Mandated by state law to analyze the city’s Housing Element for constraints on building new housing, Berkeley Deputy Planning and Development Director Wendy Cosin couldn’t find any. 

That’s what she told the Planning Commission June 24, when commissioners held a hearing to see if any changes were needed to the Housing Element, a key section of the city’s General Plan.  

While citywide development standards resemble those of other cities and can’t be restrictive of adding new housing units to the city, “in the commercial zones where there is no density set, its the opposite of a constraint,” resulting in high-density housing, Cosin said. 

The city’s No. 2 planning officer said the city may have to deal with one potential constraint, the requirement of a use permit for the construction of any new housing. 

Use permits require a public hearing in front of the Zoning Adjustments Board before new housing can be built, adding “delay and uncertainty which we may need to address,” Cosin said. 

The city will have to examine all the new plans and regulations adopted by the City Council since the last time the housing element was updated, Cosin said. 

“We have met with developers to learn their concerns,” she said, and the Planning Department will be considering new policies for the future, “like a buffer zone that backs up to transit corridors.” 

Other changes could include definition of projects which could be built “by right,” rather than through a use permit. Another possible change would be easing regulations for accessory dwelling units, or ADUs—otherwise known as “mother-in-law apartments.” 

Steve Wollmer, a Berkeley resident who has been critical—sometimes to the point of legal action—of some transit corridor projects, said that the city’s density standards haven’t lead to much affordable housing, either of the right price or the right type. 

The city has very little housing for people with very low incomes, Wollmer said. “The problem isn’t development standards in residential neighborhoods,” he said. “It’s the development standards in the commercial districts.” Upzoning along transit corridors won’t help either, he said.  

Planning commissioner Gene Poschman also questioned the notion of a transit corridor buffer, and when he asked for specifics, Cosin acknowledged that “we haven’t done the analysis yet.” 

Commissioner Teresa Clarke, a non-profit sector developer, said the city should not only look at ADUs but “areas where you can do four units,” such as 5,000-square-foot lots where “it’s cumbersome to go through a huge public process to add new units. If all R-2 zones had more units, they would be on a scale a lot of neighbors wouldn’t object to” 

West Berkeley resident Edward Moore said he was troubled that he couldn’t add an ADU to his Victorian-era house because of lot size requirements. 

“I’d like to encourage us to have more mother-in-law units in R-1 zones,” now reserved for single-family dwellings, said commissioner James Novosel, who said allowing tandem off-street parking, currently not allowed in the city but legal in Albany and El Cerrito, should be allowed if the units are built. Tandem parking allows cars to park off-street end to end. 

Novosel said duplexes in R-2 zones should be allowed to include a single ADU each. 

Commissioner Harry Pollack said another way to encourage more units might be allowing buildings to downsize their units, “to make them affordable.”  

Chair David Stoloff said intensification of residential development by upzoning abutting properties behind transit corridors “doesn’t have to be a blanket thing for the entire city. San Pablo Avenue would be very appropriate.”  

Stoloff said the commission is also “ready for the idea of reducing lot size for secondary units.” 

The discussion ended without formal action.

AC Transit took its first steps June 24 toward implementing a December district-wide bus service cut. The bus district held a public board workshop to reveal the first public details of its plan and set a Sept. 9 date for a formal public hearing. 

District officials say the cuts are necessary in order to keep AC Transit solvent over the next several years, as well as to plug a $9.74 million shortfall in the 2009-10 fiscal year budget. 

The workshop came on the same day that the AC Transit board officially declared a fiscal emergency allowing the district to move forward with the proposed line cuts and adjustments. 

If the service cuts are approved by the board, the district will drop 905 hours of bus service per day across the two-county district, 458 hours on weekends, for an estimated annual savings of $18 million. 

"We’re going to run less, but we’re going to run what we run better,” AC Transit Services and Operations Manager Corey Lavigne told board members at a special 3 p.m. workshop on the proposed service cuts last week. 

The complicated service-cut proposal introduced by district staff contains some complete line cuts and the elimination of small pockets of service, as well partial cuts and consolidation of other lines.  

Lavigne said that the proposed changes “will mean additional transfers for riders on some of the adjusted lines,” but told board members that staff had no recommendation yet on any possible changes to the district’s transfer policy to adjust to the additional need. Transfers currently cost AC Transit riders an additional 25 cents, and can only be used for one transfer. 

Trying to track the proposed staff changes between the written staff report and the existing AC Transit bus line map is next to impossible, and Lavigne promised board members that maps of the proposed changes would be made available to the public in the near future. 

Board members made few comments during the staff presentation on the proposed changes, which several board members had already seen and been briefed on in private sessions. Board members appeared resigned to the changes and several suggested that this may not reflect all of the changes necessary. 

“I’m concerned that the work that [staff has] done [on the proposed line cuts changes] will not adequately address our budget situation,” Ward 5 Director Jeff Davis said, adding that, “I hope [staff has] left some reserve in your tank” for coming up with new line cuts. 

The AC Transit Board proposed taking a formal vote on the proposed line cuts and changes when the board meets on July 8. 

The staff proposed eliminating three lines in the Oakland hills, including the 47 line between Fruitvale BART and 55th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, the 59 and 59A lines between the Lake Merritt BART and Rockridge BART stations, and the 41 line between Highland Avenue and Estates Drive. 

In Berkeley, portions of the 79 line between the downtown Berkeley BART and the El Cerrito Plaza BART are proposed to be eliminated, to be replaced by a “North Berkeley Neighborhood Shuttle,” described in the staff report as a “neighborhood service for implementation from downtown Berkeley to Pierce and Buchanan, the Target store on Eastshore, and University Village, then via Eighth Street to Cedar Street and returning to Martin Luther King.” The report says the new North Berkeley shuttle “replaces portions of the current 19, 52L and 79 lines.” What portion of the 79 line to be eliminated is not clear from the staff report. 

AC Transit staff is also proposing eliminating the portion of the 74 line in Richmond that runs to Marina Bay from 23rd Street, as well as the portion of the 13 line between the West Oakland BART station and the old Oakland Army Base. 

The district also proposes several completely new lines as well to help compensate for some of the line adjustments and cuts, including a shuttle between the Eastmont Transit Center on 73rd and MacArthur and the Oakland Airport, a new crosstown line along Fruitvale Avenue connecting the Dimond and Fruitvale business districts and portion of Alameda, a West Oakland neighborhood line between MacArthur BART, Lake Merritt BART, and West Oakland BART, and a new line connecting MacArthur Boulevard with Chinatown, downtown Oakland, and Jack London Square.

A two-alarm arson fire caused nearly $200,000 in damage to a South Berkeley home early Saturday evening, the first in a series of three arsons on the same street that evening. 

Assistant Fire Chief Donna McCracken said the fire at 1711 Woolsey St. was reported at 5:17 p.m., and the first engine company arrived to find the front porch fully ablaze, with flames eating up through the eaves into attic. 

“They knocked down the fire on the porch fairly quickly, then took up the attic,” said Assistant Chief McCracken. 

One neighbor reports that he had been fighting the blaze with his garden hose before the engine company arrived. 

“We managed to slow it down a bit,” he wrote to neighbors in an e-mail. “At some point my neighbor in the burning house came out the back door and got his tenant out, who lives in an upper flat accessed by an exterior set of stairs off the side of the house. The whole thing was pretty scary.”  

Firefighters called a second alarm after they axed their way through the attic roof and discovered that the space contained a maze of walls, which made battling the flames difficult in the early evening heat, McCracken said. 

“They got it knocked down in about a half hour,” she said. “There was extensive fire damage to the porch and the attic, and smoke and water damage to the rest of the house.” 

The assistant chief said arriving firefighters also faced another problem, a live power line arcing in the street after flames had burned it through.  

Firefighters finally cleared the scene at 8:50 p.m., said Assistant Chief McCracken.  

The emergency workers had to tread carefully, because PG&E’s emergency weekend crew was busy at another residential fire. 

Neighbors reported that the fire may have been set by children, but McCracken would only confirm that the blaze was “of suspicious origin” and currently the subject of investigation by both the Berkeley fire and police departments. 

According to Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Andrew J. Frankel, “While at the scene of the first fire, information came to light that there had been a second smaller fire set outside of a home on the 1800 block of Woolsey Street, which had been extinguished by the resident.” 

Frankel said officers learned of the third arson attempt while interviewing community members in the 1800 block of Woolsey, when they were told that someone had attempted to set fire to a parked car. 

“The Fire Marshall responded to the scene and described all three fires as suspicious in their origins and most likely arson,” Frankel said. 

The officer asked anyone with information about the fires to call the Berkeley Police Property Crimes Detail directly at 981-5737 or through the department dispatcher at 981-5900.  

Those who wish to retain anonymity may call Bay Area Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS. Crime Stoppers calls are completely confidential, and up to a $2,000 reward is offered, said Officer Frankel. 

AC Transit’s Policy Steering Committee has approved in principle the bus district’s plan to consolidate station stops along the route of its prosped Bus Rapid Transit route, but made it plain that any decisions on setting aside dedicated bus lanes must go to the governing bodies of the affected cities. 

Under the proposal, most local bus stops on Telegraph Avenue and International Boulevard would be eliminated, with AC Transit adding 14 additional stops to the 35 1R rapid stops currently operating in the proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line. 

BRT is a hybrid system between traditional bus service and light rail, combining the use of buses with light-rail-type boarding stations. AC Transit is proposing to run the rapid bus line along the route currently run by the 1R and 1 bus lines. While some BRT systems operate without lanes dedicated exclusively to buses, AC Transit is proposing using bus-only lanes for much of the project. 

The Policy Steering Committee, which met June 19, is made up of representatives of the AC Transit board, the three cities to be affected by the proposed rapid bus line (Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro), and several other area transit officials, including the Metropolitan Transit Commission. While the committee has no decision-making power, its membership has considerable influence in the various local governing bodies which must give approval for some aspects of the BRT system. 

AC Transit is currently negotiating with city council and city planning representatives in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro over those cities’ proposals for the final configuration of the system before the completion of the environmental impact review process and the AC Transit Board votes on the completed BRT package. 

Those negotiations have already resulted in significant changes in San Leandro, where city officials have vetoed the set-aside of bus-only lanes in the city’s downtown corridor. 

The two Berkeley representatives split on the recommendation to consolidate the 1R and eliminate most of the 1 line stops, with Mayor Tom Bates making the motion to approve the proposal and City Councilmember Kriss Worthington the lone vote against it. The vote on the motion was 6-1. 

Worthington has been a solid advocate of some form of BRT. He told told the Daly Planet that he objected to voting on only one piece of the total BRT package. 

“If the only question is taking away local bus stops being used by senior citizens and disabled bus riders, then I’ve got to say no,” Worthington said, adding that the proper procedure would be to have the Policy Steering Committee “be presented with a vote on the entire, completed package where we’re able to weigh all of the benefits of the system against the minuses.”  

Worthington said he was concerned that disabled and senior citizen bus patrons would be “turned off” and “potentially be turned into opponents” of BRT if all they know of the system is the elimination of local stops. 

Bus stops along the 1R line are currently about half a mile apart (approximately six city blocks) while stops for the 1, a local line, average 900 feet apart (approximately two city blocks). 

Under the AC Transit proposal, the new configuration of BRT stations would average one third of a mile apart (approximately four city blocks). 

In Berkeley, for example, AC Transit’s BRT proposal would eliminate the current 1 local stops at Prince, Webster, Russell, Stuart, Parker, and Durant while placing station stops at Alcatraz, Ashby, Derby, Dwight and Haste, and Sather Gate. 

An AC Transit staff analysis released at the Policy Steering Committee meeting estimated that 13 percent of Berkeley passengers and 16 percent of Oakland passengers would have to walk to a different bus stop than they currently use if the proposed BRT configuration is put into place. The staff reported that “many” of those passengers would not have to walk further to their stop, but simply “walk the same distance, but in the opposite direction."

UC Berkeley has just issued a call for bids from builders for the $190 million “seismic safety improvement” overhaul of Memorial Stadium. 

The call, just posted online at the University’s Capital Projects website, is the prelude to a Wednesday, July 1, meeting which builders must attend if they are to compete on the project. 

The plans call for a complete transformation of the stadium’s seating; the addition of a new raised press box atop the stadium’s western edge; lowering the playing field; installation of new seating (including a costly premium section); seismic strengthening; new scoreboards; and an excavation of earth along the stadium’s eastern side to create a new plaza level beneath the seating. 

Bids are scheduled to be opened at 2:02 p.m. July 16. 

The new contract is the second stage of a project which began with the destruction of the oak grove along the stadium’s western wall and the start of construction of the new four-level Student Athlete High Performance Center. 

Construction was delayed for more than a year by a tree-sit staged by activists who wanted to preserve the oak grove and by a lengthy legal battle waged by environmentalists. 

The stadium poses unique design challenges, given that the Hayward Fault—deemed by federal geologists the likely site of the Bay Area’s next major earthquake—runs directly beneath the stadium, running from goalpost to goalpost. 

The bid call is available online at http://www.cp.berkeley.edu/AdsForBids.html.

State budget cuts will force more parents to take responsibility for dropping off and picking up their children from Berkeley’s public elementary schools starting in August. 

The Berkeley Board of Education Wednesday unanimously approved the extension of walk-boundary perimeters in the district, which will reduce bus services and prompt more students to walk, bike or be driven to school. 

Only students who live outside a 1.5-mile radius of a Berkeley Unified elementary school will be allowed to ride bus in the new academic year. 

The change will not affect middle or high school students because—with the exception of special education students—the district does not provide them with transportation services. 

The new walk-boundary will increase the existing walk-boundary—established in 1995—by half a mile.  

District Superintendent Bill Huyett said there was no cause for alarm yet. 

“It’s one of the small things that comes with the budget cuts,” he said. “Many districts have completely dropped transportation. Berkeley Unified did not have to take such drastic measures.” 

Huyett said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing a 65 percent cut in transportation funds while the state Legislature is proposing a 20 percent cut. 

“We have to plan on the 65 percent cut,” Huyett said. “We are subsidizing transportation to a great extent. The state will not pay.” 

On May 27, the school board approved Huyett’s recommendation for the district’s 2009-2010 budget reductions, including laying off two bus drivers. 

The district’s Transportation Manager Bernadette Cormier told the board that data from 2008-09 showed that the loss of the two drivers would impact transportation services, thereby making it necessary for the district to extend the walk-boundary. 

Approximately 1,700 of the district’s 9,000 students use the district’s school buses. The cuts to transportation will result in a savings of $184,076 for Berkeley Unified. 

It is estimated that 400 children in the district's 11 elementary schools will be affected by the increase in the walk-boundary. 

“These are choices none of us want to make, but we are in a tight budget year and every program has been impacted,” said board director John Selawsky. 

Berkeley Unified is divided into four geographic zones. The district often accommodates students who live in one zone but attend school in another if they request it, if there is capacity, and if it doesn’t affect the timing or cost structure of the routes. The reconfiguration of the walk-boundary would mean that potentially 48 “out-of-zone” students would be excluded from bus stop assignments. 

Bussing for private after-school programs may have to be reduced or eliminated, Cormier said, explaining that the district was taking a careful look over the next three weeks at how the routes would shape up. 

“If we have to reconstruct our boundaries, we might have to be a little tighter with these programs,” Cormier said. 

Berkeley Unified currently provides bus services, at no additional cost, for six to eight private after-school programs which fall along the district's regular routes. 

School Board President Nancy Riddle suggested that given the cuts to the transportation program, the district might consider charging families for transporting their children to non-public after-school programs. Board Vice President Karen Hemphill stressed the importance of having a district-run after-school program at every elementary school, which she said provided parents with an alternative. 

Cormier told the Daily Planet that in a difficult budget climate, it was not unusual for school districts to charge students for transportation services to programs outside the district's jurisdiction. 

She said the district’s transportation department was still working on what specific routes would be affected by the cuts based on the 2009-10 data. Her staff will collaborate with the district’s communications team to inform families likely to be impacted by the service reductions. 

The schools, Cormier said, would work with Alameda County’s Safe Routes to School program to address the impact of the changes on traffic safety and street crossings. 

At present, most bus stops at the Berkeley elementary schools are located within certain neighborhood areas bound by busy streets. District staff make every attempt to avoid having students walk through heavy traffic while walking to these stops, Cormier said. 

Additionally, students who live on the boundary of the current one-mile radius are allowed to ride the bus if they cite safety reasons for walking to school. They are picked up from bus stops situated closest to their residences. The district will continue to consider these requests for the new 1.5-mile walk-boundary, Cormier said. 

The district, Cormier said, would work with Safe Routes to School and the City of Berkeley’s Injury Prevention Division to address traffic flow near the affected schools and provide resources on alternative traveling arrangements to parents. 

At its June 10 meeting, the school board approved the launch of a traffic safety campaign to address reduction in congestion, traffic, noise and pollution around Berkeley’s public schools and promote walking and biking and pedestrian safety in classrooms as well as among parents. 

The campaign will also address such issues as placement of crossing guards and traffic engineering upgrades.  

The push for bicycle and pedestrian safety was in response to a spike in pedestrian accidents in the district during the spring, the most serious of which led to the death of LeConte Elementary School kindergartener Zachary Michael Cruz. 

West Berkeley residents and business owners voiced their concerns to the Planning Commission Wednesday (June 24) about proposals to ease development rules on larger parcels in Berkeley’s only industrial area. 

The efforts of commissioners and city staff to implement the City Council directive to make zoning rules more flexible along the city’s western edge have sparked resistance from a growing coalition. 

Latest to join the critical ranks are residents of the sectors zoned for mixed use—mostly areas near the San Pablo Avenue eastern border of the district. 

After asking for recognition as a stakeholder during the commission’s June 10 meeting, Principal Planner Alex Amoroso has held one meeting with the group and more are planned to bring them up to speed on proposed changes. 

As with past meetings on West Berkeley, there were speakers aplenty ready for the public comment section of the discussion—enough that chair David Stoloff imposed a 90-seconds-per-speaker limit on remarks. 

Amoroso, who has been heading the staff effort to formulate zoning code revisions for the area, opened the discussion with the four specific changes he was proposing in response to the City Council’s directive to fast-track at least some code changes. 

Three of the proposed changes did not generate any significant controversy from either commissioners or the public: 

• Allowing existing businesses in the Mixed Use Light Industrial zone (MULI) to allot up to 10 percent of their space to a retail shop to sell products manufactured on site through an administrative use permit (AUP), an action which doesn’t require a public hearing before the Zoning Adjustments Board. Currently businesses are barred from adding shops unless they do so at the time their original permit for the property is obtained. 

• Allowing the interchangeability of the currently protected manufacturing, wholesale, warehouse and recycling businesses (“material recovery enterprises”), clarifying an issue which is currently a legally gray area. 

• Replacing the Standard Industrial Code (SIC) classification system now used in the city zoning code with the more contemporary North American Industrial Classification System, which includes a wide range of business categories not in existence at the time the SIC was created. 

But the fourth proposal, “Demising of space in existing buildings,” generated substantial kickback from John Norheim, one of West Berkeley’s leading real estate brokers, and from members of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC), which represents existing businesses and the areas artists and crafts workers. 

“Demising” means subdividing space within a single site into smaller parcels 

Amoroso’s proposal to reduce subdivisions which require a use permit with a public hearing before ZAB to a staff-issued AUP has raised concerns among West Berkeley residents who fear excessive subdividing of the small percentage of Berkeley land zoned for making things. 

WEBAIC offered their own counterproposal, which would allow subdivision of existing sites for two to five uses with an over-the-counter zoning certificate, an AUP for division into six to nine spaces, and a full use permit with a public hearing for 10 spaces and up. 

“Obviously it’s a bad idea to allow any large building to be demised into a large number of spaces without a public hearing,” said John Curl, a woodworker and one of the original organizers of WEBAIC. 

“We agree with WEBAIC,” said Norheim, who has worked in West Berkeley for more than 25 years. He and partner Don Yost worked with WEBAIC to develop their counterproposal. Norheim said he and other West Berkeley people had worked for 13 years on the West Berkeley Plan, the document which sets the current development parameters for the area. 

In the end, commissioners agreed to consider the WEBAIC proposal along with the staff suggestion when they conduct a public hearing on the fast-track items during their July 22 meeting. 

Commissioners didn’t get to discuss the potentially most explosive proposal on their West Berkeley agenda during Wednesday night’s meeting—a revised master use permit (MUP) that would allow sequential development and new rules for large parcels. 

Just how big those parcels would be—and how many—pose thorny problems for the commissions, with developers seeking smaller parcels and more of them that WEBAIC and its allies. 

WEBAIC seeks to confine the MUPs to a few of the areas largest parcels, while developers have said they don’t want caps on number or size. 

Susanne Hering, who operates a West Berkeley laboratory that develops methods for measuring airborne particles, said that allowing interchangeable uses “effectively shuts down any lab use,” because the generators needed to keep operations working during power outages could cause noise problems for office and residential tenants. 

Other critical issues include allowed uses, with the staff proposing changes that could allow office-only buildings and high-rises of up to 90 feet, twice the current height limit for the area. 

In addition to critics from WEBAIC, those proposals have drawn fire from members of the new residential stakeholder group, who fear tall buildings would shadow their homes and create traffic gridlock. 

“To me, the biggest issue is height,” said Judy Dater, a West Berkeley photographer who relies on natural light for illumination in her studio.  

“If a tall building were built next to my studio, I’d be out of business,” she said, literally overshadowed by the high-rise.  

“I’m not opposed to development if it’s within the existing height and zoning limits,” said Jack Van Euw, another resident. 

Commissioners will take up the MUP minefield during their next meeting on July 8. 

The Berkeley City Council adopted its two year-biennial budget Tuesday night, with the caveat—now becoming the standard refrain of the day—that the results of currently ongoing state budget action will mean that Berkeley will be tinkering with its finances into the fall. Since no one expects that the results of the Sacramento deliberations will be more money going back to local governments in California, this will mean that Berkeley’s budget adjustments will either be cutbacks or revenue increases, or some combination of the two. 

“The budget does not account for the full brunt of the effects of state action,” Budget Manager Tracey Veseley told the City Council Tuesday night. “We need to be prepared for that.” 

For the time being, Berkeley is running on a $299.7 million total operating budget for fiscal year 2009 ($138 million in general funds), with a $17 million decrease in total operating funds and a $6 million increase in general funds for the following year. 

Most of the details of the budget have been in place for several weeks. 

In order to balance the budget, for the second time this year the council raised across-the-board parking fines by $5 per citation. Fines for most overtime parking violations will jump from $35 to $40, while no parking zone violations will go from $56 to $61. 

And as part of its preparation for expected state cutbacks, the council will consider three other parking-related fee increases—raising the meter rate by 25 cents, adding meters to new areas, and a 15-percent residential preferred parking fee increase—in the coming weeks. 

While supporting the parking fine increase, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak asked staff to come back with recommendations for a possible break on the sharp increase in fines when motorists fail to pay their parking tickets on time. The current $35 fine adds a $30 penalty after payment is 28 days late, another $50 after 47 days late, bringing the total possible fine to $115. Wozniak said that the late-fee increase made Berkeley “worse than credit card companies.” 

Councilmember Susan Wengraf said that the parking fine increase was a “temporary” response to the state budget cutbacks to local governments, saying that in a “good faith gesture,” the city “should let people know that this is a temporary measure, and we will lower the fee when the state returns the money to us.” 

But City Manager Phil Kamlarz threw cold water on that idea, saying that it is “unlikely that the state will ever give the money back.” 

In other action at Tuesday night’s meeting, the council postponed until the next meeting—at Kamlarz’ request—setting the direction for regulation of Berkeley’s wireless telecommunications (cell phone) facilities.

The Berkeley City Council took significantly more than a symbolic stand against international sweatshop labor Tuesday night, approving a Sweatshop Free Ordinance to limit the amount of city money going to companies that exploit their labor. 

Wikipedia defines a sweatshop as “a working environment with conditions that are considered by many people of industrialized nations to be difficult or dangerous, usually where the workers have few opportunities to address their situation. This can include exposure to harmful materials, hazardous situations, extreme temperatures, or abuse from employers. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for little pay, regardless of any laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labor laws may also be violated.” 

The new ordinance banning city purchase of most sweatshop-approved apparel is a product of the city’s Commission on Labor, which began working on the law in April of 2006 following a referral from the council. 

Under the law, businesses with contracts of $25,000 or more providing “apparel” to the city must verify that they are not selling goods to the city that were produced by companies violating certain specified workers rights. 

The council briefly haggled over lowering the contract threshold to $10,000, but then passed the ordinance on a unanimous vote after staff said they would work with businesses with the smaller contracts to try to achieve voluntary compliance with the standards. One of four city-contracting vendors coming under the $25,000 ordinance threshold was identified as a “Berkeley business,” but neither staff nor councilmembers identified the business by name. 

The new ordinance says that companies manufacturing apparel goods bought by Berkeley must meet standards in several areas, including compliance with American and international standards on forced and child labor, non-discrimination, and freedom of association and collective bargaining. In addition, the manufacturers must not force worker overtime, must not practice discrimination, must respect women’s rights, must allow freedom of association among their workers, and must not engage in retaliation against workers who complain of adverse working conditions. 

Under the new law, the Berkeley city manager is authorized to take a series of steps when violations occur, beginning with setting up a remediation plan and ending with sanctions and termination of the city contract if compliance is not achieved.

In nearby Richmond, Garden Club activist Jayma Brown had raised concerns with city officials after she was told during a monthly neighborhood council meeting that the city had banned front-yard gardens. 

Brown, who also serves on the city’s Historic Preservation and Community Development commissions, found herself deluged with responses after Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and City Councilmember Jim Rogers got involved, followed by the city planning and legal departments. 

“I was a bit leery to go public until I knew the answer,” Brown said, “But now that I know, I am proud that Richmond has no laws against edible public gardens, and I know that many people are moving towards creating more edible gardens within our city both on public and private land.” 

First to respond to Brown’s concerns was Rogers, who e-mailed city Planning Director Richard Mitchell. “I wasn’t aware that the act of growing fresh, healthy food (e.g., lettuce) in one’s front yard (and avoiding contributing to the 20 percent of the global warming problem that is related to food production) was illegal ... If it is illegal, please inform me as to the arguments in favor of illegality.” 

Mayor McLaughlin followed with an e-mail of her own to Mitchell, asking if front-yard gardens and fruit trees ran afoul of the law. 

“If it is indeed a Richmond law, I would like to ask the city attorney’s office to change/cancel this ordinance and bring it to council for a vote ASAP. I would be happy to sponsor such an ordinance change.” 

Assistant City Attorney Mary J. Renfro came up with the definitive answer, reached after consulting the city’s Health, Public Safety and Welfare and Zoning codes. 

While some legal provisions require yard maintenance and “prohibit nuisance conditions that might attract trespassers and vermin,” none of them suggests that it is impermissible to grow fruit or other edible plants in the front yard. 

Many of the members of the new garden movement are also organic gardeners, the bane of American agribusiness. 

Consider the reigning star of America’s organic planters, unofficial First Gardener Michelle Obama. 

Days after the presidential partner and a group of Washington, D.C., fifth-graders turned a section of the South Lawn of the White House into an organic gardening plot, Bonnie McCarvel, executive director of the Mid America CropLife Association, and CropLife “Ambassador Coordinator” Janet Braun had fired off a written response  

After wishing “congratulations on recognizing the importance of agriculture in America,” they praised “conventional agriculture” and hailed “crop protection products and their contribution to sustainable agriculture.” 

Every single comment to the letter on CropLife’s own web posting of the letter was critical, with the tone ranging along a spectrum from sarcasm to scorn and finally outrage.

Asa Dodsworth faces an ever-mounting pile of potential fines from the City of Berkeley. His crime? He says it’s front-yard gardening. 

But Gregory Daniel, the city’s chief code enforcement officer, said the problem is simpler: Building structures on public property without a permit. 

City code poses problems for front-lawn gardeners who want to build planter boxes and retaining walls on their front lawns so they can either stop and smell the roses or grab some home-grown victuals for lunch. 

While many Berkeley residents might not know it, the city controls a considerable portion of the property between the curb and the front door—including outright ownership of the parking strip between street and sidewalk plus an easement that takes up a total of 17 feet between curb and home along the block of Acton Street where Dodsworth owns his home, Daniel said. 

That puts Dodsworth in a tough spot since his narrow Acton Street front yard is the only place he can garden, given that the backyard consists of a small patio and the steep banks of Strawberry Creek. 

Dodsworth’s plantings extend from his front porch to the nearest edge of the sidewalk, then from the far side of the sidewalk to the curb, almost all of it within the city’s statutory control. 

Dodsworth said he’d been warned that he could be fined up to $500 a day for each of a series of violations ranging from cultivation of plants taller than six feet, planting a tree within 15 feet of the curb without a permit, planting in the city right-of-way between the curb and sidewalk, unpermitted construction of garden beds, construction of garden beds between street and curb, and another garden-bed violation—the total running to up to $3,000 a day. 

In his defense, he said that to ease access to and from cars parked along the curb, he’s made sure there are no obstructions within 18 inches of the curb face, and for pedestrians, he’s allowed none of his low-rise plants to overhang the sidewalk, and he’s pruned tree branches so that none is fewer than eight feet above the sidewalk. 

But Daniel said the only violation the city wants to enforce concerns the parking strip. 

While Dodsworth said he was threatened with prosecution for planting fruit trees in his front yard, Daniel insists that’s not the case. 

Daniel said he’s mostly concerned with the planting structures and the table and chairs Dodsworth has placed on the city-owned strip. 

City Parks Superintendent Sue Ferrara said front-yard fruit trees aren’t a problem, but the city requires a no-cost permit for any that are planted in “the parkway,” her department’s term for what Daniel calls the parking strip. 

The city will meet with the landowner to pick an appropriate tree, one that won’t cause the sidewalk to heave or attract rats, among other considerations. 

City Public Information Officer Mary Kay Clunies-Ross said, “It’s the planting boxes that are in the way.” 

Dodsworth is no stranger to controversy. A Food-Not-Bombs activist who serves food to the homeless at People’s Park, he also supported the Memorial Stadium tree-sit and ran for a City Council seat last November. 

And like any activist responding to an officialdom intent on destroying the object of his passion, he is fighting back and looking for supporters in his battle against city hall. 

It’s not like this is the first time Dodsworth has been busted for unlawful gardening. 

His previous battle with the city in 2005 ended with the city-forced demolition of an attractive, over the sidewalk flowering arbor, a feature much liked by some of his neighbors and passersby but one that ran afoul of city laws. 

This time the war between plants and people focuses on plantings between sidewalk and curb, technically city property, and in his front yard, where planting boxes contain a variety of edible and attractive plants—as well as a couple of potentially scofflaw fruit trees. 

According to Dodsworth, the problems began when city code enforcement officer Gregory Daniel spotted his garden as he was driving down Acton Street. It was also Daniel who had cited him for the arbor four years ago. 

Daniel said the only reason he acted was because of complaints from neighbors. Callers complained about large vehicles parking on the narrow stretch of street, including “two or three yellow buses” used by Food Not Bombs and an oversized pickup and large mobile home that was once parked nearby. 

Dodsworth said one bus had parked there, and he insisted the vehicle was legally registered. 

“Neither the truck or the trailer had current registration, and the guy who owned them took off when we got there,” Daniel said. 

Dodsworth isn’t the only yard gardener drawing fire for trying to raise food on the homefront. 

Gary Rosenberg, who lives nearby in the 1400 block of Bancroft Way, has amassed more than $6,000 in fines for building a greenhouse atop his home. 

“It was neighbors who called to complain there, too,” Daniel said. 

Rosenberg, who wrote City Councilmember Darryl Moore in January to say that he was working with an architect to make sure the addition is safe, described his homestead as “my urban farm.” 

But Daniel said neighbors were more concerned about malodorous compost which had been cooking in the sun along his parking strip. 

One of Dodsworth’s neat bits of psychological jujitsu has been to dub his front-yard vegetable and ornamental plantings a Victory Garden, conjuring up images of domestic campaigns during this country’s involvement in the two World Wars of the 20th century. 

During the World Wars, the United States adopted—temporarily—many of the same values espoused by the modern green movement, including extensive recycling and growing food locally. 

Local food growth allowed diversion of more foods to the American military and to the nation’s allies during the two eras of massive military conflict. Fuel conservation was also espoused, though rubber for tires rather than gasoline itself was rationed as a way to encourage use of mass transit. 

Victory Gardens became ubiquitous, featured during World War II on the covers of major magazines like the New Yorker and front pages of national and local newspapers. 

University extension departments taught home canning of vegetables and other forms of food preservation—all foreshadowing the calls of the green movement at the dawn of the next century. 

Dodsworth said he chose the name “because once upon a time we were all supposed to plant gardens for a greater purpose.” 

“This isn’t about a city campaign against Victory Gardens,” Daniel said. 

As a result of the city’s actions and Dodsworth’s counter-campaign, the soft-spoken activist has attracted the support other activists including Maxina Ventura of East Bay Pesticide Alert and Nik Bertulis, Merritt College Regenerative Design instructor. 

His plight has also resonated through the growing sector of the blogosphere that focuses on urban gardens and the so-called “slow food movement,” where stories about his “Acton Street Victory Garden” have struck a sympathetic chord with bloggers including the authors of Garden Rant, Vegan Reader, Slow Family Online and Streetsblog San Francisco. 

Daniel said one concern had been that animals had escaped from Dodsworth property. The young activist keeps chickens, largely rescue roosters and some hens, and occasionally the resulting chicks are able to squeeze their way to a fence. 

He gives many of the birds away to others who want to start their own broods. 

During a reporter’s Tuesday evening visit to the property, two neighborhood youngsters came by, eager to show the mother of one the colorful birds then contained behind a fence. All three visitors were delighted. 

Minutes later, a couple of the younger fowl managed the great escape, but confined their activity to looking for eats among the garden plants. 

So while Dodsworth follows many of the same rules embodied in the city’s emerging Climate Action Plan and devotes much of his time to feeding the homeless—another Berkeley civic virtue—he’s also a bureaucrat’s worst nightmare. 

“I’ve told him he could come down and apply for an encroachment permit to regularize his structures,” Daniel said. But like his neighbor on Bancroft Way, Dodsworth has yet to apply

A pastor, a couple of community organizers and a group of parents, educators and students met at The Way Christian Center in Berkeley recently to discuss plans for a new charter school in the city. 

The proposal, which has yet to come before the Berkeley Board of Education for approval, is being shepherded by Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action. Organizers hope to provide an alternative for students who have difficulty adjusting to Berkeley High School or Berkeley Technology Academy, the city’s only public continuation high school. 

Named Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement (REALM), the school will operate under the Berkeley Unified School District, providing 9th through 12th graders—especially youth of color from South and West Berkeley—with an intimate small public school learning environment 

If the school board votes in favor of the project, then Berkeley might get its second charter school as early as fall 2010. The first one opened at St. Joseph’s the Worker Church about a year after its private school closed down in August 2007. 

However, there are a number of things—finances and long term feasibility being just two—which need to be worked out first. 

BOCA called a community meeting last month to address some of those concerns. 

B-Tech Principal Victor Diaz, who has also taught at the Real Alternatives Program in San Francisco and served as a continuation school principal in the Boston public schools, answered questions from the audience along with a panel of speakers from his school and Emery High School. There are seven founding directors of REALM, including Diaz, Dr. Jabari Mahiri, professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education; educator, human rights advocate and writer Dr. Chris Knaus and Pastor Michael McBride of BOCA. 

“We think it’s a realistic mission statement,” Diaz said of the proposed charter school’s goal to inculcate resiliency skills in students through innovative, culturally relevant and rigorous educational programs. 

The school’s vision, Diaz explained, is “project-based learning,” which would seek to eliminate the achievement gap by teaching students important research and writing skills required for social change. It would also prepare them for 21st century challenges by training them in new media and technology. 

He said that despite some of the academic successes at B-Tech, it was often hard for students to deal with life after school or college. 

“The kids will learn how to communicate globally,” he said. “They will be interacting in an immersive environment.” 

REALM will start by admitting 260 students with plans to expand to 400 by the 2013-2014 school year. Students will not be selected by lottery and admission will be open to any student who meets Berkeley Unified’s residency requirements. 

Diaz added that the school would not be giving preference to B-Tech students. 

“It’s our goal to include all kids,” he said. “There might be kids at Berkeley High who want to go to B-Tech but who don’t like the stigma attached with it. Again there might be students at B-tech who have voluntarily transferred from Berkeley High to B-Tech and don’t have any discipline issues. They can opt to come to this new charter school.” 

A couple of parents said they were concerned whether the plan would work in the current economic crisis which had left Berkeley Unified with a shortfall of millions of dollars. 

“What about these costs?—it’s like we are in fantasy land,” a Latina mother said. 

Diaz explained that the proposal for the school would include a budget aligned with its education goals. 

“It cannot be in a fantasy land, where everybody is sitting on a rock and holding hands,” he said. “There are some schools who have submitted a budget but have stolen money or gone bankrupt. We don’t want to have a school that will shut down four years from now. We want the school to be successful.” 

Diaz said the costs for setting up the new charter school would be made public after it gets submitted to the school board, admitting that the volatile economy could lead to adjustments to the budget. 

He acknowledged that the idea had met with some interest, but it would take time before there were “300 people beating down the door.” 

If the board denies the proposal, its proponents would take it to Alameda County as an appeal or bring it back to the board. 

Nancy Williams, a parent advocate at B-Tech and a founding director of REALM, said that the charter school hopes to expose students to the right curriculum, eliminating their chance of failing ninth grade and then having to find out that they have to transfer to B-Tech. 

“I think one of the difficulties we have is that we are getting students so late,” said Hillary Scott Walker, who teaches history at B-Tech. “They have reading, writing and academic difficulties that are being diagnosed really late. If we get them at ninth grade, we can help them a lot earlier.” 

Walker said that it was possible that Berkeley High was suitable for some students and B-Tech for others, but it was important to have another choice. 

A student support services staff at B-Tech recounted her conversation with a senior right before graduation. 

“The student was talking to me about all the struggles and I thought ‘I wish I had a little more time with you, I wish I got you when you were 15 or 16,’” she said. “I think it’s really amazing what we have created at B-Tech, but it’s a struggle to do it in the model of a continuation school. We are getting our students too late—we have already lost one of our students to violence. My hope is with the smaller learning community we can do the work more easily.” 

Antonio Cediel, who is currently principal of Emery High School, warned that charter schools were “not a silver bullet.” 

“It’s not an answer to everything—what it provides is an option,” said Cediel, who has taught at urban public schools for over the last decade. “The key thing is you build it around a new vision and you attract people who really want to be there. There are good charter schools and bad charter schools. That’s why it’s worthy of support.” 

McBride, who is also a senior pastor at The Way Christian Center, stressed it would take immense work on the part of the community to start a new charter school. 

“We need to shake up Berkeley,” he said. “We need to walk in the neighborhoods and talk to people. So far nobody has said ‘we are definitely for it,’ but no one has said ‘we are definitely against it either.’” 

McBride said after the meeting that part of the proposal was to take advantage of the small school reform happening all over the country, which was getting support from President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. 

Asha Wilkerson, a recent graduate of the UC Hastings law school, said she would love to be on the planning committee for the new charter school or even teach a class on law or government. 

“I want to figure out how I can give back to the community,” said Wilkerson, 25, who is a member of The Way Christian Center. “There are lots of little kids who haven’t had the kind of opportunities I have had. I think a charter school is something that’s doable if you get the right people behind it. Maybe you can’t change the world, but maybe you can change a few lives.” 

Pastor Sarah Isakson of the Lutheran Church of the Cross, who is also one of the founders of the Youth Emergency Assistance Hostel, stopped by to listen to the panelists. 

“We really need a charter school,” she told the Planet. “As a former special education teacher, I know so much can be done by paying attention to students in small settings. You can get more success by just focusing on basic skills and increasing motivation. South and West Berkeley kids, who often have high drop out rates, will benefit from this. Berkeley High is just too big.” 

Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Cathy Campbell said that although there was need for an alternate program within the school district, “there was nothing to indicate that it had to be a charter school.” 

“There needs to be an acknowledgment that Berkeley High is not working for a significant number of students,” she said. “This proposal acts as a challenge to the district to meet some needs of students that are not being met.” 

The Berkeley Board of Education will seek input from Berkeley High School before crafting any policy seeking to reform its School Governance Council.  

Complaints from parents about the council’s noncompliance with state and federal laws prompted a board policy subcommittee Wednesday to recommend aligning it with the model of the district’s K–8 schools. However, others on the board said they would first like to get the high school more involved in the process.  

Bylaws adopted in April 2008 by the Berkeley Unified School District for its elementary and middle schools mandated that a single committee be created to analyze school data, develop an annual plan, allocate supplemental funds and oversee other activities.  

Berkeley High’s complicated makeup, however, prevented the formation of a single committee.   

Instead, the school has two separate committees—the School Governance Council, which also acts as the School Site Council, and the Berkeley School Excellence Program (BSEP) Committee, which oversees expenditures raised under a special local assessment.   

Some parents and at least one board member have complained that the current School Governance Council lacks parity and transparency.  

The policy subcommittee—comprised of school board directors John Selawsky and Shirley Issel—recommended that instead of the current “hybrid” that exists at Berkeley High, the school form a Leadership Team and a Shared Governance Committee.   

The responsibilities of the Leadership Team, the policy subcommittee said, would include curriculum issues, professional development and evaluation of student performance while the Shared Governance Committee would monitor BSEP expenditures and the Safety Committee, among other things.  

Superintendent Bill Huyett suggested that the high school be given a chance to evaluate both the current model and the proposed model to see what suits them best.  

Huyett acknowledged that the “hybrid they have right now brings parents and staff together but doesn’t have clarity.”  

The committee also said they would like to discuss the future of the school’s BSEP Committee to consider whether it should remain as it is or become a subcommittee of the Shared Governance Committee.  

While announcing the policy subcommittee’s recommendation to the board, Issel said that changing the current governance at Berkeley High would help parents who had already been trained in K–8 governance.  

“Parents and staff would not have to learn a new governance model by aligning the high school with K–8,” She said. “It will be aligned with the board’s policy and state and federal law. It’s embracing a model that will distinguish the role of a governance team from the role of the leader.”  

Selawsky called the current model “disadvantageous,” explaining that it led to confusion at the high school and “uncertainty when parents moved from other schools to Berkeley High.”  

“Merging of administration and governance is an unreality to me,” he said. “I would like to see the leadership team bifurcate.”  

Board Vice President Karen Hemphill said she would like the high school to get an opportunity to come up with a plan themselves, adding that if they failed to do so by January 2010, the board would step in.  

Board President Nancy Riddle warned that it would not be appropriate to make any kind of decision about the subcommittee’s recommendation at Wednesday’s meeting because community members had not been adequately notified about the issue.  

Riddle said that, although there were some pros and cons to the current model, more information was required to figure out whether the policy subcommittee’s proposal would work better.  

“Even if we thought it was the best idea in the world, it would take a long time to craft a policy,” she said. “As much as people want a solution, I think it will take a while.”  

Huyett suggested that he was expecting the high school to look at the two models carefully once school was back in session in the fall.  

“In the end, the board will make some choices, but we should hear from the school first,” he said. “I would like the high school to do it during school hours, but we could also be ambitious and get a dialogue going

The Berkeley Board of Education approved more budget reductions at a board meeting Wednesday in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May revision of the state budget. 

The cuts were in addition to the $8 million made earlier this year, responding to the 2009-10 state budget approved by the Legislature in February. 

Schwarzenegger’s latest budget proposal will slash nearly $2 million from the Berkeley Unified School District in the current school year and $3.7 million in 2009-10, only $2.2 million of which district officials predict will be replaced by federal stimulus dollars. 

Berkeley Unified Superintendent Bill Huyett said that while the “overall California budget is very much up in the air,” the district had been able to make “the necessary budget reductions without additional layoffs in the pre-K–12 program.” 

Huyett said Berkeley public schools were in a far better position than other Bay Area school districts, many of which were forced to increase class sizes to 30 students in kindergarten through third grade. 

Berkeley Unified, Huyett said, was fortunate to be maintaining average class sizes at 20 in fourth and fifth grades and 28 in grades seven through 12. 

The district has also been able to reduced the number of tenured teacher layoffs to one. 

Huyett also thanked the Berkeley community for supporting public education through Measure A and other ballot measures over the last two decades.  

He acknowledged that the district had prepared a preliminary budget for 2009–10 with “significant unknowns,” including the final 2009–10 state budget and federal stimulus funds, initially promised for May, but now tentatively scheduled to be distributed later this year. 

A report prepared by district Deputy Superintendent Javetta Cleveland shows that the total cuts in the district from the February budget and the May revise amount to $13.6 million, of which $7.4 million has been addressed with the help of federal stimulus funds, state flexibility funds and the first round of budget reductions approved by the board. 

Cleveland’s report recommended using a number of budget revisions and adjustments to deal with the $5.3 million shortfall. 

An analysis of Berkeley Unified’s Post-Retirement Benefit Fund and the Worker’s Compensation Fund by district staff showed that contributions to each fund could be reduced in 2009–10 and still meet existing obligations. 

Reducing the rates, according to Cleveland’s report, would not affect employee compensation and would instead lower expenses throughout the district, including nearly $700,000 in the general fund. These funds would also return significant amounts to the general fund in 2008–09. 

The $3.7 million shortfall in 2009–10 will be alleviated by $2.2 million in stimulus funds; reductions in post-retirement benefit rate and worker’s compensation rates; a proposed reduction in health benefit costs created by raising deductibles; $400,000 from the Berkeley Adult School (through reduced services and higher fees), and a few smaller changes. 

The adult education budget itself was cut by $1.3 million in the February state budget.  

The state budget gave districts the option to eliminate adult education entirely in 2009–10 and four successive fiscal years to thwart the effect of state reductions to general fund revenues.  

Instead of putting the entire program on the chopping block, Berkeley Unified reduced its adult education program, eliminating adult summer school programs, decreasing some English language learning, high school diploma and older adult classes and charging students and agencies more for senior programs. 

The district will be able to transfer $400,000 from the adult education revenue to its general fund by making additional reductions, such as trimming classes offered for disabled students and seniors, charging fees for English language, vocational and high school diploma classes and raising fees for agencies that offer classes for its disabled adults. 

“We did talk a lot about this with students, and some of them recommended a higher fee,” said Margaret Kirkpatrick, Berkeley Adult School’s outgoing principal. “We are looking at an amount achievable to students with lower incomes, something that would save the school and is in line with other adult schools. And, of course, any student can apply for a fee waiver or scholarship.” 

Kirkpatrick said that although eliminating some programs had been “painful,” the school would continue to benefit students in many ways. 

In an attempt to close the budget gap, the district will also hold back from paying the City of Berkeley $180,000 next year for sanitary sewage service, clean storm water, pool use and maintenance and the Berkeley High School Health Clinic 

Huyett said that although Berkeley Unified was in a better position than other districts, the list of layoffs included bus drivers, clerks, vice principals, counselors and other employees.

In a push to reduce drug and alcohol use by Berkeley’s public school students, the Berkeley Unified School District will collaborate with the City of Berkeley government to form a committee by September to address the issue. 

In March the Berkeley Board of Education received a report from district officials on the 2008 California Healthy Kids Survey, which showed that Berkeley public school students used drugs and alcohol at twice the national average. 

It said that, compared with state and national figures, twice as many Berkeley ninth-graders (31 percent) and 11th-graders (54 percent) reported that they had been drunk on alcohol or high on other drugs while on school property, and twice as many students had smoked marijuana in the preceding 30 days.      

The report said that cigarette, drug and alcohol use among students increased from fifth to 11th grades, and that there was higher consumption of alcohol—except at the fifth-grade level—than in the rest of the state and nation. 

The California Healthy Kids Survey focuses on substance abuse, violence and safety and meets the requirements of the federal Safe and Drug Free Schools Act and the No Child Left Behind Act. 

This was the first time survey results were presented to the school board. The report included data about drug and alcohol use by students in the Berkeley Unified School District, the county and the state, based on information provided by students in the fifth, seventh, ninth and 11th grades. 

 School board directors and district Superintendent Bill Huyett expressed concern at the March board meeting, with some attributing the spike in substance use to Berkeley’s relatively high tolerance of drug culture. 

Huyett warned that intoxicated students lag behind in school and directed district officials to work with the city to create a plan to address alcohol, tobacco and drug use in the city. 

A report presented at the June 17 School Board meeting by Javier Mendieta, the district’s manager of student welfare and attendance, said the 2008 data “reflected a significant increase in the use of marijuana and alcohol by BUSD students from the previous survey” completed in the spring of 2006. 

Mendieta’s report said that district Director of Student Services Felton Owens was inviting representatives from the district, the City of Berkeley’s Health and Human Services staff, and Berkeley Unified parents and teachers to develop a plan for services to address alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse to meet the needs of students, staff and the community. 

Mendieta acknowledged that, although the city has already done a lot of work in this area, the school district didn’t have a chance to weigh in on it. As a result, “the city plan has not been widely implemented in the schools,” Mendieta said, adding that it would provide a good foundation for the committee. 

The new plan, according to Mendieta’s report, would identify evaluation methods taking into account measures left out in the California Healthy Kids Survey. It would review district and school polices on drug and alcohol use and recommend updates if necessary. 

It would also review disciplinary action and intervention and would develop a curriculum aligned with the Health Framework for California Public Schools, including a recommendation for an approved drug-education curriculum for secondary schools. 

Peer and support programs such as Upfront: A Reality Drug Education and Support Program for High Schools, currently running as a pilot at B-Tech, would also be considered. 

Other goals include broadening parent and community outreach, counseling and mental health services in collaboration with the city. 

Mendieta’s report includes suggestions for who should be included on the committee: district Director of Student Services Felton Owens; Berkeley’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Coordinator Barbara White; Angela Gallegos-Castillo, assistant to the city manager; Berkeley High Student Health Center Director Lisa Sterner and representatives, parents and students from B-Tech, Berkeley High and the three middle schools. 

School Board Director John Selawsky praised Mendieta’s report, calling it “comprehensive” and “well written.” 

“We’d like to have one or two board liaisons, and I would like to volunteer for it,” Selawsky said.  

Selawsky and Shirley Issel also asked Mendieta to include the Alcohol Policy Network and Students for a Safer Southside in the committee in some way. 

Board members agreed with Mendieta’s suggestion in the report that the new plan be geared toward increasing student participation in the California Healthy Kids Survey. 

Dr. Rebecca Cheung, the district’s director of evaluation and assessment, informed the school board during the March presentation that the survey was considered to be most accurate when it had a 60 percent or higher participation rate. 

Berkeley Unified only met that target in ninth grade (68 percent), followed by the 11th grade (52 percent), seventh grade (48 percent) and fifth grade (43 percent). 

Berkeley Unified spokesperson Mark Coplan said that although some people took the California Healthy Kids Survey with a grain of salt because it was self-reported, Superintendent Huyett had a lot of faith in it. 

“It’s pretty solid information,” Coplan said. “There might be a small percentage of kids who are saying one thing and meaning something else, but overall the survey is highly respected.” 

The City of Berkeley began the formal process this week of what could be a decade-long or longer multi-million dollar environmental upgrade of the Aquatic Park bayside tidal pool. 

  Among the issues being considered in what is called the “Aquatic Park Improvement Program” is how to improve water quality on the 99 acres of lagoons, wetlands, and parklands stretching between West Berkeley and a section of Highway 880 bound by Ashby and University avenues. One of the major complications of the project is created by the Berkeley stormwater runoff, which sometimes passes through the main aquatic park lagoon on its way to the bay, so that any regulation of the natural filling and draining of lagoon waters will have an effect on West Berkeley flooding, a chronic problem. 

As a first step, the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront issued a “Notice of Preparation of an Environmental Impact Report and Notice of Scoping Meeting” this week, the first step in a formal environmental review of the proposed project. 

   A public scoping session, the first legally mandated public meeting in the EIR process, will be held on July 9, 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, councilmembers received a half-hour briefing on the proposed project. Staff members said that the current water quality situation in the park was untenable, with stagnant water caused by slow draining, which results in the death of plant life and fish and an accompanying decay and odor. Staff said they expect to eventually put in place a hydrolic system that speeds up the regular tidal-based draining of park lagoon waters into the bay. 

Among the staff’s proposed drainage suggestions are enlarging the series of underground pipes that run between the aquatic park lagoon system and the bay, and installing some sort of regulatory system within them to prevent storm-water drainage from entering the lagoons. 

Several councilmembers suggested that a study of lagoon-draining hydrolics must be accompanied by a study of the larger West Berkeley water drainage situation. Councilmember Kriss Worthington called the stormwater drainage system the “whale in the room,” and Councilmember Linda Maio said the Aquatic Park study “has to be put in the context of an overall watershed management program.” Mayor Tom Bates, suggesting that no amount of pipe-opening would be enough to enable the lagoon drainage needed, said that “we might have to massively open the lagoon to the bay again.” The Aquatic Park lagoon was once directly connected to the bay, but was divided from the bay waters when Interstate 880 was built. 

The proposed Aquatic Park improvement project is being backed by a $2 million set-aside from the California State Coastal Conservancy to implement hydrology improvements in the park, but at least one Councilmember, Laurie Capitelli, calls that amount a “spit in the ocean, no pun intended,” and claims that the ultimate cost will be much more. 

The Bevatron, at least large parts of it, will be reincarnated, in concrete form—its concrete ground back to powder and used for new construction. 

Paul Preuss, spokesperson for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the lab will begin moving concrete blocks from the structure in early July. 

While most of the concrete will be recycled, any material containing “induced radioactivity” will be sent to the Nevada Test Site, Preuss said. 

Previously nonradioactive materials can be irradiated by charged particles, such as those generated during the building’s 40-year history of high energy particle research. 

Also included in the debris requiring special handling are depleted uranium blocks. 

Preuss said $14.4 million of the estimated $50 million in demolition costs will come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. 

“Most of the debris is the same sort of material you’ll find in any building of that age,” Preuss said. 

But some resulted from the unique work done in the building. 

The demolition contract was signed in Jan. 7, 2008, and work has been under way at the site, including removal of other hazardous materials including asbestos, lead, beryllium, chromium, mercury residues and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, according to a statement provided by lab officials to the Berkeley City Council last October. 

The Project Waste Management Plan with specific details on disposal of all hazardous waste, including radioactive materials, was signed effective February 11 and contains detailed descriptions of all potential waste types, procedures for assessment and disposal, and requirements for staging, packaging and transport, Preuss said. 

The steel-clad depleted uranium blocks were used as radiation shields against high energy particles generated by the Bevatron, according to the plan, and range in weight from 1190 pounds to 2.2 tons each. 

Lead was also used as radiation shielding, and as in most structures of the same vintage, was included in the building’s paint. 

Mercury was used in klystron tubes needed for some of experimental work, as well as in switches, gauges and pumps. Mercury traces remaining from at least one spill were cleaned up in the 1990s, according to the plan, but have been found in another section of the structure both in the floor and in the plumbing. 

Beryllium a highly toxic metal, has been found in both solid and dust form, and chromium and copper have seeped into the wood and plastic of one of the building’s cooling towers. 

Asbestos, which is known to cause mesothelioma, an invariably fatal form of lung cancer, was used as fireproofing and insulation. 

The work plan calls for each form of hazardous waste to be stored in its own appropriate container, with other details spelled out in the 104-page plan document. 

Radioactive wastes will be transported to the Nevada Test Site, where the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor the Atomic Energy Commission conducted nuclear weapons tests. 

The plan calls for hazardous and radioactive waste to be “staged,” stored in a roped off and posted area before transport, with each container appropriately labeled as to contents and their dangers, and with dikes or other separations between incompatible materials which could become volatile or otherwise more dangerous if mixed. 

Preuss said all the hazardous waste will be consigned to approved toxic dumps sites. 

The lab’s plans haven’t met with universal approval. A group of Berkeley activists, including Zachary RunningWolf, LA Wood, Gene Benardi, Mark Mcdonald and Carol Denney called a Tuesday evening press conference to condemn the proposal to truck the waste through the city.

Although no one is giving any guarantees just yet, there appears to be a strong possibility that three Alameda County cities will have the opportunity to implement a ranked-choice voting system for the municipal 2010 elections. 

In fact, the issue of whether voters in Berkeley, Oakland or San Leandro use the system formerly known as IRV (instant runoff voting) next year may well be more a financial question than one of certification of the voting system.  

Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro have all approved ranked-choice voting for their municipal elections, contingent on the county’s coming up with an approved electronic counting system. 

Alameda County has contracted with Denver- and Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems for a ranked-choice voting system for county elections, but the United States Election Assistance Commission has yet to certify the system. 

This week, California Chief Deputy Secretary of State Evan Goldberg said that the secretary of state’s office could grant approval for limited application in Alameda County elections, but Sequoia has to apply for it. 

Under that limited use, the Sequoia ranked-choice voting system could only be used for a specified number of elections. And while the optical scanner system—where voters hand-mark a paper ballot, which is then run through a scanner to be electronically counted—could be used to electronically count the ranked-choice votes, any such votes made by touch-screen machine could not be electronically counted, but would have to be manually rewritten to a paper ballot by election workers and then fed through the optical scanner to be counted. 

California elections must have at least one touch-screen electronic voting machine in each precinct for use primarily by visually disabled voters, and their use is generally limited. According to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office, of the approixmately 325,000 election-day votes cast in Alameda County’s 800 precincts during the November 2008 general election, only 1,000 of them were done on touch-screens. 

The Alameda County Registrar’s office reports that it already re-marks “thousands of ballots” during elections, primarily ballots sent in by mail that are initially rejected by the county’s optical scanners. In cases where election officials can determine the clear intent of the voter, officials are empowered to mark a new ballot and run it through the scanner. 

The secretary of state’s office granted one-time approval for Sequoia to operate that same ranked-choice/ optical scan/rewrite electronic-cast ballots system in San Francisco in the fall of 2008, giving the system a one-time extension in late winter of this year. 

A spokesperson for Sequoia said this week that the company is “working with Alameda County to have the [ranked-choice] system certified for 2010,” but “not necessarily” through the limited one-time procedure. Sequoia Public Information Officer Michele Schaefer says that the company expects that either through full federal certification or limited one-time secretary of state certification, the system will be available for use in Alameda County next year. Alameda “should be fine,” Schaefer said. 

But whether the three Alameda County cities that have called for ranked-choice voting take advantage of that possible approval is another matter. 

“It’s going to boil down to a matter of cost,” Alameda County Registrar of Voters Dave MacDonald said. Alameda County cities using Sequoia’s ranked-choice voting system next year will have to split the one-time $350,000 software fee. In addition, the cities will have to foot the bill for a firmware upgrade for 1,000 precinct scanners and a separate ballot for any ranked-choice elections. 

MacDonald did not have a figure for the total projected cost to the three cities for implementing ranked-choice voting. The registrar did say that all three cities—Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro—do not have to participate in ranked-choice voting next year for it to go into effect, but if only one city does, for example, that city would be solely responsible for the software costs. 

That added cost may be an important consideration during a time when all three cities are struggling to manage their budgets during the international economic recession.  

While Schaefer did not say when Sequoia would make the decision on which way to go with certification, Alameda County Registrar of Voters MacDonald said by telephone that there is a “reasonably good chance” that certification of one type or another would be in place by the end of the year. MacDonald said that his office was “trying to get [certification] done by the end of the year mostly for Oakland.” 

Because Berkeley currently holds its first round of municipal elections in November—with a mail-in-only runoff, if necessary, in February—ranked-choice voting in that city would not change the date the voters go to the polls for municipal elections. But in Oakland, municipal elections are currently held in June, with any necessary runoff in November. Adoption of ranked-choice voting by Oakland next year would mean that municipal elections would be put off until November, something which would have significant—but unknown—effects on the upcoming mayoral race. 

Ranked-Choice Voting 

Under the present situation in Alameda County, a candidate for political office must get an absolute majority of the votes in order to win in non-partisan elections. Municipal elections are held on a non-partisan basis. In a three-person race where no candidate receives a majority, voters return to the polls for a runoff election to choose between the top two vote-getters. In ranked-choice voting in the same three-person race, however, voters have the ability to rank the candidates by preference, marking their top choice for the office, and then marking their second choice as well. In the event no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the first choice vote in the first round of counting, the candidate with the lowest vote total is dropped from the race, and the top two vote-getters have all their second-choice votes added to their vote total. The candidate getting the majority of first and second choice votes would be declared the winner. 

Oakland and Berkeley Elections 

2010 Elections That Would Be Affected By  

Ranked-Choice Voting 

Berkeley 

Council District 1 (Linda Maio, incumbent) 

Council District 4 (Jesse Arreguín, incumbent; elected in 2008 to serve out the last two years of the term of Dona Spring) 

Council District 7 (Kriss Worthington, incumbent) 

Council District 8 (Gordon Wozniak, incumbent) 

Auditor (Anne Marie Hogan, incumbent) 

Rent Stabilization Board 

Oakland 

Mayor (Ron Dellums, incumbent) 

Auditor (Courtney Ruby, incumbent) 

Council District 2 (Pat Kernighan, incumbent) 

Council District 4 (Jean Quan, incumbent) 

Council District 6 (Desley Brooks, incumbent) 

A $28.4 million chunk of federal money is coming to Albany’s U.S. Department of Agriculture Western Regional Re-search Center at 800 Buchanan St. 

The funds, granted under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will cover critical work at the center, said Agricultural Research Service (ARS) spokesperson Kim Kaplan. 

Speaking from ARS headquarters in Beltsville, Md., Tuesday afternoon, Kaplan said the funds are part of the $176 million her agency received for critical deferred maintenance on existing facilities. 

“For Albany, we’re using existing plans drawn up in two different years,” she said. All of the ARS funding is for what Kaplan called “off-the-shelf projects.” 

Recovery Act funding for Albany includes $25.3 million for renovation of the electrical and plumbing systems and additional repairs for the facility’s South Wing Laboratories. 

The additional $3 million will cover repairs at the main lab building and enclosures, including work on the fire detection and suppression systems, a new steam-heating distribution system, the lab hood exhaust systems and roof repairs. 

Because the plans were drawn up several years ago, Kaplan said the first stage of work will be to bring the designs up to current building and design codes. 

“As soon as they are updated, the plans will go out to bid, which we anticipate will happen by fall,” Kaplan said. 

A deadline for the award of bids has been tentatively set for next February, with construction to start soon thereafter. 

The estimated completion date is June 2012. 

Using U.S. Department of Labor equations, Kaplan said the work may create as many as 309 construction jobs.  

The research center is currently engaged on projects involving the creation of new plant varieties through genetic modification, research on new forms of plant-derived fuels, formulation of new food products and devising new food processing and packaging methods. 

“The city is happy to see it happen,” said Judy Lieberman, Albany assistant city administrator. “The one thing I would hope to see would be a project that includes more energy efficiency.” 

Though the source of the construction employees remains to be determined, Lieberman said bringing more jobs to the city should mean more business for restaurants and merchants along Solano and San Pablo avenues and—hopefully—perhaps some business for local construction suppliers as well. 

“As far as I’m concerned, more power to ‘em. It’s a pretty old facility and it needs work,” she said. 

The website announcing the grant contains a series of pictures revealing cracked concrete, stained walls and other reasons for the new construction. 

For more on the center and the Recovery act grants, see http://www.ars. usda.gov/recovery/albany.htm. 

The Albany facility received the second-largest sum under the ARS Recovery Act package, trailing only the $40.1 million allotment granted the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill. 

Two of BART’s three largest unions have voted to authorize a strike, but BART spokesman Linton Johnson said Wednesday, June 24, that “it’s outrageous to even talk about a strike in these economic times.” 

Speaking at a briefing with reporters at BART headquarters, Johnson said the vote to authorize a strike if a new contract agreement isn’t reached by the June 30 deadline “sends the wrong signal when a lot of our riders are out of jobs.” 

Johnson said negotiators for BART management and its five labor unions are working around the clock in hopes of reaching an agreement. 

Ninety-one percent of BART workers with Local 3993 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents about 200 middle managers, who voted on Tuesday approved authorizing a strike. 

Spokesman Jeff Gillenkirk said 99 percent of members of Local 1555 of the Amalgamated Transit Union who voted Tuesday approved authorizing a strike. 

Local 1555 represents about 900 train operators, station agents and foreworkers. Gillenkirk said he doesn’t know how many of the union’s members voted on Tuesday. 

Members of Local 1021 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 1,200, mechanics, custodians, safety inspects and clerical employees, are scheduled to participate in a strike authorization vote on Thursday. 

Two smaller unions also are in the midst of negotiations with BART management. 

The BART Police Managers Association represents sergeants, lieutenants and commanders, and the BART Police Officers Association represents rank-and-file officers.

One of two men accused of murder for the 2006 death of a man who succumbed to a gunshot wound shortly after stumbling to the door of a University of California at Berkeley sorority house has pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, a prosecutor said Friday, June 19. 

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Tim Wellman said 21-year-old Brandon Crowder of Berkeley entered his plea on Monday afternoon, shortly after a jury was selected for a trial for Crowder and co-defendant Nicholas Beaudreaux, a 23-year-old Richmond man, in connection with the September 2006 death of 23-year-old Wayne Drummond Jr. of Oakland. 

Beaudreaux, who still faces murder charges, is now standing trial alone. His trial began today with opening statements and testimony by four witnesses. 

Wellman declined to comment at length on the case but said his theory is that Beaudreaux shot and killed Drummond and Crowder was an accomplice. 

According to Berkeley police, Drummond was shot after a confrontation with Beaudreaux and Crowder and was then taken by friends to the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at 2311 Prospect House, near the UC Berkeley campus, where he collapsed and died shortly after 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 4, 2006. 

Beaudreaux and Drummond weren't arrested until February 2008 because it took authorities a long time to develop sufficient evidence in the case. 

Berkeley police said Crowder and Beaudreaux were involved in an argument with Drummond in front of Blakes on Telegraph, a restaurant and bar located at 2367 Telegraph Ave. The three men were reportedly walking east in the 2500 block of Durant Avenue when Crowder allegedly directed Beaudreaux to shoot Drummond, according to police. 

Wellman said Beaudreaux’s trial will continue on Thursday but then will be in recess until June 29 because Alameda County Superior Court C. Don Clay, who is presiding over the case, has another assignment next week. 

CityCentric Investments will ask the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board June 25, Thursday, to modify a use permit to change a previously approved mixed-use building in West Berkeley into an affordable senior housing project. 

The original project of five stories and 98 units—15 of which were to sell at below market rate—at 1200 Ashby Ave. was approved by the board on Jan. 22, to include about 8,093 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor (up to 2,000 of which could be used for a restaurant) and 114 parking spaces. 

Modifications to the design would reduce total floor area for all five stories by 9,090 square feet, increase ground-floor commercial space by about 1,600 square feet and reduce the total number of parking spaces to 44. 

A staff report by the city of Berkeley’s planning department staff says CityCentric decided to develop the project as a low-income senior housing facility to take advantage of financing available through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program and the City of Berkeley’s Housing Trust Fund. 

CityCentric is requesting a Housing Trust Fund allocation of $1,381,450.  

“The economic tsunami of the last year and a half together with President Obama’s stimulus package has created a ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances to reposition this project as affordable senior housing,” CityCentric principals Ali Kashani and Mark Rhoades (formerly the planning department’s manager) wrote in a letter to the zoning board. “These circumstances are creating the opportunity for the public and private sectors to combine resources and directly leverage private capital for the sake of Berkeley’s current and future senior citizens.” 

The developers, the report says, will stick to the same number of residential units and “essentially the same exterior building envelope as the approved project,” except for a few changes. 

All the units—with the exception of one which will be for the building manager—will be reserved for individuals who are 62 years or older. Every unit will be rented to households earning less than the area median income. 

The Low Income Housing Tax Credit program and the city’s Housing Trust Fund money is scheduled to be awarded in September. If the Ashby Avenue project gets selected, it would be subject to low-income affordability levels and other provisions of the LIHTC program for 55 years. 

CityCentric has also made an agreement with Berkeley-based nonprofit LifeLong Medical Care, to provide four hours of free social service every day for the building’s residents, including life skills training, case management and counseling, educational classes, mediation, and shuttle service to LifeLong’s Over 60 Health Center at 3260 Sacramento Street, which is about a mile away.  

Some neighbors have expressed concern at the loss of parking in the new project and the fact that its scale—which they consider too big—remains unchanged. 

ZAB will meet on June 25, Thursday, at 7 p.m. at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

To an old urban designer, the best view of Oakland’s new Roman Catholic Cathedral is from the raised edge of the wooded park that runs along Grand Avenue between Harrison and Children’s Fairyland at Grand and Bellevue. Looking under big trees across the narrow northerly arm of Lake Merritt, you’ll notice a remarkable transformation. Dominating the lake-edge since 1970, the 27-story Ordway Building, Kaiser’s second tower, is now suddenly humanized by the low spreading social complex of a new Catholic center, whose novel sanctuary, a glassy oval crown, completes the northerly end of a striking ensemble. 

At first glance, this light gray concrete podium of offices, meeting rooms, health center, cafe, Bishop’s Residence, etc., looks almost dingy until you notice the closely spaced new trees along Harrison, the not-yet-established roof-garden, and the vines planted along the base of presently plain walls. In a few years, this play of levels, already a delight to explore, will be a veritable hanging garden, reminiscent of the city’s world-admired museum at the southern end of the same lake. 

If you visit, take the time to stroll around this quiet plaza, raised above the traffic and noise of street-level, and commanding a lovely view of Lake Merritt’s tree-filled park. Notice how the proudly secular glass and aluminum Ordway tower has become an integral part of the grand composition, its existing plaza merging into the paved areas of the cathedral, so that during business hours you can actually walk through the elegant lobby to begin your tour. This novel compositional use of an independent high-rise already on-site is not surprising when you realize that the tower and its new religious neighbor were both designed by the celebrated San Francisco firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, whose cathedral design team had the courage and imagination to incorporate “Mammon” rather than try to ignore it on this restricted urban edge. 

If, like me, you are from a Protestant or simply non-Catholic background, don’t be intimidated by apprehensions about genuflecting, holy water, or “doing the wrong thing.” You will be made welcome at the main entrance and elsewhere by polite young people, and within by knowledgeable docents happy to answer any question.  

As an ex-architect who has seen a lot of churches, I was particularly struck by the lofty, evenly lit space. No dim religious light here, indeed no conventional windows. Instead, a great oval room created by a system of horizontal wood slats, acting like huge, curved venetian blinds held in place by big Douglas Fir ribs, each over a hundred feet tall and bending gracefully inward to a translucent boat-shaped ceiling. Its pointed ends at north and south meet the tops of similarly translucent panels that descend behind the altar at one end, and down to the entrance at the other. These are described officially as the Alpha and Omega windows, but “three-dimensional panels” might give a better picture. 

My own preference is for the Omega panel, with its remarkable 58-foot-high ethereal image of the Risen Christ re-created—by light through perforated aluminum panels—from the sculpted figure above the famous West Portal of Chartres Cathedral. The Alpha end, by contrast, seem to me totally devoted to providing, over the gutsy main entrance, a mandatory “Gothic” pointed arch and a modern free-standing cross, to legitimize as “religious” the otherwise severe, rather industrial-looking glass and metal exterior. What might have happened instead within this dramatic split over the grand entrance will make a wonderful design exercise for generations of future architecture students! 

It’s probably a blessing that either the design team or the clerics or both avoided the use of stained-glass within the above main space, for the magical centuries-old effect of rich colors reflected onto gray stone would have been impossible to reconcile with this calm, all-or-nothing temple of even light. However, if you are missing the comfort of traditional religious art, explore the seven little chapels housed within the massive concrete walls that form a “double-ring” foundation for the delicate dome of wood, glass, and steel-cables above. Here, below, in these intimate spaces, are the colorful Virgin and Child effigies, somber crucifixions and lively narrative paintings normally found on the main walls of more conventional Catholic churches. 

Unsurprisingly, the novelty here, for Europe-oriented visitors accustomed to art from Italy, France or Germany, is the strongly Hispanic character of most of the artifacts. In the Chapel of the Holy Family, gaily-painted lifelike statues of Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus accompany 17th century Spanish Colonial paintings from the School of Cuzco, while the Chapel of the Suffering Christ contains a tragic but beautiful 5-foot Jesus on a traditional Franciscan cross. At the Sanctuary, in the altar area, notice Andrew Bonnette’s bronze crucified Savior, and in the ambulatory, or outer-walk , the same artist’s low-relief Stations of the Cross—bronze against the austere concrete. 

It is far from easy to create a modern, “of our time” cathedral for a society that basks in the achievements of science while idolizing the affluent life. Merely hearing the historic word, most of us will think of stone and stained-glass miracles like Chartres, or Baroque masterpieces like St. Paul’s, deeply preferring them to the traditionless novelties of fame-seeking architects, while knowing in our hearts that such Medieval or Classical masterpieces are no longer remotely achievable. During the 20th century, for instance, Washington’s National Cathedral and the Anglican giant in Liverpool, both of them solid stone “Modernized Gothic,” took 83 and 75 years to build, yet people still yearn for that timeless, massive look. Of the two built in San Francisco, Episcopalian Grace—French Gothic in poured concrete—remains more loved, even today, than the adventurous, structurally expressive St. Mary’s Cathedral on the other Holy Hill. Adding confusion to this caution, the present-day worship of internationally famous “starchitects” has caused otherwise intelligent building committees to give carte blanche to originality-at-all-costs—a case of House of God versus the Pritzker Prize! 

In these stressful circumstances, the Oakland Diocese has done remarkably well. Advised by an exploratory design group that contained a distinguished critic, they considered internationally famous architects and suitable sites, ending up with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and the splendidly suitable edge of Lake Merritt. As described above, Craig Hartman’s sanctuary design is unique—a dome of filtered daylight that literally expresses the cathedral’s name “Christ the Light.” Flexibility is sacrificed to visual drama, requiring for instance, almost all the devotional sculpture, paintings, etc. to be displayed within the concrete ring of chapels below. 

For a dramatic contrast to this uncompromising design, visit, in person or on the Internet, L.A.’s almost new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, opened in 2002. Instead of our delicate, translucent “high-tech” dome floating over a parklike podium, renowned Spanish architect Rafael Moneo has provided a great solid-looking block of a building—a play of dramatic projections, tilted canopies and diagonally-placed walls that looks like it could house a museum full of murals, tapestries, sculpture and art objects not yet thought of. (www.olacathedral.org) 

Both these new cathedrals are quite splendid in their different ways, so make the effort to check out the very novel one close-by. Conducted tours are currently offered at 1 p.m. Monday though Friday from the plaza just outside the sanctuary entrance, but if you’d rather explore independently, you will be welcomed at least in the sanctuary, the gift shop and the cafe. Cathedral parking is accessed from 21st Street, between Harrison and Webster. For information call 893-4711. 

Anyone familiar with the Kaiser Center and its superb lake-edge site, will know that it has remained primarily a business district for many years. The original Kaiser Building from 1959, that great bow-fronted high-rise, did offer public restaurants, a handsome roof-garden, shops, and exhibition-areas, but over time, office space on the larger site has grown as “general public” participation has shrunk. Now, suddenly, this important new complex brings, along with its obvious religious functions, all kinds of social activity—conferences, lectures, music and drama, art exhibits, festivals, etc.—not forgetting increasing use of the inviting garden-plaza. Oakland might yet be rescued by architecture!

News from Iran this week prompts reflections on the utility of violence as a solution to problems and questions about the ability of humans to govern themselves. On the first topic, it’s been all too easy to contemplate a simple solution to perceived potential threats if Iran ever managed to develop nuclear weapons: a pre-emptive attack. But after the world has seen a large percentage of Iranian citizens take to the street to protest what looked to them like a rigged election which their side might actually have won, it’s going to be hard to view Iran as a monolith which can be ethically stopped by broad military action. It seems that many Iranians are prisoners of their government and therefore can’t be held collectively responsible for, e.g., President Ahmadinejad’s intemperate statements about the Holocaust.  

Their situation is not too different from that of Americans after the 2004 election, when the majority of citizens voted no on G.W. Bush but he got to run the country anyway. We didn’t even take to the streets to protest that election’s being stolen. 

Not, of course, that the principle of collective responsibility has ever been a good one. It is grossly unfair to punish a population for being dominated by a bad leader, even though that’s what we’ve essentially done to Iraqis who suffered under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. According to iraqbodycount.org, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the current war, non-combatant victims of the chaos we’ve created there. And ironically there’s no guarantee that whenever the Americans leave Iraq there will be “a freely elected democratic government”—whatever that might mean. 

Californians do have one of those, we’re told. That would be the chumps in Sacramento who seem to be hell bent on proving that democracy doesn’t work and can’t work. Or perhaps the New York legislature or the governor of South Carolina would be better examples of what’s just not functioning right any more.  

Is this why we fought our revolution in 1776? Queen Elizabeth II might be able to do a better job than any of these idiots. 

A cynical friend who was one of the regulars at the old Caffe Mediterraneum used to sit at the front table there every morning toward the end of the Vietnam War and make fun of what he read in the New York Times that people he referred to as “the Americans” were doing, implicitly absolving himself of responsibility for actions taken in his name. It’s tempting.  

Now the actions of our government in Afghanistan are causing thoughtful Americans to cringe. If there were in real life such a thing as a surgical strike, a quick and clean technology which would make it possible to grab Osama bin Laden and run, very few would oppose it. Instead, of course, we get news from reliable sources of unmanned American drone aircraft decimating innocent village wedding celebrations. Not in our name, many of us say. 

As do many Israelis these days about their latest government, a leading candidate for their all-time worst yet. Where do they get these dreadful people, worthy peers of our own lately-departed Cheney and Rumsfeld—the thuggish Russian-born foreign minister Lieberman, who’s recently proposed loyalty oaths for Israelis, as a prime example? Unfortunately, it seems that many if not most of the governments on the world scene today, including both factions of Palestinians, are over-achieving on their thug quota. 

Unless, that is, they’re instead simply dominated by fools. See, e.g., the British parliament’s expense account scandals and, again, the New York state legislature. 

We all grew up believing that democratic self-government was a real option. But it’s an experiment not even a quarter-millennium old yet, and recent trials are suggesting that the experiment might fail. Many of us used to believe that the northern European countries were particularly good at social democracy—until Icelanders turned their whole country into a massive Ponzi scheme. 

All of the alternative gods of the left which many Berkeleyans had high hopes for in the late twentieth century also seem to have feet of clay. Cuba does indeed have interestingly good medical care and an excellent literacy record, but then there are the problems gay people and others have had there with civil liberties. Let’s not even talk about Russia—several forms of socialism met an ignominious end there, and now western-style democracy seems to be going down for the count. 

And while we earthlings continue our quarrelsome ways, the big-time gods who actually decide these matters (Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl) are preparing some nasty surprises for us if we don’t mend our ways. Our climate is changing for the worse, details to be supplied sooner or later. If we don’t find a way to get along without war and to make the necessary decisions amicably, there’s sure to be bad news ahead.  

ENERGY BILL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to Bob Burnett’s column, “Obama’s Honeymoon is Over,” I absolutely agree that Obama’s clean energy agenda needs to be pushed aggressively. Before July 4th, the House of Representatives is likely to vote on a crucial energy and climate change bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. This bill sets strong energy efficiency standards, greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, and targets for clean energy generation.  

Unfortunately industry has already spent $79 million in the last three months lobbying to weaken the clean energy provisions, and there is likely to be a strong push to weaken the climate change provisions when the bill is debated next week. Our representatives will have to fight hard to keep the climate change provisions from being weakened and to strengthen the bill back to requiring 20 percent renewable electricity by 2020, in line with President Obama’s goals. 

Cathy Kunkel 

• 

CENTER STREET PLAZA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Plazas are often wonderful, and Berkeley does not seem lack for plaza advocates. The latest plaza enthusiasm is for conversion of Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford, described in the June 1 issue of the Daily Planet. More details can be found in a link to the city Planning Commission website. It’s an exciting concept, but, as a famous architect once observed, “God is in the details.” So let’s look at some of the details: 

The bird’s eye view on the web is especially telling because the plaza is shown full of sunlight, and the buildings on its south side are shown as those existing now. If these should be replaced by a new structure, say, for example one as tall as the Brower Center, there would be no sun in the plaza in the winter and not much in the summer. Does the downtown plan say what will happen to these buildings? 

Besides concerns about sun what else may be problematic? Cost for one thing. $12 million is the current plaza price tag, and considering the unknowns involved in digging up the street, relocating utility lines, and realigning part of Strawberry Creek, these numbers have got to be regarded as very, very preliminary. Who pays? The university will own all the properties on the north side of the plaza, and the plaza will be essentially a forecourt to its art museum and hotel. Will UC pay half the cost of the plaza? 

Traffic needs to be studied a lot more, too, as the preliminary report admits. While Center Street may not have a lot of cars now, it has a number of bus lines, and will become an important taxi route once the hotel is built. Shunting hotel traffic to Addison, as the preliminary report suggests, flies in the face of the way ordinary travelers behave. When you go a hotel, you drive up to the front door, not to the block next door. If the newest hotels in downtown San Francisco are any guide, a hotel developer is going to want street front access for guests in private cars or taxis.  

Finally, is it total heresy to question whether bringing a kind of wild landscape to the absolute center of the city is right? Just a few years ago the city and UC collaborated to put in the wide sidewalk, bollards, and double rows of trees of the south side of Center Street which create a landscaped but very urban connection from BART to the UC campus. Here’s a modest suggestion: Instead of spending $12 million to reconstruct these fairly recent improvements, extend the same concept in the other direction. Repeat the wide sidewalk and landscaping on Center, west of Shattuck to Milvia. This would create a link to downtown’s other post secondary institution, Berkeley City College, and to the Civic Center. Price? My guess: $3 million. 

Christopher Adams 

• 

STUDENT MOVEOUT PROGRAM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Willard Neighborhood would like to say “Two Thumbs Way Up!” to Joseph Ayankoya, Luther West, Julie Thompson, Ken Etherington, Jim Hynes, Shallon Allen, Peter Quintin, Vivi Nordahl, Winston Burton, Jeff Mackelroy, Jan Stokely, Ian Quirk, Irene Hegarty and Linda Williams for their efforts in the student moveout program. Among other things, the program provides dumpsters on the street corners during the end of the semester. This has all but eliminated the piles of trash in the Willard Neighborhood that we were so used to seeing at the end of the semester. We have also marveled at the skill, efficiency, and care that has gone into placing and removing the dumpsters. This has improved our neighborhood quality of life and contributed to the betterment of the environment, since many of the items are recycled. It has also improved the relationship between UC’s students and their longer-term neighbors.  

So score one in the “win” column for town-gown relations. We appreciated being part of the solution and work forward to many more successful collaborations in the years ahead. 

George Beier 

President, Willard Neighborhood  

Association 

• 

HOOD’S CENTER STREET PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As co-founder of Ohlone Park and People’s Park and as a member of the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame, I would like to completely, wholeheartedly and unreservedly endorse Dr. Walter Hood’s brilliant Center Street Plaza plan. 

I hope it goes forward 100 percent the way he has laid out his thoughtful and inclusive design. The public deserves a gathering place such as this vision, which encourages spontaneity and gives people existential rights to be and to have an individual soul acknowledged as legitimate. 

Without his design, allowing porous and evanescent grouping and regrouping within all sectors of the Venn Diagram that represents the physical and intangible community, people who do not fit one mold, i.e.; who are deemed unacceptable by the “acceptable” narrow segment of the more fully empowered—the implicit alternative central and sole mass gathering place design espoused by my friend Jim Novosel would become a place of exclusion, expulsion and would end up being overly patrolled and still creating problems that can be avoided with Dr. Hood’s plan. 

Dr. Hood’s design will ultimately make everyone happy—trust me! 

Wendy Schlesinger 

Albany 

• 

PLANET BOX ARTIFACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A few years ago, I was “given” a marked-up Daily Planet news/display box by the then-distribution manager. Unlike the many wantonly vandalized boxes Berkeley’crats recently threatened to pull from the streets or fine heavily, I consider this one to be a true work of folk art, decorated no doubt by some streetperson with a sense of visual flair. In addition to previously applied bits of unsightliness, it’s covered with small gold and silver peace symbols, poetic stumps, and a few sexual editorials. I “liberated” it before it suffered more real damage, and it’s been sitting behind the gate since. 

I would like to find it a real home, ideally in a museum or collection of such artifacts, which was always my intent. Therefore, this an appeal to Planet readers and ownership to take it off my hands, and give it a place to live it deserves. Anyone? 

Phil Allen 

• 

OPEN THE CREEK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I like the ideas presented in your June 18 editorial on Berkeley’s Downtown Area Plan. The vision of linking the campus and downtown with a broad, tree-lined plaza is very appealing. Embellished with a creek running through the downtown brought to mind Paris and the Seine.  

If thinking of Strawberry Creek in parallel with the Seine is too much of a leap, I refer you to San Luis Obispo Creek as it runs open through the city of that name. There, one can see a mother mallard leading a line of ducklings paddling through the downtown with the banks lined with riparian vegetation. Above, at the street level, are arts and crafts shops and galleries, as well as outdoor cafes. Nearby is the historic mission.  

If Strawberry Creek is daylighted, Berkeley can also display a fine collection of interesting historic buildings, including art deco and other fine architectural structures and motifs. Opening the creek would be complex and costly, but its economic, environmental and social benefits would be enormous and on going.  

For other examples, one can look at the recently resurrected Napa and Petaluma rivers as they flow the cities that share their names. They have attracted much investment in buildings, business and street upgrades. Urban streams can easily become little more than open storm sewers and it is difficult to maintain bank vegetation and provide safety for children and flood protection. Yet, it can be done. The urban renewal in and around the Guadalupe River in downtown and southern San Jose is another recent example of environmental and urban renewal. 

Please keep up your interest in downtown Berkeley. 

Dick Lerner 

• 

GOODBYE LOCAL BUS SERVICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As promised, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Policy Steering Committee (PSC) took a vote at its June 19 meeting on the fate of local bus service on AC Transit’s Route 1 line. The committee decided that implementation of BRT in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro will include elimination of the local service on Telegraph Ave. and International Boulevard. 

At the meeting, the location of the bus stops under the “all-in-one” service was revealed. In Berkeley only the BRT stops would remain! Between Webster and Derby Streets on Telegraph Avenue, three local stops will be removed. Yet according to AC Transit’s self-serving calculations, hardly anyone will be inconvenienced (I doubt that nearby residents will see it quite the same way). 

During the public comment period, Joyce Roy logically pointed out that this plan would be a decrease in service, and would lead to a decrease in ridership and an increase in automobile usage. But logic doesn’t factor into AC Transit’s desire to acquire hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars by taking over lanes of our streets. 

AC Transit has lost sight of its original mission, providing bus service. For the past seven years it has been in the business of promoting VanHool buses, despite vigorous complaints about these Belgian buses and an increase in injuries to riders. 

In addition to the PSC meetings, I have been attending AC Transit Board meetings—an eye-opening experience. General Manager Rick Fernandez seems to care about nothing other than buying buses and negotiating deals that benefit the VanHool company. Sometimes a Board member will grumble about the latest sole-source deal cooked up by Fernandez—but the deals are always approved. 

Now that the decision makers have revealed that local bus service will be expunged if BRT is implemented, it is clear that BRT is a lose-lose proposition for the community. We would lose convenient bus service and street parking on Telegraph Ave. We would lose the small businesses that won’t survive years of disruptive and polluting construction. And perhaps the largest loss—a “transit” agency that cannot be trusted would squander $250 million. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

BERKELEY BOWL WEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Contrary to City of Berkeley staffer Dave Fogarty’s claim that the Berkeley Bowl West measures 51,000 square feet (letters to the editor, June 18), according to the figures provided by the developer, the new place actually totals 90,965 square feet. 

True, the grocery proper is only (?!) 51,553 square feet. But the project also includes 29,114 square feet of “marketplace storage,” 3,667 square feet of “prepared food” space, 3,547 square feet of “marketplace offices” and a 3,084-square-foot “community room.” 

In calculating a supermarket’s size and corresponding environmental impact (meaning, above all, traffic), it’s customary—except in Berkeley City Hall—to include storage, i.e. a facility’s warehouse. So the new Bowl is at least 80,667 square feet (51,553 square feet grocery plus 29,114 square feet storage). Since its offices are essential to the store, I add their 3,084 square feet; that makes 83,751 square feet. I also include the 3,667-square-foot “prepared food” space, since it will no doubt account for a good deal of the 50,000 weekly vehicle trips that, according to the environmental impact report, would be generated by the new Bowl. 

So, leaving out the “community room,” we have an 87,418-square-foot development. That’s over twice the size of the old, 43,000-square-foot Berkeley Bowl. Remember that this behemoth, the size of a Wal-Mart, was sold to the community as a neighborhood grocery store. 

Zelda Bronstein 

• 

TORTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here’s an interesting question: “Our Himmlers, Eichmanns Unscathed as Obama Dithers: Why Is He Afraid of the Torturers?” This is the title of Ray McGovern’s talk Thursday, June 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall, on Cedar Street. 

Wait a minute—we have our own Himmlers and Eichmanns? Why yes, and right here in the Bay Area. 

Heard of “torture lawyers” John Yoo, Judge Jay Bybee and Jim Haynes? All three work in the Bay Area, and all three gave a legal green light to using inhumane treatment and torture on detainees in U.S. custody. And just like Nazi lawyers who were held accountable at Nuremberg for their complicity in Hitler’s crimes, these gentlemen are war criminals. We have evidence of their crimes in their legal memos. Thank you, President Obama and ACLU, for making the memos public. Much has been written about Yoo, Bybee and Haynes, ranging from the April 18 New York Times opinion calling for Bybee’s impeachment, to the wonderful Glen Greenwald, Scott Horton, Marcy Wheeler, David Swanson and Ray McGovern articles calling for prosecution of these torture enablers. 

McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, says “I don’t want my grandchildren, of whom I have six now, coming up to me when they’re old enough and saying, ‘Grandpa, you worked for the CIA. What was it like torturing people?’ I would say I didn’t torture people, and they would say as the German kids say to their parents, ‘What did you do to stop it?’” McGovern returned his CIA “Intelligence Commendation Award” medallion in 2006 saying “I do not wish to be associated with torture.” 

June 25 events are happening in Washington, D.C., Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and more.  

In San Francisco at noon there’s a “Bye Bye Bybee Rally” at the Ninth Circuit Court where a formal Judicial Misconduct Complaint against Bybee will be submitted to the Chief Judge. 

Sunday, June 28 at 4 p.m. people will gather at John Yoo’s house on Grizzly Peak to say “Shame on Yoo” and ask him to apologize to us all for his shameful, shoddy, and unethical legal work providing legal cover for torture. Yoo has sullied the moral standing of our country. I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from this. Join our peaceful witness against torture at his house. 

Cynthia Papermaster 

ATTACKS ON THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. John Gertz describes himself in the Daily Planet as a “left-wing Zionist.” I myself was a left-wing Zionist a long time ago until I became aware of the policies of the Israeli government, which former President Jimmy Carter correctly calls apartheid. Is Carter an anti-Semite? With the Likud Party—the successor of the Fascist Revisionists—in control there is little hope for an equitable solution, unless more pressure is applied by the Obama administration. I also read that Mr. Jim Sinkinson is a director of FLAME, a despicable anti-Islam and anti-Catholic hate group. These gentlemen go to the extreme in their attack against our newspaper by sending out messengers to issue warnings against advertising in the paper or “face consequences,” a technique familiar from Cosa Nostra’s protection racket. 

Certainly, it is no more anti-Semitic to speak out against Israel’s attack against Gaza than it is anti-American to raise our voices against the Bush attack on Iraq and get these views published in the Daily Planet. 

Peter Selz 

• 

IN DEFENSE OF THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I congratulate the Berkeley Daily Planet on your continued defense of the principle of having the paper be an open forum. An ad hoc group of East Bay Jews will be placing an ad in the Daily Planet in support of the paper and the rights of the Palestinian people. Anyone who would like to support or endorse this effort, please go to www.notanotherdime.net and make e-mail contact using “Daily Planet ad” in the subject line.  

Marc Sapir 

• 

EAST BAY RABBIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We, the 40 East Bay rabbis who are members of the East Bay Council of Rabbis and serve the local Jewish community, support freedom of the press. We also support good journalism. We believe that coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be fair and honest. The Daily Planet has a right to publish its views and the views of its readers. Those who disagree have the same right. Those who have voiced their opposition to the Daily Planet’s coverage are entitled to speak and be heard. It is not accurate to label everyone who has disagreed with positions expressed in the Planet as militant right-wingers. Critics of views expressed in the Daily Planet come from a number of political perspectives. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex, and as rabbis who come from a variety of perspectives, we encourage people to explore many sources in learning about this important issue.  

The overwhelming majority of the members of the Jewish community of the East Bay, the people we serve and represent, and of the citizens of the United States, support both Israel and the peace process. Many in the Jewish community have been vocal opponents of some Israeli government policies and are part of the community’s dialogue. The Jewish community does not censor criticism of Israel and neither its leadership nor its designated representatives are engaged in a campaign against the Daily Planet. We decry any efforts by anyone who would stifle the flow of information.  

At times criticism of Israeli government policies and actions has crossed over into classically anti-Semitic expression when it targets Jewishness itself as a blameworthy status—as did the Kurosh Arianpour commentary the Daily Planet printed some years back. Disseminating hate speech against any ethnic or religious group, while it may be constitutionally legal, is not acceptable when allowed to stand on its own in a community paper and given the appearance of reasonable discourse. Hate speech against any group is unacceptable; in the same vein we would expect that the Planet would refrain from printing racist or homophobic material. The claim of freedom of the press does not excuse journalists from meeting the standards of civil discourse. 

Rabbi Andrea Berlin 

On behalf of the East Bay Council  

of Rabbis 

• 

NOT IN MY NAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

About six months ago, a Berkeley merchant I know told me that a man named Daniel Spitzer came into her workplace. He threatened her with the loss of his business, as well as a boycott of her establishment by members of the Jewish community, unless she stopped advertising in the Berkeley Daily Planet. Since I am Jewish, she asked if I’d ever heard of this man and if I thought that other Jews would participate in such a boycott. I responded that I had never heard of Spitzer, and I’d be surprised if he spoke for many people at all. I didn’t believe—and I still don’t believe—that most Jews would want the Planet or any other newspaper to censor reader commentaries or letters that are critical of Israel. So I advised my friend to ignore Spitzer. Her establishment continues to advertise in the Planet and has not lost customers as a result. Despite the threats, I expect that the same is true for many other local businesses. 

I am grateful for the Planet’s excellent coverage of local issues and the open forum that allows readers to voice a wide range of opinions. For this reason, the Planet is the only newspaper that I read in hard copy. If a business doesn’t advertise in the Planet, then I won’t see its promotions. Now that John Gertz, Jim Sinkinson, and Daniel Spitzer have made it their mission to deprive readers of this valued resource, I take it personally, and I go out of my way to patronize businesses that advertise in the Planet.  

Furthermore, I cannot remain silent after reading the venomous rhetoric that these men direct towards the Planet’s executive editor, Becky O’Malley.  

Ms. O’Malley is one of the most ethical people I know. The suggestion that she might be an anti-Semite is so far from the truth that it casts doubt on the veracity of anything else that Gertz, Sinkinson, and Spitzer might say. Additional questions about their credibility are raised by the pretense that they represent the Jewish community. They do not. 

Gertz, Sinkinson, and Spitzer have the right to speak for themselves, but it’s cowardly to hide behind the Jewish community and tarnish other Jews as accomplices in their hateful vendetta. Maybe I have a higher opinion of Jewish people than Gertz, Sinkinson, and Spitzer do, but I don’t think that most of us are thoughtless enough to follow a few self-appointed leaders with distinctively non-Jewish values. I wouldn’t be surprised if many Jews feel as I do, that Gertz, Sinkinson, and Spitzer are an embarrassment to the Jewish community—a community that has devoted considerable literature and study to our responsibilities towards other human beings. I would hope that Gertz, Sinkinson, and Spitzer would stop their despicable conduct, but until they do, I say, “not in my name.” 

Judith Epstein 

• 

DISAGREE WITH PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have been following the ongoing “campaign to destroy the DP” with much interest and strongly disagree with the Planet’s editorial position and the opinions of most of the letters the Planet chooses to publish.  

You state that you publish all letters, even if you disagree with their content because you promote free speech. Excuse me? I think not. You have repeatedly published hateful letters and opinion pieces from a number of writers, most notably Arianpour, the Iranian writer living in India (local? Not!) who wrote “The Jews got what they deserved in the Holocaust.” 

But you refused to re-publish the Danish cartoons critical of Islam because it was not local. You wrote that, “We have not received or printed a single letter attacking the Jewish religion.” Are you kidding? That would be funny if it weren’t so tragically and repulsively false.  

Your most recent censorship is your refusal to publish any more letters from Jim Sinkinson and John Gertz, writing... “(They) also sent letters to the Planet that contain further expressions of their opinions about the paper and the story about their campaign to shut it down. Upon reflection we have decided not to provide any more free space in our opinion pages for those whose expressed intention is to destroy the forum we provide. They may, if they wish, purchase advertising space to advance their opinions.”  

So, your position about publishing letters is that there is no end to the number of hate mail that is acceptable to publish that advocates the destruction of the Jewish state, untruths about Sinkinson and Gertz that call them Zio-cons, but Sinkinson and Gertz have to pay if they want their opinions known. Free Speech Berkeley style. Tolerant only of those who agree with you. Shame on you, Daily Planet. 

Susan Sholin 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kurosh Arianpour was a Berkeley resident before moving to India.  

John Gertz has provided the paper with only one substantive fact to correct, namely that he didn’t accurately express himself on laws governing Israeli citizenship. 

Mr. Sinkinson and Mr. Spitzer both were given a chance to speak to the Planet for the article and refused to be interviewed. 

Sinkinson followed with a letter riddled with claims of errors in the Planet’s reporting. He complains the paper didn’t mention the name of his organization, though it did, at the tail end of the section about him (Page 23 in the print edition).  

He claims the financial numbers quoted in the story do not match up with the numbers on his own website, which is true. But Sinkinson’s numbers do not constitute legal public record. Our source does: the 990 forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service and signed under penalty of perjury. 

Mr. Sinkinson says he is a publisher, not a publicist. His May 17-19 “Media Relations Summit” in New York is subtitled “Expanding the Value of PR in the Digital Age.” We’ll let the reader decide. 

Mr. Sinkinson claims the story says he’s a right-wing Zionist, possibly a Likud party member. The article states that Sinkinson, Gertz and Spitzer are critical of those who criticize Israel or the political goals of that nation, which are often associated with the Likud party. But OK; we’ll concede that the sentence was badly written. We have no knowledge of Sinkinson’s politics and can only judge by his writings and by his campaign to close down a public forum in which others express views different from his own. 

Sinkinson’s letter continues with a defense of FLAME and of Rev. John Hagee, accusing the Planet of distorting the record and not giving them their due. 

• 

HONOR ROLL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My favorite Jews in history include Noam Chomsky, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx, I.F. Stone and Howard Zinn. 

The three sicko thugs who are trying to destroy the Daily Planet by any means necessary are not included among that august number. 

Harry Siitonen 

• 

MY FRIEND, DAN SPITZER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have to question the journalistic ethics of Planet reporter Richard Brenneman’s attempt to smear someone I have known and respected for 30 years, Dan Spitzer. I was his landlord for over 20 years following his return to Berkeley. Dr. Spitzer (he does indeed hold a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan) is an accomplished journalist and author, and I’ve read and admired much of his work over the years. 

It’s true that Spitzer has revealed to advertisers the Planet’s obsession with demonizing Israel in its editorials, op-eds and letters. He has every right to do that, in exercise of his freedom of speech. And while it’s OK for Brenneman to discuss such endeavors, it is quite below the belt to highlight some financial difficulties Spitzer experienced many years ago. Many Americans are now going through similar problems and while there clearly is no shame in it, why would Brenneman even bring such matters up? What does this have to do with Dan and his critical response to the Daily Planet? 

Additionally, with absolutely no connection to Spitzer’s criticism of the paper, Brenneman cites a letter Spitzer wrote to the Chronicle concerning the burgeoning plight of teenagers having kids, a terrible problem both for them and our society at large. Because Brenneman wished to paint Dan as a strident right-winger, he truncated the letter to make it seem like Spitzer was placing the onus on the teenage mothers a la some American conservatives. 

It is a frequent practice for the editorial staff of the Daily Planet to label their critics “conservative extremists” or “Zion-cons.” The very notion that Spitzer—or any concerned, informed supporter of Israel – is a conservative of any stripe is laughable. Since I’ve known Dan, he has been involved in civil rights struggles as well as support for education and immigrants’ rights. It can reasonably be said that Spitzer, on most issues, remains to the left of the Democratic Party, as do many supporters of Israel. And while he is indeed a supporter, he does favor a two state solution and does not believe Israel should maintain most of its West Bank settlements. This is not exactly the perspective of a “Zion-Con,” yet the Planet and its Israeli bashing op-ed parrots like Mark Sapir, Jim Harris, and Joanna Graham conveniently brush aside anyone who shows support for Israel as being in this alleged Neanderthal camp. 

To portray Spitzer further in a negative light, Brenneman quotes Art Goldberg, someone who simply holds personal antipathy toward Dr. Spitzer. If journalists were to cite criticism based solely upon the opinion of someone whose friendship with the subject has deteriorated, we would find little real analysis of substance in our newspapers. 

Brenneman and the Planet stoop pretty low to discredit Spitzer via his past economic plight, a significantly edited letter he had published in another paper, and the opinion of someone who doesn’t like him personally. But then again, this attempted defamation reflects the integrity and quality seen so regularly in the Daily Planet. 

Finally, I have read many of the numerous pieces Dr. Spitzer has had published on politics, culture and environmental issues. He also wrote or co-authored nine travel guide books, and traveled to many remote regions of the world long before they became tourist destinations. The reason Brenneman couldn’t find many recent listings is no surprise: Spitzer has been editing books for much of the past decade. Of course, given the quality of the newspaper where he works, it is no shock that Brenneman may not correlate editing with journalism and creative writing, as he probably finds precious little evidence of either at the Daily Planet. 

Leon Mayeri 

Stop four deaths in California every day? Senator Loni Hancock could do that with a simple vote in the Senate Public Safety Committee. 

Our highways are a battleground worse than Iraq. Cars driven by drunk drivers turn into weapons that kill an average of four people every day in California. 

But there’s a proven technology that is saving lives in other states and other countries—although it is very seldom used in California. Ignition Interlock Devices (IIDs) prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver has had too much to drink. Yet very few DUI offenders are required to get the device. 

AB 91, now being considered in the state Senate, would set up a pilot program in three counties (including Alameda) requiring anyone convicted of drunk driving to install the device (at their expense) for five months. AB 91 will be considered by Senator Hancock and the Public Safety Committee sometime in the next two weeks. 

Please note—there are 1,500 Californians killed by drunk drivers every year in this state. There are a mind-numbing 310,000 of us driving around right now with three or more DUI convictions. 

This is a revolving door of repeat offenders. 

As a mother who lost her son to a drunk driver and as a nurse in a large trauma center, I see victims every day. No one should lose a loved one to the criminal negligence of a drunk driver—especially when the technology exists to prevent such tragedies. 

Right now California has the opportunity to make a real difference in this effort. There is carnage on the highways up and down this state—we should not tolerate it. 

Installing interlocks on the vehicles of all drunk driving offenders has the potential to save hundreds of California lives and at the same time give offenders the ability to drive and not endanger the public. If all states mandated interlocks for all convicted drunk drivers, we could save up to 4,000 lives a year. The drunk driver pays for the entire cost of the device, not the taxpayers. Implementation of interlocks will help unclog the courts and the jails of California. 

Interlocks are proven to be up to 90 percent effective in reducing recidivism while on vehicles. 

It is crucial for the IID to be mandated for the first-time offender. The Insurance Institute’s statistics show that the first time someone is convicted of a DUI is actually their 87th time to offend. AB 91 in its current language has the potential to save hundreds of lives by reducing drunk driving in California. 

To those who say that interlocks are too severe a punishment for those convicted of drunk driving, I say compared to what my family lost on July 29, 2001, when a DUI offender thought he had a right to drive after enjoying a few beers, an alcohol ignition interlock device is a lenient sanction. 

IIDs allow offenders to keep their jobs, family, and the ability to drive. They just can’t continue to violate the public trust by driving drunk. This is protection and prevention more than it is punishment. The IIDs have camera capability to be sure it is the offender who is breathing into the device. They are easily calibrated and—I have been told by one DUI offender—that the IID protects him and his own family from his worst impulses. 

Please ask Loni Hancock to support AB 91 with the strongest possible language.  

Mary Klotzbach is an RN and a member of 

MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, the noted author and world acclaimed anti-nuclear activist, will speak in Berkeley this Saturday, June 27, 2009, 7:30 p.m., at a benefit to support SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense) in its legal challenge of the City Council’s waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act (NFBA) for the Berkeley Public Library.  

The waiver allowed the Berkeley Public Library to sign a contract with 3M Company for maintenance of its checkout system. 3M is a corporation that would not sign a standard city form for contractors that they are not now doing “work for nuclear weapons” and will not do so for the life of the contract. SuperBOLD contends that the City Council did not appropriately consider alternatives to the contract, as required by the NFBA.  

Dr. Caldicott is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which won a Nobel Peace Prize, and was herself a nominee for the prize. The Smithsonian Institute named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century. She is the author of seven books, and will speak on “The Relevance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power to International Relations and the Green Revolution.” 

SuperBOLD, and others, have some very serious issues with the library’s radio frequency identification (RFID) checkout system, but the library administration and the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) appear determined to bury them in a pall of silence. 

On June 10, BOLT held two meetings, a Budget Workshop and a regular meeting, and several members of the public raised concerns about important issues, primarily about the library’s privacy-threatening RFID checkout system. But neither the Trustees nor the library administration responded to the comments as they were made or in any discussions about the budget that followed. 

Ying Lee, recent former BOLT member, made reference to the Commentaries of Peter Warfield and Gene Bernardi, saying she wanted to “recognize the work citizens have done” in revealing problems in the library’s RFID system. (See three articles by Bernardi and Warfield in the Berkeley Daily Planet, May 7 and May 14, 2009.) Lee said she recognized that RFID was problematic, but “didn’t track it systematically.” She said that RFID is “expensive” and “doesn’t work.” And, she said, there is “no evidence” of RFID reducing repetitive stress injuries (RSIs), as has been repeatedly stated as a reason for installing it. She also pointed out that “multiple [simultaneous] checkouts don’t work,” referencing another failed promise. “I don’t understand why we don’t have the barcode,” she concluded. 

Phyllis Olin, who is President of the Western States Legal Foundation, an anti-nuclear organization, commented that she “second[s] what Ying has said.” “It’s time to stop throwing good money after bad,” Olin said, recommending that the library scrap the existing RFID system. 

Gene Bernardi, member of SuperBOLD, presented a quotation from a vendor of self-service checkout systems, showing that a bar code self-checkout system, including a three-year maintenance contract, could be purchased for $164,431—less than the current two-year contract with 3M Company for maintenance only of the RFID system costing $168,915. 

Phoebe Sorgen, a member of the Peace and Justice Commission, but speaking as an individual, asked the Trustees to prepare a detailed cost benefit analysis of continuation of the existing RFID checkout system as well as use of other vendors and other technology approaches, such as bar codes and magnetic strips as were previously used at the library. 

Other members of the public also spoke about their objections to the library contracting with 3M Company. 

Neither BOLT nor the library administration responded to these concerns at the time they were stated, or during budget discussions that followed. The only hint of action on RFID was that the budget for fiscal year 2009-10 and 2010-11 includes $30,000 for a consultant to “conduct research on the current options available in library security and materials handling systems.” 

SuperBOLD has a special reason to be disappointed by the library’s silence and apparent inaction on RFID because the library director made a commitment in a meeting with SuperBOLD, its attorney Michael Lozeau, and the Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan. The agreement was memorialized in a May 11 letter to SuperBOLD’s attorney and signed by Mr. Cowan.  

Cowan wrote: “As we discussed, I am writing this letter to confirm the following: Library staff are planning to present a report to the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) in June concerning general approaches to eliminate any need to contract with the 3M Company for maintenance of the library’s RFID system. Library staff hopes—but of course cannot promise—that the BOLT will provide sufficient guidance at that time to enable the preparation of a request for proposals.” 

Library staff as referenced in the letter means library management, but we saw no report on the agenda, nor was one mentioned at the June BOLT meeting. As of this writing, we are not aware of any additional BOLT meetings in June. 

In other actions June 10, BOLT agreed to ask the City Council on June 23 to approve an increase in the Library Services Tax rate of 0.815 percent, based on the Bay Area Consumer Price Index. The library estimated it would receive “an increase in revenue of approximately $404,091 which is included in the fiscal year 2010 proposed budget. 

Yet the library’s annual budget for books and materials is dropping precipitously, by $125,000 for the next two fiscal years, to $816,000. This represents a 13 percent drop from the current year, and almost 30 percent from the $1,123,442 materials budget two years ago in fiscal year 2007-08 as shown in California Library Statistics, which prints self-reported figures. 

In another serious service reduction, approved in May, 2009, the library plans to eliminate inter-library loan (ILL) That will cut off library patrons’ traditional access to a world of tens of millions of books and other materials in more than 50,000 libraries that co-operatively share books and other materials for the benefit of their patrons. Berkeley also thereby ends its contributions to the system, impoverishing the co-operative library community as well. The LINK+ system is a poor substitute, drawing from only 50 libraries and placing patrons at risk of a huge $115 fee for lost or damaged books. 

The event’s sponsoring organizations include Berkeley Women in Black, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Code Pink, Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste, Ecumenical Peace Institute-N. Cal, Grandmothers for Peace, Gray Panthers of Berkeley, Green Party of Alameda county, Library Users Association, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Nuclear Information Resource Service, Social Justice Committee of Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians, War Resistors League-West, Western States Legal Foundation, and Veterans for Peace Chapter 69. 

The sooner we can put the library’s dysfunctional and maintenance-expensive RFID system and its contract with 3M Company behind us, by substituting a more reliable and less expensive bar code system, the more attention we can pay to the library’s core purposes—books and materials, and staff.  

Remember to attend the Dr. Caldicott event, Saturday June 27 at 7:30 p.m., Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. Tickets are available at independent bookstores in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco. 

Peter Warfield is executive director of Library Users Association and a member of SuperBOLD. 

Steven Falk, the city manager of Lafayette, said in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, “The state is broke, counties are broke and cities are broke.” He went on to say “Public pensions are unsustainable in the current form.” 

The Chronicle also reported, “The California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets salaries of state lawmakers and statewide elected officials, voted to slash state officials and employee pay by 18 percent, effective in 2010.” 

Other national news media report that a reason for GM’s bankruptcy and the State of California’s dire circumstances are in part due “to out of control salaries and long-term retirement and health benefits accrued by employees.”  

If you scrutinize the proposed biennial Berkeley Budget (2010–2012), you may notice that it doesn’t address or even acknowledge the very big “elephant-in-the-room.” That “elephant” is the disproportionate number of city employees in Berkeley, their most generous salaries, and the extraordinary health benefits they enjoy, including gold-plated retirement benefits.  

We are a small city of about 100,000 people with more than 1,600 city employees. This means there is roughly one city employee for every 62 residents. Compared to other communities of our size, this ratio is exorbitant. Even more dispiriting is the fact that more than 25 percent of our city employees draw a salary package of over $100,000 with an additional city debt for benefits of over $35,000 each. Most Berkeley property owners and taxpayers who finance these employees do not have equivalent incomes.  

Perhaps most egregious are the retirement benefits Berkeley employees enjoy. These exceed anything to be found elsewhere. This April, while President Obama “froze” all White House staff salaries over $100,000, the Berkeley City Council considered a proposed 8 percent raise for our city manager, a raise which was accorded him. Mayor Bates disingenuously argued for granting this raise “because Phil, like me, could otherwise simply retire and make nearly as much as he is making now.” This is sadly true. In retirement our city manager will enjoy an annual compensation of about $270,000 plus an annual inflator increase each and every year for the rest of his life. This is also how retirement works for all Berkeley city employees.  

In a time of national, state and local funding crisis, our city government has crafted a budget that maintains and increases the costs of the Berkeley bureaucracy while imposing significant cuts in services to the public and increased fees for the services which are continued. Last month the City Council unanimously authorized increased fees for fire inspections and permits, for inspection services by the Environmental Health Division, for parks and recreation programs and facilities, and for street light assessments. This month the City Council is increasing parking fines. Trash collection fees for residents and commercial entities are being raised by council by an average of 22 percent with no effective recourse for the electorate to contest.  

Meanwhile the City of Berkeley is gutting many social service programs, including a senior water aerobics class that has served 40 local seniors a day for over 10 years. The irony here is that the city continues to subsidize the Berkeley YMCA to the tune of $300,000 a year. What is the “payback” to citizens? Nothing for senior taxpayers but all city employees enjoy the added “benefit” of YMCA membership for free. What is wrong here? 

Perhaps some cuts in services and increased fees might be necessary. But before slashing services willy-nilly and before levying more fees and costs directly on taxpayers, and in particular, property owners, is it not incumbent on our city government to seek alternatives? 

This brings us back to that “elephant-in-the-room,” i.e., city employees and their benefits which are far-and-away the biggest “budget buster” out there. 

The City of Berkeley’s annual budget is about $320 million. Before service cuts and fee increases opted for by council, we were about $5 million “underwater” for next year and $10+ million for the following two. 

Now consider this: The 1,600+ city employees cost the City of Berkeley about $215 million annually, or over 67 percent of our entire city budget of $320 million. If our mayor and council responsibly directed city management to develop a plan to reduce these personnel costs by a modest 12 percent (much less than what the State of California is proposing), then our city would realize economies of about $25 million a year. No services need to be cut and no increase in fees for our already strapped electorate would be necessary. In fact, there would be a $21 million budget surplus for 2010. Ah, if only our mayor, council and city manager would be good stewards of our trust! 

So can you imagine what we, the City of Berkeley, might do if flush with $21 million? With none of the council-imposed increased taxes and fees, perhaps the warm pool bond would have a chance of passing next year and perhaps the brilliant $10 million Walter Hood plan for reinvigorating downtown Berkeley could be realized. Perhaps other infrastructure improvements could materialize, or some of the reasonable Climate Action Plan (CAP) objectives might be implemented, or perhaps all of the above … well, dream-a-little dream of what Berkeley might do with a little cash in its wallet. Yes, make a wish-upon-a-star and then ask our elected representatives to make it come true. 

Victoria Peirotes is a Berkeley resident..

After the dust has settled, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will again be the president of of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Why and how was he re-elected president? Because he was approved once again by Iran’s Guardian Council as a candidate for the nation’s highest office. The council consists of six Islamic jurists appointed by the Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and six from the Majlis, Iran’s popularly elected parliament. They screen presidential candidates through background checks and a detailed written examination. Very few pass the test. Since 2004, the council has routinely rejected reform candidates. If there was fraud in the recent election, it occurred much before the election itself.  

Iran is not a democracy; it is a theocracy, an Islamic Republic. Remember, in 1979, Iran’s monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced with an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), the leader of the revolution. The Islamic Revolution is still ongoing, trying to balance Islamic principles with democratic principles.  

As president, Ahmadinejad is not the ruler. He is not the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He cannot set policies outside the boundaries set by Iran’s Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council, who are not willing to let the Iranian Revolution be overturned. Why so much media coverage about Iran’s election and, by comparison, so little about the recent elections in Lebanon, India, and El Salvador? Probably because to many in the West, Ahmadinejad is the hateful face of Iran. 

Why does Iran consider the United States its enemy? Among our crimes are formenting a military coup that restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne and bolstering him with millions of dollars in arms; tilting toward Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war; shooting down a civilian Iran passenger plane in 1988, killing all 290 passengers (the warship’s commander was not punished; he was given the Legion of Merit); favoring Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and in 1995 imposing a total embargo on dealings with Iran by U.S. companies, including blocking much needed loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. (While there is an official embargo, trade between the United States and Iran did skyrocket in 2008.) 

Of course, the United States cannot forget the 1979 seizing of the American embassy in Tehran and the holding of Americans hostage followed by the ill-fated attempt to rescue them. Iran is also suspected of complicity in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing more than 60 people; and later that year, bombing a U.S. military compound killing 241 American servicemen; supporting the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah; aiding “terrorist” activity in the current Iraq war; and finally U.S. concerns about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons.  

In the aftermath of Iran’s election, the hope is that the young and middle-class supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the losing presidential candidate, will exert pressure on Ahmadinejad and Iran’s theocracy to be less confrontational towards the United States. President Obama must continue to seek diplomacy with Iran. After all, this is much more productive than sabre rattling. Obama’s Cairo speech to the Islamic world is an excellent start. But with all the historical baggage between Iran and the United States, the task will not be an easy one.  

Ralph E. Stone is a retired Bay Area attorney..

The City of Berkeley’s community noise guidelines need an amendment; more than 70 local businesses and residents have signed a petition made necessary by its omission. 

The current community noise guidelines, even as recently amended, never anticipated that city staff would place a sound source closer to a citizen’s residence than the point of its measurement for compliance with permissible levels (50 feet). 

There’s little point in measuring a decibel level a full 35 feet further back than someone has to experience it to find out whether it exceeds requirements. The organizers of the International Food Festival conceded on Friday, June 19, at a meeting with the staff of the Department of Environmental Health, that the largest amplified stage will be 15 feet from some residential apartment windows. 

People in mixed-use neighborhoods can expect 10 full decibel levels over ambient sound for any amplified sound stage, which during a festival puts them within five decibel points of permanent hearing damage levels for hours on end by design, and affirms, by the simple mathematics, that people unfortunate enough to be situated closer to the amplification than its point of measurement will be at serious risk of permanent hearing loss as well as other health effects such as hypertension, heart disease, and many other conditions ably noted on the City of Berkeley’s website. 

The placement of such stages puts the nearby apartment dwellers at unnecessary risk, but also unnecessarily pits residents and merchants against each other in defiance of some thoughtfully written guidelines. 

It is safe to suggest that this omission exists because those who created the guidelines would ordinarily have considered such a stage placement inappropriate. Given its omission, however, and the growing segment of Berkeley’s population living in mixed-use settings, it is time to add an amendment protecting people from having amplified stages placed closer to their residences than the 50 feet at which decibels are officially measured. 

The most telling part of the guidelines is the provision that no outdoor stage should point directly at anyone’s home: “speakers for sound amplification equipment shall be directed, to the extent feasible, toward open or unoccupied space and away from residentially occupied property.” This would seem to clarify the intent of the guidelines—to avoid directly impacting residents with potentially health-threatening conditions. 

The Berkeley City Council could amend the currently guidelines to clarify the point of placement, saying simply that it should never be closer to a resident’s home than its point of measurement. Let’s enjoy our festivals and help our businesses without ruining our hearing and our health. 

Carol Denney is a Berkeley musician and activist.

An open letter to Robert Fujimoto, the new manager of Monterey Market: 

I have shopped at Monterey for more than 30 years—beginning when your parents, Tom and Mary Fujimoto, were in the store on a daily basis. Like many other patrons, I respected them for their hard work and was pleased that your brothers, Bill and Kenny, continued the business. In all these years it has flourished, mostly under the guidance of Bill, together with his wife, Judy, and your sister, Gloria. However, since the resignation of Bill and Judy Fujimoto, the place has not been the same. 

In the past two weeks I have talked with many former customers, most of whom are dismayed by recent developments. The selection is limited, certain produce suppliers and restaurateurs have withdrawn their patronage, and there is an air of uncertainty.  

Consequently, painful as it is, many of us have chosen to boycott the business until this market returns to its high standards, led by Bill and Judy. 

I have heard that you and your sons wish to “modernize” the market. I’m uncertain what that means to you, but I am quite certain that if you polled the patrons of Monterey Market, most would not vote for modernization; we can find that at other locations. Monterey Market is our farm stand in the city, our destination for healthy, affordable produce. It’s a place where people come together, people from all parts of the Bay Area and from many countries. It is an institution unique in the Bay Area. 

I am not privy to the disagreements within your family corporation, but I do know that Bill Fujimoto has been a driving force in the development of both sustainable agriculture and a market for the highest quality fresh produce in the Bay Area. He is a leader in the field who knows the business inside and out and impresses everyone with his dedication to hard work and low-key, friendly demeanor.  

Disagreements within families are not unusual, and sometimes we make unwise decisions, but there is still time to correct mistakes. Please don’t make this cherished community institution the victim of shortsightedness and a refusal to resolve differences. Monterey Market needs to be run by people who understand its position in the fresh food business, not as just another up-scale supermarket. We need Monterey Market and Bill and Judy! 

Veronika S. Fukson

After five months, President Barack Obama’s managerial style has become obvious. He’s focused on his top priorities and he is collaborative and pragmatic; his operating instructions are “never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This summer, Obama’s leadership will put to the test as he struggles to get Congress to pass comprehensive healthcare legislation. 

America’s 44th president outlined his healthcare proposals in a speech to the American Medical Association. His plan guarantees access to healthcare for every American. It mandates health insurance for children and guarantees affordable care to adults—with a “hardship waiver” for the poor. 

While the Obama plan makes affordable health insurance widely available, it lets individuals decide whether or not they want to keep their current plan and doctor. Featuring a “one-stop shop for a health care plan”—the Health Insurance Exchange—Americans “will have [a] choice of a number of plans” including a public option. 

While conservative Republicans have complained about all aspects of the Obama plan—some going so far as to deny that the United States has a healthcare crisis—there are two primary areas of conflict. One is cost. Obama estimates “Making health care affordable for all Americans will cost somewhere on the order of one trillion dollars over the next 10 years.” While that’s a lot of money, the president notes: “Failing to reform our health care system in a way that genuinely reduces cost growth will us trillions of dollars more in lost economic growth and lower wages.” He plans to raise the trillion dollars through a combination of tax increases for wealthy Americans and cost reductions achieved by making existing services more efficient. 

But having a healthcare plan that includes everyone may cost a lot more than $1 trillion. An analysis from the Congressional Budget Office indicates that covering everyone will cost $1.6 trillion. 

The other area of conflict is the provision of a public option. Republicans rail against this—even though the well-regarded Medicare program is an example of a public option—and accuse Obama of laying the groundwork for a single-payer plan. Nonetheless, most Democrats believe that a public option is necessary to provide real competition in the health insurance marketplace. 

In May, conservative pollster Frank Luntz wrote a memo to Republicans advising them how to defeat Obama’s healthcare initiative. Luntz suggested the GOP argue: “President Obama wants to put the Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare... It could lead to the government setting standards of care, instead of doctors who really know what’s best... It could lead to the government rationing care, making people stand in line and denying treatment like they do in other countries with national healthcare.” 

Recognizing that it’s politically unwise to totally oppose the Obama health care initiative, Republicans unveiled a health care plan featuring a combination of tax credits and changes to existing programs. It does not deal with several of the major concerns about the current system, such as failure to provide universal coverage and the nagging problem of exclusion because of pre-existing conditions. 

On the other hand, many observers feel the Obama health care plan does not go far enough. Writing in the New York Review, Harvard Medical School Professor Emeritus Arnold Relman observes, “[Obama’s plan] will expand insurance coverage in the short term, which is certainly needed, but... will create a system even less affordable than at present.” “In seeking a consensus, Obama’s health reform policies do not address the central causes of rising costs, and propose nothing likely to have much effect on them. He does not mention the ways that investor ownership and the fee-for-service payment system provide incentives for increasing costs...” Relman concludes that a singer-payer plan that eliminates private employment-based insurance isn’t politically feasible. 

Most liberal Democrats favor a single-payer plan. Faced with a pragmatic Obama administration determined to push through less-than-optimal health care reform, liberals are faced with a tough decision. They can go down fighting for single-payer—probably combine with conservatives to deny Obama support for the passage of his incremental plan—or they can hold their noses and pass healthcare legislation that solves many but not all of the problems with the current system. 

There appear to be two critical components of the current Obama plan: universal access to health insurance and the public option. So long as these stay in the legislation, Democrats should support it. 

Because Obama is pragmatic, many of his initiatives will have to go through several stages. That was true of the stimulus bill; it solved some but not all problems and a further bill will be necessary. The same two-step approach will have to happen with healthcare. Obama’s first step deals with the most egregious problems with the current system, but doesn’t adequately contain costs. Those will have to be dealt with by future legislation that proposes a workable solution: a single-payer plan. 

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

We seem to be running on parallel tracks on this ongoing discussion of the East Bay’s nagging street violence, like the words from the Longfellow poem: “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” 

Or, perhaps more accurately, from the old Muddy Waters blues standard: “Two trains running, ain’t not one going my way.” 

Earlier this month, the Berkeley City Council received its quarterly crime report, during which the council discussed both the drug trade and the related cross-border disputes between South and West Berkeley and North Oakland neighborhood gangs that have contributed so much to the area’s violence. Everyone on the council sincerely wanted to slow down or stop the city’s violence. None of them had a clear idea how. There was the usual collection of suggestions about more guns off the streets and more lights on the streets, each one of them important in its own right, but nothing adding up to an overall plan. We’ve been down this road many times before. 

Oakland City Council has had similar discussions over the years, the rhetoric rising or falling depending upon some sudden spike in the violent crime rate, or a rash of restaurant takeover robberies or street burglaries in one of the “safe” sections of Oakland, or following the commission of some particularly heinous event. As with Berkeley, Oakland City Councilmembers sincerely want an end to the violence. But no comprehensive plan—beginning with a detailed discussion of the causes of the violence and ending with a program for cures—ever seems to see the light of day. To my knowledge, in fact, Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee has never even held a public hearing for the sole purpose of addressing the causes of Oakland’s street violence. Public Safety Committee Chair Larry Reid is fond of calling each new murder in the city “insanity,” but Oakland City Council’s actions in this regard seem to mimic Albert Einstein’s definition of the word, doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. 

Meanwhile, the city’s Measure Y Oversight Committee regularly discusses the issue, but almost always to a miniscule public audience, and with more of an eye to monitoring the funding the cures than exploring the causes. And while the Dellums mayoral task force report on public safety (still available on the city’s website, www.oaklandnet.com) has good suggestions for strategies ranging from community policing to reintegration of incarcerated individuals and youth and domestic violence, the report starts and ends with recommendations, skipping any discussion of causes. 

How can we know how to correct a problem if we do not know the cause? 

Two facts are relevant to this discussion. 

First, despite the fact that it is almost always adults in their 30s and upward who conduct the discussions of East Bay violence at meetings of our public governing bodies, it is the youth (and, more specifically, African-American youth) who are the primary victims of that violence. The 2007 “Homicides In Oakland” report authored by the Urban Strategies Council concluded that 31.5 percent of the homicide victims in Oakland were between the ages of 18 and 24, matching the largest single bloc of victims. And if the add the 7.1 percent of the victims who were between 12 and 17 that year, the total percentage of youth homicide victims in the city were 38.6 percent. A year before, 12-24 year old victims comprised just under 50 percent of Oakland homicides, and the five-year average puts youth victims at 44.6 percent. Meanwhile, African-Americans comprised 71.7 percent of the homicide victims in Oakland in 2007, Hispanics (Latinos) another 20.5 percent, bringing the African-American/Latino total to 92.2 percent of the total Oakland homicide victims for that year. One can assume that the statistics of most other violent crimes in the city mirror this trend. 

The racial breakdown is no aberration. The Urban Strategies Council study put the five-year homicide victim average at 90.7 percent African-American/Latino, and an earlier study by the Alameda County Public Health Department (Violence In Oakland 2002-04) put African-American homicide victims in the city during those three years at 77.1 percent, and Hispanics (Latinos) at 13.7 percent, making the total number of homicide victims 90.8 percent. The Alameda County study also put 33.9 percent of the Oakland homicide victims in that period between the ages of 15 and 24. 

To recap, the most likely victim of a homicide in Oakland is a young person of color. 

The second fact to be kept in mind in this discussion is that it is a probably a very small percentage of the youth community who are actually committing the violence. Talking about the perpetrators of South and West Berkeley’s violence during this month’s City Council discussion, for example, Chief Douglas Hambelton said that “it’s not a huge number of people. Thankfully, it’s only a small number of people who are very, very violent.” 

Assuming that Mr. Hambelton’s statement is true for the entire region, and given the fact, then, that a plurality of the victims of violence are between the ages of 15 and 24 and the overwhelming majority are either African-American or Latino, one would think that the cities of this region would wrap our arms of protection around our youth of color to shield them from this violent onslaught from a small number of perpetrators. Sometimes we do, sporadically. But just as often—perhaps more often—we block out the young people of color and bar them from our public and recreational activities—sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately—probably on the theory that keeping all of the dark kids away is the best way to protect the rest of us from that violence. One of “us” might catch a stray bullet meant for one of “them,” after all. 

And so, for example, the City of Oakland this year canceled most of its longstanding and most popular neighborhood street festivals, on the theory that some of these festivals required a large police presence to protect the festival-goers from violence, and Oakland could no longer afford to pay the police department to provide that protection. One of these festivals was the Cinco De Mayo event in the Fruitvale, which regularly attracted large crowds of Latino and African-American youth. The overwhelming and vast, vast majority of these young folks were coming out to Cinco for the same reason as the rest of us, to have a peaceful good time. By their actions, OPD and city officials declared that such large gatherings of peaceful youth of color could not be-or would not be-protected. 

But wait. While Cinco De Mayo was being scuttled for lack of funds to protect people from violence, Oakland somehow found enough money to create a brand-new street festival this month, Uptown Unveiled, in which the Tribune informed us that “hundreds of revelers Thursday filled the Telegraph Avenue corridor from 16th street to West Grand Avenue along with musicians, skaters and artists.” Uptown, one might remember, was created by former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown as a brand-new central city neighborhood built for those people who had previously disdained from having anything to do with Oakland other than, perhaps, working here, or passing through on the freeway on their way from Danville to the San Francisco theater district. 

According to the Tribune article, “‘Uptown’s time has come,’ said developer Phil Tagami, the driving force behind the renovation of the newly restored and operating Fox Theater, which has anchored the area’s revitalization. Tagami credited former Mayor Jerry Brown’s efforts to spark the renaissance that he said Mayor Ron Dellums has been trying to take to the next level.” Although Mr. Tagami is engaging in a little hyperbole as to the level of Mr. Dellums’ intentions in order to promote a district of the city in which Mr. Tagami has such an enormous financial stake, the continuation of the concentration of Oakland’s uptown development—while failing to come up with a comprehensive policy and strategy for neighborhood commercial center development—is one of the more unfortunate areas where Mr. Dellums failed to break from the direction that Mr. Brown had set. 

African-American and Latino youth could certainly come over to uptown to enjoy last week’s festival, of course, but when they do so in “too large” or “too ethnic” or “too exuberant” numbers (all of the “too”’s being entirely subjective figures), they risk being looked on suspiciously as possible violence generators by police and event authorities, rather as welcome patrons. And many local venues pointedly leave out any entertainment that would specifically attract the African-American or Latino young adult crowd. 

Witness the entertainment lineup at this year’s Alameda County Fair: Charlie Daniels (country), Mandisa (contemporary Christian), Night Ranger (rock), Bay Area Blues Society (blues), Carmen Jara (traditional Mexican), Skynnard Lynnard (tribute to the Southern rock band), Gregg Rolie (rock), Salvador (Christian), Bowling For Soup (Alternative), En Vogue (old school rhythm & blues), Bucky Covington (country), Evolution (tribute to Journey rock band), BJ Thomas (classic rock), Ozomatli (urban Latin), Solange Knowles (rhythm & blues), Con Funk Shun (old school r&b/funk), and Aaron Tippin (country). Of these, only Ozomatli—a Latino group—has a hip hop component, and there is no African-American hip hop representation at all. Hip hop music drives the entertainment industry and it is the music of East Bay youth, but it’s presence on the Alameda County Fair stage is almost nonexistent. This year’s fair lineup is no aberration. Absence of hip hop entertainment is the norm, almost as if the committee putting on the fair wanted to make certain that crowds of dark-skinned youth did not overwhelm the turnstiles out in Pleasanton. 

But if we are discouraging our dark-skinned youth from our public and sanctioned entertainment venues, how do we expect them to entertain themselves, and where? Or do we care? 

Meanwhile, our young people are talking about the East Bay’s violence, all the time, but on a distinctly different track from the official discussion. They constitute Longfellow’s other ship passing, the other train running. More on what they are saying, and how we might get the two discussions running together, in a later column. 

Another Solstice gone by, another year’s peak passed, another year older, another long half-year of diminishing light. Or, to be jollier about it: the sweet downswing of the seasons, the ripening of all that winter and spring promised.  

Also high time to prune that hazel off the driveway, and tie back the pelargoniums and pineapple sage. I like having contact with my green companions when I get into the car, but lately I’m getting aphids in my hair.  

There are more aphids than usual; the car’s getting a one-sided bath of sticky goo from them as it’s parked under the red-leafed plum, the native hazelnut, the always ambitious ‘Roger’s Red’ grapevine, and a few others who jostle into different patterns every year. I’m wondering if the crows have as much to do with that as the rather productive spring we enjoyed this year.  

(“Enjoyed” if you include such dubious pleasures as drowning in one’s own snot for weeks after a storm of pollen, and meeting all those nice people in the ER—pleasures that turn out to be rather expensive even with pricey medical insurance. I recently paid about $115 for a three-month supply of a newish drug. The “usual and customary retail” price on the label was $615. How do people live? Oh wait; I forgot.)  

Why the crows? A pair of them nested in one of the neighborhood’s four big redwoods, and raised a brood of three. Crows raid the nests of other birds for eggs and nestlings, and any birds raising big hungry young will get pretty motivated and ruthless. The young crows are still following the parents, begging (an annoying nasal “Waw”) and getting fed. They eat just about anything, and they’re smart enough to find hidden nests.  

The lesser goldfinches nested but seem to be trying again now, with no fledglings following them around begging. A robin pair, ditto, though he’s singing his heart out; I haven’t seen spotty young robins anywhere.  

The house finches are only now showing up, and seem half-hearted about territorial singing. Bushtits: there’s a pair but only one fledgling with them. I do think the hummingbirds did OK; the female might even have raised a second brood and I saw at least one fledgling in the bay laurel. No scrub jays; no mockingbirds; a few chickadees.  

Now the post-breeders are coming in: nuthatch, titmouse, black phoebe. Maybe they’ll help. Everybody knows, though, that nurserytime is about over, that it’s time to molt and relax if they’re not being chased for someone’s dinner. 

The crows are a hoot, I’ll admit. They chase ravens and hawks and each other, engage in dissonant choral cheering, play castanets with their beaks, kite around in stiff wind just for fun. I can take some extra aphid damage for a year; I begrudge it more than the extra carwash though.  

I can’t close the door to the garden in any meaningful sense, and the wild neighbors are as much a part of the climate that affects it as the fog.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. 

The hamlet of Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon, numbers fewer than a thousand inhabitants. In compensation, it is rich in scenic beauty and historic interest. Not the least interesting local resident was Jack London (1876-1916), who first bought land here in 1905. In those days, London was America’s best-known and most highly paid writer. His discovery of Glen Ellen came about through a Berkeley connection. 

In 1898, the yet unpublished writer returned from the Klondike with a sheaf of stories. The first one he managed to sell was “To the Man on the Trail: A Klondike Christmas,” which appeared in the Overland Monthly in January 1899. 

The Overland Monthly’s business manager was Roscoe Lorenzo Eames, a shorthand teacher and the author of Text-Book of Light-Line Short-Hand. His wife, the journalist Ninetta Wiley Eames, was acting as the magazine’s editor. The couple resided at 2147 Parker St., on the corner of Fulton. Living with them was Ninetta’s orphaned niece, Charmian Kittredge (1871-1955), who had learned her uncle’s shorthand method and was earning her living as a stenographer. 

Although eight of Jack London’s stories appeared in the pages of the prestigious albeit impecunious magazine during 1899, Ninetta Eames did not meet the writer until the following year. Charmian had read none of his stories by the time she accompanied her aunt to lunch with the young author. The latter, in a letter dated March 10, 1900, wrote to his friend Cloudesley Johns: “Have made the acquaintance of Charmian Kittredge, a charming girl who writes book reviews, and who possesses a pretty little library wherein I have found all these late books which the public libraries are afraid to have circulated.” 

Less than a month later, Jack married his former mathematics tutor, Bess Maddern. Two daughters were born to them in quick succession. In May 1903, Jack made his first visit to Glen Ellen, camping on the grounds of Ninetta Eames’ country house, Wake Robin Lodge. Charmian described that summer in The Book of Jack London (1921): “Here a congenial company of acquaintances met in the summers, making merry in the incomparable woods bordering Graham and Sonoma Creeks, swimming in the pools, tramping, boxing, fencing, kiting, and gathering about the campfire at dusk for discussion and reading.” 

It was here, at a rustic table by the creek, that Jack London wrote his novel The Sea Wolf. Returning from Glen Ellen, the Londons separated. A year later, following their divorce, Jack spent a week at Wake Robin Lodge, and “his regard for the beautiful mountainside had only extended,” wrote Charmian. 

By the following summer, he had committed himself to both Charmian and Glen Ellen. In June 1905, he purchased the Hill Ranch for $7,000. “There are 130 acres in the place” he wrote, “and they are 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California. There are great redwoods on it, some of them thousands of years old … In fact, the redwoods are as fine and magnificent as any to be found anywhere outside the tourists groves. Also there are great firs, tanbark oaks, maples, live-oaks, white-oaks, black-oaks, madrono and manzanita galore. There are canyons, several streams of water, many springs. … The place was a bargain, one of those bargains that a man would be insane to let slip by. The entrance is a half-mile from a small town and two different railway stations. … Woodchoppers were already at work when I snapped up the place. It had to be snapped up. Twenty years from now I’ll wager it will be worth twenty times what I am now paying for it.” 

In a June 28, 1905 article headline “‘The Simple Life’ Suits Jack London: Author is Camping on His Farm Near Glen Ellen,” the San Francisco Call reported: 

Hatless, coatless and with shirt-collar open displaying a broad sunburnt chest, Jack London, the writer, rode into Santa Rosa to-day. The object of his coming was ordinary enough—to look up the titles of the property he recently purchased near Glen Ellen in this county. He was accompanied by his reported fiancee, Miss Kettredge [sic] of Glen Ellen, the daughter of a former manager of the Overland Monthly. The young lady, who is a sprightly little demiblonde, was dressed as outre as London himself, wearing a khaki suit with leggings. … 

Speaking of his purchase near the pretty little village of Glen Ellen he said he was “just camping on the farm now.” “Some time,” he said, “I will build a shack to live in.” He is writing short stories for Eastern magazines. 

Jack and Charmian were married in November 1905. When not traveling, they made their home at Wake Robin Lodge, where an annex had been built for their use. Charmian described her husband’s activities on the ranch: 

Jack, with eye to homebuilding, ordered fruit-trees of all descriptions suitable to the latitude, and seventy-odd varieties of table-grapes—orchard and vineyard to be planted upon an amphitheater behind a half-circle we had chosen for the house-site. Johannes Reimers tendered the benefit of his professional advice about the trees and vines, and ordered for us a hedge of Japanese hawthorne to flourish between orchard and house-space, which in time grew into a glory of orange and red berries alternating with a season of white blossoming. The plot was on the lip of a deep wooded ravine which was the Ranch’s southern boundary, ancient redwood and spruce, lightning-riven and eagle-nested, accenting the less majestic growth. We never wearied of riding Belle and Ban to the spot, in our minds’ eyes the vision of a rugged stone house that was to rise like an indigenous growth from the grassy semi-circle. ... 

Our amusements consisted in exploring, alone or with our guests, the infinite variety of the one hundred and twenty-nine acres of Jack’s “Beauty Ranch”; driving or riding to points in the valley—say Cooper’s Grove, a stately group of redwoods; or to Hooker’s Falls across in the eastern range; or to Santa Rosa, as when we drove Professor Edgar Larkin, of Mt. Lowe Observatory, to call upon Luther Burbank; or to the valley resorts to swim, for a change from Sonoma Creek, in the warm mineral tanks. 

The great San Francisco earthquake exposed the machinations of their barn builder: “Our beautiful barn—the shake had disrupted its nearly finished two-foot-thick stone walls, and to our horror revealed that the rascally Italian contractor from Sonoma, despite reasonable overseeing, had succeeded in rearing mere shells of rock, filling in between with debris of the flimsiest. Jack’s face was a study.” 

Even in the midst of plans for their ranch and home, Jack began building the yacht Snark, which he intended to sail around the world. The voyage was planned to last seven years. The Londons left with a small crew in April 1907, bound for Honolulu. Although London was an excellent navigator, Roscoe Eames acted as the Snark’s skipper on the cruise’s first leg. Ninetta was left in charge of the ranch and the Londons’ business affairs. Having arrived in Hawaii, Roscoe abandoned the yacht, returning home by ship, while the Londons continued sailing across the South Pacific. In Australia, Jack’s ill health finally curtailed the cruise. They were forced to sell the boat 27 months into the voyage. 

Back home, Jack hired his stepsister, Eliza London Shepard, as ranch superintendent. He purchased the Kohler-Frohling winery ranch and set about turning the Beauty Ranch into a model of modern agriculture. In 1910 he wrote, “I am buying seven hundred acres of land that rounds out and connects my present two ranches, giving me miles of frontage on three creeks, and some magnificent mountain land, to say nothing of the timber—real wild country.” 

The Londons had been planning their dream home for years. In 1910, they retained the fashionable San Francisco architect Albert Farr to transform Jack’s ideas into blueprints. Charmian described their Wolf House as “not a mansion, but a big cabin, a lofty lodge, a hospitable teepee.” Built with redwood logs and local volcanic rock, the house was arranged around a courtyard with a large reflecting pool in its midst. 

“The Bank placed an insurance on the Hill Ranch covering half the amount loaned,” wrote Charmian. “There was no other insurance on the huge purple-red pile, since every one agreed that rock and concrete, massive beams and redwood logs with the bark on, were practically fireproof unless ignited in a dozen places, owing to the quadrangular construction and cement partitions.” 

Construction lasted more than two years. On Aug. 22, 1913, a week before they were to occupy Wolf House, it burned down to its rock shell. The insurance reimbursed $10,000, an eighth of the amount they had sunk into the house. 

London never rebuilt Wolf House, but he never stopped improving the ranch. In 1914, he built the first concrete silos in California. In November 1915, a year before his death, the Oakland Tribune reported on the palatial pig pens London had just completed at a cost of several thousand dollars. “Those pigs of mine will be cholera-proof just because I have attended to the sanitation and drainage of the place where they will be kept,” he was quoted as saying. 

The pig palace, the silos, the barns, and the ruins of Wolf House are a few of the many attractions in the 800-acre Jack London State Historic Park, established in 1960. Others include the cottage in which the Londons lived and wrote, the House of Happy Walls museum, and the Londons’ grave. Ranch, lake, and scenic mountain trails provide access to much of the property. 

I have a major pet peeve (well, many major pet peeves, actually) with the building codes. They say far too little about places where people, particularly little people, can fall, and the area in which my knickers get most fully twisted concerns the accessibility of windows. 

Now this isn’t a new problem and the worst cases I see tend to be at houses of some longish tooth. Nonetheless, new houses continue to be built every day that lack what I consider to be adequate concern for child safety. 

The building code now says that windows may not be lower than two feet from the floor without adequate guards. Now, that’s 18 inches lower than the height for guardrails on the outside of the house. So, what’s different about running around on a deck versus playing “Incarcerate Your Little Brother” inside the house. Nuthin’. That’s my take on it. In fact, children spend more time inside the house than they do on decks and landings. We just took the railing heights for decks up from three feet to three and a half feet in the most recent version of the building code (2007) and that was unquestionably a response to a given number of falls from deck or porch railings.  

For a child with a center of gravity about two feet from the ground, the difference between two feet and three and half feet can be a serious matter. 

Children also play in ways that adults don’t. If a child has never had a serious fall, a low window is an exciting place to dangle and spy. A low-set window on a third story or even a second story over a concrete driveway may be high enough to be fatal, and while there are lots of things that we look for in houses that have a fairly mild downside, this isn’t one of them. You’re not going to care very much about the rot in the bathroom floor after a tragedy of this sort. Even the potential for a serious injury should garner more attention than issues of decay, wear and utility in our homes. 

For my money, any window that is lower than three feet on a wall should be the subject of special attention in the form of inaccessible locks (set high enough for children standing on tables or chairs) or guards that inhibit access. 

Guardrails come in a wide range of shapes and sizes and one thing about them that we often don’t think about is how “climbable” they are. Railings that run vertical are very hard to climb and they’re the preferred form. When we install rails horizontally, a railing becomes a ladder. If we have a grid, the result is the same. Do children like to climb and get a better view? Do they enjoy dangling their siblings over the edge just to see their parents change color? Of course they do. Kids are all explorers and given the chance, the next frontier will be simulated WWF belly flops from the deck onto the trampoline in the yard. 

So railings should be unclimbable, as best as you can manage, high (42 inches) and well secured. 

While this doesn’t have much to do with construction, I think it’s also important to consider the furnishings of decks, balconies and other places from which children might fall. If a bench is placed alongside a railing, that railing just got shorter. A child on that bench (or chair, table or box) may be standing where their center of gravity is higher than the remnant barrier and a simple loss of balance can be all that’s needed for dire results. 

Another nasty and often overlooked falling hazard is an accessible garage roof. We have lots of garages that are set into the hillside just behind the sidewalk. Since we tend not to think of garages as places to spend time (though many a client has asked me about the viability of decking over these structures), we tend not to put railings around these roof surfaces. Most are flat (or nearly so) and become places that we can amble across amidst our superhero adventuring. Though it is easy enough to fall 12 feet to the sidewalk below all by your own caped self, it’s much easier to achieve this sorry result with the aid of your evil mastermind friend from next door, or better still, with three wrestling superheroes (mine…mine...no it’s mine).  

So take a look around and see. Do you have a garage that can be easily mounted for play? A deck or accessible roof area that kids can easily climb upon that lacks any sort of guardrail? They’re out there and there are lots of them. Some aren’t accessible to small children but will be once the get a little older. 

While I don’t mind the idea of a chosen danger, I do feel that we should choose our poison. Many choose to ride motorcycles or jump out of airplanes. Actually, cars, in general, pose a much larger threat than anything we’re talking about here today. That said, eliminating unnoticed dangers and reducing our overall risk (especially for our children) is well worth the time and, at least a chunk of our money. 

ASK MATT 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

THURSDAY, JUNE 25 

CHILDREN 

“Cowboy Songs and Ballads” with Adam Miller at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children’s Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557. 

FILM 

Free Outdoor Movies at Jack London Square “Hook” Come at 7:30 p.m., movies begin at sundown. Bring blankets and stadium seat. 645-9292.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Philip Dreyfus reads from “Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera Highlights from the upcoming production of “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 5th Floor, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6241.  

Kickin’ the Mule with Freddie Hughes at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Matt Eakle Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Everything Gone Green, The Actors, Goodbye Nautilus at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Speak the Music, beatboxing, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8. 849-2568.  

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

FRIDAY, JUNE 26 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Jack Goes Boating” through July 19. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822. auroratheatre.org.  

Berkeley Rep “You, Nero” at 2025 Addison St., through June 28. Tickets are $13.50-$71. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Thoroughly Modern Millie” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through July 19. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Joe Orrach’s “In My Corner” solo show, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School of the Arts’ New Black Box Theatre, in the Fox Theatre Complex, 531 19th St. Oakland, through June 28. Tickets are $18-$28. joeorrach.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Lady Windermere’s Fan” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through July 4. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Pinole Community Players “Pump Boys & the Dinettes” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Community Playhouse, 601 Tennet Ave., Pinole, through July 11. Tickets are $17-$20. www.pinoleplayers.org 

Shotgun Players “Faust, Part 1” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through June 28. Tickets are $18-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“What Goes Around, Comes Around” Street art on vinyl, a group show by Everybody Get Up! Reception at 6 p.m. at Float Art Gallery, 1091 Calcott Place, Unit 116, Oakland. www.thefloatcenter.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dianne Hale reads from “La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ritmojito, Latin, at noon at the Kaiser Center Roof Garden, on top of the parking garage, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Free.  

Dave Gleason, of Wasted Days, at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

Hanif & The Sound Voyagers at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Suni Paz & Rafael Manriquez at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $14-$16. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Caribbean Allstars and Native Elements at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Refugees at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Moore Brothers, Casual Fog at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

The P-PL at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Reality Playthings improvisation with Frank Moore at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. fmoore@eroplay.com 

Santero, Carne Cruda at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Dana Salzman Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Tara Tinsley’s Birthday Show with Ryan Toth and Jeremy Ferrick at 8 p.m. at Art House Gallery and Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $10.  

SATURDAY, JUNE 27 

CHILDREN  

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

Rabbit on the Moon with songs, puppetry and acrobatics, Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Stan Goldberg reads from “Lessons for the Living: Stories of Forgiveness, Gratitude and Courage at the End of Life” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Rhythm & Muse with poets Lucille Lang Day and Marc Elihu Hofstadter at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St., 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Passamezzo Moderno 17th century music of Merula, Schmelzer, Frescobaldi and others performed on dulcian, violin, organ and harpsichord, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Bluegrass Kid’s Jam from 1 to 4 p.m. at at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $12.50-$13.50. 548-1761.  

Star Spangeld Summer Gael Alcock, cello, with Skye Atman, piano, John Pearson, guitar, Adam David Miller, poetry, at 7 p.m. at 2424 Warring St. Donation $10, no one turned away. Benefits Cha house. 548-9050. 

Miss Faye Carol & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Gil Chun’s 15th Annual Bay Area Follies at 7 p.m. at the Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $12-$15. Dancegil@sbcglobal.net  

La Mixta Criolla at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Baba Ken & The Afro Groove Connexion at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Marcus Shelby Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Houston Jones at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Mark Levine & the Latin Tinge at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

20 Minute Loop, The Hollyhocks, Ultralash at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Jacques Ibula at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Marcus Shelby Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 28 

CHILDREN 

Orange Sherbet at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Mystery Made Manifest” New work by Susan Dunhan Felix. Artist talk and poetry reading at 2:30 p.m. at the Bade Museum, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 848-0528.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bluegrass for the Greenbelt Festival with The Waybacks, The Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands, and many others from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Dunsmuir House, 2960 Peralta Oaks Dr., Oakland. Tickets are $40, free for children 12 and under. For tickets see www.slimstickets.com 

Jazz Vespers with the Jazz Connection Quintet at 4 p.m. at Downs Memorial United Methodist Church, 6026 Idaho St., Oakland. Tickets are $20, $10 for children. 420-0104.  

London Players Music for strings, winds, and piano at 7 p.m. at Crowden School, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $10. 409-2416. 

Gil Chun’s 15th Annual Bay Area Follies at 2 p.m. at the Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $12-$15. Dancegil@sbcglobal.net  

Hip Hop Awareness Fundraiser at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. All ages. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Dave Le Febvre Group at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Carlos Oliveira & Brazilian Origins, featuring Harvey Wainapel, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Soul Jazz Sundays with the Howard Wiley Organ Trio at 5 p.m. at The Aqua Lounge, 311 Broadway, Oakland. Donation $5. 625-9601. 

Wild Buds in a benefit for the Ecology Center at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

McLaren’s Voices Eclectica at 5 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, JUNE 29 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Henry VI, Part I” Staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $8 at the door. 276-3871. 

Poetry Express open mic theme night on “predator and prey” at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Iya Khan at 5:30 p.m. at Palm Tree Plaza, Jack London Square. 645-9292. www.jacklondonsquare.com 

Wild Buds in a benefit for the Ecology Center at 6:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Americana Unplugged: The Whiskey Brothers at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mike Marshall and “International Mandolin Night” in a benefit for Aurora School at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

TUESDAY, JUNE 30 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jack Passion, author of “The Facial Hair Handbook” and two-time, undefeated champion of natural full beards from the World Beard and Mustache Championships reads at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

La Banda Feufollet at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 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, JULY 1 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mo’Rockin Project, world music, at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. 

Rosalie Sorrels in Concert at 7:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., corner W. Richmond Ave., Point Richmond. Suggested donation $10. 236-0527.  

Gilliam Harwin Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Woman Drum Maestras: Born to Drum at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20-$22. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Everton Blender, Admiral Tibet, Donovan Bananza, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 2 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bongo Love at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Chris Caswell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Singer’s Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

The Deep at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

These United States, Mushroom at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. 

FRIDAY, JULY 3 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Jack Goes Boating” through July 19. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Thoroughly Modern Millie” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through July 19. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132.  

Masquers Playhouse “Lady Windermere’s Fan” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through July 4. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. 

Pinole Community Players “Pump Boys & the Dinettes” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Community Playhouse, 601 Tennet Ave., Pinole, through July 11. Tickets are $17-$20.  

Opera Piccola “The Play’s the Thing” staged readings at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Help Me Remember How Beautiful the World Is” Works by YaChin Bonny You. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at the Compound Gallery, 6602/6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs through July 26. 655-9019. thecompoundgallery.com 

“This Town” Group art show of cities, people, cultures of Northern California. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Exlectix Galery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.eclectix.com 

“just because there are questions, does not mean there are answers” Installation by Sam Lopes, Joy Fritz and others. Opening reception at 7 pm. at Blankspace Gallery, 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 547-6608.  

“Wood and Water” Works by Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Anna Vaughan and “Forecast” Works by Julie Alvarado, Aaron Geman, Kathleen King and Joan Weiss. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Aug. 1. 701-4620.  

“Painting from a Deep Place” Works by Leigh Hyams and others. Reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to July 11. 663-6920. 

“Shedding” Works by Kimberley Campisano and Yasmin Lambie-Simpson on the creative expression of change. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Red Door Gallery, 416 26th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to July 31. www.reddoorgalleryandcollective.com 

FILM 

The Afro-Mexican Presence in Film with sceenings of “The Forgotten Robot” and “The Third Root” at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak at 10th, Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

UpSurge! Jazz poetry for the 3rd Annual Fredrick Douglass Day/Alternative 4th of July Celebration with the Frederick Douglas Youth Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Barbeque at 6 p.m. www.opcmusic.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Independence Day Celebration with the Oakland East Bay Symphony at 7 p.m. at Craneway Pavilion, inside the historic Ford Point Building, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Free. www.craneway.com 

Technohop Danceparty: In-degenerate’s Day Edition at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Danny Caron Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Justin Ancheta, Stitchcraft at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8 with bike, $10 without. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Darol Anger’s Monster String Quartet with Brittany & Natalie Haas and Lauren Rioux at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Green Machine at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

SATURDAY, JULY 4 

THEATER 

Disney’s High School Musical: Summer Celebration at 7:15 p.m. at Craneway Pavilion, inside the historic Ford Point Building, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Activities from 5 p.m. on. Performance followed by fireworks. www.craneway.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Macy Blackman & The Mighty Fines at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Youssoupha Sidibe in a benefit for SEVA, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $110-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

SUNDAY, JULY 5 

EXHIBITIONS 

Squeak Carnwath: Painting Is No Ordinary Object, docent tour at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amy André, Sherilyn Connelly, Kimberly Dark, Daphne Gottlieb, and others read from “Visible: a Femmethology” at 6 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sing Out for Single Payer with Anne Feeney, Jon Fromer, Roy Zimmerman and many others at 5 p.m. at 33 Revolutions Cafe, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. www.33revolutions.com 

Jaz Sawyer’s Eight Legged Monster at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

A man dances salsa in silhouette, then bobs and weaves like a fighter in the ring, backed by a tight piano trio. Lights up; Joe Orrach turns and tells us, “When I was 17, I signed a contract with the U.S. Air Force for the next four years of my life. After three, they decided they had enough. I could’ve told them that after a week!” 

Joe proceeds to show us what “enough” means over the next hour or so, as he dances, feints and jabs, complains and exults, talks to us about and just plain shows his early days, relentlessly, with passion and humor in his solo act, In My Corner. 

The show runs for another weekend at the new Black Box Theatre, Oakland School for the Arts’ new stage in the uptown Fox Theatre complex on 19th Avenue, just off Telegraph. 

Solo shows, autobiographical solo shows—ethnic identity autobiographic solo shows—have become a staple, even a cliché in American performance. But Joe Orrach shows what it is to be Puerto Rican-Italian, from the Bronx transplanted to Long Island, with such engagement—and so many arrows in his quiver, strings to his bow—that he has us reacting to his very synapses as they fire nervous impulses. To tell is to instantly re-enact, to re-experience a life. 

Constantly changing tempo, breaking up the rhythm, telling us one thing as he does something else in counterpoint, Joe puts it across by bringing us into his activity, even as he’s describing it. Not illustrating one by the other, but setting a whole series of acts in motion by a recited fact or image. An image itself has been defined as a complex, and In My Corner. compounds those complexities into what would be merely a tour-de-force if it weren’t so close to the bone, yet higher than a kite. It’s truly a show, continuous entertainment, its infectious spirit telegraphed by the rapture of the performer. 

All the perceptions and sensitivities are there, from memory, brought alive with relish: the family scene, the food, his parents dancing—and when he’s praised for winning a twist contest, his father demurring, “His timing’s off. Watch me and my wife. Please,” as they writhe to Tito Puente. 

Joe’s characterization of his father colors the show as much as his own impulsive delivery: his father teaching him how to shave, and talking about romance and marital disappointment, breaking into a rendition of “Besame Mucho.” Or putting up a speedbag in the basement (there’s one in a rollaround frame onstage) and teaching his boys boxing (“My father didn’t have much patience; in fact, he had no patience at all.”). Or shouting out instructions and imprecations to the P.R. boxer on TV, losing to Ballentine Ale by a knockdown. Or confronting the coach at school for punishing Joe for a misdemeanor while letting his non-Puerto Rican accomplices off easy—and beating the system. 

In My Corner. takes us up through Joe’s initiation into The Sweet Science—though opening the metal doors into the gym, he falls backwards at the stench—and a gripping first bout, after which he’s almost assassinated, thought to be “a whitey from Long Island.” It tails off with disappointment, estrangement even, until he changes his shoes, learning “so that’s how you do it!”—with a sensational tap routine to salsa, that burns on into curtain call and an encore. 

It’s a great solo show, with a great performer giving his all. And, like anything else, a few others have been crucial: Joe’s co-writer, Lizbeth Hasse; his director and dynamic lighting designer, the ubiquitous Jim Cave (of Laney College as well as everywhere else); and three tremendous musicians: pianist and music director Matthew Clark, drummer Micha Noor Patri and bassist Eugene Warren. 

IN MY CORNER 

8 p.m. tonight (Thursday) through Saturday, and 7 p.m. Sunday at the New Black Box Theatre, Oakland School of the Arts (in the Fox Theatre building), 531 19th St. at Telegraph, Oakland. $28 ($10 student discount), benefit for the school. (415) 433-4380. www.joeorrach.com.

When director Mario Gonzales welcomed the audience to Round Belly Theatre Company’s performance last Sunday at West Oakland’s Noodle Factory, offhandedly acknowledging it was Father’s Day, there was some irony: Living Room, billed as an ensemble piece, is more about what keeps the family apart than together, no one more estranged than dear old dad. 

Gonzales recounts in the program the six-week series of “improvisational, ensemble-building and creative writing exercises” during which the piece was developed, the characters drawn from 1950s television family comedies—a familiar resort for sketch comedy as well as more serious theater. 

The family—Patrick Holt as Dad, Katie Meinholt as Mom, Son played by Lucas Buckman (an alum of Berkeley High’s Independent Theatre Productions) and Josh Han as Baby—present themselves like they’re in a box, or terrarium, acting out their dysfunctionality through speeches to the audience, dialogue, jittery rewinds and fast-forwards in and out of flashbacks, and parody of boob-tube familial cheerfulness and rancor that would make a cat scream. 

Son mopes; Dad fumes and lashes out; Mom acts positive and sticks to it vehemently when questioned, showing the strain. Only Baby, dressed as a superhero in beachtowel cape, necktie headband and Snoopy slippers, is really happy, because he wants to be: “I know exactly who I am ... I’ve been meditating lately.” 

Son, swathed in bathtowel, looks at the mirror image of his fondled chesthair, over the audience, while talking into a handheld tape recorder. “It’s not like I haven’t been with girls before. Boys, too. I have the Internet ... we all face the night alone.” Meanwhile Mom stands outside the bathroom door, fretting: “I know you’re in there, talking to yourself again.” 

“Damn the day I was born,” Dad curses, holding a Channelmaster. “Why won’t my numbers hit?”  

Baby tells about his day in school— “We learned about Class, and Privilege, and Power, Diversity, Colonialism and Dancing”—and threatens a hunger strike, immediately following next week’s “spaghetti night.” 

There’s a visit from Grandma, never seen, as the family faces the audience and fawns. “My favorite mother-in-law!” says unxious Dad. 

Son comes in drunk, and Mom confronts him, while Baby crouches behind the sofa, eavesdropping. Earlier, Dad said of Son, “He’s almost old enough to buy cigarettes and pornography.” Son: “C’mon 18!”  

Living Room is mostly vignettes, soliloquies and asides. There’s satire amid the parody. Given the theme, Round Belly could use a bit more alienation, of the theatrical type, making a clearer definition (like TV, there’s sometimes a “low def” sense here) between narrative and theater, a common enough blur in many other shows. Some of their best, most theatrical moments—Dad sulking in a bright jumpsuit, slouched in the recliner Mom has sworn she’ll burn someday; Baby’s Zorro-like leap from behind the couch and prowl after Mom and Son have it out; saying hello (and goodbye) to Grandma—could use a little underscoring, some of that sense of demonstrating, of showing something Brecht used to talk about when he’d mention “alienation,” or just plain strangeness. 

“I am married to a man who believes he’s an embarrassment to his family,” Mom shares with us. And finishing on the “strangest” upbeat note of all: “I love the idea of family ... They think family happens to everybody.” 

LIVING ROOM 

Presented by Round Belly Theatre Co. at 8 p.m. Friday, June 26 and Saturday, June 27, at the Noodle Factory, 1255-26th St. at Union (a few blocks west of McClymons High School), West Oakland. Suggested donation: $10. 

www.roundbellytheatre.com.

Berkeley pianist Daniell Revenaugh remembers, during his student days in the late 1950s at Florida State University, walking at night by a former slave cabin near the campus in Tallahassee, hearing composer Carlisle Floyd, best-known for his nine operas, including Susannah, working on his Sonata for Piano.  

“It’s one of the three great American sonatas of the 20th century,” Revenaugh said, “Along with Aaron Copland’s and Samuel Barber’s, which have their following, and been frequently performed during the past half century. Floyd’s hasn’t. ... I wanted to encourage Floyd to write again for piano, and do something to bring the Sonata to light, hopefully inducing further performances.” 

Revenaugh has done just that, capturing his performance of the formidable yet ravishing piece—after a rare, fascinating tutorial for the pianist by the composer, now in his 80s—on a DVD Revenaugh co-produced. The DVD, now available at the Musical Offering, was honored at the Tallahassee Film Festival in April. 

“It was a great success, the auditorium was full—to my surprise, no music faculty members or piano students, but theater and dance students and townspeople,” Revenaugh recalls. “Afterwards, audience members came up to us to say how much they appreciated the Sonata, understanding it better because of the coaching Floyd gave me on camera.” 

Indeed, the unusual combination of a lesson for the player by the composer—following their conversation, with Floyd’s comments and Revenaugh’s demonstrations of musical points at the keyboard—is not only a boon for musicians and students, but a privileged glimpse into the process of music-making for untrained listeners, making it all tangible, showing how both a composition and its performance are put together. 

“I’d never actually played for Floyd,” said Revenaugh, “and we hadn’t seen each other in years. I took advantage of his move back to Tallahassee after his many years with the Houston Opera. But I had no idea how he would respond to my idea. To my great, surprised satisfaction, he gave me this detailed lesson before I attempted to perform the Sonata, as if he had just written it—and Floyd hadn’t seen or heard it since its first performances, after which it just sort of faded away, in great part because of its highly individualistic style.” 

In the DVD booklet, Revenaugh notes of his own encounter with the piece, “not an easy task for a musician whose repertory starts with Bach and ends abruptly with Bartok’s 1926 Sonata.” 

Revenaugh characterized the Sonata as “Post-Romantic, structured after the 19th-century manner, harmonically traditional, with 20th-century inclinations to dissonance—but easily appreciable, if not on the first, surely the second hearing.” 

Floyd’s third opera, Susannah, staging the story from the Apocrypha in a rural Tennessee setting and dialect, was premiered at Florida State in 1955, followed by its New York City Opera debut the following year, then a City Opera production at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. It has had a great worldwide success.  

“Over 800 performances,” Revenaugh recounted, “more than West Side Story, second only to Porgy and Bess for American operas performed.”  

Floyd has been honored, along with Leontyne Price and Richard Gaddes, by the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as by the National Opera Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 2004. 

Revenaugh, whose mother danced with Mikhail Folkine’s ballet company, and whose paternal great-grandfather was portraiturist Aurelius O. Revenaugh, grew up in Louisville, Ky., living there until his teens when, he said, “I realized I couldn’t go any further with my musical career there; I had to get into a more competitive environment. My record collection had many Egon Petri records. I managed to get a recommendation to him. I thought he was at Cornell University; he was at Mills College. My parents brought me out here. I was 16 years old.” 

Petri mentioned composer Ferruccio Busoni, Petri’s mentor, to Revenaugh at their first meeting. Revenaugh would go on to record Busoni’s Piano Concerto, Opus 39 in 1967, conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Men’s Voices of the John Alldis Choir, with fellow Petri student John Ogdon at the keyboard, on EMI, an award-winning recording still in catalogue.  

In 2007, EMI released Revenaugh and Lawrence Leighton Smith’s recording of Busoni’s Complete Two Piano Programme, originally composed and arranged by Busoni to further Petri’s career. Busoni and Petri performed it together, but it wasn’t recorded until Revenaugh and Smith’s version. 

“Busoni’s recitals were said to have a demonic, magical power,” Revenaugh said. “Posters announcing his concerts would only say ‘Busoni.’ I resisted playing Busoni, even playing records, for years.”  

It wasn’t until the 1960s, after rescuing Petri’s papers, including much Busoni memorabilia, from Petri’s house in Poland, from where he fled the invasions of 1939, that Revenaugh “got intrigued with the possibilities to try to make Busoni live on.” To that end, he also founded the Busoni Society. “It’s quite frankly the same thing I’ve been trying to do with the Floyd Sonata,” he said. 

Revenaugh has the largest collection of Busoni memorabilia anywhere. He also acquired the cabin where Floyd worked on Susannah and the Sonata for Piano, moving it to the Millstone Plantation Preservation Institute outside Tallahassee, where he hopes it will house a Floyd archive and be a guesthouse for visiting artists. 

Revenaugh, who once wrote a magazine article entitled “When the Piano Recital Became Deadly,” also organized the Electric Symphony Orchestra, which debuted in Zellerbach Auditorium, as well as L’Institut de Hautes Etudes Musicales in Switzerland—both in 1973—as well as the Classical Cabaret, which performed in the early ’90s at Freight & Salvage and the Julia Morgan Center, with jugglers, fire-eaters and eccentric dancers sharing the stage with classical music.  

“I’m not trying to popularize,” Revenaugh declared, “but to propagate a huge body of literature out beyond its usual sociological barriers.” 

An on-and-off Berkeley resident since 1951, who now divides his time between here, Switzerland and Tallahassee, Revenaugh said he’s spent more time in Berkeley than anywhere, including his childhood home.  

“Berkeley has left me alone to my own devices,” he said. “I have not been disturbed in any way. And, like in London, there is everything life can afford in the Bay Area.” 

The Piano Sonata of  

Carslile Floyd  

DVD at The Musical Offering, 2430 Bancroft Way. 849-0211 www.musicaloffering.com. $19.98.

In the shady backyard of the Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, a grand old Victorian just a few blocks up Peralta Street from West Oakland BART, The Low Bottom Playaz present two short plays, and the actors’ lines as they perform are textured by the rustling of leaves in the breeze at this outdoor venue. 

The first play up, Flowers for the Trashman, depicts a sadly familiar happening: two young African-American men are ushered into jail, where they are expected to share a cell with a white prisoner (another young black actor in whiteface) who keeps calling out: “Dammit, jailer, I want to make my phone call.” Finally, the jailer (also in whiteface) escorts him out; the two remaining young men sit, stew—and talk. 

What rises out of that conversation is the play. One, Wes, doesn’t know his father. When asking what he’s like, he’s told one thing one day, something very different the next, depending on his mother’s mood. His buddy Joe, on the other hand, lives with his father, the two of them alone since his mother left; father and son hardly talk. 

Joe’s fraught, and he’s angry, reading out the others around him—he’s someone who gets in trouble for his mouth. His inheritance, no doubt: Joe’s father, who sells flowers, is called the Trashman because of his bad tongue, one reason Joe’s mother “put him down.” 

“Your daddy thinks he’s white or something,” Wes needles. “Don’t know anything about flowers but ‘Roses are Red, Violets are Blue’”—then sings that old doo-wop, “White port and lemon juice.” Even Wes will finally admonish his buddy for his hot put-downs of his own father. 

Another prisoner is brought in, a little bit older. Joe starts in on him, too, and Wes defuses it. Turns out he knew Joe’s brother in Folsom. “You got a cold ass brother, man.” But he remembers Joe sending books to his brother and asks, “Ain’t you supposed to be a writer or something?” He compares him to James Baldwin, though Baldwin’s gay. “How do you know Jesus Christ ain’t a fag?” Joe shoots back. “All those Apostles he had with him. He must’ve had a gay old time, spreading the Gospel!” The prison-hardened parolee, worried his arrest will send him back, doesn’t like Joe “cuttin’ up on J. C. like that.” 

The talk and the tale go round and round, covering the same ground but always turning up something else, some realization of both wanting and not wanting, loving and hating, what they have. 

Flowers for the Trashman was written by Marvin X in the early ’60s. Things haven’t changed much at all. And, as director Ayodele Nzinga remarked of her cast—the young men of the Lower Bottom Playaz, most of them Hip-Hop performers—“They never asked for interpretation, they just understood the inflections, as if they were in the same era.” It comes across as anxious yet offhand, streetwise. 

Marvin X—poet, playwright, cultural figure since the days of Black House in Oakland, with Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver and other, maybe more familiar, names—lives in Berkeley now. The notorious (but elegiac) play, Salaam, Huey, Salaam, concerns a meeting between Marvin and Huey Newton in an Oakland crackhouse. Nzinga has worked with him since meeting him and directing a play of his at Laney College, over 20 years ago. 

Next up is Opal Palmer Adisa’s The Bathroom Grafitti Queen, with Nzinga in the regal lead role, and Tatiana Monet bravely taking up a slew of supporting parts—all the women, from church lady to street, who occupy the next stall and provide the scribble for the Grafitti Queen to pontificate on. 

It’s funny, and harrowing. Nzinga brings across a woman who’s walked away from her job as a meter maid, leaving her vehicle’s engine running, to follow a higher, if ribald, calling. Or is it a street person’s sense of dislocation? She’s looking for her daughter, searching for her home ... sharp one minute, hazy the next. As Nzinga says, “She’s trying to remember, get back and handle it ... Even in her absence, she ministers to other people. She’s misplaced her life, but is perfectly willing to tell you what to do with yours!” Her mission, at least, is as clear as its premises are stained and jotted over. 

“I love the freedom to walk around all painted up!” Nzinga’s a thoughtful, humorous, articulate woman, with a great deal to say about theater and its relation to community. She jokes about her identification with the Bathroom Queen: “Longly, wistfully thought of as being crazy—but of what I’ve got to do next Tuesday! That’s what’s beautifully tender and precious about her.”  

Nzinga also produces Recovery Theater and Shakespeare In The Hood, with her “remixes” of The Bard, like Mack, A Gangsta Tale, from Macbeth, or the new Romeo and Juliet remix, Ebony and Johnny. Some of her cast, besides Tatiana Monet, who just returned from acting in LA, go by their Hip-Hop handles: Doe & Reezy (Joe and Wes), Wolfhawk Jaguar (vocalist for Hairdoo, who played the parolee), Leo Coleman (the white prisoner), Hi-Beats Entertainment (jailer plus working the tech boards in the booth)—and have all been with the Lower Bottom Playaz (named after the neighborhood’s monicker), some for all nine seasons. 

After the show closes, July 25, they’ll take the plays along with Nzinga’s Mama at Twilight; Death by Love to the San Francisco Theater Festival in Yerba Buena Gardens. 

THE LOWER BOTTOM PLAYAZ 

Flowers for the Trashman by Marvin X and The Bathrroom Grafitti Queen by Opal Palmer Adisa, performed by The Low Bottom Playaz, Friday–Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p. m. through July 25. Prescott-Joseph Center, 920 Peralta Street (four blocks from West Oakland BART). $10 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Information: 510-835-8683; reservations: 510-208-1912.

A Midwestern gal takes a bite of the Big Apple, gets her hair bobbed, dances the Charleston in a speakeasy and is busted in a raid; falls for the first ne’er-do-well she meets, instead of the successful boss she’s determined on; evades the toils of White Slavery—and lives happily ever after. 

That’s the lowdown on Thoroughly Modern Millie, the musical on stage at Contra Costa Civic Theatre in El Cerrito, carrying the torch of the ’60s film spoof of the Roaring ’20s that it’s fashioned after. (Which, in hindsight, looks like a crazy quilt of crossed talents: Julie Andrews, James Fox, Carol Channing—and the glorious Bea Lillie in her silver screen swan song—directed by Ross Hunter! Oh those eclectic ’60s ...)  

Summer ups the demand for frothy fare—as does the air of uncertainty around state and national issues, especially the economy. But Millie isn’t just a pleasant airhead, even if that’s how a few of the kids on the corner type our heroine. With Daren A. C. Carollo directing and Joe Simiele conducting the sextet that powers Liz Caffrey’s choreography and the singing of cast and ensemble—the production numbers are exciting, the pacing is crisp—if it’s frothy, that’s what it all gets whipped up into. 

Besides the street Millie arrives on, divested of purse, hat and scarf in the process, and the aforementioned speakeasy, as well as the precinct office for booking and a conga line of mug shots, the plot propels our novice flapper into a “theatrical” hotel, filled with forlorn Broadway wannabes; the typing pool of a high-powered office downtown; and the swank precincts of Cafe Society, if also its kitchen when dishwashing passes for legal tender.  

Millie (Morgan Breedveld) meets man-about-town Jimmy Smith (Ron Houk), a jack-of-all-trades, as well as other hyphenated non-professions; Mrs. Meers (Laurie Strawn, playing Bea Lillie’s nutty role as a would-be diva posing as crossover dragon lady), who runs the hotel, and her behind-the-scenes accomplices Ching Ho (Bryan Pangilinan) and Bun Foo (Natalie Tse); statuesque ingenue Miss Dorothy Brown (Hannah M. Newton), the girl (in the hotel room) next door; Miss Flannery (Marisa Borowitz), who runs the corps-de-bureau with an iron hand for adored (if frenetic) boss Trevor Graydon (Tom Reardon); and socialite/chanteuse (on the Red Hot Mama side), Muzzy Van Hossmere (Patty Penrod). 

A show like this is dependent on a few elements: competent leads to further plot and romance; a gallery of eccentric characters and the actors who can bring them to zany life; and a hardworking ensemble that can swing into action, yet turn on a dime, going from auditioners to barflies, stenographers to haute monde ... and back again. CCCT manages well in all categories, not always a given in community theater, which just adds to the warmth of its neighborly, family-oriented feeling. 

It all gets nutty as soon as Millie checks in to Mrs. Meers’ sinister hostelry—and when Ching Ho and Bun Foo burst out in a Cantonese reprise, replete with supertitles (and other operatic exaggerations), of Millie’s brave little number, “Not for the Life of Me,” giving pre-talkies Al Jolson a run for his Hong Kong dollar. The show switches into high gear right after intermission with Millie, Miss Flannery and a phalanx of lovelorn typists avowing to “Forget About the Boy.” 

If I’m evading the story more than a little, it’s because it’s a mixture of surprises and camped-up clichés—all in the cleverness of the doing, a kaleidoscope of off-the-wall burlesques of oldtime big-town fun that still delivers the goods, revolving around Lisa Johnson’s great Manhattan set, with Adam Fry and Travis Rexroat’s lights and sound and costumer Melissa Anne Paterson’s period dress sprucing up nearly two dozen livewire performers intent on having fun—and conveying it. 

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE.  

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays through July 19, at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org. 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre will host a cast reunion party, an event in their ongoing 50th anniversary celebration, Saturday, July 24. Cast members from 1960 through the present are invited. 

Jack Goes Boating, Bob Glaudini’s play now onstage at the Aurora, is a little bit of a double work-buddies comedy—Jack and Clyde drive limo for Jack’s uncle; Lucy supervises Connie, selling grief seminars in a funeral home phone tank—combined with a couples comedy, though these four are no Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice, much less the lost souls of Carnal Knowledge.  

There’s a sense of the hybrid about Jack Goes Boating; it never breaks down into its constituent elements, as many contemporary comedies seem to, becoming protracted, live theater versions of TV sketch or situation comedy. Neither does it define an idiosyncratic form of its own.  

Most interesting, most important: although Jack operates off a basic premise, a comic situation that develops (if sometimes sideways, even verging on shaggy dog) as well as acquiring tempo and volume by employing running gags and goofy situations that build up, almost vertiginously, the truest humor is conveyed by texture, by the feel of the characters and events, a kind of studied over-familiarity that becomes at times an almost grotesque strangeness, without losing a basic warmth, its humanity.  

There’s a tradition—or perhaps overlapping traditions—in American humor for something like the kind of tone Jack achieves, maybe closest to the work of two writers who were inspired by Sherwood Anderson, started out with stories about the children of ethnic immigrants, then went into theater or screenwriting, living the lives of Hollywood or New York celebrity or professional: William Saroyan and John Fante. 

Glaudini himself has worked as a director. In his program bio, he singles out playwrights whose work he has directed who all espouse one or another form of absurdism or alienation: Beckett, Genet, Ionesco, Brecht, Pinter, Sam Shepard. Joy Carlin, who directed the Aurora show with both a light touch and sense of focus amid the attention deficiency of this menage, has directed a few absurd comedies, and one by Arthur Miller, at the Aurora, which both incorporated and scrutinized absurd humor. It would seem Glaudini would be a director’s playwright in a field that often puts the director on the spot. 

The casting works very well: Danny Wolohan as deadpan, obtuse Jack, naive to a fault in his determination to be somehow positive; Beth Wilmurt, who took on a similar role under Carlin’s direction in Bosoms and Neglect at Aurora last year, here playing Connie, as intense and eccentric—and absent-minded—a loner as Jack. 

The two are brought together by the very different, long-bonded (perhaps in dysfunctionality) and more urban, if not exactly urbane Clyde. Gabriel Marin takes the role and poses his swaybacked orations on life with a vertiginous Body English; it’s great physical comedy. His better half by mutual consent, Lucy—played with pert layers of contradictory mood and wilfullness by Amanda Duarte—is the one mover-and-shaker on the scene, though whether she’s steaming straight ahead is hard to catch; still, her wake’s a formidable one. Their constant activity and verbosity prove counterpoint to Connie and Jack’s diffidence, and give the play much of its atmosphere. 

Atmosphere’s the thing, and a tangible part of it is hempen; one running, situational gag produces bigger—and presumably better—means to smoke. Another, really the axis or crux of the play, is Jack’s determination, assisted by an unlikely mentor in Clyde and the unseen third—or is it fifth?—wheel of “The Cannoli,” to master swimming so he can take Connie boating, study cuisine so he may cook for her, which she swears no other man has. 

Things go surprisingly well, though the coefficient to easy hopefulness is sudden disaster. A few of these moments cut through the genially nutty sociality of this unlikely little community, all towards middle age—will they see it through together or alone?—while doggedly displaying badges of protracted post-adolescence, against the background of New York, where every gesture or recognition seems “named into anonymity,” as poet Lew Welch put it. 

Melpomene Katakalos’ set, lit by Jim Cave, and Chris Houston’s sound design and music anchor this loopy tale, yet at moments, render it fabulous.  

JACK GOES BOATING 

8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through July 19 at Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison. $28-$50. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. 

The hamlet of Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon, numbers fewer than a thousand inhabitants. In compensation, it is rich in scenic beauty and historic interest. Not the least interesting local resident was Jack London (1876-1916), who first bought land here in 1905. In those days, London was America’s best-known and most highly paid writer. His discovery of Glen Ellen came about through a Berkeley connection. 

In 1898, the yet unpublished writer returned from the Klondike with a sheaf of stories. The first one he managed to sell was “To the Man on the Trail: A Klondike Christmas,” which appeared in the Overland Monthly in January 1899. 

The Overland Monthly’s business manager was Roscoe Lorenzo Eames, a shorthand teacher and the author of Text-Book of Light-Line Short-Hand. His wife, the journalist Ninetta Wiley Eames, was acting as the magazine’s editor. The couple resided at 2147 Parker St., on the corner of Fulton. Living with them was Ninetta’s orphaned niece, Charmian Kittredge (1871-1955), who had learned her uncle’s shorthand method and was earning her living as a stenographer. 

Although eight of Jack London’s stories appeared in the pages of the prestigious albeit impecunious magazine during 1899, Ninetta Eames did not meet the writer until the following year. Charmian had read none of his stories by the time she accompanied her aunt to lunch with the young author. The latter, in a letter dated March 10, 1900, wrote to his friend Cloudesley Johns: “Have made the acquaintance of Charmian Kittredge, a charming girl who writes book reviews, and who possesses a pretty little library wherein I have found all these late books which the public libraries are afraid to have circulated.” 

Less than a month later, Jack married his former mathematics tutor, Bess Maddern. Two daughters were born to them in quick succession. In May 1903, Jack made his first visit to Glen Ellen, camping on the grounds of Ninetta Eames’ country house, Wake Robin Lodge. Charmian described that summer in The Book of Jack London (1921): “Here a congenial company of acquaintances met in the summers, making merry in the incomparable woods bordering Graham and Sonoma Creeks, swimming in the pools, tramping, boxing, fencing, kiting, and gathering about the campfire at dusk for discussion and reading.” 

It was here, at a rustic table by the creek, that Jack London wrote his novel The Sea Wolf. Returning from Glen Ellen, the Londons separated. A year later, following their divorce, Jack spent a week at Wake Robin Lodge, and “his regard for the beautiful mountainside had only extended,” wrote Charmian. 

By the following summer, he had committed himself to both Charmian and Glen Ellen. In June 1905, he purchased the Hill Ranch for $7,000. “There are 130 acres in the place” he wrote, “and they are 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California. There are great redwoods on it, some of them thousands of years old … In fact, the redwoods are as fine and magnificent as any to be found anywhere outside the tourists groves. Also there are great firs, tanbark oaks, maples, live-oaks, white-oaks, black-oaks, madrono and manzanita galore. There are canyons, several streams of water, many springs. … The place was a bargain, one of those bargains that a man would be insane to let slip by. The entrance is a half-mile from a small town and two different railway stations. … Woodchoppers were already at work when I snapped up the place. It had to be snapped up. Twenty years from now I’ll wager it will be worth twenty times what I am now paying for it.” 

In a June 28, 1905 article headline “‘The Simple Life’ Suits Jack London: Author is Camping on His Farm Near Glen Ellen,” the San Francisco Call reported: 

Hatless, coatless and with shirt-collar open displaying a broad sunburnt chest, Jack London, the writer, rode into Santa Rosa to-day. The object of his coming was ordinary enough—to look up the titles of the property he recently purchased near Glen Ellen in this county. He was accompanied by his reported fiancee, Miss Kettredge [sic] of Glen Ellen, the daughter of a former manager of the Overland Monthly. The young lady, who is a sprightly little demiblonde, was dressed as outre as London himself, wearing a khaki suit with leggings. … 

Speaking of his purchase near the pretty little village of Glen Ellen he said he was “just camping on the farm now.” “Some time,” he said, “I will build a shack to live in.” He is writing short stories for Eastern magazines. 

Jack and Charmian were married in November 1905. When not traveling, they made their home at Wake Robin Lodge, where an annex had been built for their use. Charmian described her husband’s activities on the ranch: 

Jack, with eye to homebuilding, ordered fruit-trees of all descriptions suitable to the latitude, and seventy-odd varieties of table-grapes—orchard and vineyard to be planted upon an amphitheater behind a half-circle we had chosen for the house-site. Johannes Reimers tendered the benefit of his professional advice about the trees and vines, and ordered for us a hedge of Japanese hawthorne to flourish between orchard and house-space, which in time grew into a glory of orange and red berries alternating with a season of white blossoming. The plot was on the lip of a deep wooded ravine which was the Ranch’s southern boundary, ancient redwood and spruce, lightning-riven and eagle-nested, accenting the less majestic growth. We never wearied of riding Belle and Ban to the spot, in our minds’ eyes the vision of a rugged stone house that was to rise like an indigenous growth from the grassy semi-circle. ... 

Our amusements consisted in exploring, alone or with our guests, the infinite variety of the one hundred and twenty-nine acres of Jack’s “Beauty Ranch”; driving or riding to points in the valley—say Cooper’s Grove, a stately group of redwoods; or to Hooker’s Falls across in the eastern range; or to Santa Rosa, as when we drove Professor Edgar Larkin, of Mt. Lowe Observatory, to call upon Luther Burbank; or to the valley resorts to swim, for a change from Sonoma Creek, in the warm mineral tanks. 

The great San Francisco earthquake exposed the machinations of their barn builder: “Our beautiful barn—the shake had disrupted its nearly finished two-foot-thick stone walls, and to our horror revealed that the rascally Italian contractor from Sonoma, despite reasonable overseeing, had succeeded in rearing mere shells of rock, filling in between with debris of the flimsiest. Jack’s face was a study.” 

Even in the midst of plans for their ranch and home, Jack began building the yacht Snark, which he intended to sail around the world. The voyage was planned to last seven years. The Londons left with a small crew in April 1907, bound for Honolulu. Although London was an excellent navigator, Roscoe Eames acted as the Snark’s skipper on the cruise’s first leg. Ninetta was left in charge of the ranch and the Londons’ business affairs. Having arrived in Hawaii, Roscoe abandoned the yacht, returning home by ship, while the Londons continued sailing across the South Pacific. In Australia, Jack’s ill health finally curtailed the cruise. They were forced to sell the boat 27 months into the voyage. 

Back home, Jack hired his stepsister, Eliza London Shepard, as ranch superintendent. He purchased the Kohler-Frohling winery ranch and set about turning the Beauty Ranch into a model of modern agriculture. In 1910 he wrote, “I am buying seven hundred acres of land that rounds out and connects my present two ranches, giving me miles of frontage on three creeks, and some magnificent mountain land, to say nothing of the timber—real wild country.” 

The Londons had been planning their dream home for years. In 1910, they retained the fashionable San Francisco architect Albert Farr to transform Jack’s ideas into blueprints. Charmian described their Wolf House as “not a mansion, but a big cabin, a lofty lodge, a hospitable teepee.” Built with redwood logs and local volcanic rock, the house was arranged around a courtyard with a large reflecting pool in its midst. 

“The Bank placed an insurance on the Hill Ranch covering half the amount loaned,” wrote Charmian. “There was no other insurance on the huge purple-red pile, since every one agreed that rock and concrete, massive beams and redwood logs with the bark on, were practically fireproof unless ignited in a dozen places, owing to the quadrangular construction and cement partitions.” 

Construction lasted more than two years. On Aug. 22, 1913, a week before they were to occupy Wolf House, it burned down to its rock shell. The insurance reimbursed $10,000, an eighth of the amount they had sunk into the house. 

London never rebuilt Wolf House, but he never stopped improving the ranch. In 1914, he built the first concrete silos in California. In November 1915, a year before his death, the Oakland Tribune reported on the palatial pig pens London had just completed at a cost of several thousand dollars. “Those pigs of mine will be cholera-proof just because I have attended to the sanitation and drainage of the place where they will be kept,” he was quoted as saying. 

The pig palace, the silos, the barns, and the ruins of Wolf House are a few of the many attractions in the 800-acre Jack London State Historic Park, established in 1960. Others include the cottage in which the Londons lived and wrote, the House of Happy Walls museum, and the Londons’ grave. Ranch, lake, and scenic mountain trails provide access to much of the property. 

I have a major pet peeve (well, many major pet peeves, actually) with the building codes. They say far too little about places where people, particularly little people, can fall, and the area in which my knickers get most fully twisted concerns the accessibility of windows. 

Now this isn’t a new problem and the worst cases I see tend to be at houses of some longish tooth. Nonetheless, new houses continue to be built every day that lack what I consider to be adequate concern for child safety. 

The building code now says that windows may not be lower than two feet from the floor without adequate guards. Now, that’s 18 inches lower than the height for guardrails on the outside of the house. So, what’s different about running around on a deck versus playing “Incarcerate Your Little Brother” inside the house. Nuthin’. That’s my take on it. In fact, children spend more time inside the house than they do on decks and landings. We just took the railing heights for decks up from three feet to three and a half feet in the most recent version of the building code (2007) and that was unquestionably a response to a given number of falls from deck or porch railings.  

For a child with a center of gravity about two feet from the ground, the difference between two feet and three and half feet can be a serious matter. 

Children also play in ways that adults don’t. If a child has never had a serious fall, a low window is an exciting place to dangle and spy. A low-set window on a third story or even a second story over a concrete driveway may be high enough to be fatal, and while there are lots of things that we look for in houses that have a fairly mild downside, this isn’t one of them. You’re not going to care very much about the rot in the bathroom floor after a tragedy of this sort. Even the potential for a serious injury should garner more attention than issues of decay, wear and utility in our homes. 

For my money, any window that is lower than three feet on a wall should be the subject of special attention in the form of inaccessible locks (set high enough for children standing on tables or chairs) or guards that inhibit access. 

Guardrails come in a wide range of shapes and sizes and one thing about them that we often don’t think about is how “climbable” they are. Railings that run vertical are very hard to climb and they’re the preferred form. When we install rails horizontally, a railing becomes a ladder. If we have a grid, the result is the same. Do children like to climb and get a better view? Do they enjoy dangling their siblings over the edge just to see their parents change color? Of course they do. Kids are all explorers and given the chance, the next frontier will be simulated WWF belly flops from the deck onto the trampoline in the yard. 

So railings should be unclimbable, as best as you can manage, high (42 inches) and well secured. 

While this doesn’t have much to do with construction, I think it’s also important to consider the furnishings of decks, balconies and other places from which children might fall. If a bench is placed alongside a railing, that railing just got shorter. A child on that bench (or chair, table or box) may be standing where their center of gravity is higher than the remnant barrier and a simple loss of balance can be all that’s needed for dire results. 

Another nasty and often overlooked falling hazard is an accessible garage roof. We have lots of garages that are set into the hillside just behind the sidewalk. Since we tend not to think of garages as places to spend time (though many a client has asked me about the viability of decking over these structures), we tend not to put railings around these roof surfaces. Most are flat (or nearly so) and become places that we can amble across amidst our superhero adventuring. Though it is easy enough to fall 12 feet to the sidewalk below all by your own caped self, it’s much easier to achieve this sorry result with the aid of your evil mastermind friend from next door, or better still, with three wrestling superheroes (mine…mine...no it’s mine).  

So take a look around and see. Do you have a garage that can be easily mounted for play? A deck or accessible roof area that kids can easily climb upon that lacks any sort of guardrail? They’re out there and there are lots of them. Some aren’t accessible to small children but will be once the get a little older. 

While I don’t mind the idea of a chosen danger, I do feel that we should choose our poison. Many choose to ride motorcycles or jump out of airplanes. Actually, cars, in general, pose a much larger threat than anything we’re talking about here today. That said, eliminating unnoticed dangers and reducing our overall risk (especially for our children) is well worth the time and, at least a chunk of our money. 

ASK MATT 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

THURSDAY, JUNE 25 

“Our Himmlers, Eichmans Unscathed as Obama Dithers: Why Is He Afraid of Torturers?” with Ray McGovern and Jon Eisenberg at BFUU Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5-$10. 333-6097. 

Climate Change Action Group Facilitator Training from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2350 San Pablo Ave. Free. Workbook is $10. Registration required. 548-2220, ext. 240. 

“Oakland: Politics and Policing” Panel discussion sponsored by the Wellstone Democratic Club at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Pot-luck at 6 p.m. www.wellstoneclub.org 

“The Political Crisis in Iran and the need for revolution” A discussion at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the American Red Cross Bus, 2021 Challenger Dr., Alameda. To schedule an appointment call 800-448-3543. www.beadonor.com 

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults. 

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. 

FRIDAY, JUNE 26 

Compost Give-away from 8:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., with first priority given to Berkeley Unified School District and Berkeley Community Gardens at Berkeley Marina Maintenance Yard, 201 University Ave., next to Adventure Playground. 981-6660. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Sally Pipes, Pacific Research Institute, on “The Top Myths of American Health Care” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 527-2173. www.citycommonsclub.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Alameda Hospital, Conference Room A, 2070 Clinton Ave., Alameda. To scehdulae an appointment call 800-448-3543. www.beadonor.com 

Humanistic Judaism Shabbat at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. Please bring finger dessert or snack to share for the Oneg and non-perishable food for the needy. 428-1492. Programs@kolhadash.org  

“What is Jewish Spirituality?” at 6:15 p.m. in a private home in Oakland’s Lake Merritt area. Location given on RSVP. Potluck contribution or $7. 559-8140. www.jewishgateways.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. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 27 

The Future of Albany Waterfront The City of Albany is sponsoring small-group sessions on a vision for the future of Albany’s waterfront from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 444-4567. rsvp@voicestovision.com  

45th Birthday UNA/UNICEF Center from 10 a.m. ato 5 p.m. with a celebration of the 64th anniversary of the UN Charter at 1 p.m. at 1403B Addison St. 849-1752. www.unausaeastbay.org 

G.I. Suicide Awareness March and Rally Meet at 11 a.m. in Civic Center Park across from Veteran’s Bldg and march to People’s Park for speakers, music and food.  

Dr. Helen Caldicott on “The Relevance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power to international relations and the Green Revolution” at 7:30 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. Ticekts are $12-$15. Benefit for SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense). 843-2152. 

Haiti Action Committee Memorial for Fr. Gerard Jean- Juste at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. www.haitisolidarity.net 

Backyard Chickens Learn how to get started with your own low-effort backyard flock. We’ll discuss life cycles, coop designs, breed selection, care and feeding for health and egg production, protection from predators and ways of integrating your chickens into your garden From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the East Bay. Location given upon registration. Cost is $30-50. Sponsored by Institute of Urban Homesteading East Bay. 927-3252. 

Friends of Five Creeks Volunteers remove invasives and improve habitat at restored Baxter Creek at the north end of the Ohlone Greenway, El Cerrito. Meet at 10 a.m. where the Ohlone Greenway breaks Conlon, west of Key and east of San Pablo. Snacks, water, tools, and gloves provided. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Master Gardeners at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market Get advice on watering, plant selection and pest management from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Center St., between MLK and Milvia. 639-1275.  

Build a Nest Box for Your Backyard Golden Gate Audubon and Wildcare of Marin County are sponsoring a Nest Box Building Workshop for Western Chickadees, Tree Swallows, flycatchers, Western Bluebirds. All materials provided and hands on instruction in how to assemble nest boxes. No experience necessary. From 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Golden Gate Audubon Society parking lot, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $15-$20. Space limited. To register call 843-2222. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland Explore the 9th and Washington St. district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Ratto’s, 821 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.  

Walk to Talk A walkathon to raise awareness and funds for aphasia services at 9:45 a.m. at Downtown Oakland Senior Center, 200 Grand Ave. at Harrison St. 336-0112. www.aphasiacenter.org 

“Fuchias” How to grow and care for these plants at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. Free. 644-2351. 

Teen Drumming Circle at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. To reserve a drum please call 981-6147. 

Introduction to Improv Theater and Acting with Pan Theater in downtown Oakland, from 10:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. For ages 18 and up. Free. Advance registration requested pantheater@comcast.net 

Cork Boat Regatta A family day at the museum of Children’s Art. Build your own yacht and set sail in the mini-pool, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 538 9th St., Oakland. Cost is $7. 465-8770. www.mocha.org 

Ham Radio Demonstration for Field Day at from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Crown Memorial Beach, close to Shoreline Drive, Alameda. 523-1397. www.arcaham.org 

Beach Party Weekend at Playland Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 232-4264 ext. 25. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the American Red Cross Bus, at YMCA, 2001 Allston Way. To schedule an appointmetn call 800-448-3543. www.beadonor.com 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

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. 

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

SUNDAY, JUNE 28 

Berkeley International Food Festival with cooking demonstrations, food samples, and live entertainment, from noon to 5 p.m. several blocks in either direction of the San Pablo and University aves intersection. Free. 845-4106. www.berkeleyinternationalfoodfestival.com 

“Thank You Bill and Judy” A community celebration to thank Bill and Judy Fujimoto for their 31 years at Monterey Market at 2 p.m. at King School Park, Hopkins St. near Colusa. Please bring a sweet or savory finger food to share. 

Dr. Helen Caldicott on “Can and should there be a world ban on nuclear weapons now?” at 2:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, at the intersection of Dana and Durant. Vigil at 1 p.m. at on the west lawn across from the intersection of Addison and Oxford. 848-8055. 

Home Expo An opportunity to learn about home repair and home improvement projects, from 1 to 5 p.m. at El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane, El Cerrito. www.el-cerrito.org 

“And Still I Rise: A Day of Advocacy and Tribute to Congolese Women” with Kambale Musavuli, from the D.C. based organization, Friends of the Congo, along with Bay Area activists from 2 to 4:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. bayarea@friendsofthecongo.org 

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, designed by Julia Morgan, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Sponsored by the Landmark Heritage Foundation. 848-7800. 

Family Printmaking Workshop in conjunction with “Reverberations” Japanese Prints of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake from 3 to 5 p.m. at Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 430-2164. www.mills.edu/museum/ 

Sad Voter Pink Tea Party with Code Pink at 6 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. bayareacp@yahoo.com 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to do a safety inspection, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Social Action Forum with Cheryl Meyers, Nevin Community Center on “Working as a Community Organizer” 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.  

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 Bob Byrne on ”Mantra and Healing” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 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, JUNE 29 

“Living Green: Communities That Sustain” with Jennifer Fosket and Laura Mamo at 7:30 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874,. www.buildersbooksource.com 

KPFA Local Station Board Election Forum at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalist meeting hall, corner of Cedar and Bonita. 644-1937. 

Community Yoga Class Mon. and Thurs. at 10 a.m. at James Kenney Parks and Rec. Center at Virginia and 8th. Seniors and beginners welcome. Cost is $6. 207-4501. 

Three Beats for Nothing South Mostly ancient part music for fun and practice meets every Mon. at 3 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, Ellis at Ashby. 655-8863. asiecker@sbcglobal 

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. and Wed. 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 

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.  

TUESDAY, JUNE 30 

Hillside Club Book Lust Salon meets to discuss works by Ward Just at 7:30 p.m. at 2286 Cedar St. Non-member donation $5. 845-4870. www.hillsideclub.org/booklust 

“Obama Six Months Later: The change you thought and the change you got” A discussion at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Poles for Walking and Hiking at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Family Storytime for preschoolers and up at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 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. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Bridge for beginners from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m., all others 12:30 to 4 p.m. Sing-A-Long at 2:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1 

Native Plant Workday Volunteers will help care for native plants by collecting seeds at our restoration site and sowing them in our on-site nursery. Other activities include watering and general maintenance. From 1 to 4 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. 452-9261 ext. 119. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers: Walk with a Founder Join BPWA co-founder Jacque Ensign for a convivial and relaxed morning walk on the paths around Live Oak Park culminating in an optional lunch in the Gourmet Ghetto. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Live Oak Park Recreation Center, 1301 Shattuck Ave. 520-3876. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Walking Tour of Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the fountain of Pacific Renaissance Plaza, Ninth St., between Webster and Frainklin. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Berkeley Path Wanderers: Solar Calendar Summit Walk Explore the Berkeley waterfront at dusk, including new and upcoming restorations. Enjoy refreshments as we watch sunset and nearly full moonrise at the top of Cesar Chavez Park. Meet at 6 p.m. at Sea Breeze Delicatessen, 598 University Ave. at Frontage Rd. 848-9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

“Fed Up” A documentary about genetic engineering, modern pesticides, and agribusiness at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“The Efficiency Illusion and other Energy Myths: Why Cap & Trade Won't Work—and What Can” with Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado, at 6 p.m. at Giannini Hall, Room 141, UC campus.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Oakland Police Dept. Lobby, 455 7th St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

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 6 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. 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. 

THURSDAY, JULY 2 

Berkeley Recycling Center BBQ & Open House See Berkeley's recycling program in action with tours of buyback and donation operation, watch sorting and baling equipment, observe off-loading of curbside trucks, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Berkeley Recycling Center, 2nd St. and Gilman St. 524-0114. berkeleyrecycling.org 

Come Play Board Games at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children’s Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. Most of the games are only suitable for ages 3 and up. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at the American Red Cross bus 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. 

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, JULY 3 

Kensington First Friday Art Walk from 6 p.m. to 9p.m., with street musicians, free refreshments at participating businesses on Colusa Circle, as well as works by local artisans. 525-6155.  

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Sideshow weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Celebrate P.T. Barnum's birthday with a trip to the sideshow Fri.-Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.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, JULY 4 

4th of July at the Berkeley Marina with entertainment, food, games, arts and crafts booths and more, from noon to 9:30 p.m.. Fireworks at the Berkeley Pier at 9:30 p.m. No cars after 7 p.m. 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

El Cerrito’s Fourth of July Celebration, with carnival games, rides, circus performances and live music, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Cerrito Vista Park on Moeser Lane, El Cerrito. www.el-cerrito.org 

Disney’s High School Musical: Summer Celebration at 7:15 p.m. at Craneway Pavilion, inside the historic Ford Point Building, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Activities from 5 p.m. on. Performance followed by fireworks. www.craneway.com 

Independence Day on the Aircraft Carrier USS Hornet with live music, interactive games and tours of the carrier, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 707 W. Hornet Ave., Pier 3, Alameda. Cost is $10-$25. 521-8448, ext. 282. www.hornetevents.com 

People’s Weekly World Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, as well as the 40th anniversary of the first Venceremos Brigade with music, Cuban food and art exhibition from 1 to 5 p.m. at 2232 Derby St. Cost is $12. 548-8764. 

Adbusters July 4th Event with Adbusters contributing editor on the future of the anti-corporate movement in America at 6 p.m. at The Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. micah@adbusters.org 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children 5 and over welcome with parent or guardian. www.cal-sailing.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 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. 

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

SUNDAY, JULY 5 

Bay Trail Bike Bash Brunch for the grand opening of the new Ford Point Bay Trail at at 8 a.m. at Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbor Way South, Richmond. Ribbon-cutting at 9:30 a.m. www.craneway.com 

Social Action Summer Forum with Carson Perez, Program Associate for the Children’s Defense Fund California on “Freedom Schools, Children’s Sabbath, and the Goals of the Children’s Defense Fund” 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 11 a.m. and 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 

Huston Smith on “Tales of Wonder” at 11:30 a.m. at Epworth UMC, 1953 Hopkins St.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Judy Rasmussen on “Creating Positive Community” 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 

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., June 25, at 5 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5217.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., June 25, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430.  

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., June 29, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., July 2, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7460.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission/Zoning Adjustments Board Meeting meets Thurs., July 2, at 6 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7429.