too narrow for both tables and pedestrians. Like hundreds of shoppers each day, I use the tables and chairs in front of Saul’s Deli and Masse’s Pastries. Every single time I sit there I see folks get blocked up and stuck between the seated diners and the storefronts – legs tangled in dog-leashes, wheelchair users forced to beg for passage, babes and their mothers playing bumper-cars with their strollers. Every time I have a cup of coffee out in front of Masse’s Pastry I see vehicles bump into my fellow diners. It’s a serious injury-accident waiting to happen. A great example of how that sidewalk should work can be found in front of the French Hotel where the city created a slightly widened sidewalk that allows both uses while also making it safer to cross the street from the post office. 

By failing to address the concerns of merchants in the area the Stoloff “Grand Plaza Plan” united much of the residential community against that proposal, but not against any improvements. At every meeting I attended, both public and private, the vast majority of those in attendance were in favor of modest, incremental, ecologically sound improvements. Unfortunately there also were always a few loudmouths who screeched out their complaints (out of turn) and made ridiculous inflammatory personal attacks. As a result each public meeting had fewer and fewer folks in attendance. One of the few neighborhood community meetings that actually accomplished its goals, and didn’t dissolve in rancor, was the North Berkeley Vision Committee chaired by Linda Bargmeyer.  

There were two key points developed by that group, both of which were endorsed by two of the area’s neighborhood associations. The first point is called “Goodness of Living”: 

“We want North Berkeley to remain a strong and cohesive neighborhood community, not a domain of anonymity. We do not want it transformed into a high-density city, like San Francisco. We want to increase opportunities to interact with neighbors, friends, and business owners and their employees, which includes protecting neighborhood streets from the incursion of high-volume traffic; and, promoting the needs of children, teenagers and seniors.” 

“Goodness” is defined as a strong sense of community; close proximity to nature; the availability of quiet and environmentally safe public transportation; close proximity to intellectual, cultural, and outdoor activities; opportunities to participate in the democratic process and influence living conditions; opportunities to know and interact with neighbors; opportunities to savor good food and drink; access to vibrant and diversified local shops; an ability to preserve our connection to the past; the opportunity to understand diverse people; and the ability to afford living here. 

The second key factor was protecting our small independent businesses: 

“Businesses are an integral part of our community. Some of the local businesses are particularly excellent and are models for the kind of customer/business relationship that we desire and would like to foster. These businesses have excellent products as well as excellent customer interaction. We know many of the owners and their employees. We care whether they survive. 

“We would like to support small, independent businesses by improving what we have, not by … increasing the financial burden of current proprietors. We are concerned about raising rents. We are also concerned that the construction process itself can drive current proprietors out of business. Therefore, if there is to be change, it should be incremental rather than massively disruptive.” 

If the community and the city can work within those constraints, not only will we preserve and improve our contributions to the local sales tax base, we’ll improve our neighborhood as well.  

Fred Dodsworth is a Berkeley journalist. 

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At the Jan. 29 Berkeley City Council meeting, Judith Scherr heard me start a sentence with, “As a former GI Rights counselor on the GI Rights hotline,...” Judith then wrote in the Feb. 1 issue of the Daily Planet, “Bob Meola, a veteran who has staffed hotlines for military personnel trying to leave the service, told the council that use of the parking space will help the demonstrators deliver the truth to possible recruits.” The word “veteran” was not spoken by me. 

I am not now and never have been a veteran of any military organization. I am a veteran of the anti-war movement since 1967. I have also been a veterans’ counselor, assisting veterans with obtaining discharge upgrades at discharge upgrade hearings and at a hearing of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. Please either publish this letter or make it clear that you mistakenly labeled me as a veteran. 

Bob Meola 

• 

NOVEMBER TAX INCREASES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The City of Berkeley is in the process of surveying voters on their attitudes toward increased property taxes. The poll is supposed to give the mayor and City Council an objective view of whether or not their initiatives are likely to succeed in November. 

The problem is that the questions aren’t objective at all. On Monday, I got a call from the professional poll takers. Everything was designed to make me say I would vote for higher taxes. To paraphrase: “Wouldn’t you like to have access for the handicapped to the libraries?” “Wouldn’t it be nice for our kids to have a place to go after school? “You don’t want your fire protection to go away, do you?” “Shouldn’t there be a warm water pool for our disabled children?” And so it went, until at the very end that the real point came out, and I was asked if I would be willing to pay just a few more dollars for these wonderful things. 

At no time did the surveyor ask whether I thought the city was spending its current revenues wisely. Or tell me what my total bill might be if all of these programs were adopted. There were no questions about how I thought the city might economize, or raise revenues in ways that would be more fair to young families who now must pay over $10,000 a year in taxes on small starter bungalows, while 60 percent of the population would be exempt from any property tax increase. 

I’m not saying we should never consider new taxes. All I’m saying is that when the city spends my money on an “impartial survey,” it should not load the results in advance. 

The last time the city cooked the books to justify a tax increase was in 2004. We all know how that turned out. 

Miriam Wilson 

• 

SEATTLE STREETCARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am just back from Seattle, a town that overcame the moniker “the least worst place.” It overcame being built on mudflats and sawdust, burning down from a glue factory, being watered down by hydraulic sluicing and erecting walls around hollowed out streets only poets write about. (Be sure to go on the Underground Tour if you go to Seattle.) 

If this town can run buses in bus-only lanes in rush hours, build a purple streetcar line you can walk onto and have proof of payment, a ticket you can show or glide through a slide, and be OK with avoiding congestion that way, what is wrong with a lucky town like Berkeley, built on halcyon oak woodland with a history of the key system streetcar? 

The Seattle Streetcar is a 2.6-mile loop with 11 stops that shares the road with traffic. It was funded by hospitals, banks, construction companies, research centers, hotels, and the UW Med School. If they can do that, why can’t some of the poor-crying wealthy companies around the East Bay care more about global warming than driving an SUV to the grocery store or the symphony. It is embarrassing to go to a place like cold Seattle, and find people more committed to the environment than we are. Are the waves from the melting arctic ice floes going to hit them sooner than they hit us? 

Claire Risley 

• 

TIMELY LETTERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit is a poorly designed and expensive transit system that would not serve the needs of neighbors, students, or businesses in Berkeley—and studies show that its huge, diesel-powered buses would not help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If you are for protecting the environment, you should be against this BRT plan. If you are for protecting the quality of life in Berkeley’s neighborhoods, you should be against this BRT plan. If you are for protecting small and large businesses in Berkeley, you should be against this BRT plan. A large and growing coalition of merchants and residents, called Berkeleyans for Better Transportation Options, recommends that other transportation measures be tried first that are a better fit for our city. 

Here are two things you need to do this week: First, call or e-mail your councilmember and tell him or her that you are in favor of a Rapid Bus Plus system, that would give us almost all of the gains of BRT without the intrusive and costly detriments of traffic lane removal. Second, sign the petition being circulated that calls for a citizen vote before any traffic lanes are given away to a transit company for their exclusive use. We should not give away part of the commons without democratic participation. 

Make your voice heard! The time is now, and I assure you, they are listening. Members of the elite consensus trying to force this system on Berkeley will be persuaded if we make them realize that they will lose their jobs if they fail to heed the community’s wishes. 

Don’t be shy. Speak up! 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

BANNING THE  

BRT BUSWAYS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After spending a few days riding great public transit in Seattle, it was quite a comedown to return to backward Berkeley and read about the opposition to dedicated lanes for the BRT. 

In Seattle, there are several streets which are bus-only during peak hours. Express buses travel in a bus-only tunnel under the city. Many of the buses are electric or hybrid. 

Berkeley once paid extra taxes to build BART underground. Could we dig a tunnel under Telegraph for the BRT—if we really can’t bear to have a dedicated bus lane? Could we have a dedicated lane for the BRT only during certain hours? Or are we going to do nothing effective to control our traffic congestion? Are we going to keep on engineering to maximize the flow of cars, instead of the flow of people? 

In January, service started on the Seattle Streetcar, running from downtown to south Lake Union, using an overhead electric wire. I wish we had a streetcar running from Shattuck and Center up to Telegraph. The Seattle Streetcar doesn’t have a dedicated lane—the tracks are embedded in the street. The stops aren’t stations; they’re similar to bus stops. One of the cars is bright red, like those of the San Diego trolley; the other is purple. There are doors on both sides. The streetcar is a joy to ride. 

What’s really awesome is that the hi-tech businesses around South Lake Union not only lobbied for the streetcar, but provided most of the funding. 

Berkeley, the former streetcar suburb, continues its single-minded dedication to the private car. 

Steve Geller 

• 

AN EXCUSE TO CUT  

BUS SERVICE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think Alan Tobey is being disingenuous in his April 8 commentary, “It’s Only Halftime for BRT Decision.” I’d bet he is aware that AC Transit is busy lining up the federal money for BRT now. Waiting for the environmental impact report to be completed would mean waiting until it’s too late to stop this ill-conceived scheme. 

The 1R articulated VanHool buses, with the same infrequent stops that BRT would have, are very poorly utilized in Berkeley, while the local buses are still heavily used (they are relatively comfortable and they stop near people’s homes). 

I have just learned that AC Transit’s current plan is to “combine” BRT with the local line 1, in other words, to eliminate the local buses on Telegraph Avenue. 

If true, AC Transit would be shafting its loyal riders for the benefit of imaginary future commuters from San Leandro who happen to prefer a wild ride on a lurching diesel behemoth—rather than a smooth, fast train ride on BART. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

HANCOCK FINANCES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was not surprised to read in the April 8 Daily Planet that Loni Hancock has been charged with a misuse of campaign funds. 

Loni seems to have moved away from the neighborhood-based politics that launched her political career and into the realm of corporate politics. I was surprised to see that she has raised thousands of dollars for her state Senate race against Wilma Chan from big corporations like Bayer, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Abbot Laboratories, Chevron, AT&T, Owens Illinois General, PG&E, Pacific Racing, Golden Gate Fields, the Pt. Molate Casino interests, and the Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads. 

She has also accepted many thousands of dollars from local real estate developers like Wareham Development, EMG Properties, Madison Marquette Property Development, Seagate Properties, Laurie Capitelli, John Gordon, Felicia Woytak and Sohel Mondarressi. Plus large sums from a variety of construction industry unions including the State Building and Construction Trades Council, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors Association. 

It seems to me that with this list of major contributors, the concerns and interests of Berkeley neighborhoods will not be uppermost in her mind.  

And I can’t think of a single piece of legislation she got passed during her six years in the Assembly that would justify her elevation to the state Senate. 

Art Goldberg 

• 

MISOGYNIST CARTOONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Although we are Obama supporters, we have not been amused by the recent spate of political cartoons in your newspaper. They are neither clever nor particularly well-drawn and certainly not up to the usual quality of Mr. DeFreitas’ work. These cartoons seem quite misogynistic and when satire sinks to cruelty it is neither funny nor enlightening. 

Charles and Ellen Robinson 

• 

UC STORAGE ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A week ago, I had surgery to remove a tumor from my brain. From my living room window I can see the top of UC Storage where the proposed antennas are supposed to go. I do not think that the radiation from these towers will be good for my health. I oppose them with all the vigor I can manage. 

Arthur Carson  

• 

BEATING McCAIN? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Either Obama or Clinton should easily win in a huge landslide over McCain in November. Except that he is a Republican war candidate. GOP war candidates win. Consider General Grant: a drunk and a political incompetent. He won two terms. His Civil War record was only part of his success. His campaigners were the original “red baiters.” At promo stops they would hold up a bloody shirt from the war and say, “See these holes, they were put there by a Democrat.” 

In 1840, before the GOP even existed, their predecessor party, the Whigs, used a military hero to upset the favored Democrats (popular for inaugurating public schools and help for small business). The Whigs propagandized for “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” a reference to Indian fighter William Harrison and running mate John Tyler. 

At the turn of the 20th Century the Robber Barons were hated by a wide majority of the American people. But the darling of the plutocrats William McKinley won in 1900 because he was the war president who led the 1898 capture of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. 

In 1948 the GOP expected to win with governor Thomas Dewey, but the electorate rejected him. So, in 1952 the Republicans ran “the general,” Dwight Eisenhower, who had his two terms. 

After Bush stole the 2000 election he became a war president, and although he probably stole 2004, too, he wouldn’t have been close if not for the Iraq war. 

Now we get McCain: He has one war in process, and before November, Bush will probably add for him a hot new war, ensuring that the public will vote for the GOP, even if all the airlines are out of business, hospitals and schools are closing in droves, bridges are falling down, milk and gas are selling for $10 a gallon and millions are living on the street. Then again, if the price of Viagra goes to $100 a pill the war candidate just might lose enough of his base for a Democrat to squeak through. 

Ted Vincent 

• 

CAL DAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If there’s a single event in Berkeley reflecting the exuberant, joie de vivre spirit of its citizens, that event has to be the annual Cal Day celebration, which was held on the UC campus this past weekend. Thousands of people throughout the Bay Area descended on Telegraph Avenue to soak in the glorious sunshine and to enjoy the mind-boggling number of free musical performances, research discoveries, dramatic presentations, African Drumming, and, of course, the adrenaline charged Cal Band, to name only a few of the widely varying activities. 

Before entering Sather Gate for the official program, people were entertained by a familiar group, the 1929 Depression Band, playing their toe-tapping Dixieland favorites in front of the Student Union. I could have happily spent the whole afternoon there, but, no—there was too much to see and do after entering Sather Gate. 

So, the big question: just where to begin? Picking up a thick Cal Day program, I immediately suffered an anxiety attack trying to decide which event to take in first. Joining the huge crowd of spectators, babies in strollers, and skate boarders, I head for Dwinelle Hall for a lecture on “Film Making in Berkeley.” After that came a performance by the University Symphony in Hertz Hall. Next, rushing over to the Art Museum, I had a guided tour of their current exhibit: “Enrique Chgoya: Borderlandia,” a show not to be missed. 

Aware that I was attending purely arts and entertainment exhibits, nothing cerebral, I decided I would take in shows that would exercise my mind even though some were clearly above my limited intellectual level. Since Science and Natural History have never been high on my list of interests, I popped over to the Valley Life Science Building for a staggering array of exhibits—one, an awesome display of Fossils, clearly a favorite of small children. Next I ventured into a seminar on Vertebrate Zoology, followed by a demonstration of Molecular & Cell Biology (all in the Life Sciences Building). 

I’m afraid my eyes glazed over at some of the above activities, so I then settled on a discussion of the 2008 presidential election offered by the Political Science Department in Stanley Hall. 

My energy having dropped to a low level by this time, I concluded my Cal Day adventure by sitting on a bench outside Sproul Hall, sipping a cool drink and watching the unending procession of people headed for Sather Gate. I was heartened by the great number of parents bringing their children to this challenging program of educational exhibits, hands-on work shops and nature shows. What better way, I thought, to celebrate all that this world premier university gives to our community. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

SUMMER OLYMPICS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I suggest that the United States boycott the Summer 2008 Olympics to let the whole world know that it is occupying Iraq for five years and also supporting Israel that has been occupying Palestine for 60 years. Only then the world would know how evil occupation is.  

Mina Davenport 

• 

ISRAEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anne White writes that Gaza is under siege by Israel, but does not want to admit that the Israeli cities, Sderot and Ashkelon, and all Israeli villages within their range are under siege by Gaza’s duly elected government, Hamas. In fact, it is only because of the Gazan siege of Israel, that Israel has felt the need to take counter measures. White feels that Israel is “collectively punishing” Gazans when it does not deliver food or health services to them. Israel actually delivers both in abundance, though Lord knows why. Israel is under no more obligation to trade with a neighboring country, Gaza, with which it is at war, than the United States had responsibility for the humanitarian needs of the Germans during World War II. The moral is, as it should be, that if you willfully wage war on your neighbor, you shall suffer the inevitable consequences. If Gazans want to trade with Israel, and receive the benefits of Israeli fuel, medicine, food, and water, it might behoove them to stop “collectively punishing” Israelis with incessant rocket and terror attacks. Most recently, Gazans killed the drivers of two Israeli fuel trucks that were merely trying to deliver fuel to them. What were they thinking? Only the rabid bite the hand that feeds them. Gaza has two borders, one with Israel and the other with Egypt. However, White neglects to mention the Egyptian “collective punishment” of Gaza. That border, though recently breached for a few days, is now once again hermetically sealed, with no fuel, food, or medicine going through it. Apparently, Egyptians feel no need to offer Gazans much of anything, and White feels no need to protest. No propaganda points there for White. The commodities that flow freely through the Egypt-Gaza border are arms and explosives, which traverse beneath that border in Hamas’ extensive system of smuggling tunnels. White no doubt rejoices at that free trade. 

John Gertz 

• 

THE STATIST MIND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent rant of Mr. Smith from Jersey is a good illustration of the statist mind (?) at work. Eighteen-year-olds can go to war and can vote but they shouldn’t be allowed to drink or purchase firearms ? By what crazy paternalistic nonlogic? I’ve researched the laws in the major urban areas where most of the crime occurs and of course it is not as easy to acquire a gun as the Smith ilk would have us believe. Furthermore guns are most often used to prevent crime which includes killing. John R. Lott’s book More Guns, Less Crime documents this in copious detail. 

As for hunting, the alternative is large scale animal starvation and animal predation against each other. That is usually a far more horrible, drawn out death than that which occurs by hunters. This is a hard fact for the animal “rights” crowd to swallow but it’s true. Raw nature is not a wonderful place. 

Speaking of less than wonderful places, Mr. Smith’s New Jersey is so hated by its own residents that 49 percent would like to move out according to a recent Harper’s Index. Another statist high-tax hellhole. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

OAKLAND CULTURE WARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to a recent Undercurrents column by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor: 

Firstly, the concept that the laws of a city should be ignored simply because these laws either do not exist or were not enforced in the country from which one comes, is absurd! Whether this is given the okay by the current mayor or chief of police is immaterial. If those in this “culture” wish the laws changed, then go through the proper procedures to get the laws altered for everyone in the city, not just those in some special culture. 

One of the byproducts of the hip-hop culture is the contagious concept that no one should “snitch” to the police. Do you support that concept as well? 

The laws of the City of Oakland should be applied equally to all. You are apparently implying that each cultural area within the city should have its own independent set of laws. I consider this inherently ridiculous! 

Oakland police officers have long been trained in the various cultures (which I support). However, requesting that any officers working in one specific cultural area must speak another language not realistic. This would result in a separate little police department and definitely would not contribute to the assimilation of this culture into the overall American culture. English is the spoken language in the United States, like it or not. 

Lastly, regardless of the language, shaking a knife of any kind in the face of any police officer in any country will no doubt bring negative results to the knife bearer. 

Dave Hunter 

Sergeant of Police (retired)  

Oakland 

• 

IT’S NOT ABOUT RESPECT,  

IT’S ABOUT CULTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor justifies thug disrespect by trying to frame it as a “culture war.” Since he caricatured my campaign for City Council, let me correct his misrepresentations when he writes: 

“In a recent League of Women Voters forum with candidates for Oakland City Council’s at-large seat, for example, candidate Charles Pine—who is campaigning on a law-and-order platform—talked of how crime and violence are ruining Oakland, mentioning the problems of ‘sideshow culture’ and ‘boom boxes’ in the same breath. Boom boxes?” (April 11) 

First of all, I am not a law-and-order ideologue. I do call for increasing Oakland’s police force, currently half the size of most major cities, to a modest 1,100. This is not a program of “law and order” at all times and in all places. Would Mr. Allen-Taylor tell Atlanta, Boston, St. Louis and all those other cities to cut their police forces in half? Then their residents could live and die as we do in Oakland. All we want in Oakland is the relative peace of an average American city. 

Second, I referred not to boom boxes but to boom cars, vehicles equipped with speakers that blast hundreds of watts of pounding bass. “Boom car” is a street term; perhaps Mr. Allen-Taylor would like to get out of his office more often. 

Like thousands of Oakland residents, I need relief. One supporter of my candidacy, Louis Hagler, M.D., has published in medical journals on the health problems that noise pollution exacerbates, from stress to heart attacks. (See www.orpn.org for his reports.) For my part, I want to sit in my living room without boom car after boom car causing stomach pain and making it impossible to enjoy an hour of peace. These vehicles, besides violating California law, are an instrument of the culture of disrespect, which is very different from a “culture war.” 

Basically, Mr. Allen-Taylor fails to realize that no cultural tradition makes it OK to punch other people, whether with fist or sonic sledgehammer. 

Charles Pine 

Oakland 

• 

WEDGE ISSUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is no fan of the latest anti-gay initiative; the real fans and promoters of this measure are Republicans and social conservatives ("Governor to oppose amendment to ban same-sex marriage,” April 12). 

The Republican National Committee is pumping money into California, backing a voter initiative confronting same-sex marriage, figuring this hot-button issue will stoke the fires of unrest in the GOP base and entice moderates and independents to go to the polls, and while they’re at it they’ll vote for John McCain. 

The ballot measure is another wedge issue being used by the election savvy GOP to short-change and confuse Californians and promote their presidential candidate. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

The Berkeley Daily Planet accepts letters to the editor and commentary page submissions at opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com and at 3023A Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705. Letters should be no more than 400 words in length; commentaries should be no more than 1,000 words in length. Deadline for Tuesday edition is 5 p.m. Sunday; deadline for Friday edition is 5 p.m. Wednesday. Please include name, address and phone number for contact purposes. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

The recent disclosure of a memo by Boalt Law School faculty member John Yoo has given that school and the University of California itself a long overdue public relations nightmare. “Overdue” because quite enough was known about Yoo’s role in justifying the Bush regime’s claims to the dictatorial powers it has taken that a small group of concerned citizens held a weekly vigil outside his class several years ago. That vigil was almost entirely ignored by faculty and students too hurried or plugged in to their iPods to pause or take a leaflet let alone join. When Fernando Botero’s horrific paintings of torture came to Doe Library, few faculty members on panels organized to discuss them mentioned that the man largely responsible for the atrocities Botero depicted is a campus colleague. But when the New York Times published an editorial (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune on April 5) with the clause “Yoo, who inexplicably teaches law at the University of California,” mud finally stuck to Alma Mater’s teflon robes, and the administration had to act.  

Boalt Dean Christopher Edley, Jr. wrote a position paper posted prominently on the University’s home page that I consider a masterpiece of judicious temporizing, concluding that “Absent [commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty] no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.”  

I am no expert on the Nuremberg Tribunals and the international criminal laws formulated to ensure that atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and Japanese would never happen again, but surely there must be someone on the besmirched Boalt Hall faculty or one of its sister institutions who could pass such judgment. That Professor Yoo has not yet been convicted of criminal acts is no reason to remain silent on the possibility of his having done so. Academic freedom cuts both ways: faculty bloggers may debate among themselves what should be done about their infamous colleague, but they have been impressively discrete about publicly criticizing him until the latest memo and a clause in the New York Times forced the point.  

That succinct clause bears more consideration than Dean Edley’s voluminous rationale for letting sleeping dogs lie: why is a person whose legal opinions have subverted the U.S. Constitution teaching constitutional law at the University of California? Do his colleagues share culpability? In her April 11 editorial, Becky O’Malley asks the kind of question that Edley and other faculty need to answer: “who saddled their institution with this infamous character in the first place?” Furthermore, how did he get tenure? Is a university with such a professor “worthy of distinction?” 

I understand the reluctance of faculty to wake the mastiff of the California Loyalty Oath once used by reactionaries to maul liberals, but John Yoo presumably signed it to obtain his job. The signers of that oath vow to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Such enemies include those in the executive branch, including themselves. To recommend or teach the Constitution’s subversion in the name of a “unitary executive” violates that oath. 

Gray Brechin received his bachelor’s, master’s degree and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and is a visiting scholar in the Geography Department.

The small number of Bus Rapid Transit supporters (one third or less of those who spoke) who showed up at the Planning Commission public hearing on BRT on April 9 spent much of their time urging the commission to endorse a “preferred alternative” route for BRT so AC Transit can move ahead with finalizing the environmental impact report on the project. 

AC Transit has indeed proposed several actual “alternatives” for BRT routing in the Southside, north of Dwight Way, and in the downtown. It is important for the city to scrutinize those options and, at least, determine which ones are less workable and should definitely be taken off the table as discussion continues. 

However, the larger issue that went completely unaddressed at the meeting is the fact that AC Transit has proposed no “alternatives” for the longest stretch of the proposed BRT route through Berkeley, Telegraph Avenue south of Dwight. 

From Dwight Way into Oakland, all of the BRT “alternatives” assume that Telegraph Avenue should become a two-lane street, with the center of the roadway given over to buses only.  

(A further assumption is that all un-signalized cross streets along Telegraph—including several in Berkeley—should either get full signals, or be closed to cross traffic and left-turns.) 

In essence, planning commissioners should understand that selecting any of the north of Dwight alignments for further study also entails selecting as the city’s “preferred alternative” narrowing Telegraph to two lanes and disruptively packing every intersection with either unneeded new signals, or traffic barriers. 

BRT-as-is supporters and AC Transit will seize on the city action as a de facto endorsement of bus-only lanes along Telegraph, whether the Berkeley policy makers intend that or not. 

If city councilmembers and planning commissioners want to retain the flexibility of saying no to the presumption of bus-only lanes on Telegraph—as two thirds of the speakers at the public hearing urged them to do—they need to make it clear to AC Transit that the selection of a preferred alternative route for BRT north of Dwight is explicitly not a blanket endorsement of narrowing Telegraph south of Dwight. 

There’s another issue worth considering in the BRT debate; the lesson of BART planning from the 1960s.  

In the early 1960s BART presented East Bay communities with its construction plan. In Berkeley, there would be a BART line along the present day route, three stations—two of them “elevated”—and a stingy three-quarters-of-a-mile of subway beneath downtown Berkeley. 

Elsewhere, both in north Berkeley and along south Shattuck, the BART tracks would be obtrusively “elevated” as they are indeed today in Albany, El Cerrito, and most of Oakland. 

Berkeley officials and citizens welcomed the concept of BART, but objected to the elevated subways and huge above-ground stations, quite correctly worrying they would be a detriment to the town, particularly the adjacent neighborhoods and businesses. 

But according to Berkeley’s mayor at the time, “it was not clear whether BART’s organization was adequate for its assignment…by the spring of 1964 it had become evident that BART held the single-minded attitude of the construction engineer with a job to do. Individuals and cities affected…appealed to BART to modify its plans or consider a new idea. Almost invariably the BART staff response was polite but negative, followed by a corresponding decision of the board of directors.” 

Berkeley’s leaders persisted, and after prolonged negotiation and struggle—and one successful citizen lawsuit—they were able to achieve the current BART arrangement, with the tracks underground from one end of the town to the other.  

Berkeley's underground subway, with costs scrutinized every step of the way by Berkeley officials, even proved much less expensive to construct than BART had projected, while in other communities that had accepted BART promises and plans without question, facilities went way over budget. 

Berkeley’s insistence on a better plan for BART meant that places like Ohlone Park, the Karl Linn Garden, and the North Berkeley Senior Center—where, ironically, last week’s BRT hearing was held—could be created in the long term. 

No Berkeley residential neighborhoods and business blocks were blighted by the rumble and screech of BART trains passing by overhead.  

In sum, the transportation objectives of BART were achieved and the system works well in and through Berkeley. But, thanks to Berkeley, and no thanks to the intransigent and hidebound transit agency, the design of the transit infrastructure through town was modified and gave Berkeley a better result. 

Forty years later that is, in essence, what BRT critics envision. 

A more sensible, vastly less expensive, and less disruptive public transportation system that meets community goals without making the community a less livable place. 

It remains to be seen whether a habitually inflexible regional transit agency—this time AC Transit—will continue to block the way to a better solution and whether, in response, Berkeley officials have the fortitude of their 1960s predecessors to act to improve transit while also protecting our community’s streets, neighborhoods, and businesses. 

Steven Finacom is a Berkeley resident. 

No matter how you look at it, Barak Obama’s March 18 speech on race was a Category 5 news event; it did for political reporting what Katrina did for disaster reporting. It lacked the ugly pictures but it generated a comparable multitude of comments buoyed by passion and collectively covering every conceivable aspect, from the super-sublime to the hyper-ridiculous. On the left it was rated breathtaking, historic, momentous, from the center it was deemed provocative, memorable, moving and conservatives tagged it hypocritical, duplicitous, deceptive. Titled “A More Perfect Union,” the speech arrived in the aftermath of a hurricane of publicity about the passionate preachments of a man of God, Obama’s pastor, but the devastation that came later was entirely an act of man, as was Katrina’s.  

I read the text the day after Obama delivered it. I have since read or viewed several dozen reports and commentaries in print and on TV but to my surprise none noticed the simple fact that Obama himself was not the subject of his speech and he was not talking directly about race. (Disclosure: As best I can tell I am one-sixteenth African which does not make me an Obama fan perhaps because up to now I have managed to ignore everything in this obscenely elongated presidential campaign.) 

Reading the speech left me impressed. A few days later a friend forwarded the YouTube video of the speech and I was startled and excited seeing and listening to Obama’s mastery of rhetoric and oratory. Since then, provoked by afore mentioned Katrina-like coverage, I’ve examined what he said more closely. 

The manner of his opening words suggested to me that, although he was dead serious, he would rather not have been obliged to speak on the subject of race. I think that’s why he started by restating his reason for entering the campaign which was “…to continue the long march [toward] a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous nation.” Then, acknowledging the extraordinary intelligence and the astounding ignorance of Americans, he proceeded to cite the need for unity and justice using the best available evidence, himself. Thus, he saw in himself the personification of America’s yearning to be united, just, equal, free and prosperous. 

That he was not talking about race was implied by a self-revelatory statement that came a little later: “I have brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents…” In other words, he is less a black American than a representative American. “…and for as long as I live I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.” In other words, his story is America’s story. 

It took a little over 37 minutes, applauses included, for Barak Obama to scan centuries of North American history, highlight certain socio-economic hurts and make his points. To extract deeper meaning from oratorical flourishes, one must disregard the worn out language of journalists and pundits: It’s time to close the racial divide, time for a national conversation on race, etc. Instead, review the historical context of Obama’s subject and place his points in perspective. 

Imagine a tapestry representing three millennia of western history in which is interwoven throughout a thread showing a few haves exploiting masses of have-nots: slaves preparing dinner parties so their Greek masters could engage in all-night philosophical disputations (symposia), Greeks in turn being enslaved by Romans, indigenous American tribes enslaving individuals from other indigenous tribes, Africans bartering for Africans to be shipped across the Atlantic where they are unloaded and sold as chattel to European colonizers.  

From this perspective, the American portion of the larger historical tapestry shows its original sin, legalized injustice and the unfulfilled promise of equality. Briefly stated, an America in which one class has more (today by a factor greater than ten) is neither just nor united. 

From the perspective of his African-American persona Obama observed in detail how “…black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations”. He then stepped into the persona of his white heritage and acknowledged that black anger was met by well-founded white resentment. Oscillating between the black and the white perspectives he moved to a position above the racially dividing crevasse. 

We can accept the political landscape: let racism distract us and halt our advance toward a more perfect and more just union. Or we can with an all-out effort move to provide for our common needs; this time, we need a united effort.  

We can accept current economic policy that “…favors the few over the many…” Or we can work together to create government policies freed from corporate control and unshackled by lobbyists and special interests. 

In the end Obama’s speech may or may not help him achieve his goal; it has, nevertheless, helped reshape the political landscape; it replaces the old story with a new one, his. 

Marvin Chachere is a San Pablo resident. 

Running for elected office—especially for local elected office—can be an extraordinarily stressful time, as candidates struggle to get their messages heard and understood amidst the general cacophony. 

Thus it is not surprising that Oakland City Council at-large candidate Charles Pine takes me to task in the Daily Planet’s letters section for what he says is my misquoting of one his statements during a recent League of Women Voters candidates’ forum. 

In an April 11 UnderCurrents column, I wrote that Mr. Pine had mentioned sideshow culture and “boom boxes” specifically while talking about how crime and violence are ruining Oakland. In rebuttal, Mr. Pine writes: “I referred not to boom boxes but to boom cars, vehicles equipped with speakers that blast hundreds of watts of pounding bass. ‘Boom car’ is a street term; perhaps Mr. Allen-Taylor would like to get out of his office more often.” 

My notes from the debate reflect “boom boxes” rather than “boom car,” but I’ll defer to Mr. Pines’ memory—since he was the one who said it—and apologize for the error. I have one or two things to quibble about concerning Mr. Pine’s political platform. Whether or not he is more concerned about loud music coming from a handheld speakerbox or a moving car is not one of them. 

(I’ll offer no rebuttal to his “get out of his office more often” remark. In the absence of any direct knowledge of me or my work habits—which I don’t believe Mr. Pine has—such a comment is, well, silly.) 

But the exchange highlights what I believe is a more serious problem with this campaign season. For the first time in many years, the inner East Bay has a wide array of hotly contested political races, from Senate District 9 (now held by the outgoing Don Perata) to Assembly District 14 (now held by the outgoing Assemblymember Loni Hancock) to the crowded race Mr. Pine is running in—at-large Oakland City Council—to challenges to Oakland City Councilmembers in several districts as well as serious races for the newly empowered Oakland School Board. 

Unfortunately, the process hasn’t kept up with what could be very lively and informative campaigns. 

Perhaps with no clear plan, but only by force of habit, we have developed two major types of forums--sometimes optimistically called “debates”--by which candidates are allowed to present their views, side-by-side, to the public. The first are the endorsement sessions sponsored by various organizations. The second are the forums sponsored by the League of Women Voters, most of which are taped at Oakland City Hall, and then rebroadcast over Oakland’s cable station, KTOP. For different reasons, the two venues have identical problems: neither give the public much of an opportunity to explore and understand the differences between the candidates. 

Although none of the candidates will talk about this publicly--for obvious reasons--some candidates privately complain that decisions made in the endorsement debates have nothing to do with anything said during the debates. And how could it be otherwise?  

In March of 2006, I went over to the Alameda County Democratic Lawyers Club endorsement meeting on the Jack London waterfront, in part to hear the debate between Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, since it was the only time the two men had planned a head-to-head matchup in their race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for California Attorney General. But I also wanted to hear the debate between Sandré Swanson and Oakland City Attorney John Russo in their race for the 16th Assembly District Democratic Party nomination. 

The Brown-Delgadillo AG race got all of the attention in the next day’s Oakland Tribune, getting the first 15 paragraphs and the headline. Concentrating on the Brown-Delgadillo matchup was to be expected in the city’s newspaper, with Oakland’s mayor one of the candidates for statewide office. What was interesting was that the Tribune gave no coverage to the other races involved in the lawyers club debate. Following details of the Brown-Delgadillo debate, the Tribune story said that “Also debating at Friday’s event…”, thereafter merely giving a listing of the races and the candidates. 

Unfortunately, the debate itself was little better. Nine candidates in four separate races were asked to present one-minute answers to various posed questions as the assembled attorneys sipped wine and munched on lunch. It is hard to believe that those attorneys could glean much from the limited answers to limited questions given by Mr. Russo and Mr. Swanson. Instead, as candidates privately complain about the endorsement meeting process in general (not the Alameda attorneys’ process in particular, but all of them), the only way for an organization member to give a fair and conscientious vote is by having come to the endorsement meeting with their minds already made up. 

The endorsement meeting debates, in other words, are not designed to unveil information about the campaigns, but only to put a neat and pleasing cover on a process wherein the decisions—if not a foregone conclusion—are reached by the membership resorting to other means to get their information. Nothing underhanded or wrong implied in this. Only that for voters looking to make their decision based upon how the candidates answer detailed questions head-to-head, the endorsement debates are not the best way. 

Unfortunately, although the League of Women Voters candidate forums do not contain an endorsement at the end, these forums suffer from a similar problem: too many candidates, too many questions, not enough time. Typical League candidate forums run an hour apiece—whether they involve two candidates or five—with the candidates given a minute to answer questions. 

The League forums have an added twist. In an attempt to ask questions that the public, ourselves, are interested in, the League solicits written questions from the audience prior to and during the debates and, after screening and sorting, those are the questions which are asked. 

There are two problems with this type of format. 

The first is that, bless their hearts, most people don’t know how to ask a question in a political forum. Most of the questions allow the candidates to give a generalized answer if they want, without getting to the heart of the matter. And sometimes, while the questions may be of some interest, they are not of enough interest to have been included in the debate for that campaign. 

In a recent League debate in the Oakland Council District Five race, for example, in which incumbent Ignacio De La Fuente is being challenged by two opponents, the candidates were asked about their position on term limits for Oakland City Council. Mr. De La Fuente has served 16 years on City Council, and perhaps the question was aimed, in some way, at that fact. But term limits are generally unpopular in Oakland and, to my knowledge, there has not been a serious attempt either to bring the matter before City Council or to bring it to the voters in the form of a ballot measure. As such, it caught the candidates by surprise, particularly challenger Mario Juarez, who had to answer it first. 

But more important, the one-and-done type of questioning format for the League of Women Voters forums does not allow for follow-up questions, either from the audience or the moderator, to make sure that, at the very least, the original question was understood and answered. (I hate to jump on the League about this, since they are the only group stepping up to the plate to provide non-endorsement forums in these campaigns. Without them, we’d have nothing. Sorry guys, and please take this as constructive criticism.) 

We return to Mr. Pine. 

In his letter to the Daily Planet complaining about my references to his campaign, Mr. Pine writes that while he is not a law-and-order ideologue (something I never accused him of), he does “call for increasing Oakland’s police force, currently half the size of most major cities, to a modest 1,100. … Would Mr. Allen-Taylor tell Atlanta, Boston, St. Louis and all those other cities to cut their police forces in half? Then their residents could live and die as we do in Oakland. All we want in Oakland is the relative peace of an average American city.” 

I have visited Mr. Pine’s websites, both for his campaign and for the Oakland Residents For Peaceful Neighborhoods of which he is the co-founder, and have seen this particular argument before. On the front page of his campaign website, he writes that Oakland has 18 police officers per 10,000 residents, only half the number that “Atlanta (35), Boston (34), Cleveland (34), St. Louis (39) and most major cities have. Fewer than San Francisco. Fewer than Los Angeles.” 

But judging how many police officers Oakland should be gearing towards by looking at how many officers are in other cities is something like a family deciding what kind of car they should have by walking around the neighborhood and seeing what is parked in other peoples’ garages. The question is not what the other cities are doing. The question is, at the present time, what can Oakland afford? 

The cities cited by Mr. Pine--Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles--are all major regional retail centers, with no city of comparable size in their vicinity to provide competition. Thus, they have enormous tax bases to draw upon that is not available to Oakland. Much of the retail sales tax revenue in Oakland that might go to Mr. Pine’s increased police force—or to other city services, if that’s what we decide we want—instead go the retail mall developments in Emeryville, San Leandro, Alameda, Hayward, and other surrounding East Bay cities, and across the bridge to San Francisco. The question for Oakland City Council candidates is not how they would spend money we don’t currently have—an interesting exercise, but not very probative—but how they would gather new revenue to make spending for their preferred programs possible. 

Alternatively, candidates—beginning with Mr. Pine—might want to say, in detail, what existing programs they would cut or city positions they would end in order to make up the shortfall. 

If you think I am picking on Mr. Pine, I am not. He is an easy target only because he is one of the few candidates this campaign season—or any campaign season—who has committed himself to a specific number and a specific solution, and has not tried to hide behind generalities. I admire that, even while in disagreement. It is my hope that with this dearth of able and qualified candidates in so many fields, we could figure out a way to have a campaign that could draw out more of the differences and specifics from candidates, so that the public could be in a better position to make an informed choice. 

So far, we haven’t. 

John Albert Marshall (1868-1924), commonly known as J.A., was a small and hot-tempered man. In 1906 he had two brushes with the law—one as a recalcitrant witness for the defense, threatening to thrash a much larger prosecuting attorney, the other when he was convicted of battery after pummeling John Koch, owner of a delicatessen at 2520 Bancroft Way. 

A Berkeley resident since 1895, Marshall began his profitable career in building as a cement contractor (the material was euphemistically known as “artificial stone”). On Jan. 1, 1896, the Berkeley Herald credited him with having paved nine-tenths of Berkeley’s new sidewalks the previous year. His stamp is still faintly visible on the northeast corner of Hillegass Avenue and Parker Street, across the street from his own residence. 

By the early 1900s, Marshall had branched out into real estate development. Among his enterprises were two of Telegraph Avenue’s earliest business blocks, the Marshall Apartments (1904) and the Alta Vista Apartments (1907), on the southwest and northeast corners of Telegraph and Bancroft, respectively. He also constructed many private residences-some for clients, others speculatively. His own home address kept changing as he completed a new house, lived in it for a while, then sold it and moved on. 

In 1897, when Marshall set out to build “the prettiest home in Berkeley,” he was a 29-year-old newlywed. Whether his ultimate aim was to please the bride or to embark on a speculative venture, Marshall spared no expense. The builder he hired was Jonas Irving Bowers, a prosperous carpenter who would accumulate considerable real estate holdings in Berkeley before decamping for Southern California. To design the house, Marshall selected the sought-after firm of Cunningham Bros., two young architects then at the height of their fame. 

Harry L. (1869-1919) and Gerald C. (1872-1900) Cunningham were born in Calcutta, India. Their father, a captain in the British Royal Engineers, died before Gerald was born. His widow and the boys came to California in 1874, settling in Oakland. 

The brothers began their architectural apprenticeship in their teens (Gerald at 14). First Harry, then Gerald worked as draftsmen for the prominent San Francisco architect John J. Clark. At the age of 20, Harry transferred to the office of A.W. Pattiani, a fashionable East Bay designer and builder, but in 1891 both brothers disappeared from Oakland for two years. In 1893, Gerald opened his own practice in Portland, Oregon, but the pair reappeared in Oakland in 1894, this time as partners. The first buildings bearing their combined name date from that year. 

“Although both members of the firm were young then,” stated the Oakland Tribune in its obituary for Gerald in June 1900, “they had attained to a coveted position in their chosen profession and had built more than their share of the modern structures of this State and in various places along the coast.” The Cunninghams’ best-known Berkeley building was McKinley School (1896) on Dwight Way. 

Gerald Cunningham was considered one of the best pen-and-ink artists in California, and his renderings paved the way for many public commissions, from the Modesto High School to the Contra Costa County Courthouse in Martinez, listed in the National Register of Historic Places but erroneously attributed to William Mooser, who designed the adjacent jail. 

The firm’s progress was cut short by Gerald’s death from cerebral meningitis. He was 27 years old and had been married only two months. Harry then brought in Matthew Politeo as a partner, and the two went on to design Art Nouveau buildings in San Francisco and Oakland, as well as many of the early farm buildings on the U.C. Davis campus. 

J.A. Marshall’s house, still standing at 2601 Hillegass Avenue and a City of Berkeley Landmark, began its life as an opulent 8-room residence. Designed in the Colonial Revival style, it is graced with massive corner pilasters and an L-shaped porch supported by six Ionic columns. Extensive ornamental balustrades, only some of which remain, lined the porch above and below. A Palladian window, since replaced, was set above a bay window in the façade. The property extended all the way to Benvenue Avenue, with tennis courts, windmill, a barn, and a carriage house in the rear. 

In December 1899, less than two years after the house was completed, John Marshall put the “prettiest home in Berkeley” on the market. The asking price must have been salty, since the next owner was Erik Olof Lindblom (1857-1928), a newly minted millionaire. 

One of the “Three Lucky Swedes” who discovered gold near Nome, Alaska, Lindblom has been the subject of many biographies, as well as inspiring the character of Dextry in Rex Beach’s novel “The Spoilers,” which was twice adapted for the screen. Piecing together details from variously credible accounts, one gathers that Lindblom’s father, a school teacher in Dalarna, died early, leaving his widow and children in penury. After completing his public schooling at the age of 14, Erik learned tailoring, and three years later began traversing Europe as an itinerant journeyman. Spending some time in London, he obtained additional schooling at the YMCA Polytechnic and met his first wife, Mary Anne Smith, a tailor’s daughter. The two were married in August 1886 and sailed to New York a month later. Their daughter, Brita Margaret, was born in New York in December 1887. By the time their son, Olof Henry, was born in 1890, they were living in Pocatello, Idaho. A few years later, they had moved to Montana, where Lindblom was naturalized in 1894. 

When the news of a gold discovery in Kotzebue Sound swept the nation in 1897, Lindblom was eking out a living as a tailor on 23rd Avenue in east Oakland. Already interested in mining and having attended Professor George Davidson’s lectures on Alaska, he borrowed money and, on April 27, 1898, shipped before the mast on the bark Alaska, which carried prospectors to the new gold fields. Mary Anne was left in Oakland to work as a seamstress at a dry goods store, earning $1 a day. 

Upon reaching the Bering Sea, the Alaska was obliged to wait for the ice to break up. Lindblom had learned from whalers that the Kotzebue yields were meager, and he seized the opportunity to jump ship at Grantley Harbor, starting on foot for Golovin Bay. Surviving several mishaps, he arrived there three weeks later with the aid of an Inuit trader. 

After prospecting on his own for several weeks, Lindblom met John Brynteson and Jafet Lindeberg. In stormy weather, the three embarked on a 100-mile sea voyage to the mouth of the Snake River. They reached their goal on September 15, 1898 and a week later struck gold at Anvil Creek, quickly filing as many claims as they could in their own names as well as in others’. The Nome gold rush had begun. 

Lindblom invested his proceeds from the Nome bonanza in U.S. and Mexican mines, and holdings in banks, transportation, and real estate. He would become sole owner of the Parral Electric Light, Telephone & Water Co. in Chihuahua, Mexico; president of the Swedish-American Bank of San Francisco; vice-president of the Pioneer Mining Co. of Nome, Alaska (incorporated in Seattle); director of the Davidson-Ward Lumber Co.; and owner of the Claremont Hotel. 

Along with wealth came a flamboyant lifestyle, much travel, at least two automobile accidents caused by his reckless driving, and a goodly number of lawsuits. Some of these were brought by claim jumpers, others by professionals and tradesmen who had not been paid, but the lengthiest of all, lasting nearly six years and keeping 18 lawyers employed, was the Lindbloms’ divorce trial. 

It began in February 1902, when Mary Anne charged her husband with extreme cruelty. “Mrs. Lindblom says that since her husband acquired his wealth he has been consumed with a desire to pull her hair out by the roots, that he has threatened to shoot her head off, and that on one occasion he forcibly removed a handful of her tresses and she was compelled to go to the Fabiola Hospital for treatment,” reported the San Francisco Call on March 1, 1902. The same article cited “lively stories of how Lindblom used to spend $2000 on a little ‘time’ with some of his friends, and then take his wife out to a dinner consisting of a plate of soup.” 

Lindblom quickly found a new life partner, taking up with Hanna Sadie Sparman—a tall, blond and blue-eyed 18-year-old daughter of a Swedish basket manufacturer. Twenty-seven years her senior, the new boyfriend moved into the Sparman family’s Oakland home. They made a handsome couple, apparently inseparable and spending much time in travel. They were married in Bellingham, Washington on June 7, 1907, a month after Mary Anne was granted her final divorce decree. 

As part of the divorce settlement, the first Mrs. Lindblom-now declaring herself a widow-received the house at 2601 Hillegass Ave. Soon thereafter, she rented it to Wigginton E. Creed, attorney (at the time he was Louis Titus’s law partner), capitalist, and future president of PG&E. In 1911, after traveling for a few years, Mary Anne built an apartment house on the eastern part of the property, at Benvenue and Parker. Two years later she sandwiched a pair of flats between the apartments and the house. 

Further augmenting her income in 1916, Mary Anne divided her house into two flats, reserving the lower floor for herself and Brita. Erik, meanwhile, had allied himself with Frank C. Havens in 1914, injecting funds into the Claremont Hotel (begun in 1906 and still unfinished) and completing it in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Three year later, he took complete possession of it. He would live in the hotel until his death, and the hotel would remain in the Lindblom family’s possession until 1937. 

The Marshall-Lindblom House will be open for viewing on BAHA’s Spring House Tour, May 4, 2008, from 1 pm to 5 pm. 

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

Beautiful Benvenue, Elegant Hillegass 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Spring House Tour 

Sunday, May 4, 2008 

1 pm to 5 pm 

Tickets: $35; BAHA members $25 

(510) 841-2242 

berkeleyheritage.com

So I was licking nectar off the base of an orchid blossom the other night ... See?That’s why people keep pets, in which category I place houseplants. Most of us don’t live the wildlands any more, which of course is why they’re still “wildlands,” and there’s all this unpredictable, unrepeatable, unmediated experience we don’t get to have every minute of every day.  

There are so many things people don’t write into literature (including scientific literature) or nature documentaries. Why the heck were our four box turtles alerting in unison, all facing the same way, all with their necks stretched at the same angle, for a good three minutes while we were eating dinner Sunday night? I haven’t seen them behave like that since Bruce played us a wonderful morning serenade on the uillean pipes some years back.  

Memo: Box turtles are very very interested in bagpipe music. We haven’t had the intestinal fortitude to try the Great Pipes in the dining room yet, and maybe never will. Great Pipes, like bombards, belong outdoors. 

By some standards, of course, so do box turtles and cymbidium orchids. I can make a case for ex situ conservation of both, especially after seeing so many box turtles crushed along roadsides back East. My everlasting curse on people who do that. May they tread on their own intestines someday soon. 

There are ex situ conversations to be had, too. I’d bet I can find out somewhere what’s going on with the cymbidiums in the parlor just now, but I wouldn’t have known to look for it without having seen the clear drops of nectar in such odd places on each flower, reflected in the lamplight the other night. After a couple days’ concentration, they’re intensely sweet.  

But I couldn’t detect any nectar where I thought it should be, inside the throat of the flower. My first assumption was that it was a My-cup-runneth-over situation, since there aren’t any nectar-eating birds or bugs from the home range flitting about our flat to drink the stuff before it got to me. Dammit. 

Now I’m going to need to chase that down, that intricate puzzle of sex and deception and time that made those flowers what they are, so incredibly erotic, at close range, even to us animals. What a reach across eons of beings! I hope somebody has written about it in the scientific literature, so I can see the next observational step—the hard one, that takes hours and days of observation and charting.  

While I’m standing on the shoulders of those giants, let me say that I’ve seen enough painted lady butterflies on Point Reyes, in inland Marin, and right here in Berkeley to think that there’s a migration going on right now.  

If you notice those fluttering shapes while you’re out walking, if you sit in your yard or a park and watch awhile, note how they tend to fly over, not around, obstacles, if you’ve planted nectar-source flowers to sustain them overnight, you can watch the spectacle too. 

That’s a reason we keep gardens. 

As you go for that morning jog ( You are jogging every morning, right? Immediately after that low-fat, lemon, poppy-seed, caramel muffin and the soy latte) you probably note amidst the quiet and still of the neighborhood that there are little puffs of smoke that come from the tops of every house and business. 

If you stop long enough to think about it (as a child might do more than we busy adults) you’ll realize that there are no fires in fireplaces and that, probably, there are no similar fires comprised of oil and smoke being generated in all those buildings. What all that stacks are actually emitting in our California landscape is mostly steam (I mention the locale because there are oil-fired devices that really are smoky in other parts of the globe). 

As though unchanged from the 19th century we are a culture full of steam generating equipment. While we’re not all running little steam engines in our houses, most of us are running incredibly simple heating devices that use burned natural gas to heat our water, cook our food and heat our houses. These devices have some requirements and some problems that are peculiarly endemic to this heating method and while much of this is beyond the technical capacity of the typical homeowner, you might be surprised at how much of this you can understand and how many problems you can begin to diagnose for yourself. 

First, let’s understand a little about what natural gas is. The gas that comes to your house is primarily methane. The same thing our bodies, and many organisms on earth produce as a product of digestion. It’s a small molecule just filled with energy and when combusted with a little oxygen, it produces lots of warmth as well as quite a bit of water vapor. That’s the steam you see above all the roofs. It’s not smoke at all, it’s mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide.  

That last part makes the exhaust a greenhouse gas and one reason we all want to turn off the furnace, turn down the water heater or turn off the dryer as soon as possible. The good news is that natural gas has less carbon output per unit of energy than all of the other fossil fuels by a goodly margin (30 percent less than oil and 45 percent less than coal) so we can feel pretty good about using CNG (compressed natural gas) for our heating. 

Now, back to some basic science and diagnosing your own heating devices. You may notice that when you cook in the kitchen that it steams up the windows. That’s the water vapor that the gas burners are producing. What may be less obvious is that your dryer, water heater and furnace are doing the same thing. If these devices are vented properly, you shouldn’t be seeing the steam (or the paint peeling off the wall, which actually happens sometimes when gas devices are poorly vented). 

We can use this knowledge to see if our gas devices are vented property. Let’s start with the water heater. If you have a water heater inside your living space (and it shouldn’t be reached through the bedroom or bathroom (e.g. bedroom closet)) you can check to see if it’s exhausting properly to the exterior by putting a mirror (I use my glasses) at the top of the water heater where there are air inlets just before the pipe goes upward. If you kick the unit on by running some hot water or by turning its thermostat up just a bit you can check to see if exhaust comes out of the inlets and steams up your mirror. If this is happening (and we call it spillage) you’ve got an exhaust leak and it needs to be fixed. 

By the way, it not just steam that’s coming out of the pipe. This can also include carbon monoxide, an odorless, toxic (and potentially deadly) gas as well as a range of other unpleasant hydrocarbons, so exhaust leaks are serious business. 

If you run your gas dryer empty, you can do the same test and just see if there are signs of moisture (again, use a little mirror or your glasses) around the outside of the device (especially near the vent at the rear). If you can get to your furnace, you can look at that same flue for signs of the same thing. While many furnaces don’t have “draft-diverters” (the inlets we noted on the top of the water heater) you still may see signs of spillage. 

Most furnaces have metal exhaust pipes and, again, these are carrying mostly water vapor and plenty of it. This vapor is hot when it first enters the pipe but if it has a chance to cool off too early, it will rain down inside the pipe creating all sorts of havoc. These gases also contain acidy impurities that like to eat metal and when its happening and you look in the right places, you can actually see it. I see it all the time. Sometimes so much that the exhaust pipes have actually fallen completely apart and the exhaust is just pouring out into the crawlspace below the house. If you can get to where your furnace flue is, look for signs of moisture. One of the clearest signs is a white powdery “precipitate” built up at the joints in the pipe. These are the impurities in the gas crystallized on the surface and they show us that there’s been water cooling and leaking inside. Sometimes they’ll also be lots of corrosion and you might just see a hole or crack or worse.  

All gas heating devices can be subject to these effects so it’s a really good idea to have an expert take a look at these devices every year. Still, looking and learning for yourself is a great idea as long as you remember to rely upon professionals for the final call and any work on a system like this. By the way, remember that flues get very hot. 

When I do see flues that rain inside or seem to spill, its often the result of poor configuration. Steam doesn’t stay hot for long when its asked to take a long trip on a cold day so the best flues go strait to the roof with a minimum of twists and turns. They’re also built of “double-wall” metal that acts like a thermos bottle and keeps the exhaust nice and hot for the whole trip. If you look carefully at metal flues, you can see that the double wall material has dimples where the inner and outer layers meet and locking rings at the ends. More high-tech. 

I don’t intend for grandma to use this article to diagnose her furnace problem and I always think twice before taking you down such a complex path but I still think that a little knowledge is a useful thing. You might actually see a real defect and take action or you might just be able to have a more fruitful discussion with your heating contractor the next time they come to check out your furnace. If you start out by telling your furnace guy or gal that you think that flue gases are condensing inside your furnace flue and that you’re concerned about the configuration of the flue, you can bet that they’re going to take this job very seriously (just as soon as they’ve found their eyeballs and put them back in their head). 

Who was it who said that anyone who isn’t outraged just hasn’t been paying attention? 

A week or so ago I got mail from Berkeley naturalist/writer Phila Rogers announcing the formation of a new group called Save Strawberry Canyon. It came as something of a surprise, since I hadn’t been aware that the canyon needed saving. Boy, does it ever. 

Rogers explained in a later conversation that the impetus for Save Strawberry Canyon was UC’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in general and two new ventures in particular: the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT) and the Helios Energy Research Facility. Both have received little news coverage, even in the Planet. 

Both new buildings would have enormous visual and environmental impacts. The CRT would be a high-rise structure 

sited in Blackberry Canyon, just inside the Lab’s main gate. (The Lab is already building a guest house there, without an EIR.) It has been described as the engine for future lab expansion. 

Helios is in some ways even more problematic. The new building, funded in part by BP (ex British Petroleum), would be plunked down in the heart of Strawberry Canyon, across the road from the UC Botanical Garden. Its construction would require removing 18 redwoods from the Mather Grove. 

If you want an extra level of irony, the Helios Project would be dedicated to research on renewable transportation fuel. The building would, of course, be “a model of ‘green’ construction.” 

Rogers said her group coalesced out of an event last summer, organized by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, that explored Strawberry Canyon as a cultural landscape, with walking tours led by Gray Brechin and others. Rogers and others followed up by taking Robin Freeman’s Merritt College class on the creeks of the East Bay. Save Strawberry Canyon’s leadership includes 

Lesley Emmington and Janice Thomas, both associated with BAHA; former Berkeley mayor Shirley Dean; and the legendary Sylvia McLaughlin, one of the founders of Save the Bay. 

This was shortly after the UC Regents approved the LRDP (sorry, this is going to be thick with acronyms.) Last fall, Emmington, Thomas, and other plaintiffs filed suit, claiming that the EIR for the plan was deficient in addressing air and water quality, endangered-species issues, greenhouse gas emissions, and possible alternative sites, among others. They get their day in court on May 21. 

Meanwhile, UC issued draft EIRs on CRT and Helios late last year, with comment periods during the winter holidays. Neither report has been finalized yet. The regents are scheduled to vote on both at their May 16-17 meeting at UCLA. 

That’s the bare-bones version. It all comes down to conflicting visions for the Berkeley Hills: are we going to have an even denser techno-scientific complex, or can we preserve what’s left of the hills’ open space for its scenic, cultural, and wildlife values? 

Strawberry Canyon was recognized as something special as far back as 1865, when landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted described it as “a unique and most valuable appendage to the general local attractions of the neighborhood.” When the East Bay Regional Park District was carved out of surplus EBMUD lands in 1934, the canyon, although university-owned, was considered an integral part of the matrix of parklands. 

Despite the wave of construction that began with the Radiation Laboratory, the university continued to make gestures toward preservation. In 1968, prodded by UC professor Robert L. Stebbins, a renowned authority on reptiles and amphibians, UC designated portions of the Canyon as Ecological Study Areas. 

A 1976 report by Garrett Eckbo & Associates seconded Olmsted: “The varied and rugged topography of Strawberry Canyon … has favored the establishment of a rich diversity of plant and animal life, such that Strawberry Canyon today is one of the finest natural areas of comparable size in the Bay Area.” 

The Helios Building would abut one of the Ecological Study Areas, and preempt undeveloped land that has been considered for ESA status. And both projects-and whatever else the Lab has in mind, with its wooly visions of scientific “hill towns”-would eat up huge swathes of habitat that sustain the diversity that so impressed Eckbo.  

Strawberry Canyon is not Terra Nullius. It’s home to birds of prey, migratory songbirds, bats, snakes, and tiny blind invertebrates that hide under rocks. Some of these species have protected state or federal status; others should. For all of them, and for anyone who cares about biodiversity, UC’s plans would mean an irreparable loss. 

I’ll have a lot more to say about the endangered-species issues in future columns.  

For now, if you want more information, write Save Strawberry Canyon at PO Box 1234, Berkeley 94701. I understand a web site is in the works. Or email Phila Rogers: philajane6@yahoo.com. The EIRs for the LRDP, CRT, and Helios are on the lab’s site: www. lbl.gov/Community. And they make very interesting reading. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Uncle Vanya” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through May 17. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.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. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Foxfire” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through May 11. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

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 

“Medea, A Tragedy by Euripides” Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo, Oakland , 1 block from 19th St BART. Tickets are $5-$10. 873-8800. www.oakarts.tix.com 

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 

TheatreFirst “Future Me” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through May 4. Tickets are $23-$28. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Diversity in Play” Paintings by Rita Sklar. Reception at 3 p.m. at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. www.ritasklar.com 

FILM 

“The Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi” about Chilean exiled musician Quique Cruz at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine & Lebanon” with readings by Elmaz Abinader, Barbara Berman, Alexis De Veaux, Kathy Engel, Sam Hamod, Jack Hirschman, James Scully, and Deema Shehabi. Recption at 5:30 p.m., readings at 7:30 p.m. at St. John's Church, 2727 College Ave. RSVP to 548-0542.  

Amy Arbus “The Fourth Wall” A multi-media presentation on the stories behind her most iconic images at 6:30 p.m. at Sibley Auditorium, UC Campus. For ticket information see www.fotovision.org/pages/home.php 

Amanda Nadelberg and John Sakkis read their poems for National Poetry month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Ernest Bloch Lecture with Steve Mackey on “The 21st Century and the Composer/Performer” at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Jannell Moon and Jeanne Lupton, read their poetry, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

Don Lee reads from his comic satire, “Wrack and Ruin” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Will Allen describes “War on Bugs” on the chemical industry’s deep roots in agriculture, at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Bruce Anderson reads from his new book, “The Mendocino Papers” at 7 p.m. at Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 654-2665. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friday Noon Concert, with University Baroque Ensemble at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

April Paik, Melissa Lin, violins, Garrett McLean, viola and Ting Chin, 'cello, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery 2911 Claremont Ave. Tickets are $10. 848-1228. giorgigallery.org 

Spotlight on Local Composers New Works by John Blakelock at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 845-1350. 

UC Berkeley’s The Movement Spring Showcase, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $9 at the door.  

Berkeley Dance Project 2008 Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through April 27 at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-8827. theater.berkeley.edu 

Los Boleros in a Havana Dance Party, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Back Porch Pickers at 7:30 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets are $12-$15, children under 16 $5.  

Rebecca Coupe-Franks Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Youssoupha Sidibe at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$14. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Acoustic Son at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

California Guitar Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Andrew Sammons Solo Guitar, jazz, swing, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Extreme Noise Terror, Stormcrow, Strong Intention at 7:30 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Pills and Jackets at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Devin the Dude, hip hop, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15-$18. 548-1159.  

Terrence Brewer Quartet with Lorca Hart at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Billy Cobham & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 19 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Betsy Stern, songs in Spanish, French and English, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Active Arts Theatre, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. www.activeartstheatre.org 

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 

Best of the Bay Comedy Series with Derrick Ellis, Marc Howard, John Alston, B.T. Kingsley and others at 10 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 652-2120.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Photographs of the West” by J. Williams, jewelry and pottery. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Maison d’ Art Gallery, 2729 San Pablo Ave. 207-9509.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

West Coast Live with authors Patrick McGrath, Melanie Abrams, Nathanial Rich and Tin Cup Seranade at 10 a.m. at Freight & Salvage Coffee House, 1111 Addison St. Tickets are $13-$18. 415-664-9500. www.ticketweb.com 

Samantha Le reads from her novel “Little Sister Left Behind” at 4 p.m. at Eastwind Book of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.ewbb.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Earth Day Cultural Performances with Marcia Flores Cantillana, Shawl-Anderson Youth Ensemble, Antoine Hunter Urban Jazz Dance Company and others, from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park.  

The American Recorder Orchestra of the West “Fancy Free” a concert of American music at 8 p.m. pre-concert reception at 7 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Donation $10, $5 for students and children under 12. www.arrowmusic.org 

American Bach Soloists “1685 and the Art of Ian Howell” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m., Tickets are $16-$42. 415-621-7900. www.americanbach.org 

African Music and Dance Ensemble, directed by C.K. Ladzekpo at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

San Francisco Renaissance Voices at 4 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-456-1102 www.sfrv.org 

Journey Into Dance at 8 p.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way, at 6th. 486-8700. www.rudramandir.com 

Vladimir Vukanovich, Peruvian guitarist, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Faye Carol at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ben Adams/Terrence Brewer Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Brothers Goldman, funk, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Grupo Falso Baiano, Brazilian Choro, at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sweet Crude Bill & The Lighthouse Nautical Society at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Consider the Source, ethno-fusion, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mike Park, Captured by Robots in a Memorial Benefit for Lynette Knackstedt at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

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 

Matt Hart, Darcie Denningan and Joseph Massey read their poems for National Poetry month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Alonzo Addison describes in planet’s most extraordinary and endangered palces in “Disappearing World” at 4 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Patrick McGrath reads from “Trauma” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Animal Crackers! Funny Songs & Delicious Desserts, music by Gershwin, Whitacre, PDQ Bach at 1 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $15-$20; no one turned away for lack of funds. 525-0302. 

California Chamber Players in a concert of string quartets at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

University of California Alumni Chorus, University Men's and Women's Chorales, and Francisco Unitarian Universalist Church Choir perform Brahms’ German Requiem with Jeffrey Fields, baritone, and Nancy Cooke Munn, soprano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, U.C. Campus Tickets are $6-$15. 643-9645. 

Taylor Eigsti, “Solo/Duo/Trio” with bassist John Schifflet and drummer Jason Lewis at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $25-$50 for concert and reception. Fundraiser for the Jazzschool. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.inhousetickets.com  

Dalby-Rabin Duo at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. $12 for adults and free for children 18 and under. www.crowden.org 

Sound Poems Poetry and percussion by Kirk Lumpkin, Paul Mills, guitar, Mark Wieder, double bass, at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Garrett McLean, violin, Marvin Sanders, flute, perform solo works by J. S. Bach at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. berkeleyartcenter.org 

Don Neely’s Royal Society Jazz Orchestra at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $17-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Grupo Falso Baiano with guest Carlos Oliveira at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Athena Tergis & John Doyle at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Have Heart, Blacklisted, Killing the Dream at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, APRIL 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Green Ahead of His Time?” Paintings by Alex Maldonado at The Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. Hours are Mon.-Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Subterranean Shakespeare Shakespeare Intensive Staged reading of “Much Ado About Nothing” at 7:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $5. 276-3871. 

Steve Lopez talks about “The Soloist:A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with MK Chavez at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Chabot College Jazz Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, APRIL 22 

CHILDREN 

First Stage Children’s Theatre “Inside/Outside Blues” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $7, children under 12, $5.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Christina Gillis discusses her new “Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Garrett Caples on the poems of John Hoffman and Philip Lamantia at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Jen Sorensen discusses “ Slowpoke: One Nation, Oh My God!” book-length collection from the cartoonist at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Matt Morrish with Beep at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Return of the Mo’Rockin Project at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Diversity in Play” Paintings by Rita Sklar. Reception at 3 p.m. at Dimond Cafe, 3430 Fruitvale Ave., Oakland. www.ritasklar.com 

FILM 

“Daughters of the Dust” at 3 p.m. at “Society of the Spectacle” 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 

Bernard Maybeck: An Arts and Crafts Architect in California Lecture by Sissel Hamre Dagsland at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. $15 at the door. 

Melanie Abrams reads from her debut novel, Playin” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

College of Alameda Creative Writing Faculty, staff and studetns share their writings at noon at College of Alameda Library, first floor, L Building, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway, Alameda. 748-2213. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Keynotes, exploring the interface between early and modern keyboard music at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Ian Carey Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Rebecca Riots, Melanie DeMore, Betsy Rose and Kelly Takunda-Orphan in a benefit concert for Code Pink at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Adrian Xavier Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Green films for Earth Day at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$8, free before 9 p.m. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Regina Pontillo, songs from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mike Seeger at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz Project at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Grandmothers Against the War Book Discussion at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People featuring Francisco X. Alarcón at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ariana Reines and Angie Yuan read as part of The Holloway Series in Poetry 6:30pm 315 Wheeler Hall, The Maude Fife Room UC Berkeley Campus http://holloway.english.berkeley.edu 642-3467. 

James Howard Kunstler describes “World Made By Hand” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak describe “Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Four Bitchin’ Babes: Saly Fingerett, Debi Smith, Nancy Moran & Dierdre Flint at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Grace Woods Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tamra Engle at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Speak the Music, beatboxing performances, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Akousa Mireku, Ghanaian-American folk-singer, at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Mingus Big Band at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

Red means War,” said Harriet March Page of Goat Hall’s San Francisco Cabaret Opera to explain “The Red Horse,” the title of the second concert in the series Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, featuring all female vocalists Saturday at St. Gregory’s Church in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill.  

“Red also means domestic strife, battles with depression—and the Red Horse District, where the fillies of the night hang out!” she added. “Come and enjoy.” 

Page talked about the evolution of the series concept. “I had the initial idea myself. I wanted something with women, a little strong ... I stretched the theme a little bit further than I intended!” 

This production is not at Goat Hall, which is undergoing renovations, but further up the Potrero slope. 

“The Red Horse” follows, naturally, “The White Horse,” which was performed in February, and will in turn be followed by “The Black Horse with a Touch of Gray” on May 9.  

“Since they are only three performances for Four Horsewomen, we have to include Death, The Gray Horse,” Page said. “First is Pestilence, Plague, Famine, which are fun, but Strife and Death are more fun.” 

“The Red Horse” features Judith Weir’s just under 10-minute solo a capella opera “King Harald’s Saga,” (from Snorri Sturluson’s Helmskringla Saga, about the first invasion of Britain in 1066, ending 19 days before the Battle of Hastings, with soprano Marilyn Pratt “playing eight roles, as well as the Norwegian Army”).  

It also features “A Set of Songs,” from Susannah by Carlysle Floyd, “More Songs of Woe” by Zachary Watkins and from Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, “Three Questions” from Mark Alburger’s opera Antigone, as well as “Fire!” from The Bald Soprano, arias from Saga—Portrait of a 21st Century Child by Sheli Nan (of Berkeley), who will also accompany on piano, selections from Oakland’s Allan Crossman’s “The Log of the Skipper’s Wife,” Benjamin Britten’s “The Trees They Grow So High” (with Crossman on piano) and “The Red Horse District,” songs from Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera and Happy End.  

“The Brecht and Weill material is tinged with horrible wars about to happen,” commented Page. 

Singers are Erin (Kat) Cornelius, Sarah Hutchinson, Kristen Jones, Janet Lohr, Eliza O’Malley and Marilyn Pratt, sopranos, and mezzo-sopranos Meghan Dibble, Elizabeth Henry and Harriet March Page. Besides Crossman and Nan, John Partridge will accompany on piano. 

“The Black Horse with a Touch of Gray” will include, among other pieces, more of Nan’s Saga, songs from poetry by Mary Holmes with music by Peter Josheff of El Cerrito and a potato famine song by Cynthia Weyuker (from Alameda) who will perform it with electric saw and loops. 

San Francisco Cabaret Opera will present more opera selections at St. Gregory’s, including scenes from on May 25, and this fall their Fresh Voices VII Festival of New Music: Opera Apocalypse! will premiere Nov. 14 and 16 at Oakland’s Chapel of the Chimes, with Alburger’s Antigone in full, Amy Beth Kirsten’s Ophelia Forever, and, by John G. Bilotta and John F. McGrew, both of Contra Costa County, Quantum Mechanic, paying homage to Aesop, backed up by the Quark Sisters. 

HORSEWOMEN OF THE  

APOCALYPSE 

8 p.m. Saturday at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, 500 De Haro St., San Francisco. $20-$25, $15 seniors. (415) 255-8100. www.saintgregorys.org.

Poet Robert Hass won a Pulitzer prize last week for his most recent collection Time and Materials, a book that also won the National Book Award last year. 

Awards are not unfamiliar to the Berkeley-based poet, who began his distinguished career by winning the 1973 Yale Younger Poet Competition for his first book, Field Guide. He also won the William Carlos Williams for his second book of poems Praise (1979), the National Book Critics Circle Award for his lucid essays on poetry and poets, Twentieth Century Pleasures (1984), as well as for his poetry collection Sun Under Wood (1996).  

From 1995 to 1997 Hass served as U.S. poet laureate. His tenure was characterized by his concern for cultivating public awareness of the role of poetry in our lives and his active role in developing literacy throughout the U.S. He was also the first Westerner to serve as poet laureate. 

It is being a Westerner, particularly a Northern Californian living on the Pacific Rim, that most characterizes Hass’ work and sensibility—though one could argue that his clear love for food places him more exactly, smack dab in Berkeley. Who else but a Bay Area child, born and raised, could write: “… ham in thin, almost deliquescent, slices/ Mottled ovals of salami … crabmeat,/ With its sweet, iodine smell of high tide …” and then relate the careful attention of serving this feast, with its tenderness of lettuce leaves, to the death of a child? 

A more frequent inhabitant of his work is the California landscape and its wildlife, especially birds, which seem to follow him even when he is out of the environment he is most bonded with, as in “Twin Dolphins,” set in an unnamed Hispanic country: “Harlequin sparrows in a coral tree/ One halcyon harrying another in the desert sky.” Likewise, the landscape of his dreams is invested with birds: “In my dream, I notice, to my surprise, a bird,/ Brilliantly yellow, a European goldfinch, perhaps,/ Red in the wingtips” (“Pears”). 

This basking in the details of nature is more than an academic obsession with categorization or a poetic naming of the harbingers of ecologic concern. They are for Hass a path into the spiritual, the portals to a cosmic world underlying the everyday. This, to me, is a profoundly Californian attitude: 

If there is a way in, it may be 

Through the corolla of the cinquefoil 

With its pale yellow petals, 

In the mixed smell of dust and water 

At trailside in the middle reaches of July. 

Soft: an almost phospher gleam in twilight. 

—from “Poet’s Work” 

Totally lucid language is formed in easily discernible lines that reveal a thoroughly approachable perception of the natural world. These are the traits of Hass’ poetic style. And he uses them to draw the reader into his philosophy, which is more complex and involved with the complications of interconnectedness. Often Hass takes us on a ride of associations from, for example, the rain on the windshield to a schoolgirl crossing the street, to the imaginary book she carries in her backpack, Getting to Know Your Planet. And from there to the revolution of the earth around the sun, to greenhouse emissions, to spilled milk and hunger, to the Latin of Lucretius. And on and on, finishing at last with the Earth, who is a “she”: “the birds just keep arriving,/ Thousands of them, immense arctic flocks, her teeming life.” 

In Time and Materials, Hass also addresses the war. Except through his constant return to ecology, politics is not a subject he is comfortable with. In a 1991 interview, he commented: “I think political writing is problematic .. I know what I hate, but I know less and less about how to change it.” But the war poems in this Pulitzer prize-winning book are some of the most powerful in the book. 

… 

Nightingales singing at the first, subtlest, 

Darkening of dusk, it is a trick of the mind  

That the past seems just ahead of us, 

As if we were being shunted there 

In the surge of a rattling funicular. 

Flash forward: fire bombing of Hamburg 

Fifty thousand dead in a single night, 

“The children’s bodies the next day  

Set in the street in rows like a market 

In charred chicken.” Flash forward: 

Firebombing of Tokyo, a hundred thousand 

In a night. … 

—from “Bush’s War” 

Hass is a superlative editor of poetry, and one of his finest accomplishments is the Addison Street Poetry Walk. The Poetry Walk is a collection of some 120 poems cast in iron plaques that are imbedded in the sidewalk and introduced by artistic tiling in the pavement along Addison Street in downtown Berkeley. The poems range from songs from the Ohlone tribe to lyrics from the punk band Operation Ivy, and pretty much everything in between. Berkeley publisher Heyday Books has released a book of the poems, The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley’s Poetry Walk (2004: Robert Hass and Jessica Fisher, eds.). 

TIME AND MATERIALS:  

POEMS 1997-2005 

By Robert Hass. Ecco Books (Harper Collins, New York.)

First Run Features has released three provocative films on DVD that delve into the complex consciousness of the German people. From the atrocities of the Holocaust to the repressive post-war socialist government of East Germany, these films offer fascinating glimpses of artists and historians struggling to come to terms with their nation’s past while battling forces—in the form of both the government and the people—who would rather keep such horrors hidden. 

The Second Track 

Joachim Kunert’s The Second Track went unseen for decades, only recently resurfacing and taking its rightful place among Germany’s greatest films. This 1962 noirish thriller examined the burden of the Holocaust on the German conscience at a time when the country as a whole was eager to forget and move on.  

A freight yard inspector stumbles upon a robbery but does not inform the police that he has recognized one of the perpetrators, a man from his past whom he is eager to avoid. This sparks a chain of events in which the inspector’s daughter begins delving into her father’s past as well as her own, uncovering a debilitating cache of Nazi-era secrets. 

The movie is filled with spectacular black and white photography, juxtaposing emotional close-ups with stunning imagery of trains and railroad tracks, of steam drifting across black skies, of glistening cobblestone streets, and impressionistic shots of industrial architecture: freight yard bridges, passageways, stairwells, and gleaming tracks that merge and separate and crisscross the frame.  

The film has been compared to the dark tales of suspense crafted by Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock, but its most apparent influence is Carol Reed’s English masterpiece, The Third Man (1949). Traces of that film can be seen in the angled shots, atmospheric nighttime photography and zither score, and most decidedly in the closing shots, which seem to deliberately draw a parallel with the earlier film. But whereas Reed’s film ends with a single long take of the heroine walking toward and past the hero in what amounts to a romantic rejection, The Second Track closes with a much more troubling and ambiguous rejection, as a woman walks along railroad tracks, toward and past a man who turns to follow her until they approach a gate. The gate may represent passage to another plain, but does it lead to a purgatory in which the German people acknowledge and do penitence for the past, or does it mark entry into a hell of recrimination and reproach? And will the these two figures pass through the gate at all? The image fades to black before we find out. 

Extra features include a short film about Second Track’s cinematographer, Rolf Sohre, and an essay and newsreels about the film.  

The Rabbit is Me 

A few years later, Kurt Maetzig’s The Rabbit Is Me (1965) shined a light on the opportunism, careerism and political calculation that undermined the professed principals of the repressive East German socialist government.  

A young woman’s brother is imprisoned for subversion, though his crime is never revealed to the public or to his family. The sister embarks on an affair with the judge who sentenced her brother, and eventually the truth behind the sentencing is exposed. Though the film was made with solid studio backing, the final product proved too hot to touch, the film’s politics, sexuality and frank moral discussion deemed too dark and skeptical by government censors.  

It was not the only film to draw the government’s ire that year. Many more were likewise banned in the wake of Rabbit Is Me, the whole lot of them thereafter referred to as “the Rabbit films.” The Rabbit Is Me was not screened for the public until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

Rabbit calls to mind the films of the French New Wave, and anticipates the edgy youth-centered films of America in the 1950s. The movie not only challenges the validity of government institutions but sets up a generational conflict between the young heroine and her much older lover, between the energy and idealism of youth and the stodgy, self-interested avarice of the establishment. Maetzig delights in some of the new tools available to filmmakers, most notably the zoom lens, which would become a common fixture in American films of the 1960s and ’70s, allowing the director to create both establishing shots and close-ups without a cut.  

The disc includes a 1999 interview with director Kurt Maetzig and an essay and brief documentary about the banning of the Rabbit films. 

The Unknown Soldier 

First Run has also just released an intriguing documentary, The Unknown Soldier (2006), that tracks the volatile controversy surrounding a museum exhibit that first opened in Germany in 1996. The Wehrmacht Exhibition documented the complicity of the German Army in the atrocities committed by Hitler’s Waffen SS and the Gestapo. For decades, the accepted portrait of the German soldier was that of an innocent pawn, who knew nothing of the crimes being carried out by the Third Reich. While many were oblivious to the horrors of the Holocaust, many were fully aware, and the exhibit featured evidence, in the form of personal letters, photographs and film footage, of knowing collaboration between the army’s common foot soldiers and Hitler’s Nazi forces. The exhibition sparked riotous protests from an outraged populace and revealing a split in the German psyche as the nation struggled to pay tribute to its veterans while confronting once again the horror of its past. 

It wasn’t only the neo-Nazi skinheads who were angry; World War II were incensed, as were the children and grandchildren of deceased soldiers who felt the memories of their loved ones were being tarnished. A second exhibit a few years later, which sought to correct a few troubling issues with the first, elicited a similar response. Michael Verhoeven’s film captures the pain and conflict of a nation caught in the midst of an identity crisis. 

Other films new to DVD: 

Who Is Henry Jaglom? 

Who Is Henry Jaglom? is a ragged but entertaining little documentary about the gadfly film director and his methods. It features behind-the-scenes footage of the director at work and interviews with the man himself and many of his associates—including Orson Welles, Candice Bergen, Karen Black and Milos Forman, among others—who appeared in two of Jaglom’s films. 

It’s an amateurish film, often charmingly so, but Jaglom is right when, in an interview included as an extra feature on the disc, he challenges some of the decisions of directors Henry-Alex Rubin and Jeremy Workman. The 32-minute interview, like the documentary, has the feel of a home movie as Jaglom sits down with an amateurish interviewer who  

is quickly overwhelmed by Jaglom’s force and charisma. Jaglom goes on to point out that, though he enjoyed the film, the directors failed to get a very broad array of responses to him and his work, and at some point shoved in a completely out-of-the-blue shot of a woman, identified as a sociologist, standing at the top of the stands during a football game and railing that Jaglom is a misogynist. Who this woman is and how she’s relevant are never made clear. And if she’s simply stating her interpretation of his work, sound, reasoned arguments might have made the case better than a brief rant full of unsubstantiated accusations. 

But Jaglom himself is prone to ranting, so perhaps it’s all fair play. Who Is Henry Jaglom? is by no means a definitive statement on the art and character of the man, one of America’s most distinctive auteurs, but it’s an entertaining glimpse into a career that doesn’t get much mainstream attention. 

1997. 52 minutes. $24.95. www. firstrunfeatures.com. 

Pierrot Le Fout 

Criterion has released Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou (1965) shortly after having released a new edition of the director’s seminal French New Wave classic Breathless. Pierrot, like Breathless, stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a self-consciously iconoclastic character. Belmondo’s Ferdinand leaves his wife and family for the babysitter (Anna Karina) and sets off on a madcap road trip that allows Godard to mix and match an array of disparate cinematic styles and references into a sort of post-modern pastiche. 

Bonus features include a new interview with Karina, a documentary about Godard and Karina, and a booklet with reviews by Andrew Sarris and Richard Brody. 

1965. 110 minutes. In French with English subtitles. $39.95. www.criterion.com. 

Dragon Painter 

Sessue Hayakawa is primarily remembered today for his performance in David Lean’s Bridge on the River Kwai. But long before that, he was a major star in the silent era—in fact, the first Asian Hollywood star. His silent-era career is finally getting greater recognition. 

Milestone Films has released The Dragon Painter (1919), a simple, almost fantastic tale, partially filmed in the Yosemite Valley, featuring Hayakawa as Tatsu, a painter and a madman, an artist driven by his muse—his relentless pursuit of his princess fiancé, who he believes was captured by a dragon. When he is adopted as an apprentice by an aging master, Tatsu falls for his mentor’s daughter, believing her to be the dragon woman whom he has long sought. But having achieved his goal, his work suffers, for he cannot create his obsessive art when living in a state of complacent bliss, and thus he must give her up if he is to reclaim his greatness. It’s a simple allegorical tale, told simply and beautifully. 

The film was lost for decades, until a French print was discovered and restored, complete with the original color tints. It was screened in 2004 by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, with acted narration by Tokyo benshi artist Midori Sawato, recreating the traditional manner in which silent films were presented in Japan. The DVD presents the film with the same score by Mark Izu performed live at the San Francisco screening. 

Bonus features include another Hayakawa vehicle, Thomas Ince’s The Wrath of the Gods (1914); a short film called Screen Snapshots (1921) that features Hayakawa along with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Charles Murray; and the original novel of The Dragon Painter, by Mary McNeil Fenollosa, in PDF format. 

1919. 53 minutes. $29.95. www.milestonefilms.com. www.newyorkerfilms.com. 

John Albert Marshall (1868-1924), commonly known as J.A., was a small and hot-tempered man. In 1906 he had two brushes with the law—one as a recalcitrant witness for the defense, threatening to thrash a much larger prosecuting attorney, the other when he was convicted of battery after pummeling John Koch, owner of a delicatessen at 2520 Bancroft Way. 

A Berkeley resident since 1895, Marshall began his profitable career in building as a cement contractor (the material was euphemistically known as “artificial stone”). On Jan. 1, 1896, the Berkeley Herald credited him with having paved nine-tenths of Berkeley’s new sidewalks the previous year. His stamp is still faintly visible on the northeast corner of Hillegass Avenue and Parker Street, across the street from his own residence. 

By the early 1900s, Marshall had branched out into real estate development. Among his enterprises were two of Telegraph Avenue’s earliest business blocks, the Marshall Apartments (1904) and the Alta Vista Apartments (1907), on the southwest and northeast corners of Telegraph and Bancroft, respectively. He also constructed many private residences-some for clients, others speculatively. His own home address kept changing as he completed a new house, lived in it for a while, then sold it and moved on. 

In 1897, when Marshall set out to build “the prettiest home in Berkeley,” he was a 29-year-old newlywed. Whether his ultimate aim was to please the bride or to embark on a speculative venture, Marshall spared no expense. The builder he hired was Jonas Irving Bowers, a prosperous carpenter who would accumulate considerable real estate holdings in Berkeley before decamping for Southern California. To design the house, Marshall selected the sought-after firm of Cunningham Bros., two young architects then at the height of their fame. 

Harry L. (1869-1919) and Gerald C. (1872-1900) Cunningham were born in Calcutta, India. Their father, a captain in the British Royal Engineers, died before Gerald was born. His widow and the boys came to California in 1874, settling in Oakland. 

The brothers began their architectural apprenticeship in their teens (Gerald at 14). First Harry, then Gerald worked as draftsmen for the prominent San Francisco architect John J. Clark. At the age of 20, Harry transferred to the office of A.W. Pattiani, a fashionable East Bay designer and builder, but in 1891 both brothers disappeared from Oakland for two years. In 1893, Gerald opened his own practice in Portland, Oregon, but the pair reappeared in Oakland in 1894, this time as partners. The first buildings bearing their combined name date from that year. 

“Although both members of the firm were young then,” stated the Oakland Tribune in its obituary for Gerald in June 1900, “they had attained to a coveted position in their chosen profession and had built more than their share of the modern structures of this State and in various places along the coast.” The Cunninghams’ best-known Berkeley building was McKinley School (1896) on Dwight Way. 

Gerald Cunningham was considered one of the best pen-and-ink artists in California, and his renderings paved the way for many public commissions, from the Modesto High School to the Contra Costa County Courthouse in Martinez, listed in the National Register of Historic Places but erroneously attributed to William Mooser, who designed the adjacent jail. 

The firm’s progress was cut short by Gerald’s death from cerebral meningitis. He was 27 years old and had been married only two months. Harry then brought in Matthew Politeo as a partner, and the two went on to design Art Nouveau buildings in San Francisco and Oakland, as well as many of the early farm buildings on the U.C. Davis campus. 

J.A. Marshall’s house, still standing at 2601 Hillegass Avenue and a City of Berkeley Landmark, began its life as an opulent 8-room residence. Designed in the Colonial Revival style, it is graced with massive corner pilasters and an L-shaped porch supported by six Ionic columns. Extensive ornamental balustrades, only some of which remain, lined the porch above and below. A Palladian window, since replaced, was set above a bay window in the façade. The property extended all the way to Benvenue Avenue, with tennis courts, windmill, a barn, and a carriage house in the rear. 

In December 1899, less than two years after the house was completed, John Marshall put the “prettiest home in Berkeley” on the market. The asking price must have been salty, since the next owner was Erik Olof Lindblom (1857-1928), a newly minted millionaire. 

One of the “Three Lucky Swedes” who discovered gold near Nome, Alaska, Lindblom has been the subject of many biographies, as well as inspiring the character of Dextry in Rex Beach’s novel “The Spoilers,” which was twice adapted for the screen. Piecing together details from variously credible accounts, one gathers that Lindblom’s father, a school teacher in Dalarna, died early, leaving his widow and children in penury. After completing his public schooling at the age of 14, Erik learned tailoring, and three years later began traversing Europe as an itinerant journeyman. Spending some time in London, he obtained additional schooling at the YMCA Polytechnic and met his first wife, Mary Anne Smith, a tailor’s daughter. The two were married in August 1886 and sailed to New York a month later. Their daughter, Brita Margaret, was born in New York in December 1887. By the time their son, Olof Henry, was born in 1890, they were living in Pocatello, Idaho. A few years later, they had moved to Montana, where Lindblom was naturalized in 1894. 

When the news of a gold discovery in Kotzebue Sound swept the nation in 1897, Lindblom was eking out a living as a tailor on 23rd Avenue in east Oakland. Already interested in mining and having attended Professor George Davidson’s lectures on Alaska, he borrowed money and, on April 27, 1898, shipped before the mast on the bark Alaska, which carried prospectors to the new gold fields. Mary Anne was left in Oakland to work as a seamstress at a dry goods store, earning $1 a day. 

Upon reaching the Bering Sea, the Alaska was obliged to wait for the ice to break up. Lindblom had learned from whalers that the Kotzebue yields were meager, and he seized the opportunity to jump ship at Grantley Harbor, starting on foot for Golovin Bay. Surviving several mishaps, he arrived there three weeks later with the aid of an Inuit trader. 

After prospecting on his own for several weeks, Lindblom met John Brynteson and Jafet Lindeberg. In stormy weather, the three embarked on a 100-mile sea voyage to the mouth of the Snake River. They reached their goal on September 15, 1898 and a week later struck gold at Anvil Creek, quickly filing as many claims as they could in their own names as well as in others’. The Nome gold rush had begun. 

Lindblom invested his proceeds from the Nome bonanza in U.S. and Mexican mines, and holdings in banks, transportation, and real estate. He would become sole owner of the Parral Electric Light, Telephone & Water Co. in Chihuahua, Mexico; president of the Swedish-American Bank of San Francisco; vice-president of the Pioneer Mining Co. of Nome, Alaska (incorporated in Seattle); director of the Davidson-Ward Lumber Co.; and owner of the Claremont Hotel. 

Along with wealth came a flamboyant lifestyle, much travel, at least two automobile accidents caused by his reckless driving, and a goodly number of lawsuits. Some of these were brought by claim jumpers, others by professionals and tradesmen who had not been paid, but the lengthiest of all, lasting nearly six years and keeping 18 lawyers employed, was the Lindbloms’ divorce trial. 

It began in February 1902, when Mary Anne charged her husband with extreme cruelty. “Mrs. Lindblom says that since her husband acquired his wealth he has been consumed with a desire to pull her hair out by the roots, that he has threatened to shoot her head off, and that on one occasion he forcibly removed a handful of her tresses and she was compelled to go to the Fabiola Hospital for treatment,” reported the San Francisco Call on March 1, 1902. The same article cited “lively stories of how Lindblom used to spend $2000 on a little ‘time’ with some of his friends, and then take his wife out to a dinner consisting of a plate of soup.” 

Lindblom quickly found a new life partner, taking up with Hanna Sadie Sparman—a tall, blond and blue-eyed 18-year-old daughter of a Swedish basket manufacturer. Twenty-seven years her senior, the new boyfriend moved into the Sparman family’s Oakland home. They made a handsome couple, apparently inseparable and spending much time in travel. They were married in Bellingham, Washington on June 7, 1907, a month after Mary Anne was granted her final divorce decree. 

As part of the divorce settlement, the first Mrs. Lindblom-now declaring herself a widow-received the house at 2601 Hillegass Ave. Soon thereafter, she rented it to Wigginton E. Creed, attorney (at the time he was Louis Titus’s law partner), capitalist, and future president of PG&E. In 1911, after traveling for a few years, Mary Anne built an apartment house on the eastern part of the property, at Benvenue and Parker. Two years later she sandwiched a pair of flats between the apartments and the house. 

Further augmenting her income in 1916, Mary Anne divided her house into two flats, reserving the lower floor for herself and Brita. Erik, meanwhile, had allied himself with Frank C. Havens in 1914, injecting funds into the Claremont Hotel (begun in 1906 and still unfinished) and completing it in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Three year later, he took complete possession of it. He would live in the hotel until his death, and the hotel would remain in the Lindblom family’s possession until 1937. 

The Marshall-Lindblom House will be open for viewing on BAHA’s Spring House Tour, May 4, 2008, from 1 pm to 5 pm. 

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

Beautiful Benvenue, Elegant Hillegass 

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Spring House Tour 

Sunday, May 4, 2008 

1 pm to 5 pm 

Tickets: $35; BAHA members $25 

(510) 841-2242 

berkeleyheritage.com

So I was licking nectar off the base of an orchid blossom the other night ... See?That’s why people keep pets, in which category I place houseplants. Most of us don’t live the wildlands any more, which of course is why they’re still “wildlands,” and there’s all this unpredictable, unrepeatable, unmediated experience we don’t get to have every minute of every day.  

There are so many things people don’t write into literature (including scientific literature) or nature documentaries. Why the heck were our four box turtles alerting in unison, all facing the same way, all with their necks stretched at the same angle, for a good three minutes while we were eating dinner Sunday night? I haven’t seen them behave like that since Bruce played us a wonderful morning serenade on the uillean pipes some years back.  

Memo: Box turtles are very very interested in bagpipe music. We haven’t had the intestinal fortitude to try the Great Pipes in the dining room yet, and maybe never will. Great Pipes, like bombards, belong outdoors. 

By some standards, of course, so do box turtles and cymbidium orchids. I can make a case for ex situ conservation of both, especially after seeing so many box turtles crushed along roadsides back East. My everlasting curse on people who do that. May they tread on their own intestines someday soon. 

There are ex situ conversations to be had, too. I’d bet I can find out somewhere what’s going on with the cymbidiums in the parlor just now, but I wouldn’t have known to look for it without having seen the clear drops of nectar in such odd places on each flower, reflected in the lamplight the other night. After a couple days’ concentration, they’re intensely sweet.  

But I couldn’t detect any nectar where I thought it should be, inside the throat of the flower. My first assumption was that it was a My-cup-runneth-over situation, since there aren’t any nectar-eating birds or bugs from the home range flitting about our flat to drink the stuff before it got to me. Dammit. 

Now I’m going to need to chase that down, that intricate puzzle of sex and deception and time that made those flowers what they are, so incredibly erotic, at close range, even to us animals. What a reach across eons of beings! I hope somebody has written about it in the scientific literature, so I can see the next observational step—the hard one, that takes hours and days of observation and charting.  

While I’m standing on the shoulders of those giants, let me say that I’ve seen enough painted lady butterflies on Point Reyes, in inland Marin, and right here in Berkeley to think that there’s a migration going on right now.  

If you notice those fluttering shapes while you’re out walking, if you sit in your yard or a park and watch awhile, note how they tend to fly over, not around, obstacles, if you’ve planted nectar-source flowers to sustain them overnight, you can watch the spectacle too. 

That’s a reason we keep gardens. 

As you go for that morning jog ( You are jogging every morning, right? Immediately after that low-fat, lemon, poppy-seed, caramel muffin and the soy latte) you probably note amidst the quiet and still of the neighborhood that there are little puffs of smoke that come from the tops of every house and business. 

If you stop long enough to think about it (as a child might do more than we busy adults) you’ll realize that there are no fires in fireplaces and that, probably, there are no similar fires comprised of oil and smoke being generated in all those buildings. What all that stacks are actually emitting in our California landscape is mostly steam (I mention the locale because there are oil-fired devices that really are smoky in other parts of the globe). 

As though unchanged from the 19th century we are a culture full of steam generating equipment. While we’re not all running little steam engines in our houses, most of us are running incredibly simple heating devices that use burned natural gas to heat our water, cook our food and heat our houses. These devices have some requirements and some problems that are peculiarly endemic to this heating method and while much of this is beyond the technical capacity of the typical homeowner, you might be surprised at how much of this you can understand and how many problems you can begin to diagnose for yourself. 

First, let’s understand a little about what natural gas is. The gas that comes to your house is primarily methane. The same thing our bodies, and many organisms on earth produce as a product of digestion. It’s a small molecule just filled with energy and when combusted with a little oxygen, it produces lots of warmth as well as quite a bit of water vapor. That’s the steam you see above all the roofs. It’s not smoke at all, it’s mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide.  

That last part makes the exhaust a greenhouse gas and one reason we all want to turn off the furnace, turn down the water heater or turn off the dryer as soon as possible. The good news is that natural gas has less carbon output per unit of energy than all of the other fossil fuels by a goodly margin (30 percent less than oil and 45 percent less than coal) so we can feel pretty good about using CNG (compressed natural gas) for our heating. 

Now, back to some basic science and diagnosing your own heating devices. You may notice that when you cook in the kitchen that it steams up the windows. That’s the water vapor that the gas burners are producing. What may be less obvious is that your dryer, water heater and furnace are doing the same thing. If these devices are vented properly, you shouldn’t be seeing the steam (or the paint peeling off the wall, which actually happens sometimes when gas devices are poorly vented). 

We can use this knowledge to see if our gas devices are vented property. Let’s start with the water heater. If you have a water heater inside your living space (and it shouldn’t be reached through the bedroom or bathroom (e.g. bedroom closet)) you can check to see if it’s exhausting properly to the exterior by putting a mirror (I use my glasses) at the top of the water heater where there are air inlets just before the pipe goes upward. If you kick the unit on by running some hot water or by turning its thermostat up just a bit you can check to see if exhaust comes out of the inlets and steams up your mirror. If this is happening (and we call it spillage) you’ve got an exhaust leak and it needs to be fixed. 

By the way, it not just steam that’s coming out of the pipe. This can also include carbon monoxide, an odorless, toxic (and potentially deadly) gas as well as a range of other unpleasant hydrocarbons, so exhaust leaks are serious business. 

If you run your gas dryer empty, you can do the same test and just see if there are signs of moisture (again, use a little mirror or your glasses) around the outside of the device (especially near the vent at the rear). If you can get to your furnace, you can look at that same flue for signs of the same thing. While many furnaces don’t have “draft-diverters” (the inlets we noted on the top of the water heater) you still may see signs of spillage. 

Most furnaces have metal exhaust pipes and, again, these are carrying mostly water vapor and plenty of it. This vapor is hot when it first enters the pipe but if it has a chance to cool off too early, it will rain down inside the pipe creating all sorts of havoc. These gases also contain acidy impurities that like to eat metal and when its happening and you look in the right places, you can actually see it. I see it all the time. Sometimes so much that the exhaust pipes have actually fallen completely apart and the exhaust is just pouring out into the crawlspace below the house. If you can get to where your furnace flue is, look for signs of moisture. One of the clearest signs is a white powdery “precipitate” built up at the joints in the pipe. These are the impurities in the gas crystallized on the surface and they show us that there’s been water cooling and leaking inside. Sometimes they’ll also be lots of corrosion and you might just see a hole or crack or worse.  

All gas heating devices can be subject to these effects so it’s a really good idea to have an expert take a look at these devices every year. Still, looking and learning for yourself is a great idea as long as you remember to rely upon professionals for the final call and any work on a system like this. By the way, remember that flues get very hot. 

When I do see flues that rain inside or seem to spill, its often the result of poor configuration. Steam doesn’t stay hot for long when its asked to take a long trip on a cold day so the best flues go strait to the roof with a minimum of twists and turns. They’re also built of “double-wall” metal that acts like a thermos bottle and keeps the exhaust nice and hot for the whole trip. If you look carefully at metal flues, you can see that the double wall material has dimples where the inner and outer layers meet and locking rings at the ends. More high-tech. 

I don’t intend for grandma to use this article to diagnose her furnace problem and I always think twice before taking you down such a complex path but I still think that a little knowledge is a useful thing. You might actually see a real defect and take action or you might just be able to have a more fruitful discussion with your heating contractor the next time they come to check out your furnace. If you start out by telling your furnace guy or gal that you think that flue gases are condensing inside your furnace flue and that you’re concerned about the configuration of the flue, you can bet that they’re going to take this job very seriously (just as soon as they’ve found their eyeballs and put them back in their head). 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 

Oakland Street Retreat: Bearing Witness to Homelessness Participants will live on the streets without money, bedding, change of clothing, books or watches. Participants will eat in soup kitchens and beg for money or food at times when soup kitchens are closed. Retreat lasts from Fri.-Sun. Cost is $225 to benefit service providers of the Homeless & the New Dharma Scholarship Fund. Participants urged to beg to raise the funds. For information and to register call 549 3733 ext 2. www.newdharma.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Harold Palmer on “Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Comparison of Democrat vs Republican Positions” 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 524-7468.  

Expo 50+ for Boomers and Beyond The public is invited to attend Expo 50+, featuring class exhibits and demonstrations, live entertainment, health screenings, vendors, musicians, a raffle and complimentary refreshments, hosted by Pleasant Valley Adult School. The Expo will be held from10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 4700 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. Admission is free. 879-4090. 

Iraq Moratorium Day and Vigil to Protest the War from 2 to 4 p.m. at the corners of Unvirsity and Acton. 548-9696. 

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 19 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour “Berkeley and the Wars: A Look Back at Local Military Sites” from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For reservations call 848-0181. 

Berkeley Earth Day 2008 with demonstrations of biodiesel and electric cars, solar power, farmers’ market, food and craft booths, from noon to 5 p.m. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Blvd & Allston Way. 

“Clean It, Green It, Mean It!” Help out at Peralta Hacienda HIstorical Park to remove graffiti, pick up litter, clear the creek of invasive plants, and help plant some more native species, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

Oakland Earth Day 2008 Join your neighbors and friends on Earth Da y to make a difference in our Oakland communities. Participants will receive a free event T-shirt. For featured locations and a complete list of citywide project sites please visit www.oaklandearthday.com  

Earth Day Shoreline Clean-up from 9 a.m. to noon at Albany Waterfront Trail Head, end of Buchanan St. Wear sturdy shoes, a hat and sunscreen, and bring your own water bottle and gloves if you have them. Snacks provided. Children must be accompanied by an adult.665-3508. staff@thewatershedproject.org 

Hi-Tec Recycling electronics recycling from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 631 So 31st St., Richmond. 488-4564. 

Wildflower Walk Learn to identify wildflowers with linda Yemoto, naturalist, from 2 to 4 p.m. on the Big Spings Canyon Trail. Meet at the Big Springs Picnic Area. 525-2233. 

California Native Plant Sale with California shrubs, trees, perennials, and many plants that are not available in a nursery, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Botanic Garden, Tilden Park, Wildcat Canyon Rd., at South Park Dr. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society 44th Annual Iris Show and Potted Iris Sale Sat. from 1 to 5 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. http://bayareairis.org  

STAND Oakland Candidates Forum / Earthday Event from 1 to 3 p.m. at Faith Presbyterian Church, 430 49th St. and Webster, Oakland, just off Telegraph. Sponsored by Standing Together for Accountable Neighborhood Development. www.standoakland.org 

California Wildflower Show Sat. and Sun. at the Oakland Museum of CA, 1000 Oak St., at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

“Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling” Learn to detect and remedy lead hazards in the home to prevent lead poisoning, from 10 a.m. to noon at Berkeley Public Library, South Branch, 1901 Russell St., at MLK. Registration required. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org/homeown.htm 

Green Building Open House from noon to 5 p.m. at 2619 San Pablo Ave. www.ecohomeimprovment.com  

Brooks Island Trip Paddle across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Brooks Island to explore the rocky island, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For experience boaters who can provide their own canoe, kayak and safety gear. For ages 14 and up. Parent participation required. Cos t is $20-$22. To register call 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

United-Front Protest to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal at 2:30 p.m. at 14th St. and Broadway, Oakland. Called by Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black League for Social Defense. 839-0852. 

The War Comes Home: Campus Antiwar Network Western Regional Conference, from 1 to 6 p.m. at 200 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. Cost is $5. For information contact katrina.yeaw@gmail.com 415-335-0953. 

California Writers Club “Welcome to SoMa” with author Kemble Scott at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble Event Loft, Jack London Square, Oakland. 272-0120. 

“Spring/Summer Veggies and the Edible Landscape” with Stephanie Bittner at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

Storytelling Workshop with Liz Mangual from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 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 20 

East Bay Labyrinth Project Community Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. info@eastbaylabyrinthproject.org 

Mad Science for the Whole Family A introduction to chemistry from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. For ages 7 and up. Cost is $4, registration required. 1-888-EB-PARKS.  

East Bay Crop Walk A fundraiser for the Alamenda County Comunity Food Bank around Lake Merritt, Oakland. Registration at 1:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Crop Walk begins at 2 p.m. For information call 635-3665, ext. 328. 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society 44th Annual Iris Show and Potted Iris Sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. http://bayareairis.org.  

Spring Family Hike Join an easy walk around Jewel Lake from 1:30 to 3 p.m. with Meg Platt, naturalist. 525-2233. 

Waddle and Swaddle East Bay Baby Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Free. 540-7210. www.eastbaybabyfair.com  

Pachamama Alliance “Awakening the Dreamer Symposium” from 1 to 4:30 p.m. at New Spirit Community Church at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. pachamama.org 

East Bay Atheists Berkeley Meets to discuss what to do when you find yourself in a situation where you are expected to join a religious ritual, at 1:30 p.m., 3rd flr. meeting room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. eastbayatheists.org 

SF AIDS Benefit Brunch at 10:30 a.m at T-Rex Barbeque, 1300 Tenth St. at Gilman. 

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 Jack Petranker on “Experiments in Awareness: Making Friends with Experience” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

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. Also on Fri. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 21 

“Environmental Impact: Evolution of the Berkeley Landscape” with Chuck Wollenberg and Dave Weinstein at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, central meeting room, 2090 Kittredge.  

Berkeley Green Mondays Berkeley & Military Recruiting: What's All the Fuss? with Zanne Joi and Rae Abileah at 8 p.m. at Anna's Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. www.berkeleygreens.org 

“'The Two Faces of Breast Cancer with Genes and the Microenvironment” with Joe Gray, LBNL Life Science Director, Mina Bissel, LBNL Distiguished Scientist, Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff, LBNL Senior Scientist, at Berkeley Lab Friends of Science, at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. www.lbl.gov/friendsofscience/  

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group, for people 60 years and over, meets at 9:45 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany. Cost is $3.  

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 

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 22 

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 Inspiration Point in Tilden Regional Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

“The Costs of War: The U.S. in Iraq” with Prof. Samera Esmeir, Porf. Ramon Grosfoguel, at 6 p.m. at 145 Dwinelle, UC Campus. costofwar@gmail.com 

“Texts We Wish Were Not In the Bible” with Aaron Brody, associate professor of Bible and archaeology and director of Badé Museum, at 11:10 a.m. at Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. 

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. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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 Masonic Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for signs of spring, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Waking from the California Dream: How Our History Affects Your Future” with Gray Brechin and Jan Spencer at 6:30 p.m. at Cocina Poblana, Jack London Square, Oakland. to register see www.EWcoNowUSA.org 

Berkeley Gray Panthers with Jim Soper of the Voting Rights Task Force on electronic voting and Julia Cato on Prop. 98 at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, corner MLK. 

“The Art of Being Present” A lecture and demonstration with Denise Berezonsky at 7 p.m. at Three Stone Hearth, 1 Bolivar Drive at Addison. Threestoneheath.com 

“With God on Our Side” A documentary tracing the roots of the Christian Right movement at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

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. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

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 24 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll look for signs of spring, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will learn about plants from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Are Peace and Impeachment Possible? Strategies to end the war, stop war on Iran, save our constitution and economy with David Swanson of afterdowningstreet.org; Daniel Ellsberg; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, and others at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10 at independent bookstores.  

“Grandmothers Against the War” book party at 6 p.m. at North Branch, Berkeley Public Library. 981-6250. 

“Darfur Now” documentary screening at 6 p.m. at VLSB 2050, UC Campus. For more information see www.Darfurnowtour.com 

“American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau” with Paul Hawken at 7:30 p.m. at 2121 Bonar St., Studio A. RSVP required. 540-4800. 

Creative Movement and Sign Language for ages 5-10 at 3:30 p.. at Elephant, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

ONGOING 

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.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., April 21, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 981-7368.  

City Council meets Tues., April 22, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., April 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., April 23, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., April 23, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., April 23, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Mental Health Commission meets Wed., April 24, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213. 

It is wonderful and exciting that many businesses are waking up to the fact that “going green” can make a lot of green ($$, that is). It is not so wonderful that a whole bunch of products that claim to be green are actually far from good.  

Paint, for example. Some companies have removed certain chemicals, only to substitute even more offensive ones. There are other products that claim to be green because of recycled content that can still be extremely toxic to use.  

These days, the greenest companies are using the Triple Bottom Line Standard—i.e. social responsibility, environmental responsibility and profitability. 

While no one is perfect, certain brands do have good green track records while others are new and still superb. So what is a consumer to do? How to judge? Here are some questions to ask across the board:  

• What is the material? Is its content natural and non-toxic? Not all that is natural is meant to be used in everyday products (lead and arsenic, for example).  

• Is it genetically engineered? (Soy and corn products, for example, are most likely made from G.E. crops if they are not certified organic)  

• What was the impact of manufacturing this product? Was the environment harmed in the process? Were people producing this product treated fairly, with healthy working conditions? The International Fair Trade Federation certifies products to have been made under decent working conditions and adequate pay for the people involved. 

• Where does it come from? Is it locally produced?  

• How much embodied energy does it hold?(Embodied energy is the amount of combined resources used to access, manufacture, transport and dispose of a product.) 

• Is this product healthy to use?  

• What is the finishing on the product—is it natural and healthy? What is the packaging material, and is the packaging actually necessary? 

• Can this product be healthfully recycled, reused or bio-degraded? Does it have a third-party verification of its eco-claims? 

In addition to the Fair Trade Federation, there are a growing number of verification and other non-profit organizations that are excellent resources for answering many of these questions. And while it isn’t always possible for us as individual consumers to find the answers, the more questions we ask and the more often we ask them, the greener and cleaner the products we buy will become. 

Berkeley resident Alisa Rose Seidlitz is a certified green building professional, eco-interior and landscape desinger, and green feng shui consultant. She owns Optimal Environments garden design company. She wrote “Simple Green Solutions: 12 Steps to Make a Difference” in the April 15 issue. 

Resources:  

www.fairtradefederation.org and www.rugmark.org verifies that no child labor has been used.  

www.foreststewardshipcouncil.org and sfiprogram.org to verify sustainably grown and harvested wood products. 

www.energystar.gov for verification of energy saving appliances.  

www.environmentaldefense.org is an all around good informational source. 

World agriculture appears to be approaching a crossroads. The globalized economy has placed a series of conflicting demands on the 1.5 billion hectares of croplands.  

Not only is this land required to produce food for a growing human population, but also it must meet the increased demands for biofuels, and it must do so in an environmentally sound way preserving biodiversity and reducing greenhouse emissions while still representing a profitable activity to millions of farmers.  

These pressures are setting in motion a crisis of the global food system of un-precedented scope already signaled by food riots in many parts of the world.  

This crisis, which threatens the livelihoods of millions more than the already 800 million hungry people, is the direct result of the dominating industrial farming model, which is not only dangerously dependent on fossil fuels but which has also become the largest source of human impact on the biosphere.  

In fact, there are now so many pressures on dwindling arable ecosystems that farming is overwhelming nature’s capacity to meet humankind’s food, fiber and energy needs. 

The tragedy is that agriculture depends on the very ecological services (water cycles, pollinators, fertile soil formation, benevolent local weather, etc.) that intensive farming continually degrades or pushes beyond their limits.  

Before the end of the first decade of the 21st century, humanity is quickly realizing that the fossil fuel-based, capital intensive western industrial agricultural model is not working to meet the food demands of various countries. Soaring oil prices will inevitably increase production costs and food prices, which have escalated to the point that today one dollar purchases 30 percent less food than a dollar did a year ago.  

This situation is rapidly being aggravated by farmland being turned from food production to biofuels, and by climate change, which already reduces crop yields via droughts, floods and other unpredictable weather events.  

Expanding land areas devoted to biofuels and transgenic crops will further exacerbate the ecological impacts of vast monocultures that continually override nature’s services.  

Moreover, industrial agriculture presently contributes at least one-quarter of current greenhouse gas emissions, mainly methane and nitrous oxide. Continuing this dominant degrading system, as promoted by the current neoliberal economic paradigm, is no longer a viable option.  

The immediate challenge for our generation is to transform industrial agriculture by transitioning the world’s food systems away from reliance on fossil fuels. We need an alternative agricultural development paradigm, one that encourages more ecologically biodiverse, sustainable and socially just forms of agriculture. Reshaping the entire agricultural policy and food system in ways that are environmentally sound and economically viable for farmers and consumers will require major changes in the political and economic forces that currently determine what is being produced, by whom and for whom.  

Out-of-control trade liberalization is the key mechanism driving farmers off their land and the principal obstacle to local economic development and food security. Only by challenging the control that big multinational corporations exert over the food system and changing the export-led and free-trade-based agriculture model can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger and environmental degradation be halted.  

The concept of food sovereignty, as promoted by the world’s movement of small farmers, Via Campesina, constitutes the only viable alternative to the current and collapsing global food system, which failed in its assumption that international trade was the key to solving the world’s food problem.  

Instead, food sovereignty focuses on closed local circuits of production and consumption and community action for access to land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc., which are of central importance for communities to control in order to be able to produce food locally with agro-ecological methods.  

There is no doubt that an alliance between farmers and consumers is of strategic importance. In addition to moving down the food chain, that is eating less animal protein, consumers need to realize that their quality of life is intractably associated with the type of agriculture practiced in neighboring rural areas, not only because of the quality of the food produced, but also because agriculture is multifunctional, producing a series of environmental services such as sustaining water quality and biodiversity conservation.  

But this multifunctionality can only emerge if agricultural landscapes are dotted by small, diversified farms, which studies show can produce from two to 10 times more per unit area than do larger, corporate farms. 

In the U.S. the top quarter of sustainable-agriculture farmers, which are mostly small to medium size, exhibit higher yields than conventional farmers, and exert a much lower negative impact on the environment, reducing soil erosion and conserving biodiversity.  

Communities surrounded by populous small farms experience fewer social problems and have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated large, monoculture, mechanized farms.  

Thus it should be obvious to city dwellers that eating is both an ecological and political act; that buying food at local farmers markets will support the type of beyond-peak-oil agriculture that is urgently needed, while buying food in supermarkets perpetuates an unsustainable agricultural path. 

The scale and urgency of the challenge we face has no precedent but what needs to be done is environmentally, economically and politically feasible The speed with which changes must be implemented is great, but it is doubtful that we can gather the political will to radically transform our food system before hunger and food insecurity reach planetary and irreversible levels. 

Miguel Altieri is a professor at UC Berkeley 

A friend who works for Solano County said that the Anna’s hummingbird nesting in her office courtyard was being harassed by county employees who’d been sticking their noses and cameras rather literally into the nest and even bending the branch it’s on down, for closer looks. The hummingbird has been tenacious but she’s clearly agitated, and diverting her even occasionally from feeding the newly hatched chicks endangers them. 

The overeager bird botherers got indignant when the groundskeeper roped off the nest area.  

That evening one of my sisters back East emailed a forwarded copy of a Chron story from a year or two ago: a humpback whale had been entangled on a string of crab pots, and a volunteer crew of divers, at serious personal risk, had cut her free. My sister asked: Was the story was for real? 

Sure it was. So was the hummingbird story. So were the many stories that accumulated after the Cosco Busan oil spill. Joe and I played a very minor part in that rescue effort; you should have seen the outpouring of time and sweat and skill and, yes, love, by volunteers who spent long hard days at the rescue centers and on the beaches and in boats in the middle of Bay in the middle of the night.  

Maybe you did. Maybe you were among them. If so, you know what I’m talking about.  

Both the good and the bad stories there arise from something E. O. Wilson calls “biophilia,” something as basic to us as music or an oxygen-based metabolism. We’re alive, and we’re drawn to everything else alive. We’re part of something, and vice versa: it is what we’re made of. That’s Darwin’s most compelling idea, that we’re related to every other living being on the planet. You want family values? We got ’em. 

But, like parents who’ve never learned child care, sometimes we stumble in ignorance. It’s appalling that anyone is allowed to grow up without a feel for, say, the requirements of breeding birds; the knowledge that they’re utterly different and still the same as us, that they’re not puppets or cartoons. We still crave their company after we’ve paved them half out of existence, but sometimes we hurt them further even in reaching out. 

It’s not unusual to be ignorant. I’m still learning, and I’m nearly 60. The bit of work I did for the bird rescue gave me the organized guts to grab a sick barn owl in my spare shirt when we saw him as we strolled in a marsh a day later.  

We took him to the Suisun wildlife center and he died in two days anyway.  

Did I do him any good? Don’t know. Would I do it again? Yes, I’m a used nurse, and know about trying anyway. I also know the oath: First, do no harm. Funny, how we’re barely beginning to learn how to carry that one off. 

We’re born with biophilia. It’s hard to kill it. Nurturing it will do more for us—whatever age we are—than banning Grand Theft Auto or requiring organized sports. We don’t need more regimentation; we need knowledge, access, and release.

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 

CHILDREN 

Walter the Giant Storyteller for ages 3 and up, at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

FILM 

“Schindler’s Houses” 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 

Amy Goodman introduces “Standing Up to the Madness” at 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 25th, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. www.kpfa.org/events. 

Jack Hirschman, San Francisco Poet Laureate, reads at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

LeRoy Thomas & the Zydeco Roadrunners at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Bird Head at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Karen Blixt at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joshua Kryah and Alex Lemon read their poems for National Poetry Month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Bob Barde discusses his new book “Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Priscilla Royal talks about her medieval mystery series at 2 p.m. at at West Side Library, 135 Washington Ave., Point Richmond. 620-6567. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Cafe Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Laurel Anne Hill reads from her new crossover novel “Heroes Arise” at 7 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fever, swing music at noon at 555 12th St., Oakland. Part of Oakland City Center Spring Concerts.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Jared Redmond, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

UC Berkeley’s Cal RaijinTaiko, Taiko Drumming Concert, at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5-$7 at the door.  

Mesut Ozgen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Terrence Brewer Quartet with Lorca Hart at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

MIBB, University of Copenhagen Jazz Big Band in a benefit for Ashkenaz, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

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

Keith McArthur Project, funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Billy Cobham & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 17 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Interplay” Works by David Kwan, Nora Pauwels, Bartosz Posacki, and Steve Reich. Artists’ reception at 6 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

“Here: Oakland Through the Arts” Works by Excel High School Students. Presentation by the artists at 7 p.m., performance at 5 p.m. at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of CA Office Bldg., Atrium, 1515 CLay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

“Medea, A Tragedy by Euripides” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo, Oakland, 1 block from 19th St BART. Tickets are $5-$10. 873 8800. www.oakarts.tix.com 

FILM 

Heinz Emigholz: Architecture as Autobiography “Sullivan’s Banks” at 7 p.m. and “Loos Ornamental” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Adam David Miller reads from “Ticket to Exile” at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Adam Mansbach reads from “The End of the Jews” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Doug Fine reads from “Farewell, My Subaru: An epic Adventure in Local Living” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Jazz Quartet, live recording session at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The California Honeydrops, New Orleans blues and roots, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone, at 7:30 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $35-$100. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Vladimir Tarasov, Mark Dresser & Larry Ochs: Thinking About Morton Feldman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Houston, Jones & Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Sacred Profanities at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Dietsnaks, funk, nu-jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Uncle Vanya” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through May 17. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.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. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Foxfire” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through May 11. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

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 

“Medea, A Tragedy by Euripides” Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo, Oakland , 1 block from 19th St BART. Tickets are $5-$10. 873 8800. www.oakarts.tix.com 

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 

TheatreFirst “Future Me” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through May 3. Tickets are $23-$28. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Diversity in Play” Paintings by Rita Sklar. Reception at 3 p.m. at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. www.ritasklar.com 

FILM 

“The Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi” about Chilean exiled musician Quique Cruz at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine & Lebanon” with readings by Elmaz Abinader, Barbara Berman, Alexis De Veaux, Kathy Engel, Sam Hamod, Jack Hirschman, James Scully, and Deema Shehabi. Recption at 5:30 p.m., readings at 7:30 p.m. at St. John's Church, 2727 College Ave. RSVP to 548-0542.  

Amy Arbus “The Fourth Wall” A multi-media presentation on the stories behind her most iconic images at 6:30 p.m. at Sibley Auditorium, UC Campus. For ticket information see www.fotovision.org/pages/home.php 

Amanda Nadelberg and John Sakkis read their poems for National Poetry month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Ernest Bloch Lecture with Steve Mackey on “The 21st Century and the Composer/Performer” at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Jannell Moon and Jeanne Lupton, read their poetry, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

Don Lee reads from his comic satire, “Wrack and Ruin” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Will Allen describes “War on Bugs” on the chemical industry’s deep roots in agriculture, at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Bruce Anderson reads from his new book, “The Mendocino Papers” at 7 p.m. at Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 654-2665. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friday Noon Concert, with University Baroque Ensemble at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

April Paik, Melissa Lin, violins, Garrett McLean, viola and Ting Chin, cello, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery 2911 Claremont Ave. Tickets are $10. 848-1228. giorgigallery.org 

Spotlight on Local Composers New Works by John Blakelock at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 845-1350  

UC Berkeley’s The Movement Spring Showcase, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $9 at the door.  

Berkeley Dance Project 2008 Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through April 27 at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-8827. theater.berkeley.edu 

Los Boleros in a Havana Dance Party, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Back Porch Pickers at 7:30 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets are $12-$15, children under 16 $5.  

Rebecca Coupe-Franks Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Youssoupha Sidibe at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$14. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Acoustic Son at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

California Guitar Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Andrew Sammons Solo Guitar, jazz, swing, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Extreme Noise Terror, Stormcrow, Strong Intention at 7:30 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Pills and Jackets at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Devin the Dude, hip hop, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15-$18. 548-1159.  

Terrence Brewer Quartet with Lorca Hart at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Billy Cobham & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 19 

CHILDREN 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Betsy Stern, songs in Spanish, French and English, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Active Arts Theatre, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. www.activeartstheatre.org 

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 

Best of the Bay Comedy Series with Derrick Ellis, Marc Howard, John Alston, B.T. Kingsley and others at 10 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 652-2120.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Photographs of the West” by J. Williams, jewelry and pottery. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Maison d’ Art Gallery, 2729 San Pablo Ave. 207-9509.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

West Coast Live with authors Patrick McGrath, Melanie Abrams, Nathanial Rich and Tin Cup Seranade at 10 a.m. at Freight & Salvage Coffee House, 1111 Addison St. Tickets are $13-$18. 415-664-9500. www.ticketweb.com 

Samantha Le reads from her novel “Little Sister Left Behind” at 4 p.m. at Eastwind Book of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.ewbb.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Earth Day Cultural Performances with Marcia Flores Cantillana, Shawl-Anderson Youth Ensemble, Antoine Hunter Urban Jazz Dance Company and others, from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park.  

The American Recorder Orchestra of the West “Fancy Free” a concert of American music at 8 p.m. pre-concert reception at 7 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Donation $10, $5 for students and children under 12. www.arrowmusic.org 

American Bach Soloists “1685 and the Art of Ian Howell” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m., Tickets are $16-$42. 415-621-7900. www.americanbach.org 

African Music and Dance Ensemble, directed by C.K. Ladzekpo at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

San Francisco Renaissance Voices at 4 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-456-1102 www.sfrv.org 

Journey Into Dance at 8 p.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way, at 6th. 486-8700; www.rudramandir.com 

Vladimir Vukanovich, Peruvian guitarist, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Faye Carol at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ben Adams/Terrence Brewer Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Brothers Goldman, funk, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Grupo Falso Baiano, Brazilian Choro, at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sweet Crude Bill & The Lighthouse Nautical Society at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Consider the Source, ethno-fusion, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mike Park, Captured by Robots in a Memorial Benefit for Lynette Knackstedt at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

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 

Matt Hart, Darcie Denningan and Joseph Massey read their poems for National Poetry month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Alonzo Addison describes in planet’s most extraordinary and endangered palces in “Disappearing World” at 4 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Patrick McGrath reads from “Trauma” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Animal Crackers! Funny Songs & Delicious Desserts, music by Gershwin, Whitacre, PDQ Bach at 1 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $15-$20; no one turned away for lack of funds. 525-0302. 

California Chamber Players in a concert of string quartets at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

University of California Alumni Chorus, University Men's and Women's Chorales, and Francisco Unitarian Universalist Church Choir perform Brahms’ German Requiem with Jeffrey Fields, baritone, and Nancy Cooke Munn, soprano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, U.C. Campus Tickets are $6-$15. 643-9645. 

Taylor Eigsti, “Solo/Duo/Trio” with bassist John Schifflet and drummer Jason Lewis at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $25-$50 for concert and reception. Fundraiser for the Jazzschool. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.inhousetickets.com  

Dalby-Rabin Duo on Sunday, April 20, 4:00 p.m. Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. $12 for adults and free for children 18 and under. www.crowden.org 

Sound Poems Poetry and percussion by Kirk Lumpkin, Paul Mills, guitar, Mark Wieder, double bass, at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Garrett McLean, violin, Marvin Sanders, flute, perform solo works by J. S. Bach at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. berkeleyartcenter.org 

Don Neely’s Royal Society Jazz Orchestra at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $17-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Grupo Falso Baiano with guest Carlos Oliveira at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Athena Tergis & John Doyle at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Have Heart, Blacklisted, Killing the Dream at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, APRIL 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Green Ahead of His Time?” Paintings by Alex Maldonado at The Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. Hours are Mon.-Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Shakespeare Intensive” Staged reading of “Much Ado About Nothing” at 7:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $5. 276-3871. 

Steve Lopez talks about “The Soloist:A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with MK Chavez at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Chabot College Jazz Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Here is the end of meaning; here is loss beyond comprehension.” A former queen—only the day before, queen of a great city—finds herself and her entourage of young women captives after their home has been overwhelmed by stealth, burned and demolished. Before they are taken away to a new life as slaves, as chattel in a foreign land, there are confrontations with other women that would seem to define, or refine, the terms of their grievous situation.  

Or are they only further twists and turns to a widening vortex of hopelessness that swallows up any personal understanding or expression? 

Aurora Theatre Co. is staging Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, The Trojan Women, directed by Barbara Oliver, company cofounder, who also directed McLaughlin’s version of Aeschyus’ The Persians for Aurora a few years back.  

The cast of a dozen, who play the royal captives, a great beauty seemingly set free, a soldier and a god, are gathered on John Iacovelli’s set, strangely reminiscent of the Vaillancourt Fountain on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, a sprawling urban wreakage of chutes or passages that echo the outcries around them. 

Foremost among the forlorn bunch waiting to go into exile is Hecuba, played by Carla Spindt, one of the Bay Area’s finest actors, at her best in the head-on scenes with a daughter and two daughters-in-law: mad prophetess Cassandra (Sarah Nealis); brave Andromache (Emilie Talbot), Hector’s widow and mother of an infant prince; and the cause of the war, Helen (Nora el Samahy) in furs and designer sunglasses, ready to leave with her Greek husband for home after 10 years in Troy. 

The scenes revolve in mood and (not just speaking musically) attack. Cassandra is hysterically exultant, yet it is only when she approaches the others, telling them their fates in a reasonable tone, that they draw back. She calls the Trojan captives and dead happier than the Greeks, who will return home after a decade fighting as strangers to their dearest.  

In a hot debate that ends with her hazing, Helen claims she is as much at the mercy of the men who have claimed her as the new captives now are. Adventuress or canny survivor? “No scream of pain ever moved you.” Hecuba scoffs at her claims and taunts that her abandoned Greek husband will now dispose of her. “You think he will kill me? After ten years of fighting for me?” Helen shoots back. 

Andromache, the admired widow, expresses her guilt and her anger over the lost hero, her husband: “I envy him. The dead ask too much of us.” She will be the first to walk to the Greek ships, after her child is taken from her by a sympathetic but implacable Greek soldier (Matthew Purdon), tough and nice cop in one. 

“I am ... the mother of all confused and lost. It will be up to me to make order of this chaos.” Hecuba’s lines prove true of her role in Euripides’ play as well.  

Called “the most tragic of the poets” by Aristotle, Euripides ransacked the still new form of tragedy to find resonances, dissonances, contradictions and parodies—even burlesques—that would go beyond metaphor, beyond the symbolism of mythic figures to touch the deepest ambiguities of the human condition. 

The Aurora program refers to his psychological dramaturgy—the cliche since post-Romantic “well-wrought” plays became the stock-in-trade for a century of theater and film aimed at the middle class. In France, birthplace of that form, Parnassian poet Lecomte De Lisle translated Euripides in clear, resonant versions that have no parallel in English. 

As with the grand lines of Aeschylus’ Persians, Ellen McLaughlin at many points fulfills what poets like Witter Bynner (who translated Euripides at Isadora Duncan’s behest) have striven for: to “make it new,” in the words of Ezra Pound, who tried his hand at Sophocles, while his old friend H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) rendered one play and many choruses of Euripides, himself a poet of deliberate anachronisms. 

Side by side with fresh, perceptive lines that open up what the tragedian saw to us, 2,500 years later, there are the many famous rhetorical lines, those that (ironically) helped bring us more of Euripides, whole plays and fragments, than of both Aescylus and Sophocles, preserved for study by students of rhetoric, lawyers and other public speakers.  

The translator, director and actors all seem tentative at best with these passages. The best moments are in Helen’s argument with Hecuba, Andromache’s lament, the Greek soldier’s exhortations—all pretty straightforward. Like a baroque or modern dramatist, though, Euripides found a way outside of dialogue with these ambiguous statements, big (and questionable) truisms. Nobody seems to know, dramaturgically, what to do with them. 

In close dialogue, argument or some of the choral passages (choreographed by MaryBeth Cavanaugh), the Aurora production illuminates the awesome tragedy of the defeated for another audience of “the victors,” as it was in Euripides’ time. The other, more radical theatricalities of the tragedian get muffled or lost.  

Introducing the play as Poseidon, walking the ruined streets of “the only city I loved” and urging the captive women to sleep happily, is another fine actor, Julian Lopez-Morillas, though awkwardly costumed on yachting whites and braid. 

“I dreamed of a city ... my home,” intones Hecuba. “To the ships. It’s over!” barks the soldier with the sound of what’s left of Troy tumbling down.  

There’s really no conclusion, just departure from the scene. As at the end of other tragedies by this contradictory poet, as that other, modern poet and prophet of a new theater, Artaud, put it when claiming Euripides as predecessor: “We just don’t know where we are.” 

TROJAN WOMEN 

Through May 11 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.

Who was it who said that anyone who isn’t outraged just hasn’t been paying attention? 

A week or so ago I got mail from Berkeley naturalist/writer Phila Rogers announcing the formation of a new group called Save Strawberry Canyon. It came as something of a surprise, since I hadn’t been aware that the canyon needed saving. Boy, does it ever. 

Rogers explained in a later conversation that the impetus for Save Strawberry Canyon was UC’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in general and two new ventures in particular: the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT) and the Helios Energy Research Facility. Both have received little news coverage, even in the Planet. 

Both new buildings would have enormous visual and environmental impacts. The CRT would be a high-rise structure 

sited in Blackberry Canyon, just inside the Lab’s main gate. (The Lab is already building a guest house there, without an EIR.) It has been described as the engine for future lab expansion. 

Helios is in some ways even more problematic. The new building, funded in part by BP (ex British Petroleum), would be plunked down in the heart of Strawberry Canyon, across the road from the UC Botanical Garden. Its construction would require removing 18 redwoods from the Mather Grove. 

If you want an extra level of irony, the Helios Project would be dedicated to research on renewable transportation fuel. The building would, of course, be “a model of ‘green’ construction.” 

Rogers said her group coalesced out of an event last summer, organized by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, that explored Strawberry Canyon as a cultural landscape, with walking tours led by Gray Brechin and others. Rogers and others followed up by taking Robin Freeman’s Merritt College class on the creeks of the East Bay. Save Strawberry Canyon’s leadership includes 

Lesley Emmington and Janice Thomas, both associated with BAHA; former Berkeley mayor Shirley Dean; and the legendary Sylvia McLaughlin, one of the founders of Save the Bay. 

This was shortly after the UC Regents approved the LRDP (sorry, this is going to be thick with acronyms.) Last fall, Emmington, Thomas, and other plaintiffs filed suit, claiming that the EIR for the plan was deficient in addressing air and water quality, endangered-species issues, greenhouse gas emissions, and possible alternative sites, among others. They get their day in court on May 21. 

Meanwhile, UC issued draft EIRs on CRT and Helios late last year, with comment periods during the winter holidays. Neither report has been finalized yet. The regents are scheduled to vote on both at their May 16-17 meeting at UCLA. 

That’s the bare-bones version. It all comes down to conflicting visions for the Berkeley Hills: are we going to have an even denser techno-scientific complex, or can we preserve what’s left of the hills’ open space for its scenic, cultural, and wildlife values? 

Strawberry Canyon was recognized as something special as far back as 1865, when landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted described it as “a unique and most valuable appendage to the general local attractions of the neighborhood.” When the East Bay Regional Park District was carved out of surplus EBMUD lands in 1934, the canyon, although university-owned, was considered an integral part of the matrix of parklands. 

Despite the wave of construction that began with the Radiation Laboratory, the university continued to make gestures toward preservation. In 1968, prodded by UC professor Robert L. Stebbins, a renowned authority on reptiles and amphibians, UC designated portions of the Canyon as Ecological Study Areas. 

A 1976 report by Garrett Eckbo & Associates seconded Olmsted: “The varied and rugged topography of Strawberry Canyon … has favored the establishment of a rich diversity of plant and animal life, such that Strawberry Canyon today is one of the finest natural areas of comparable size in the Bay Area.” 

The Helios Building would abut one of the Ecological Study Areas, and preempt undeveloped land that has been considered for ESA status. And both projects-and whatever else the Lab has in mind, with its wooly visions of scientific “hill towns”-would eat up huge swathes of habitat that sustain the diversity that so impressed Eckbo.  

Strawberry Canyon is not Terra Nullius. It’s home to birds of prey, migratory songbirds, bats, snakes, and tiny blind invertebrates that hide under rocks. Some of these species have protected state or federal status; others should. For all of them, and for anyone who cares about biodiversity, UC’s plans would mean an irreparable loss. 

I’ll have a lot more to say about the endangered-species issues in future columns.  

For now, if you want more information, write Save Strawberry Canyon at PO Box 1234, Berkeley 94701. I understand a web site is in the works. Or email Phila Rogers: philajane6@yahoo.com. The EIRs for the LRDP, CRT, and Helios are on the lab’s site: www. lbl.gov/Community. And they make very interesting reading. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 

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 Crockett Hills Regional Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Birds and Butterflies: Easy Garden enchantment with California Native Plants. An Audubon Nature Studies class begins at 7 p.m. at Albany Adult School. Cost is $35. For details, call 559-6580 or see www.albany.k12.ca.us/adult/birding.html 

Amy Goodman and David Goodman: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times and 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12. 444-8511. brownpapertickets.com/event/31304  

Bayview Library Grand Re-opening Party from 4 to 7 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. 620-6566, www.richmondlibrary.org. 

“Texts We Wish Were Not In the Bible” with Mary A. Tolbert, Professor of Biblical Studies, at 11:10 a.m. at Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. 

Climbing Mt. Shasta Tips for the novice and expert at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 

City of Oakland 14th EarthEXPO with products and tips to reduce energy use, be a greener consumer, information on bay-friendly gardening, and more, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway. www.oaklandearthexpo.org 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will learn about plants from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Bush’s Brain” A documentary about Karl Rove, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy” with author Michael Klare, introductory remarks by Daniel Ellsberg, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Durant. Donation $10-$20, no one turned away for lack of funds. ProgressivePersp@aol.com 

“In Sickness and In Wealth” Film and discussion on how economic status, race and zip code are powerful predictors of health status and life expectancy, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. 981-5356. 

Green Chamber of Commerce “Green Industry Trends” at 5:30 p..m. at StopWaste.org, 1537 Webster St., Oakland. Cost is $20-$30, includes program and tour of LEED Platinum building. greenchamberof commerce.net 

Watch the Clinton Obama Deabte at 8 p.m. at Park Avenue Bar & Grill, across the street from Piedmont Theater, Piedmont. 

Simplicity Forum “Decluttering - physical, mental and metaphysical” at 6:30 p.m. at Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 

Anime in the Afternoon at Bayview Library Watch a classic Japanese animation film featuring a mysterious forest spirit who befriends two young girls at 3 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. Appropriate for all ages. 620-6566. www.richmondlibrary.org. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

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 17 

Berkeley High School Red & Golden Girls Reunion Luncheon at 11 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $35, reservations required. 582-2478. 

Chiapas Support Committee Report and slide show on the International Zapatista Women’s Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 654-9587. 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School, Russell St. entrance. If you have agenda items please forward them to karlreeh@aol.com 

“Bird Song and Coffee: A Wake-up Call” A documentary film followed by discussion on the relationship between coffee and the environment at &7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Sponsored by the Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

Stories about Travels to Australia with Stuart Pawsey at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

Brain Games at Bayview Library Exercise your brain and have fun with your neighbors at this free, casual event at 1 p.m. at 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. 620-6566. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. $5. 643-2755. botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 

Oakland Street Retreat: Bearing Witness to Homelessness Participants will live on the streets without money, bedding, change of clothing, books or watches. Participants will eat in soup kitchens and beg for money or food at times when soup kitchens are closed. Retreat lasts from Fri.-Sun. Cost is $225 to benefit service providers of the Homeless & the New Dharma Scholarship Fund. Participants urged to beg to raise the funds. For information and to register call 549 3733 ext 2. www.newdharma.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Harold Palmer on “Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Comparison of Democrat vs Republican Positions” 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 524-7468.  

Expo 50+ for Boomers and Beyond The public is invited to attend Expo 50+, featuring class exhibits and demonstrations, live entertainment, health screenings, vendors, musicians, a raffle and complimentary refreshments, hosted by Pleasant Valley Adult School. The Expo will be held Friday, April 18, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 4700 Lincoln Ave, in Oakland. Admission is free. For information call (510) 879-4090. 

Iraq Moratorium Day and Vigil to Protest the War from 2 to 4 p.m. at the corners of Unvirsity and Acton. 548-9696. 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 pm. at the Berkeley Public 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 19 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour “Berkeley and the Wars: A Look Back at Local Military Sites” from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For reservations call 848-0181. 

Berkeley Earth Day 2008 with demonstrations of biodiesel and electric cars, solar power, farmers’ market, food and craft booths, from noon to 5 p.m. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Blvd & Allston Way. 

“Clean It, Green It, Mean It!” Help out at Peralta Hacienda HIstorical Park to remove graffiti, pick up litter, clear the creek of invasive plants, and help plant some more native species, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

Oakland Earth Day 2008 Join your neighbors and friends on Earth Da y to make a difference in our Oakland communities. Participants will receive a free event T-shirt. For featured locations and a complete list of citywide project sites please visit www.oaklandearthday.com  

Earth Day Shoreline Clean-up from 9 a.m. to noon at Albany Waterfront Trail Head, end of Buchanan St. Wear sturdy shoes, a hat and sunscreen, and bring your own water bottle and gloves if you have them. Snacks provided. Children must be accompanied by an adult.665-3508. staff@thewatershedproject.org 

Hi-Tec Recycling Electronics recycling from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 631 So 31st St., Richmond. 488-4564. 

Wildflower Walk Learn to identify wildflowers with linda Yemoto, naturalist, from 2 to 4 p.m. on the Big Spings Canyon Trail. Meet at the Big Springs Picnic Area. 525-2233. 

California Native Plant Sale with California shrubs, trees, perennials, and many plants that are not available in a nursery, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Botanic Garden, Tilden Park, Wildcat Canyon Rd., at South Park Dr. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society 44th Annual Iris Show and Potted Iris Sale Sat. from 1 to 5 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. http://bayareairis.org.  

STAND Oakland Candidates Forum / Earthday Event from 1 to 3 p.m. at Faith Presbyterian Church, 430 49th St. and Webster, Oakland, just off Telegraph. Sponsored by Standing Together for Accountable Neighborhood Development. www.standoakland.org 

California Wildflower Show Sat. and Sun. at the Oakland Museum of CA, 1000 Oak St., at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

“Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling” Learn to detect and remedy lead hazards in the home to prevent lead poisoning, from 10 a.m. to noon at Berkeley Public Library, South Branch, 1901 Russell St., at MLK. Registration required. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org/homeown.htm 

Green Building Open House from noon to 5 p.m. at 2619 San Pablo Ave. www.ecohomeimprovment.com  

Brooks Island Trip Paddle across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Brooks Island to explore the rocky island, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For experience boaters who can provide their own canoe, kayak and safety gear. For ages 14 and up. Parent participation required. Cost is $20-$22. To register call 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

United-Front Protest to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal at 2:30 p.m. at 14th St. and Broadway, Oakland. Called by Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black League for Social Defense. 839-0852. 

The War Comes Home: Campus Antiwar Network Western Regional Conference, from 1 to 6 p.m. at 200 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. Cost is $5. For information contact katrina.yeaw@gmail.com (415) 335-0953. 

California Writers Club “Welcome to SoMa” with author Kemble Scott at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble Event Loft, Jack London Square, Oakland. 272-0120. 

“Spring/Summer Veggies and the Edible Landscape” with Stephanie Bittner at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

Storytelling Workshop with Liz Mangual from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 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 20 

East Bay Labyrinth Project Community Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. info@eastbaylabyrinthproject.org 

Mad Science for the Whole Family A introduction to chemistry from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. For ages 7 and up. Cost is $4, registration required. 1-888-EB-PARKS.  

East Bay Crop Walk A fundraiser for the Alamenda County Comunity Food Bank around Lake Merritt, Oakland. Registration at 1:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Crop Walk begins at 2 p.m. For information call 635-3665, ext. 328. 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society 44th Annual Iris Show and Potted Iris Sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. http://bayareairis.org.  

Spring Family Hike Join an easy walk around Jewel Lake from 1:30 to 3 p.m. with Meg Platt, naturalist. 525-2233. 

Waddle and Swaddle East Bay Baby Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Free. 540-7210. www.eastbaybabyfair.com  

Pachamama Alliance “Awakening the Dreamer Symposium” from 1 to 4:30 p.m. at New Spirit Community Church at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. pachamama.org 

East Bay Atheists Berkeley Meets to discuss what to do when you find yourself ina situation where you are expected to join a religious ritual, at 1:30 p.m., 3rd flr. meeting room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. eastbayatheists.org 

SF AIDS Benefit Brunch at 10:30 a.m at T-Rex Barbeque, 1300 Tenth St. at Gilman. 

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 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 Jack Petranker on “Experiments in Awareness: Making Friends with Experience” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

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. Also on Fri. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 21 

“Environmental Impact: Evolution of the Berkeley Landscape” with Chuck Wollenberg and Dave Weinstein at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, central meeting room, 2090 Kittredge.  

Berkeley Green Mondays Berkeley & Military Recruiting: What's All the Fuss? with Zanne Joi and Rae Abileah at 8 p.m. at Anna's Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. www.berkeleygreens.org 

“The Two Faces of Breast Cancer with Genes and the Microenvironment” with Joe Gray, LBNL Life Science Director, Mina Bissel, LBNL Distiguished Scientist, Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff, LBNL Senior Scientist, at Berkeley Lab Friends of Science, at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. www.lbl.gov/friendsofscience  

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group, for people 60 years and over, meets at 9:45 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany. Cost is $3.  

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 

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 

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.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., April 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., April 16, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344. 

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., April 17, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., April 17, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

Are you wanting to do more this year to live “green”? Looking for simple yet meaningful ways to be part of the solution?  

Here are suggestions for doing your part to heal the environment while directly supporting your personal well being: 

1. First and foremost, make the commitment to eat organically.  

Food grown without pesticides has been shown to contain significantly higher levels of naturally occurring, essential nutrients. Additionally, soil unadulterated by chemical contaminants sequesters (absorbs) much higher amounts of carbon, thus reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.  

Finally, the manufacture and usage of chemical pesticides in and of itself adds to global warming.  

In fact, according to highly respected environmental activist, ecologist and physicist Vandana Shiva, chemical agriculture altogether accounts for 40 percent of global warming gasses. 

2. Switch to non-toxic cleaning products.  

This will help you eliminate chemical residues, and help keep your indoor air free of toxic cleaning fumes. 

3. Take footwear off at the front door.  

This keep dirt, pesticides, oil and other chemicals from being tracked into living spaces. 

4. Drive less, walk and/or bicycle more.  

Try to exercise outdoors in nature more often. 

5. Conserve energy by turning off lights when no one is in the room.  

And, put appliances and electronic equipment on power strips, then switch off the power when not in use. Appliances, televisions, computers, etc., individually turned to “off” are still drawing power. 

6. Take an eco- adventure vacation. 

Or stay in hotels where greening measures have been implemented. 

7. Switch to natural cosmetics, soaps and shampoos.  

As our largest organ, our skin absorbs what it contacts. Chemicals that we’d never think to eat are actually taken in through the products we put on our skin. 

8. Choose to purchase organic clothing.  

Conventional cotton production typically entails the highest amount of chemicals per acre of any crop and accounts for 16 percent of the world’s pesticide use. The processing of conventional cotton also significantly contributes to air and water pollution. It is true that at the moment, organic cotton usually does cost more out of pocket. Why not start with smaller items, such as socks and underwear? There are now lusciously soft organic cotton sheets, blankets and towels. Prices are already begun to go down, and the more we make these healthy choices the more likely that trend will continue. 

9.Choose post-consumer recycled paper products.  

Most often “recycled” paper is made of the scraps from lumber milling, not the stuff we so conscienciously putout on the curb. Paper labeled “post-consumer” is just that. 

10. Make conscious purchases all around.  

Is this item local, or is there a local equivalent available? Ask yourself if this is something you truly need. 

11.Plant a tree—on your own or through an organization such as Trees For The Future(.org). 

Approximately one ton of carbon is absorbed by each tree over it’s lifetime. (We lost millions of trees during Katrina.). 

12. And of course, make a pledge to utilize the three Rs.  

Reduce, reuse and recycle, in that order, whenever possible! 

This is a beginning list. Start with one or go for all. Once you start thinking, you’ll probably come up with many more ideas. For an added bonus, how about joining with a friend, family member or neighbor to become green resolution buddies? Get support, spread the action and spread the word!  

Arms—in Berkeley?  

Although the establishment of a Marine recruiting station downtown has brought attention—and controversy—to Berkeley in recent months, most locals are probably not aware that central Berkeley has a number of buildings and sites once used for military purposes, some dating back to the early 20th century.  

The sites and history of Berkeley’s military associations and veterans are the starting focus of the spring season of Berkeley Historical Society walking tours, which begin this Saturday. 

Later tours visit historic neighborhoods, take in some of Berkeley’s transportation history, and provide an insider’s peek at new libraries on the UC Berkeley campus. 

The Saturday tours, which run from about 10 a.m. to noon, extend through June and cost $10 each for those who aren’t BHS members. As of this writing, there were still spaces available on all of the tours. 

This Saturday, April 19, the first walk is co-led by the author, along with BHS President John Aronovici, and titled “Berkeley and the Wars: A look Back at Local Military Sites.”  

Concentrating on the downtown and the western side of the UC campus, we’ll see Berkeley’s old National Guard Armory, several war memorials, the former military training headquarters on the UC campus, and even the location of a local artillery park. 

The tour finishes with a viewing of local memorabilia of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), recently curated by the BHS. Back in 1933 and 1939 Berkeley hosted major GAR gatherings. 

The following Saturday, April 26, BHS Board member Dale Smith leads a walk through the Elmwood neighborhood which, just a little more than a century ago, was still a productive agricultural district.  

The walk, entitled “I Ain’t Gonna Work on Kelsey’s Farm No More,” recalls John Kelsey, who grew not only fruit crops but many of the sapling street trees for Berkeley—including the elms of the future “Elmwood”—on his ranch northeast of College and Ashby.  

It traces the pattern of residential development, where scattered homes of early settlers of the district still stand among handsome rows of “streetcar suburb” houses from the beginning of the 20th century.  

Attention will be called to homes designed by Leola Hall, one of Berkeley’s early women architects, as well as the history of the Kelsey Street Press, a poetry publisher founded by a group of local women. 

The tour also includes the Elmwood commercial district—packed today with fine restaurants, gelato fanciers, and a neighborhood-run movie theater—which has made its own history through struggles to preserve neighborhood businesses, such as Ozzie’s Soda Fountain, and to regulate commercial rents. 

If you’re also planning to go on the May 4 Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association house tour of the adjacent Benvenue/Hillegass neighborhood, this Elmwood walk is a good prelude and introduction to the environs. 

Saturday, May 10, another venerable Berkeley residential district—Northbrae—is explored, with a focus on the trolley system that served the neighborhood. The walk, led by Phil Gale, will recall how the streets came to be named, the grandeur that ambitious developers proposed for the neighborhood—including, at one time, plans for the State Capitol—and what actually came to be built. (The tour is not wheelchair accessible.) 

Gale, a Berkeley treasure (as well as BHS treasurer) whose local roots go back to the 19th century, is an expert on the early transportation systems of the East Bay. 

Then it’s off into the wilds—sort of—on Saturday, May 17, when Ron Sipherd leads visitors up Panoramic Hill, just southeast of the UC campus. Sipherd will focus on the “contrasting qualities of proximity to the university and steep, difficult terrain” that make Panoramic Hill a unique piece of Berkeley’s physical and cultural landscape.  

A remarkable array of homes—from early brown shingles, to the only Frank Lloyd Wright design built in Berkeley—are integrated with winding streets, staircases, and the natural landscape of Strawberry Canyon to the north and Hamilton Gulch to the south. 

See Sipherd’s website at www.well.com/~ronks/pix/panowalk/index.html for a preview of some of the sights on this walk. (This tour involves steep grades and stairs and is not handicapped accessible.) 

Eleven-year veteran tour leader and long-time Berkeley resident Paul Grunland is a familiar leader of BHS tours of the northeast Berkeley hill neighborhoods which he probably knows better than anyone else, but this season he comes down to the flatlands to guide a walk of the McGee Tract neighborhood west of Downtown. 

This pleasant but often overlooked district of older Berkeley homes and wide, leafy, streets includes Berkeley’s first Roman Catholic parish church, St. Joseph the Worker, and was once the site of the working farm of James McGee, who was also elected one of Berkeley’s first town trustees in the 1870s.  

Grunland will draw on the recent research of the McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group, a dedicated set of volunteers who meet weekly to research and discuss their neighborhood history.  

Their own introduction to the neighborhood is posted at www.donaspring.com/HistoryDistrict4.htm 

Subscribers to at least three of the Spring walks are also eligible for a free bonus tour on June 14. This season, the bonus tour will visit the two newest libraries on the UC campus. 

The Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, near Wurster Hall, is sheathed in green slate “shingles” and houses nearly a quarter of a million books, records, manuscripts, and other rare materials. The C.V. Starr East Asian Library—just opened last month—overlooks Memorial Glade and Doe Library. Library staff will guide the tours. 

For last-minute reservations, call the Berkeley Historical Society at 848-0181 on the Thursday or Friday afternoon (1-4 p.m.) before the tour to see if space is available and to get your name on the list. 

For reservations further in advance, mail a check payable to Berkeley Historical Society to P.O. Box 1190, Berkeley, California, 94701. 

When making a reservation, please provide your telephone number and e-mail address (if you have one) so you can be contacted with information about where to meet for a tour, and last-minute updates. 

Membership—which costs $20 individual, $25 family—entitles the ticket purchaser to an $8 price for individual tours, or a “season ticket special” of all six tours for $30. Only members are eligible for the June 14 Bonus Tour.