After undergoing a $700,000 renovation which lasted nearly nine months, the rare 1911 Herschell-Spillman Menagerie edition merry-go-round has reopened in Tilden Park. -more-
While the battle over the North Oakland portion of AC Transit’s proposed Bus Rapid Transit line has not reached the level or volume that it has in neighboring Berkeley, a Saturday morning political forum at Peralta Elementary School showed that the battle lines are drawn around similar issues. -more-
People’s Park might not get a free clothing box any time soon, but an owl box is more than welcome, especially if it acts as a rat patrol. -more-
Meeting an hour later than usual, Berkeley’s planning commissioners will have time to watching the final presidential debate before Wednesday night’s meeting. -more-
Last week, for the second time in a year, the Berkeley Police Department and city officials sent out a letter to 400 restaurants in Berkeley warning them against holding late night parties, which have resulted in fights, gunfire and unruly crowds. -more-
It has weathered the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy Era and the Free Speech Movement. -more-
Controversy over a $45,000 loan from Berkeley’s most controversial developer to City Councilmember Linda Maio and her spouse has resulted in a court order compelling the councilmember’s testimony. -more-
Berkeley is feeling the pinch of the current economic slump, with the demand for new housing decreasing, real estate sales declining and developers adopting more of a “wait and watch” policy when it comes to breaking ground on new projects. -more-
A rainbow coalition of Richmond activists on Monday demanded that the city’s powerful police union rescind an electoral mailer they described as a racist hit piece. -more-
A California Appeals Court has ruled that the City of Berkeley’s Police Review Commission must continue to exclude the public from complaint hearings against Berkeley police officers, and must continue to bar public access to peace officer personnel records or other records relating to Police Review Commission investigations or findings in such complaints. -more-
The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved Mills Act contracts Thursday for two historic Berkeley landmarks—the Durant Hotel and the Charles Keeler House. -more-
Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz told councilmembers Tuesday night that the city was prepared to absorb the hits that are the result of the recent adoption of the State of California’s 2008-09 budget. Possible further cuts to Berkeley’s $321 million city budget, stemming from the state’s ongoing financial crisis, may be another matter, however. -more-
Berkeley may be facing the loss of one of its two hospitals. -more-
Did animal rights activists vandalize the property of UC Berkeley researchers involved in animal experiments? -more-
Berkeley real estate developer duo Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald—known for the Fine Arts building downtown and the Trader Joe’s project on University Avenue—gave the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board a glimpse of their next big venture at a public meeting Monday. -more-
Bruce Valentine of Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland wants to cut down on sports-related injuries at high school sports games. -more-
Two candidates with strong environmental records are facing off for an open seat on the East Bay Regional Parks District. -more-
Even planning commissioners who have fought to defend the downtown plan crafted by a citizen committee are backing away from its parking provisions. -more-
The body of a 44-year-old Berkeley man lay decomposing in his studio apartment for at least two weeks, while his aging mother, who suffers from dementia, remained inside, surrounded by an ever-growing mound of garbage bags. -more-
Berkeley residents were targeted in three armed robberies that took place within 57 minutes of each other last week, police report. -more-
Arrests made in Faison murder -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District received a one-time $400,000 Program Improvement Corrective Action grant Tuesday as part of the millions of dollars in intervention funds awarded to 92 school districts by the state Department of Education. -more-
With friends like Blue Star PR, Israel doesn’t need enemies. The Berkeley Daily Planet made the grievous error of publishing a sympathetic story about local reaction to an incident in which graffiti were applied to a Blue Star poster advertising Israeli-Arab coexistence at a campus bus stop. Some of our readers wrote to us complaining that the story was too soft on Israel. -more-
We Americans tend to think that the world revolves around us. I used to think this was arrogant, until I noticed, during my travels, that it was true. The evening news in Southeast Asia and Africa usually led with stories about the United States, and somehow Latin Americans knew much more about American foreign policy than I did. Now I understand that the powerless usually know much more about the powerful than vise versa. Vulnerable people need to understand those who control and influence their lives, while those in control are largely unaffected by those around them. Therefore, although those in power love to call them “complainers” and “crackpots,” the regular victims of power are usually astute observers of the covert mechanisms of governance. -more-
Finally, voters in Berkeley have an opportunity to secure funding for our local fire and emergency services. Measure GG, on this November’s ballot, will once and for all eliminate fire station closures, fund paramedics at every fire station, and restore funding to our community’s disaster readiness programs. -more-
That millions of radical Muslims use the clarion call of “Zionism” as an enemy philosophy justifying advocating for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state is, I guess, to be expected. -more-
Marc Sapir may be well-traveled, but his Oct. 2 commentary reveals ignorance and lack of comprehension. To unravel his lies and half-truths: -more-
Bus Rapid Transit supporters have said a lot of misleading things. From their claims that BRT will reduce greenhouse gases, to their claims that it won’t have any negative effects on the people who live and work in Berkeley, there appears to be no basis in fact for many of their statements. Now they are opposing Measure KK, the voter initiative that would declare the rights of the citizens of Berkeley to make their own choices about public transit. Let’s look at some of the people who are opposing Measure KK. -more-
AC Transit has a plan to take over the two center lanes of Telegraph Avenue and most of the parking for big ugly buses exceeding the speed limit. It’s called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Almost everyone who sees details of the plan thinks it’s a bad idea—the more you know about it, the less you like it. -more-
The other day Al Gore—hardly a revolutionary—told those gathered at the Clinton Global Initiative that global warming is accelerating with such speed that it may be necessary for environmentalists to undertake actions of civil disobedience in order to prevent the construction of more coal burning power plants and other threats to the planet. -more-
Albany Measure Y is democratic reform. It allows Albany’s citizens, rather than the City Council, to select Albany’s mayor. -more-
A few weeks ago, I filed papers to become a candidate for City Council District 4. It was and is my belief that my candidacy would provide a fresh perspective on the challenges our city faces, informed by solid progressive values and a history of public service. I withdrew my candidacy, resigned to the reality that, even in Berkeley, success as an outsider candidate would require substantial sums of money and very significant amounts of time upfront. It is clear that I would have to miss many precious moments with my new baby daughter to run a campaign for City Council. -more-
I am a retired octogenarian with graduate level college education, albeit dated, who has endured national crises of many kinds but never in all my years witnessed a financial crisis like the one we’re in now. Every bell of foreboding available to the dominate media sounds the high note of meltdown and catastrophe. People in the know speak and write stuff about bundling and swapping that I can’t understand and point accusing fingers in every direction of the causal compass. The Treasury secretary mournfully submits a three-page solution keyed to legalizing extortion. Professionals of every stripe analyze and analogize. Congress in characteristically spineless fashion approved a humongous cash bailout (or handout) that may or may not help. -more-
Every day now a new blow seems to send the world’s financial system staggering as it desperately seeks a chance to right itself. Congress passed the $700 billion bailout and things have gotten worse, not better. Now several states, notably California, can’t even raise the money they need to meet payroll because the bond markets are nearly shut down. -more-
Most Americans have one eye on the nation’s financial crises and the other on the presidential election. And they are asking themselves, “Is McCain or Obama, the Democrats or the Republicans, better for the economic health of the country as well as for my own financial well-being?” That is the defining question of this election. -more-
The tale of what the Bush administration is up to in the Caucasus is slowly filtering out, although the U.S. media has largely deep-sixed the story. The recent Georgia-Russia war was just one move in a complex chess game aimed at cornering the energy reserves of Central Asia, extending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to Moscow’s vulnerable southern border, and ending Russia’s control of the Black Sea. Georgia was just a pawn-an expendable one at that—in a high stakes game. -more-
An African-American politician once told me that when he was newly elected to the South Carolina State Legislature in the early 1970s—making him somewhat of an oddity in a statehouse that spawned John C. Calhoun and Pitchfork Ben Tillman—a group of moderate white legislators offered to show him around the state capitol, and even to help him pick up a girlfriend. He declined the help with the girlfriend, saying he’d been doing that pretty well on his own since he’d been a sophomore in high school. -more-
Berkeley schools are at a crossroads. BUSD has made strides in improving achievement at our elementary schools, but too many Berkeley middle school students arrive at high school two or more grade levels behind. They are unprepared for a rigorous high school curriculum. -more-
I am running for re-election to the Berkeley School Board because I have the energy, enthusiasm, experience, and knowledge to continue the impressive improvements that the Berkeley Unified School District has achieved since I was first elected to the Board in 2000. I have strong educational, fiscal, and operational experience, and I bring the additional perspective as an environmentalist and community liaison to the School Board. -more-
The first question that people usually ask me is after being Mayor (1994-2002) why would you want to do that again? Since leaving the Mayor’s Office I have talked with people across political lines all over this City. I find that Berkeley is a divided community; that people believe no one in City Hall is listening. That’s why I am running for Mayor. -more-
My name is Toya Groves and I represent the population of Berkeley often criticized for their lack of political involvement. I represent whole heartedly the youth who come from these communities and their victimization by policies like No Child Left Behind. I represent the youth who has been suspended or expelled from this district as early as middle school, and who are forgotten about or shifted out of the district without proper representation, to maintain statistical mandates. Suspension and expulsion and large time spans of no education does not just mean the lack of higher education , or the lack of a job, it could very well mean destructive behavior and violent deaths. As adults we must take responsibility for all our children and deal with the threat of violence in our schools and community in a holistic way. This is a mental health issue similar to teenage suicide. Our suspension and expulsion policies must be re-evaluated because those kids we kick out of school do not just disappear they end up dead or incarcerated! -more-
My great love for politics, which is based in love, has more to do with being in touch with people. Rather than go on and on here (I will see you as I make my rounds), I have instead taken this opportunity to present to you some information about myself. -more-
It was almost six years ago that we embarked on a journey to set aside the old political divisions and work together to take on the tough challenges that face Berkeley in the 21st century. -more-
It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the Southwest Berkeley community for the last four years on the Berkeley City Council. I have been accessible and active in District 2, working to improve residents’ quality of life. -more-
No, this is not turning into the Magpie Column. But I just got wind of disturbing news about these birds that needs to reach a wider audience. The July issue of The Auk, published by the American Ornithologists’ Union, has an article entitled “Early Impact of West Nile Virus on the Yellow-billed Magpie (Pica nuttalli.)” -more-
A friend of mine has a bass guitarist living upstairs who has been working out the chords to “In a Gadda Da Vida” for the past 12 years. My friend is a patient person but she’s begun to exhibit something of a tic and often looks dolefully into space for long periods of time, returning from her reverie only when the music has stopped for some short spell. -more-
High on Panoramic Hill, overlooking Berkeley and the bay, stands a pre-World War II house that became both a public architectural spectacle and a secret aerie. Next week, a scholar offers an illustrated lecture exploring some of the hidden dimensions and character of this striking structure. -more-
It’s just before a matinee at the Julia Morgan Center and the theater is flooded with families, lots of kids. And the kids are being given a speech lesson. But it’s taught by pirates—eyepatches, hooks and headscarves, literally out of a storybook, mingling with the audience, saying “Aarrr!” and “Avast!” over and over, followed by a roar of youthful voices. The exclamations appear, projected on the pirate ship’s sail. -more-
At the time of the French Revolution, William Blake wrote, in “The Marriage of Heaven & Hell,” that Milton had been “a true Poet of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Several generations of Gothic tales and Romantic and “Decadent” works followed, transforming the devil into a modern creature, even an aesthete—quite a jump from medieval Satan or the Mephistopheles of the Renaissance. And before Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky assailed Progress by saying the cleverest trick of the devil was to convince mankind he didn’t exist, Jean-Paul Richter, well before Nietzsche, told of a dream in which a voice announced that God was dead. -more-
When novelist and educator Cecil Brown—longtime Berkeley resident and teacher at Bay Area colleges—was introduced for a reading and talk he gave a few weeks ago at Washington University in St. Louis, Prof. Gerald Early recalled when he was in high school in the ‘60s, “The three books that everybody just had to read were James Baldwin’s Another Country, John A. Williams’ The Man Who Cried I Am and Cecil Brown’s The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger.” -more-
German Expressionism Collection -more-
Cooper-Moore, free jazz pianist, multi-instrumentalist and composer extraordinaire, makes his first Bay Area appearance in 37 years at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, 1519 St., San Francisco (moved from the Noodle Factory in Oakland) on his solo tour, “Old & New Paths,” featuring his handmade instruments. A cohort of William Parker, who has played at the behest of Sonny Rollins, Cooper-Moore will play “a stew of Gospel, Bop, Free Jazz, Blues and Roots Music”—and tell stories. (There’s a grand piano on site, too.) David Gitin, KPFA music programmer of the 1960s and ‘70s, commented, “His appearances are so rare, they’re excited when he plays in New York,” where he lives. $12/$15. For tickets, contact Brown Paper Tickets at brownpapertickets.com or (800) 838-3006. For information on the show, call 547-8932 or see aumfidelity.com/cooper-moore. -more-
A friend of mine has a bass guitarist living upstairs who has been working out the chords to “In a Gadda Da Vida” for the past 12 years. My friend is a patient person but she’s begun to exhibit something of a tic and often looks dolefully into space for long periods of time, returning from her reverie only when the music has stopped for some short spell. -more-
High on Panoramic Hill, overlooking Berkeley and the bay, stands a pre-World War II house that became both a public architectural spectacle and a secret aerie. Next week, a scholar offers an illustrated lecture exploring some of the hidden dimensions and character of this striking structure. -more-
