UC Berkeley announced plans to institute a 9.3 percent tuition increase to address a state budget crisis that is taking away millions of dollars in public education funding. 

The proposed fee hike would take effect July 1 and would increase undergraduate tuition from $7,126 a year to about $7,789. 

The UC Board of Regents is scheduled to vote on the fee increase in May. 

Student service fees are also expected to rise. 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau told reporters Tuesday that a $60-$70 million funding shortfall for the 2009-10 fiscal year prompted university officials to increase fees, institute a staff hiring freeze, temporarily slow down faculty hiring and expand a program that encourages employees to reduce their work hours.  

Birgeneau said that until further notice, all career and contract staff positions will be frozen. 

He said the projected deficit includes a $15 million shortfall from the 2008-09 fiscal year, a $10-20 million permanent state budget cut in 2009-10, and $35 million in unfunded obligations such as utilities, health and medical benefits, faculty merit and employee pay increases, and the anticipated re-start of pension contributions. 

The chancellor said that in the coming weeks the university would have to implement permanent staff layoffs, but that efforts would be taken to minimize that by asking employees to take advantage of programs designed to reduce workforce expenses. 

“We're not able yet to determine to what extent layoffs will be necessary in individual units,” he said. 

The university has already decreased faculty hiring from about 100 hires a year to about 25 in 2008-09 and 2009-10, which is expected to save about $5 million annually in salaries. 

Birgeneau acknowledged that the fee hikes would have a significant impact on students, particularly those from middle-class backgrounds. 

Under the proposal, families making more than $100,000 would pay the full fee increase. Families earning between $60,000 to $100,000 would pay half the fee increase, or about 4.65 percent. Families earning less than $60,000 would not be subject to the increase. 

Birgeneau said that the university administration rejected the possibility of top officials at the Berkeley campus taking a salary cut. 

“Obviously this is one of the things that we have considered," he said. "Further reductions of senior administrators’ salaries would damage our ability to attract outstanding people.” 

He said that some university officials had responded generously to his call for help and donated parts of their salaries.  

Frank Yeary, a vice chancellor, donated his entire $200,000-a-year salary to the university. 

He said that UC’s Office of the President was considering six-day unpaid furloughs for staff and administrators for the next academic year. 

Birgeneau added that the university would not compromise on its quality of undergraduate education, and continue to make it accessible and affordable to California residents. 

“We expect to maintain a robust undergraduate program but we will not be able to achieve that unless every department pitches in,” he said. 

Other UC campuses facing similar challenges are expected to adopt similar cost-cutting measures. 

George Breslauer, the university’s executive vice-chancellor and provost, said that the Berkeley campus has a $1.8 billion budget, $500 million of which comes from the state. 

Breslauer said that the campus was bracing for an 8 percent permanent budget reduction. 

He added that despite all the cuts that were taking place, he would be increasing the financial support allocated to undergraduate curriculum from his budget to “avoid this serious budgetary situation creating bottlenecks in student access to courses.” 

Nathan Brostrom, the campus's vice chancellor for administration, said that the university was appealing to wealthy Californians to come forward in this time of crisis to support public education. 

He said that, even in these difficult times, private donations had been higher than ever at the university over the last eight months. 

Bergeneau said that he was hoping that the money set aside in the federal stimulus bill for research in energy reforms ad other areas would give UC Berkeley a much needed boost in funding. 

America has lost another major urban daily paper while newsroom downsizings and cutbacks continue at an unprecedented pace, but the Bay Area’s most famous masthead will stay in print—at least for a while. 

The latest fatality is Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, which closed Feb. 27, leaving the Mile High City a one-newspaper town, with only Dean Singleton’s Denver Post still standing. 

And if the Hearst Corporation follows through on its threat to close the San Francisco Chronicle, Singleton could become the Bay Area’s reigning media king, with Denver media mogul Phillip Anschutz’s San Francisco Examiner, once the flagship of the Heart media empire, offering the only daily rival. 

Hearst had threatened to shut or sell the Chronicle unless it received major concessions from the newspaper’s two unions. 

The agreement announced Tuesday night by the paper and the Media Workers Guild may have delayed the Chronicle’s demise, but at a price: the guild agreed to terms that include significant reductions in seniority protections in coming layoffs.  

The guild represents 483 workers at the Chronicle, including 218 in the newsroom. The concessions mean the loss of up to 150 of those positions, a 31 percent cutback. In addition, workers who keep their jobs will be working an extra two and a half hours every week. 

The proposal, which the union is recommending to members, would also exempt some new hires in advertising from mandatory union membership, though they would still be represented by the union in disputes and contract negotiations. 

The company also wants concessions from the Teamsters union, which represents 420 workers.  

The privately held Hearst Corporation concedes that it has lost money on the Chronicle since 2001, and the paper reported Tuesday that last year’s losses had reached $50 million. Venture capital consultant and former Chronicle executive Alan D. Mutter, who blogs at Reflections of a Newsosaur (newsosaur.blogspot.com), reports that actual losses are probably closer to $70 million. 

Hearst bought the Chronicle for $660 million in 2000 in a deal that required the company to subsidize the Examiner for three years after selling the smaller paper to San Francisco’s Fang family. The Fangs transformed the afternoon daily into a morning tabloid and later sold it to Anschutz.  

Northern California’s other major home-grown media chain, Sacramento-based McClatchy, announced a major downsizing move of its own this week that will strip the company of 1,600 jobs, including 128 at the flagship Sacramento Bee. The layoffs become effective April 11. 

In a similar strategy to Hearst’s, the publicly traded McClatchy negotiated the downsizings with the Media Workers Guild after first announcing the need for drastic cutbacks in the wake of devastating financial losses. 

In addition to layoffs, McClatchy employees are also taking pay cuts. At the Sacramento Bee, the guild agree to a six percent reduction for those earning $50,000 or more a year, three percent for those earning between $25,000 and $50,000 and none for those earning less than $25,000. 

The media guild announced that layoffs at the Sacramento paper meant that 19 jobs would be saved in the editorial and advertising departments. 

McClatchy CEO and chair Gary Pruitt is taking a 15 percent pay cut, while other executives will take a 10 percent dock. Pruitt declined his bonus for last year and for the current year. Other corporate executives weren’t offered bonuses for last year and won’t receive any this year either, the company announced Tuesday. 

As a publicly traded company, McClatchy files detailed financial statements, unlike Hearst or Singleton’s MediaNews. 

Singleton’s Bay Area News Group (BANG) and Hearst have already undergone several rounds of newsroom layoffs. 

Members of BANG’s East Bay Media Guild unit agreed to take a week of unpaid leave during February and March to forestall further layoffs. 

According to Paper Cuts (graphicdesignr.net/papercuts), a blog that tracks newspaper layoffs, at least 3,938 newspaper jobs have been lost in 2009 as of Tuesday afternoon. That compares with 15,633 logged in all of 2008, putting this year’s reductions on track to top last year’s record figures. 

Hearst has also announced that it plans to close the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer, though it hasn’t given a date for the final print addition. Reports have also surfaced indicating that the company may opt for an online-only publication. 

The company has notified employees that their jobs will end between March 18 and April 1, according to a report published by the paper. 

KGO television, the local ABC affiliate, reported on the Berkeley Daily Planet’s own struggles to survive in a rapidly downsizing media world in their Monday night newscast, which can be seen at KGO's website.

Berkeley police have arrested three men in the stabbing of a UC Berkeley student early Saturday morning in the city’s south campus area.  

Carlos Argenis Guzman, 22, Fernando Ramos-Hernandez, 23, and Christian Aaron Woodward, 23, were arrested for their alleged involvement in the stabbing. Guzman and Ramos-Hernandez were also arrested for brandishing a deadly weapon, battery and a hate crime—incidents that took place just minutes before the stabbing, said Officer Andrew Frankel, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department. 

The assault took place at 1:13 a.m. Saturday at Piedmont Avenue and Channing Way. 

Officer Frankel said that all three suspects were residents of San Francisco and did not attend UC Berkeley. The victim was taken to Oakland’s Highland Hospital, where he is in stable condition. Police have not released his name since the case is still under investigation. 

It is the second stabbing of a UC Berkeley student near campus within a year. Last May, UC Berkeley senior Chris Wootton died after being stabbed by former Berkeley City College student Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield during a drunken brawl after a party on fraternity row. 

Officer Frankel said that on March 7, Guzman, Ramos-Hernandez and Woodward crashed a party at a fraternity house on the 2400 block of Warring Street. After being asked to leave, Guzman and Ramos-Hernandez brandished a knife and the situation quickly escalated as the suspects threw a few punches and shouted anti-Chinese slurs at one of the guests.  

They left the scene around 1 a.m., Frankel said.  

Minutes later, two of the guests who had been punched were walking on Channing toward Piedmont with other guests from the party when they were confronted by the suspects, he said. Woodward started making unwanted sexual advances toward a girl in the group, Frankel said, and her boyfriend began to argue with him, resulting in a fight. 

“Another person tried to intervene in the fight and was stabbed in the stomach,” Frankel said. An eyewitness called 911 at 1:34 a.m. to report the stabbing.  

Police officers who were patrolling the area saw the suspects fleeing and arrested them at 2709 Parker St., Frankel said. All three were booked into Berkeley City Jail at 7:05 a.m., according to court records, and are scheduled to be arraigned at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Wiley W. Manuel courthouse in Oakland. Both Guzman and Woodward were also charged with violating parole. 

Frankel said police had interviewed a substantial number of witnesses in the case. 

One eyewitness, who did not want her name published due to concerns for her safety, gave her account of the incident to the Daily Planet. She said she had been with six girls at the party at the Kappa Sigma fraternity house at 2400 Warring St., which was shut down shortly before 1 a.m. because the three suspects were causing trouble. The suspects had provoked a few Cal rugby players, calling them “big bad football players,” she said. 

The witness said that she and nine other UC Berkeley students left the Kappa Sigma fraternity around 1 a.m. and were walking to the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at 2395 Piedmont Ave. when Woodward approached them and made unwanted advances toward one of the girls.  

“She was just ignoring him and then she got fed up and slapped him,” she said. “Then this other guy there [with Woodward] slapped her back. Her boyfriend stepped in, people got punched and then one of the Cal rugby players who was with us turned around and said he had got stabbed... . All of us were stunned but called 911 at once. I was trying to keep his pressure stable but by the time I looked up there were people everywhere. I don’t know where they came from but I guess they heard our screams.” 

Calls to UC Berkeley’s media relations department were directed to UC Berkeley Assistant Police Chief Mitch Celaya. Celaya said that he couldn’t release details about the case since it was under the jurisdiction of the Berkeley Police Department.  

“We are assisting Berkeley police in whatever way we can,” Celaya said. “It was a random act. Southside officers have taken note of it and are being vigilant and visible.” 

The NASDAQ Stock Market, the nation’s leading electronically based stock exchange, is striking Magna Entertainment Co., the owner of Albany’s Golden Gate Fields, from its listings.  

That action, announced late Monday, follows a similar move announced a week ago by the Toronto Stock Exchange, which also delisted Magna effective at the end of March. NASDAQ’s order takes effect April 15. 

The NASDAQ action also follows Magna’s filing of bankruptcy actions in both countries and the announcement that the company would be selling off some of its key assets, including Golden Gates Fields.

The AC Transit Board of Directors will consider a proposed 25-cent fare increase at its Wednesday evening meeting. 

According to an AC Transit staff report, the bus district “is facing very difficult financial challenges due to heavy reliance on revenue sources that are directly affected by the current economic crisis.” Without a fare increase, the report says, the district is facing a budget deficit of “at least $52 million in 2010.” 

The regular AC Transit board meeting will be held at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 11 at the AC Transit headquarters at 1600 Franklin St. in Oakland. 

AC Transit staff is recommending an increase in the bus district’s base fare from $1.75 to $2. Youth, senior and disabled fares would increase by 15 cents, from 85 cents to $1. Youth monthly passes would go up $13, from $15 to $28. Senior and disabled monthly passes would see an $8 increase, from $20 to $28. If the board approves the recommendations, the proposed fare increases will go into effect July 1. 

AC Transit originally proposed the fare increase last year, but with several board members up for re-election last November, the board postponed the fare increase in favor of putting a parcel tax increase on the ballot. At a public hearing held last year, many speakers asked the district to come up with alternative proposals that would increase revenue without raising fares. Alameda and Contra Costa County voters approved the district’s Measure VV last November, but district staff says that the continuing economic downturn, including elimination of state transit assistance in the governor's new budget, has forced the district to put the fare increase back on the table.

The Berkeley City Council is set to consider long-awaited revisions to its Wireless Telecommunications Facilities Ordinance at its regular Tuesday night meeting. However, the change in the rules governing the placement of cellphone tower facilities in the city will fall far short of the demands of some neighborhood groups, or even of the extensive revisions requested by the city’s Planning Commission. 

The council meeting will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Maudelle Shirek Building, aka Old City Hall, on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in downtown Berkeley. 

Neighborhood challenges to cellphone tower placement have become a staple of City Council meetings in recent years, and that is likely to continue no matter what happens to the telecommunications ordinance. In one of the few times that anyone involved in this continuing city controversy has made a statement with which all sides agree, the staff report on the proposed ordinance changes says that the issues involving the ordinance are “complex and emotionally charged.” 

The council put the Planning Commission to work in December of 2007 on revisions to its original 1996 Telecommunications Facilities Ordinance in response to a number of factors, including growing neighborhood concern over the proliferation of cellphone towers, a settlement of a lawsuit with Verizon Wireless, and Ninth Circuit Court rulings which put greater restrictions on the ability of cities to regulate cellphone towers. In the middle of the Planning Commission’s deliberations, the Ninth Circuit reversed itself, sending the commission back to the drawing board. 

There are widely varying opinions on the meaning of the new Ninth Circuit guidelines. Some Berkeley neighborhood groups believe that the Ninth Circuit widened the criteria by which cities could regulate the placement of cellphone towers, including consideration of such things as the health effects of tower radiation. The Berkeley city attorney’s office takes a distinctly narrower view of the court’s new decision, however, saying that the same restrictions on city regulations remain in place, and that the court only made it more difficult for telecommunications companies to strike down city ordinances. 

Meanwhile, the Planning Commission has sent what might be called “modified, limited” changes to the ordinance to the council without recommendation, with the request that the commission be given the mandate to continue working on more extensive changes to the ordinance.

Berkeley’s Planning Department will begin their mandatory update of the city plan’s housing element on Monday, March 23. 

The session begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

The city is obligated to update the section of the plan that addresses housing needs both for existing residents and those who projections show may be likely to settle here. 

The document is critical in setting patterns of possible growth. 

The March 23 session opens with a half-hour presentation by city planning staff on the legal requirements for the housing section and the update process. 

The following hour will feature a public discussion, followed by a closing 30 minutes focusing on population and housing trends and a look at the existing element and city policies and programs designed to fulfill its goals and obligations. 

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the date for the meeting. The correct date is March 23.

The Berkeley Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday night to eliminate numerous teaching jobs. 

Superintendent Bill Huyett said the depth of the cuts may amount to 118 full-time teacher positions. 

The job cuts are a result of the state budget crisis that has left the district at least $8 million short, prompting district officials to send out tentative layoff notices to teachers by March 13, as required under state law. 

Lisa Udell, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, told the school board that the list of teachers who would receive pink slips next week would be finalized by Tuesday. 

“These are the positions, not people,” she said, referring to the services that might be eliminated as outlined in the board packet. “People will be notified according to the seniority list.” 

Udell’s staff will be working over the weekend to determine years of service and teaching credentials of teachers to determine who will not be returning next year. 

The district will mail preliminary layoff notices by Wednesday and will mail final notices by mid-May after releasing its 2009-10 budget. 

Cathy Campbell, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, said that newer teachers, who have been with the district for less than two years, were the most vulnerable since they had the least seniority. 

Positions recommended for reduction include vice principal positions at a middle school, Berkeley High School and the Berkeley Adult School, counselors and teachers on special assignment. Music, math, biology, chemistry, physics and English teaching positions will also be affected. 

The California Federation of Teachers estimates that nearly 18,000 teachers statewide will get pink slips next week—almost twice as many as last year—because of the budget cuts, prompting the union to launch an ad campaign protesting the layoffs. 

It has tagged March 13 “Pink Friday,” and has plans to hold mass rallies and protests around the state, purchasing radio ads and billboards to get their point across to the public. 

Campbell asked the community to join the Berkeley teacher’s union at a March 13 rally protesting the layoffs in front of the district administrative building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Superintendent Huyett has warned that unlike last year—when the district was facing a similar layoff threat but rescinded it at the last minute—the prospect of some teachers losing their jobs this time is a real possibility. 

Other school districts across the East Bay and California are facing a similar crunch, with the West Contra Costa school district planning to send out more than 200 pink slips and Mt. Diablo preparing out about 100. 

Some Berkeley school board members urged the public to keep in mind that the pink slips that would go out next week were “only potential layoff notices” which could change once the district adopted its budget. 

“It’s kind of a strange thing to give people a notification that they could be laid off,” said board vice president Karen Hemphill. “But until we have a budget, we have to do that.” 

Golden Gate Fields is up for sale as owner Magna Entertainment (MECA on the NASDAQ stock exchange) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today (Thursday). 

The Albany race track is one of three tracks, a betting wire service and other assets that the company is offering for $195 million, with a $44 million down payment required. 

The other tracks are Gulfstream Park in Florida and Lone Star Park in Texas, according to the announcement issued from the company’s Canadian headquarters in Aurora, Ontario. 

Operations at the tracks will continue while the company looks for a buyer. 

The bankruptcy filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., comes less than a week after the Toronto Stock Exchange announced it was striking the company’s shares from its rolls as of April 1. 

Magna listed $1.05 billion in assets at the time of the filing, along with $989 million in debts. 

Two of the company’s three independent board members overseeing corporate finances have resigned in recent weeks, with the delisting announcement following closely on the heels of the second resignation. 

In announcing the bankruptcy filing, Canadian auto parts magnate Frank Stronach said the company “has far too much debt and interest expense” and has been pursing “numerous out-of-court restructuring alternatives but has been unable to create a comprehensive restructuring to date due, in part, to the current economic recession, severe downturn on in the U.S. real estate market and global credit crisis.”  

Magna shares had dropped to an all-time low of 20 cents on Thursday—down from the all-time high of $198 seven years ago. They had risen to 22 cents by the time the last shares traded hands early Thursday afternoon. 

Whole Foods Market announced late Thursday evening that the company has reversed its plans to let the lease expire for its tenant, Ashby Flowers.  

The supermarket chain had planned to take over the family-owned flower shop's small retail space, located on the grocery store's Berkeley property at Ashby and Telegraph avenues.  

Whole Foods Regional President David Lannon told the Daily Planet last week that the company was not renewing the lease, set to expire in July, because the supermarket planned to expand its operations by using the space for a coffee shop or juice bar.  

But after a week of public criticism, the company shelved the plan and invited Ashby Flowers to stay. 

In a statement sent out Friday by Jennifer Marples of San Francisco-based Koa Communication’s, Whole Foods’ PR firm, company officials acknowledged that they had arrived at the decision after listening to the public's concerns. 

“During our conversations with Ashby Flowers and with members of the community that began in spring 2008, it has become clear that Ashby Flowers is indeed a treasured asset to the local community and that it should remain where it is,” the statement read. “[W]e’ve heard what our customers and neighbors have had to say, loud and clear. We look forward to a continued relationship with this company that clearly has a loyal, local following, and we wish them great success in the future.” 

Ashby Flowers’ owners, Iraj Misaghi and Marcy Simon, had expressed their desire to remain at the location, where the flower shop has operated for the last 60 years, drawing a loyal patronage. The married couple has owned the business since 1995.  

In a telephone interview Friday, Simon said the company’s statement caught her by surprise and that she was “cautiously optimistic” about Whole Foods’ decision. 

“We have not spoken about it,” she said. “But I am eager to renegotiate our lease with them. I am happy—I think they did the right thing.” 

Whole Foods’ original plan met with stiff opposition from the local community and elected officials, including Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who joined in a Feb. 25 rally outside Whole Food’s corporate headquarters in Emeryville.  

Worthington organized neighborhood groups and businesses to help Ashby Flowers, even asking a student volunteer to go door to door collecting signatures for a petition in support of the florist. 

The councilmember also met with Whole Foods’ corporate officials in an effort to get them to reverse the decision. 

Stacey Simon, a spokesperson for Ashby Flowers, said the owners had met with Whole Foods Vice President of Development Glen Moon since the rally and were waiting to talk to him about starting a new lease. 

“Apart from that, we have not heard anything official,” she said, “so [Thursday’s] statement came as a surprise, a very pleasant surprise. We are guardedly optimistic.” 

“For a small business like Ashby Flowers, location is very critical,” Councilmember Worthington said, in response Thursday’s development. “Plus the whole thing was hurting Whole Foods—it was making their customers unhappy. It’s wonderful that the company realized that Ashby Flowers is a landmark business—the building itself is not a landmark, but the business itself is important. Now two businesses in my district will have a happy ending.” 

Worthington said that it was important that the new lease be for a five-year term at least, which would give the tenants a certain amount of protection if their landlord decided to reclaim the space again. 

Whole Foods’ officials were not available for further comment. 

Short skirts, long skirts, itsy-bitsy polka-dotted mini skirts, ruffled skirts and pleated skirts, and even a kilt or two took over the steps of Sproul Plaza Wednesday at noon to protest the sexual predator on the UC Berkeley campus who is going around lifting women’s skirts on desolate street corners and dark alleyways. 

Organized by university groups V-Day, Berkeley NOW, and the Women’s Identity and Sexuality Small Group, the rally brought together more than 60 women wearing skirts of different shapes, sizes and colors to emphasize that they were not “skirting the issue,” and instead raising awareness among their peers to ensure that the suspect is caught as soon as possible. 

The Berkeley Police Department reported Monday that the latest incident in the long list of sexual attacks had occurred Saturday, when the alleged sexual predator snuck up behind the first victim at 3:45 a.m. on Piedmont Avenue near Channing Way, and targeted the second victim in a similar manner around 11 p.m. on Dwight Way near College Avenue, reaching up under their garment to sexually penetrate them with his fingers. 

The attacks bring the total number of sexual assaults to 20. 

Some students said that the incidents had created a sense of fear among young women in the sororities and dorms—whose walls have been plastered with a sketch of the suspect, described by the Berkeley police as a white man in his 20s, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing around 160 pounds with a medium built and dark, wavy hair. 

Others said that they were surprised to hear people asking questions such as why the victims were out alone at night or wearing a skirt, which they said took the focus away from the actual crime. 

Led by V-Day, a grassroots movement which aims to end violence against women, students enacted the scene “my short skirt” from Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, a book celebrating female sexuality, to draw attention to their plight. 

“My short skirt is turquoise water with swimming colored fish, a summer festival in the starry dark, a bird calling a train arriving in a foreign town—my short skirt is a wild spin, a full breath, a tango dip—my short skirt is initiation, appreciation, excitation,” said a UC Berkeley student, reading aloud from the book. “It is not an invitation, a provocation, an indication that I want it or give it or that I hook—my short skirt is not begging for it, it does not want you to rip it off me or pull it down.” 

Alex Stone, a UC Berkeley senior who is involved with the production of the play scheduled to take place next week, said that skirts were not an invitation for people to attack women. 

“When I first heard the news of this serial sexual predator, my first thought was, ‘uh-oh, I wear a lot of skirts,” said Stone, who wore a long ruffled skirt Wednesday to show solidarity for the victims. “My second thought was, ‘maybe I should lay off the skirts for a little until this blows over.’ Then I got angry. I was angry because my initial reaction to the assaults on Piedmont was to react in fear and let this criminal control my life. My skirts are not meant to provide easy access to anyone. They are not an invitation to attack me.” 

Stone said that she was enraged that women were too often blamed for their attack. 

“We focus our attention on what we think the women should have done differently to avoid the attack rather than looking at the attackers and examining their behavior,” she said. “This mentality has led sexual assault and rape to be the most underreported crimes in the U.S. Luckily, many of the women attacked recently have had the courage and support to report these heinous crimes so that the predator can be caught.” 

Morgan, a college student who had been assaulted by the skirt-lifter, spoke at the rally about her shocking experience. 

Wearing a short white skirt, she held hands with her friends and said in a trembling voice, “I just pray that this man gets caught. I hope he realizes that it’s not OK to do what he is doing. I really appreciate the passion my friends have for this issue.” 

Morgan walked with the rest of the group along Bancroft and Piedmont avenues, covering some of the streets in the South Campus area that the attacker picks his victims from. 

Rajan Grewal, a senior at UC Berkeley, carried a “freedom not fear” poster as she walked down Channing Way. 

“It’s completely unacceptable,” Grewal, dressed in a short gray dress and black tights said of the assaults. “The response we are getting from the public is that women are asking for this. I think the important issue is not that a girl was wearing a skirt, but that she was assaulted.” 

Chris Franco, a sophomore at the university, said that he was attending the rally as an “ally of women.” 

“As a guy, I have the privilege to walk on the streets wearing what I want to, without having to worry about a skirt or anything else,” he said. “I think women should have the same right. I am here to support them.” 

Jamie Tan, one of the rally organizers who is with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, stressed women should have the right to wear what they want—anytime, anywhere. 

“Women have lives too,” she said. “This predator has targeted women in skirts, women in shorts, women in tights. He has attacked women walking alone and women walking in groups. He has attacked late in the evening and early in the morning. The focus needs to be on catching him, not what we are wearing.” 

Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, a spokesperson of the Berkeley Police Department, said that Berkeley police and the University of California Police Department were on high alert about the assaults and doing their best to share information and coordinate responses. 

“We even have extra officers working the focus area,” she said. “This suspect has been elusive ... accomplishing his crimes quickly, fleeing swiftly on foot into the night.”  

Police are asking for the community’s help in catching the suspect. Anyone who can identify him or who has witnessed an attack can call the Berkeley police sex crimes detail at 981-5735. 

Police are also encouraging victims to report attacks immediately to Berkeley police dispatch at 981-5900. 

Three young men filed suit Tuesday against the Boy Scouts and their former Berkeley Sea Scouts master, seeking damages for their sexual molestation on board the S.S.S. Farallon. 

Former scoutmaster Eugene Austin Evans is already in prison after entering guilty pleas in July to sexually abusing two of the plaintiffs in the action filed by Oakland attorneys John D. Winer and Alexis McKenna. 

“At the time he was convicted, he admitted in criminal court that the actions had been going on for 30 years,” McKenna said Wednesday afternoon. 

Prosecutors at the time said they had agreed to the plea on only two of the victims to save them and others from the trauma of testifying about their abuse in open court. 

Named as defendants in the civil action in addition to Evans are the Boy Scouts of America, Berkeley Sea Scouts S.S.S. Farallon, the Boy Scouts of America Mt. Diablo Silverado Council and the national Sea Scouts organization. 

The youths are seeking damages on six counts, including: 

• Negligent supervision and management of the Berkeley program and failure to warn the youths and their families of the risks of molestation, 

• Assault. 

• Battery. 

• Sexual harassment by a Scout leader. 

• Intentional infliction of emotion duress. 

• Premises liability, stemming from the allegedly negligent ownership, supervision and management of the ship. 

The 20-page complaint filed in Alameda County Superior Court contains detailed allegations about the complaints that led to Evans’ conviction. 

The first of the plaintiffs, identified in the filing only as Roe 1, said he was 13 and an eighth-grader when he entered the program in 2002, and was subjected to abuse for the entire three to four years he belonged to the troop. 

According to the young man’s allegations, Evans began his seduction with talk of masturbation, and would tell the youths, “I’m the skipper. I’m not going to hurt you. You are my best buddy. You are the best thing that ever happened to me.” 

Sexual contact took place inside the ship’s cabin after Evans locked the door and began rubbing the youth’s back, the young man declared. Massage was followed by masturbation and attempted—but never consummated—fellation of the youth, according to the declaration. 

The second youth declared that molestation began a year after he joined the troop in 2002, ending with the scoutmaster masturbating the youth. 

The third youth said he first boarded the ship in early 2001, and he said Evans told him “a story about a guy who lifted a lot of weights in his garage and would let Evans smoke marijuana if he was allowed to perform oral sex on Evans.” 

The youth said Evans had groped his buttocks, but he was able to extricate himself before Evans could proceed further. 

The complaint also alleges that Evans made frequent racist and homophobic jokes, and warned his charges that any complaints could result in the breakup of the troop “and other boys would hate them for ruining the group.” 

“What happens on the boat stays on the boat,” Evans reportedly told the scouts. 

“Evans ran the program with a divide and conquer mentality,” the litigation charges, “turning kids against each other so that he could obtains sexual access to the Scouts that he wanted.” 

The complaint also alleges that Evans “constantly made inappropriate masturbation references to the boys and stocked the ship full of pornography,” allegations a scout had earlier reported to the Daily Planet. 

McKenna said the next step would be to serve the defendants with copies of the suit and then initiate the discovery process to gather evidence. 

While the plaintiffs will be able to subpoena some of the criminal investigative reports assembled for Evans’s prosecution, she said the law requires that names of minors who were victims of sexual crimes must be expunged before the documents are released. 

Sad history 

Evans had rocketed to national prominence once before, when he sued the City of Berkeley after the city stopped allowing the scout ship free berthing rights at the city-owned marina. 

The city acted because the scouts refuse to allow gay members, bringing the organization into violation of city policies that deny free city services to organizations which discriminate on the basis of sexual preference. 

Evans became a hero to conservatives and the religious right when he challenged the decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he was handed his final defeat in 2006. 

Despite his conviction in the criminal case, Evans retained a solid core of supporters, with many of them writing letters on his behalf to the court and showing up to support him at the sentencing hearing.

Community members continued throughout the week to place flowers, candles and notes at the intersection of Derby and Warring streets, where 5-year-old Zachary Cruz was hit and killed by a welder’s truck on Friday, Feb. 27. 

A laminated picture of Zach, and his parents, Frank and Jodie, along with his baby brother Miles, taken at his kindergarten classroom at LeConte last year, shared the crosswalk with photographs of him rock climbing and posing on the grass, along with dozens of carnations, roses and a Tigger stuffed toy—all dripping wet from the rain, but serving as a gentle reminder of how much he was loved by friends and family and had touched the heart of those who had never known him. 

As the rain beat against the windows of Zach’s classroom—room 109—at LeConte on the Monday following the accident, it was easy to see that the tragedy had affected not just his teacher, Jeannie Gee, and his classmates, who spent the better part of the morning talking about him, but the entire school. 

Teachers stressed the importance of traffic safety rules to their students, parents stopped by to speak with the school staff after almost every period—some insisting on being with their children during a concert rehearsal, and principal Cheryl Wilson dropped everything to prepare to meet with Zach’s parents later that afternoon. 

Wilson, who canceled the school’s black history month celebration Friday night after she heard about the accident, said that the outpouring of support from parents and students had been tremendous. 

“We started with Zach’s classroom today in the morning and then we went to every class answering questions and clarifying misconceptions about what happened to Zach and what had happened to some of their family members who died in the past,” said Wilson, who has been at LeConte for four years and is dealing with the death of a student for the first time. 

“Some of the kindergartners burst into tears but we told them that Zach’s death had made each of us a stronger person. We have learned to be a better person from Zach, and the importance of showing love, care and respect to the people we love.” 

Wilson said that the most important thing on her mind right now was to help Zach’s family, who she said lived in student housing because Zach’s father is a graduate student at UC Berkeley. 

According to a MySpace.com web post, Zach’s father, Frank Cruz, is a musician working on his Ph.D. in American literature at UC Berkeley. A native of Ventura, Cruz formed a band called The New Deal in 2003 when he started “writing, rehearsing and playing around town” with Joel Levin and John D. Cruz. 

The New Deal, which lists Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Calexico among its influences, recorded its first CD, Blueskies Longrides Youreyes, in the spring of 2003. 

After moving to Berkeley that fall to complete his undergraduate degree in English, Cruz relocated to Santa Barbara briefly, and worked with the award-winning alternate country band Far From Kansas, making his studio debut with the band’s 2006 record, the Ghost Inside of You. He returned to Berkeley to finish his Ph.D. and “resurrect” The New Deal, and is now working on a new album. 

In an interview with the Daily Californian in May 2008 for an article about the rising costs of child care programs on campus in light of state budget cuts, Cruz said that he sent his 5-year-old son to day care at the Clark Kerr Infant Center—one of the eight Early Childhood Education Programs run by the university—every week while he taught English class discussions. He said, with a new baby on the way, any increase in program fees would make it “impossible” for them to afford it. 

Cruz and his wife Jodie had their second child, Miles, last August. 

“My focus is primarily on how the community can support the family,” Wilson said, adding that friends had already set up a meal calendar and that the Cruz’s had set up a website, www.zacharymichaelcruz. com, where they were requesting donations instead of flowers to help pay for funeral costs. 

A video posted on the website shows Zach visiting his brother at the hospital after he was born, smiling as he holds the baby carefully in his arms. Other videos show him playing Wii boxing and enact a scene from Star Wars with Lego blocks, in which he cries out “Powwwww, hey, you shot my helmet off!” 

The website also lists some of Zach’s favorite bands—the Beatles and the Terrible Twos, and his favorite TV shows—Sponge Bob Square Pants and TLC’s How It’s Made. It tells us that the 5-year-old loved to play with Legos, Ray the Racoon and WALL-E toys and was a fan of the Star Wars Trilogy and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. 

It shows him enjoying eating dinner—the web post lists paneer tikka masala and naan from Berkeley’s House of Curries as his favorite food and vanilla milk as his favorite drink. 

Zach liked visiting the Lawrence Hall of Science and the Chabot Space and Science Center and spent a lot of time listening to records, playing with Miles—whom he called “Mr. M”—and visiting San Francisco. He wanted to be a scientist, an astronaut or a doctor when he grew up. 

A message from Zach’s parents says they are collecting stories and photos of their son to include in a memory book for him. These can be sent to chrispaul.dixon @gmail.com. 

Copies of the book will be handed out at his memorial service in Oxnard on Saturday. 

Wilson said that besides the message board in the school’s hallway, which had a picture of a rocket drawn by him titled “I mad a roccit” and other messages and pictures from his friends and teachers, the school would create a temporary altar in the library and keep a place for Zach in his kindergarten classroom permanently, which would be marked by a giant teddy bear. 

The birthday graph in the classroom listed Zach’s birthday as March 12, the only one in the class this month. 

Around 15 kindergartners crowded around their teacher, Ms. Gee, Monday afternoon to hear one of Zach’s friends, Ophelia, talk about him. 

“I miss you Zach and I will miss playing ghostbusters with you,” Ophelia said, handing over a “special box” she had made in his memory to Gee. “This box has a picture of Zach and me during Halloween—Zach was dressed up as a ghostbuster. You see, he loved being a ghostbuster.” 

Gee also read aloud from The Next Place, a children’s book by Warren Hanson, which she said had helped students get through most of the day. 

“It was tough but we survived the first day,” she said, as she led her class into the school’s auditorium to practice for an upcoming concert with the Berkeley Symphony. 

Berkeley police are still investigating the fatal accident of 5-year-old Zachary Cruz, a LeConte Elementary School kindergartner who was struck and killed Friday, Feb. 27, by a contractor’s truck at Warring and Derby streets. 

Authorities said that Zachary’s parents, Frank and Jodie, had left for Ventura Tuesday to be with their family. Funeral services have been scheduled for 12 p.m. Saturday at the Grace Bible Church at 936 West Fifth St. in Oxnard, Calif. 

Zachary will be buried at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura. 

Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department, said Wednesday that the investigation would take some time since investigators were reviewing the diagramming they completed using the Total Station surveying tool and re-examining witness statements “in order to be very exact about the primary collision factor.” 

She said Berkeley police received a 911 call at 1:45 p.m. on Feb. 27 reporting that a young child had been hit by a truck near the Clark Kerr Campus, a residential complex located about six blocks southeast of the UC Berkeley campus. 

According to Kusmiss, police officers arrived on the scene to find a neighbor performing CPR on the boy. Berkeley Fire Department later pronounced him dead at the scene, Kusmiss said. 

Though the parents were notified as quickly as possible, the child’s identity was withheld until extended family could be contacted.  

Police enclosed the boy’s body inside a pop-up tent, a protocol devised, Kusmiss explained, as a method of preserving evidence when a victim is pronounced dead at the scene. 

Kusmiss said the boy was walking southbound on Warring and that the driver might have made an eastbound turn on Derby, stopping when he realized he had struck the child. 

“The driver shared what his path was,” she said, adding that he had cooperated with police officers and that no drugs or alcohol were involved in the accident. 

“We are trying to re-evaluate the witness statements,” Kusmiss said, adding that so far 15 witnesses had come forward to testify, including other children present at the time who were attending a nearby after-school program. 

Other witnesses included residents of the Clark Kerr Campus who were able to see the last part of the accident from their apartment balconies, and several women who said they saw the truck but not the collision. 

“We have a couple of different accounts but it’s slightly early to announce anything,” Kusmiss said. “The officers are interviewing the students.” 

Officers from the Berkeley Police Department’s Fatal Accident Investigation Team (FAIT), who have undergone extensive training to deal with collision incidents, were at the scene investigating the accident along with homicide detectives. 

Officials from both Berkeley Unified School District and UC Berkeley—including district Assistant Superintendent Neil Smith, LeConte Principal Cheryl Wilson and UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof—visited the scene of the accident in the afternoon. 

Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan, who arrived at the scene immediately after he heard the news, said Cruz was crossing the intersection at Derby and Warring on his way to a K-2 after-school program. 

Students from LeConte Elementary School, located at 2241 Russell St. in South Berkeley, are taken by school bus to Emerson Elementary School where they are met by after-school program teachers who escort them the remaining block to the Clark Kerr Campus. 

Coplan said that on this particular Friday, Zach was picked up by a school bus from LeConte and dropped off at Emerson. From there he and three other Emerson students were walked by a staff member from the K-2 After-School Center to the center at 2601 Warring St., one of eight centers run by the university’s Early Childhood Education Program, which serves 279 university families. 

“His parents are responsible to designate who will walk him to the after-school program,” Coplan said. “It’s out of the school district’s control at that point.” 

Calls to UC Berkeley’s Early Childhood Education Program for comment were directed to Dan Mogulof, the university’s director of communications. 

Mogulof confirmed that although Zach, whose father is a UC Berkeley graduate student, was with a teacher and other students from the after-school program when the accident occurred, it was not clear exactly where the Berkeley Unified bus driver had dropped him off. 

“We don’t know whether it was at Emerson or between Emerson and Clark Kerr [that the bus dropped off Zach], after which at one point he rendezvoused with the teacher and the students,” he said. “There are conflicting accounts of what happened and we are waiting for the final police report.” 

Children 58 to 84 months attend UC’s after-school program in the afternoon, according to the program’s website, where “they enjoy art and free play activities after a rigorous day in the school classroom,” get an afternoon snack, and are able to do their homework and socialize. 

The program, which provides subsidized child care for university families, began as a parent cooperative in 1969 and came under university management in 1973, receiving joint funding for student families from student registration fees and the state Department of Education Child Development Division. 

Mogulof said the staff at the after-school program was distraught about the incident and that university officials, including counseling staff, were at the scene to offer support and assistance to the parents. 

“Our community is deeply saddened and shaken by this loss,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau said in a statement. “The Berkeley community sends our thoughts and prayers to the parents, family members, and others affected by this tragic accident.” 

Around 2:30 p.m. on the day of the accident, UC Berkeley students and individuals who lived or worked in the neighborhood started to crowd near Derby and Piedmont Avenue, where police had cordoned the area off with yellow crime scene tape. 

Two college students from the Clark Kerr Campus who did not want their names published complained that the Derby and Warring intersection, which is in a residential neighborhood and gets a lot of traffic from the Caldecott Tunnel, is a dangerous one, especially considering the number of small children in the area. 

The driver of the 2.5-ton white contractor-style truck from Ferguson Welding Services was escorted into a police vehicle by two Berkeley police officers around 3:30 p.m. 

Coplan said that the entire school district was “grieving over the loss of the 5-year-old LeConte student.” 

“Any loss of life is a tragedy, but the loss of a kindergarten child is so hard to accept,” he said in a statement. “His teacher Jeannie Gee, his classmates, and his family knew him in a way that none of us will ever be able to experience.” 

In a letter to LeConte parents, principal Cheryl Wilson described the letter as “one of the most difficult letters I have had to write.”  

Assisted by counselors from the Berkeley Mental Health department, Wilson visited every classroom at LeConte Monday to talk to children and answer their questions. 

Friday’s incident is the second pedestrian collision in less than a month involving a Berkeley kindergartner.  

On Jan. 30, a 6-year-old Malcolm X Elementary School student was hit by a Toyota 4 Runner at the intersection of Ellis Street and Ashby Avenue when she darted into the crosswalk after hearing the school bell ring.  

The girl, who underwent surgery for a broken clavicle and fractured skull, has recovered from her injuries and returned to school Monday. 

Zachary’s family has created a website in his honor, www.zacharymichaelcruz.com, with a soundtrack consisting of his favorite song, The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” 

Visitors to the site can post comments and donate money to help defray funeral costs. 

The family hopes to hold a memorial service in Berkeley on March 14. 

Two tragic accidents involving Berkeley public school students, occuring within a month of each other, have put a spotlight on traffic safety and improvements.  

On Jan. 30, a 6-year-old girl was hit by a Toyota 4 Runner when she darted into the crosswalk at Ashby and Ellis streets on her way to Malcolm X Elementary School in the morning. The child, who suffered a fractured skull and clavicle, started school this week after recuperating from her injuries.  

Four weeks later, on Feb. 27, 5-year-old LeConte student Zachary Cruz was killed after being hit by a welder’s truck at Warring and Derby streets while walking to an after-school program at the nearby UC Berkeley Clark Kerr Campus.  

LeConte PTA president Sarah Kayler said that although parents were still recovering from the initial shock of the loss, concerns about traffic safety were at the back of everyone’s mind.  

Farid Javandel, Berkeley’s transportation manager, said that although he had not received a police report about last week’s accident, he was investigating concerns raised about the intersection in the past.  

“People have been worried about the traffic volume and speed in that area,” he said, adding that it is one of the routes drivers take to get to UC Berkeley, especially if they are coming from Highway 24.  

Javandel said that the T-intersection at Derby and Warring has all the necessary signage, including stop signs at all the intersections and an island which acts as a pedestrian refuge.  

At a forum held by the Malcolm X Parent Teacher Associaton Feb. 11, about 50 parents, neighbors and members of the South Berkeley Senior Center met with representatives from the Safe Routes to School Alameda County Partnership program and city officials to discuss modifications to enhance traffic flow and improve safety on Ellis Street and Ashby Avenue, the broad artery which runs from Berkeley’s bayshore to the hills, connecting with the Warren Freeway and Highway 24, leading to the Caldecott Tunnel.  

Visitors at the senior center told the Planet right after the Jan. 30 incident that they viewed the Ashby and Ellis intersection as “extremely dangerous.”  

In 2003, Fred Lupke, 58, an activist for the disabled community, was killed when his wheelchair was struck by a car on Ashby Avenue near the Ellis Street intersection.  

Ideas put forward by parents present at the meeting included increased enforcement for speeding in a school zone and violating pedestrian right-of-way in crosswalks, additional signage around the school along with pedestrian-activated in-street cross lights and adding a crossing guard at Ellis and Ashby.  

After listening to community members, transportation officials proposed a list of improvements to the area surrounding Malcolm X, including barring U-turns on Ellis and installing flashing beacons at Ashby and Ellis to warn drivers about pedestrians.  

Javandel said that the city had applied for $55,000 to complete the projects under the statewide Safe Routes to School funding program, which allots $48.5 million in traffic safety improvements every two years.  

Cheryl Eccles, Malcolm X PTA president, said that the school had formed a traffic committee, comprising of representatives from the school, neighborhood and the senior center, which would help to set up walking school buses—groups of students chaperoned by a parent—and create more awareness about traffic safety at the school.  

“We were concerned that traffic was flying too fast and it was not safe for pedestrians there,” said Susan Silber, education coordinator for Safe Routes to Schools. “We want to make that crosswalk more prominent.”  

Nora Cody, director of the Safe Routes to School Alameda County Partnership, said that Berkeley was one of the more congested cities in the area when it came to traffic.  

“Two accidents is definitely two too many,” she said. “It’s very, very tragic—a parent’s worst nightmare. It could very well be a strange coincidence, but we can’t deny the fact that in both cases, the victims were very young. Many kids are just not getting basic pedestrian safety training. The schools should continue to do safety training.”  

Cody said that she was hopeful that the interest generated about traffic safety following the two accidents would not fade after a few months.  

“The more parents we can get to walk children to school the better,” she said. “The fewer cars we have on the streets, the safer it is for our children. We need to get more people to bike or walk everywhere.”  

According to a report published by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, pedestrian injuries are most common among elementary school children aged 5 through 9.  

The report states that these children “often lack the cognitive skills necessary to safely interact with traffic, and can be inattentive to their surroundings, leading them to engage in high-risk behavior, such as dashing in front of traffic.”  

According to the report, the most common type of child pedestrian injuries involve “midblock dart out and dash behavior,” accounting for 60-70 percent of the total pedestrian injuries for children under the age of 10.  

Data from the California Highway Patrol show that one-third of California’s pedestrian injuries and fatalities for children aged 5 to 17 occurred while they were crossing at a crosswalk.  

Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan said that pedestrian accidents in the Berkeley Unified School District were extremely rare and the two accidents were an exception, rather than the norm.

Berkeley police and Berkeley High School are still investigating a report made by a student Feb. 25 that he had been threatened by another student from the school with a gun or an imitation firearm at the end of the lunch period. 

School administrators investigated the incident after learning about it but were not able to find any weapons on campus. 

Officer Andrew Frankel, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department, told the Planet that Berkeley police were summoned to the campus by Berkeley High staff on a report of someone with a gun. 

“The school staff had already isolated the victim, a 16-year-old boy, and the suspect—who is a year older—and we arrested the suspect for brandishing. He is alleged to have brandished a firearm,” Frankel said, adding that the suspect was also arrested for “committing an act on campus which interfered with peaceful activities.” 

He said that the Berkeley Police Department’s youth service division was following up on the case. 

According to an e-mail sent out last Thursday on the Berkeley High e-tree, an online message board, by Berkeley High Acting Principal Maggie Heredia-Peltz, the school’s safety team worked with the student, the student’s family and the Berkeley Police Department, resulting in the identification and apprehension of the suspect later Wednesday afternoon. 

Berkeley High principal Jim Slemp is on a leave of absence because of a burst appendix. Calls to Heredia-Peltz and the Berkeley Police Department were not returned immediately. 

Mark Coplan, public information officer for the Berkeley Unified School District, told the Planet in an e-mail that the message sent out by Heredia-Peltz was the only available information at the moment, and probably the only information that would be released in light of the fact that the investigation and any hearing or action taken against the suspect would be confidential. 

In her e-mail, Heredia-Peltz assured the Berkeley High community that the perpetrator would not be allowed to return to campus unless the investigation conducted by both Berkeley High and the Berkeley police cleared him of any wrongdoing. She said that if the allegations turned out to be true, the student would face expulsion as mandated by state law. 

Addressing parents and students at Berkeley High, the acting principal said, “We appreciate your support in helping us to keep our campus safe by continuing to report any concerns regarding your student’s safety immediately to an administrator, safety officer, counselor, and/or staff member.” 

Members of the Berkeley High School Safety Committee, formed by the school’s Governance Council to update Berkeley High’s safety plan, said they were happy to see that the school had alerted the community after the incident, a policy the committee has been advocating. 

Don Morgan, a parent-member of the safety committee, said that crime alerts helped parents, students and teachers to be aware of what was happening at the school and its surrounding area, helping students avoid similar incidents in the future. 

“If certain incidents are happening regularly, then parents could instruct their children to stay away from that place,” he said. “We have heard from parents in the past who complain about the lack of information about crime at the high school. The only way they learn about it is either by word-of-mouth or the newspaper. We hope to make these notices a part of the school safety plan.” 

Berkeley police recovered an air-soft gun from the Berkeley High Gym last May which they said at that time might have been used by a 17-year-old Berkeley High School junior who was arrested for robbing a sophomore at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, which is located right across the street from the school. 

Heredia-Peltz also sent out an alert Wednesday about a fire alarm on campus which went off at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday when two popcorn bags started burning in a microwave, setting off all the alarms.

In last November’s battle of Berkeley mayors, incumbent Tom Bates outspent former Mayor Shirley Dean more than 2 to 1 to win re-election to the post he had won from Dean six years earlier. 

Overall, Bates raised nearly 2.4 times as much cash as his challenger, but when it came to financial largess from people with an interest in getting things built, the mayor out-raised his opponent by 18 to 1. 

Bates raised $85,198.75 for the November election, spending $81,994.02 of it on the campaign in which he won with 34,208 votes—which works out to $2.37 a vote. 

Dean raised $36,186.99, spending all of it in a campaign which netted her 20,188 votes—or $1.79 a vote. 

Write-in candidates, including Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi and Zachary RunningWolf, received 1,774 votes. Neither of them had a financial statement. 

The mayor, clearly the favorite of development and property interests, maintained a solid lead in the final reports, filed last month with the city clerk’s office. 

Among the contributors listed in his final report, Bates lists an additional $4,750 in contributions from the development and land use interests sector, bringing his total identifiable contributions from the sector to at least $19,000, or 23 percent of his total campaign war chest. 

Donations in the final report included: 

• Fourth Street developer Denny Abrams, $250. 

• Bricklayers and Allied Craftsworkers Local No. 3 PAC, $150. 

• California Real Estate PAC, $200. 

• Architect Burton Edwards, $100. 

• Teamsters Union DRIVE Committee, $250. 

• John Stewart Company president Jack Gardner, $250. 

• Doug Herst, West Berkeley developer, $250. 

• International Union of Painters and Allied Trades PAC, $250. 

• Developer and architect Lyman Jee, $100. 

• Real estate investor Tony Kershaw, $250. 

• Contractor Young Kim, Arenbest Construction, $250. 

• Evan McDonald, developer, $250. 

• Michael McDowell, contractor, $250. 

• Soheyl Modaressi, developer, $250. 

• Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, $250. 

• Thomas Olson, attorney specializing in real estate and property law, $50. 

• Mark Polite, Seagate Properties, $250. 

• Stephen Portis, investment banker and funder of the city’s solar loans program, $250. 

• Bruce Riordan, transportation consultant whose clients include BART and the Association of Bay Area Governments, $100. 

• Sheet Metal Workers Local 104 PAC, $250. 

• Barclay Simpson, building hardware manufacturer and funder of UC Berkeley developments, $250. 

• Contractor Karen Springer, $100. 

• Sprinkler Fitters and Apprentices Local 483 PAC, $250. 

• Teamsters Local 853 PAC, $200. 

• Teamsters Joint Council No. 7, $250. 

• Developer David Teece, funder of major Berkeley projects for Patrick Kennedy and Hudson McDonald, $250. 

• Glenn Yasuda, Berkeley Bowl owner and developer of the new West Berkeley Bowl, $250. 

• Diane Yasuda, $250. 

Dean donors 

Former Mayor Dean’s final land use sector donations could be counted on the fingers of one hand. 

The $650 in donations, added to the $1,048 reported previously, yield a total of $1,698, or 4.7 percent of her final campaign contribution tally of $36,186.99. 

Unlike Bates, who ended the campaign with a surplus of $3,204.73, Dean spent every cent she raised. 

Her final report of land use sector donations include: 

• Northbrae property real estate broker Anita Thede, $50. 

• Real estate economist David Shiver, $250. 

• California Real Estate PAC, $200. 

• Real estate investor Richard Dishnica, $100. 

• Architect Edward Levitch, $20. 

Despite a crowd of public transit advocates packing last week’s meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, many of them seeking more money for the embattled AC Transit bus agency, MTC Commissioners opted to give the largest single allocation of new federal money to a project to provide BART service between the Coliseum BART Station and the Oakland Airport. 

AC Transit Board President Chris Peeples said that he was “a little frustrated” by the MTC action.  

“There’s continual disrespect [at MTC] for bus service for our passengers,” Peeples said by telephone this week. He blamed that “disrespect” in part on AC Transit itself, saying that “we have to do a better job in communicating our positions and our needs at both the commission and staff level at MTC.” 

MTC is both the planning and fund-funneling agency for the transportation in the nine-county Bay Area region. 

BART’s Oakland Airport Connector will get $70 million of a total $490 million allocated for distribution by MTC out of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act recently signed into law by President Barack Obama. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, who represents East Bay cities on the 19-commissioner member MTC, was the only commissioner to oppose the Oakland Airport Connector. 

But commissioners delayed action on a second big ticket item included in its proposed federal recovery act budget, $70 million for the construction of a “train box” in connection with the proposed new San Francisco Transbay Terminal. Requests for terminal funding are being moved into a separate part of the recovery act set aside for high-speed rail projects. 

AC Transit will get money out of the recovery act, $25.7 million out of a $270 million pot MTC has set aside for seven transit agencies, somewhat less than the $40.1 million the agency had expected when the recovery act was passed by the House of Representatives.  

Peeples said that had the agency received the full $40.1 million, “we would probably have raised fares a little bit but probably not had any service cuts.” AC Transit is considering both fare raises and service cuts to keep its budget balanced. 

The only other transit agency operating in the East Bay, BART, received $65.3 million from the recovery act funds directed towards transit agencies. San Francisco’s Muni will get $67.2 million and Santa Clara Valley’s Valley Transit Authority will get $47.2 million. 

At last week’s MTC meeting, MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger said that it was incorrect to say that MTC was “diverting” recovery act money from AC Transit, as some public transit advocates had charged. 

“A lot of comments you’ve heard is that somehow this proposal will divert funds from some other purpose or that some agency is going to lose money if another agency gets something,” Heminger told commissioners. “But there really can’t be any diversion of these funds because they didn’t exist until last week [when the recovery act was signed by President Obama]. These funds aren’t governed by any existing adopted policy of this commission.” 

Heminger said that “every agency, every transit operator, every city, every county will walk out of this room with more money than they walked in with. No one’s going to lose.” 

But many of the crowd attending the MTC meeting who came to support more money for AC Transit felt that they were losing. 

“I encourage you to use these funds for operating costs to provide better service for AC Transit,” Berkeley/East Bay Gray Panthers convener Margo Smith told commissioners. “I heard the director of AC Transit get up at a meeting and say that he was proud of the fact that there was an AC Transit bus stop within a quarter of a mile of every home in Berkeley. What he didn’t say was that there wasn’t any service provided on some of those stops. If you want to get up to many places after 7 in the evening, AC Transit doesn’t work.” 

Smith said that “more operating funds should go to AC Transit so that service can be improved, and so that AC Transit doesn’t raise fares in these hard times, but instead can lower fares so they can get more riders.” 

In his telephone interview, Peeples said that he was happy to see that the transbay terminal project got referred to high-speed rail money in the recovery act. AC Transit is scheduled to be one of the transit agencies connecting to the terminal when it is eventually built.  

“It’s a worthy project,” Peeples said, “but they were trying to take it out of the wrong source of money.” 

As for BART’s Airport Connector, Peeples said that one of the sources of recovery act money that was included in the $70 million MTC allocation was money that was supposed to go for bus service.  

“Whatever the merits of the project, it was the wrong pot of money,” he said.  

Countering the argument that construction of the connector would create jobs that are needed in the current flat area and national economy, Peeples called those construction jobs “temporary,” and said that “preserving existing transportation jobs would have been more beneficial.”  

Peeples said that without the extra recovery act money, AC Transit may have to lay off workers. 

German media giant Bertlesmann bought legendary Berkeley independent publishing house Ten Speed Press Monday through its New York-based publishing unit Random House.  

The one bright light in the sale is news that the company will keep most of its existing operations and staff in Berkeley.  

News of the sale came in a joint announcement by three publishers: Ten Speed founder and president Philip Wood, Random House president and CEO Markus Dohle and Jenny Frost, president of Crown Publishing Group.  

Ten Speed and its label will be operated as part of Crown, a Random House subsidiary.  

The sale includes all four of Ten Speed’s imprints: Ten Speed Press, Tricycle Press, Celestial Arts and Crossing Press.  

Terms of the sale were not included in the announcement.  

Wood, who founded the company in 1971, will assume the title of president emeritus of the company which publishes more than 100 new titles a year and which has an active backlist of more than 1,000 titles, according to the announcement.  

Among the firm’s biggest sellers are What Color Is Your Parachute, a job-hunting manual with sales of more than 10 million copies, and the 2 million-seller The Moosewood Cookbook.  

Distribution of titles will be taken over by Random House effective May 1.  

Lisa Regul, Ten Speed’s publicity manager, said Random House is keeping most of the publishing operations in Berkeley, with the exception of the warehouse, which will be consolidated with the existing Random House facility in Maryland.  

She said she didn’t know how many employees might be affected.  

“But they’re keeping the office here open,” she said, including editorial, production, design, marketing and her own publicity staff.  

In the Random House press release, Dohle hailed the acquisition as “a real opportunity for us to further grow our business with a terrific group of imprints and a great publishing team.”  

In the same announcement, Wood said he was “confident Ten Speed Press, the company I founded and have owned for almost four decades, will thrive under Random House, whose highly professional people are committed to, and fully understand, publishing.”  

The company’s headquarters is at 999 Harrison St. in West Berkeley.  

Statewide education cuts have forced the Berkeley Unified School District to consider eliminating at least 118 teaching positions in the 2009-2010 school year, district officials announced last week.  

Administrators and educators in Berkeley acknowledged that although the district annually faces possible layoffs that it usually manages to avoid, this year the situation is more serious, given that the district is estimated to lose $8 million over the next two years, the majority of which would come from the district’s general fund.  

General fund dollars go toward paying teacher salaries, officials said.  

The district lost $2.5 million in the last fiscal year but was still able to rescind layoff notices to teachers at that time after the Legislature voted against scrapping Prop. 98, a voter-approved statute that establishes a minimum level of funding for California schools.  

However, the new budget approved by state lawmakers on Feb. 19 will subtract $8.4 billion from Proposition 98, resulting in teacher layoffs, larger class sizes and fewer programs in arts and music.  

“It’s a pretty serious threat,” said Cathy Campbell, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. “We are cutting more than twice as much this time."  

In a report to district Superintendent Bill Huyett and the school board, Lisa Udell, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, said that budget cuts meant that the district would have to reduce its ability to “provide the same type of services at the same level and in the same manner as provided in previous years.”  

Udell informed the board that the state education code permitted teacher layoffs, but that it was necessary to notify teachers by March 15 if their jobs were in jeopardy.  

“We recognize that it’s a very painful process and a time of uncertainty, but Berkeley is not unique,” she said, referring to school districts which already laid off teachers and even closed down entire schools. “We will be doing our best to limit the layoffs as we get close to March 4 but unfortunately we feel there will be some serious cuts this year.”  

The board is scheduled to vote on the list of possible reductions Wednesday. District administrators will finalize the list of layoffs after taking into account a teacher’s seniority, credentials and degrees, among other factors.  

Teachers receiving pink slips in March will also have a chance to appear before an administrative law judge to make their case. The final layoff notices are scheduled to go out in mid-May.  

The district is considering reducing positions that include management in administrative areas, vice principals, counselors and coaches across all the elementary, middle and high schools.  

Udell said that jobs like foreign language and early childhood special education teachers would not be eliminated because those positions are harder to fill.  

“Clearly the cuts are large,” said Huyett. “There are more than 100 positions here. We will look to see if we can preserve the positions but we don’t want to give false hopes at this juncture.”  

Huyett said there might be hope in the form of education funds promised through the federal stimulus bill, but that the school district still did not have any definite numbers.  

“The worse part is, that’s not all the cuts,” he said, adding that categorical funds which provide money for arts programs and libraries will be slashed by 20 percent and adult education will face at least a $1 million cut.  

“We are living in a state that is not valuing public education and not using progressive taxation,” said Campbell. “We are probably down to 50th in the nation in per pupil spending. I am ashamed of the failure of the state to prioritize education.”

The struggle over the size of Wareham Properties’ latest Berkeley project entered a new phase last week with the first public meeting to gather insight for an environmental impact report (EIR).  

The project, at 740 Heinz Ave., would be the tallest building erected in West Berkeley since the Fantasy Building, rising 62 feet, with another 12 feet of screening above that to shield rooftop hardware from public view.  

The existing height limit for the area is 45 feet.  

“That’s a big puppy,” said John Shea, an artist who lives just north of the site in the landmarked, Wareham-owned 800 Heinz Building, a former mayonnaise plant Wareham rents as live/work artists’ quarters. That use was hammered out in a 1985 agreement that allowed Wareham to demolish other landmarked buildings on their property.  

Environmental review consultants LSA Associates are conducting the environmental review and prepared an initial study outlining the proposed parameters of the more detailed study to come.  

The building Wareham proposes is 92,000 square feet and would replace the 10,000-square-foot landmarked Garr Building, but would preserve the Garr’s northern and southern facades. The new building would be constructed as a research and development facility, a Wareham specialty.  

The Feb. 26 meeting was a scoping session, mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act as a forum for gathering comments and concerns to be addressed in the EIR.  

Chris Barlow and Tom Fitzsimmons were on hand for Wareham, as was West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) advocate Rick Auerbach along with nearby neighbors and business owners.  

Aerin Moore of Magic Gardens, the nursery and landscaping services business at 729 Heinz, said the LSA study had erroneously claimed there would be no adverse impact on agriculture resources.  

The existing landmark shaded about 15 percent of his nursery during winter months, he said. “But this is going to be four or five times larger,” he said. “It’s going to kill plants. There’s no doubt about it. We won’t get any daylight until late afternoon.”  

The study found only two areas—cultural resources and transportation and traffic—where impacts would be potentially significant and not easily mitigated.  

But Auerbach said the project could have potentially major impacts on archaeological resources because it is located near a seasonal water source, Potter Creek, near the edge of the historic shoreline, the kind of site he said was often used by native peoples. He said core samples should be collected from the site before construction begins to search for signs of native habitation.  

Neighbors said they were concerned about increased traffic and making the area’s parking problems worse, and Barlow acknowledged traffic problems in the area. The project would eliminate existing parking spaces on the site and provide no replacements.  

Wareham was able to avoid some of the restrictions that would have resulted from locating a new building on a single property because the new building extends past the existing property lines of the Garr Building lot and onto other property owned by Wareham, which allows the structure to be developed under city codes governing integrated developments.  

Greg Powell, the city senior planner assigned to the project, said Wareham would be entitled to integrated development rules even if the building didn’t cross the property line, since the adjacent properties are held by the same owners.  

Shea and other artists at 800 Heinz said they are worried that the new building would limit the light so critical to their work. “It changes our light source,” said painter Corliss Lesser, who said she was also concerned about parking and traffic.  

Wareham is one of the Berkeley’s biggest landlords and owns a large collection of structures in the area, as well as major holdings in Emeryville, Richmond and Marin County. Among their West Berkeley holdings are buildings at 830 Heinz Ave., 2910 and 2929 Seventh St. and 2600 Tenth St.  

Barlow is an advocate of easing zoning regulations in West Berkeley and had appeared at the Planning Commission the night before to argue for new master use permit rules to allow for more flexibility in permissible uses in the city’s only sector zoned for industrial and manufacturing uses.  

Auerbach, who represents a large and diverse community of existing businesses in West Berkeley, said a major concern was the impact of new construction on the area’s existing businesses, including displacement of blue- and green-collar workers by the post-grads who work in Wareham’s lab buildings.  

He said he was also concerned that lab employees, as projected by the developer, would want to live nearby, potentially leading to an inflation in housing costs in the area of the city most affordable to those with modest incomes.  

Other concerns he cited included what he said were conflicts with the West Berkeley Plan, including sections dealing with the scale and appropriateness of developments and impacts on existing buildings.  

Powell said some of Auerbach’s concerns would be more appropriately directed to the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board after Wareham files for permits to build the structure.  

The planner said the project would be presented to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in April or May for review of its impacts on historic resources.  

A draft of the EIR will be ready by “early spring,” said LSA consultant Shannon Allen, when another hearing will gather comments on the document before a final draft is completed. 

UC Berkeley, already the instigator of a new plan for downtown Berkeley, is leading the effort to reshape West Berkeley as well.  

Mayor Tom Bates is pushing Berkeley’s role in the East Bay Green Corridor, a developing alliance of mayors that is pressing for the region to take a leading role in development and manufacturing of so-called “green” technology.  

However, the initial shove came not from Bates nor from his fellow mayors, but from UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who summoned them for a luncheon at his university-owned residence.  

And the university official who heads the marketing effort to commercialize UC Berkeley-generated patents with the private sector was on hand to pitch the virtues of tech-friendly zoning to city planning commissioners last week. Michael Cohen, that UC official, may be better known to Daily Planet readers as Michael Alvarez-Cohen, a member of the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board.  

A speaker who favors Power Point presentations laced with words starting with the same letter, Cohen led the lineup of speakers assembled by Michael Caplan and Dave Fogarty of the city’s Economic Development Department to pitch the planners on the virtues of zoning flexibility.  

“Most communities could only dream of having this kind of opportunity,” said Cohen, acting head of UC Berkeley’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances. 

Every year, he said, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) sends out 10 to 20 start-ups created to exploit technology developed at the two public institutions.  

Cohen, whose university job responsibility is “New Technology Management and Commercialization,” works out of an office on Shattuck Avenue. He said he had worked on more than 100 start-up companies. Of those which had started in Berkeley, most eventually left, even though they might have preferred to stay in Berkeley, he said—with the screen behind him lit up with logos of university-spawned corporate start-ups.  

“We have to take a look at our core assets and leverage them in ways that other parts of the community cannot,” he said.  

Caplan said that there are signs that Washington may become involved in creating new “innovation zones” to foster emerging clean energy technologies in cities with either universities or national laboratories specializing in the field.  

Then-Sen. Barack Obama praised Pennsylvania’s Keystone Innovation Zones during the presidential primary contests last year and promised $200 million a year in matching funds for state and local governments to develop regional economies.  

Now, with President Obama in the White House and the head of a national lab—LNBL’s Steven Chu—as secretary of energy, both UC Berkeley and LBNL are engaged in just those pursuits Caplan cited.  

For Caplan, the ideal outcome would be “incentivizing what we want and getting what we want” to develop what he called a “cradle to scale technology,” to allow high tech startups to evolve from garage labs to full-scale manufacturing plants.  

The changes, he said, would allow the city to specialize in developing new sources of energy and “green and clean technology that will lead the transformation of our era.”  

The goal of the initiative, according to the presenters at last week’s planning commission meeting, was to revise West Berkeley zoning to make it easier for tech startups to begin and stay in the same city that produced the patents they’ll be using.  

Flexible MUPs?  

The problem, according to the zoning change boosters, is a flaw with the city’s regulations for its master use permit (MUP), a process that allows for sequential development of sites.  

Commissioner Gene Poschman noted that in the last 10 years since the commission looked at zoning for the area, “somehow it’s never come to the planning commission that there’s something screwed up about the MUP.”  

“I can’t tell you why it didn’t happen,” said senior planner Alex Amoroso, the city staffer who has been handling the West Berkeley rezoning.  

“We’ve had no applications for an MUP since then,” said Debra Sanderson, the city’s land use planning manager. “There has to be a five-acre minimum, thus the size problem.”  

Sanderson said the existing MUP regulations wouldn’t allow some of the uses previously allowed. Other concerns include development standards that wouldn’t allow some proposed uses.  

The “size problem” refers to possible moves to reduce the size of allowable master-planned developments, a matter that worries many West Berkeley small businesses and artisans. They say they fear that lowering the size of MUP sites would lead to expansion development which would result in escalating land and lease prices that could drive small operations from their last toehold in the community.  

Amoroso said three primary obstacles to development remain: allowable uses, bans on elimination of manufacturing space and protected uses.  

Flexibility fans  

A procession of developers and landowner representatives summoned by the city staff spoke to the commission, urging changes in the way the development game is played in what Caplan called “the economic development frontier for the city.”  

Steve Goldin, a major property owner and the second speaker in Caplan’s lineup, identified himself as a majority West Berkeley property owner with first-hand experience of zoning issues.  

“You can tinker around with these problems only so much,” he said, urging commissioners to tweak the rules and definitions to ease the way for tech startups to evolve into full-scale manufacturing facilities that would stay in Berkeley. “One source of leverage we have is that the more you can intervene to help a business grow before they make any money, they will be very beholden and grateful.”  

Michael Ziegler, an industrial developer (who is also a rabbi who leads monthly musical services at Berkeley’s Jewish Community Center), said he had helped develop more than five million square feet of development space—including the Temescal Business Center at 7th and Heinz streets, which city staff has held up as a model of the MUP process.  

One site that “effectively could not be developed as flexible space,” he said, was the Flint Ink site, on the 1300 block of Fourth Street. Ziegler also said some tenants chose other locations than in Berkeley because “it takes many, many months just to determine” if their project fits with the city’s list of acceptable uses.  

Jim Morris and Peter Waldt of development consultants Cushman Wakefield are part of the team representing the owners of West Berkeley’s largest potential MUP site, 8.2 acres located adjacent to Aquatic Park. Morris presented his own Power Point pitch, complete with “psychographic” charts of potential workers at high tech companies. The owners hope to develop the site, once the site of American Soil & Stone Products Inc., as an incubator host to startups connected with the university and lab.  

Darrel de Tienne spoke on behalf of Douglas Herst, who is proposing a project called Peerless Greens at the site of the Peerless Lighting plant in West Berkeley, which occupies most of two blocks, all of it currently occupied.  

In addition to attracting conventional tenants, de Tienne said Herst hopes to create separate work and living spaces for artists, with the goal of housing half of the site’s 1,700 project daytime employees.  

“Obviously, we need an MUP for this to take place,” he said.  

Comments  

Commissioner Patti Dacey was the first critic to sound off, telling staff (alluding to Orwell’s Animal Farm) that while she appreciated the information, “I really object to the way we treat some animals as more equal than others.”  

Advocates of the zoning changes “get to actually present cohesive, well-developed thoughts without anyone interrupting,” she said, unlike public comment speakers,. who are strictly timed. “I find that offensive.”  

Dacey said advocates of other views should be allowed to make their pleas in a similar forum. “This needs to be a more open process with us sitting down with different stakeholders,” she said.  

And with that, public comments began.  

George Chittenden runs an existing manufacturing business in West Berkeley, Adams & Chittenden Scientific Glass. He said the exuberance about green tech reminded him of the since-deflated dot-com euphoria, and he urged commissioners not to “throw the baby out with the bath water. Leave space to make things in West Berkeley,” he urged, warning that too many zoning changes could keep similar firms out of the city.  

“We were a start-up in the ‘90s and relocated to West Berkeley. A lot of the companies presented here tonight are our clients,” he said.  

West Berkeley’s biggest developer wasn’t part of the staff’s list of speakers, but he conveyed the same message. Chris Barlow of Wareham Properties said his company owns 22 buildings in West Berkeley.  

“This is not the dot-com story,” he said, urging rules that would ease mixed-use site development to accommodate changes in the tech world.  

“No one knew what biofuel was two years ago,” he said. “An MUP is an important tool that would allow the developer to work with the city for the benefit of the city as a whole.”  

George Martin, who owns a business that straddles the Berkeley/Emeryville border, urged commissioners to keep the community stakeholders involved in the process of shaping new zoning rules. “Keep us involved, don’t push us out,” he said.” We’ve been here for 60 years.”  

Other speakers who called for restraint in zoning changes included some of the leading figures in West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC), a stakeholder group representing existing businesses and the area’s sizable arts community.  

WEBAIC doesn’t oppose zoning changes to allow for more flexibility in assigning use on parcels, but members have urged restricting major changes to the largest development sites, with five acres often mentioned as the minimum.  

A divided AC Transit Board chose Oakland corporate attorney and former State Senator Loni Hancock’s campaign field organizer Joel B. Young last week to fill the vacancy left when At-Large Board Member Rebecca Kaplan left for the Oakland City Council.  

It took two rounds of voting for the board to make its decision, first deadlocking 3-3 on a motion to choose Obama Transition Team member and former Google executive Elizabeth Echols of Oakland. The board then voted 4-2 to select Young.  

Not selected was the woman who won the most votes when the board winnowed down the original 17 candidates earlier this month, former Vallejo Superintendent of Transportation Pamela Belchamber, a Berkeley resident.  

Belchamber had received six votes to Echols’ five and Young’s four in that initial round of voting, but had been the subject of some e-mail traffic by public transportation advocates in the intervening week questioning her credentials.  

Young, who said in his application letter that a “significant amount” of his life had been spent riding public transit and that his father was a 19-year San Francisco Muni bus driver, will serve until December 2010. Voters in the two-county AC Transit area will vote in November 2010 for the full four-year term of the at-large seat that Young now occupies.  

Sexual assaults continue 

Berkeley police received three more reports this week of sexual assaults south of UC Berkeley’s campus. There are now 20 such incidents associated with a white male suspect.  

“We believe it’s the same guy,” said Officer Andrew Frankel. 

The man is described as in his 20s, about 5’10,”of medium build with short, dark wavy hair.  

On Saturday, Feb. 28, two young women claimed they were assaulted by a young white man fitting the description of the suspect given to police after a Feb. 20 incident. One woman was assaulted around 3:45 p.m. while walking north on Piedmont Avenue from Channing Way. The second said she was attacked on Dwight Way east of College Avenue around 11 p.m. Both victims, who were alone at the time, claim their attacker tried to penetrate their vaginas with his finger. Unlike the previous victims, the two women were not wearing skirts: one wore shorts, while the other had on stretch pants.  

This week, another victim came forward and reported a similar assault in October. In total, there have been 20 such attacks and 19 victims.  

Over the past few weeks, Berkeley police have stationed additional officers in the South Campus area, handed out copies of the suspect’s sketch and description to residents, and addressed fraternities and sororities about the issue. The majority of victims were attacked while on their way home from fraternity parties. Police are advising young women not to walk home alone at night, and have asked fraternity members to escort their guests home. 

Attacked with detergent, knife 

A Berkeley woman was arrested Saturday morning after a dispute with her uncle turned violent. Around 8:20 a.m. on Feb. 28, Nicole Jones, 27, got into an argument in a house on the 2700 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Jones threw a bottle of detergent at her 66-year-old uncle, hitting him in the head. She then hurled a kitchen knife at her uncle, narrowly missing him. Her uncle called police, and Jones was arrested at the house. She faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon and a probation violation. 

Stolen gun 

On Monday, an elderly man informed police that a handgun had been stolen from his home on the 1000 block of Middlefield Road. The 79-year-old told police he had been in the hospital for three months. Upon returning home, he noticed a .357 caliber Luger revolver he kept on the top shelf of his bedroom closet was missing. 

Shoplifting turns violent 

A Berkeley Bowl shoplifter was arrested Sunday afternoon after fleeing store security guards and attacking them on a nearby street, according to police. Around 5:38 p.m., store security guards monitoring surveillance cameras noticed Scott O’Day, 28, of Oakland, walking out of the store with food stashed under his jacket and in a motorcycle helmet.  

Two guards went outside and tried to detain O’Day. The 28-year-old took off running, dumping food as he went. When the guards caught up with him on the 2700 block of Fulton, O’Day struck one of them with his motorcycle helmet. The other guard wrestled him to the ground and held him until police arrived on the scene. O’Day is charged with strongarm robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. 

Golden Gate Fields moved closer to the auction block Monday when the Toronto Stock Exchange ordered shares of Magna Entertainment removed from its listings. 

And one of the players rumored to bid on the track is UC Berkeley. 

The delisting action, announced yesterday by the Toronto exchange’s Listing Committee, takes effect April 1. 

Word of the delisting sank the company’s stock, already trading at record lows, down to a quarter a share Tuesday, matching an all-time low set a week earlier on news the company had defaulted on loans at its Pimlico track. 

Just what this means for the track at Albany remains unclear. 

Two rumored buyers for all or parts of the property are a consortium organized by Hollywood Park president Jack Liebeau, who had previously headed Magna’s Santa Anita track, and another set of deep pockets closer to home: UC Berkeley. 

The Liebeau rumors were reported by blogger Bill Christine, the former Los Angeles Times reporter who covered racing for nearly a century. 

Three sources who asked not to be identified have told the Daily Planet that the university has met with Magna officials to discuss buying the track—or at least that section which Magna had previously tried to develop as an upscale mall and housing project. 

During hearings on the environmental reports on two planned buildings at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, critics repeatedly urged the university to build at alternative sites, with the Albany race track cited several times. 

Magna Entertainment is a spinoff of Magna International, Canadian Frank Stronach’s highly successful auto parts firm. Stronach is passionate about horse racing, owning horses as well as the largest block of U.S. race tracks ever assembled. 

The entertainment subsidiary is under a second Magna affiliate, MI Developments, Inc. (MID), which manages the company’s properties. 

But the tracks proved a financial black hole for the parts firm, and shareholders demanded that Stronach spin off his racing holdings into a separate company. 

The latest crisis for Magna Entertainment followed loan defaults and a demand by MID shareholders that directors refuse to lend any more money to the spinoff. 

MID, which has arranged financing for the tracks, announced last week that loans to at least four track-related affiliates were in default. 

The fate of the Albany track has been a political minefield in Albany, with the proposed shopping center project leading to the election of two city councilmembers who opposed the project—which was to be built by Los Angeles “lifestyle” mall developer and GOP political powerhouse Frank Caruso. 

Should UC Berkeley buy all or part of the property, development would be exempt from the Albany council’s jurisdiction since UC is a separate governmental agency autonomous of local zoning and regulations. 

Bankruptcy liquidation may be the only option left on Magna’s table. A failed restructuring plan, announced in November, included the announcement that all the company’s assets were up for grabs. 

In addition to Golden Gate Fields and Santa Anita Park, the company owns Laurel Park and Pimlico in Maryland, Portland Meadows in Oregon, Lone Star Park in Texas, Remington Park in Oklahoma, The Meadows in Pennsylvania, Gulfstream Park in Florida and the Magna Racino in Stronach’s native Austria. 

The company also owns betting wire services. 

It’s the classic old school East Bay greeting: “How ‘bout them A’s?!” Heard at the Oakland Symphony concert on Friday night, a not-so-surprising new variant: “How ‘bout that budget?!” And I knew exactly what he meant: not the disgraceful California model, but the Obama presentation that was all over the front page of the New York Times on Friday. It was a revelation to those of us who have suffered for the last 25 years through the politics of low expectations.  

My friend is an old-time liberal who has always believed that government can do many things right, and should be allowed to do so. He ended up starting a small high-tech business, I suspect partly because public service opportunities have been so limited during both of our adult lives, and much to his surprise it’s been a success. He’s been a faithful contributor to political and cultural causes, but he’s been disappointed in almost everything that came after Johnson’s War on Poverty.  

The goals, tone and language of the Obama budget presentation resonated for people like us like the sound of the last trumpet announcing the Resurrection of the Dead in Handel’s Messiah. The scathing reference to “an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington, D.C.” was music to our ears.  

And then on Monday another new day dawned. Attorney General Eric Holder released nine Bush Justice Department memos written shortly after 9/11 which outlined arguments for drastic restrictions on Americans’ civil liberties. Just a sample of the horrors therein, from Devlin Barrett and Matt Apuzzo’s story for the Associated Press: 

“Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo. 

“‘First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,’ Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: ‘The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.’ 

“On Sept. 25, 2001, Yoo discussed possible changes to the laws governing wiretaps for intelligence gathering. In that memo, he said the government’s interest in keeping the nation safe following the terrorist attacks might justify warrantless searches.” 

It’s terrifying to speculate on how close this country came to a genuine totalitarian coup. While President Obama has already done a few things we might not approve of, and the situation in Afghanistan, “where empires go to die,” continues to be worrisome, the vigorous actions by Holder at Justice and Leon Panetta at the CIA (revealing the agency’s destruction of key torture videos under the Bush administration) are cause for celebration by civil libertarians. It seems that Obama really does intend to clean house in Washington. 

Which brings us round, circuitously, to the question of cleaning house at home. Just as our man in Washington is engaged in sweeping the devils out of the corners there, we should be getting rid of our own around here.  

After a couple of years of self-described “dithering,” UC’s Economics Professor Brad DeLong, functioning as our civic conscience, has finally called on Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to get rid of John Yoo, now in safe haven as a tenured faculty member at the University of California Law School. DeLong’s argument: it’s not a matter of Yoo’s academic freedom, since he’s shown that he’s happy to argue what he doesn’t actually believe in order to curry favor with a patron. In 2000, DeLong says, Yoo argued that President Clinton’s powers were “crabbed and restricted,” but then in 2001 he gave President Bush’s administration carte blanche to do anything up to and including curtailing civil liberties and torturing prisoners. 

The key paragraph in DeLong’s letter to Birgeneau: “Academic freedom is a powerful and important principle. But I do not believe it provides a shield for weathervanes. I do not believe it shields those whose work is not the grueling intellectual labor of the scholar and the scientist but instead hackwork that is crafted to be convenient and pleasing to their political master of the day.” 

Now that the era of profound irresponsibility seems to be over in Washington, it should be over in Berkeley as well. The law school has erected a shield around Yoo which he doesn’t deserve, and that should end.  

One egregious example: Yoo took part about a year ago in a panel discussion at something called the BCLT Privacy Lecture. The handful of audience members were greeted with the boldly printed  

BCLT PRIVACY LECTURE RULES:  

NO Cans, Bottles or Fruit.  

NO Banners or Signs.  

NO Sound-Making Devices.  

NO Disturbances during the Program, including NO Standing. 

NO Yelling. 

NO Behavior that disrupts the event or prevents the speakers from being heard or being able to continue. 

In other words, plenty of protection for John Yoo’s First Amendment rights, and plenty of provision for his complete comfort as he exercised them. Also, not stated but clear to all, NO Torture, NO Search and Seizure, NO Invasion of Yoo’s cozy home in Lafayette (or somewhere else through the tunnel).  

Law school dean Christopher Edley is President Obama’s old professor, and it’s time for him to show that he has as much class as the president’s appointees Holder and Panetta. Yoo is currently a visiting faculty member at a lesser academic institution in Southern California, and that’s a good place for him to stay. Edley could just drop him an e-mail suggesting that he needn’t bother to come back, and Berkeley’s long and embarrassing Yoo nightmare would be over.  

TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The killing of kindergartner Zachary Cruz in a crosswalk during the middle of the day is troubling because accidents like this seem more likely in Berkeley than in other cities that I have lived in. I was reminded of a near miss that I witnessed near Berkeley Montessori School where a woman in a Subaru Outback was unwilling to stop for a group of children escorted by their teacher in the crosswalk. The teacher was left visibly trembling, and after the driver appeared indignant and I threatened to call police, she said, “Go ahead, waste my day,” and sped off. Similarly, I witnessed a driver honking his horn at a group of schoolchildren who were crossing Sacramento, but it was taking “too long.”  

This deliberate disregard for children in crosswalks is something I’ve witnessed only in Berkeley. I think one possible factor is Berkeley’s lack of traffic stops by police. Other cities across the country seem somewhat extreme in their traffic enforcement, to the point where every citizen is treated like a criminal given the large number of traffic stops. Berkeley is at the other end of the scale with a Wild West environment. It’s the only city where I’ve seen cars roll straight through red lights if the intersection appears clear, as if drivers have no expectation that Berkeley police will enforce traffic laws. This was exactly the attitude of the woman driving the Subaru Outback. I have heard the dispirited police perspective that traffic stops are unpopular and get nowhere in the local courts. But for the sake of kindergartner Cruz, Berkeley police should begin to stand their ground. Everyone would probably drive more cautiously and respectfully if we were to see the traffic laws enforced more often in Berkeley. How much is enough? The brief enhanced police enforcement on Solano Avenue after two pedestrian deaths was roughly what other cities have year-round on all of their major thoroughfares. 

Paul Kalas 

• 

SUBCONSCIOUS  

MOTIVATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Over the past few years I have worked with Terry Doran on several BUSD committees. I found Terry to be a kind and gracious person as well as a dedicated public servant and ardent supporter of public education. I might add that I do not know Jesse Arreguin. It was for all of these reasons that I decided to support Terry’s campaign for City Council and then made two $25 contributions—one in September and another in November. 

When reading Richard Brenneman’s Feb. 26 article, “Developer Dollars Fell Short in District 4 City Council Race,” I was surprised to discover that my contribution was actually part of an eleventh-hour effort led by Berkeley’s “best-known real estate industry players” and that my motivation, as an architect, was obviously the desire to maintain billings in these hard economic times. I want to thank Mr. Brenneman for clearing up my confusion! 

Carl Bridgers 

• 

ZONING BOARD DISCUSSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Terry Doran is right. The Daily Planet is largely a journal of opinion. But the news story about the Zoning Adjustments Board approval of 1200 Ashby Ave. was a short factual summary of a two-hour discussion of the project, a five-story apartment building on San Pablo Avenue between Ashby and Carrison Street. 

Mr. Doran should have expanded on his support of the project if he feels that the Planet didn’t pay enough attention to his remarks. 

Since he is so shy, here is a snippet of what he said about the project, not on Jan. 22, but at the ZAB meeting of Aug. 14, 2008: 

“I’d actually like to see a 10-story building at that corner but we can’t do it right now. Five stories doesn’t bother me at all. I’ll be very clear about that. I think Berkeley could benefit tremendously from the amount of affordable housing that we could put into a 10-story building.” 

Toni Mester 

• 

NARROW-FOCUSED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I feel honored! As a career urban planner, I was mentioned in your article about the District 4 City Council race as one of the numerous pawns of the development community that gave money to the Terry Doran campaign. I just don’t get it. Why does your newspaper consider a person and those they support bad if they focus their careers and education on land use, the urban environment, and livability? We, of all people, care deeply enough about our city’s environmental, social, and fiscal health to dedicate our lives to the pursuit of designing and repairing our cities and fostering walkable, transit-friendly communities that reduce human impacts on climate, air quality, and precious farmland. Your narrow-focused, fear-of-any-change point of view is limiting and only serves to move us backwards. Partly because of your paper’s efforts, this city has lost much of its progressive luster. I for one will continue to support candidates who I believe will put Berkeley back on the map as a leader in progressive environmental and social change. 

Joe DiStefano 

• 

FOX REBIRTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Heaps of praise on the miraculous rebirth of the fantastic Fox Theater in Oakland. Despite too many years of abandonment, a fire and vandalism, she has somehow managed to survive. Now, after a lengthy and expensive restoration, one of the few remaining old-time Hollywood motion picture palaces celebrated her gala reopening on Feb. 5, 2009. The majestic Fox Theater is alive and well in the heart of Oakland.  

Congratulations also to the architect and builder, Maury I. Diggs (1886-1953), the California state architect, noted racetrack design specialist and student of Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Jack Biringer 

Oakland native 

• 

CELL PHONE ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Tuesday, March 10, 7 p.m., at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, the Berkeley City Council will consider Berkeley’s new Cell Antenna Ordinance. It will impact all neighborhoods in our city. An independent radio frequency radiation engineer will also submit data on RF radiation measurements taken before and after cell antennas were activated at the UC Storage Building at Shattuck and Ward.  

We believe Verizon is operating these antennas illegally. As you might remember, Linda Maio’s tainted vote was the crucial vote in overturning the ZAB decision to deny Verizon the permit for antennas facing many homes in our neighborhood. At the time of her vote, Linda Maio was involved in buying property and getting a loan for the property from Patrick Kennedy, the owner of the UC Storage building. Unfortunately, Ms. Maio failed to declare a conflict-of-interest and did not recuse herself from Council deliberations, as required by law. 

We urge all interested people to attend this meeting. We need a vigilant community which demands that cell antennas be spread out more evenly and equitably throughout Berkeley. Only then will Flatland communities be able to protect themselves. Please show the City Council that we stand united in our opposition to antenna farms in residential areas. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the right of local municipalities to have more power to determine placement of cell antennas. And our current local ordinance discourages placement of cell antennas which face residential communities. 

Please stand with us once more and show the City Council that we expect them to protect our neighborhood by refusing any more permits for antennas on UC Storage. Come to the City Council Meeting on March 10. 

Laurie Baumgarten 

Michael Barglow 

• 

WOMEN’S FACULTY CLUB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Women’s Faculty Club is, without question, one of the University of California’s greatest treasures. Designed by John Galen Howard and completed in 1923, this gracious building remains a splendid “refuge from bustle,” as it was once described, providing hotel accommodations and fine dining to university faculty and staff. But it also offers wonderful programs open to the public. 

This afternoon I weathered thunder, lightning and driving rain to attend the club’s “Arts in the Afternoon,” a piano recital featuring Percy Liang, a dynamic performer playing music by Haydn, Liszt and Beethoven on a Steinway piano, owned by Benjamin Ide Wheeler. Liang is a fourth-year Ph.D student in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence—a far cry from the world of music. Sitting in the warm comfort of the lovely Lucy Ward Stebbins Lounge, listening to rain beating against the window, sipping sherry and enjoying this glorious concert, I thought how blessed we are to have the opportunity to escape the doom and gloom of today’s world for an afternoon of sheer pleasure. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was very touched to read Annette Herskovits’ “Who Remembers the Holocaust?” How courageous and extremely sensitive was the author’s concern toward the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli Zionists. She belongs to a noble fraternity which I feel nowadays is in short supply. 

It was also rewarding to read the many letters to the editor from people who shared the author’s anguish. I am almost 91 years old, yet my anger goes beyond the mere display of solidarity with Annette’s sentiments, to angrily asking how in the world can there be so much apathy toward such abuse of the Palestinian people? I personally hold the United States culpable for the barbaric situation. I consider the U.S. and Israel rogue nations for colluding, and for defying for decades all the international human rights laws and vetoing all of the United Nations’ deliberations on this matter. 

Not even the courageous stand of our stalwart for peace, Jimmy Carter, has been able to arouse the world to end this shameful situation. Why was there so much concerted effort directed toward apartheid in South Africa, while being so misled by the Zionist lie? 

George Barbero 

• 

TRANSPORTATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does MTC have a criterion on Cost or Social Equity when they allocated $70 million stimulus funds to Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) or their Automated Guideway Transit (AGT)? It is not a cost-effective nor socially responsible project. 

The OAC’s original environmental impact report indicated the cost of AGT was almost eight times greater than the Quality Bus (QB). It also showed, on Table 6-4, the annual ridership for year 2020 for QB was 133,087,410 versus AGT at 134,879,560, only a 1.3 percent difference. However since then, the cost for the AGT has about doubled, making the AGT at least 12-15 times more costly. 

The AGT ridership increase will be no more than 30 percent of the present bus service or around 3,500 additional daily trips. If AGT costs around $500 million to build when including the annual operation/maintenance, its overall cost over 20 years will be $20 per trip per new rider! 

As for equity, the AGT benefits the more affluent who can afford to travel, whereas, there are far more people with lesser income and students who are transit dependent and use transit daily and will suffer from state funding cuts with higher fares and less service. 

Roy Nakadegawa 

• 

PRESIDENT’S PRIORITIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his address to Congress last week, President Obama promised to stop funding wasteful cold war weapons systems and invest in domestic priorities like healthcare, education and green jobs. 

Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Banking and Financial Services Committee recently said that he believes we can finance health care for all Americans by cutting the defense budget and re-investing in America. 

One project reported to be on the chopping block is the F-22, a bomber that costs $143 million dollars apiece, has no utility in the Afghanistan or Iraq conflicts. Even the Secretary of Defense says he doesn’t need any more of them! 

For a fraction of what we spend on this Pentagon pork, we could be creating healthcare for every American, giving our kids the education they need, or putting millions of our neighbors back to work. 

Congress needs to listen to the President Obama and Representative Frank and shift funding away from useless Cold War weapons and toward rebuilding our country. 

Support education not war. 

Patti Rich 

Oakland 

• 

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE  

SCULPTURES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read with interest “Pancho” McClish’s letter about those truly ugly sculptures on the Pedestrian Bridge, and I must disagree—those sculptures actually could never ruin the pedestrian bridge. Yes, they are dreadful, completely without any redeeming aesthetic or artistic qualities and an utter waste of taxpayer money, but they are minor bookends upon a really nice piece of functional public architecture. 

What bothers me most about the “Pedestrian Bridge Experience” is those huge mounds of dirt which completely block what could be a spectacular view of the Golden Gate and Mt. Tamalpais. Is that land not owned by the East Bay Regional Parks District? Why is that property being used by a private, for-profit industrial corporation? It’s actually an incredible eyesore, and a completely inappropriate use of that property. The only redeeming feature of those mounds of dirt is that they deflect the traffic noise if you are on the west side of them. I cannot imagine that having such piles of dirt so close to the water could possibly fulfill any environmental concerns regarding the silting up of the bay. Perhaps the sculptures were placed there to divert our attention from the true ugliness. 

Arthur Fonseca 

• 

ASHBY FLOWERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Whole Foods’ intention not to renew Ashy Flowers’ lease is very disappointing, and depressing in what it says about the state of corporate governance in this country. They may be a publicly traded corporation, but their brand and entire business model is based on an ethos that sets up very different expectations of community citizenship than what we’ve had to face from the car companies, banks and other fatally myopic enterprises. Now Whole Foods has corrupted their image, in Berkeley no less! What’s next, irradiated genetically modified organic free-range chicken?  

Two points I think your story should have covered: First, Whole Foods is not just Ashby Flowers’ landlord, but also a competitor—and not a very successful one in my opinion. Despite a relatively large floral sales area, Whole Foods does not compare well to Ashby Flowers in service, quality or price. About all Whole Foods has in its favor is convenience and longer hours, and I’m not surprised they want to push Ashby Flowers out.  

Second, there does happen to be a vacant retail property of the sort described by Mr. Lannon, just across the intersection on Telegraph, where a camera store used to be. It might not be economically feasible for the flower shop, although it has been vacant for a long time, and of course even a move across the street is a hardship for an existing business. But if Whole Foods wants to do something for the community, and do good while doing well, maybe they should open their cafe over there—it’s got its own parking and a drive through, and would give them even more visibility. How about it, Whole Foods?  

Ross Bogen  

• 

CITY MANAGER PAY HIKE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is incredible that Mayor Bates and the City Council gave the city manager a pay hike. It is equally amazing that they’ve gotten away with it with very little public outcry. 

The city manager’s salary and benefits are worth over $300,000 a year. The mayor justifies the pay raise by pointing out the city manager could “collect more by retiring.” 

This is not a justification for a pay hike but reason to reevaluate benefit and salary packages. 

At the same time our elected officials were raising fat salaries even higher, Santa Rosa decreased salaries for all public employees earning $100,000 or more. Their city manager earns $65,000 less than ours, even though Santa Rosa is geographically 4.5 times larger with a population 60 percent greater than Berkeley. If Santa Rosa can be fiscally responsibly in these difficult times, why can’t Berkeley? 

Mayor Bates was in Sacramento too long spending big bucks, learning the culture of the elite and getting use to fat salaries and obese retirements. Gordon Wozniak, coming out of UC, is likely accustomed to the same gravy train.  

How long will we consent to pay “experts,” “consultants” and bureaucrats salaries that far exceed those of the people they’re supposed to serve? Perhaps less self important “public servants” would do a better job for reasonable pay. There are plenty of talented people looking for work. 

Is our city manager such a genius that he can’t be replaced? As Charles DeGaulle once quipped, “The world’s graveyards are filled with indispensable men.” 

John Koenigshofer 

• 

GATHERING ROSEBUDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Reading your “Spring Thoughts From Home” as a fellow English major, I was moved and delighted by the selections and the editorial thoughts and feelings. Additionally, on a less somber note, I can’t help but add that T.S. Eliot’s poem in which spring (April) is described as the “cruelest month” (he was such a scamp!) can be construed as mourning the month in which the I.R.S. brings dread to us all. And, there is that old cliché about the inevitability of death and taxes. We may “gather our rosebuds as we may,” but the IRS will always charge us for the bouquet. 

Robert Blau 

• 

THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read the Planet each week (when I can get a printed copy), pretty much from front to back. I skip much of the (tedious, repetitive, or predictable) letters to the editor, but pay attention to much of the rest of it, including the ads and the funnies. I frequently read and appreciate the editorials and opinion pieces. I especially like the house inspection articles by Matt. Cantor, the bird/wildlife/planting articles by Ron Sullivan and Joe Eaton, and the local history. I read the calendars and am frequently better informed because of it. I slog through the news of city business, but need as much as anything else to know when the city manager is making more money because of specious claims about his retirement made to City Council during recommendations for his new raise. 

The Planet has steadily improved in quality over the years and I am certain our community would feel the loss if it should fold up and disappear. I doubt if we’ve ever had a better paper in this city. It is no more biased than any other paper; perhaps it leans toward the good of the public commons more than Mr. Doran (or others who complain about it) might wish. Que lastima, chicos! 

The Planet is doing a great job. We need this kind of dialog in our community. We need the real news of what is happening, whether the bastions of power want us to have it or not. I need to know what is happening with the toxics battle in West Berkeley as much as I need to know what is happening with the nanotechnology development battle or stadium rehab battles being fought by my Panoramic Hill neighbors. I need it all. 

I could perhaps afford 50 dollars a year for a paper, but would only regularly read the printed version if one existed. I cannot imagine spending even more time in front of the computer, even if to get news. Thus at current rates, I would get the news once a week. I would prefer to put a dollar into a box to get my paper, and would go out of my way to do so, fairly often if not every week, rather than subscribe. Piled up newsprint of any kind is a horrid waste. No news at all is a travesty. 

Keep up the good work, 

Lynda Winslow 

West Berkeley 

• 

NO DEFICIT OF GOOD IDEAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve found some helpful ways of thinking about the economic and financial challenges facing the world that have brought reassurance and peace in the midst of turmoil and fear. As I work to make God the center of my life, what a friend said has uplifted me: there is, there can be, no deficit of ideas. Of course there needs to be the willingness and determination to try various approaches until ones are found that work to open up the job and credit markets and stabilize financial institutions.  

Knowing that the good flowing from spiritual sources is infinite, like a river, yields an abundant supply of calm, grace and joy, dispelling dismay and anger. Investing in such qualities of thought supplies strength and wisdom from which to draw in the days, months and years ahead. The only deficit occurs in my thinking and this is remedied when I use a spiritual lens on these difficulties and focus thought on higher realms for inspiration and encouragement. 

Marilyn McPherson 

• 

WRONG ABOUT EDUCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Ms. Khanna’s latest admonition, she states that young kids in school need to flourish creatively before they learn educational discipline. This sounds good, but it is exactly the kind of mushy thinking growing out of the 1960s that has destroyed our once-proud public schools. When such concepts as “creativity” and “self-esteem” assume more importance than actual learning, students don’t learn anything except self-indulgence. We see the results every day: illiteracy, ignorance, nihilism and the need for instant gratification in so many young people that the future of our democratic republic—of our entire society—is seriously threatened. 

I grew up in those dreadful old days when we were forced to learn. Rote memorization and other tried-and-tested educational tools, which fill the souls of people like Ms. Khanna with horror and disgust, actually resulted in kids who could read, write and speak intelligently. And, few things contribute to real self-esteem as well as decent grades and recognition for educational achievement. 

Throughout history, school has been a place where we demanded the best from our youth, and getting there was rarely fun. Most kids would rather not be in school at all, and if their happiness is the main goal, our country will just become dumber and dumber and dumber. 

Our students, and our country, would be much better served if most educational “reforms” of the past 40 years were eliminated, and schools began to teach once again, and to demand that students learn. 

Michael Stephens  

Point Richmond 

• 

NETWORKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am thinking about the importance of networking at this time of economic downturn. Many people have been laid off. Many others have lost hope that they can ever get a paying job. This is the time we can be good neighbors to one another, telling our employer friends about our qualified acquaintances, sharing our resume writing skills, doing job research in the library on behalf of our friends. Even if jobs are slow in coming we will meanwhile be building communities in which people care. 

Romila Khanna 

• 

SOLUTION TO HOMELESSNESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today, I wanted to address two letters that were written to the editors of the Berkeley Daily Planet: “Love of Learning Comes First,” by Romila Khanna, and “Fines for the Homeless,” by Autif Kamal. I agree with what Autif suggests when he says that the laws Mayor Tom Bates wants to enforce on the homeless people in the Berkeley streets should not be fines, but instead rehabilitative programs. Charging them fines will only keep them down in the same position of being homeless, and the problem of homelessness would not be solved; it will only get worse. Another solution for homelessness is attacking it at the root of the problem. That is, educating children about life while making their surroundings comfortable and safe. I agree with Romila when she says that we should open the doors to opportunities and let children’s curiosity prevail before. In other words, let the children be their own persons while creating an environment that they can easily adapt to. These practices can’t only be applied to children, but also to the people in society who need rehabilitation. If we create an environment that the homeless feel safe in, they may be able to focus on other things. The environment we would want to create would be one where the homeless would not have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter. If the homeless has these basic necessities, they can focus their thoughts to helping themselves to become positively and financially stable. 

Tamar Lee 

• 

MONEY THOUGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My mother, a wise woman, used to tell me,”You can only eat so much food. You can only drive one car at a time. You can only live in one house. What can these rich people buy with so much?” I wondered for years, until I realized the answer: Congress. 

Also privilege. Madoff is confined to his luxury home except for trips to the post office to mail wealth to friends and relatives, while the mugger who steals $40 and a laptop computer (bad) is immediately jailed. 

I have an updated class analysis (sorry, Marx): The MOCs, the OPs, and the Ns. The Members of the Club, the Ordinary People, and the Nobodies. 

Capitalism is collapsing; communism as manifested isn’t working. We need a hybrid. Socialism? The opposition to the word may be equating capitalism with God and all other systems with atheism, which is equated with evil. Oooooh. (Helen Caldecott). 

Bill Moyers says that the American Eagle needs two wings: The right to make the system productive, and the left to make sure that the benefits are distributed fairly. 

Robin Hood had it right, although he lacked details. Details I’ve noticed: No interest is paid to us for withholding. 

A sales tax is regressive. A yacht tax is not. 

The Daily Planet is a community treasure, well worth a dollar a copy. I’m sending a check for at least part of the year. 

Ruth Bird 

• 

CLOSURE OF ELEPHANT PHARM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am very disappointed in Elephant Pharm because it is incomprehensible to do business in Berkeley, of all the cities in the world, and not ask for help from the community before closing. I must be idealistic, because I feel we are the one city that would have rallied around Elephant. The store’s closure has had a direct impact on us collectively. This was Berkeley’s store.  

For some time I had noticed less and less restocking of shelves, which breaks brand loyalty. I heard rumors of bad management that caused many good employees to leave. That was hard to hear. 

I have worked in the hospitality industry for over 20 years and learned that management is crucial to the success of any establishment. Perhaps a more stringent eye should have been kept on management in order to retain good employees? 

Becoming a collective might have helped. It worked for San Francisco’s Rainbow Grocery. Worker buy-in is a great option as part of a bailout plan. If Elephant closed because of not getting a bank loan, they might have come to us, their public. We here in Berkeley might have taken on the bank, or found a way to save the store. Another option might have been to sell shares to the public. I would have invested at least $100, and I know for a fact there are many of us who would have risen to the occasion, given the option. 

Please pardon me for assuming more about the Elephant story than I know for sure, but the store’s downfall was predictable for the past year and a half.  

Needless to say I am disappointed; I am disappointed in the traditional route of caving in and not moving towards collective help. 

Thanks to Elephant for being in and enhancing our community. The store’s sales pitch at the beginning was fabulous and welcoming; the classes, photography lab, health practitioners, and products were really eye-opening as to what can be done. 

Lisa L. Wetmore 

• 

TRANSFER OF WEALTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Republican propagandists, following Sen. Judd Gregg, have been criticizing non-stop Obama’s tax reform plan to make the very rich pay a more fair share of the cost of running this nation. They wail about how taxing people who make more than $250,000 will “hurt small business.” Hmmm, where were their voices last year when Bush’s administration allocated seven hundred thousand million dollars to big business, with virtually no strings attached? Did small business get any of those bailouts? Did Sen. Gregg argue against that huge theft, er, transfer of our national treasure? 

Now, Republicans are squealing like stuck pigs at the prospect of paying more taxes on their unearned incomes. All those golden parachutes, bonuses, and bailouts have been class warfare against working folks. It is due time for war reparations. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

SEEK DONATIONS ELSEWHERE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I urge the Daily Planet to contact Hamas as a source for additional revenue. Doesn’t that make perfect sense? Good bye.  

Harry Lieberman 

Ashby Flowers, the tiny store on the southwest corner of Telegraph and Ashby, is one of those places that (you can supply the cliché) “saves your bacon,” “covers your butt,” “salvages a bad moment,” when you suddenly realize that you forgot (take your choice): Valentines’ Day, Mother’s Day, spouse’s birthday, anniversaries, or whatever special moment you need to commerorate with plant life.  

For 60 years the little hole-in-the-wall, with a rather amazing selection of flowers at very reasonable prices, has salvaged marriages, marked important dates, or filled hospital rooms at nearby Alta Bates. The current owners—Marcy Simon and Iraj Misaghi—bought the shop in 1995, and the place is decorated with “Best” awards from the East Bay Express and the Bay Guardian. 

The last time I was in there, Simon was anxious about a customer who had sat in the Alta Bates Emergency for five hours without being seen. When the young woman came into the store to report that she had had it with Alta Bates and was off to see her own doctor, Simon actually wrung her hands and confided, “I’m worried about her.” 

Very Berkeley.  

But if the Whole Foods behemoth on whose parking lot Ashby Flowers sits gets its way, the cheapest, quickest and arguably friendliest flower store in Berkeley will be ripped up by the roots come July 31. 

And why? Well, Whole Foods is not exactly saying, except that it is a “business decision.” And Whole Foods is definitely about “business.” Based in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods is the 55th largest retailer in the country, with more than 270 locations nationwide (and spreading internationally). The company wraps its pricy produce—its nickname is “Whole Paycheck”—in environmental correctness, except if you happen to want to join a union. Then the company shows its claws. 

When Whole Foods took over the old co-op market, the company dumped the Food and Commercial Workers Union in favor of promoting “team member happiness and excellence,” a phrase that should make everyone reach for a picket line. The unions in Berkeley did, but they couldn’t crack Whole Food’s anti-union, libertarian CEO, John Mackey. Whole Foods beat back a similar effort in Madison, Wisconsin, where organizers accused the company of union busting. 

Whole Earth claims it pays its full-time workers competitive salaries and gives them health care. But of course there is no union contract or grievance procedure just in case you disagree with the boss on the definition of “happiness and excellence.” 

When local supermarket chains signed on to a drive by the United Farm Workers Union to improve wages and working conditions for strawberry workers, Whole Foods refused. Instead the company had a day when it gave a certain percentage of its sales to organizations providing social services to farmworkers.  

As I said, Whole Foods doesn’t like unions. 

While the company will not own up on what it intends to do with Ashby Flowers, it denies that it is trying to drive the store out of business. “The store [Whole Foods] sells pre-made bouquets, plants and herbs. It does not make custom bouquets or do deliveries.” Except, of course, that Ashby Flowers also sells pre-made bouquets, and getting rid of the store will simply mean that customers who would like to use their imagination in making up a bouquet will have to pay higher prices some place else. Much higher prices. 

According to Simon and Misaghi, Whole Foods plan is to put in a coffee shop, which will put considerable stress on two quite good local coffee shops, Mokka and Mudrakers.  

This area of south Berkeley is a kind of retail hell. The northwest corner has a defunct camera store (that morphed into several other things before being boarded up), and the northeast corner is a dead gas station. Mokka has good coffee, pastries, killer Panini, and a nice, relaxed, laid-back atmosphere. Mokka is owned by Berkeley residents Susan and Michael Iida, and has a staff of nine. Mudrakers, which adds salads and sandwiches to its lineup of coffee and pastry, is much the same. According to owner Hazim Bazian, the place runs on a staff of two.  

A coffee shop run by a retail mega-giant will swamp the two of them, making it impossible to get decent coffee without going up to College Avenue. Unless, of course, one wants to sip union-busting grounds. 

Ashby Flowers co-owner Iraj Misaghi says the couple and their two employees are just trying to survive. “We’ve lived here 20 years. We have a house, a mortgage. This store is our life.” 

So how does one stop Godzilla from driving several small businesses into the ground? Well, for one thing you can stop by Ashby Flowers and sign the petition and ask what you can do to help out. You can also take this issue to the City Council, where helping local businesses against retail giants ought to be a concern. And since Whole Foods is not about to bail from the lucrative Berkeley market because the Council comes to the defense of Ashby Flowers, such a move won’t hurt our tax base.  

In the middle of the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, Ashby Flowers may seem like small potatoes. But when times get hard, that’s when you need reasonably priced flowers delivered by nice people. 

Conn Hallinan has lived in the neighborhood for almost 30 years. 

The salt marsh harvest mouse is an endangered rodent that lives in the marshes around the San Francisco Bay. Because of development around the Bay Area, the tiny mouse’s existence as a species is now threatened. 

That’s the story of the salt marsh harvest mouse. 

The story of the story of the salt marsh harvest mouse, however, is much more interesting. It illustrates how the conservative noise machine works—and how some media play a far-too-willing role in abetting that noise machine. 

Republicans have been up in arms in recent weeks about using $30 million from the economic recovery act to save the salt marsh harvest mouse and its habitat. 

There’s just one problem: There is no money in the package for the salt marsh harvest mouse. Or its habitat. 

But that hasn’t stopped numerous media figures and outlets from baselessly asserting that there is. 

The mouse tale began with a House Republican staffer who circulated an e-mail charging that a federal agency said it planned to use stimulus money to save the mouse’s habitat. 

The following day, the conservative Washington Times ran a story headlined, “Pelosi’s mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese,” which reported that “House Republicans are challenging Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the massive stimulus spending bill contains no pet projects after uncovering in the bill more than $30 million for wetlands conservation in her San Francisco Bay Area district, including work she previously championed to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse.” But the bill didn’t include “$30 million for wetlands conservation” in the Bay Area, nor did it say anything about the mouse. 

That night on Fox News’ “Special Report," host Brett Baier cited the Washington Times story, claiming that “the stimulus contains $30 million for wetlands conservation in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home district.” He added: “Some of that money goes for a past Pelosi project, protecting the salt marsh harvest mouse.” 

On “Fox & Friends,” co-host Steve Doocy didn’t mention the wetlands conservation, simply claiming that the bill contained “something like $30 million for a little mouse in Nancy Pelosi's district.” 

In the hands of Glenn Beck on his new Fox News program, the talking point devolved even further into a baseless personal attack. Beck claimed that “Nancy Pelosi put $20 million into the stimulus package to preserve the salt marsh mouse.” 

Meanwhile, Fox Business News was overrun with the different versions of the mouse tale. “Happy Hour” co-host Rebecca Diamond stated that if “you look at the details” of the bill, “there’s millions of dollars there for a wetlands reservation area for a mouse,” and “Bulls & Bears” host Brenda Buttner stated, “[A] little mouse stirring up big controversy. It’s getting 30 million in stimulus cash.” And Fox Business News even went through the trouble of finding a video of the salt marsh harvest mouse, but didn’t bother to check out whether or not any of the claims about the mouse were true. 

On the other hand, the day the Times report appeared, Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent contacted the Republican staffer who originally circulated the e-mail that started everything. The staffer conceded, “There is not specific language in the legislation for this project.” San Jose Mercury News writer Paul Rogers also did his job, reporting that the Times story was “incorrect.” 

The mouse made its way onto “Fox News Sunday,” where Fox News Washington deputy managing editor Bill Sammon asserted that people look at the stimulus package and object to “some mouse being protected in Pelosi’s district.” Host Chris Wallace did not challenge Sammon. A week later, however, when a former Bush aide mentioned the salt marsh harvest mouse as evidence of a “pet project” in the stimulus bill, Wallace said, “Well, supposedly that’s been debunked.” 

Wallace’s acknowledgment was somewhat encouraging. 

Still, Fox News owes its viewers countless corrections for all of the falsehoods it aired invoking the salt marsh harvest mouse. 

To be fair, Fox News was not alone. The New York Times, The Hill, and CNN also aired various versions of the mouse tale. 

Journalists reporting on the president’s economic recovery act must be diligent when reporting on what it includes and not just regurgitate partisan allegations without checking them for accuracy. It is large and complex and allocates billions of dollars for all sorts of things, including transportation, housing, and energy projects. 

But unfortunately for the little salt marsh harvest mouse, there is no money set aside for him. 

Brian Frederick is a deputy editorial director at Media Matters for America (www.mediamatters.org), a progressive media watchdog, research, and information center in Washington, D.C. He has a PhD in Communications from the University of Colorado. 

What is activism at UC Berkeley today? What limits it? What promotes it? What mechanisms challenge and shape the way we interact with problems in our world? Is sending an e-mail letter to a politician a form of activism or pressing support for a social cause on Facebook or attending an hour-long rally? 

The type of activism found on campus today is not completely different or less powerful than it was in the past. The Free Speech Movement (FSM) and the Third World Strike in the ’60s and ’70s eventually shut down the university. The FSM was based on ideals of openly speaking one’s emotions and concerns without fear of being punished and suppressed. This freedom related to a broad range of UC students as well as people outside the university. The Third World Strike assembled numerous and diverse ethnic groups to challenge the Regents’ power, leading to the creation of the ethnic studies department. 

Today, new mechanisms of speech control that are less direct still exist and constantly challenge our freedoms. These controls work through many forms such as advertising, fear, trust, and/or disassociation from the larger community. Other controls are the lack of good information, or sometimes more important, loss of access to good information. The internet is full of information, but it is short in depth. Are we able to do the type of activism of the ’60s and ’70s today?  

A current form of indirect control may be the gradual and quietly accepted increase of tuition fees. Since the ’70s—when the cost of California’s public universities began rising from free to costly—students/parents have been bit by bit forced to pay more money for education. This constant tuition increase may have serious social and political implications on student activism. 

What is the benefit of public universities charging students more money? Is it to maintain our research capacity? Or paying administrative officials such as President Yudof salaries that are triple that of the average professor? What does President Yudof do for the students and the university? Is his job primarily to delegate power from the Regents to the chancellors as well as to raise more money for the university from private donors to support research and an ever increasing cost of administration, including his well-endowed office? This differs from his official statement of his focus on increasing California’s investment in “human capital” and “innovation.”  

Similar questions can be applied to the chancellors of each UC campus who rarely speak directly to students or faculty except through the occasional campus wide e-mails. As explained by UC Berkeley Dean of Students Jonathan Pollard, Berkeley’s chancellor is busy soliciting private donations from numerous businesses, organizations, and governments across the world. Some may argue that they do attend a few public events and fundraisers, such as Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau attending the pride-conditioning Pavlovian bonfire during homecoming or President Yudof’s fall fundraising campaign to raise $500 million, but these are mainly PR and not a key component to quality education.  

Constructing new UC buildings doesn’t make the university any cheaper either. Given the economic crisis and the shortfall of state funds it would be better to halt non-academic projects such as high-tech sports facilities than to raise tuition fees by using fear and extortion to get more money from students and tax payers. The university’s main focus should be on making minds, not careers.  

And what about those UC Regents? They set their own salaries from public funds, yet they are non-elected officials, solely appointed by the governor. This situation requires challenge and debate.  

Are students passionate about their studies or are they studying to get a degree mainly for a job? Can the two be combined? How do you protest against an administrator who controls the campus police as well as the rules of protest without some form of civil disobedience and good news reporting? What is it about the space of activism at Berkeley today that is different from its past or other parts of the world?  

Have we merely commodified our dissent in this society that lives for economy? How about an economy that works for society?  

If students have passion for a subject, then they are likely to get good grades and a good job regardless of whether they aim for a career or not. Over-emphasis on careerism and jobs after school may produce apathetic students who are only learning for the grade and the degree and not because they love what they are learning. Its time to take back public education for society and not for companies who want the well trained, obedient careerist ready to enter a cookie cutter job market.  

Students who choose to focus on their personal careers rather than getting a broad education do deserve equal respect and resources, but education should not be limited to this single pursuit, especially not at a public research university such as UC Berkeley. The student who wishes to obtain a diverse and open education should have the environment available to seek it. These concerns laid out in this piece are resonating out of a greater fear that that the university is being incrementally standardized, routinized, transformed, and designed into a machine that is reproducing modeled students, faculty, and staff, leaving the numerous dissenters and free-thinkers underrepresented or simply, unheard.  

Sebastian Groot is a Berkeley resident. 

I’ve been especially monitoring the letters and commentaries since the O’Malleys have made public their need for financial support from the community for their newspaper. 

Berkeley raised, I started reading the Daily Planet over four years ago, after I had recently sold my international magazine I had published for 18 years (it started as a partnership). It was a zine covering a small industry, too small, various publishing experts admonished, to support a viable magazine. But through good timing, vision, diligence, and hard work, it worked—funded on less than a shoestring. 

After 18 years of deadlines pressures, and the tensions and balancing act of serving subscribers, advertisers, and later an association, I became burnt out and sold it when competition came onto the scene. 

I can’t express in words how inspired I became when I first discovered the Berkeley Daily Planet. Its candid in-depth local news coverage and public opinions motivated me to go and witness for myself various city and university public meetings and forums, join several local community groups, and otherwise immerse myself in the Berkeley scene. I also benefited from scouring the community event listings and went to numerous and social, environmental, health-related events. 

Slowly my burnout turned into pride in my own past publishing accomplishment. I began realizing and acknowledging to myself how much I had learned in those 18 years of living the pressures of the publishing world. 

When I look at the reactions from Planet readers to its plight, so far I’ve been disappointed but not surprised.  

This area has a reputation for being “progressive,” whatever that means.  

In actuality, I frequently see a handful of passionate and dedicated citizen activists arduously promoting whatever cause(s) close to their hearts, too often with just a smattering of support from the community. This is not meant as a judgment or indictment—I realize that many are dealing with the struggles of having enough time and resources to live a full and balanced life, so we all have to prioritize our activities carefully. 

Satisfying all factions—especially in a town as diverse and vociferous and this one—is impossible. I bet that the O’Malleys would love to have more time to enjoy themselves rather than dealing with all the pressures they endure publishing while watching their nest egg dwindle. 

• The Planet becomes an easy target for some local politicos who don’t like and are not used to being scrutinized so closely. It makes them uncomfortable. They would like the paper to be more so-called “professional,” less “biased.” 

Have you ever witnessed a local press conference, especially one put together by the city or university? Too often there’s a tangible, discernable, and tacit agreement that certain queries just won’t be queried. It’s just part of the accepted culture of the more mainstream media news outlets. Other than for the occasional sensational expose, the media self-edits, most easily done by not even attending or covering obscure committee meetings, or press conferences. That’s why too much news is tinged with influence from “official sources” or PR departments.  

The New York Times, which has a local following here—are they supposed to be the benchmark for “professionally reporting”? Certainly their initial coverage of the lead up to the Iraq war show is just one example of how vulnerable they are to manipulation and human error. It’s hard to find many examples of financially viable news outlets especially of any significant size which consistently have high ideals and quality reporting. If you’d like to gain insights about huge problems with the media, view the outstanding documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave (2003). 

• The commercial and business community thinks twice about advertising in the Planet because, well, the Planet might publish front-page news articles exposing a particular business’ controversy, or include unflattering commentaries and letters to the editor, or all of the above.  

• Some readers or groups may get peeved when the Planet publishes letters or commentaries contrary to their own views or those that they consider “politically incorrect.” I find being offered such a wide array of opinions and viewpoints stimulating and helps me to form my own. 

For a paper who some attack for their “inaccuracies,” it’s an interesting fact that the Berkeley Daily Planet has won numerous awards for the quality of its reporting. Especially when you realize that this is all done on a limited budget and a very limited staff. Money helps when you’d like to have the luxury of extra time and staff for further follow up and fact checking, while chasing the next deadline. When you consider their considerable constraints, they have done exceptionally well. 

It’s tempting to entertain the concept of a non-profit entity run by dedicated core group to become a vehicle for local reporting, and this could happen. But in my own life, the most dynamic, inspiring, experiences were ones based on the vision and ideals of one or two people, not by groups run by consensus. Sure, visionaries are going to have their set of values and biases, but if you have a strong sense of self and a critical mind, you can compensate for this.  

In an era when even publishing stalwarts like the San Francisco Chronicle could go under, it’s especially essential to have a locally-produced paper which brings us together. There’s nothing like a local newspaper to help create a sense of community and identity, in addition to providing much-needed information—especially in their fourth-estate watch-dog capacities. 

I urge readers who have benefited from this newspaper to make financial contributions to their Fund for Local Reporting. They now even make it easier by also offering their own Save the Planet merchandise.  

I’d like to see less nitpicking and more acknowledgment, appreciation, and support for the high ideals and Herculean efforts the O’Malleys have put in since 2003 to create and run a such a much-needed community newspaper.  

Richard Fabry is a Point Richmond resident. 

Is President Obama trying to copy the failed notions of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, with his policies of “guns and butter,” as he pursued social progress on the domestic front and imperialism abroad (wars on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). By the time President Johnson was driven from office in the presidential primary elections in early 1968, his record and his legacy were left in shambles. 

President Obama is showing early signs of this same sort of moral failure abroad with his remote drone murders of Pakistanis (war crimes), his escalation of our illegal, brutal, ongoing seven-year-old military occupation of Afghanistan (war crimes) and his notion of indefinitely keeping some 50,000 American soldiers in Iraq to “protect American interests” (war crimes). Will they just happen to be hanging around Iraqi oil wells? Hmm... 

President Obama is also following the Bush gangster regime’s medieval tyrant viewpoint that Afghans being held in the U.S. Air Force Base in Bagram, Afghanistan have absolutely no human rights at all; that they have no rights to protest and appeal their endless indefinite imprisonment without charge to any American court of law. This is turning the human rights clock back some eight hundred years, to before the signing of the Magna Carta, by the English King John in 1215. As a constitutional scholar, President Obama should know that this is a bankrupt and evil policy that has no place in America today, and especially not in his administration with its mantra of “change.” 

Does President Obama believe that human rights end at water’s edge? He has made stirring speeches in defense of civil rights and human rights in his campaign to become president. Does he not feel in his heart of hearts that the Afghan people and the Iraqi people have the right to live free of brutal, hostile military foreign occupations? Maybe President Obama should try rereading our Declaration of Independence and thinking about it from the viewpoint of an Afghan or an Iraqi. 

On a small bookcase near my desk and computer, I have a tall newspaper clipping with a picture of then presidential candidate Barack Obama walking with several other officials through some ancient ruins in Amman, Jordan last July. It was an inspiring scene, especially so in the widely held public view that as president, Obama would put an end to the arrogant, brutal imperialistic foreign policies of the Bush gangster regime. 

In recent days, this newspaper clipping has sagged and then finally folded over on itself. Is this a premonition of a coming failure of President Obama to seek a new humanistic foreign policy, and instead, to fall back on continuing the failed Bush imperial aggression and criminal foreign occupations in the Middle East? 

James K. Sayre is an Oakland resident.

One of the more disturbing developments in the Middle East is a growing consensus among Israelis that it would be acceptable to expel—in the words of advocates, “transfer”—its Arab citizens to either an as-yet-unformed Palestinian state or the neighboring countries of Jordan and Egypt. 

Such sentiment is hardly new among Israeli extremists, and it has long been advocated by racist Jewish organizations like Kach, the party of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, as well as groups like the National Union, which doubled its Knesset representation in the last election.  

But “transfer” is no longer the exclusive policy of extremists, as it has increasingly become a part of mainstream political dialogue. “My solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic state of Israel is to have two nation-states with certain concessions and with clear red lines,” Kadima leader and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told a group of Tel Aviv high school students last December, “and among other things, I will be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Israeli Arabs, and tell them, ‘your national solution lies elsewhere.’ ” 

Such talk has consequences. 

According to the Israeli Association for Civil Rights, anti-Arab incidents have risen sharply. “Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy,” says Sami Michael, the organization’s president. Among the association’s findings: 

• Some 55 percent of Jewish Israelis say that the state should encourage Arab emigration. 

• 78 percent of Jewish Israelis oppose including Arab parties in the government. 

• 56 percent agree with the statement that “Arabs cannot attain the Jewish level of cultural development.” 

• 75 percent agree that Arabs are inclined to be violent. Among Arab-Israelis, 54 percent feel the same way about Jews. 

• 75 percent of Israeli Jews say they would not live in the same building as Arabs. 

The tension between Israeli democracy and the country’s Jewish character was the centerpiece of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party’s campaign in the recent election. His party increased its Knesset membership from 11 to 15, and is now the third-largest party in the parliament.  

Lieberman, who lives in a West Bank settlement near Bethlehem, calls for a “loyalty oath” from Arab-Israelis, and for either the expulsion of those who refuse or the denial of their citizenship rights. During a Knesset debate last March, Lieberman told Arab deputies, “You are only temporarily here. One day we will take care of you.”  

Such views are increasing, particularly among young Jewish Israelis, among whom a politicized historical education and growing hopelessness about the future has fueled a strong rightward shift.  

In a recent article in Haaretz, Yotam Feldman writes about a journey through Israel’s high schools, where students freely admit to their hatred of Arabs and lack of concern about the erosion of democracy. 

“Sergei Liebliyanich, a senior, draws a connection between the preparation for military service in school and student support for the right,” Feldman writes. “‘It gives us motivation against the Arabs. You want to enlist in the army so you can stick it to them… . I like Lieberman’s thinking about the Arabs. Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the rightwing Likud Party] doesn’t want to go as far.’ ” 

Feldman polled 10 high schools and found that Yisrael Beiteinu was the most popular party, followed by Likud. The left-wing Meretz Party came in dead last. 

In part, the politicalization of the education system is to blame.  

Mariam Darmoni-Sharviot, a former civics teacher who is helping with the implementation of the 1995 Kremnitzar Commission’s recommendations on education and democracy, told Feldman, “When I talk to a civics class about the Arab minority, and about its uniqueness in being a majority that became a minority, my students argue and say it’s not true that they [Arabs] were a majority.” She said when she confronted teachers and asked why students didn’t know that Arabs were a majority in 1947, the teachers become “evasive and say it’s not part of the material.” 

In part, students reflect the culture that surrounds them. 

“Israeli society is speaking in two voices,” says Education Minister Yuli Tamir. “We see ourselves as a democratic society, yet we often neglect things that are very basic to democracy…. If the students see the Knesset disqualifying Arab parties, a move that I’ve adamantly opposed, how can we expect them to absorb democratic values?” 

All the major Israeli parties voted to remove two Arab parties—United Arab List-Ta’al and Balad—from the ballot because they opposed the Gaza war. Balad also calls for equal rights for all Israelis. Kadima spokesperson Maya Jacobs said, “Balad aims to exterminate Israel as a Jewish state and turn it into a state for all its citizens.” Labor joined in banning Balad, but not Ta’al. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned the move and both parties ended up electing seven Knesset members in the recent election. 

“The ultimate aim here,” says Dominic Moran, INS Security Watch’s senior correspondent in the Middle East, “is to sever the limited ties that bind Jews and Arabs, to the point that the idea of the transfer of the Arab-Israeli population beyond the borders of the state, championed by Yisrael Beiteinu, gains increasing legitimacy.” 

This turn toward the right also reflects an economic crisis, where poverty is on the rise and the cost of maintaining the settlements in the Occupied Territories and Israel’s military is a crushing burden. Peace Now estimates that the occupation costs $1.4 billion a year, not counting the separation wall. Israel’s military budget is just under $10 billion a year. According to Haartez, the Gaza war cost $374 million. 

Some 16 percent of the Jewish population fall below the poverty line, a designation that includes 50 percent of Israeli Arabs. 

“The Israeli reality can no longer hide what it has kept hidden up to now—that today no sentient mother can honestly say to her child: ‘Next year things will be better here,’ ” says philosophy of education professor Ilan Gur-Ze’ev. “The young people are replacing hope for a better future with a myth of a heroic end. For a heroic end, Lieberman fits the bill.” 

Intercommunity tension manifests itself mainly in the Occupied Territories, where the relentless expansion of settlements and constant humiliation of hundreds of Israeli Army roadblocks fuels Palestinian anger. 

This past December, settlers in Hebron attacked Palestinians after the Israeli government removed a group of Jewish families occuping an Arab-owned building. In response, the settlers launched “Operation Price Tag” to inflict punishment on Palestinians in the event the Tel Aviv government moves against settlers. Rioters torched cars, desecrated a Muslim cemetery, and gunned down two Arabs.  

Settler rampages on the West Bank are nothing new, even though they receive virtually no coverage in the U.S. media. But a disturbing trend is the appearance of extremist settlers in Israel. Late last year, Baruch Marzel, a West Bank settler and follower of Kahane, threatened to lead a march through Umm al-Fahm, a largely Arab-Israeli town near Haifa. 

“We have a cancer in our body capable of destroying the state of Israel,” Marzel told The Forward, “and these people are in the heart of Israel, a force capable of destroying Israel from the inside. I am going to tell these people that the land of Israel is ours.” 

Arab-Israelis charge that settlers—some of them extremists re-settled from Gaza three years ago—played a role in last year’s Yom Kippur riots in the mixed city of Acre and forced Arab families out of their houses in the east part of the city. Arabs make up about 14 percent of Acre and 20 percent of Israel. 

Rabbi Dov Lior, chair of the West Bank Rabbinical Council, has decreed, “It is completely forbidden to employ [Arabs] and rent houses to them in Israel.” 

The Adallah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights is urging Israeli Attorney General Mernachem Mazuz to investigate “wild incitement to racism against Arabs in general and the [Arab] residents of Acre in particular.” 

On Oct. 15, three days after the Acre riots, two Arab apartments in Tel Aviv were attacked with Molotov cocktails. Seven Jewish men were arrested. The Arab residents of Lod and Haifa charge that they too are being pressured to move. 

In the case of Lod, municipal authorities are open about their intentions. Municipal spokesman Yoram Ben-Aroch denied that the city discriminates against Arabs, but told The Forward that municipal authorities want Lod, to become “a more Jewish town. We need to strengthen the Jewish character of Lod, and religious people and Zionists have a big part to play in this strengthening.”  

However, the growing lawlessness of West Bank settlers and Jewish nationalists has begun to unsettle the authorities in Tel Aviv. After right-wing extremists tried to assassinate Peace Now activist Professor Zeev Sternhell, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said the intelligence organization was “very concerned” about the “extremist right” and its willingness to resort to violence. Even Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “We are not willing to live with a significant group of people that has cast off all authority,” and called Operation Price Tag a “pogrom.” 

So far, however, the government and Shin Bet have done little to rein in the rising tide of right-wing terror, which is aimed at Jews as well as Arabs. 

Ahmad Tibi of the Arab Ta’al Party says that while Arab Israelis feel threatened by what Ben Gurion University political scientist Neve Gordan calls a “move toward xenophobic politics,” Tibi warns that, “It is the Jewish majority that should be afraid of this phenomenon.” 

Readers might want to subscribe to Jewish Peace News at jpn@jewishpeacenews.net for a very different picture of Israel than most Americans get.

About a half-hour before the scheduled Oscar Grant march and rally in Grant’s hometown of Hayward last week, Hayward police in full riot gear set up a blockade line in front of the City Hall building. Across the street at the Hayward BART station, where protesters were gathering, a group of early teen Latino boys were bouncing around at the edge of the sidewalk, periodically shouting “Fuck the police!” at the officers lined up across the way. Well, not actually shouting it. In fact, they seemed at great pains to make sure that while their friends and some of the protesters heard what they were saying, the police did not. 

Shortly afterwards, when the march started, it was turned back by police after marchers tried to take a short cut from the BART Station to City Hall. A couple of African-American boys far back from the crowd started jumping up and down, eyes wide, hands over their mouths, saying “Ooooh, it fixing to be a riot!” in the same gleeful tones you might expect if they were saying, “that girl fixing to take her bra off!” 

There was no riot in Hayward last week, only the sort of juvenile bantering of youngsters looking for a little excitement. 

Rioting is fuel-fed by anger and if there is a center of anger over the New Year’s Day shooting death of Oscar Grant, one would think that it would be in his home town, where people knew him as a person, not as a martyred symbol and a movement icon. But the random street-violence mood that characterized the aftermath of the Jan. 7 Oscar Grant march and rally in Oakland was not present in Hayward last week, in part because Mr. Grant’s family—which was out in numbers—has demanded it so, in part because the early explosive community anger that characterized the first couple of weeks after Mr. Grant’s shooting death by a BART police officer has been replaced by the quiet, patient determination of family members and community organizers who have launched what can now be called the Oscar Grant Movement. 

The continuing running face-off between African-American and Latino youth that stretches across most East Bay cities continues to be a tinderbox that can be set off at any moment, who knows when? And in the unlikely event that the charges of the murder of Oscar Grant against former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle were to be dropped, or in the more likely possibility—stressing the word possibility—that he were to be either outright acquitted or convicted on a significantly lesser charge, there is likelihood that the anger would boil up and overflow again, and street violence would be the result. 

For now, though, what had characterized a split in the Oscar Grant Movement—those who advocated violence and those who decried it—has subsided with the subsiding of the violence itself. However, there is still some confusion and disagreement over tactics, and what is possibly a more serious threat to the movement’s unity has developed over demands. 

The City of Oakland had—mostly by accident and default—become the focus of the Oscar Grant protests, first after the most serious rioting broke out in downtown Oakland after the Committee Against Police Execution’s (CAPE’s) first march from the Fruitvale BART station to the former BART headquarters at the Lake Merritt Station, then, a week later, when CAPE marched between Oakland City Hall and the Alameda County District Attorney’s office at the courthouse. Since then, particularly after the Feb. 12 BART meeting was taken over for a half hour by CAPE, the focus of the movement has shifted to BART itself. 

It would appear that with the continuing widespread community disgust over Oscar Grant’s death, and the vulnerability of BART in precarious economic times, that a disciplined, unified, well-targeted campaign of direct action by organizations involved in the Oscar Grant Movement would be able to win significant concessions from the transit agency. 

BART would appear to be particularly vulnerable to some form of boycott and, in fact, the term “boycott” has increasingly crept into speeches and pronouncements by the various organizations involved in the movement. However, there is anything but unity in how and when such a boycott would take place. 

One boycott has already been held, or at least called for, sponsored by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) and West Oakland’s Black Dot Coalition. In a Feb. 28 article in BayView newspaper, POCC’s JR (Cleveland Valrey Jr.) wrote that POCC and Black Dot had called a “boycott/jump the gate” day for Feb. 27, Grant’s birthday, saying that it would be a “jump-off for the campaign to make BART more accountable in this case and in general.” 

He went on that “[s]ome have had questions about the effectiveness of this campaign, so I must explain that although boycotting and jumping the BART gate are acts that are targeted at hurting the income of BART, we realize that two weeks is not enough time to organize people by the thousands to stop supporting BART with their BART fare. That is why it is a jump-off for the campaign. Future dates that we plan to boycott or jump the gate are the days on which Mehserle and hopefully other involved police go to court, as well as days when [individuals arrested in the Oscar Grant protests] go to court.” 

Meanwhile, at the Hayward Oscar Grant birthday march and rally, a friend of the Grant family said that the family itself had initiated a three-day boycott of BART, to last over the weekend of Feb. 27-March 1. 

Neither of these boycotts were widely publicized and, therefore, it can be presumed that their effectiveness was minimal, at best. 

But an even more important question is, boycotting for what? To be effective, a boycott must be linked to precise demands that BART is in a position to implement. Probably the most successful American boycott of recent memory was the year-long African-American boycott of the buses of Montgomery, Alabama by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the boycott that propelled both Rosa Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national attention. The demand of the MIA was clear and simple: desegregate Montgomery’s buses. When the Montgomery City Council passed an ordinance allowing passengers to sit anywhere they wanted on the bus, the boycott was ended. 

But even if you strip away those demands which are not directly applicable to BART, the various organizations involved in the Oscar Grant Movement have not yet reached unanimity on what they want the transit agency to do or give up in the immediate future. 

The biggest differences are over the future of the BART Police Department. 

CAPE, the organization that has sponsored the two largest Oscar Grant protests, is the most open-ended in its demands in this area, calling for a “public review of BART history, police policy, strategy, and philosophy to assess whether (A) BART police are really needed, and (B) If needed, whether or not they need guns.” 

The other organizations involved in the Oscar Grant Movement are far less equivocal. No Justice No BART (NJNB) demands that “the BART Board must abolish the BART Police, fully divesting BART of any police power over the communities it serves! [emphasis in original]” BAMN wants to “disarm the BART Police” and “BART police out of Oakland” entirely (BAMN members explaining at meetings that the police force is free to continue in other cities served by BART). And the POCC “demand[s] that BART police be disarmed.” 

Neither NJNB or BAMN suggest how BART stations and trains might be policed in the absence of the BART police, although one possibility might be for BART to turn its police powers over to the respective county sheriff’s departments, as is the case with AC Transit. 

The minister-led Town Hall Movement that meets at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church every Saturday and has been one of the leaders in the Oscar Grant Movement has not yet published its demands, although many of them appear to parallel those of CAPE, which is closely allied with the Town Hall Movement. 

The issue of changing, reforming, or outright abolishing the BART Police Department is clearly the most important and far-reaching of the demands being sought by the Oscar Grant Movement, and so the current differences between the organizations on this point have the most significance. 

In the area of specific BART personnel either directly involved in the Fruitvale BART actions of New Year’s Day, or in the administrative actions that followed, there is less disagreement among the various organizations. 

CAPE initially called simply for the “release of the names and suspension of all the officers accompanying Officer Mehserle on Jan. 1 at the Fruitvale BART shooting until a thorough and comprehensive investigation has taken place.” Many of those names have since been released by Mr. Mehserle’s defense attorneys in moving papers filed in connection with the officer’s bail hearing. And with the release of the “second” video showing BART Officer Tony Pirone hitting Mr. Grant in the head with his fist shortly before Mr. Mehserle shot and killed Mr. Grant, CAPE has added the firing of Mr. Pirone to its BART demands. CAPE also seeks the firing of BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger and BART Police Chief Gary Gee. 

No Justice No BART takes a position similar to CAPE’s, calling for the “suspension of all officers present during Oscar Grant’s murder, for the duration of any investigations into their conduct” as well as the firing of Mr. Pirone, Ms. Dugger, and Mr. Gee. NJNB also demands that “upon completion of [an independent] investigation [of the facts surround Mr. Grant’s death], all officers suspected of procedural violations must be fired immediately.” Neither BAMN nor the POCC address the issue of personnel firings in their lists of demands. 

Two of the organizations have presented demands to BART that go beyond the BART Police Department and personnel decisions. One of CAPE’s demands is for BART “in the spirit of restorative justice, to make community restitution, in part, by funding community based healing centers throughout the city for grief counseling, conflict resolution, and healing.” And NJNB says that “the BART Board must implement and fund economic development and youth programs to repair relationships with communities of color!”  

The great danger for the Oscar Grant Movement is that it might be able to force personnel changes on BART—where the organizational unit is more present but the far-reaching impact on the community will be less—while falling short on the more substantive goals surrounding the BART Police Department and police policies, where the various organizations have not come to agreement. That result could mean an ultimate victory for the Oscar Grant Movement, but little or no actual structural change. 

We’ll watch and see how this all falls out. 

When Lisa Owens Viani summoned spirits (and bodies) from the vasty deep of bureaucracy, they showed up. Furthermore, they made specific promises. 

The City of Richmond promised to re-restore the section of Baxter Creek in Booker T. Anderson Park that Owens Viani and many others had restored nine years ago, and that a city maintenance crew had reduced to bare soil and lollipop trees in a misguided effort to increase safety. That promise is now in writing, and several public agencies are helping—and watching—to see it gets fulfilled right. 

Despite the fact that people in Richmond and other local cities get mugged, robbed, raped, shot, and generally threatened out in public parking lots, streets, ballfields, and their own front lawns on a regular basis, there’s a widespread perception that any public space is safer if it’s bare, especially of shrubbery and low-growing plants like bunchgrasses. Several of the city representatives at the meeting I’ve referred to over the last three weeks cited callers who were concerned about drug sales and use, lurking muggers, and people having sex in the formerly verdant understory.  

Richmond’s not alone in its public disregard for decent habitat. I have a report from a local university professor who may write in to identify herself if she wishes:  

I have observed a disturbing trend in my home in Santa Cruz, California. In these cases, urban riparian corridors are denuded in the name of public safety, despite the existence of a restoration plan of some sort. In the Santa Cruz case, the work is done by furloughed prisoners engaged by the city government, no qualified biologists are employed, and a vegetation removal permit entitled “riparian restoration” is issued, despite the heavy removal of willows, box elders and other natives. 

I have other such tales I’ll pass along if I get permission.  

It’s not just an urban problem. The Federal stimulus bill includes this:  

For an additional amount for “Wildland Fire Management,” $500,000,000, of which $250,000,000 is for hazardous fuels reduction, forest health protection, rehabilitation and hazard mitigation activities on Federal lands and of which $250,000,000 is for State and private forestry activities including hazardous fuels reduction, forest health and ecosystem improvement activities on State and private lands using all authorities available to the Forest Service: Provided, That up to $50,000,000 of the total funding may be used to make wood-to-energy grants to promote increased utilization of biomass from Federal, State and private lands: Provided further, That funds provided for activities on State and private lands shall not be subject to matching or cost share requirements. 

Maybe it’s just that short plants get no respect. This bill makes no distinction between “fuel” and functioning native chaparral communities. Rick Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute has set about educating the people who pull the pursestrings. As he says, “The conversation needs to be changed from focusing exclusively on wildland fuels reduction towards correcting problems at the wildland/urban interface.” 

And wholesale clearing won’t help with fire, either.  

Next: The chaparral connection. But first, Joe Eaton has a rather more pleasant story about local hawks.

At the heart of Berkeley’s downtown, behind the commercial facades of University Avenue, stands a cluster of four century-old residential buildings. Shoppers at Berkeley Hardware who park next to these relics may pause and wonder about them occasionally. 

The short block on which these structures stand runs between University Avenue and Berkeley Way. It is now an isolated southern extension of Walnut Street, but a hundred years ago it was called Home Street. In 1903, Home Street was a block of five homes and four empty lots. Eight years later, the block had filled up; now there were five buildings on the west side and four on the east, including the four-story Home Street Apartments on the northeast corner, constructed in 1909 by George L. Mohr for William B. Heywood. Only the southeastern corner on University Avenue was vacant (it remained so and is now a parking lot). 

To the north of Home Street, the block between Berkeley Way and Hearst Avenue, currently the site of a California Department of Health Services building, was entirely residential, although not entirely built. So were the southern two-thirds of the Whitton Tract, a block bounded by Walnut, Hearst, Oxford and Virginia. 

Much of this area burned down in the 1923 Berkeley Fire, clearing the way for new uses and buildings. The university was quick to acquire the Whitton Tract for its off-campus expansion. On March 6, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported, “That the block bounded by Walnut, Virginia and Oxford streets and Hearst avenue will take at least $300,000 from the assessment roll when it is fully acquired by the University is the statement of Assessor Harry J. Squires. Only a dozen or more parcels of land in this block have passed so far into University hands and will affect this year’s assessment.” 

UC did not wait patiently until all the owners of Whitton Tract lots agreed to sell. On Aug. 30, 1924, the Regents filed suit in superior court to condemn several properties located on this block. “The university is seeking to further extend the limits of the Berkeley campus, in order that the agricultural experimentation field can be enlarged,” announced the Oakland Tribune the following day. UC evidently got its wish, for by 1929, the entire block was marked “University of California Experimental Garden” in the Sanborn fire insurance map. 

The 1923 fire stopped just short of Home Street. In the aftermath, the block directly to the north was divided to allow the passage of Walnut Street. through its center. The new buildings erected on the divided block in the 1920s were apartments and automobile-related service structures. 

Since there was now direct access from Walnut Street to Home Street, the latter was renamed Walnut. The block was still largely residential, but only two single-family homes remained on it. Three dwellings had been converted into rooming houses, while the southwest corner had been occupied since 1915 by the S.J. Sill grocery and hardware store (now Berkeley Hardware). The duplex at 1930 Walnut St. was turned into eight apartments. 

This brown-shingled duplex was built in 1905 for Eliza Moore, then living in San Francisco. Widow of the Sutter farmer Sanford H. Moore, Eliza brought up two daughters in Marysville. When the Berkeley duplex was built, both daughters, middle-aged and unmarried, were school teachers and lived with their mother. 

In those days, only a few months transpired between land acquisition and building completion. Eliza bought her two Home Street lots in early February 1905. By March 24, she had applied for a building permit, and the dwelling was completed two months later. In early July, half of the duplex was rented to the Jordan family, who arrived from Pasadena for the purpose of educating its three children. Harold S. Jordan, who entered UC that year, wrote in his memoir, “Our folks located 1930 Home St. as our new home. It was the south half of a three-story, two-family building. The basement was on the street level; parlor, dining room, kitchen and pantry were on the second floor; and bedrooms on the third floor.” 

The Moores did not live on Home Street. In October 1904, Eliza purchased two lots in the Whitton Tract and built her residence at 1748 Oxford St. Twenty years later, her daughter Mary would be named as one of the defendants in the UC Regents’ lawsuit to condemn properties on that block. 

The Jordans, meanwhile, quickly integrated themselves into the life of the town. The father, Frank E. Jordan, got a desk at a downtown real estate office, where he sold insurance and goldmine stocks. The daughters, Ethel and Mildred (the latter my partner’s grandmother), enrolled at Berkeley High School. Their elder brother Harold wrote, “We soon began to realize the advantages of living in a college town. In early July, at the Greek Theatre on the University campus, there was an address by William Howard Taft, then the Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt. Also present were Congressman Grosvenor of Ohio and Congressman Payne of New York, who was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. I don’t know why they were there, but I was impressed.” 

In August 1905, Harold enrolled in the UC College of Mining. “President Benjamin Ide Wheeler held a big reception for the Class of 1909 at Hearst Hall, with dancing and refreshments. This made us Frosh feel very important,” wrote Harold, adding, “Toward the end of September, William Jennings Bryan spoke at the Berkeley Theatre. We were all given the opportunity to go up and shake his hand. Then the next day, he spoke at the University. He had the well-earned reputation of being the best public speaker in the country.” The San Francisco Call also covered the Berkeley Theatre speech: “With oratory, the magic of which was potent enough to help a thousand people of Berkeley forget the discomforts of a warm, stuffy auditorium, William Jennings Bryan spoke tonight […] under YMCA auspices, his subject being ‘The Value of an Ideal.’” 

On Oct. 12, Harold would experience his first big football rally: “It ended with a monstrous snake dance that wound out of the Greek Theatre down through the campus and into the streets of town, and into the Berkeley Theatre, where a show was in progress. The snake dance participants moved in and filled up all the vacant seats and much of the standing room.” 

The show, Under Two Flags, had to be stopped several times and the curtain lowered owing to the gate-crashers’ rowdiness. According to the Oakland Tribune’s report the following day, “A pandemonium reigned while the students, it is said, broke up chairs, tore up carpets, pulled down curtains, and howled like a band of Indians. Scores left the theater, and a hurry-up call was sent to Marshal Vollmer for assistance in suppressing the students.” Vollmer stationed men at all exits and informed the crowd that no one would be allowed to leave until they paid the regular admission price and arranged to cover the costs of damage to the theatre. 

“Some had money with them,” wrote Harold, “others were busy borrowing money from each other. Still others left watches, items of apparel, fountain pens, eyeglasses, etc. I, fortunately, had money with me, so got out early and didn’t stick around to see the finish.” The newspapers gave full play to the episode, and John Boyd, president of the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, urged Benjamin Ide Wheeler to restrain the students from interfering with the GAR’s upcoming production at the same venue. 

Among Harold’s most amusing observations were his descriptions of student apparel of the era: “Freshmen were supposed to wear a blue cap with a little yellow button on top. There were other little apparel details which […] I don’t recall. Any infringement meant a dousing in the pond in front of the Chemistry Building—the Chem Pond. The Juniors wore soiled corduroy trousers and a battered gray plug hat that had been decorated with painted pictures or words. The Seniors wore battered black plug hats. The Sophomores wore anything not defined as proper for the other three classes. I don’t remember whether girls were affected by all these restrictions.” 

The Jordans experienced the 1906 earthquake at 1930 Home St. “The terrifying sounds that I heard were made by, first our brick chimney, then the brick chimney of the house next door being shaken down. […] The sound of the earthquake was a loud rumble, like a sudden, very heavy hailstorm falling on the roofs, punctuated with collapse of roofs, caving brick walls, and also some human screams.” 

As a UC cadet, Harold was assigned to guard duty around the campus, where refugee tent camps had been set up. “One effect of the earthquake was very embarrassing to our family,” he wrote. The family had no charge accounts, being proud to be able to pay in cash for all their purchases. Now the banks were closed indefinitely, and the grocer refused to extend credit to anyone who had not established a charge account earlier. 

By May 1906, life had returned to normal, although aftershocks continued to rattle the town for some time. On May 11, Harold counted the 60th aftershock since April 18. That summer, Ethel Jordan entered the freshman class at UC, and Mildred followed her two years later. Harold concluded his memoir in 1907, but his sisters continued making regular appearances in the local newspapers owing to their campus activities. 

In 1909, her junior year, Ethel headed the finance committee for the co-eds’ annual Jinks celebration. The following year she was president of the UC suffrage club. In her turn, Mildred was involved in the formation of the women students’ affairs committee in her junior year, acted as photograph editor of the Blue and Gold yearbook, and was elected to the Prytanean Women’s Honor Society. She was first vice president of the senior class, served twice as Chair of the Dormitory Committee, was a member of the Senior Advisory Committee and of the Woman’s Day Pelican staff. 

Mildred graduated in Natural Sciences in 1912, the year her father died. On Sept. 20 of that year, the Oakland Tribune published the notice of her license to marry Leslie Theodore Sharp, a young soil chemist, assistant professor at UC, and a member of the Abracadabra Club. Their two eldest children were born in Berkeley. 

Eliza Moore died in 1910, her daughters following her in the 1930s. The building at 1930 Walnut St. then passed into the hands of the three Acheson brothers, scions of a pioneer Berkeley family and owners of the Acheson Physicians’ Building at 2131 University Ave. 

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

I could be handy mending a fuse 

When your lights have gone. 

You can knit a sweater by the fireside 

Sunday mornings go for a ride. 

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, 

Who could ask for more? 

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, 

When I’m sixty-four?  

Sixty-Four. It seemed so old when we were 20. Little did we know that we would still feel very much the same and, for many of us, would still be pursuing career, love and meaning in our lives just as though we were still 20. 

Sadly, many of us who held the dream of home ownership and independence are still far from these aspirations, even as we approach retirement (or what we had hoped would be retirement). 

Will we remain renters with all the insecurity that entails? Will we be forced to relocate at 70 years of age, upending our lives in a manner that was hard enough at 20 but now includes medical issues and family? 

For this portion of society (and it’s no small slice), cooperative housing (or simply co-ops) may be an answer, and limited equity housing cooperatives (LEHCs) may make the most sense of all.  

Berkeley is currently encouraging building development that addresses the needs of lower-income folks through its Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance (IZO) which requires developers to assure that at least 20 percent of any condos or apartments that get built will be affordable to persons who make no more than 80 percent of the local median income. Last year those figures were roughly $46K for a single person, $53K for two or $60K for a family of four. These figures represent a group that is generally unable to afford to own a home and often unable to rent in any but impoverished neighborhoods. 

The IZO offers a second option to builders that do not wish to include low-cost housing in their projects. They can, instead, pay into a fund (ours is called the City of Berkeley Housing Trust Fund) that goes to support local affordable housing projects. Groups such as Resources for Community Development have used these funds to buy properties and help local groups, such as Berkeley’s 9th Street Co-op, manifest their vision. (Founded by Berkeley Councilmember, Linda Maio, RCD has developed over 1,400 long-term affordable living units in Alameda and other nearby counties.) 

The Bay Area Community Land Trust is a local advocacy group that is helping to encourage co-operative housing. They would like to offer a third option and here’s why: So far the IZO has resulted in the creation of 143 rental units and only nine condos. So home ownership is, as usual, pushed further away from people with a low income. What they would like to see is an amendment to the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance that would allow developers to meet their obligation by helping to create limited equity housing co-operatives.  

In short, what is not happening today is the creation of home ownership for low-income persons through the Berkeley Housing Trust Fund (and that was clearly part of its mandate). So what is being proposed is a new way, a way in which Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives are formed directly out of the partnership with the builders. 

What’s really different here, and follow me, but jeez, this is very confusing stuff, is that the money or efforts (that 20 percent that developers have to give up) can be funneled directly to a limited equity housing co-op project and here’s what makes that cool. 

Co-ops aren’t like renting and they’re not like typical home ownership. They’re sort of like the group living many of us did 30 years ago. Remember buying food in bulk and sharing a big house? Well, it wasn’t for everybody and when we coupled up and married and had kids, it sort of went the way of old girlfriends. Nice to remember but you’d better not have it on speed-dial. 

Group living had many advantages and a few disadvantages, and as my friend Kathy Labriola of the 9th Street Cooperative says, “Ironically, the good things and the bad things are the same things. A co-op is like a family. You may love them, but you don’t always like them.” 

Co-op living means that you don’t have to do everything (or pay for everything) yourself. Costs and jobs are shared by the entire group, making many of the tasks that homeowners or renters face (digging the garden OR mending a fuse), much easier. This has also tended to foster extras for some co-ops such as the growing of fruits and vegetables, chicken farming and various green building improvement, all of which might have simply been too much for a single homeowner to manage while dealing with all the other monthly matters that homeowners face. 

Cooperative living, like its budding cousin, Cohousing, requires a curtailing of selfishness and a willingness to share and to work things out. Each member of a co-op is typically expected to hold an elected position, take on a task and participate in regular meetings (monthly meetings are common). The Berkeley 9th St. Cooperative has only five member families (some are single, some are couples). There are currently five elected positions including president, VP, secretary, treasurer and maintenance coordinator. Elections are held each year and people swap jobs but everyone plays a role. Labor is also divvied up. Someone prunes the trees, someone waters the plants. Someone does the accounting. This may seem burdensome but it’s really much easier than doing all these things yourself. There isn’t that much more property to care for at a typical co-op of five persons than one might find at a single-family dwelling. And even if there is more square footage, economies of scale tell us that the actual difficulty of painting a 3,000-square-foot house isn’t twice the work of painting a 1,500-square-foot one. It might be 30 percent more work since much of the job is the same (making decisions, shopping, setting up tools and drop cloths).  

LEHCs also change the way we think about the housing market in a very important way. We tend to think of the value of homes as naturally rising with the local market, but an LEHC doesn’t do that. Based on the radical notion that people can determine the amount of cost growth of their property, LEHCs pre-set the amount of value that the property can increase by each year (0-10 percent per annum is what the department of real estate mandates for LEHCs). Our own Tom Bates, while in the state assembly, proposed and passed the enabling legislation that gave us cooperate housing as we know it today in California. 

The 9th Street co-op set their annual rate of increase at 2 percent, so that, as the years roll by, the property will still be affordable to new incoming members. However, it also means that being a member of an LEHC, such as this one, is no way to get rich by owning real estate. It’s just the opposite. The objective is to keep the value in the property and to make sure that it remains affordable to all its members. A monthly fee is charged to each member that covers their share of the mortgage, maintenance costs (whatever materials are needed and services that the members have to shop out), tax, insurance and whatever else the co-op pays for. With the value kept low, the monthly fees are also kept in check.  

Many people have total monthly housing expenses in the range of about $600-800 per month, which is fairly incredible in today’s Bay Area market. The only problem is that, when you sell, you’re not going to make a killing. It requires a fairly radical rethinking of what we’re doing when we buy and sell real estate. 

Of course, not all co-ops work this way. There are also Market Rate Housing Co-operatives (MRHC) and Berkeley has a few of these too. These function in all the same ways as were described above with the only difference being that the local real estate market determines the value of the shared in each co-op. And that brings up another interesting point, that of the actual manner of ownership in the co-op. One does not buy a unit or a room or a building in a co-op. One buys shares in the co-op. The co-op is owned by a non-profit corporation and the individual owners buy shares in the corporation. As the total value of the co-op rises (either by market forces or a fixed rate) each share increases in value. You never own property, per se, just a share in an entity that owns it. 

If these ideas excite you, I’d encourage you to contact the Bay Area Community Land Trust (BACLT), a local organization that’s been organizing co-ops in recent years. They can help you to learn more about this radical (some might even say subversive) new way for us to live and create a more democratic and sustainable model of housing for the future. BACLT is also focused on the promotion of Elder Co-ops and Elder Cohousing and asking the question, “How will we live as the years roll by? Will we live alone in some big million dollar house that we can’t afford to repair? Or will we live with friends who look out for us and share the tasks and responsibilities that make up daily life?” BACLT is offering a bus tour this May to visit several elder-housing facilitates. They can be reached at 841-5307 if you think that this is your cup of herb tea. 

If you think that Berkeley should amend the IZO to include that third choice, please contact your City Council member. 

While it’s not clear whether LEHCs or MRHCs, Cohousing or Borg-operated, neutron-fired housing will turn out to be our best choice, it’s clear that the (American) dream of home ownership hasn’t turned out to be all that it was cracked up to be. Too few can live this way and I’m not so sure that it’s really the richest, smartest or the fairest way for us to go. People living in cohousing or co-ops sure look happy to me and when I’m 64, it might be just the place for me to mend a fuse. How about you? Care to dig a weed with me, Madam Vice President? 

THURSDAY, MARCH 5 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Of Ships and Tugs” Maritime photography of Jan Tiura, opens at the EBMUD 2nd flr. gallery, 375 11th St., Oakland. www.phototiura.com 

“black and white, silver gelatin prints of nudes” by Jim Stipovich. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nan Phelps Photography, 398 Colusa Ave., Kensington. Exhibition runs to March 15. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Holloway Poetry Series with A.B. Spellman at 6:30 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC campus. http://holloway.english.berkeley.edu 

Spain Rodriguez, comics artist, discusses his book “Che: A Graphic Biography” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Festival of Flamenco Arts & Traditions with guitarist Antonio Reyat 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$40. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Gankmore, Buxter Hoot’n at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Kelly Park Trio & Friends at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Rachel Levant, Elevation 32, Jon Perri, in a benefit for the Berkeley Patients Group Hospice Care Center at 6 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Raya Nova at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Gypsy” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 5. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Betrayed” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., at 2081 Addison St. to March 8. Panel discussion iwth Iraqi refugees following the Fri. performance and with Kirk Johnson of The List Project following the Sat. performance. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Playhouse “Once On This Island” a family musical, Thurs. at 7 p.m., Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. at Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through March 15. Tickets are $22-$28. 665-5565, ext. 397. berkeleyplayhouse.org 

Berkeley Rep “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)” at 2015 Addison St., through March 15. Tickets are $33-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Berkeley Rep “Crime and Punishment” at 2025 Addison St., through Mar. 29. Tickets are $27-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “The Window Age: A Guided Tour of the Unconscious” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through March 22, at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $21-$25. 558-1381. centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Nine (The Musical)” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through March 28. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “A Midsummers Night’s Dream” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 14. Tickets are $10-$17. impacttheatre.com 

Independent Theater Projects Three one-act plays independently directed and produced by Berkeley students, Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $12 general, $5 studetns. 292-5058.  

“Phoolan is all of us: In Memory of Phoolan Devi” written and performed by Angelina Llongueras at8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

UC TDPS “Sauce for the Goose” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC campus, through March 15. Tickets are $10-$15. 642-8827. tdps.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A Farewell Kiss” Mark Byron and Bruce Yurgill revisit the Bush era with their political art. Reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. 663-6920. 

“Eric Bohr & Charlie Milgrim: Vexing History” Painting, sculptural installation and video. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620. www.mercurytwenty.com 

“Intersectionality of Sisters” Group show opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

FILMS 

Luna Fest: Short Films by...For...About Women at 7 p.m. at 155 Dwinelle Hall, UC campus. Tickets are $6 at the door. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Yu Hua discusses his recently translated epic novel “Brothers” at 7:30 p.m. at Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 654-2665. www.bookzoo.net 

Cara Black reads from her Aimeé Leduc mystery “Murder in the Latin Quarter” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Tales of Hoffman” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $48. 925-798-1300. ww.berkeleyopera.org 

New Century Chamber Orchestra “The Glory of Russia” with Anne-Marie McDermott, piano, at 8 p.. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $32-$54. 415-357-1111. www.ncco.org 

“Mendelssohn Bicentenial: Songs with Words” piano performance on the restored 1854 Erard piano, at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Tickets are $5-$15. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Barron Edwards Motown 60s Revue at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Stomp the Stumps Benefit for the Bay Area Coalition for the Headwaters with Quilt, Funky Nixons, and Curly at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Donation $10-15 sliding scale. 849-1255. 

“Kinds of Blues” with Tom Lucas and the Baja Bluegrass Band, Judy Rogers, Cordell Sloan and others at 6:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Includes dinner of southern cooking. Tickets are $25 per adult, $10 per child, $60 for a family of 4-5. 525-0302. www.uucb.org 

Bill Crossman, First Fridays Free Jazz and Improv at 7:30 p.m. at OPC Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Cost is $5, free for ages 16 and under. 836-4649. 

Copacabana Meets the French Quarter” at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10.  

Country Joe McDonald’s Tribute to Florence Nightingale & Nursing at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$20. 841-4824. www.bfuu.org  

Rova, saxophone quartet, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

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

Harley White Jr. Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Steven Strauss and Kurt Stevenson at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 597-0795. 

Mushroom, Feat at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Plan 9 at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $8. 525-9926. 

The Midnight Train at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Friends of the Old Puppy with Steven Strauss at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 597-0795. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Asheba at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

John Weaver, storyteller, Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

Boswick the Clown at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 10th St. Cost is $8. 526-9888. 

THEATER 

Stone Soup Improv Comedy at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7-$10. www.stonesoupimprov.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“It Takes All Kinds” Group show of diverse and unconventional arts and artists. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Autobody Fine Art, 1517 Partk St., Alameda. www.autobodyfineart.com 

FILM 

“Women Rock and Soul Performers” Film clips and discussion in commemoration of International Women’s Day at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rae Armantrout & Lisa Robertson at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Tilar Mazzeo on “Back Lane Wineries of Sonoma” at 5 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading from 3 to 5 pm. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“The King’s Trumpetts & Shalmes” Renaissance music for winds, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www. 

trinitychamberconcerts.com 

The Saturday Afternoon Gallery Acoustic music open mic series at 2 p.m. at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St., corner of Lincoln, Alameda. 847-3903. 

Marina La Valle, Afro-Peruvian, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kenny Washinton & Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Lakay & Mystic Man at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Bob Franks, folk/rock at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 597-0795. 

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

Ben Stolorow, pianist, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Mucho Axé at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Larry Stefl Jazz Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Shark Alley Hobos at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Bob Franks at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 597-0795. 

The Asylum Street Spankers at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $15. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SUNDAY, MARCH 8 

CHILDREN 

Wee Poets 25th Anniversary Celebration from 2 to 5 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Booksellers, 98 Broadway, Jack London Square, Oakland. Free admission, donations accepted. 848-6905. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A Rare Alchemy” Pinhole photography by S. McGrath Ryan, glass sculptures of David Ruth. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at FLOAT Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place #116, Oakland. 535-1702. 

“Meet the Museum” Docent led highlight tour at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Free. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

FILM 

Talk Cinema Berkeley Preview of new independent films with discussion afterwards at 10 a.m. at Albany Twin Theater, 1115 Solano Ave., Albany. Cost is $20. http://talkcinema.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Bacon discusses “Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants” at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donations to the Berkeley Daily Planet accepted. 841-5600. 

“What Do the Women Say?” Poetry from the Middle East at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Tales of Hoffman” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $48. 925-798-1300. ww.berkeleyopera.org 

Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. www.brownpapertickets.com 

International Women’s Day Concert “Women of Note” Works by Mary Watckins, Joan Tower, Lili Boulanger at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methosdist Church, 1550 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10 at the door. www.communitywomensorchestra.org 

Sounds New A concert of contemporary American classic music at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $15-$20. 524-2912. www.SoundsNewUS.org 

In Bocca al Lupo and Canciones, medieval/Renaissance ensemble, at 7:30 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets are $15 at the door. 526-9146. 

Larry Vann Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

UC Berkeley Folkdancers Reunion at 2 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

International Women’s Day Celebration with Della Grant, Ginger, I-Live at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Montclair Women’s Big Band at 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Orfa Root at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Brocus Helm, Havoc, Laceration at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $8. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, MARCH 9 

FILM 

Monday Afternoon at the Movies Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “The Decalogue” Segments 5 and 6 at 1:15 p.m. at JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Life and Work of Julia Morgan: Building the California Women's Movement” lecture by Karen McNeill, architectural historian at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free. 883-9710. 

John Campion reads from his new book “Medusa: a collection of poery” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

TUESDAY, MARCH 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tavis Smiley “Accountable: Making American as Good as its Promise” at 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $12-$15. 848-6767. kpfa.org/events 

“Culture Jammers” What they do and how it affects political change at 5 p.m. at 145 Dwinelle, UC campus. www.adbusters.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu 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 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Art Connections: San Francisco’s Grande Dames” A talk by four women who have founded and run art galleries, at 10:30 a.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Bonita Hollow Writers Salon at 7 p.m. at 1631 Bonita Ave. Bring food, drink and your original work to read. 266-2069. 

Nick Hoff, translator of “Odes and Elegies” by Friederich Hölderlin, reads at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. http://moesbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on organ at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert, at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Kostrama, Russian folk music, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. www.lebateauivre.net 

Joshua Eden & The Seeds at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

THURSDAY, MARCH 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

Justice for Oscar Grant Photography Exhibition by Keba Konte. Reception at 5 p.m. at East Side Arts Alliance, 2277 International Blvd., Oakland. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Wild Women of California” A talk by Autumn Stephens at 1p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

ZZ Packer at the Story Hour at 5 p.m. at 190 Doe Library, UC campus. Free. 643-0397. storyhour.berkeley.edu 

Poetry Flash with Dobby Gibson and Matt Hart at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Fred Kaplan reads from “Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Diamano Coura West African Dance Company “Collage des Cultures Africaines” dance and drum workshops through Sun. at th e Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 ALice St., Oakland. For details see www.DiamanoCoura.org 

Little Wolf & The Hell Cats at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

“Truth Be Told” Hip Hop and spoken word with Rico Pabon at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jim Grantham Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Genralissimo, Ferocious Eagle, Ovipositor at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

John Seabury at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, MARCH 13 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Gypsy” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 5. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Playhouse “Once On This Island” a family musical, Thurs. at 7 p.m., Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. at Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through March 15. Tickets are $22-$28. 665-5565, ext. 397. berkeleyplayhouse.org 

Berkeley Rep “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)” at 2015 Addison St., through March 15. Tickets are $33-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Berkeley Rep “Crime and Punishment” at 2025 Addison St., through Mar. 29. Tickets are $27-$71. 647-2949. berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “The Window Age: A Guided Tour of the Unconscious” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through March 22, at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $21-$25. 558-1381. centralworks.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Nine (The Musical)” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through March 28. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theatre “A Midsummers Night’s Dream” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 14. Tickets are $10-$17. impacttheatre.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Eat It!” Group art exhibit based on any and all things food and “Bunny-licious” Mary Patterson’s paintings inspired by matchbook cover art, reception at 7 p.m. at Eclextix Gallery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Exhibition runs to April 26. www.eclectix.com 

“Returning to El Centro: Street Photography of Mexico City” Ilona Sturm’s photography exhibit. Artists reception at 5 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alan Boss describes “The Crowded Universe: The Search of Living Planets” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Cost is $10. 

Tom Odegard and Howard Dyckoff will read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave., a little north of Hearst, as part of the Last Word Reading Series. There is also an open reading. 841-6374. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “The Marriage of Fiagaro” at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15-$30. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org 

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women celebrating International Women’s Month, at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing St., at Dana. Suggested donation $15-$20, no one turned away. www.betsyrosemusic.org 

Jewish Music Festival: Shir Hashirim at 7:30 p.m. at JCC of East Bay. www.jewishmusicfestival.org 

Voices of Music Young Artist Concert at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Donation of non-perishable food. 236-9808. www.voicesofmusic.org 

The Stairwell Sisters at Utunes Coffe House at 8 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$18. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“Aqui te traigo una rosa” with Rafael Manriquez and Ingrid Rubis at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Hurricane Sam & The Hotshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $114. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Stompy Jones at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Gooferman, The Zoopy Show, Party of Ten at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Saviors, Agenda of Swine at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Kymberly Jackson at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Beep! Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mark Holzinger at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 597-0795. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 14 

CHILDREN  

“Adventures in Music” Family Concert with the Berkeley Symphony at 9:45 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. at Malcolm X Elementary School Auditorium, 1731 Prince St. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for 18 and under. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Stagebridge “Grandpa’s Teeth” the musical, at noon and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Tickets are $5 for children $12 for adults. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

Abby and the Pipsqueaks at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Kids Matinee Series “A Hard Days Night” Sat. and Sun. at noon at Elmwood Theater, 2966 College Ave. Cost is $4, and benefits local elementary school PTAs. 433-9730. 

Blake Maxam “The Wizard of Ahhhhs” Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

THEATER 

Blended Voices “Another Antigone” at 8 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd, Kensington. Tickets are $10. www.uucb.org  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Elza & Valters 1981-2001” Sibila Savage will talk about her photographs of an elderly immigrant couple at 2 p.m. in the Central Catalog Library, at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Exhibition runs to May. 1. 981-6240. 

“Dusk on Lucy’s Pond” Oil paintings by Juliana Harris opens at the Christensen Heller Gallery, 5829 College Ave., Oakland, and runs through May 3. 655-5952. www.christensenheller.com 

Valerie Raven: “Urban Casualty...Little Known and Seldom Seen Birds” Sat. and Sun. from 1 to 5 p.m. at Garage Gallery, 3110 Wheeler Street, near Shattuck and Ashby. www.berkeleyoutlet.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

6th Annual Dance IS Festival at 3 and 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Arts Center, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12. www.juliamorgan.org 

Diamano Coura West African Dance Company “Drum Call – Diaspora Drum Explosion” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Community Theater, BHS campus, 1980 Allston Way. Doors open at 6 p.m. for African Marketplace. Tickets are $15-$30 from www.BrownPaperTickets.com 

American Bach Soloists “Favorite Bach Cantatas” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana St. Pre concert lecture at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10-$44. 800-838-3006. americanbach.org  

AIDS/Lifecycle Concert with WAVE, UC Berkeley Chorale Ensemble, Young People’s Symphony Orchestra at 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $10-$20. 449-4402. 

Voyage Kreyol with Michelle Jacques and Chelle, sounds of New Orleans, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Moh Alileche, Cheb I Sabbah, Triple Dog Devils, and Danse Magreb at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Susan Werner at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Kerry Marsh and Julia Dollison, vocal duo, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Dgiin at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Strange Angels at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 597-0795. 

The Eric Mcfadden Trio, The New Up at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

RWH & The Jazz Triad, CD release, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 15 

THEATER 

Blended Voices “Another Antigone” at 3 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd, Kensington. Tickets are $10. www.uucb.org 

UC TDPS “Sauce for the Goose” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC campus, through March 15. Tickets are $10-$15. 642-8827. tdps.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Animals Have Souls” Reception with artist Patricia Leslie at 1 p.m. at RabbitEars, 377 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Allensworth: California’s African-American Town” A panel discussion with historians Susan Anderson and Guy Washington and authors Alice C. Royal, Mickey Ellinger and Scott Braley, at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Poetry Flash with Etel Adnan, Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah at 3 p.m. at Diesel, 5433 College Ave., Oakland. 653-9965. 

“Learning from the Absurd” a lecture by South African artist William Kentridge and hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, at 5 p.m. in Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 643-9670. http://townsendcenter. 

berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High School Alumni Jazz All-Stars with Peter Apfelbaum, Will Bernard, Steven Bernstein, Dave Ellis and many others at 3 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

San Francisco Cabaret Opera “The Marriage of Fiagaro” at 2 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15-$30. 415-289-6877. www.goathall.org 

Chamber Music Sundaes with San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends at 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door $20-$25. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “Mendelssohn Madness” at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Free. www.sfchamberorchestra.org 

California Bach Society with Paul Flight, director and counter-tenor, Brian Staufenbiel, tenor, Curtis Cook, bass at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $10- $30. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.org 

Soli Deo Gloria with Orchestra Gloria at 3:30 p.m. at St. Joseph Basilica Parish, 1109 Chestnut, Alameda. Tickets are $20-$25. Children in grades K-8 are free. www.sdgloria.org 

Oakland Civic Orchestra Hilda Li, violin, at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Avenue, Oakland. Free. 238-7275. 

Belly Dance Medley at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Sylvia Cuenca Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Big Nasty at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

It’s little wonder that E.T.A. Hoffmann was one of the Romantic era’s favorite and most influential writers—parts of his long fantastic stories can be found in many of the operas and ballets of the time from Delibes to Tchaikovsky to Offenbach. Recognizing a cultural force when he saw one, Papa Freud used Hoffmann’s work as the basis for his essay on the uncanny, “Das Unheimliche.” 

Hoffmann’s stories are infused with an air of horror and whimsy, populated with rat kings and candy lands, doppelgangers and automatons, spectacles that distort reality and change the wearer’s emotional world.  

Jacques Offenbach made the writer the subject of his opera The Tales of Hoffman, but died before the opera’s completion musically. The opera was finished by other composers and as many as five different versions appear, each celebrating the enduring charm of both the writer and the composer.  

The version chosen by Berkeley Opera as its season opener is a composite of more contemporary versions—Fritz Oeser’s, from the 1970s, and Michael Kaye’s, from the 1990s—both of which were based on scholarly discoveries that revealed more of composer and librettist Jean Barbier’s intentions.  

In this current version, the driving conflict of the plot is between the writer’s muse and the women who are the objects of Hoffman’s copious love—the muse wants him to love only her, claiming that she has loved him the best and the longest, that she could heal all the pain in the poet’s life if only he would buckle down and get back to writing. 

For the opening performance on Saturday, Feb. 28, Nora Lennox Martin excellently sang the role of the muse, who assumes the guise of Hoffmann’s best buddy, Nicklaus, during the opera’s three tales. Martin has a warm, full sound in the lower mezzo range and a more bell-like tone in the upper register. Having the buddy and muse be a pants role gives the character an appropriately surprising and slightly otherworldly quality.  

Writer’s block was never one of Hoffmann’s problems, though his life in the bourgeois world of Polish and German jurisprudence was fraught with complications and iniquities, and his love life was erratic. He was a round peg trying to fit in a square hole. As inaccurate as the opera’s portrayal of the writer may be, however, it did allow playwright Michel Carré and librettist Barbier to use three of Hoffman’s eerie and most psychologically charged stories by turning the story’s central female character into one of character Hoffman’s longed for—yet artistically distracting—lady loves. 

The roles demand different voice types and are often sung by three different women—although the opera’s Hoffmann claims they are three different aspects of the same woman: the doll, the artiste, and the harlot. Soprano Angela Cadelago took on the heavy task of all three, and she succeeded admirably. Her voice was light in the coloratura part of the doll, Olympia, but she effortlessly hung on to the roller coaster ride of the famous doll aria, “Les oiseaux dans la charmille.” The lyric soprano part of the artiste Antonia, who like her mother suffers from a mysterious illness that ultimately causes her death by singing, brought out the plusher, most luxuriant qualities of Cadelago’s voice.  

The vibrantly toned tenor, Adam Flores, sang Hoffman, a part that carries heaps of poetic feeling, swinging from deep drunken angst to sublime love. Bass-baritone Paul Murray sang Councilor Lindorf. Lindorf is not merely Hoffman’s nemesis; he is a personification of evil, which assumes a different guise in each tale. Both Flores and Murray have large, solid voices. 

Librettist David Scott Marley sensibly had many of the supporting characters in the “real” world of Hoffmann’s tavern assume different personas within the tales, although the roles they played within the individual story’s plots were similar. The barman Luther became the automaton servant in Olympia’s story, Antonia’s father and Giulietta’s erstwhile lover; all four roles were sung by tenor Wayne Wong. George Arana assumed the comic supporting roles.  

Marley’s translation was very clean and accessible, adding to the appeal of this charming production. It was an auspicious opening of the Berkeley Opera’s 30th anniversary season.  

TALES OF HOFFMAN 

Performed by Berkeley Opera at 8 p.m. Friday, March 6 and at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 8 at the Julia Morgan Theater in Berkeley.

The band in the loft at Altarena Playhouse strikes up the overture with the head for “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.” The curtain is ready to rise on Gypsy, opening with the auditions for a kiddie show in Seattle. This musical is all about being onstage and backstage, featuring the most relentless stage mother of them all. 

The show, by Jule Stine, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, is forever associated with Ethel Merman, not its creators, even though Rosalind Russell starred in the film (with young Natalie Wood as Louise, who transforms into Gypsy Rose Lee) and a slew of other Broadway greats and proud warhorses trouped the part of Rose.  

Altarena is fortunate to have Donna Turner as the monstre sacree of stage moms, who jokes in her bio that she’s recently played another “difficult [showbiz] mother” for Alameda’s old community house, Judith Bliss in that piquant chestnut, Hay Fever. 

She’s well-matched by Lisa Price (who also graced Hay Fever) as her “no-talent” tomboyish sensitive of a daughter, who becomes the sprightly—and faux-elegante—Gypsy, burlesk queen who dropped more wry witticisms than encumbering garments, a triumph of transparent gimmickry, of telegraphy punching the message through as much as any overt move. 

The first act, the “development” of the vaudeville act (more a change of costumes with the same hopeless script, hopelessly delivered), is enough to give anyone who’s ever been on an amateur stage flopsweat just by watching.  

There’s a good use of young performers, the kiddie show contestants (with Balloon Girl Zana Zinn in her maiden role), followed by the newsboys’ chorus (Derek Apperson, Mattias Christensen, Noah Han), backing the beaming Baby June (Olivia Hyntha) and deadpan Baby Louise (Jennifer Beall), who cleverly metamorphose into their older selves (Meghan Ihle and Price) in the beams of a strobe light, midstream in their perennial act, as it switches from juvenile to patriotic to bucolic (Caleb Draper, Youssef Riahi, Nick Hodges, Daniel Guzman as The Farmboys), on to the Carmenesque Toreadorables (Rebecca LaFleur, Erin Little, Nina Dumas, Erin Lucas). 

But it’s with the introduction of the real transformation, Louise into Gypsy, that the show really comes alive in Act 2 with June’s defection (eventually to become actress-director June Havoc), the ramshackle act finding itself stranded in a burlesk house, and Louise entranced by the strippers showing the “no-talent” girl how “You Gotta Get A Gimmick (if you want to have a chance).”  

Some great work here by Paula Wujek as bumping, grinding Tesse Tura, supported by Katie Francis’ statuesque (and illuminated) shimmy as Electra and Kerry Chapman’s upside-down fanfare as Mazeppa. The sextet in the loft (led by artistic director Armando Fox on the ivories) starts to swing lowdown, Rose pushes Louise onstage as a fill-in, and a strutting, knowing rendition of Baby June’s insipid “Let Me Entertain You” takes on new meaning. 

Matt Bealls (as a choice bunch of nerdy emcees, assistants and second bananas) appears onstage with his niece; Scott Alexander Ayres is the dyspeptically good-natured former candyman-turned-agent Herbie, hopelessly in love with Rose till he finally sees the writing on the grindhouse wall, and Tom Leone goes from straitlaced Pop to a hardbitten succession of theatrical hotel and strip club managers. Even managing director Daniel Zilber goes on as the manager of a vaudeville thee-ay-ter (such typecasting).  

And the untold amount of volunteer work behind the scenes showing an “untalented” girl become a pro—that’s showbiz, community theater at Altarena. 

GYPSY 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays through April 5 at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda. $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org.

David Bacon, Berkeley-based labor journalist, photographer, KPFA radio commentator and Daily Planet contributor, will speak on his book, Illegal People—How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon, 2008), followed by a discussion and book signing, at the first Berkeley Daily Planet Book Forum, at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 8 at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Admission is free. The event is co-sponsored by the Hillside Club and Black Oak Books, along with the Planet.  

Bacon’s talk will be preceded at 6 p.m. by a pizza hour, jointly sponsored by the Planet and Berkeley Cybersalon (RSVP at 841-5600 x 117). The Cybersalon will present the iPhone Lovefest from 4-6 p.m., an open demonstration of new apps, with Steven Levy from Wired Magazine: $15; $10 for club members, students and the unintentionally unemployed. 

In a starred review last July 1, Publisher’s Weekly characterized Bacon’s book as “incisive reporting ... analysis as cool and competent as his labor advocacy is unapologetic. In mapping the political economy of migration, with an unwavering eye on the rights and dignity of working people, Bacon offers an invaluable corrective to America’s hobbled discourse on immigration and a spur to genuine, creative action.”  

Author Mike Davis called Bacon “the conscience of American journalism,” in the “rugged humanist tradition” of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams and Ernesto Galarza. 

Bacon’s activism began while he was attending Berkeley High School; he was, at 16, one of the youngest protestors for the Free Speech Movement to be arrested. Working later as an organizer for the United Farm Workers, United Electrical Workers, Molders Union and Ladies Garment Workers Union, he said he has been fired for organizing—and arrested more times than he can remember. 

His documentary photographs led to his work being published in The Nation, L.A. Weekly and San Francisco Chronicle—and led to a career in journalistic writing and photography, with books like Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration (Cornell U. Press, 2006), The Children of NAFTA (UC Press, 2004), Hijos del Libre Comercio (El Viejo Topo, Barcelona, 2005) and exhibitions of photographs and oral histories from Galleria de la Raza in San Francisco and the Oakland Museum, to the AFL-CIO Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico.  

He began photographing activists for unions in the 1980s, originally to document their struggle for future generations.  

In Illegal People, Bacon demonstrates, through interviews and on-the-spot reportage, how US trade and economic policy—NAFTA, in particular—have created a situation in which communities are displaced, initiating migration. He also shows how criminalizing immigrant laborers benefits employers, and he traces the development of illegal labor status back to the time of slavery. 

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers, has said, “David also demonstrates that there is hope, and we can win something better today, not just for immigrants, but for all working people.”

The New Century Chamber Orchestra will present The Glory of Russia, a program of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives, Op. 22, featuring pianist Anne-Marie McDermott; Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 35, featuring McDermott and trumpeter Adam Luftman; and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, Friday at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. 

“A fleeting set of impressions assembled from 20 piano miniatures,” is how Visions Fugitives is described. Anne-Marie McDermott, who has been called “a passionate champion of the music of Prokofiev,” recorded his complete sonatas (Arabesque Recordings) and chamber works, and has played the Shostakovich Concerto on a recent American tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. 

“I have a very intense relationship with Prokofiev’s piano repertoire and chamber music,” McDermott said. “What I find so intriguing and challenging is the extreme range of emotional demands as well as physical demands. He demands the performer to explore emotions ranging between naive, innocent, humor, devastation, despair, irony, sarcasm, powerful, ferocious, biting, passion and ecstasy. His writing allows the performer to explore a very wide range of colors at the piano and a great sense of abandon.” 

“The Visions Fugitives present a gentler side ... more subdued ... a very personal and intimate side of Prokofiev [but] no less imaginative and inventive,” McDermott continued. It is “a series of night visions that contrast with each other, and, in this arrangement [by Rudolf Barshai], in dialogue between piano and strings ... a perfect contrast to the Shostakovich Concerto, which is extremely fiery and intense and flamboyant—it’s a magical contrast!”.  

McDermott, who debuted in 1997 with the New York Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann, is recital partner to violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, The New Century Chamber Orchestra’s music director since January 2008, after a debut with the orchestra the previous September. She was the youngest winner ever of the Naumberg Competition in 1981. The two have recorded together (including “Live” on NSS, Salerno-Sonnenberg’s own label) and performed together here in a Shenstone Recital at Zellerbach Hall in 2005.  

Souvenir de Florence is “a richly expressive and joyous romantic piece for sextet or string orchestra,” and was featured in ‘Speaking in Strings,’ the 1999 documentary about Salerno-Sonnenberg. 

The Orchestra will conclude their season (May 14 in Berkeley) with a diverse program of “sweet dreams and nightmares” from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik through Bernard Hermann’s Psycho Suite and Borodin’s Nocturne to featured composer Clarice Assad’s premiere of NCCO-commissioned Dreamscape, and Strauss’ Die Fleudermauss Suite.  

THE GLORY OF RUSSIA 

8 p.m. Friday at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way (at Dana Street). $32-$54 (30 and under can purchase half-price tickets). No late seating.  

(415) 392-4400. cityboxoffice.com. 

Other Minds—the 14th New Music festival founded by former KPFA programmer Charles Amirkhanian—presents three evenings of diversity and depth in contemporary music, beginning tonight (Thursday) at 8 p.m. through Saturday at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St., with such legends of New Music as Ben Johnston, John Schneider, Chinary Ung and other composers and musicians from Brazil, Canada, Poland, Argentina, Estonia, including Michael Harrison, collaborator with Terry Riley and La Monte Young. Panels with the artists start at 7 p.m. Tickets: $25; festival passes: $60-150 (415) 292-1233 or otherminds.org  

David Bacon, Berkeley-based labor journalist, photographer, KPFA radio commentator and Daily Planet contributor, will speak on his book, Illegal People—How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon, 2008), followed by a discussion and book signing, at the first Berkeley Daily Planet Book Forum, at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 8 at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Admission is free. The event is co-sponsored by the Hillside Club and Black Oak Books, along with the Planet.  

Bacon’s talk will be preceded at 6 p.m. by a pizza hour, jointly sponsored by the Planet and Berkeley Cybersalon (RSVP at 841-5600 x 117). The Cybersalon will present the iPhone Lovefest from 4-6 p.m., an open demonstration of new apps, with Steven Levy from Wired Magazine: $15; $10 for club members, students and the unintentionally unemployed. 

In a starred review last July 1, Publisher’s Weekly characterized Bacon’s book as “incisive reporting ... analysis as cool and competent as his labor advocacy is unapologetic. In mapping the political economy of migration, with an unwavering eye on the rights and dignity of working people, Bacon offers an invaluable corrective to America’s hobbled discourse on immigration and a spur to genuine, creative action.”  

Author Mike Davis called Bacon “the conscience of American journalism,” in the “rugged humanist tradition” of Dorothea Lange, Carey McWilliams and Ernesto Galarza. 

Bacon’s activism began while he was attending Berkeley High School; he was, at 16, one of the youngest protestors for the Free Speech Movement to be arrested. Working later as an organizer for the United Farm Workers, United Electrical Workers, Molders Union and Ladies Garment Workers Union, he said he has been fired for organizing—and arrested more times than he can remember. 

His documentary photographs led to his work being published in The Nation, L.A. Weekly and San Francisco Chronicle—and led to a career in journalistic writing and photography, with books like Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration (Cornell U. Press, 2006), The Children of NAFTA (UC Press, 2004), Hijos del Libre Comercio (El Viejo Topo, Barcelona, 2005) and exhibitions of photographs and oral histories from Galleria de la Raza in San Francisco and the Oakland Museum, to the AFL-CIO Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico.  

He began photographing activists for unions in the 1980s, originally to document their struggle for future generations.  

In Illegal People, Bacon demonstrates, through interviews and on-the-spot reportage, how US trade and economic policy—NAFTA, in particular—have created a situation in which communities are displaced, initiating migration. He also shows how criminalizing immigrant laborers benefits employers, and he traces the development of illegal labor status back to the time of slavery. 

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers, has said, “David also demonstrates that there is hope, and we can win something better today, not just for immigrants, but for all working people.”

Golden Thread Productions, the Bay Area’s specialists in theater and other performances exploring Middle Eastern identity, will co-present, with Sunbula: Arab Feminists for Change, and ASWAT Bay Area Arab Music Ensemble, “What the Women Say” their annual evening of poetry and performance for International Women’s Day on Sunday, dedicated this year to the women of Gaza, featuring poetry by Deema Shehabi and Dina Omar, a staged reading of the blog writings of Majeda Al Saqqa from Gaza and a performance by Al-Juthoor dance company at La Pena Cultural Center. 

Golden Thread will also present “Reclaiming Nooroz: Reflections of Rebirth & Survival from the Clutches of War” at La Pena at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 20, including a repeat performance of the staged readings of Majeda’s blog, readings concerning Iraq by Maxine Hong Kingston’s Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace writing group, plus Middle Eastern music and dancing to celebrate the Persian New Year, Norooz.  

Earlier that day, the Golden Thread Fairytale Project will present The Girl Who Lost Her Smile, a story from Karim Alrawi, inspired by a Rumi tale, told in Naghalli Persian storytelling style at 10 a.m. at La Peña. Free (donations accepted). 

Torange Yeghiazarian, founder of Golden Thread, commented on the events and on her company: “Majeda writes both factually and poetically on her blog, depicting everyday struggles, trying to survive—how children respond to the violence, the questions they ask, about trying to buy food or kerosine for lamps—the everyday, mundane stuff, more powerful to hear about than soldiers and tanks.” 

On Norooz, she said, “It may seem strange to combine the two together—Persian New Year and the anniversary of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. But it was on Norooz. I was talking with Nadine Ghammachi of La Peña about what a huge slap in the face that was ... did somebody know what day it was? Did they think people would be distracted? It was heartbreaking. Norooz is celebrated wherever the Persian Empire was in Antiquity—in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Central Asia. So it gives us the opportunity to reclaim the holiday after six years of war, the same sort of devastation that’s gone on throughout history. It’s New Year’s, spring starts again, and we can rebuild from the destruction of the past. We’ll turn it into a party, with oud playing, Iranian folk music, dancing.” 

Yeghiazarian, who has lived in Oakland for 15 years, was born in Iran of Armenian Christian and Iranian Muslim parents. Her mother was an actress there. “She made her first film at 17—and was thrown out of high school. But it didn’t stop her. Her family supported her.” 

Although she only saw one of her mother’s films, never seeing her perform onstage, Yeghiazarian “saw a lot of theater as a child. I grew up with aunts—one was a choral director—and my grandmother. My dad owned a night club. There were always artists roaming in our house.”  

Yeghiazarian’s mother stopped acting in film right before the Revolution but taught theater to children and collaborated with Eastern European artists. 

In 1978, the family sent Yeghiazarian’s sister out of Iran to her uncle in Connecticut. The rest of the family followed. Later, she would get a degree in microbiology at UC Berkeley and work in that field. Deciding she wanted to focus more on theater, she took an MFA program at San Francisco State: “not just acting, but writing and collaboration.”  

Her first project was with Iranian director Manijeh Mohamedi, Mohamedi’s actor husband andYeghiazarian’s mother. “I learned more about my mother and her work after I moved to California than I knew before,” she said. “It rekindled our relationship.” 

Yeghiazarian started Golden Thread partly in answer to the situation that discouraged a career for her in acting: typecasting that resembles ethnic profiling. “I’d been told I would never get cast for a lead role. They didn’t say as a housekeeper, but that’s the impression I got, and that it was because of my background.” 

Since 1996, Golden Thread has produced one or two plays a year, except for 2003-06, when the company could only afford to stage their annual ReOrient festival of one-acts, which has put on an impressive 50-plus short plays, some of unusual quality, all dealing with Middle Eastern themes.  

The next ReOrient will take place in October-November.  

A Girl’s War, Joyce Van Dyke’s “Armenian-Azeri love story,” has been extended till March 15 at Thick House, on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill, where Golden Thread is in residence. In July, they’ll open Ecstasy in the River, commissioned through their new plays project, Kimia (from the Persian for alchemy), by Denmo Ibrahim, best-known as a performer with the experimental troupe mugwumpin and in the cast of George Packer’s Betrayed, now at the Aurora, as an Iraqi translator in the American Embassy.  

Kimia has also produced Benedictus, in collaboration with Iranian and Israeli artists, about the political stalemate in the region. And Middle Eastern America, a bi-annual national new plays initiative, founded by Golden Thread in partnership with The Lark Play Development Center in New York and Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago has just made its first award—to Adriana Sevan, a writer-performer of Armenian, Dominican and Basque heritage. 

“Our big goal is to impact American theater artistically,” said Yeghiazarian. “Hal Gelb said it’s not enough to look for plays already written. We want to expand the mainstream. These playwrights and artists are Middle eastern-American. I think we’re on the verge of something exciting. I expected 10 submissions for the play initiative; we had over 40, very strong artistically. Even the name Kimia, by the way—it’s Semitic, Arabic and Hebrew, in origin, but is Persian and Turkish, too, and related to the European words for alchemy and chemistry, themselves from Arabic ... confirms my perhaps naive belief we have so much in common with each other. There’s that tendency for minorities to claim their own territory—like arguing who was the first to wrap dolmas in grape leaves! But breaking boundaries, the title of one of our first productions, is what Golden Thread is all about.” 

WHAT THE WOMEN SAY 

Presented by Golden Thread Productions at 7 p.m. March 8 at La Peña  

Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave.  

$10 ($8 students/seniors).  

849-2568. www.lapena.org.  

Golden Thread: (415) 626-1138. www.goldenthread.org.

Just an hour up the road in Sonoma County, the Sebastopol Center for the Arts presents the second annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival this weekend, March 6-8. 

Culled from more than 300 submissions, this year's program boasts 18 short subjects and 26 features, two of which were reviewed in these pages. Beyond the Call was reviewed in the Dec. 1, 2006 edition of the Daily Planet, and Soldiers of Conscience, made by Berkeley filmmakers Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg, was reviewed in both the Aug. 24, 2007 edition and in the Oct. 16, 2008 edition.  

The weekend will also feature question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers and other special presentations. 

The festival begins at 7 p.m. Friday and runs through Sunday afternoon at five venues, including the Center for the Arts, Sebastopol Cinemas, French Garden, Viva Culinary Institute and Hopmonk Tavern.  

Tickets can be purchased through the Sebastopol Center for the Arts or through www.brownpapertickets.com.  

Sebastopol Center for the Arts. 6780 Depot St., Sebastopol. (707) 829-4797. www.sebastopolfilmfestival.org. 

Other Minds—the 14th New Music festival founded by former KPFA programmer Charles Amirkhanian—presents three evenings of diversity and depth in contemporary music, beginning tonight (Thursday) at 8 p.m. through Saturday at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St., with such legends of New Music as Ben Johnston, John Schneider, Chinary Ung and other composers and musicians from Brazil, Canada, Poland, Argentina, Estonia, including Michael Harrison, collaborator with Terry Riley and La Monte Young. Panels with the artists start at 7 p.m. Tickets: $25; festival passes: $60-150 (415) 292-1233 or otherminds.org  

At the heart of Berkeley’s downtown, behind the commercial facades of University Avenue, stands a cluster of four century-old residential buildings. Shoppers at Berkeley Hardware who park next to these relics may pause and wonder about them occasionally. 

The short block on which these structures stand runs between University Avenue and Berkeley Way. It is now an isolated southern extension of Walnut Street, but a hundred years ago it was called Home Street. In 1903, Home Street was a block of five homes and four empty lots. Eight years later, the block had filled up; now there were five buildings on the west side and four on the east, including the four-story Home Street Apartments on the northeast corner, constructed in 1909 by George L. Mohr for William B. Heywood. Only the southeastern corner on University Avenue was vacant (it remained so and is now a parking lot). 

To the north of Home Street, the block between Berkeley Way and Hearst Avenue, currently the site of a California Department of Health Services building, was entirely residential, although not entirely built. So were the southern two-thirds of the Whitton Tract, a block bounded by Walnut, Hearst, Oxford and Virginia. 

Much of this area burned down in the 1923 Berkeley Fire, clearing the way for new uses and buildings. The university was quick to acquire the Whitton Tract for its off-campus expansion. On March 6, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported, “That the block bounded by Walnut, Virginia and Oxford streets and Hearst avenue will take at least $300,000 from the assessment roll when it is fully acquired by the University is the statement of Assessor Harry J. Squires. Only a dozen or more parcels of land in this block have passed so far into University hands and will affect this year’s assessment.” 

UC did not wait patiently until all the owners of Whitton Tract lots agreed to sell. On Aug. 30, 1924, the Regents filed suit in superior court to condemn several properties located on this block. “The university is seeking to further extend the limits of the Berkeley campus, in order that the agricultural experimentation field can be enlarged,” announced the Oakland Tribune the following day. UC evidently got its wish, for by 1929, the entire block was marked “University of California Experimental Garden” in the Sanborn fire insurance map. 

The 1923 fire stopped just short of Home Street. In the aftermath, the block directly to the north was divided to allow the passage of Walnut Street. through its center. The new buildings erected on the divided block in the 1920s were apartments and automobile-related service structures. 

Since there was now direct access from Walnut Street to Home Street, the latter was renamed Walnut. The block was still largely residential, but only two single-family homes remained on it. Three dwellings had been converted into rooming houses, while the southwest corner had been occupied since 1915 by the S.J. Sill grocery and hardware store (now Berkeley Hardware). The duplex at 1930 Walnut St. was turned into eight apartments. 

This brown-shingled duplex was built in 1905 for Eliza Moore, then living in San Francisco. Widow of the Sutter farmer Sanford H. Moore, Eliza brought up two daughters in Marysville. When the Berkeley duplex was built, both daughters, middle-aged and unmarried, were school teachers and lived with their mother. 

In those days, only a few months transpired between land acquisition and building completion. Eliza bought her two Home Street lots in early February 1905. By March 24, she had applied for a building permit, and the dwelling was completed two months later. In early July, half of the duplex was rented to the Jordan family, who arrived from Pasadena for the purpose of educating its three children. Harold S. Jordan, who entered UC that year, wrote in his memoir, “Our folks located 1930 Home St. as our new home. It was the south half of a three-story, two-family building. The basement was on the street level; parlor, dining room, kitchen and pantry were on the second floor; and bedrooms on the third floor.” 

The Moores did not live on Home Street. In October 1904, Eliza purchased two lots in the Whitton Tract and built her residence at 1748 Oxford St. Twenty years later, her daughter Mary would be named as one of the defendants in the UC Regents’ lawsuit to condemn properties on that block. 

The Jordans, meanwhile, quickly integrated themselves into the life of the town. The father, Frank E. Jordan, got a desk at a downtown real estate office, where he sold insurance and goldmine stocks. The daughters, Ethel and Mildred (the latter my partner’s grandmother), enrolled at Berkeley High School. Their elder brother Harold wrote, “We soon began to realize the advantages of living in a college town. In early July, at the Greek Theatre on the University campus, there was an address by William Howard Taft, then the Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt. Also present were Congressman Grosvenor of Ohio and Congressman Payne of New York, who was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. I don’t know why they were there, but I was impressed.” 

In August 1905, Harold enrolled in the UC College of Mining. “President Benjamin Ide Wheeler held a big reception for the Class of 1909 at Hearst Hall, with dancing and refreshments. This made us Frosh feel very important,” wrote Harold, adding, “Toward the end of September, William Jennings Bryan spoke at the Berkeley Theatre. We were all given the opportunity to go up and shake his hand. Then the next day, he spoke at the University. He had the well-earned reputation of being the best public speaker in the country.” The San Francisco Call also covered the Berkeley Theatre speech: “With oratory, the magic of which was potent enough to help a thousand people of Berkeley forget the discomforts of a warm, stuffy auditorium, William Jennings Bryan spoke tonight […] under YMCA auspices, his subject being ‘The Value of an Ideal.’” 

On Oct. 12, Harold would experience his first big football rally: “It ended with a monstrous snake dance that wound out of the Greek Theatre down through the campus and into the streets of town, and into the Berkeley Theatre, where a show was in progress. The snake dance participants moved in and filled up all the vacant seats and much of the standing room.” 

The show, Under Two Flags, had to be stopped several times and the curtain lowered owing to the gate-crashers’ rowdiness. According to the Oakland Tribune’s report the following day, “A pandemonium reigned while the students, it is said, broke up chairs, tore up carpets, pulled down curtains, and howled like a band of Indians. Scores left the theater, and a hurry-up call was sent to Marshal Vollmer for assistance in suppressing the students.” Vollmer stationed men at all exits and informed the crowd that no one would be allowed to leave until they paid the regular admission price and arranged to cover the costs of damage to the theatre. 

“Some had money with them,” wrote Harold, “others were busy borrowing money from each other. Still others left watches, items of apparel, fountain pens, eyeglasses, etc. I, fortunately, had money with me, so got out early and didn’t stick around to see the finish.” The newspapers gave full play to the episode, and John Boyd, president of the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, urged Benjamin Ide Wheeler to restrain the students from interfering with the GAR’s upcoming production at the same venue. 

Among Harold’s most amusing observations were his descriptions of student apparel of the era: “Freshmen were supposed to wear a blue cap with a little yellow button on top. There were other little apparel details which […] I don’t recall. Any infringement meant a dousing in the pond in front of the Chemistry Building—the Chem Pond. The Juniors wore soiled corduroy trousers and a battered gray plug hat that had been decorated with painted pictures or words. The Seniors wore battered black plug hats. The Sophomores wore anything not defined as proper for the other three classes. I don’t remember whether girls were affected by all these restrictions.” 

The Jordans experienced the 1906 earthquake at 1930 Home St. “The terrifying sounds that I heard were made by, first our brick chimney, then the brick chimney of the house next door being shaken down. […] The sound of the earthquake was a loud rumble, like a sudden, very heavy hailstorm falling on the roofs, punctuated with collapse of roofs, caving brick walls, and also some human screams.” 

As a UC cadet, Harold was assigned to guard duty around the campus, where refugee tent camps had been set up. “One effect of the earthquake was very embarrassing to our family,” he wrote. The family had no charge accounts, being proud to be able to pay in cash for all their purchases. Now the banks were closed indefinitely, and the grocer refused to extend credit to anyone who had not established a charge account earlier. 

By May 1906, life had returned to normal, although aftershocks continued to rattle the town for some time. On May 11, Harold counted the 60th aftershock since April 18. That summer, Ethel Jordan entered the freshman class at UC, and Mildred followed her two years later. Harold concluded his memoir in 1907, but his sisters continued making regular appearances in the local newspapers owing to their campus activities. 

In 1909, her junior year, Ethel headed the finance committee for the co-eds’ annual Jinks celebration. The following year she was president of the UC suffrage club. In her turn, Mildred was involved in the formation of the women students’ affairs committee in her junior year, acted as photograph editor of the Blue and Gold yearbook, and was elected to the Prytanean Women’s Honor Society. She was first vice president of the senior class, served twice as Chair of the Dormitory Committee, was a member of the Senior Advisory Committee and of the Woman’s Day Pelican staff. 

Mildred graduated in Natural Sciences in 1912, the year her father died. On Sept. 20 of that year, the Oakland Tribune published the notice of her license to marry Leslie Theodore Sharp, a young soil chemist, assistant professor at UC, and a member of the Abracadabra Club. Their two eldest children were born in Berkeley. 

Eliza Moore died in 1910, her daughters following her in the 1930s. The building at 1930 Walnut St. then passed into the hands of the three Acheson brothers, scions of a pioneer Berkeley family and owners of the Acheson Physicians’ Building at 2131 University Ave. 

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

I could be handy mending a fuse 

When your lights have gone. 

You can knit a sweater by the fireside 

Sunday mornings go for a ride. 

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, 

Who could ask for more? 

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, 

When I’m sixty-four?  

Sixty-Four. It seemed so old when we were 20. Little did we know that we would still feel very much the same and, for many of us, would still be pursuing career, love and meaning in our lives just as though we were still 20. 

Sadly, many of us who held the dream of home ownership and independence are still far from these aspirations, even as we approach retirement (or what we had hoped would be retirement). 

Will we remain renters with all the insecurity that entails? Will we be forced to relocate at 70 years of age, upending our lives in a manner that was hard enough at 20 but now includes medical issues and family? 

For this portion of society (and it’s no small slice), cooperative housing (or simply co-ops) may be an answer, and limited equity housing cooperatives (LEHCs) may make the most sense of all.  

Berkeley is currently encouraging building development that addresses the needs of lower-income folks through its Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance (IZO) which requires developers to assure that at least 20 percent of any condos or apartments that get built will be affordable to persons who make no more than 80 percent of the local median income. Last year those figures were roughly $46K for a single person, $53K for two or $60K for a family of four. These figures represent a group that is generally unable to afford to own a home and often unable to rent in any but impoverished neighborhoods. 

The IZO offers a second option to builders that do not wish to include low-cost housing in their projects. They can, instead, pay into a fund (ours is called the City of Berkeley Housing Trust Fund) that goes to support local affordable housing projects. Groups such as Resources for Community Development have used these funds to buy properties and help local groups, such as Berkeley’s 9th Street Co-op, manifest their vision. (Founded by Berkeley Councilmember, Linda Maio, RCD has developed over 1,400 long-term affordable living units in Alameda and other nearby counties.) 

The Bay Area Community Land Trust is a local advocacy group that is helping to encourage co-operative housing. They would like to offer a third option and here’s why: So far the IZO has resulted in the creation of 143 rental units and only nine condos. So home ownership is, as usual, pushed further away from people with a low income. What they would like to see is an amendment to the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance that would allow developers to meet their obligation by helping to create limited equity housing co-operatives.  

In short, what is not happening today is the creation of home ownership for low-income persons through the Berkeley Housing Trust Fund (and that was clearly part of its mandate). So what is being proposed is a new way, a way in which Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives are formed directly out of the partnership with the builders. 

What’s really different here, and follow me, but jeez, this is very confusing stuff, is that the money or efforts (that 20 percent that developers have to give up) can be funneled directly to a limited equity housing co-op project and here’s what makes that cool. 

Co-ops aren’t like renting and they’re not like typical home ownership. They’re sort of like the group living many of us did 30 years ago. Remember buying food in bulk and sharing a big house? Well, it wasn’t for everybody and when we coupled up and married and had kids, it sort of went the way of old girlfriends. Nice to remember but you’d better not have it on speed-dial. 

Group living had many advantages and a few disadvantages, and as my friend Kathy Labriola of the 9th Street Cooperative says, “Ironically, the good things and the bad things are the same things. A co-op is like a family. You may love them, but you don’t always like them.” 

Co-op living means that you don’t have to do everything (or pay for everything) yourself. Costs and jobs are shared by the entire group, making many of the tasks that homeowners or renters face (digging the garden OR mending a fuse), much easier. This has also tended to foster extras for some co-ops such as the growing of fruits and vegetables, chicken farming and various green building improvement, all of which might have simply been too much for a single homeowner to manage while dealing with all the other monthly matters that homeowners face. 

Cooperative living, like its budding cousin, Cohousing, requires a curtailing of selfishness and a willingness to share and to work things out. Each member of a co-op is typically expected to hold an elected position, take on a task and participate in regular meetings (monthly meetings are common). The Berkeley 9th St. Cooperative has only five member families (some are single, some are couples). There are currently five elected positions including president, VP, secretary, treasurer and maintenance coordinator. Elections are held each year and people swap jobs but everyone plays a role. Labor is also divvied up. Someone prunes the trees, someone waters the plants. Someone does the accounting. This may seem burdensome but it’s really much easier than doing all these things yourself. There isn’t that much more property to care for at a typical co-op of five persons than one might find at a single-family dwelling. And even if there is more square footage, economies of scale tell us that the actual difficulty of painting a 3,000-square-foot house isn’t twice the work of painting a 1,500-square-foot one. It might be 30 percent more work since much of the job is the same (making decisions, shopping, setting up tools and drop cloths).  

LEHCs also change the way we think about the housing market in a very important way. We tend to think of the value of homes as naturally rising with the local market, but an LEHC doesn’t do that. Based on the radical notion that people can determine the amount of cost growth of their property, LEHCs pre-set the amount of value that the property can increase by each year (0-10 percent per annum is what the department of real estate mandates for LEHCs). Our own Tom Bates, while in the state assembly, proposed and passed the enabling legislation that gave us cooperate housing as we know it today in California. 

The 9th Street co-op set their annual rate of increase at 2 percent, so that, as the years roll by, the property will still be affordable to new incoming members. However, it also means that being a member of an LEHC, such as this one, is no way to get rich by owning real estate. It’s just the opposite. The objective is to keep the value in the property and to make sure that it remains affordable to all its members. A monthly fee is charged to each member that covers their share of the mortgage, maintenance costs (whatever materials are needed and services that the members have to shop out), tax, insurance and whatever else the co-op pays for. With the value kept low, the monthly fees are also kept in check.  

Many people have total monthly housing expenses in the range of about $600-800 per month, which is fairly incredible in today’s Bay Area market. The only problem is that, when you sell, you’re not going to make a killing. It requires a fairly radical rethinking of what we’re doing when we buy and sell real estate. 

Of course, not all co-ops work this way. There are also Market Rate Housing Co-operatives (MRHC) and Berkeley has a few of these too. These function in all the same ways as were described above with the only difference being that the local real estate market determines the value of the shared in each co-op. And that brings up another interesting point, that of the actual manner of ownership in the co-op. One does not buy a unit or a room or a building in a co-op. One buys shares in the co-op. The co-op is owned by a non-profit corporation and the individual owners buy shares in the corporation. As the total value of the co-op rises (either by market forces or a fixed rate) each share increases in value. You never own property, per se, just a share in an entity that owns it. 

If these ideas excite you, I’d encourage you to contact the Bay Area Community Land Trust (BACLT), a local organization that’s been organizing co-ops in recent years. They can help you to learn more about this radical (some might even say subversive) new way for us to live and create a more democratic and sustainable model of housing for the future. BACLT is also focused on the promotion of Elder Co-ops and Elder Cohousing and asking the question, “How will we live as the years roll by? Will we live alone in some big million dollar house that we can’t afford to repair? Or will we live with friends who look out for us and share the tasks and responsibilities that make up daily life?” BACLT is offering a bus tour this May to visit several elder-housing facilitates. They can be reached at 841-5307 if you think that this is your cup of herb tea. 

If you think that Berkeley should amend the IZO to include that third choice, please contact your City Council member. 

While it’s not clear whether LEHCs or MRHCs, Cohousing or Borg-operated, neutron-fired housing will turn out to be our best choice, it’s clear that the (American) dream of home ownership hasn’t turned out to be all that it was cracked up to be. Too few can live this way and I’m not so sure that it’s really the richest, smartest or the fairest way for us to go. People living in cohousing or co-ops sure look happy to me and when I’m 64, it might be just the place for me to mend a fuse. How about you? Care to dig a weed with me, Madam Vice President? 

THURSDAY, MARCH 5 

Critter Crafts: Fantastic Feathers Learn how feathers help to keep birds warm or to fly. A parent/child class for ages 3-5, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo. 632-9525, ext. 200. 

Free Skin Cancer Screening from 8 a.m. to noon at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 3100 Summit St., Oakland. Appointments required. 869-8833. 

Tilden Nature Area Docent Training from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fee. is $35. For an application or information call 544-3260. www.ebparks.org 

“Capitalism Next” Panel discussion on sustainable solutions with speakers from IDEO, Patagonia and Nike Considered at 6:15 p.m. at Lipman Hall, UC campus.  

“Natural Solutions to Digestive Problems” with Dr. Jay Sordean at 12:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Thurs. at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Wheelchair Yoga Thurs. at noon, Family Yoga on Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at Niroga Center for Healing, 1808 University Ave. between MLK Way and Grant St. All classes by donation. 704-1330. www.niroga.org 

Buddhist Class on Shikan Meditation at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar at Bonits, through May 28. http://caltendai.org 

FRIDAY, MARCH 6 

The 16th Annual Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) Day celebration in the Berkeley Public elementary and preschools. Volunteers read to a class of students in the school library from 9 to 10:30 a.m. To volunteer, please contact 644-8833. bsv@berkeley.k12.ca.us 

“Ask Mr.Green” Sierra Magazine’s Mr. Green, aka Bob Schildgen, reads from his recently published compilation of environmental advice columns at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church Chapel, 1640 Addison St. Free. 

“Women’s Rights and Health: Future Outlook and the United Nation’s Role” with Jane Roberts at noon at School of Public Health, UC campus, and at 4:30 p.m. at International House, UC campus. www.unausaeastbay.org 

“Sick Around the World” PBS Frontline documentary and talk by CC Co. Supervisor John Gioia at 7 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Full day workshop for health care activists on Sat. RSVP to 526-0972. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jack Steller, Physicist (ret.), Lawrence Livermore Labs on “Fresh Views: The United States and the Middle East Under the Obama Administration” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 524-7468. www.citycommonsclub.org 

“Overcoming Youth Legal Obstacles ... What gets in the way?” The McCullum Youth Court Youth Summit with information and workshops from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 832-5858, ext. 301. www.youthcourt.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Three Beats for Nothing Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Fri. at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst at MLK. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 

Berkeley Path Wanderers: Power Walk A challenging, fast-paced fitness walk through John Hinkel Park, on Acacia Walk, and past Grizzly Peak Blvd. to Vistamont with a return via Easter Way. Meet at the picnic area of Indian Rock Park at 10 a.m. 848-2944.www.berkeleypaths.org 

Historical Pulse of Carquinez Strait A 3-mile saunter around the horn of this large river with James Wilson, naturalist. Meet at 2:30 p.m. at Bull Valley Staging Area. 525-2233. 

Bay Area Seed Library Seed Swap with a pot-luck dinner and information on seed saving at 6:30 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10 or food and seeds to share. 658-9178. 

“Let Worms Eat Your Garbage” A presentation by Bay Friendly Gardening on worm composting from 10 a.m. to noon at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

“Designing with Native Plants” A workshop to help you recreate your outdoor living space by integrating native plants to create a thriving, drought-tolerant garden, with Jocelyn Bentley-Prestwich, from 10 a.m. to noon at Ploughshares Nursery, 2701 Main St., at the old naval base, Alameda. Free. 898-7845. www.ploughsharesnursery.com 

Richmond’s International Women’s Day Celebration with Elaine Brown, former Black Panther leader and criminal justice reform advocate at 10 a.m. at Lovonya DeJean Middle School, 3400 Macdonald Ave., Richmond. Please RSVP to 620-6502. 

Health Care Activist Training from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito. Donation $5-$10, no one turned away. RSVP to 526-0972. 

Habitot’s Girl Power Day For children ages 0-6. Interactive storytelling at 11 a.m., 1:30 and 3 p.m. at 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $7-$8. www.habitot.org 

Youth Ceramics Class begins and runs Sat. at 11 a.m. to April 11 at James Kenney recreation Center. Cost is $52. 981-6650. 

Critter Crafts: Fantastic Feathers Learn how feathers help to keep birds warm or to fly. A parent/child class for ages 3-5, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo. 632-9525, ext. 200. 

“Women’s Rights and Health; Future Outlook and U.N. Role” with activist and author Jane Roberts at 7 p.m. at Home of Truth Spiritual Center, 1300 Grand St., Alameda. Suggested donation $5, no one is turned away. www.alamedaforum.org 

“New Era? New Deal?” The Political Affairs Readers Group of the Communist Party meets at 10 a.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. For reading materials call 595-7417. www.marxistlibr.org 

Introduction to Meeting Planning Learn how to put on meetings and events for corporations and associations, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Class continues on Mar. 14. Registration required. 981-2931. www.peralta.edu 

Dr. Seuss’ Birthday Party from 11 a.m to 1 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. For ages 5 and up. Free, but tickets required. 524-3043.  

“Rosie and the Railroaders” A celebration of trains for ages 3 and up at 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr community room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

Artists’ Marketing Workshop “How To Market Yourself as an Artist” from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Frank Bette Center for the Arts ,1601 Paru St., Alameda. Cost is $15 members, $25 non-members 523-6957. info@frankbettecenter.org 

“Rebel Shamans: Indigenous Women Confront Empire” with Max Dashu on how priestesses, diviners and medicine women stand out as leaders of aboriginal liberation movements, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Cost is $5-$20. 841-4824. www.bfuu.org 

“Bookmaking with Recycled Materials” Learn coptic binding for scrapbooks, blank books and journals. All materials provided. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10-$15. Advanced registration required. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

White Elephant Sale to benefit the Oakland Museum of CA. Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 333 Lancaster St., in Oakland on the Estuary. Free shuttle to the warehouse available from the Fruitvale BART station. 536-6800. www.whiteelephantsale.org 

Banff Mountain Film Festival Sat. and Sun. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC campus. Tickets are $15-$18. 527-4140. 

Bunny Maintenance 101 with House Rabbit Society educator Carolyn Mosher, at 2 p.m. at RabbitEARS, 377 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 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. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 8 

2009 Berkeley High Live Fundraising event for BHS Development Group and BHS Athletics, with music by the BHS Jazz Combo, and live and silent auctions, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Honda Showroom, 2600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $25-$75. 464-1181. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Herstory of the Bay Hike Celebrate International Women’s Day on this five mile hike to Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park and back. For ages 10 and up. Bring water and lunch. Meet at 10 a.m. at Rydin Rd, Point Isabel. Bring water and lunch. Registration required. 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

“Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants” with author David Bacon at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Donations to the Berkeley Daily Planet accepted. 841-5600. 

Green Sunday “ACTransit in Trouble” with Joyce Roy at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Procter Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th, Oakland. 

International Women’s Day Celebration with Code Pink Starting at noon with a march across the Golden Gate Bridge and concluding with a celebration and potluck from 4 to 8 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. 540-7007. 

Berkeley Cybersalon: iPhone Lovefest All developers welcome to give a two-minute demo. Steven Levy of Wired magazine to meoderate, at 4 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10-$15. www.hillsideclub.org 

Berkeley Hiking Club goes to Mt. Tamalpais Meet at Shattuck Ave. and Berkeley Way at 8:30 a.m. for a moderate pace 8-mile hike on a variety of trails stopping at West Point Inn for lunch. Rain cancels. 415-383-7069. 

Cute Lil’ Newt Meet the parks’ most famous amphibian from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Not stroller friendly. 525-2233. 

Little Farm Open House Come grind some corn to feed the chickens, pet a bunny, groom a goat or help out in the Kids Garden, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Celebratory Drum Circle in honor of International Women’s Day. Learn how indigenous cultures connect with nature through the rituals of drumming at 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Bring drums and shakers. 525-2233. 

“Socialism for the 21st Century: Marxist-Humanism vs. the legacy of post-Marx Marxism as pejorative” at 6:30 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 658-1448. 

Personal Theology Seminars with Alex Pappas on “The History and Main Characters in Theosophy” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

Jewish Purim Party for Young Children at 10:30 a.m. at Jewish GAteways, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. Free, but RSVP required. 559-8140. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “No Boundaries” 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 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, MARCH 9 

“The Life and Work of Julia Morgan: Building the California Women’s Movement” lecture by Karen McNeill, architectural historian at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Free. 883-9710. 

“Certain Doubts of William Kentridge” film screening hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities at 7 p.m. in the Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, UC campus. Free and open to the public. 643-9670.  

International Women’s Day with Patricia Isasa, Argentinian Human Rights leader and survivor of the military dictatorship at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Suggested donation $10. 841-4824. 

“Starting a Small Business from Scratch” Three evening classes presented by the Small Business Assoc. and the Richmond Public Library, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Main Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. Class continues on Mar. 16 and 23. Free, but advanced registration required. 620-6561. 

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one counseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment call 981-6148. www.eastbayscore.org 

ASUC Student Legal Clinic provides free legal research and case intake. Drop-in hours Mon.-Thurs. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. anfd Fri. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., UC campus. 642-9986. asuclegalclinic@gmail.com 

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. 548-0425. 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

TUESDAY, MARCH 10 

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, Tilden Regional Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 544-3265. 

National Nutrition Month Cooking Demonstrations at 2:30 p.m. with Joy Moore and and 4:30 p.m. with HuNia Bradly at the Tuesday Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK. 548-3333. 

“Investigating Trafficking of Women: A Reporter’s Journey through Korea and Nepal” An International Women’s Day talk with Meredith May at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley City College, lower level auditorium, Center St. at MLK. Free. 

California Colloquium on Water “California Water: Managing Crisis and Opportunity” with Tim Quinn, Exec. Dir., Assoc. of California Water Agencies, at 5:30 p.m. in Room 250, Goldman School of Public Policy, 2607 Hearst Ave. at LeRoy. www.lib.berkeley.edu/WRCA/ccow.html 

“Prospects for Health Care Reform” A League of Women Voters discussion of the various proposals coming up in the new legislative session at 12:15 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room, Albany Public Library, Masonic and Marin. 843-8824. office@lwvbae.org 

“Discover Northern Arizona’s Redrock Country” with Jim Scheiling at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“How Mathematicians Look at Particle Physics” by Prof. Matilde Marcolli at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. www.revolutionbooks.org 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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., Sat. and Sun. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.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. 

Ceramics Class Learn hand building techniques to make decorative and functional items, Tues. at 9:30 a.m. at St. John's Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, materials and firing charges only. 525-5497. 

Bridge for beginners from 1 to 2:15 p.m., all others 1 to 4 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

Qi Gong Meditation 7:30 p.m. at 830 Bancroft Way, Lotus Room 114. Cost is $5-$10. 883-1920. tgif@tiangong.org 

Free Meditation Class at 7 p.m. every Tues. and Thurs. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians, 2nd flr. , 1606 Bonita Ave. at Cedar. 931-7742. 

Rhythm Tap Exercise Class Tues. at 5 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. Donation $2. 548-9840. 

Yarn Wranglers Come knit and crochet at 6:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11 

Winter Soldier: Berkeley Testimonies from US military veterans of the global war on terror, at 6 p.m. at 150 Goldman School of Public Policy, UC campus.  

Conservation Speaker Series “The Red Panda Project” with Brian William at 6:30 p.m. at the Marain Zimmer Auditorium, Oakland Zoo. Suggested donation $10-$20, $5 for high school students. amy@oaklandzoo.org 

“Consume this Movie” A documentary on our consumerism and materialism at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Discussion follows. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

Foreclosure Prevention at 6 p.m. at The HomeOwnership Center, 3301 East 12th St., Suite 201, Oakland. To register call 535-6943. homeownership@unitycouncil.org. 

East Bay Geneaology meets at 10 a.m. in the Oakland Family History Library, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Lisa Louise Cooke will speak on the importance of collecting and preserving family artifacts. 

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. 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. 

Berkeley CopWatch Drop-in office hours from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 12 

Blake Garden Walk for Age 50+ Tour the UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture Department’s 10-acre Kensington estate from 9 to 11 a.m. Meet at garden gate at 70 Rincon Rd., Kensington (AC Transit 7). Free but numbers limited; register at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., 524-9122, or Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. 524-9283. For information contact walk leader Susan Schwartz, f5creeks@aol.com, 848-9358. 

Berkeley Housing Authority Annual Plan discussion at 2 p.m. at BHA, 1901 Fairview St. Plan is available at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/bha 

Tilden Nature Area Docent Training from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Fee. is $35. For an application or information call 544-3260. www.ebparks.org 

14th Collages des Cultures Africaines series of West African Dance & Drum Workshops taking place at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland, through Sun. For details contact 733-1077. www.DiamanoCoura.org 

Purim Carnival & Silent Auction from 12:30 to 3 p.m. at Temple Beth Hillel, 801 Park Central, Richmond. 223-2560. www.templebethhillelrichmond.org 

East Bay Mac Users Group meets to discuss UPEK, biometric fingerprint security solutions, at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 1 to 7 p.m. at 2106 Shattuck Ave. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Thurs. at 10 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Wheelchair Yoga Thurs. at noon, Family Yoga on Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at Niroga Center for Healing, 1808 University Ave. between MLK Way and Grant St. All classes by donation. 704-1330. www.niroga.org 

Free Meditation Class at 7 p.m. every Tues. and Thurs. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians, 2nd flr. , 1606 Bonita Ave. at Cedar. 931-7742. 

Buddhist Class on Shikan Meditation at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar at Bonita, through May 28. http://caltendai.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, MARCH 13 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Kiyolo Woodhouse, docent, Asian Art Museum, “Japanese Art and Its Context in Japanese Daily Life” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 524-7468. www.citycommonsclub.org 

“American Sandinista” A documentary about the life and execution of Ben Linder, a young American supporter of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. Both the film-maker and the author of the investigation the film is based on will be present for questions after the film. Free. 

Conscientious Projector Film Series “9/11 Press for Truth” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824. 

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. 

Three Beats for Nothing Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Fri. at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, Hearst at MLK. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, MARCH 14 

Race Judicata: 10k Run/5k Run-Walk Fundraiser for UC Berkeley Environmental Law Summer Fellowship, from 10 a.m. to noon, registration starts at 9:15 a.m. at the Kroeber Fountain, corner of Bancroft Way and College Ave. Cost is $30. 619-992-9619. 

Disaster Preparedness Workshop with representatives from Albany Fire Department and Bay Area Seismic Retrofit, at 4 p.m. at Albany High School, 603 Key Route Blvd., Albany. 229-9651. http://albanytoday.org 

Little Farm Poultry Pals Learn about the different breeds and their personalities at 2:30 p.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Workshop: Eat Local Learn about how to eat more from your local foodshed, by gleaning and foraging edible weeds, alternative food sources and food preservation. Includes a short walk. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10-$15. Advanced registration required. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

“The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—And What We Must Do To Stop It” with activist and author Antonia Juahsz, at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, 1550 Oak St., Alameda. Suggested donation $5; no one is turned away. 814-9592. 

Healthy Communities Financial Freedom Conference from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., registration at 9:30 a.m. at Richmond Auditorium, 403 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 568-5899. 

“Keeping Cool in the Fire: Becoming More Skillful with Inner or Outer Conflict” A two-day training with Lawrence Ellis and Donald Rothberg, Sat. from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sun. from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at East Bay Meditation Center, 2147 Broadway, Oakland. Donations accepted. Register at www.eastbaymeditation.org/event/55 

Annual Burma Human Rights Day Benefit Join us for a Burmese style dinner and Burma documentary film along with two speakers on Burma, Min Zin and Zoya Phan at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar, at Bonita. Suggested donation of $15 benefits the Burmese American Democratic Alliance. 485-3751. www.badasf.org 

“Grow Your Own Salad” with Stefani Bittner, at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society meets to discuss “The Russians Are Coming To the Western Front” by Michael Hanlon at 10:30 a.m. at the Albany Veterans Hall, 1325 Portland Ave., Albany. 527-7718. 

Head Shaving Event to benefit Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland from noon to 6 p.m. at Bay Street Plaza, Emeryville. 655-4002. www.baystreetemeryville.com 

American Red Cross Free CPR Training throughout the East Bay. Register today and learn lifesaving skills that will better prepare you and your family for emergencies. For a detailed list of other training sites and to pre-register, visit RedCrossCPRSaturday.org. Registration is also available by phone at 888-686-3600. 

Train Your House Rabbit Learn how to get your pet bunny to come when called and other tricks at 10 a.m. at RabbitEARS, 377 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

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 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 841-2174.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 15 

“California’s Families” A family exploration day from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Compost 101” Learn the basics of composting and how to use this nutrient-rich material in your home garden, at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Allensworth: California’s African-American Town” A panel discussion with historians Susan Anderson and Guy Washington and authors Alice C. Royal, Mickey Ellinger and Scott Braley, at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Trails Challenge: Kennedy Grove This hike explores the hills, early flowers and late winter wildlife. Bring a lunch. Meet at Fern Cottage, at 11 a.m. 525-2233. 

“Learning from the Absurd” lecture by South African artist William Kentridge and hosted by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, at 5 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free and open to the public. 643-9670. 

Personal Theology Seminars with Helene Knox on “My Spiritual Odyssey as Embodied in my Poems” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

East Bay Atheists meet to watch a video of Richard Dawkins at the 2007 Atheists Alliance International Convention, at 1:30 p.m. at Berkeley Main Library, 3rd Floor Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. 

“Today’s Global Meltdown and the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy” at 6:30 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 658-1448. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Temple Beth Abraham, Social Hall, 327 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Mark Henderson on “Sacred Art and Prayer Wheels: An Avenue to Light” 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 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., March 5, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7460.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., March 5, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7429. 

City Council meets Tues., March 10, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Board of Library Trustees meets Wed., March 11, at 9:30 a.m. and March 13 at 3 p.m. at the Central Branch Library, 981-6195.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., March 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5431. 

Planning Commission meets Wed., March 11, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., March 11, at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., March 11, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6737.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., March 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428. 

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., March 12, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356. 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., March 12, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., March 12, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430. 

ONGOING 

Help Low-wage Families with Their Taxes United Way’s Earn it! Keep It! Save It! needs Bay Area volunteers for its 7th annual free tax program. No previous experience necessary. Sign up at www.earnitkeepitsaveit.org