The FBI is now involved in the search for a missing 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who was last seen in Oakland on Monday afternoon. 

FBI spokeswoman Patti Hansen said she could not give details about the case but confirmed that FBI is helping search for five-year-old Hassani Campbell. 

Campbell was reported missing from the area of 6000 College Avenue at around 4:15 p.m. Monday, according to the Oakland police youth services unit.  

The boy, who uses leg braces to walk and is considered at risk, had not been located as of this morning, police said. 

Hassani is described as a black boy with light complexion, brown hair and brown eyes. He is about 3 feet tall and weighs around 30 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt and gray pants. 

Anyone with information regarding Hassani's whereabouts should call Oakland police youth services at (510) 238-3641, or call 911 if he is believed to be in immediate danger.

Hackers have struck again at UC Berkeley computers, this time at the Graduate School of Journalism, the university announced Tuesday.  

In a statement from the university’s Department of Public Affairs, the school said a hacker may have gained access to “Social Security numbers and/or dates of birth” of 493 applicants to the journalism school between September 2007, and last May. 

The computer breach is the second announced by the school this year. 

In May the university announced that hackers had stolen at least 160,000 medical records from university computers during attacks that lasted from Oct. 9, 2008, to April 9. 

In March, 2005, the university announced the theft of a laptop computer containing personal information on nearly 100,000 graduate students. 

In October 2004, the university revealed that hackers had breached a database which contained the names and Social Security numbers of about 600,000 individuals. 

In all of the previous incidents, the university sent notice to warn each potentially compromised individual of the breaches. 

In the statement released today the university announced that “Any students who applied to the Graduate School of Journalism between 2007 and 2009 and provided valid Social Security numbers will be receiving letters” informing them of the breach and advising them about what precautions to take.

Police this morning continue to search for a missing boy with cerebral palsy who was last seen in Oakland Monday afternoon. 

Five-year-old Hassani Campbell was reported missing from the area of 6000 College Avenue at around 4:15 p.m., according to the Oakland police youth services unit.  

The boy, who uses leg braces to walk and is considered at risk, had not been located as of 5 a.m., police said. 

Hassani is described as a black boy with light complexion, brown hair and brown eyes. He is around 3 feet tall and weighs around 30 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt and gray pants. 

Anyone with information regarding Hassani's whereabouts should call Oakland police youth services at 238-3641, or call 911 if he is believed to be in immediate danger.

The long-running and sometimes noisy battle over the installation of cell phone antennas in a South Berkeley neighborhood has ended quietly with a few pen strokes. 

A settlement agreement was signed last month signed by the city, two phone companies and representatives of the Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna Free Union (BNAFU). 

The deal gives building owner Patrick Kennedy the right to lease space to no more than three carriers on the roof of his warehouse at 2721 Shattuck Ave. 

In return, Verizon Wireless and Nextel agreed to pay $22,500 each towards BNAFU’s legal costs, with the city contributing $15,000. 

In addition to the legal costs, the city and the phone companies have agreed to provide documented test results showing that their transmitters do no exceed electromagnetic radiation limits set by the Federal Communications Commission. 

Kennedy, as the principal of 2721 Shattuck LLC, the building’s legal owner, agreed to allow no more than three phone companies—including Sprint and Verizon—to install antennas. 

A third carrier, T-Mobile, had already applied to install its equipment at the time of the July 10 agreement. 

The long-fought battle had pitted neighbors, including Michael Barglow, Ellen McGovern and Pamela Speich, against the companies. 

While the Zoning Adjustments Board had voted the antennas down on Jan. 25, 2007, much to the delight of neighbors, the City Council voted in favor of the projects on Nov. 6, 2007. 

The lawsuit followed four months later and raised the issue of the pro-installation vote of Councilmember Linda Maio, which was critical to the council’s 5-1-3 decision to let the project move forward. 

Maio did not disclose at the time that she had received a $45,000 loan from Kennedy to help her and husband Rob Browning buy a commercial condominium unit in another Kennedy building, an act that led to the councilmember’s deposition. (See the Planet's Nov. 13, 2008 edition.) 

Oakland attorney Stephan Volker represented BNAFU, acting City Attorney Zach Cowan represented the city, and the phone carriers were represented by two San Francisco law firms. 

Berkeley officials confirmed Friday that plans are in the works to try to provide tax incentives to Bayer, the city’s largest private-sector employer, to keep the company from leaving the city.  

According to East Bay officials, Bayer Healthcare could decide within two weeks whether to relocate or commence manufacturing the next generation of Kogenate, a drug for the treatment of hemophilia at their 43-acre campus next to the Berkeley Aquatic Park or relocate. 

Senior company officials plan to make the case to the Bayer AG Governing Board that the company should stay in Berkeley.  

In an effort to retain the company, the mayors of Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville are collaborating to expand Oakland’s enterprise zone to include West Berkeley. An enterprise zone is a state-mandated area that gives companies tax credits to hire and train workers.  

On July 28 the Oakland City Council unanimously approved a motion to ask the state to include West Berkeley businesses within Oakland’s enterprise zone. If the cities succeed in getting Bayer included within the zone, the company could receive as much as $19 million in benefits over a 10-year period, including $13 million in tax incentives, $1.5 million in worker-training reimbursements, and $4.5 million in reduced electric rates from PG&E.  

The East Bay Development Alliance, an organization that lobbies to increase jobs and improve economic activity in the East Bay, assembled the package of economic incentives for Bayer that includes the reduced PG&E rates. 

Officials from the East Bay Development Alliance could not be reached for comment by press time. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and Emeryville Mayor Richard Kassis sent a joint letter to Bayer board member Hartmut Klusik last month urging the company to remain in Berkeley. 

“We recognize that Bayer, as a publicly traded corporation, must make location decisions based in part on cost considerations,” the letter said. “Therefore, the cities are working with the state to create a powerful set of economic incentives.” 

Although the cities may all agree to expand the enterprise zone, the final decision is up to state officials.  

Bayer officials are reluctant to speak about the issue before the scheduled meetings among top company officials in Germany. 

Company spokeswoman Trina Ostrander issued a statement late Friday. 

“Bayer is proud of its long-standing commitment to the Bay Area, and especially our 30-year Development Agreement with the City of Berkeley,” said Bayer spokeswoman Trina Ostrander. “We value our local ties and have continuously worked to enrich the communities in which we operate and live.”  

Ostrander said that expenses would be a major factor in their considerations. 

“We cannot forget that by various indicators doing business in California is very expensive,” said Ostrander. “To strengthen the economic diversity of the East Bay and encourage the growth of the biotech sector and green corridor requires forward-looking economic development strategies such as Enterprise Zones. We are currently exploring various options, however at this point it is premature to provide any speculation on future plans.” 

Berkeley city officials are anxiously waiting for Bayer’s decision. 

“We are fearful that any step to move production of Kogenate could mean a move out of Berkeley,” said Michael Caplan, the city’s economic development manager. “We are doing everything within our power to get them to stay here.” 

Caplan explained that expanding the enterprise zone is a regional issue, citing his office’s statistics, which show that most Bayer workers live outside of Berkeley and 3,000 Oakland residents work in West Berkeley. 

Founded in 1863, Bayer, based in Barmen, Germany, is the third-largest pharmaceutical company in the world. 

Bayer’s Berkeley campus is the company’s global center for hemophilia and cardiology pharmaceuticals, including Kogenate. CNN reported that in January 2001, the FDA halted shipments of Kogenate FS after it was found that harmful bacteria were present in the drug’s manufacturing process. 

UC Berkeley is moving its BP-funded agrofuel research from a site in the hills above Strawberry Canyon to the heart of downtown Berkeley. 

The Helios Energy Research Facility West will rise in the northeastern quadrant of the site now occupied by the eight-story building formerly used by the state Department of Health Services. 

That building occupies much of the two-block area between Berkeley Way on the south, Hearst Avenue on the north, Oxford Street on the east and Shattuck Avenue on the west. 

In a letter to members of the Berkeley City Council, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau wrote that the Helios West building would enclose “about 64,000 square feet of useable interior space.”  

A call for a general contractor to build the new structure, posted on the university’s website late last week, describes the overall structure at 113,000 square feet. 

Birgenau said the building size is “consistent with the amount of development anticipated in the UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan 2020.” 

A lawsuit challenging that plan led to a settlement which mandated creation of a new Downtown Area Plan, which was approved by the City Council in June to accommodate more than 800,000 square feet of development the university plans in the city center. 

“It’s consistent with what we would like to see on the site,” said city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. “They’re still doing massing studies and architectural work, but what I’ve seen is within the parameters of the Downtown Area Plan.” 

UC Berkeley Executive Director of Public Affairs Dan Mogulof agreed, adding that the remaining site could still accommodate the public health campus that university planning staff told the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) had been the university’s intended use of the two-block site. 

But one DAPAC member who also serves on the city’s planning commission has doubts. 

“That could blow the whole downtown plan out of the water,” said Gene Poschman. That plan was adopted less than three weeks ago by the Berkeley City Council after significant changes—by both the council and the Planning Commission—had been made to the original plan submitted by DAPAC. 

Jesse Arreguín, the city councilmember whose district includes the proposed site, said he had been surprised by the move and would be closely monitoring the project as it develops. 

Stephan Volker, the environmental law attorney who had challenged the university’s environmental review of the lab’s earlier site on the hillside above Strawberry Canyon, called the move “a classic example of the university’s arrogance.” 

“What’s wrong here,” Volker said, “is that the university never comes clean and ask the public to help in their decisions. Instead, they hold themselves arrogantly aloof from the public and follow their own internal objectives and jam them down their throats.” 

Documents about the move are posted at the university’s Facilities Services web page announcing calls for bids of prequalifications at www.cp.berkeley.edu/AdsForBids.html. They are last two items on the web page, listed under the heading “Request for prequalifications.” 

Michael Lozeau, who has also repeatedly challenged university plans in court, laughed when told of the move. 

“How are they going to collaborate, man?” he asked, chuckling. His comment targeted the statements of lab scientists earlier in the approval process for the LBNL site, when they said Helios had to be on the hill so scientists on the project could readily consult with other lab scientists working on similar projects. 

Lozeau said the simple fact that the lab had been relocated was proof in itself that the lab could move further away, perhaps to the university’s Richmond Field Station. 

Mogulof said the new site was chosen over Richmond because scientists could still readily meet with each other on the campus, just across Oxford from the new site. 

Forcing researchers and grad students to drive or bus to Richmond would be a hindrance to collaboration, he said. 

Volker said two of his clients in his suit against the original site were pleased that the lab had moved off the hill. 

“We are pleased that Helios as moved out of Strawberry Canyon, and I’m certainly gratified that our litigation prompted its removal from a very sensitive environmental resource that should be preserved for all time.” 

But Volker said he was “concerned that if British Petroleum continues to be involved, it augers for the continued privatization of a a public university.” He said he was also concerned that there wouldn’t be adequate public oversight of proprietary corporate research that will be conducted behind security locks inside BP’s proprietary portion of the facility. 

Mogulof said the university would ensure that adequate safeguards were in place to protect both those working inside the lab and the Berkeley community and university on the outside. 

Research on turning plants into fuels has been deemed a national security issue, but critics, including some internationally known members of the UCB faculty, have worried that turning to plants for fuels could wreak ecological havoc and lead to corporate colonization of the grasslands and rain forests of the Third World—the subject of a recent major article in the German magazine Der Spiegel. 

Students and other activists, including several faculty members, protested before the university and the UC Board of Regents approved the project. Several students were arrested during the protest. 

Mogulof said there are still several steps remaining before the project can move forward. 

First, the regents must approve the change of plans, the new site and the funding. Currently $70 million in state bond revenues are allocated for the lab, The remainder will come from private contributions and external funding sources, he said, and BP is not putting up any construction money. 

The first step before construction can begin is demolition of the existing building. If all goes as planned, construction on the new lab could begin in summer, 2010, with completion by the fall of 2012. 

Mogulof denied that the move was a response to Volker’s suit, and said the decision was made because of the CEQA process. 

    “The change was based on what the environmental review revealed about the site. That’s just the way CEQA is supposed to work,” he said.

The Council of East Bay Rabbis has condemned a publicity campaign by Jim Sinkinson to intimidate Daily Planet advertisers. 

Sinkinson sent a letter to Daily Planet advertisers that selectively quotes from a letter sent to the paper by the East Bay Council of Rabbis. This week, the council’s vice president, Rabbi Deborah Kohn, denounced Sinkinson’s misuse of the letter.  

“The way the letter was used by Sinkinson is deeply disturbing,” Rabbi Kohn said, “because the intent of our letter was to endorse free dialgoue.” 

Sinkinson, under the guise of “East Bay Citizens for Journalistic Responsibility”—an organization with no paper trail or apparently any members other than Sinkinson himself—is running a sophisticated publicity campaign to shut down the Daily Planet.  

In letters sent to the paper’s advertisers, he claims the Daily Planet runs anti-Semitic “editorials.” Sinkinson’s misuse of journalism terminology is deliberate; what he is really attempting to shut down is the paper’s opinion section, a community forum that prints the views of readers as expressed in op-eds and letters to the editor. Some of these letters are critical of Israel, a position that Sinkinson and a few other of the paper’s critics—most notably, John Gertz and Dan Spitzer—brand as anti-Semitic.  

In his latest letter to advertisers, Sinkinson told local small-business owners that unless they returned his self-addressed postcard by Aug. 1, promising to cancel their advertising contracts with the Planet, he would begin an “educational campaign” to draw attention to the alleged anti-Semitism of the paper, and that his materials would print the names of the businesses that he claims, through their advertising dollars, implicitly support and endorse anti-Semitism.  

Sinkinson’s letter is titled “East Bay Jewish Community Mobilizes Against the Daily Planet,” and in that letter he reprints most of a letter by the East Bay Council of Rabbis that was published in its entirety in the Daily Planet’s June 25 edition. However, an ellipsis marks the point where Sinkinson has neatly excised three critical sentences that undermine his cause, an omission designed to give advertisers the impression that he is acting with the blessing and support of the greater Jewish community.  

The sentences Sinkinson didn’t want his targets to read are these: “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.” 

Sinkinson “picks and chooses” what he wants from the rabbis’ letter, said Rabbi Kohn. “The council supports an open discussion. People may not agree—they probably won’t agree—but these issues should be discussed openly.” 

“Someone using our name this way is inappropriate and departs from the original intention of our letter,” said Rabbi Andrea Berlin, who wrote the original letter on behalf of the council. 

Sinkinson’s own rabbi, SaraLeya Schley of Chochmat HaLev, a member of the East Bay Council of Rabbis, did not return calls for comment. 

Sinkinson declined requests for an interview for the Daily Planet’s June 4 story about his campaign, saying “I don’t trust your newspaper. I think from a journalism standpoint, I can’t trust you. Becky lies. Becky changed a letter I wrote and then lied about it.” 

When confronted with evidence that his letter had been printed with just one minor change (“E.U.” was instead spelled out as “European Union”), Sinkinson changed the subject and ultimately concluded the correspondence with, “I don’t really feel that submitting to an interview would accomplish my objectives. I don’t feel it would contribute to an understanding.” 

Bruce Joffe, a member of Chochmat HaLev (CHL), sent a letter to the group’s leadership, including Rabbi Schley, on July 6, informing them that he would suspend his support and membership until Sinkinson was removed or termed out from his position as CHL treasurer and boardmember.  

“Mr. Sinkinson and his associates, John Gertz and Dan Spitzer, are deluded in thinking that the Berkeley Daily Planet’s editor and publisher [Becky and Mike O’Malley] are anti-Semitic,” Joffe wrote. “While hurtful letters critical of Israel’s policy and actions toward Palestinians often appear on the BDP’s pages, letters supporting such policies are also given adequate exposure. The BDP serves as a robust forum for public discussion of controversial ideas. 

“Mr. Sinkinson and his friends don’t agree. While their letters and opinions have been given plenty of space in BDP pages, they have not prevailed in the marketplace of ideas among other BDP readers. Their response, regrettable and objectionable to me, has been to try to destroy the forum itself. Their campaign to dissuade advertisers from supporting the BDP, as well as more recent tactics of stealing newspapers from their distribution boxes so others can’t read the paper, cross the line of decency and morality, two qualities a Board member of CHL ought to represent. ... 

“A spiritual community offers guidance on how its adherents ought to conduct their lives beyond the walls of their spiritual institution. The actions of a pillar of CHL, in working to destroy the public forum itself, violates our community’s core teachings. It is my conclusion that Jim Sinkinson’s actions outside CHL taint our CHL community. Withholding my support of CHL while Jim Sinkinson is part of its leadershlip is the strongest way I can communicate my objection to his activities.” 

Bruce Joffe told the Daily Planet, “My objection to Sinkinson’s campaign against the BDP was responded to by the Chochmat Board with their belief that they ought not counsel or censure Sinkinson for his non-Chochmat actions. Some Board members, acting as private citizens, support Sinkinson’s campaign. My personal opinion is that Chochmat Board members ought to represent what Chochmat stands for 24x7. 

“I wrote a letter in March to the Board and to [Sinkinson] in particular, and received an answer from both him and Board member Hal Feiger justifying their actions with no regret.” [Hal Feiger made an effort to persuade Daily Planet advertisers to cancel a few years ago.] 

“Personally, I am saddened by some of Israel’s actions toward Palestinians, and I am even more troubled by the actions of the Palestinians toward Israel. Perhaps that puts me right in the middle. I appreciate the public forum that the Berkeley Daily Planet provides for expression on this complicated and emotion-provoking issue.” 

Many Jews have written to the paper condemning the campaign to close it. More than 100 contributed money and signed their names to a full-page ad in support of the paper.  

Several advertisers have contacted the paper after receiving Sinkinson’s most recent letter, a few with the impression that they were indeed being targeted by the greater Jewish community. They reported feeling threatened, intimidated, even blackmailed. 

Sinkinson is director of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME). (See the Planet’s June 4 story, “The Campaign Against the Daily Planet.”) FLAME’s founder, Gerardo Joffe, used virtually identical tactics to persuade advertisers to withdraw from the Coastal Post, a newspaper based in Bolinas in west Marin County. 

Gerardo Joffe told the Point Reyes Light in a July 30 story that his campaign against the Coastal Post had no ties to Sinkinson’s efforts to shut down the Daily Planet, but they clearly drew from the same playbook, supplying advertisers with forms to fill out in order to declare their intent to cancel their contracts with the papers. 

John Gertz, a Berkeley businessman who owns the rights to the Zorro brand, runs a website, www.dpwatchdog, which he launched, as he stated in an e-mail to Executive Editor Becky O’Malley, with the goal of forcing the paper to “reform, or close, or bleed money until you are forced out of business or die broke.” 

Shortly after launching the site, Gertz said, in another e-mail to O’Malley, that in March he would set in motion “a PR and marketing campaign, which we believe will largely increase our readership.” 

Sinkinson, a PR professional who runs an annual conference (complete with high-profile journalist speakers such as Dan Rather and New York Times writers) that coaches other PR professionals on how to influence the media, sent his first letter to Daily Planet advertisers March 7. Gertz maintains that the two men’s actions are not related. 

Gertz did not answer a request for comment about Sinkinson’s latest letter by press time. 

The Daily Planet’s opinion pages have been open to these men since the O’Malleys launched the paper in 2003. Gertz and Spitzer each had many letters and op-eds appear in these pages and were only excluded from the paper once they began threatening lawsuits and attempting to shut the paper down.  

Sinkinson never contacted the paper at all until he had already launched his campaign to close it.

Cheryl Ferguson, 49, a homeless woman, died on Berkeley’s streets July 24. Ferguson was found unconscious in front of the downtown public library around 1 a.m. When Berkeley police failed to revive her with CPR, deputies from the Alameda County coroner’s office took custody of her. 

Authorities are still investigating the cause of death, but have ruled out any kind of crime. 

Friends remembered Ferguson by creating a makeshift memorial on the piece of flimsy cardboard she slept on, something a passerby on Kittredge might easily have missed: a few white lilies, a coffee-cup clutch holder cut in the shape of a cross, and “Cheryl” in black letters on the cardboard. 

Sgt. Damon Wilson of the county coroner’s office said that although the county does not keep track of how many homeless people die on the streets every year, the number is not very high. 

When family members don’t want to pay for the funeral, Wilson said, the dead are “disposed” using the county’s indigent program under which the body is cremated and the ashes stored indefinitely in a cemetery vault. 

Wilson said Ferguson’s family had agreed to handle the funeral. Records kept on file at the Berkeley Food and Housing Project’s North County Women’s Center show that Ferguson had two sons. She last stayed at the shelter from Oct. 14 to Nov. 17, 2008. 

Ferguson, a diabetic who suffered from pancreatitis, has a file at the women’s shelter that includes her birth certificate and an emergency contact number, but no I.D. 

Her death shocked shelter staff and residents, a couple of whom remember her as a frail lady who lived there off and on. 

“Ferguson was found by social workers on the streets of Martinez, and she came to us from Martinez Hospital,” said shelter coordinator Kendra Lewis. “She had no income.” 

Lewis said homeless people rarely die on the streets, because they can avail themselves of city services. Although a lot of her clients die of various illnesses, substance abuse or old age while in permanent housing, this was the first time in Lewis’ eight years at the shelter that she had heard of a person dying on the streets because of homelessness. 

“She knows our system,” she said. “She could have come here. A lot of the women who are used to the streets don’t want to live by the rules. Often when women are out on the streets, especially in Berkeley, it’s by choice.” 

The landmarked 1895 Davis-Byrne building on 2140 Dwight Way, which is home to the 33-bed women’s shelter, also includes a two-year transitional housing program for homeless women with severe psychiatric disabilities and a six-month transitional housing program for women and their children. 

When a homeless woman rings the buzzer on the first floor, she can come in for a hot meal, get an emergency roll-away bed when available and sign up to reserve a 30-day bed. 

“Sometimes the doctors will call us, the hospitals will call us, police will call us, or women off the street will just come in,” said Lewis. “We ask about addiction, their last rental and what their income is to get a general idea about increasing it, which nine times out of ten is what we have to do. There’s not a lot of subsidized housing in California, and it takes years and years to get on a waiting list.” 

Caseworkers work around the clock with clients to get them to doctors and enroll them in recovery programs or classes. 

When the shelter is full, Lewis sends her clients to Harrison House on Harrison Street, or even the overnight Men’s Shelter on Center Street. “We try to get them a place, no matter what,” Lewis said. Unlike the men’s shelter, where the residents have to leave at 7 a.m., the Dwight Way facility lets its clients stay there all day. 

If clients are employed or receive aid from Social Security, disability or unemployment, they can extend their stay, but they are required to save 30 percent of their income with the shelter. 

“We don’t want them to get too comfortable and relaxed,” Lewis said. “If they are doing whatever we tell them to do, we move them into suitable housing.” 

Lewis said Berkeley has more homeless men than women, perhaps because the city’s shelters have more beds for men.  

The plight of women trying to survive on the streets, however, is often far more serious than that of their male counterparts due to the threat of sexual harassment, rape and battery. 

“The homeless population faces lots of problems legally anyway, because you cannot be on the streets,” said Lewis, referring to the city’s Public Commons for Everyone Initiative, which seeks to penalize unlawful street behavior. “There’s no loitering, no hanging around, so if the shelters are full, where do they go? Homelessness is not supposed to be a crime, but police treat it as a crime.” 

At the women’s shelter, case managers do their best to encourage clients and give them a sense of security. 

“We feed them a good meal, get them some good coffee, let them take a nice hot shower—we have beautiful hygiene products—and that gives them a sense of comfort,” Lewis said. “Because when you are clean, and fed, and you are not worried about where your next meal is coming from, you can start thinking about your life again.” 

Most of Lewis’s clients are victims of domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, mental illness, low or no income and recently, foreclosure. Some have been incarcerated. 

“If you talk to our women, they love being here,” Lewis said, looking around the shelter’s spacious common area, which doubles as kitchen and dining room. “It’s bittersweet, because we don’t want you to love being homeless and love coming here, but we do want you to be comfortable and safe if you do end up coming here. We want women to understand that this is an emergency need, not a permanent thing. We want you to get yourself back together, so you can get into society.” 

On a recent Friday afternoon, shelter residents were enjoying a chicken sandwich lunch, with a side of watermelon and canteloupe. A couple were talking about Ellen Henniger, a graduate of the shelter’s 12-step drug recovery program, who passed away a few weeks ago at Harrison House, 

Henniger, 58, carried oxygen tanks and smoked a lot of cigarettes. 

“She was frail, so frail,” said Lewis, shaking her head. “Basically we put her through a recovery program to get her clean and sober of drugs because we knew she was going to die.” 

Not all cases at the shelter have sad endings, though. 

Lewis talks about 18-year-old Gerlanda Gelin, the shelter’s youngest resident, who had moved into independent housing at the Fred Finch youth center the day before. 

Originally from Haiti, Gelin is now attending Berkeley High. 

“She does have family but chooses not to deal with them,” Lewis said. “She just landed up here from Florida one day—how they get to Berkeley, California, beats me.” 

Younger homeless women often face more problems than others, Lewis said, discussing a case where a client was assaulted and raped by a friend in Oakland. The man was recently prosecuted, and the courts have issued a restraining order against him. 

Not every shelter resident has lived on the street. One arived there after her drug-addicted boyfriend tried to throw her out a window. Bruised and battered, with severe injuries to her head and a busted lip, she was bouncing around domestic violence shelters in Alameda until she finally found a room in the North County center’s independent living program. 

“I don’t think I could handle sleeping on the streets,” she said, feeding a piece of watermelon to her baby daughter. “I mean if I have to, I would, but I have never really put myself in that predicament. It’s not for me. I mean a shelter isn’t either, but it’s a lot better than sleeping on the streets.” 

The woman recently enrolled in Berkeley City College and hopes to open her own business one day. 

Paris Ford, 53, has been living at the shelter for a month after her rental in Oakland was foreclosed. 

Ford said she got her teaching credential at a California state university after graduating from Brown University in 1975, but lost her job as a kindergarten teacher. 

Left to survive on $336 General Assistance every month, Ford got by sleeping on the street and on people’s couches. 

“I had a blanket, a pillow, my medicine and a couple of pair of jeans and T-shirts—that’s about it,” she said. “I faced a lot of safety problems—as far as trying not to be assaulted, trying to hold on to your possessions, which is like everything you own, which is your worldly goods you carry with yourself every single day.” 

Ford said she witnessed drive-by shootings on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland in broad daylight, images that haunt her even today. 

Her worst moment on the street, she said, was sleeping in a friend’s car. 

“It wasn’t safe,” she said. “It was very uncomfortable. It’s a very demeaning type of feeling because the neighbors could see you. I didn’t have any privacy.” 

Ford is currently waiting to get on Social Security and takes medicine for Fibromyalgia, a syndrome characterized by chronic widespread pain. 

When she gets out of the shelter, Ford wants to go to culinary school in San Francisco and become a chef. 

“Gosh, you know, with all that schooling I had, I never knew I would be homeless,” she said, arranging her clothes into a cubby next to her bed. “But it doesn’t matter what you have done right or wrong, you can become homeless no matter what. You can just wake up one day and be like me.” 

Shelter senior case manager Sarah Bridges said that some women suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from living on the streets for the rest of their lives. Bridges’ clients suffer from stress, anxiety, dual diagnosis and schizophrenia. 

“Our biggest challenge is when the clients themselves don’t want to take their medicine,” Bridges said. “It’s really difficult for us to get them back on their medication once they spiral out of control. There is nothing else to do but hospitalize them.” 

Most shelter residents are out during the day working or attending college. Some are busy doing chores.  

Suzanne Smith, 47, was waiting for word on her medical insurance. A resident of Walnut Creek, Smith became homeless after getting addicted to crack at a young age. A self-described crack addict, Smith started living under the 580 bridge in Walnut Creek after her husband threw her out of their house. 

In 2007, Smith developed a brain tumor. 

Although doctors were able to take most of it out, Smith still needs surgery.  

She said she has spent most of the last 10 years panhandling on the streets. 

“I was never raped or anything bad like that,” she said, when asked about her experience. “I think a lot of it was dignity, not having a place to live. Sometimes I would buy beer because I was so depressed. I found myself drinking more and more.” 

Smith said she missed being able to meet her children when she was homeless. 

“It was atrocious, it was hell,” she said. “I had known a better way of living. I had very good parents, grew up in Walnut Creek, got good grades, had a good family—I’d never thought in a million years I’d be homeless.” 

With help from the center, Smith was able to turn her life around and connect with her children once again. 

“Until you have been through being homeless—a lot of the women here haven’t been homeless, they have gone from husbands or apartments to here—you don’t realize what it is,” she said. “I have lived on the streets, and it’s tragic. It’s very hard to get yourself out of this dilemma, but hopefully with the grace of god, I’ll get out of it.”

The sometimes contentious relationship between Berkeley’s KPFA radio and its owner, the national Pacifica Foundation, took another twist this week when KPFA supporters posted an online petition alleging that Pacifica recently withdrew $100,000 from the KPFA Wells Fargo bank account without notification of or consultation with station representatives. 

The petition was posted on the iPetitions.com website sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and by 4 p.m. on Wednesday had gathered 24 signatures, including several producers and employees at KPFA. 

The new controversy comes as KPFA is beginning the process of electing new listener representatives for the station’s local board of directors. Elec- 

tion ballots are scheduled to be mailed out to station members on Aug. 29 and are due back by Oct. 14, and a series of campaign debates and appearances are scheduled in September and early October. In the past, some of the KPFA board campaigns have revolved around the station’s relationship with Pacifica. 

In an e-mail sent out early Wednesday morning to KPFA “colleagues,” KPFA Local Station Board Staff Represen- 

tative and Treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert called the situation a “raid on KPFA’s accounts.” 

Edwards-Tiekert wrote that on Friday of last week, “a Wells Fargo agent told KPFA’s Business Manager that Pacifica National had instructed the bank to transfer $100,000 of KPFA’s money to a National Office savings account, and secure another $100,000 as collateral for a line of credit for the national office. What’s remarkable is that the national office hadn’t even notified KPFA it was taking our money, let alone sought our permission. Nor has Pacifica’s Interim CFO, LaVarn Williams, responded to multiple emails on this subject since Friday.”  

The Daily Planet left messages with Williams and with Grace Aaron, Pacifica interim executive director and board chair, who was in New York this week on business, but neither returned the messages by deadline. 

However, an official affiliated with both KPFA and Pacifica told the Daily Planet this week, on background, that while stations owned by Pacifica Foundation raise their own money through pledge drives and other means and hold that money in bank accounts in the name of the individual stations, the money belongs to Pacifica Foundations, and can only be spent by the individual Pacifica stations themselves within budgets approved by the Pacifica National Board. The official said that with the exception of a set percentage of raised funds that goes back to Pacifica, the local stations “normally” use all of the money they raise locally except under “extraordinary situations,” when that money can be appropriated by Pacifica. 

Aside from KPFA, Pacifica owns KPFK radio in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, WBAI in New York, and WPFW in Washington, D.C. 

In his e-mail to KPFA “colleagues,” Edwards-Tiekert said that Pacifica Radio “has been spending more money than it’s been taking in. … The only way they’ve financed things thus far is by borrowing money against KPFA’s assets and delaying the release of (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) funds to KPFA and other stations. As of this month, that isn’t enough to cover the National Office’s mounting cash deficit, so it’s digging into KPFA’s accounts.” 

“KPFA of all the Pacifica Stations,” Edwards-Tiekert continued, “built up the largest savings before the economy tanked. That’s made us an attractive target to a national leadership that doesn’t seem to understand you can’t spend more than you’re earning. If current trends persist, more raids on KPFA’s funds will be coming shortly.” 

Edwards-Tiekert added that even though KPFA has “stepped up off-air fundraising and cut expenses,” the station is getting $1 million less per year in pledges than it was six years ago, and is spending down its savings “at a rate of over $300,000 per year.” “In other words,” Edwards-Tiekert concluded, “WE need the money sitting in our bank accounts if we want to keep our station alive until we get on more sustainable footing.” 

Edwards-Tiekert said in his e-mail that he will raise the funds issue at KPFA’s local board meeting scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 8, 11 a.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, at Cedar and Bonita. 

The three American hikers who recently disappeared in Iran have been identified as UC Berkeley graduates. At least two are journalists based in Africa and the Middle East. 

The university's News Center reported Aug. 3 that former students Shane Bauer, Sarah Emily Shourd and Joshua Felix Fattal were hiking in Iraq's Kurdistan region last week when they were reportedly detained by the Iranian government. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Iranian authorities to provide information about their safety. 

Bauer, who was born in Minnesota, is a 2007 peace and conflict studies graduate and used his fluency in Arabic to work in North Africa and the Middle East, where he spent the majority of the last six years. His website shows that he has recently produced stories on Iraq and Syria for New American Media. 

As an undergraduate, Bauer, 27, took courses in UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, going on to win the university’s Matthew M. Lyon Prize in Photography in 2007 for his photographs of the devastation in Darfur, Sudan. 

On his website, Bauer is described as “a documentary photographer and journalist whose work focuses on the effects of social, economic, and political realities on the lives of people around the world.” His blog posts cover a wide array of topics, ranging from the violence of al Qaeda to orphans in Ethiopia to unrest in the Arab world. Bauer’s photographs of the residents of a hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district were selected by his classmates as the lead story of the journalism school’s May 2007 issue of Realeyes magazine. 

Shourd, 30, transferred from Diablo Valley College to UC Berkeley in 2000. She graduated three years later with a B.A. in English. Shourd recently reported a story for New American Media on Israel’s Golan Heights. 

The website bravenewtraveler.com describes Shourd as a “teacher-activist-writer from California currently based in the Middle East.” 

Her last story for the website, in 2008, was titled "Escape from Iraq: A Muslim Family Finds Solace in Ramadan”. 

Fattal, 27, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004 with a B.S. in environmental economics and policy from the College of Natural Resources. Shon Meckfessel, a fourth American, who news reports said was with the three in Turkey but did not take part in the July 31 hike, enrolled in a summer course in Arabic at UC Berkeley two years ago and is currently going to graduate school in linguistics at the University of Washington. 

The Times UK reported that a Kurdish official said the three contacted one of their colleagues to say they had entered Iran “accidentally” Friday and had found themselves surrounded by troops. The Times said that Iran’s state television had reported that the Americans were arrested after they did not listen to warnings from Iranian border guards. It said that efforts by Swiss diplomats to get information about the three had been unsuccessful. 

Earlier this year Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were held by North Korean authorities near the China border, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry into the country and “hostile acts.” 

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea and negotiated their release Tuesday.

While crops still grow on the Gill Tract, the buildings and greenhouses that once housed a thriving research center stand vacant, defaced by broken glass and graffiti scrawls. 

Over the coming months, all but one will be coming down, casualties of economic fortunes and UC Berkeley’s development plans. The last building, a farmhouse, will be relocated and restored. 

The university plans to demolish “approximately 35” structures in Albany, located in a quadrangle across from University Village student housing. 

The demolition site is largely separate from the 4.2- acre site where the university plans a shopping and housing complex, anchored on the north by a Whole Foods store and parking lot and on the south by “approximately” 175 units of senior housing fronted by retail spaces along San Pablo Avenue. 

The doomed buildings include greenhouses and vacant structures, “all of which had been previously used for research,” said Dan Mogulof, the university’s executive director of public affairs. 

The demolitions will take place on property described by Albany City Councilmember Robert Lieber as the last significant urban farming site in the East Bay. 

The Gill Tract has been the site of research in radically different styles of agriculture—from genetically modified crops (GMOs) to agroecology plots in which ecological practices rather than pesticides ensure that crops thrive. 

After raids by GMO foes and promises of more to come, the university erected a sign announcing that no genetically modified crops are being grown on the land. 

But university officials have declared the once-sacrosanct land too valuable for testing crops and proposed to relocate research to another plot of land near Pinole. 

“All of the structures slated for demolition are either vacant buildings or greenhouses,” that had been used for research, Mogulof said. “They are located on the Gill Tract west of San Pablo Avenue and north of Monroe Street.” 

Mogulof said that “the College of Natural Resources has a small research facility on the Gill Tract that is in use and will remain in place, ” even after the demolitions. 

But the farmland isn’t safe from the university’s future plans. 

“Neither the demolition project nor the San Pablo Mixed-Use Project would impact on the agricultural research lands on the Gill Tract north of Village Creek, which the University Village master plan designates for future community uses,” Mogulof said. 

The university’s plans for the tract are outlined in UCB’s 2004 University Village Master Plan, which designates the farmland tract for recreation and open space, featuring a 23,800-square-foot community center with nearby baseball fields and a basketball court. 

Lieber said any plans to transform the agricultural land into anything other than open space would trigger strong resistance from Albany residents. 

“A year ago when I was mayor I tried to get the university to commit to open space, but I couldn’t get it. I think this will be around as an issue for at least the next year or two,” he said.  

Mogulof said “demolition of the agricultural research buildings at the Gill Tract is a long-planned, independent project that has been separately reviewed and approved by the university.  

“The University is proceeding with the demolition at this time because the vacant and dilapidated buildings have become an attractive target for vandalism.  

“To be clear, the majority of the demolition site is designated not for mixed-use, but for University housing at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future.” 

Mogulof said “proceeds from this San Pablo Mixed-Use Project would be used for scholarships for University Village residents, for future University Village improvements, and to address UC Berkeley's budget deficit.” 

The mixed-use project is being developed by The LaLanne Group, a San Francisco developer that has also worked on another development anchored by a Whole Foods store, a project in Novato with 125 condos and a three-story parking structure. 

The five-acre Albany project includes the 55,000-square-foot grocery store, with a parking lot to the north that will overlap with what Mogulof called “a small portion of the area to be demolished.”  

The housing and retail segment to the south features 100 senior apartments, and 75 assisted-living apartments with 30,000 square feet of retail fronting along San Pablo avenue. 

Lieber said the school district had insisted on senior housing, “because our schools are bursting at the seams already.”  

Because the projects aren’t related to the university’s, they fall under the City of Albany’s zoning rules, and before the first shovel of earth can be moved, the city must approve rezoning for the site. 

According to the city planning staff notice for Tuesday night’s hearing on the project’s environmental impact report, the whole site for the UCB/LaLanne project must be rezoned to San Pablo Avenue Commercial. Currently, only the first 100 feet along the roadway is zoned commercial; the rest is designated for Medium Density Residential. 

According to the EIR construction of the new buildings is expected to take between 18 months and two years after the university completes its demolition project. 

The EIR concludes that in only one area would the project pose unavoidable significant environmental impacts, and that is the impact of a major new project near the already heavily traveled intersection of San Pablo and Marin avenues. 

Unavoidable traffic impacts would spread beyond the site to the east- and westbound ramps of Interstate 80 at Gilman Street in Berkeley at several Gilman intersections. 

Unavoidable impacts that were beyond remediation would also include the intersection of San Pablo and Solano avenues, and along both directions of San Pablo during peak afternoon traffic hours. 

The EIR for the project is available at the city Community Development Department, 979 San Pablo Ave.; the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave.; or online at www.albanyca.org/index. 

aspx?page=521 

Public comments on the document may be submitted through Aug. 20 to Associate Planner Amber Curl at the Community Development Department or by email at acurl@albanyca.org 

The United States Postal Service is considering closing at least three Berkeley post offices as part of a plan to consolidate services in light of a huge budget deficit. 

The three branches facing closures are Park Station at 2900 Sacramento St., Landscape Station at 1831 Solano Ave. and South Berkeley Station at 3175 Adeline St. 

At least five post offices were marked for possible closure in Oakland and four in Richmond. 

The postal service is considering eliminating as many as 1,000 post offices nationwide in order to mitigate a $7 billion potential loss this year.  

Although the agency increased the price of stamps by 2 cents, reduced staff and removed collection boxes, those measures haven’t helped all that much. 

A list of employees whose jobs are at risk has been sent to the independent Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent federal body representing community interests. 

For a complete list of post offices that may face closure, see www.prc.gov.

There’s finally some good news for book lovers in Berkeley.  

Books Inc., which calls itself the oldest independent bookseller on the West Coast, announced Aug. 5 that it plans to open at a new location on Fourth Street in October. The bookshop will be located at 1760 Fourth St., the site currently occupied by NapaStyle. 

In the last few years Berkeley has seen the demise of well-known bookstores such as Cody’s—which had stores on Telegraph, Fourth Street and, for a while, downtown—and the closing of Black Oak Books on North Shattuck, leaving bibliophiles with fewer places to browse in the city. 

Although Black Oak owner Gary Cornell hopes to reopen in a new location, he has not announced any plans yet.  

Founded in the middle of the California Gold Rush, Books Inc.’s history dates back to 1851, when Anton Roman became rich in Shasta City and built a bookstore, which was “moved, bought, sold, burned, rebuilt, renamed and became Books Inc. in 1946.” 

Books Inc. has changed hands several times in the last five decades and at one point was forced to close 10 of its stores and declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to competition from national book chains. 

It bounced back in 1997 and has been on an upward spiral since then. 

Books Inc.’s Berkeley location will be its twelfth. It currently has bookstores all over the San Francisco Bay Area and Anaheim, and employs 400 people. 

Books Inc. co-owner and CEO Michael Tucker attributed the “right location, the right lease and the right landlord for allowing expansion in this challenging economic climate.”  

“We are committed to have this location bring Fourth Street’s book-buying community experienced, knowledgeable booksellers, diverse, interesting events and a book selection that will reflect the neighborhood’s character,” said Tucker, who grew up in Berkeley. 

Tucker and Books Inc. co-owner and Vice-President Nikolai Grant signed a lease for the new location Aug. 5 and plan to start construction Sept. 1. 

For updates on when the store will open keep checking www.booksinc. 

net.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received an additional $40 million in stimulus funds from the Department of Energy Aug. 4. 

This brings the lab’s total gain from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to $156 million. 

A statement from the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science said the additional funds would go toward biofuels, fusion energy and power grid research and help scientists get access to state-of-the-art technology at work. 

The DOE Office of Science, which received a total of $1.6 billion in recovery act funding from Congress this year, allocated $115 to Berkeley lab in March. 

“These new initiatives will help the U.S. maintain its scientific leadership and economic competitiveness while creating new jobs,” said DOE Secretary Steven Chu in a statement. “The projects provide vital funding and new tools for research aimed at strengthening America’s energy security and tackling some of science’s toughest challenges.” 

The Berkeley lab biofuel projects seek to explore new biofuel feedstocks and expedite research to convert plant biomass to biofuels, an idea that has met with a substantial amount of protest from critics of biofuels. 

Another project hopes to investigate how the nation’s power grid could be secured by algorithms to prevent blackouts similar to the one that took place in August 2003, which affected 50 million people nationwide and cost an estimated $4 billion to $10 billion. 

“It’s an extremely exciting time at the lab,” said Berkeley lab Interim Director Paul Alivisatos. “We’ve been at the forefront of clean energy and energy efficiency research, and this new injection of funds will help make the work of turning scientific study into energy solutions much faster.” 

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Mobilized Women of Berkeley building at 1007 University Avenue as a city landmark last month. 

Built in 1949 by P. L. Coates, the building features architecture influenced by the design Bernard Maybeck did for the Mobilized Women of Berkeley’s 1938 building at 1001 University. 

Originally used as a community center and thrift shop, the building has been occupied by the East Bay Association of Mentally Retarded (later known as the Association for Retarded Citizens) and Amsterdam Art. 

A letter from Berkeley Architectural Heritage President Daniella Thompson praises the building for its “exceptional historic, cultural and educational value.” The building, Thompson says, is living proof of the role women played in providing services to needy citizens often overlooked by public agencies. 

“It is the last remaining physical and tangible evidence of the charitable organization,” which was founded at the beginning of World War I by more than 150 women’s clubs and organizations, Thompson said. 

The center also served the community during the Great Depression and World War II. 

In her landmark application to the commission, architectural historian Susan Cerny points out that the building’s architecturally distinctive features are its grid-form panels and unique U-shaped design, which uses the cast-in-place wall form embedded with translucent glass blocks. 

Cerny told the commission that the hollow glass blocks were first developed in 1933 by Owens-Illinois Glass and exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair.

BART this week began allowing payments through TransLink, becoming the latest Bay Area transit agency to use the “smart card” fare collection system. 

To use a TransLink card, a customer must electronically load money onto it using a credit or debit card, and then touch the Translink card to a plastic card reader located on top of BART station fare gates. 

Technicians turned on the equipment at the various stations on Sunday, but the official rollout for the program began Monday, BART spokesperson Jim Allison said. He said that about 250 customers used TransLink on BART Monday. 

In addition to BART, TransLink cards are accepted on Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District vehicles, Golden Gate Transit buses and the Golden Gate Ferry, and the Dumbarton Express, a bus service between the Union City BART station and Palo Alto Caltrain station. 

San Francisco Municipal Railway is also allowing the use of TransLink cards on all of its vehicles except for cable cars. 

BART officials are encouraging people to bring other means of payment as well, in case any mechanical problems occur during the rollout. 

The rollout period for the TransLink cards will last about five months while BART deals with any technical issues that might affect the program, according to Allison.  

    Neil Goteiner, a San Francisco attorney for UC Berkeley economist David Teece, has asked the Daily Planet to correct two stories about his client published in the Planet on July 16 and 23 stating that the IRS had taken Teece to tax court over its claims that he had underpaid his taxes by some $12 million. 

    In fact, Goteiner said, it was Teece who initiated the court action to challenge the agency’s claim that he had underpaid his taxes by $12 million. 

    As a matter of clarification, it was the IRS that initially began the action with its claim Teece owed back taxes, but it was Teece who initiated the court action. 

    The case was resolved in a settlement by which Teece agreed to pay $1.825 million, not $1.84 as reported in the paper. 

    Goteiner also alleges that the newspaper made “what appears to be an attempt to disparage Mr. Teece” by describing him as a “very silent partner” with developer Patrick Kennedy in downtown Berkeley apartment projects subsequently sold to Chicago billionaire Sam Zell. 

    That description was used because Teece, a public employee as a faculty member and a contributor to Berkeley political campaigns, has consistently refused to take calls from the paper about his role as a significant player in Berkeley real estate. 

    Teece did not respond to any of the paper’s calls about the tax case, and his Los Angeles attorney in the case offered only a “no comment” for a Jan. 29, 2008, story that contained the same statement about the tax case.

Two U.S. journalists who had been jailed in North Korea but were pardoned Tuesday arrived back in California this morning and will be invited to visit the Bay Area in the next month, a family friend said.  

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who work for San Francisco-based Current TV, were reunited with their families in Los Angeles early this morning after arriving on a plane accompanied by former President Bill Clinton, who traveled to North Korea to negotiate for their release. 

Ling and Lee were arrested March 17 near the North Korean border, reportedly while working on a story about human trafficking along the Tumen River border area between China and North Korea. 

The women had been convicted in June of illegally entering into and committing “grave crimes” against the country, and they were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. 

At a news conference this morning, Ling said, “We feared at any moment we could be sent to a hard labor camp.” 

However, on Tuesday they were suddenly told they had a meeting, and came into the meeting room to find Clinton waiting for them. 

“We were shocked, but we knew instantly that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end,” Ling said. 

Rebecca Delgado Rottman, vice president of community relations for San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, said she would be inviting the women and their families to San Francisco to an event in early September after they have had time to recover from their ordeal. 

“I was planning another vigil but now I’m going to make it into a celebration,” Rottman said. 

Rottman, who talked to Lee’s husband, Michael Saldate, on Tuesday after the families received news of the pardon, said she would “be hearing from them as soon as they’re able to talk.” 

Rottman said she had grown close to the families since organizing a vigil in June at the university. Lee graduated from the university’s School of Motion Pictures and Television in 2001. 

She said an impromptu celebration held in the city Tuesday evening in the women’s honor was well-attended, and that a representative from Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office had shown up.  

Rottman said the event “was like a reunion of all the women who organized the vigils in San Francisco.”  

At today’s news conference, Ling reserved a special thank-you for complete strangers who had worked for the pair’s release.  

“We could feel your love all the way in North Korea,” she said. “It is what kept us going in the darkest of hours. It was what sustained our faith that we would come home.” 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement today commending Clinton and the Obama administration for negotiating the pardon. 

“The former president obviously conducted himself in a skillful and dignified fashion, and I applaud the Obama administration’s support of his efforts,” the governor said. 

Current TV spokesman Brent Marcus said today that the company is “just celebrating their being back.” 

He said there would be more announcements about the women in the days and weeks ahead, but that “right now we’re just overjoyed that they’re here.”

The lives of many dogs throughout the country were changed due to the activism and hard work of Doris Richards, who died July 27. Richards helped to start the Ohlone Dog Park, the first in the nation, and succeeded in keeping the park open despite several attempts to close it down. She served as president of the Ohlone Dog Park Association (ODPA) from 1985 to 2002.  

Richards helped people around the country—indeed, around the world—start dog parks. As a result, the limited canine existence of leashed walks and hanging out in backyards was, for many dogs, transformed into one of exuberant play and the chance to run free. It was Richards’ entry into civic activism, and she remained dedicated to making a difference until the end of her life.  

A colorful storyteller, Richards called the creation of the dog park a true Berkeley happening and a tale of political activism and social concern. Appropriately, it began as an adjunct to the People’s Park struggle.  

“In the late ’70s, People’s Park activists planned a takeover of the area along Hearst Street after the city razed the homes there to create a park,” Richards was fond of recalling. “The city fenced the area off, and it wasn’t being used for anything. Activists cut the fencing at various points during the night. The next day they marched from Telegraph Avenue to Hearst Street and the fence toppled over easily when pushed. There were demonstrations, food, and music. It was a festive time.”  

People from the neighborhood began hanging out in what was called People’s Park Annex, and they brought their dogs. Neighbors raised bail money for those jailed, collected food for the homeless, found, painted and donated lawn furniture. Richards originally got involved because it was just around the corner from where she lived, she had a dog, and “Hey, this is Berkeley.”  

Eventually, just dogs and neighbors remained, and the idea for the dog park began. As Richards told it, “We were learning that dogs need outings, a social life, and places to run. We started to use it as an off-leash area.”  

When the city was first approached to create an official park, there were concerns about liability and insurance. By 1983, Berkeley officials had decided to try an experimental dog park. Trees were brought in and an opening ceremony planned, complete with mayor and councilmembers in attendance. The day before the big event, the newly planted trees went into shock and lost all their leaves. So Richards—who is known to have said that if she were to be reborn it would be as a Sheltie because they like to organize and run things—got people together to string up leaves on the trees for the big day.  

Threats to the existence of the park began almost immediately. The city began negotiating to transfer the land to BART, and newly arrived neighbors tried to shut the park down. ODPA was formed in 1984 to fend off the attacks. One of the early rules of the association was that you had to have a dog to be a member, so Richards, who was between dogs, was allowed to work for the association and attend meetings, but couldn’t become its president until 1985.  

However, she quickly organized people and got them to join ODPA and to attend City Council meetings. She designed and ordered teal-colored T-shirts, and, at one critical meeting, councilmembers looked out at a blue sea of 90 people. The vote for the dog park was favorable. 

Those members and T-shirts needed to be pulled out more than once as threats to the park’s existence continued. During all this, Richards was organizing dog washes to raise funds for ODPA and carnivals for dogs to enjoy competing in recall contests, dunking for hot dogs, and frustrating their two-legged companions in leashed spoon races. She was also taking calls from people locally, nationally and worldwide, advising them on how to start dog parks. With Richards’ involvement, dog parks from Point Isabel to Los Angeles, London and several in Finland got started, to name just a few.  

The Ohlone Dog Park went on to be designated one of the top 10 dog parks in the country on more than one occasion by Dog Fancy magazine and, in recent years, Berkeley’s Parks and Recreation Department has reported that it gets the fewest complaints of all the city’s parks and is the most used, as well. 

When Richards retired as ODPA president, members had a blue fire hydrant with a plaque in her honor installed at the park, and the city named March 2002 “Doris Richards and Ohlone Dog Park Month.” When it was pointed out that dogs do certain things to fire hydrants, Richards’ response was a chuckle and the comment, “Don’t you just love it?” She is survived by her dog, Tyler, who is in a friend’s loving care. Doggone it, Doris Richards will be missed.

Last stop, Paris, on the globalized grandparents’ express. Our clever son-in-law has arranged to exchange their family’s Santa Cruz house for a series of European equivalents which are the homes of families like theirs—no money needed to change hands. Grandparents and aunts were invited to go along for the ride, with eight of us together at times. It’s been fun, if exhausting. Who could pass up the use of three-bedroom family apartments in both Rome and Paris, but who anticipated how far apart the two cities actually are, or how hot Rome can be in July? 

It’s been an unduplicatable chance to see how “people like us” live in European cities these days. In many ways what’s remarkable is how much “like us” these people whom we’ve never met actually are. The Oaxaca hand-woven rug in the living room here is the same one that’s on my daughter’s bedroom floor in Santa Cruz. Décor is the familiar-to-Berkeley mix of ethnic souvenirs, flea market finds and Ikea.  

Though I’ve visited Paris several times, this is only the second time I’ve stayed in a resident’s apartment, the only real way to get a feel for what it would be like to live here. This one is on one of the broad boulevards which radiate from the Place de la Bastille, in a prototypical six-story 19th century building which has seen better days, but is still firmly and comfortably middle-class at least (our exchange partner is a doctor). It takes up the whole fifth floor of a wide, shallow building fronting on a tree-lined boulevard, and boasts huge floor to ceiling windows and doors across a narrow hall from one another other, flooding the apartment with natural light and breezes for natural cooling. All kinds of plants flourish on the balcony across the front. Ceilings are 10 feet high or more, with exquisite original mantels and molding. Two new Moroccan-tiled bathrooms with showers and a modern kitchen are a considerable improvement over places I stayed in Paris 40 years ago. 

Outside the building, however, it’s easy to see that even the City of Light has not escaped the woes which go along with modernity. Graffiti is everywhere, much more than in Berkeley, even on ancient monuments. Apparently homeless people gather in side streets near the Cathedral de Notre Dame, and beggars ask for money in the plaza in front of it. Signs suggest that some of these might be pickpockets, something we don’t usually worry about at home.  

The boulevard outside our temporary home has many attractive features, and some which are not so attractive. It’s about 200 feet across, building to building. In the middle there’s a tree-shaded strip park and walkway with playground equipment including fountains which are used by skateboarders for “surfing.” There’s a twice-weekly market here too. Individual narrow one-way lanes carry autos and bicycles in each direction, and there are four lanes of curbside parking, for which residents get special permits. Parking for others is limited to two hours, controlled with sticker machines, just like in Berkeley, at the rate of $3 an hour. On weekends, holidays and the whole month of August parking is free. 

This basic street design geometry was pioneered in mid-19th century Paris by Georges-Eugene Haussman and his disciples. Huge swaths of medieval and renaissance Paris were destroyed to realize his vision, with much of the bohemian tenant element evicted to create building sites. Like it or not, it worked, and where it survives it still works. 

Some semi-literate Berkeley developers have claimed that if they were given carte blanche to rebuild downtown Berkeley it would be a similar success. That’s what the recently passed developer-driven Berkeley downtown plan is all about—that’s how it’s being pushed, and that’s why it’s being opposed by genuinely sophisticated citizens who worked for two years on a plan draft which was summarily rejected by the politicos. 

Here’s what the council/developer plan for downtown Berkeley lacks that classic Paris still has: dedicated park space, water access, playgrounds, natural light, on-street parking, dedicated bike lanes and more. A cleverly crafted letter that claims that the new plan is everything it’s not is circulating over the signature of Erin Rhoades, wife of developer Mark Rhoades (though her name is mysteriously misspelled in the copy I got). 

The most disingenuous statement in the letter: “If the referendum succeeds, four years of hard community planning work would be thrown away and improvements for Downtown would be put on hold again.” In fact, as Mr. and Mrs. Rhoades know full well, it’s the new council/industry plan that threw away four years of community work, which is why the outraged community workers who were the majority on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee are referending it.  

This letter was forwarded to me as part of a mass email from a well-meaning writer acquaintance who has recently shown an interest in national and state politics and now aspires to go local. She captures the attitude of many of those who winter in Berkeley: 

“If you don’t live in Berkeley, just delete. Seriously, this won’t interest you. But if you do, and you agree that downtown Berkeley is a monstrous blot on our city, that it is a sinkhole desperate for some decent urban planning, then please read the attached email. It was written by someone who knows more than you and I do, and forwarded by an architect whom I trust. 

“I’m telling you, I love our town, but I am so goddamn sick of the myopic vision of some of its more vocal (and colorfully-dressed) citizens.” 

As a colorfully-dressed and vocal citizen herself, not to mention a smart person, she should know better than to believe everything she’s told. When I managed a high-tech business in one of my past lives, I often used to quote the aphorism that “anyone who believes a programmer deserves what he gets.”  

The same thing is true about architects: anyone who believes an architect deserves what she gets. Architects, like others in the construction industry, have a vested interest in advancing the notion that we can build our way out of climate change and urban blight, but as someone who’s spent 40 years thinking about these things, I’m here to say that it’s not nearly that easy.  

Architects (and some of my best friends and relatives are architects) will tell you that we’ll end up with classic Paris if only we’ll let them do their thing when and where they want to. What many of us who have been working on urban problems since Jane Jacobs was a soccer mom fear is that instead Berkeley will end up like the Paris suburbs, which are a monstrous ring of crime-ridden airless high-rise storage units for the urban poor, sacrificed to preserve the glory of the center at enormous cost to residents of surrounding areas.  

Only slightly better would be a Berkeley downtown composed of empty luxury condos pitched for the pre-suburban young, which is how it’s tending now. The vacancy rate is already huge, and will just grow as the recession deepens. People like my correspondent who don’t like downtown seldom go there, but it doesn’t stop them from having opinions. Perhaps the referendum supporters should create a series of downtown tours for the benefit of those who’d actually like to see what’s really happening there before they make up their minds. 

REINING IN UC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

  For years I have heard complaints about how UC doesn’t pay local communities for the utility services it uses, that it doesn’t follow local zoning codes, etc. Now there is a bill in the California Legislature, SCA 21, that would allow elected representatives to address some of these issues. Yet, most of the City Council is against it! I don’t understand.  

Chris Gilbert 

• 

PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I hope the City of Berkeley doesn’t pass any copycat parking regulations such as those recently implemented in Oakland. I dine out frequently, go to movies, plays, and musical events. Now I favor Berkeley restaurants, Berkeley movie theaters, and all Berkeley venues, because I don’t want to worry about getting a ticket after 6 p.m. or having to add an extra $4 to whatever I do after 6 p.m., or wondering where I can park for a 4 p.m. movie without leaving the theater before the movie is over to move the car. No wonder small businesses in Oakland are mad.  

Nancy Bartell 

• 

REPUBLICANS IN BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have to agree with letter-writer Laura Figueroa. As a long-time Berkeley homeless person, and a registered Republican, I get more crap in this town for being a Republican than for being homeless. 

Ace Backwords 

• 

NOT MEAN TO THE HOMELESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having worked in Berkeley for 31 years and having lived in Berkeley from 1989–2003, it is my opinion that Berkeley isn’t mean to the homeless population. I do agree with Laura Figueroa, who wrote last week, that there is a lot of work and dialogue needed in regards to the homeless in general in Berkeley to make the current situation better. 

Alan Roselius 

Castro Valley 

• 

B.N. DUNCAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ace did a fantastic write up on B.N. Duncan. I was too young at the time to appreciate his comics and humor (same with Ace), but when I got older and re-read the comics that I have from them (in mint condition, no less!) I got to experience all the chaos and funnies in those strips and now I appreciate them as comic writers of that era. I just wanted to write in and say that I am glad Duncan got a write-up and that people do remember him and the legacy he has given to the Bay Area. Next time you indulge in a Hostess fruit pie, cover it in butter and fry the damn thing. 

Josh Broughton 

• 

OPTIONS RECOVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

More Berkeleyans become homeless every day and I have never been busier. Money that used to help the homeless has been diverted to the mayor’s favorite phony drug and alcohol program, Options Recovery. With a wink and a nod, the entire City Council approves of their mission of working with the police to run homeless Berkeley residents out of town. Proof of this is Options Recovery’s support of the mayor’s plan to criminalize sitting and offering to set up a program for sitters! I guess if you are disabled and can’t stand, you are the first to go. 

Meanwhile the city and Options Recovery has run out of bona fide beer drinkers/self medicators with no health insurance to arrest and harrass, so they are now importing parolees from places like San Leandro. One of them sold my Berkeley High student step-daughter and her friends a bottle of vodka. They all got very sick and my step-daughter had to be hospitalized. It seems the Options Recovery parolees share Civic Center Park with the high school students. It’s just a hot mess that everybody responsible refuses to acknowlege. Thankfully we were able to send our daughter out of state to finish up high school.  

But what about those left behind? Are they to be the next generation of Options Recovery/Santa Rita County Jail fodder?  

Dan McMullan 

Disabled People Outside 

• 

FREE SPEECH AND  

THE MIDDLE EAST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was deeply moved by Becky O’Malley’s July 30 editorial. Having grown up in Belgium during the German occupation, witnessing the plight of the Jewish people who were being harrassed and killed, I am deeply aware of cruelty in any shape or form and the suffering of the Palestinians is a horrible testimony of people and nations after being oppressed, turn around and become the oppressors. I believe that the the Jews who are persecuting your newspaper are behaving in a despicable way.  

I hope and pray that George Mitchell will be able to bring about some solution to the Mideast crisis and this administration should reduce the aid given to Israel, which most of it goes to weapons and send the same amount of aid to Palestine, with the stipulation that the money be used for peace-building efforts. I am sending a small contribution to your paper and hope that people who read this letter will join me in supporting the Berkeley Daily Planet, which is a much-needed “free speech” tool in this area. 

Andree Julian 

• 

A LETTER OF ADVICE  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A group of conservative Jews has apparently tried to shut down the Daily Planet or interfere with its operations because they believe it is an anti-Jewish newspaper. The Berkeley Daily Planet has been put into the middle of a battle it never asked for, and doesn’t want. This is because it has allowed opinions to be published that criticize Israel’s policies. This group of conservative Jews attacking the Planet seems to believe that if someone allows criticism of Israel in their paper, this equals anti-Semitism. 

Meanwhile, Becky O’Malley, editor of that paper, has repeatedly denied an anti-Jewish bias in numerous editorials. However, as I see it, this might be adding more fuel to the fire. When someone attacks a person, it is a natural instinct to go into an opposing position. Yet, if a person is operating at a higher level, they do not have to “fight back,” toward their perceived assailant. They could merely step aside when the person is coming after them, and this assailant will trip and fall under their own power. If you don’t give emotional juice to a person who is trying to start a fight with you, you can be much more efficient at avoiding that person, using confusion tactics, or otherwise getting away unharmed. 

I perceive that unfortunately Becky is stuck in an opposing position against the assailants of the Planet. Ironically, this is a similar problem to what Israel and its supposed enemies face. If you’re “not into” a battle, you won’t get one as often. If your goal really is peace, then be peaceful. 

As a Jew and as a rational human being, I do not believe that either Becky O’Malley or the Planet have shown any anti-Jewish prejudice. However, I believe they are stuck in a fight that they didn’t ask for and don’t want, and they have forgotten that the only way out of a fight is to stop fighting. 

Jack Bragen 

Martinez 

• 

PROPAGANDIZING FROM ISRAEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Yisrael Medad, a citizen of USA, the most privileged country in the world, finds it necessary on account of his religion, to leave the country of his birth, travel thousands of miles to colonize Palestine, steal the land and water of the natives, uproot their trees, demolish their homes, impoverish them and destroy their livelihood, then send letters to the Berkeley Daily Planet to propagandize for his adopted country claiming that he and his fellow settlers are seeking equal rights for Jews and Arabs in Palestine. Really? 

Medad should tell us what Jewish colony he lives in and to what rabbinical authority he ascribes. Is he a follower of settler Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg who, in defending the killing of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in 1989 by his yeshiva students, declared in court, “It should be recognized that Jewish blood and a goy’s blood are not the same ...The people of Israel must rise and declare in public that a Jew and a goy are not, God forbid, the same. Any trial that assumes that Jews and goyim are equal is a travesty of justice.”  

Could Medad be a follower of settler Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the Yesha Rabbis Council, who ruled that it is “Kosher to kill gentile women and children in wartime,” and who only this week called on Jews to act now to “Judaize” the town of Nazareth Illit? 

Does Medad live in Kiryat Arba settlement whose most famous resident was mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein? Settler Goldstein celebrated the 1994 Jewish holiday of Purim by massacring 29 Palestinian Muslims as they knelt in prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque. Baruch Goldstein, who was an American citizen, is considered a hero of the settler movement and is honored by burial in a prominent shrine, a popular site of pilgrimage for religious settlers. On the plaque on his grave it is written that he was holy and that he “gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel” and that he died “pure of heart, clean of hand.” In case you are perplexed, settler Baruch Goldstein only had goy’s blood on his hands. 

Hassan Fouda 

Kensington 

• 

MEMORIAL STADIUM PLANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I guess it’s good business for a local real estate agent to appease the locals, but the issue has already been decided in court. Neither the Panoramic Hills Association, the City of Berkeley nor the animals that were defecating in the oak trees were successful in stopping the new facilities from finally progressing. Memorial Stadium has been around a lot longer than the homes and the occupants that surround it. If you can’t stand being around college students and/or big football crowds, why in the world would you buy a multi-million dollar home right next to a football stadium? Perhaps the haters can move to Sun City, and Ms. Dittmer can sell all their houses for them? Win-win for everybody! 

Daniel Breining  

• 

STATE BUDGET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In their July 30 commentary about California’s state budget, writers Ariel Boone, Nik Dixit, and Mia Pskowski rightfully lament the recently signed budget. What kind-hearted person wouldn’t? However, I must take exception to their last paragraph: “We could have used painless fees to minimize painful cuts.” 

There is no “We.” There is only “They,” the political elite in Sacramento, especially all our Bay Area Democrats, who voted for the budget. 

The writers state effect but flee from cause. Their commentary is a fine example of bleeding-heart liberalism. Their hearts ache at the consequences of the budget but their minds are asleep with reference to any analysis of how and why it passed. 

This failure to name names, i.e. be specific, is also reflected in their extensive use of the passive voice throughout the commentary. E.g. “…Sacramento’s refusal to consider taxes…” The city becomes a stubborn person. This is nonsense writing. This type of writing only perpetuates the dense atmosphere of lies and distortions that is our political reality. 

Two of the writers are affiliated with Democrat organizations. Apparently that blinds them to the fact that the budget passed because enough Democrats joined 23 Republicans. This inability to tell it like it is becomes an additional obstacle to any progressive change. 

Republicans seem to vote their values, however irrational they may be. Not so Democrats. Not one stood up and said, “I can’t vote for this barbaric and cruel budget.” Senate Leader Steinberg said of his support for the budget, “I can face myself in the mirror.” Then he is faceless, i.e. immoral. 

Whether legislative Democrats are self-proclaimed progressives or not, all have as their main objective getting reelected. No rocking of boat allowed if those free health care, free car and gas, free lobbyist lunch perks are to continue. They are the real live people responsible for the gashed budget. The writers would do well to point that out in future writings.  

Maris Arnold 

• 

PAT BUCHANAN’S REMARKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Allen-Taylor has missed the import of Pat Buchanan’s remark regarding the Supreme Court’s whiteness. Buchanan said the reason why nearly all justices have been white is because the country was created and largely built by whites. Of itself the observation does not justify any racism or sexism. It is simply a factual statement. Allen-Taylor would like to believe that women and slaves would have written the Constitution and made the Declaration of Independence if they had not been otherwise occupied in the kitchen and in the fields, making them virtual creators of America. That is lame. 

What is at stake is the justification for our current system of race and gender preferences. Victimhood is supposed to make it all right. The obvious response is that white men created a country of what not long ago would have been unimaginable mass health, wealth and personal freedom. This is the fruition of a western tradition which created democracy and secular society, the scientific and technological revolutions, the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the Enlightenment and liberal democracy. It is not the product of either African, Asian, or any ancient Americas’ civilization.  

Racism, sexism, class oppression and a number of other unpleasantries are common to all civilizations. Indeed, most would have difficulty even understanding those things as problems, much less setting out to resolve them. Mr. Allen-Taylor thinks that Ms. Sotomayor has a race/gender right of preferential access to a system created by someone else, and that the collective guilt of whites justifies it. He is wrong. The flip side of collective guilt is collective credit. That is why whites in general and white men in particular have a right to be free of discrimination. 

Larry Carlson 

• 

BEWARE OF DEAD DOWNTOWN BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Who wants to live with Dead Downtown? The City Council voted 7–2 to get us unstuck from Dead Downtown! The Planning Commission and the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Commitee worked four years to forge the hammer to break the bonds of Dead Downtown! Why should we sign a petition to keep us mired in sickening Dead Downtown? How many more years before the clods of dirt are finally shoveled over us and our downtown, with sad sad words? Final peace for Dead Downtown... 

Is Manhattanization the price we must pay to fan our remaining little spark of life? Bring it on! A little of the big-M will do Berkeley some good—so many people are THERE because they LOVE? the place! What a wonderful change it would be to hear people say they love Downtown Berkeley!  

When I visited Manhattan I was astonished at so much life at every scale, even tons of TINY businesses were thriving—retail, discount stands, repair, specialty, food carts. In Berkeley, it is impossible to add one more table of crafts, or a food cart, and larger scale retail is going the way of Berkeley’s Eddie Bauer Store. Come back, Eddie Bauer! Agreement on our latest plan has taken four years, and now the naysayers are asking that we scrap it and start over, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars of OUR cash. The naysayers love Process! They can do it forever! 

In the meantime: Dead Downtown.  

The University of California is a huge player in Berkeley’s downtown, but by state law it does not even have to think about Our downtown plan. The council-approved plan co-ordinates with university plans. THEY are planning to build some BIG buildings. If we continue forever to dither and squabble we will have unbalanced parasitic growth on the corpse of our downtown. 

So if you are asked to sign a petition, just ask questions. Don’t we need ER instead of EIR? Haven’t we had enough Dithering Delaying Tactics? Our own Democratically Elected Berkeley City Council voted 7–2 for a plan that took four years to develop. Will more years and more of our dollars result in a plan that pleases everyone? And most importantly, why conjure up super-size phantom problems when we could be taking the next real steps to revive our Dead Down Town? 

David Soffa 

• 

A REAL STREET POET 

There is a poem that is slowly fading and being shoe-leathered into unreadbility on a cement sidewalk in Berkeley.  

A heart-felt love-note to Berkeley, it’s located in the 1600 block of Shattuck Avenue, across the street from the Sew-Clean Cleaners. 

I thought it deserved to be preserved.  

—Gar Smith 

HOBO 

Belongings in bags 

Eating organic leftovers 

Recitals outside BART 

Knights on shopping carts 

Educating the students 

Listening to windchimes 

Enjoying a chai latte 

You’re the luckiest hobo in the world. 

—ZD 

I am tired of the malicious lies and deception being hurled by those who are out to destroy the Berkeley Daily Planet. 

The motives of this self-selected group of militant Zionists seem obvious. 

This newspaper publishes a wide range of letters to the editor and commentaries, a small percentage of which focus on relations between the Israeli government and Palestinians, an incendiary issue for folks like Jim Sinkinson and John Gertz, the two men with the highest profiles in the effort to shut down the paper. 

While Gertz, author of a website devoted to “reforming” the “probably” anti-Semitic Daily Planet, comes across as a somewhat genial if naive man of wealth—he owns Zorro, after all—Sinkinson is cut from a rougher cloth. 

While Gertz, a self-described “left-wing Zionist,” resorts to the kind of red-baiting that once deprived this country of some of its finest filmmakers, singers and actors (many of them Jewish, it should be noted), Sinkinson comes across as a more sinister character, willing to resort to outright lies and deception in his drive to intimidate the paper’s advertisers. 

The author of several letters sent to each of the Daily Planet’s advertisers warning them that their continued presence in the paper threatens to bring down the wrath of the East Bay Jewish community, Sinkinson has proved himself in his latest letter willing to twist even the words of the 40 Jewish leaders who constitute the East Bay Council of Rabbis. 

In a July 19 letter to advertisers—which featured a prepaid cancellation notice for them to send to the paper’s ad department—he declares, “Please know that we are taking this action because it is a critical concern for many members of the Jewish community.” 

And then he offers, by way of an endorsement, a letter to the editor from rabbinical council president Andrea Berlin, published unedited in this newspaper’s June 25 edition. 

Her letter, which includes a ringing acclimation of freedom of the speech and press, nonetheless states that one letter published in the Planet “some years ago ... crossed over into clearly anti-Semitic expression.” 

While she cautioned the paper against publishing “hate speech,” the only instance she cited was that 2006 letter to the editor, which I discussed in detail in my lengthy June 4 article “The Campaign Against the Daily Planet” (see http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-06-04). 

While Rabbi Berlin’s letter was reprinted in full in the Daily Planet, Sinkinson omitted two sentences from the version he included in his letter to advertisers. 

A quick reading of the missing text makes clear why he conveniently excised them. The simple truth is, they provide an explicit criticism of the very publicist’s campaign he’s conducting: 

“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.” (see http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-06-25/article/33213 ) 

Sinkinson intends just that, the stifling of the flow of information. 

Now let’s look at a couple of his other lies, included in the mailings he’s sent to advertisers warning him that the paper is filled with “hate speech” which will drive Jews away from businesses that advertise in it. 

First, in a June 11 letter to advertisers, he declares that I wrongly called him a publicist, adding that never “have I ever practiced any form of public relations.” 

False.  

Jim Sinkinson most emphatically IS a publicist. Let’s look at a definition from Yourdictionary.com: “a person whose business is to publicize persons, organizations, etc.” 

By that definition, Sinkinson is clearly a publicist for FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), an organization with a website that features harsh comments about Islam and boasts the virulently anti-Islamic Daniel Pipes as a director. 

He sends out e-mails on behalf of the group—the very essence of the publicist’s job—and he also publicizes a mysterious group called East Bay Citizens for Journalistic Responsibility, the purported sponsor of his letters to advertisers. 

And speaking of that group—which has no paper trail, no legal filings and no other name associated with it than his—Sinkinson told another lie in his June letter to our advertisers, declaring that in my June 4 articles I had “neglected (mysteriously!) to provide the name of the local organization I head up. . .” 

But, just to be charitable, maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he simply can’t read. One thing is certain, I did name the organization. Let me quote my own article: 

“In his campaign against the Daily Planet, Sinkinson employs a classic corporate PR strategy, claiming he writes as a representative of a previously unknown group, ‘East Bay Citizens for Journalistic Responsibility.’” 

Lets’ take another lie in the same letter: “Mr. Brenneman implies that my organization receives some $70,000 annually for providing website services” to FLAME. 

Lie. Let me quote the article again:  

“During the last three years for which IRS returns are available, FLAME reported taking in gross receipts of $2,997,654, of which direct public support accounted for $2,330,032. 

“During the same three-year period, FLAME spent $1,352,696 on mass media ads, $133,850 on direct mail fundraising and an additional $200,772 on ‘educational’ mailings. 

“The forms report $70,552 in costs to maintain the group’s Internet site, and while the tax documents don’t list the payee, separate ‘Statements of Condition’ found on the organizational website reveal that the recipient is Sinkinson’s Infocom Group.” 

So much for that falsehood—or perhaps it was merely the fruit of a momentary instance of dyslexia. 

Sinkinson also implies that I’m an anti-Semite, an allegation that drew laughter from my two daughters, who are descendants of both that Goldman and that Sachs as well as Edwin Vogel, one of the founders of CIT. They’re also step-great-grand-nieces of Sir Rudolph Peierls. 

I converted for my first marriage, and unlike some of my critics, I can remember my bris. I would also add that four of the five great loves of my life have been Jewish by birth. 

Adding insult to injury, Sinkinson declares, ominously, “What was Brenneman smoking when he invented this stuff?” 

But wait. I didn’t invent a damn thing. Maybe the sentence should be rephrased: “What was Sinkinson smoking when he read this stuff?” Perhaps something that affects short-term memory? 

Hmmmmmm. 

This is the man who warns our advertisers in his latest letter that their appearance in the paper “harms your reputation” [underline in original], adding that “East Bay Jews and Israel supporters” will become “more outraged ”if they continue.” 

“Please know that we are taking this action because it is a critical concern for many members of the Jewish community,” he tells the advertisers. 

Such is “I am not a publicist” Sinkinson, who comes out smelling a lot like brethren in arms of his who once touted the health virtues of tobacco in press releases to reporters like me. 

Oh, and one last point. Sinkinson’s letters rail at the Planet for publishing “editorials” of which he disapproves. 

As the publisher of a publicists’ newsletter and the organizer of annual national gatherings for the PR trade, Sinkinson surely knows that letters to the editor and op-ed pieces aren’t “editorials.” They are unremunerated contributions from readers, printed to give free expression to the opinions of others in order to create a public forum for the free exchange of ideas, a critical function if democracy is to endure. 

Sure, I’m not thrilled that Sinkinson and Gertz are after my job, striving to close the paper by intimidating advertisers until they either fold up their checkbooks or the paper “reforms.” But I’ve been unemployed before. 

Journalism has been the first and perhaps hardest hit craft in the chaos of the “new economy,” and newspapers across the country have closed or downsized. Attacking newspapers these days is like shooting ducks with already-clipped wings. 

But imagine if Sinkinson and Gertz could boast that they’d shut down the only community newspaper in Berkeley, California, known worldwide as the home of the Free Speech Movement and (somewhat erroneously) as a bastion of radicals. 

What sober editor wouldn’t have second thoughts about publishing an article critical of Israeli policies if someone called up and reminded her about the fate of the Daily Planet and warned that the same thing could happen to them? 

And just for the record, I had the same qualms about the 2006 letter as Rabbi Berlin expressed. But one thing I won’t call Becky O’Malley is anti-Semitic. I wouldn’t be working here if she were. 

As for the Daily Planet’s policy of encouraging the free exchange of ideas in its reader contribution pages, let me quote another Jew whom I deeply admire. In his 1927 concurring opinion in the case of Whitney v. California, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that “freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.” 

Richard Brenneman is a staff writer for the Berkeley Daily Planet.

I am supporting the Downtown Plan referendum because the mayor and the current Berkeley City Council majority are giving away development rights and failing to protect neighborhoods from adverse impacts and detriment. 

They argue that we have to densify the downtown in order to spare the neighborhoods while they intend to develop all the remaining flatlands, starting with West Berkeley and then the areas around the North Berkeley and Ashby BART stations. 

Their tactics are familiar: Set up citizen advisory groups like the Density Bonus Subcommittee and the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), string them along for two years, and then ignore their recommendations or rip them off. 

At the heart of the downtown plan controversy are height allowances and requirements such as green-building standards, open space, affordable housing, and transit mitigations. The Bates/Maio version that the council passed at one of their infamous late-night meetings allows for six-story buildings near low-density residential neighborhoods and gives developers an escape from paying for public benefits. 

An economic feasibility policy (land use 8.3) states: “When establishing provisions for new fees and financing consider how all fees and exactions may discourage development,” giving developers room to wiggle out of their obligations to the community. 

In 1991, I spent six months on the citizens’ advisory committee for the Bayer development agreement, a 30-year contract which has garnered over $13 million for the city in infrastructure improvements, education, community programs, and fees. Yet at the time, the City Council was paralyzed with fear of a plant closure. It was staff working with determined citizens and Fern Tiger Associates, representing the corporation, who brought negotiations to a successful conclusion. 

The current council is similarly afraid that developers will actually turn their backs on the East Bay’s premier city, its centrality in the Bay Area and splendid climate and cultural life, when their stance should be welcoming with tough love, supporting innovation while maintaining standards that make Berkeley a desirable place to live. 

Nowadays the mayor and City Council rely too heavily on staff planners, who no longer see citizens as a help but a hindrance to their professional ambitions, and both the council majority and staff are besotted with the smart-growth rationale and its dumb assumptions. 

If the city doesn’t force developers to respect our neighborhoods and pay for the privilege of building in Berkeley, then the taxpayers will not only lose our amenities but end up footing the bill. 

For your own sake, for the sake of democracy in Berkeley, for the sake of the future, and for Pete’s sake, sign the Downtown Plan referendum. 

Toni Meister is a Berkeley resident. 

Early environmentalists believed that limiting population growth was the foundation for all efforts to preserve our natural world. Today’s urban environmentalists have a different view. Green is not literally green anymore. It does not mean grass, trees, open space or anything resembling nature but is a code word for increased population density; an accommodation of limitless population growth. 

The lack of vision in the current green movement is grossly apparent in Berkeley. As “progressives” and “environmentalists” congratulate themselves on their achievements, more and more people are crammed into smaller spaces with less trees, birds, and sunlight. 

The big idea behind the “green movement” is essentially correct. People should live in proximity to work, entertainment and services. Denser housing in urban areas on transportation corridors makes good sense as does building with recycled and low carbon impact materials. But simply constructing somewhat environmentally friendly big box buildings near bus lines does not create a greener future and undermines the livability of our city. 

Berkeley should rethink “green” adjusting the details to actually create a greener future. Changes in zoning requirements could establish a new type of city that integrates nature into the urban environment rather than merely paying homage to it. We should begin by requiring building set backs to create actual green (trees, grasses etc) corridors along walkways and streets. Ironically as the city “stood with” tree sitters to protect oaks at UC it fails to establish new tree canopies around town. We should create squares, gardens and stands of trees in downtown and throughout neighborhoods—a network of green sanctuaries. Our city could be re-created with green belts, gardens and “cooling areas,” groves that convert some of the CO2 produced by urban environments. 

City politicians often opt for symbols rather than meaningful change as is demonstrated by the ironically named “Gaia Building” and “Brower Center.” 

Plants draw down carbon dioxide cooling the atmosphere. This is the most fundamental green system on Earth. Concrete, buildings and roads do the opposite. It’s a no-brainer. When we build new structures we need to mitigate their impact with actual greenery. The current “in-fill” in-group considers this thinking naive. 

In-fill advocates are often unwitting accommodators of unrestricted population growth. They accept the population explosion as irreversible fact. Once this seminal problem is embraced all “green” policies that follow are at best intermediate “solutions” that merely slow the tide of environmental degradation. 

In 1968 Paul Erhlich’s The Population Bomb argued that all environmental problems stemmed from over population. Because many of his time specific predictions did not come to pass his ideas faded from mainstream dialogue. Economic success during the Reagan and Clinton years combined with profound technological innovations supported the notion that humans can procreate endlessly and will always survive and thrive. Though Erlich’s apocalyptic vision was overstated the slow trudging path towards declining quality of life due to our sheer numbers continues. 

The idealism of the 1960s gave way to pragmatism and a convenient “environmentalism” epitomized by Berkeley’s Green movement. This in vogue system discounts nature in exchange for the ideology of urban planning promoted by academia and enacted by urban greenies, planning department bureaucrats and large-scale developers.  

The Brower Center is a perfect example of the end product. Political coalitions marched forward to achieve what Mayor Bates referred to as his “legacy,” ironically “honoring” David Brower, co-founder of Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Brower viewed over population as the root cause of our problems and doubted our ability to mitigate its impact. “All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent,” he said. He viewed economic pragmatism a suspect philosophy cautioning; “There is no business to be done on a dead planet.” 

Yet our local leaders in coalition with urban “environmentalists” and big developers borrowed Brower’s name to create a building that insults Brower’s values.  

There are two environmental movements. One accommodates limitless population growth, maintaining small museum like areas of nature to be viewed from the observation deck of a well planned urban world. The second, values nature in its wild state for both its eco-sustaining quality and its spiritual or aesthetic value. This group seeks to protect the wild while the first seeks to redesign and contain it. 

Today’s environmental movement is dominated by those who wish to impose a plan on nature and accommodate endless human expansion. They see raw nature as “quaint” and its aesthetic value a primitive throwback, the naive sentiment of poets and romantics discounting its fundamental value to the psychic health of our specie. 

A great opportunity was missed when developing the Brower site. Instead of creating a visionary structure nestled in a enclave of actual greenery, a symbolic building was built that neither serves nor reflects nature but rather and only pays homage to the forces and philosophy Brower opposed. 

The cure was simple and required only a bit of imagination. With less density we could have had a center that biologically served the environment, integrating nature and urbanity and awakening inspiration in those who might of wandered meandering paths beneath a canopy of trees adjacent to a structure reflecting naturalistic elements.  

Instead we have a strikingly sterile building that resembles nothing in the natural world and grants no significant space to actual greenery. It is a bulk of glass and steel in a field of concrete. Nothing about it even alludes to our native environment—no open soil to absorb rain, no grasses to house insects, few trees to shade passersby or provide shelter for birds. It is without mystery and beauty. It’s ominous concrete mass, galvanized steel gates and imposing scale is reminiscent of a prison. It has no relationship to Brower’s life or ideals. 

At its main entry on Oxford Street there is a small raised planter made of native stones containing red leaf maples and a few ferns. It is a laughable gesture, tiny and out of place in the shadows cast by steel, stucco and glass. It is less nature and more an awkward and cluttered display of what someone who has never been in the woods might imagine them to be.  

Urban “greenies” will tell you this critique is naive and uninformed claiming that the Brower Center is green because of construction methods and materials used. Perhaps “greener” methods and materials were employed but that does not excuse excessive density, sterile style and the absence of plants, soil and natural spaces. 

This building reflects a cynical vision of the future wherein people are warehoused in cubicles surrounded by concrete, justified because the cubicles are near work, shops and entertainment. It fails to recognize human “spiritual” or aesthetic needs. The Brower Center may turn out to be Mayor Bates’ “legacy” but it will be a legacy of dulled imagination born of popular hype.  

The current infill movement attempts to protect nature elsewhere by destroying it here. But it is not enough to protect land far away. We must seek to reestablish the mystery, beauty and awe nature conveys, even in our cities.  

The Brower building insults the name it bares. We cannot let another project like it to be built. We must commit ourselves to a green policy that is actually green. We must commit to open space, parks, tree corridors, and networks of wild places throughout the city. We should increase set backs to establish garden corridors and create a public agency to buy dilapidated structures and vacant land to convert to small wild spaces. Such an approach would go a long way to cool our environment and sooth our souls. 

It is common sense. Green really is green…trees, plants and open earth. These humanizing ingredients become ever more important as we increase urban density. It is time to let vision and imagination take precedent over symbolism and dull bureaucracies. 

John Koenigshofer is a Berkeley resident.

Most of us don’t get to visit the headlines. I had such an opportunity recently week when I joined a convoy bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged people in Gaza. I was joined on this trip by my son, Powell, a graduate of Berkeley High School and UC Davis. Powell works as a labor union organizer and activist with Unite Here in San Diego and has taken a special interest in Middle East affairs since majoring in political science at Davis.  

While flying to Cairo and joining a caravan of buses across the Egyptian desert, the Sinai Peninsula, and through the heavily fortified border crossing at Rafah into a war zone might not seem like a typical father-son bonding excursion, we were each called to a responsibility to try to lend succor to a desperate, war-ravaged, brutalized group of fellow inhabitants of the planet.  

Current conditions in Gaza have been well documented, if not in the mainstream North American media, then certainly on progressive Internet sites. The historical ravages visited upon the Palestinian people by their “neighbor,” Israel, are similarly well known. It began, of course, in 1948 with the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Resisters were murdered or turned into refugees. Over the subsequent 61 years, the settler state has expanded its borders with the brute force of soldiers, tanks and bulldozers. United States taxpayers have picked up much of the tab for these “settlements.” (It is estimated that U.S. aid to Israel from 1949 to 2000 was close to $100 billion. In fiscal year 2003 Israel received a foreign military financing grant of $3.1 billion and a $600 million grant for economic security in addition to $11 billion in commercial loan guarantees. This total aid package of nearly $15 billion makes Israel by far the largest single recipient of U.S. aid.)  

It must also be noted that Israel, a nation the ssize of New Jersey, has the fourth-largest military in the world, including the largest fleet of F-16 fighter planes outside of the United States. Israel’s notion that it is David fighting a world of Goliaths is not quite accurate. Unless they are fighting the United States, Russia or China, Israel is Goliath, and everybody else is David. 

In 2008, 21 South African activists visited occupied Palestine. Most concluded that the word apartheid was more than appropriate. South African MP Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was widely quoted: “What I see here is worse than what we experienced; the absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere; racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa.”  

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth, with a current population of 1.5 million, two thirds of whom are refugees. It is now, essentially, the world’s most notorious penal colony with its borders essentially closed by the neighboring governments of Israel and Egypt. The essential supplies of life are severely restricted from coming or going. While it is crude to use the this metaphor it is also accurate to say that to attack the people of Gaza is akin to shooting fish in a barrel.  

The recent assaults on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 have been the most lethal to date. F-16 jets and Apache helicopters (all made in America), off-shore naval destroyers, white phosphorous bombs, cluster bombs all contributed to the systematic destruction of food warehouses, small factories, apartment buildings, Red Cross facilities, the American School, Gaza City’s government buildings and more and more and more.  

Clearly, these attacks targeted the civilian population. In Gaza, it could not be otherwise.  

Like most Americans who have not been soldiers, I have never visited a war zone. America is clever enough to make sure that all of its wars of aggression are away games, “played” on the road, in the visitors’ ballpark. Thus, my eyes had never seen what they saw a few weeks ago in Gaza. Clearly, the Israeli government’s goal was not just to make a political or military point but rather to eliminate a society of people, their land, their buildings, their factories, their homes, their water and electrical supplies, even their farm animals. And most of all their spirit. While they accomplished the former, they failed at the latter.  

On just one one-hour tour starting in Gaza City and environs, the physical devastations of the recent attacks were obvious and overwhelming. The detritus remains as a bizarre sculpture of de-construction. Buildings are now mounds of massive slabs of cock-eyed concrete, poked though with gnarled re-bars and unknown Cubist shapes. Almost every surface of every building, factory, house, apartment is riddled with bullet holes, large and small. Living in the ruins are families, in small tents and lean-tos and thatched makeshift “houses.” In one industrial section, I saw a roadside pile of concrete and steel rubble of what had been a small factory; atop the rubble was the rotting carcass of a cow. Apparently Israel soldiers had been inspired to shoot at and destroy anything that moved.  

In fact, while our convoy was in Egypt and Gaza, a newly published account by an organization of Israeli soldiers suggests that policy set by top commanders led to unnecessary civilian deaths and massive physical damage.  

“We didn’t see a single house that was not hit. The entire infrastructure—tracks, fields, roads—was in total ruin,” an anonymous soldier says, describing his days in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli incursion last winter. “Nothing much was left in our designated area. A totally destroyed city. The few houses that were still habitable were taken by the army. There were lots of abandoned, miserable animals.” The destruction continued daily, he testifies, though Palestinians—fighters and civilians—had fled the area.  

I got to see the human side of this genocidal assault on the Palestinians. I left the convoy for a day to accompany a Palestinian filmmaker who had secured permission from the staff at a hospital in Cairo that was tending to many of the most severe medical cases from the recent attacks. Because Israeli bombs and missiles had cut off the electrical supply to Gaza hospitals, many of the worst of the war-wounded were evacuated to Cairo. We were allowed to visit a half-dozen patients in their rooms. These fractured bodies and lives were as heartbreaking as you might imagine. We met a 10-year-old boy with part of his skull gone, a bullet lodged in his head forever, too perilously positioned to be removed. He had the bad fortune to live next to a small iron foundry. The incoming bomb destroyed the factory and sent shards of iron into his face. He had the worse misfortune to watch his two-year-old brother die before his eyes in the same attack. He was able to tell the camera crew that he, now, wanted to die, too. In another room, two men lay in beds. Each was missing a leg. One was also missing an arm. He spoke candidly, trying to put into words what it is like to have one’s neighborhood rained upon with bombs. He attempted a gesture that required two hands coming together, with the left hand reaching out to meet the ghost of a forearm and fingers that are no longer there.  

Both in the hospital in Cairo and on the streets in Gaza, we heard some common refrains: ‘We will never surrender.’ And, ‘We want peace, we want our land back and we want to co-exist. We don’t hate the Jewish people. It is their government that wants us eliminated.’  

These are not direct quotes, obviously. But they are accurate expressions of what we heard in Gaza. They also accurately represent the comments made by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya at a press conference I attended.  

The evil being visited upon the Palestinian people is almost beyond comprehension. Almost. One can only pray that it so appalls the world that, at some point, it simply will not stand. The Crusades ended. The Holocaust ended. Apartheid ended. So too must the siege of Gaza.  

Groups of citizens, be they from Great Britain or America or anywhere, entering Gaza with humanitarian aid and medical supplies are a good start. Breaking the silence of other Arab countries and Europe would help. And President Barack Obama and the current U.S. administration could absolutely lead the way in stopping it by cutting off all military aid to Israel.   

Stephen DeGange is a freelance writer who has lived in Berkeley since 1985.  

The Grand Avenue-Lakeshore Boulevard commercial district has long been one of my favorite hangouts. For years, I would park at the old Lucky/Albertsons parking lot and then walk up Lakeshore and then down around to Grand, window shopping, maybe making a purchase or two at the Gap—when its styles were more to my taste—renting a movie from Blockbuster, sitting down for coffee or sometimes a meal from one of the many Asian cuisine restaurants, almost always ending up for a half-hour or more of browsing at Walden Pond Books. I’m a sucker for a good used book store. 

I had long before given up parking at the metered spaces on the two streets because I never had a clear idea about how long I wanted to wander the district and, besides, the street spaces along Grand and Lakeshore were almost always filled until blocks and blocks up either street, far away from the businesses. 

When Lucky/Albertsons turned into Trader Joe’s and the proprietors put severe restrictions on parking, that pretty much killed my Saturday tours of Grand Avenue-Lakeshore, which could sometimes stretch into three hours or more. On Sundays I’d park along the south side of Lake Merritt until I noticed, one day, a parking ticket on a car in front of me and discovered, upon inspection of the street signs, that the Oakland City Council had unaccountably banned Sunday parking along that stretch. Why, I’ve never been able to figure out, but it effectively ended my weekend shopping in the district. 

Instead, I turned to dropping by after 6, when metering hour had ended and the street spaces began to clear up as well, and I could generally find one on Grand under the 580 overpass across from the Splash Pad. 

One evening in early July, I parked over in that spot about 6:15 or so and walked around to Lakeshore to get a takeout dinner from the new Louisiana barbecue place that had opened up across the street from Trader Joe’s. Unfortunately, there was a sign on the window saying they had closed for an undisclosed reason, and were looking for another location. While I was there, however, I watched a woman come out of the 5th Amendment club just up the street—apparently having been informed that a parking enforcement officer was in the area—found a ticket on her car and said, disgustedly, to a group of men standing outside the club, “Yeah, I got one, too.” 

I assumed that she had put money in the meter and it had run out before 6, or else she had parked just before 6 and not put any money in the meter at all, hoping the officer wouldn’t come in the area. 

I found out different, of course, when I walked around to Grand and got a hot dog from the Day of the Dead café next to the Grand Lake Theater. The Day of the Dead has become one of my favorite new hangouts on the lake area avenues in part because you’re never quite sure what you’re going to encounter there, whether a long conversation with one of Oakland’s interesting characters, a poetry reading session, or a collection of musicians tuning up for a free jam session. It’s a throwback to the old ’60s counterculture establishments, and one that lends itself to leisurely indulgence. 

Anyway, while I was eating and leisurely indulging outside at one of the café’s street tables, I had a talk with Smoky Memel, the café’s co-owner and proprietor, who was fairly upset over the fact that the Oakland City Council had recently extended the parking meter hours from 6 in the evening to 8. He told me that he’d been hearing complaints already from drivers who’d gotten the unexpected after-6 tickets up Grand Avenue. “Don’t they know it’s going to kill the businesses on the street here?” Mr. Memel asked me, in an agitated refrain we’ve heard repeated over and over in the past month. And though Mr. Memel is generally a polite and good-tempered man, it was clear he was pretty angry. 

I’d known about the council’s struggle to balance the 2009-10 budget, of course, but until then hadn’t heard details of the parking meter extensions. I tried to deflect Mr. Memel’s anger about the City Council by pointing out that in the years since the passage of Propostion 13, radical fiscal conservatives had been using the referendum process to slowly cut off the various avenues by which California cities could raise funds, thereby leaving only the most onerous and unpopular. The goal of the conservatives, I explained, was exactly what was occurring, both to starve out local governments and make them unable to govern, as well as to stoke citizen anger about the methods used by local governments to raise funds. The ultimate purpose, I said, was to make the majority of California citizens anti-government. Mr. Memel remained unconvinced. 

It was in the middle of this explanation that I realized that if the meter hours had been extended in the business districts on Grand and Lakeshore, they had probably been extended where I had parked as well, under the overpass, so I broke off the conversation and hurried back to move my car, thereby aborting the walk up to Walden Pond that I normally would have taken. 

As much as I love Grand Avenue-Lakeshore, I haven’t been back to the district since, and won’t go until I can figure out another parking strategy. Whatever the case, unless the city’s parking procedures in that area are reversed, I think my days of leisurely walking, window-shopping, eating, and occasional purchasing are over. If I go at all, it will be on a strict time schedule, and only for a specific purchase purpose. 

I am only one minor shopper, and the sum total of my purchases in a year couldn’t sustain one Grand Avenue-Lakeshore business to keep its doors open for an hour. But I don’t think I am alone. 

While the Oakland City Council must take the responsibility for authorizing the new parking fee policies, it’s the office of Oakland City Administrator Dan Lindheim which must take the blame for how it was implemented. The administrator’s office could have phased in enforcement, giving out warning tickets in the first week or two in order to warn drivers what was coming. Instead, they chose immediate enforcement, a sort of “gotcha” policy which pissed people off as much as, and maybe more than, the actual parking changes themselves. 

Anyway, myself being personally assured that the members of Oakland City Council and the office of the city administrator aren’t involved in some plot to destroy the Grand Avenue-Lakeshore business district and the other neighborhood commercial centers adversely affected, how in the world could something like this come about? 

The answer lies in the Jerry Brown years, and the former mayor’s downtown-uptown-centric development obsession. 

When Mr. Brown came into office in 1999, Oakland had a distinctly checkered retail map. Downtown had been dead for so long that only people in their fifties could remember when it was once a thriving commercial center. The city’s retail life had shifted to several highly successful neighborhood commercial districts: Grand Avenue-Lakeshore, Chinatown, College Avenue, the Fruitvale, Montclair Village, the Laurel. In addition, there were some neighborhood commercial centers in the more moderate-to-low-income sections of the city that were barely holding on—Eastmont Mall and Foothill Square, for example. And there were large stretches of the city—along International from High Street to the San Leandro border, and almost all of West Oakland—that had some thriving local retail businesses, but nothing that could be characterized as a commercial center. 

Mr. Brown had a distinct commercial policy choice to be made at the beginning of his administration. He could have put his attention on the rebuilding of the downtown-uptown center from the ashes, as he had promised in his 1998 election campaign platform (the so-called 10K promise, to bring 10,000 new residents downtown, thereby kickstarting a rebirth of the center city’s retail). Or Mr. Brown could have concentrated on shoring up the successful neighborhood commercial districts, making sure they remained successful, propped up the ailing ones, and built new neighborhood commercial centers where none existed in 1999. 

Mr. Brown, as everyone knows, chose the former path, funneling the vast bulk of city development money into the Forest City Uptown and Fox Oakland restoration projects while letting the neighborhood commercial districts fend on their own. His promise was that the downtown-uptown development would bring extra money into the city through real estate transfer taxes as well as taxes from the newly created businesses attracted by Forest City’s new uptown condominium complexes. Mr. Brown’s actions certainly transformed the uptown area. The gleaming new residential complexes are a much better sight than the crumbling and decrepit buildings they replaced, and “beautiful people” life has returned to the area, with upscale crowds patronizing several new restaurants along the uptown Broadway corridor. 

But there is a distinct shallowness to Oakland uptown’s development, what the country folks used to call “a mile wide and an inch deep.” When the national and local economy took a nosedive towards the end of the Brown administration, the promised boost to Oakland’s tax collections went with it. Condominiums went unsold, leaving a hole in the expected real estate transfer taxes. And while uptown upscale restaurants are thriving, the expected big-ticket retail stores have not (yet) followed. 

In the meantime, the opportunity passed for Oakland to shore up its neighborhood commercial centers. Shopping centers like Foothill Square and Eastmont Mall have gone downhill in the few past years—Foothill Square lost its anchor supermarket tenant, and Eastmont has survived only by replacing its retail components with government and health-services activities. With few exceptions, the large stretches of Oakland communities that were underserved by retail in 1998 remain just as underserved 11 years later. Meanwhile, the major impediment to the expansion of the successful neighborhood centers—a shortage of available parking—was never addressed by city government. And in fact, rather than solving the problem in a way that brings more patrons into the successful neighborhood commercial districts, it is that parking shortage that the city now attempts to take advantage of in these times of budget shortages. 

When Ron Dellums was elected mayor of Oakland in 2006 to succeed Jerry Brown, he did little to change those Brown commercial development priorities. While Mr. Dellums has certainly done many things different, the Brown retail development engine was roaring down a particular road with such momentum, a complete slamming on the brakes and rapid turning of the wheel by the Dellums administration was needed to reverse that course. Gradualism would not do it. 

Public policy works on the principle of inertia. Most people confuse the term “inertia” as meaning moribund, something standing still, bogged down, unable to move. The actual meaning of the term is scientific: “the tendency of matter to remain at rest if at rest, or, if moving, to keep moving in the same direction unless affected by some outside force.” Both parts apply to our present situation in Oakland’s commercial policy. The momentum from the Brown administration putting attention on downtown-uptown development continues, even if the Brown development theories (that retail would automatically follow residences) never made sense in the first place, and have proven to be a miscalculation. Meanwhile, the neglect of the city’s neighborhood commercial district continues as well, leading city officials to continue to try to pull more and more money out of these areas—in the form of extra parking fees and fines, for example—in order to keep the city financially afloat, rather than see these districts as precious commodities which need to be protected and cultivated, lest they eventually crash or wither away…as the old downtown did.

The wildlife scene at the beaver pond in downtown Martinez continues to surprise observers. Last year, in addition to the beavers, muskrats, river otters, turtles, and herons, someone spotted a single mink. Now there’s an entire mink family. 

Beaver advocate Heidi Perryman and photographer Cheryl Reynolds observed them on a recent July evening near the beavers’ main dam, where Escobar Street crosses Alhambra Creek. If you visit the Martinez Beavers site (www.martinezbeavers.org), you can watch four young mink cruising around like a paddling of ducklings in Reynolds’ video. Furry ducklings with sharp little teeth. The mink appeared to be using a muskrat burrow on the side of the pond. 

My own mink-watching experience is limited to a couple of chance encounters: one in a marsh in North Dakota, the other in the Delta near Thornton. But I remember sitting in church as a kid behind women wearing mink stoles and not being quite sure whether the critters were dead, or alive and exceptionally well trained. The idea of wearing defunct weasels, heads, tails, and all, to church struck me as strange, and still does. 

Not much is known about the mink in the wild; there hasn’t been a lot of field research on the species. Lacking radiotelemetry studies, it’s not clear how large their home ranges are or how far they travel to find food and mates. That’s partly a matter of priorities: North American mink are neither endangered nor economically important pests, so budgets for mink studies have been limited. 

We do know that they inhabit a broad swathe of northern and Central California: interior marshlands, mountain streams, even ocean beaches. They’ve been found from the Oregon border south along the coast to San Francisco Bay, in the Central Valley to Mendota in Fresno County, and east of the Sierra to the Owens Valley. Mink are or were widespread in the northern Sierra and the Coast Ranges. 

Less committed to an aquatic lifestyle than otters, mink lack webbed feet and are not very agile swimmers. Physiological adaptations include a lowered heart rate when diving and a less acute sense of smell than their terrestrial kin. They hunt by sight and sound, and can detect ultrasonic mouse vocalizations. Like most mustelids, mink have paired anal glands used for scent-marking and sometimes to repel predators, although without a skunk’s volume or range. 

A typical mink’s diet consists of fish, frogs, crayfish, and rodents, notably mice and muskrats. Salmon and trout can outmaneuver them, unless the fish are preoccupied with spawning. In one study, only three of 174 trapped mink had trout remains in their stomachs. Lesser game may include aquatic insects, snails, and earthworms. As opportunistic predators, they’ll also go after waterfowl—including those crippled but not retrieved by duck hunters—and domestic poultry.  

“Few people realize that minks are good mousers,” wrote Joseph Grinnell in the classic Fur-bearing Mammals of California. “The stomach of a mink trapped at Pittsburg, Contra Costa County was found to contain an entire family of three or four young meadow mice.” It’s more likely that what attracted them to Alhambra Creek was the muskrat population, though. Male mink, larger than females, take a disproportionate share of muskrats. The youngest muskrats, still confined to their burrows, are the most vulnerable to mink predation. 

Recent coverage in the Chronicle implied a connection between the arrival of the mink family and the disappearance of this year’s beaver kits. Perryman says that’s unlikely: “The size of the kits when [they were filmed] was already unmanageable for a mink.” 

The mink’s reputation has suffered because of its predilection for killing more prey than it can immediately consume, and its supposed impact on game birds and sport fish. Grinnell disagreed: 

“With respect to food, the mink appears to subsist chiefly on kinds that are of no value to man; even its levies upon domestic fowl and the like—depredations regarded by man as ‘harmful’—are fully offset by its consumption of mice, carp, and the like…The case for the mink is clear—it should be conserved (not wastefully destroyed) for its value to the greatest number of people…” 

What Grinnell didn’t know was that mink can also be important environmental sentinels. “Mink are extremely sensitive to environmental pollutants,” writes biologist Serve Larivière in the authoritative Mammals of North America. “Because of their position at the top of the food chain in aquatic environments, mink accumulate many chemical compounds and heavy metals in their systems, and for this reason they are often used as bioindicators of pollution.” Larivière says they’re particularly sensitive to mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs.)  

Thriving mink, then, are a hopeful sign of a healthy wetland—one more piece in the living mosaic that has assembled around the Alhambra Creek beaver pond.

On the corner of Bonita Avenue and Berkeley Way stands an elegant Colonial Revival brick building that might have been transplanted whole from a New England town, where it might have served as a Masonic lodge. 

Bonita Hall was, in fact, a venue for local lodges during the first three decades of the 20th century. Beginning in 1906, the assembly hall on its second floor was used by local chapters of organizations such as the Native Daughters of the Golden West, Grand Army of the Republic, Daughters of Pocahontas, Knights of the Maccabees, Ancient Order of Foresters, Modern Woodmen of America, Knights of Pythias, Order of Owls, and Companions of the Forest. Here they held officer installations, banquets, dances, whist parties, musical entertainments, bazaars, and bonbon socials. The Berkeley baseball team gave a hop here on the first Saturday in September 1906. Entre Nous, a social organization of Berkeley young people, held its initial dance here in June 1913. 

A social hall may not have been what the building’s owner, William G. Black, initially had in mind. Black (1865-1943), a Maine-born brick mason and contractor, needed a warehouse for his business. When he took out a building permit on Aug. 30, 1905, it was for a brick dwelling of two stories. The “dwelling” entry was probably a clerical error—Black did not require a new dwelling, having moved only the previous year into a large Italianate house at 1930 Delaware St., two short blocks to the north. 

In moving to his new residence, Black didn’t have far to go. From 1898 to 1904, the Black family resided a block to the east, in a charming Victorian cottage at 2012 Delaware St. Earlier still, between 1894 and 1897, they owned and occupied a similar Victorian cottage at 1612 Virginia St. All three houses are still standing 

Nobody knows why and how William G. Black and his wife, Luella F. Parsons, came to settle in Berkeley. They first appeared in the city directory in 1894, briefly residing at 1937 Berkeley Way—only half a block away from the site where they would build Bonita Hall. Luella, 18 months older than her husband, hailed from Plymouth, Mass. Her seafaring father died while she was still a child, and perhaps this early loss instilled in her self-sufficiency, for she appears to have been the family’s business head. One newspaper account described her a contractor, and all the Blacks’ properties, which multiplied from year to year, were registered in her name. 

The Blacks married in 1885. Two twin daughters, Hattie and Helen, were born to them in 1891 while they were living in Massachusetts. In 1900, the U.S. census taker found them in Berkeley, residing at 2012 Delaware St. with Luella’s widowed mother, Ellen Parsons. Mrs. Parsons was declared insane in 1905. Nor did the Blacks see happiness in their daughters, both of whom married precipitately and were divorced within two years. In addition, the family’s animals were the victims of a dog poisoner and horse thieves. 

On the business front, however, all went swimmingly. In an audacious promotional ploy, William used both his residence and Bonita Hall as standing advertisements for his fireplace- and chimney-building abilities. Two fireplaces were installed on the exterior wall of Bonita Hall above street level. The Black home at 1930 Delaware St., whose bracketed Italianate style dates it to the 1870s or earlier, received three Arts and Crafts clinker brick chimneys, one of them ingeniously perforated to expose a small window. This house was evidently moved from an unknown location to its current site around 1902, since the assessment records show no improvements on the lot until 1903. 

The clinker brick chimneys were part of a general remodel the Blacks performed on their new house before moving in. Another notable feature is the square cupola on the roof, also seen on Bonita Hall. Fire insurance maps show that after 1903, the house was enlarged toward the rear. Its assessed value more than tripled in one year, rising from $500 in 1903 to $1,800 in 1904. By 1906, the Blacks had acquired the two adjoining lots to the south, constructing a water tower and an accessory building that included a stable for their horses. 

The year 1906 was a watershed for the Blacks, as it was for Berkeley. The influx of San Francisco earthquake refugees swelled the city’s population, triggering an unprecedented building boom. The Blacks wasted no time in acquiring the remaining three vacant lots south of their homestead. This purchase put in their hand the entire east side of Bonita Ave. between Delaware Street and Hearst Avenue. On the three southern lots they erected four identical two-story Colonial Revival houses, of which only one, 1807 Bonita Ave., remains. The other three were demolished in the 1960s for BART construction along Hearst Avenue. 

Also in 1906, the Blacks built a commercial store building at 1942-46 Bonita Ave. This charming two-story building survives practically intact. Still on a roll in 1912, the Blacks added a warehouse and stable to Bonita Hall. 

While the Blacks were residing at 2012 Delaware St., architect and Civil War veteran William H. Wharff built himself a house next door, on the corner of Milvia Street. The Wharff house, a large Colonial Revival affair clad in clapboard, inexplicably rises from a base of clinker bricks, a material also used in the front stairs’ parapets. Did William Black build the brick parts and perhaps even the entire house? And did Wharff, a fellow Maine native, advise on the design of Bonita Hall? Wharff, a senior member of the local Grand Army of the Republic lodge, was likely the one who encouraged Black to include a lodge hall in his warehouse building. 

About 1910, the building’s ground-floor space was leased to the U.C. Express & Storage Company for its warehouse, but by the early 1920s, the company had moved to 2120 Berkeley Way. The Blacks’ little empire collapsed about this time. The reasons are unknown, but Luella’s death may have been the trigger. In 1925, the building was listed in the city directory as the American Legion clubhouse. The ground floor was converted into a 10-car garage. 

William Black moved to the Danville area, where he was recorded by the 1930 U.S. census as a 65-year-old widower working as an “on the job” bricklayer. He died in Santa Cruz in 1943. The Blacks’ successor at 1930 Delaware St. was William N. Hartshorn (1861-1947), a laborer and former fireman. In the mid-1920s, he replaced the stables with a four-unit bungalow court, still standing at 1803-1805 Bonita. The house itself was converted to four apartments before 1950. 

As the Depression deepened, Bonita Hall stood empty, while the number of the homeless unemployed increased. On Nov. 1, 1933, the Oakland Tribune reported that since January of that year, the Berkeley YMCA had “furnished 4,737 beds to needy transients and other deserving men […]. In addition, 5,233 free meals were served to transients in Bonita Hall, former American Legion headquarters which has been fitted up with beds and tables to provide for needs of transient unemployed.” To do so, the YMCA utilized funds allotted it by the Community Chest. 

In 1936, Bonita Hall was acquired by Arthur and Grace Mauerhan, who commissioned architect Clarence Mayhew to convert the building into a fine furniture showroom with a neo-Georgian touch. Arthur C. Mauerhan (1888-1951) was working for the San Francisco furniture store of Gullixson Bros. in 1920 when he met Grace Worstell Harnden (1896-1986), a doctor’s daughter from Big Sandy, Montana, newly arrived in town with her lawyer husband. 

Like Luella Black, Grace Worstell had pluck. At the age of 15, she left home on her own initiative, determined to get the high school education unavailable in her rural community. Having arrived in the Bay Area, she enrolled at the University of California, receiving her bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1925 and her Master’s in 1927. She was a Phi Beta Kappa and an Honorary Traveling Fellow in Philosophy. 

In 1925, Grace and Arthur married. Several years later, they launched a successful home decorating business. Early practitioners of the Tupperware sales method—perhaps even before Tupperware existed—they introduced new lines of furniture or fabrics to invited guests at tea parties in their showroom. They lent homeowners decorative objects to place in their homes on a trial basis. Grace delivered lectures on home decorating to women’s clubs around Northern California. 

Grace’s most popular topic was “How to Be Your Own Interior Decorator.” She often quoted William Morris, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” and advocated the three fundamental principles of function, character, and beauty. “If you are forced to choose among the three, choose in that order,” she advised. 

By 1950, the Mauerhan business occupied the entire Bonita Hall, with furniture warehouses in the adjacent annex and two buildings in the rear. The neighboring Cape Cod-style house at 1908 Bonita Ave. became a showcase home advertised as the “Little House next door.” 

After Arthur’s death in 1951, the business became Mauerhan’s-Sarnes. It continued until 1965, when the building was sold. The large newspaper ad announcing the public auction promised “$243,780 all new luxurious furnishings, imports, lamps, rugs, wall decor, antiques, etc. (3 entire buildings of exquisite decorator selections,” trumpeting the business as “The House of Quality Since 1937.” 

The building was then converted into three floors of offices and renamed Berkeley Bay Commons, a name that has since fallen into disuse. It was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 1979. 

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

Forced-air heating is stupid. I’m sorry if that’s what you’ve got; it’s also what I have, so you can feel bad for me, too. It’s not that we’re stupid. It’s just that heating air is a dumb way to heat space. It noisy, it’s dirty, it’s not especially efficient and it takes up a huge amount of space in a home. In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, let me apologize, go back, slow down and explain what forced-air heating is. 

Most of us have forced-air heat if we live in our own houses. If you have an apartment or a very small house, you might have a wall or floor furnace, but the common heating in homes on the left coast is forced-air. 

Forced-air heating is made up of a big box (the furnace) that contains a set of burners, a blower and a “heat exchanger.” This last part is a magical place where noxious gases give up their heat to clean, cool air along the surface of a metal barrier. This barrier is called a heat exchanger and is the heart of any forced-air system. 

The system also includes a set of ducts (this is the really stupid part). These end up ruining lots of really nice houses by intruding into ceilings, walls, soffits and other places that we liked before the ducts got there. Taking an older house and adding forced-air is one of the best ways to screw it up. True, there are artists in the field who can do amazing things with minimal intrusion, but many purveyors of this mundane commodity lack said finesse and sort of molest these innocent, unsuspecting homes. 

Unfortunately, the alternatives (such as radiant “hydronic” heating) are just too expensive for the time being, and so forced-air is what we’ve got. Therefore, in the interest of conciliation, I’d like to offer some thoughts on how to proceed onto the field of battle. 

So you’re ready to replace your current heating system. Perhaps you have a forced-air unit and it’s old and you’ve been told that it’s time to upgrade. If you haven’t had an expert look at it in a year or three, it’s probably time for a check-up. Perhaps you’re concerned about your carbon footprint (or similarly, your heating bill). If any of these things are true, you should know that this is a very good time to get greener because you can get a huge tax break by buying a high-efficiency furnace and simultaneously lower your heating bill by 20-30 percent.  

Our fairly fabulous new president signed a bill back in February of this year (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) that gives a nice big tax credit (assuming you will be paying some tax this year) to people who buy certain pieces of equipment and among these are certain high efficiency furnaces. The tax break is 30 percent of the total installation cost and is capped at $1,500.  

This means that if you buy a furnace that costs $5,000 bucks, you can take $1,500 off your tax bill, making the furnace upgrade $3,500. Now a new furnace could be more than this with the addition of the accursed ducting, but if you already have viable ducting and a gas feed to the area where the new forced-air unit will live, the cost may be less than $5,000. In any event, this is a very good deal and will go poof at the end of next year.  

There are actually a whole bunch of incentivized items that can earn this tax credit. All offer a 30 percent tax credit with a cumlative total of $1,500. This includes Energy Star rated windows and skylights, insulation, water heaters, air conditioners and solar electric systems, but the list is much longer. These are all listed at energystar.gov/taxcredits. 

As I’ve mentioned, you win two ways with this upgrade (and maybe more if your furnace is old, dangerous, noisy or otherwise corrupt). Once with a big tax credit, which is basically free money, if you have to pay more than $1,500 in taxes, and again with a reduced heating bill for many years to come. Even those of us lucky enough to live west of the Sierras can benefit from a lower heating bill. If you have an old and inefficient heating system, you are probably throwing away 30–40 percent of your heating bill on waste heat. Modern, high efficiency, “condensing” furnaces, such as those that are approved as a part of the stimulus package can be 95 percent efficient or better, meaning that you could potentially save over 30 percent on the heating portion of your utility bill.  

We spend more on electricity than on heat, due to the mild climate, but a savings of 30 percent on your heating bill is very likely to provide more than enough financial benefit when calculated against the real cost of the furnace over a 10-year period (say $350 a year) and a new furnace will probably last twice that long and perhaps 10 years more than that, bringing the cost down to something under $125 a year. Keep in mind that energy costs are likely to ascend, not descend, making this choice even smarter than it already seems to be. 

For some, these new furnaces may pay for themselves in five years or less, but there are other issues as well. A new high efficiency furnace is a bouquet of flowers to the planet for all those extra trips in the car just to buy shampoo. Replacing inefficient carbon burning equipment is a manageable way to decrease your first-worldishness. We lucky, rich Amerikans use a huge percentage of the world’s resources and were only recently surpassed in environmental impact by China, a country about four times as populous as we. We owe it to the planet and to our children to take the $1,500, upgrade the noisy old furnace and pocket the savings. Aren’t we just too selfless? 

Before we’re done, let me share a few last thoughts regarding “condensing,” high-efficiency furnaces, since they’re not your father’s Oldsmobile. 

Condensing furnaces get their name from the nature of their exhaust systems. Natural gas furnaces all produce steam as the primary product of combustion, which is pretty nice when compared with oil or coal. It’s why we call it clean natural gas (CNG) as opposed to clean coal (which gets my vote for oxymoron of the decade). The steam that exhausts from a 95 percent furnace has been so closely shaved of heat (it’s almost all going to heat your house) that these flue gases may turn to liquid in the flue system and must be carefully managed. If this liquid is not well managed, it can wreak all sorts of havoc inside the furnace. So, modern condensing furnaces have several ways to deal with the water.  

First, the flues all tip downward, back toward the furnace so that they don’t end up dripping down the outside wall, eating the paint and staining the stucco (this water ends up being acidy and somewhat sulfurous). The water runs into a drain that may (if gravity allows) run outside to some point near the ground, where it can drain to soil. If gravity doesn’t allow, this water must be pumped away using a small reservoir and pump near the furnace. If furnaces are not installed level or have blockages, they may retain water, gurgle or become clogged. They may also rust through and require replacement in too short a time, turning the good deal bad. 

Therefore, when hiring an installer, don’t hire the cheap gal or guy. Hire someone who can intelligently discuss these issues. If you do have a furnace that gurgles, get it looked at. It may be drowning. 

Now I don’t feel any less critical of forced-air units than I did 10 minutes ago. Forced air is still clumsy. There’s no icing for that cake. That said, a high efficiency furnace can save a lot of money and a lot of carbon and that’s a good thing. I guess this makes it less stupid and I think that will make you pretty smart.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6 

CHILDREN 

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie” Thurs. Sat, Sun. at 4 p.m., Fri. at 6 p.m., through Aug. 16, at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$12. 296-4433.  

EXHIBITIONS 

JURIED@BAC: Works on Paper Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center,1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

“Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma, 1775-1950” An overview of the upcoming exhibition at the Asian Art Museum at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Paintings by Antonio Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five, with Alice Walker at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568.  

Oakland Art Association Group Show in the windows at 54 Washington St., Jack London Square, through Nov. 12.  

FILM 

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison, through Aug. 8. For schedule and tickets 866-558-4253. www.sfjff.org 

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Indigo Moor and Alena Hairston read their poetry at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 536-3720. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Julian Pollack and Infinite Playground at noon at the downtown Berkeley BART Station. 

Stu Allen & Sandy Rothman at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $TBA. 525-5054.  

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

Kelly Park Trio & Friends at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. 

Vinny Golia & Friends, jazz, at 8 p.m. at Flux 53 Theater, 5300-5312 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $10. 842-8841. 

7 Orange ABC, Dialectic, Tremor Low at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

The Deep at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 15. Tickets are $12-$15. 649-5999.  

Altarena Playhouse “Spitfire Grill” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

Stage Door Conservatory “Grease” performed by Teens on Stage Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 521-6250.  

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Singin’ in the Rain” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Distilled Spirits” Paintings inspired by forms and images of Buddha and contemporary iconic portraits by Cherie Raciti & Susan Matthews, through September at Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Rd. 649-2500. www.gtu.edu 

“Object Oriented” Group show with works by Julia Shirar, Jon C. Rogers, Dan Nelson Shanna Maurizi and others. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. thecompoundgallery.com 

“Sounding Art: Instruments as Art Pieces” Works by Perry Cook, Lisa Coons, Anne Hege, Peter Musselman and Dan Truman opens at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland, and runs through Sept. 5. oakopolis@gmail.com 

“Dream Pools, Light Drifts” recent paintings of Jenn Shifflet. Opening Reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. Runs to Sept. 26. 415-577-7537. www.chandracerrito.com 

Maya Kabat “Cities and Desire” paintings and Mary V. Marsh “Everyday Readers” artist book and prints. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620.  

“How Do You Know” An exchange show of Irish artists curated by Gallery 126 in Galway, Ireland. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Blankspace, 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 547-6608. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pure Ecstasy, motown, at noon at the Kaiser Center Roof Garden, on top of the parking garage, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Free.  

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions Record Shop amd Cafe,10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Grupo Falso Baiano at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568.  

Candice & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Antioquia, Free Peoples at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $1, $8 with a bike. 525-5054.  

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

Jessee Brewer, Brad Brooks, Joel Streeter at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Beep! Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8 

THEATER 

HurLyBurLy Productions “Cat’s-Paw” Sat at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Periscope Cellars, 1410 62nd St., Emeryville. Tickets are $20. periscopecellars.com 

Shotgun Players “The Farm” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Ave., through Sept 13. Suggested donation $10. 841-6500.  

Stage Door Conservatory “Grease” performed by Teens on Stage at 7:30 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 521-6250. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Isaura: A Life in Focus” Photographs of the Afro-Brazilian dancer. Artist talk at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Pubic Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Exhibit runs to Sept. 30. 981-6240.  

“Alan Osborne: Expressionist Enamels” Recption at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Bartlett Ave., Richmond. Exhibition runs through Aug. 29. 620-6772. www.therac.org 

“Wildlife of Costa Rica” Photographs by Dan Suzio. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Aug. 28. 649-8111. 

Maya Kabat “Cities and Desire” paintings and Mary V. Marsh “Everyday Readers” artist book and prints. Artist talk at 2 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620. www.mercurytwenty.com 

FILM 

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival at the Roda Theater, 2025 Addison, through Aug. 8. For schedule and tickets 866-558-4253. www.sfjff.org 

Growing Up in Oakland: Youth Film Festival from 2 to 5 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda, 1870 Antonio Peralta House, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Films are free, tours are $3. RSVP for tour to 532-9142.  

“Back to the Future” at dusk at the outdoor big-screen at Cerrito Vista Park, 950 Pomona at Moeser Lane, El Cerrito. Free. Bring a picnic dinner and blankets. www.el-cerrito.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Duniya Dance & Drum Company at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Frankye Kelly & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Tambores Remelexo at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054.  

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

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

The Eric Mcfadden Trio, Teddy Presberg at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $12. 841-2082.  

CV Dub at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 

CHILDREN 

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

THEATER 

“Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad” at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Tickets are $15-$20. www.brownpapertickets.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Architecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Free. 238-2200.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bob Harp at 1 p.m. at Rasputin Music, 2401 Telegraph Ave. 1-800-350-8700. 

San Francisco Renaissance Voices “The Bawdy and the Chaste” Palestrina’s Missa Sicut lilium inter spinas with Banchieri’s comic Festino madrigals at 7:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian of Alameda, 2001 Santa Clara, Alamed.a Tickets are $15-$18. www.SFRV.org 

Single Payer Puppets “The Sound of Moolah” A puppet musical on health care reform at 6 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568.  

Kyle Athayde at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Farewell to 1111 Addison, open mic, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $8.50-$9.50. 548-1761.  

Americana Unplugged: Savannah Blu at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 11 

CHILDREN 

Dan Chan the Magic Man at 6:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Leroy Thomas & The Zydeco Roadrunners at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $12. 525-5054.  

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

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12 

FILM 

New Cuban Filmmakers at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

STUNG!, Police tribute band, at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. 

Jay King and Gary Taylor at 8 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Tickets are $35. 839-6169. 

Steve Carter Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Finnish Barn Dance with Midsummer Fiddle People featuring Tuula Tossavainen at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Sonic Safari Swing Band at 7 p.m. at Chester's Bayview Cafe, 1508 B Walnut Square. 849-9995. 

Sam Dickey Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13 

CHILDREN 

Active Arts Theatre for Young Audiences “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie” play based on the book by Laura Numeroff, Thurs. Sat, Sun. at 4 p.m., Fri. at 6 p.m., through Aug. 16, at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$12. 296-4433.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tamar Sella at noon at the downtown Berkeley BART Station. 

Dedicated Maniacs, Pat Nevins & Amy Gabel at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8-$10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Grupo Falso Baiano at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Annie Bacon and her Oshen, Theresa Perez at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $67 841-2082.  

Country Joe’s Open Mic with Mugg Muggles, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. $5-$10 suggested donation. 841-4824. 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 15. Tickets are $12-$15. 649-5999.  

Altarena Playhouse “Spitfire Grill” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

HurLyBurLy Productions “Cat’s Paw” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Periscope Cellars, 1410 - 62nd Street, Emeryville. Tickets are $20. periscopecellars.com 

Lower Bottom Playaz “Mama at Twilight: Death by Love” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at The SIster Thea Bowman Memorial Theater, 920 Peralta St., rear yard, through Aug. 23. Cost is $10-$20. 208-1912. 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Singin’ in the Rain” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597.  

FILM 

“Babette’s Feast” at 6:30 p.m. at Charles Chocolates, 6529 Hollis St., Emeryville. 652-4412, ext. 311.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Last Word Reading Series with poets Charles Entrekin and Gail Rudd Entrekin at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 841-6374. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtney Janes, bluegrass, at noon at the Kaiser Center Roof Garden, on top of the parking garage, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Free. www.KaiserCenterRoofGarden.com 

Diáspora Negra: The African Legacy in Latin America, symposium at 6:45 p.m., music and dance at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568.  

Point Richmond Summer Concert with Claudia Russell & the Folk Unlimited Orchestra, at 5:30 p.m. and Taarka, at 6:45 p.m. at Park Place at Washington Ave. in downtown Point Richmond. www.pointrichmond.com 

Mimi Dye & The Topaz Allstars at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Messenjah Selah, Lady Passion, Tuff Lion, We A Dem at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054.  

Alien Cowboys, The Geroso Bros, Lee Koch and The Grinders at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Beep! Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 

CHILDREN  

The Fratello Marionettes “The Frog Prince” at 3:30 p.m. at Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 3 and up. Free. 524-3043. 

THEATER 

Berkeley Playhouse Youth Company “Urinetown” Sat. at 7 p.m. and Sun. at 1 p.m. at The Julia Morgan, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 665-5565, ext. 397.  

Bizarre Shorts Showcase performed by Berkeley Public Library’s Teen PlayReaders at 7:30 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Metal Shop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. 981-6147. 

Shotgun Players “The Farm” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Ave., through Sept 13. Suggested donation $10. 841-6500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Gone Fishin’” Group art show opens at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

“Down By the Sycamore Trees” Works by Maliea Croy and Jon Schroeder. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Local 123, 2049 San Pablo Ave. www.local123gallery.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

9th Annual Art & Soul Festival Oakland, with jazz, rock, gospel, latin, R&B and more Sat and Sun. from noon to 6 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, downtown Oakland. Cost is $5-$10, 12 and under free. www.artandsouloakland.com 

Travis Brooks, Jonathan Sarenana, 100 Swans, J Irvin Dally and others at noon at House of Nostromo, 4 Fifth Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8. 

Prometheus with harmonica player Ken Mitchell at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Tickets are $5-$20. 548-2153. 

Diáspora Negra: The African Legacy in Latin America, symposium at 6:45 p.m., music and dance, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568.  

Kenny Washington & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Andre Thierry & Zydeco Magic at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

PZ at 10 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7. 548-1159.  

Forrest Day, Alex Lee, The Feel Good Patrol at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

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

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054.  

EXHIBITIONS 

New Works by Julie Ross Watercolor & Acrylic. Reception at at the French Hotel, 1538 Shattuck Ave. Exhibition runs through Aug. 31. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Visual Thinking Strategies” An interactive workshop on ways to view and teach art from 2 to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Free, but RSVP required. 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tanaora, Latin and Brazilian jazz, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12. 849-2568.  

Eva Scow Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: Jimbo Trout & The Fish People at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mahealani Uchiyama at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Josh Sinton recalled his mentor, the late Steve Lacy, famed as one of the great soprano saxophone players, an accompanist to Thelonius Monk and other jazz masters and as a prolific composer, while talking about the band he’ll lead, Ideal Bread West, in a program of Lacy compositions this Saturday night at the Jazz- 

School in downtown Berkeley.  

“Steve moved back from Europe to teach at Boston Conservatory [where Sinton studied] in 2002,” Sinton said. “I knew a little bit of his playing, mostly from the album ‘Gil Evans + 10,’ a much more straight-ahead, bebop style than what he’d come to play and compose. But it was his presence while playing—and not playing—that had a deep impact on me. He was one of the most fascinating people. A sweet, quiet man who could be charismatic. And being right next to that sound, that presence he generated on his instrument, the overtones I heard while in the same room with him ... I often wanted to stop playing and just listen to him.” 

Ideal Bread West—a touring version of the New York project Sinton, a baritone saxophonist, developed to play Lacy’s music—also features two Bay Area saxophonists: Phillip Greenlief on tenor and Jorrit Dykstra, alto, special guests for the JazzSchool concert who will play with Sinton first as a trio, joined after a break by drummer Paul Kikuchi and bassist Geoff Harper, both Seattle-based, rhythm section for the whole tour.  

Greenlief, a well-known player and bandleader in the Bay Area, with his Evander recording label based in Oakland, explained how he met Sinton, playing on the same bill in Philadelphia while on a solo tour. 

“I asked Josh for a ride to the bus station,” Greenlief said. “It turned out he was going to New York, too, and gave me a ride. It started snowing just as we got into Manhattan. It was really beautiful. He passed along the Ideal Bread music to me.”  

Sinton told how the project of playing Lacy’s music developed. “When he passed away in June 2004, I was sitting on 20 songs of his, a little book. I moved to New York, which is great for having a healthy session culture: Musicians want to play something different. I whittled it down to three core people. I was also obsessed with a not-so-well-known record of Steve’s, ‘New York Capers & Quirks,’ five tunes he never recorded again, played with a pick-up group—Ronnie Boynton and Dennis Charles. By 1979, about a year later, Steve was well ensconced in Europe.” 

Sinton was wry about his approach to the material. “The ‘Quirks & Capers’ tunes don’t sit well at all on baritone sax. And I’m tickled by how often people assume there has to be a soprano saxophone player. But Steve kind of ruined me, standing next to him, hearing that sound.” 

Stinton said Lacy influenced him to devote himself to one instrument, to go the places it would go, rather than playing lots and lots of instruments.  

“I do play bass clarinet, but have foregone working on other saxophones or flutes, which I played growing up.” he said. “Steve told me himself that he tried all the saxophones, learned Lester Young solos on tenor—and loved it! But once said, ‘That thing’s too heavy; I don’t want to carry it around.’ He started as a clarinet player in Dixieland Revival bands and was smitten by the soprano sax, recording with it even before he had the intonation completely down. He had no models but Sidney Bechet and a little [Johnny] Hodges. Then he went through the roof with it.” 

Lacy said late in his life that the sound of the soprano saxophone reminded him of the cantors he heard as a boy in synagogue—and that trying to go with its unique intonation was like riding a bucking bronco. 

“The Ideal Bread Presents The Ideal Bread” was recorded on KMB Jazz in the fall of 2007, released the next spring. Sinton has started preparing material for a second recording. “As Steve put it, music should be fully cooked ... but there’s a danger of it being overcooked.”  

Sinton continued: “I never consider myself an expert in Steve’s music. Many of his songs baffle me. He’s a unique American composer—in fact, weird! And depending on who you ask, he wrote 300 to 600 compositions. I approach the tunes with a series of questions: why my ears are drawn to it, or not to parts of it. He was pretty concrete in his approach to how his music’s to be played. Strictly what was on the page. Pretty clear cut. He gave some guidelines to improvising on it—on the chord changes, after the notes at the beginning of the song. His music takes awhile to grow into, it’s so sui generis.” 

Sinton added, “He expected people to be themselves, to be responsible to their own identity. It was great how he responded to people as he watched them play. Some would try to impress him that they were great—and he had played with or listened to every great musician; not just jazz but across the board. But when his eyes would seem to light up ... it’s with that same spirit that I try to approach his music.” 

“All Animals Are Equal — But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.” 

The amended declaration, on a farmyard wall where all the once-rebellious animals can see, if not read, their revolutionary credo, is probably the best-remembered detail of George Orwell’s political fable, Animal Farm, once promoted as an anti-Communist allegory (the pigs are the Bolsheviks: Snowball, Trotsky; Napoleon is Stalin, etc.) during the Cold War, often on high school reading lists. 

In collaboration with the Shotgun Players, playwright-director Jon Tracy—who doesn’t shy away from controversy or loaded metaphors—has “remixed” this tale of bestial collectivity betrayed, and come up with Animal Farm, performed outdoors in the old amphitheater at John Hinkel Park, a vigorous theatrical which morphs Orwell’s cautionary tale about power into more 21st-century trappings and mood—more about the volatile mix of despair and hope in the present world (particularly in its youth culture) than nostalgia for old dualisms. 

(In fact, “Orwellian” itself went from meaning a jaundiced eye cast on the manipulation of semantics for limiting the perception of reality to an adjective for a dystopic society that employs “mind control.” The little novel 1984 was, ironically enough, long—and automatically—considered an anti-Soviet polemic; Orwell wrote it after resigning in disgust from the BBC over Basic English programming.) 

In the greenery of Hinkel Park, a metal shed sits on a stage riddled with trap doors, surmounted by a percussionist (Dan Bruno, who doubles as Old Major, the animal prophet of revolution) beating out a tattoo under the green banner emblazoned with hoof and horn that declares the Republic of Animal Farm. The splendid production design is by Nina Ball. 

Whether it’s the heroism of domestic beasts routing their bipedal oppressors (“Four legs, good; two legs, bad!"), the gossip and scheming ‘round the postdiluvian barnyard, or the conflicting recollections and sudden purges which gradually erode and transform the collective memory of great deeds and purposes, it’s all played out in ensemble style.  

The cast is costumed more for underground clubbing or Burning Man than Old MacDonald or the ASPCA, turning musical numbers into stomps or swinging from monkey bars while reciting lines that rhyme, figuratively kicking up the dust, raving with pride or plaintiveness over the shape forced on them, the fate of beasts subjected to a world of complacent men—until they kick out the usurping Homo sapiens and restore Nature, which turns out to be human nature. In the end, the whiskey-imbibing clique of pigs is indistinguishable from the wily human visitors, all cheating at cards. 

(Orwell’s original put one over on the Anglo-Saxon sentimentalizing of domestic animals. Another, earlier Englishman stated it more simply and maybe more in tune with what Tracy’s driving at: William Blake, whose “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” commented on both the beginnings of the French Revolution and a kind of proto-New Age spiritual revival in 18th-century London: “As a new heaven is begun ... the Eternal Hell revives.”) 

The enthusiastic ensemble numbers 14, from theater majors and graduate students, like Antonette Bracks (San Francisco State) and Mairin Lee (ACT), or recent grads of Solano College Actor Training, Sergo Gonzales and Roy Landaverde, to a pro (and Shotgun vet) like Brent Rose, who returned from New York to play barnyard witness and narrator Moses. 

“It must be due to some fault in ourselves,” opines the stalwart, if obtuse, horse Boxer (Brendan Simon), when animals kill other animals, breaking yet another commandment. His solution? Work harder. 

Shotgun artistic director Patrick Dooley announced the run, weekend afternoons through Sept. 13, will include Labor Day, “a great day for this!”  

THE FARM 

Presented by Shotgun Players,  

from George Orwell's Animal Farm 

4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the amphitheater at John Hinkel Park. Free admission; suggested donation 

$10.  

841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org.

“I prefer just to call it music,” L.A. multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia replied to questions about the material and style of an unusual collaborative performance tonight, simply titled Vinny Golia and Friends, at Flux 53 in Oakland—a new, independent arts center on the site of the Egypt Theater, which closed last year after 35 years of community arts programming.  

“People like to make distinctions between jazz and classical, but those borderlines don’t exist—or they’re there to be erased,” Golia said. “Jimmy Giuffre proved that in 1961 with the classical elements in the pieces he wrote for [alto saxophonist] Lee Konitz, and for himself on clarinet. Mingus and other people had done this for a long time. And Gunther Schuller, though as more of an experimentation. There’s a whole new breed of musician comfortable with playing Bulgarian music in 7/8, switching to a Monk tune, then rock fusion. They’re forced to diversify in order to make a living—and so extend the boundaries of music.” 

Zack Reiheld of Flux 53 described the concert: “Vinny will be playing with an avant-garde jazz group, which is what you’d expect—but the opening act will feature him with a string quartet.” 

“It’s an honor,” Golia said, “A night presenting music, all new stuff I wrote for these people. It was [bassist] Lisa Mezzacapa and [drummer] B. J. Anderson’s idea. They put a sextet together and got the string players. Most people just want to have a gig. They’ve really gone out of their way; all this work on my behalf.”  

Golia’s worked with similar formats before.  

“Years ago, there was Feeding Time, which had a string group with two violins, cello and bass—originally violin, viola, bass; it became all the permutations in between,” he said. “Nowadays, it’s easier to find improvisational string players. It’s fun to keep it as a project, playing so as not to overpower the strings, mostly with flutes and clarinets, though lately I’ve used some saxes: baritone, occasionally soprano—the foil, as it were, to the orchestration around it.” 

Golia has taught for 11 years at CalArts in Valencia, where he now is full professor, holding a chair as performing composer. “Some of my older students—graduates now—are in a group that plays with me, takes it into contemporary music, with more latitude, from a straight feel to funk, pretty wide-ranging, with different stylistic approaches. A sextet, with one or two persons soloing. There’s more room, compositionally.” 

Golia’s beginnings as a player are unique.  

“I started as a painter,” he said. “Before I played, I drew musicians from about 1969 to ‘71. I met a lot of up and coming, and already famous players: Mingus, Pharoah Sanders, Benny Maupin, Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp—they were interested in my painting. I got this idea for paintings as musical notation, a graphic score that the players would interpret. But I saw they were playing the same way they normally would. So I got a horn to show them. I worked at the Museum of Modern Art, and would play long tones on the sax I just bought in the sculpture garden, where nobody could see me. One day one of the musicians followed the sound and said, ‘It’s you!’ So I had to learn. Stupidly, I assumed everybody wrote their own music, so I wrote mine. I still draw, but composition takes the place of painting. My scores are still kind of visual.” 

After going back and forth between coasts, Golia moved to Los Angeles in 1973. 

“I thought I’d stay here until I stopped learning,” he said. “I haven’t yet. I’m from New York, I came out here, and it was the same music. It occurred to me the guys I knew in New York were transplants from L.A.”  

He’s played often in the Bay Area over the years.  

“After Beanbenders in Berkeley went away, it was hard to play here,” Golia said. ROVA had me in a couple of their projects. Weasel Walter and Damon Smith brought me up a number of times. And Henry Kaiser. I was in the Albert Ayler Project. Rent Romus had me in the Out Sound Festival ...” 

Golia’s recordings are mostly distributed by Jazz Loft and indyjazz.com, “the majority” on the 9 Winds label. 

Flux 53 started the beginning of this year when Brad Porter had the idea for a communal arts space after “happening on a property on Craigslist with two stages, seating and a storefront property in the middle, all connected into one building,” according to Reiheld, a Berkeley High alum, and Porter’s roommate, now one of 10 in the collective, “pretty much Oaklanders.”  

When Porter and Reiheld first visited the property, “we took one look and said, ‘We have to make something happen here.’” The collective is seeking to incorporate and looking for sponsorship. 

Flux 53 is on the site of the Egypt Theater (acronym for Experimental Group of Young Peoples’ Theater), founded 36 years ago by Minnie Gibson, who is in touch with Flux 53.  

“We’re trying to continue the mission of the Egypt,” Reiheld said, “and serve an underserved community, as Minnie put it. There’s lots of activity in Oakland, in basements and warehouses. We’d like to give it a public space. And we try to make every evening an unusual one, to mix it up. That’s what Flux 53 is, what the Bay Area is—a hybrid melange. Scenes shift, and things are shifting to Oakland. There’s energy; it’s exciting here.” 

Vinny Golia & Friends, jazz with strings 

8 p.m. tonight (Thursday)  

Flux 53 Theater, 5300-5312 Foothill Blvd., (at Fairfax), Oakland.  

$10 

842-8841, www.flux53.org 

Growing Up In Oakland: Youth Film Festival will be presented from 2 to 5 p. m. this Saturday at the Peralta Hacienda, the six-acre historical park at the restored Antonio Peralta House (listed on the National Register), dating from 1870, in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. Admission is free; tours of the Peralta House are $3. 

“This is the first we’ve had,” said destiny Webster, Community Programs Associate at the Peralta Hacienda. “We’re excited about it—and proud of how the kids participated.” 

Seventeen films will be shown, “the bulk of them autobiographical,” according to Webster, with two public service announcements and one documentary (themes chosen by the participantsz) on abusive relationships, seen from both female and male perspectives, as well as from the perspective of a younger person.  

“It’s something we’ve been doing with the middle school students of United For Success Academy,” said Webster. “It started out last fall, with them creating autobiographies. They range from being about summer activities to as deep as gang violence, how the community is affected, the filmmaker as well as the others in the Academy.” 

Webster explained the process for making the films. “Over two semesters, there’re several kids in each of three group, and we have 22 youth interns, between the ages of 15 and 20, who help out at our three day-a-week summer camp, which is going on right now—from the second week of July till the end of August.”  

The fimmaking and the festival tie in to other programs at the Hacienda, which was nurtured by the Friends of the Peralta Hacienda since the late 70s, and opened as a park in 1996.  

“Part of our mission is to archive local stories,” Webster said. “There was Faces of Fruitvale in early 2000. Local residents tell stories, and groups like Story Corps. put them on audio. It’s a great opportunity for the community, which is made up mostly of immigrants, and of people who came from the South, who tell what Fruitvale was like, and how it’s changed.” 

Webster reflected on both the films and the oral histories, their importance to the community and its youth: “All these stories need to be collected in our libraries. We have media literacy, voice-over programs, to help get their stories down through the Youth Digital Storytelling program. It’s really powerful, the kids thinking of their own involvement, of being part of change.” 

There are other regular programs at the park, including environmental science and hands-on history. “One of our rooms has a rotating exhibit,” Webster said, “with different things featured, including things the kids made. In November, there are urban altars, when altars are built to honor the lives lost to violence that year. Oakland Unified Schools ties in that way.  

“There’re tours of the House every second Saturday of the month, from 2 to 4,” Webster continued. “Wells Twombly books teachers for field trips, local elementary schools. We teach the significance of the site, how Fruitvale became Fruitvale. There’s a new gardening club, with a local youth garden on site.” 

Webster also has her own Global Chef program, “bridging cultural gaps with food. In summer it’s only about an hour each day, but in the fall, one day a week has a four to five hour day, with Bret Harte Middle School kids.” 

Webster concluded with the enthusiasm that underlines the motto of the Peralta Hacienda, Every Human Being Makes History: “It’s a great time for Oakland to be together with other conscious people, who appreciate kids looking outside themselves, at their own lives, the community ... These kids are amazing!” 

GROWING UP IN OAKLAND: YOUTH FILM FESTIVAL 

2–5 p. m., Peralta Hacienda 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free admission. House tours, 2–4 p.m., $3. RSVP for tours: 532-9142.  

http://peraltahacienda.org. 

Japanese director Hiroshi Shimizu, nearly unknown in the West, was a friend and sometime collaborator of his better-known contemporary Yasujiro Ozu. 

The two share many qualities. Though their techniques differed, their themes were similar, and both evinced an uncommon compassion and abiding empathy for their characters. 

Criterion has released a box set of four Shimizu films, none of which have appeared on DVD in this country before and only one of which has ever had much exposure on American movie screens. “Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu,” part of Criterion’s Eclipse line of DVD releases, is aptly named; not only does it refer to the fact that the director shot these films largely on location in the mountains and seaside towns of Japan, but it also calls to mind his distinctive and eloquent use of the traveling shot. 

Shimizu’s camerawork is not technically complex—it usually involves simple movements forward or backward or from side to side—but it is employed so artfully and with such grace that his moving camera speaks volumes about his narrative, his characters and his perspective. 

Like Ozu, Shimizu uses simple and very direct techniques to convey so much more than script or image can suggest. His style is almost Hemingwayesque in that he imbues the most elementary building blocks of his artistic language to suggest a vast world of emotion, humanity and depth. He employs his camera the way a poet chooses just the right word, a simple word, and emphasizes it with a sharp, poignant delivery. 

Shimizu’s work is deceptively slight; he strikes a delicate balance between pathos and lighthearted entertainment. His films are full of wit, intelligence and an overwhelming sense of compassion. He views his characters with patience and wholly without judgment, using landscape and setting—dappled light, swaying branches, timelessly pastoral meadows, bridges over gentle but relentless streams—to convey their dilemmas, perspectives and personalities. 

Mr. Thank You (1936) may be the most accessible and pleasing of the set’s four films. It features an effective motif, first introduced as comedy but employed with greater poetry and depth as the story develops. A bus driver traverses the same landscape each day, transporting rural folks to the big city and back. As pedestrians and bicyclists step aside to let his bus pass along the narrow mountain roads, he tips his hat and cheerfully calls out “Thank you,” earning him his affectionate nickname. The film gradually becomes more thoughtful, and even, in small ways, political, as Shimizu moves us gently from a lighthearted travelogue to a sociological examination of Depression-era Japan. 

Japanese Girls at the Harbor (1933), the only silent film in the collection, is something of a melodrama, but again with a light touch, tracing a love triangle that contains disaster, tragedy, redemption and ambivalence. 

In The Masseurs and a Woman (1938), the traveling shot is again deployed. The film opens with the camera retreating before two blind hikers, masseurs on their way to seasonal work at a mountain spa. The two converse like characters from a Beckett play, talking of nothing on the way to nowhere. 

Gradually something of a plot unfolds, though it is a slight one. Characters, each with his or her own brand of loneliness, interact at the spa, seeking connections with one another, like ghosts grasping for something tangible to hold onto. It is a Winesburg, Ohio-like poem of emptiness, with people tentatively reaching out but pulling back for fear of...what? Rejection? Success? Disappointment? Vulnerability? The specifics of their lives are withheld; details about the woman at the center of the intrigue are only slowly revealed. Another traveling shot depicts her from the point of view of one of the blind masseurs: he senses her nearby as she passes him on the street, a ghostly, mysterious and tremendously sensual presence—a woman simultaneously earthy and real but slightly beyond reach, a romantic and erotic dream, a scent, a gentle breeze, a feeling that can’t quite be pinned down. 

Ornamental Hairpin (1941) bears resemblance to Ozu’s film, especially his early work, in that it depicts multiple generations and stages of life in one dense milieu—from the boredom of children who have exhausted the pleasures of games, to love burgeoning among the young, to pragmatic middle age, to the wisdom and weariness of old age, as well as its poignant regression in the form of an old man who is as eager for a game of Go as the children are for any game at all. And the middle-aged bear the brunt of both, sandwiched between the demands of their children and parents. 

The film also contains perhaps Shimizu’s most effective and devastating use of the traveling shot. You can see it coming in the final minutes as Shimizu beautifully establishes the themes of his closing sequence. A young woman retraces her steps through fields and streams and groves, the backdrops of a now-concluded romance. We have watched as she aided a young soldier in his recovery from an injury, helping him to take small steps one at a time until he could walk again without crutches. Her sentimental journey takes her across a narrow bridge across a stream, through a meadow and into a grove of trees, her face always obscured by a white parasol. Finally she comes to the foot of the stairwell that served as the final test of the soldier’s recuperation. The angle of the parasol changes and her face is revealed, looking up toward Shimizu’s camera as it patiently waits for her to begin her ascent. And when she does, Shimizu cuts to a view from the side, the camera tracking with her one step at a time as she begins the hard climb of her own recovery from wounds less visible but no less crippling. 

The Last Metro 

The Last Metro (Le dernier métro) (1980), directed by Francois Truffaut, who died in 1984, stars movie greats Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu in their young prime. Set in Paris in Vichy France in 1942, the film centers on a theater company struggling to keep alive and vital despite censorship and harassment by fascist reporters. There are also the subplots of hiding Jews and a love triangle. This new, restored, high-definition film, in DVD and Blu-Ray editions, in color and at 131 minutes, holds up well after three decades, thanks to excellent acting, a solid script, and sophisticated direction, what we’ve come to expect from any Truffaut film. 

Criterion’s two-disc edition includes excerpted television interviews with Deneuve and Depardieu, a 1958 short film co-directed by Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and an essay by film critic Armond White.  

—E. C. Jeline  

In the Realm of the Senses 

In the Realm of the Senses (L’Empire des sens) (1976), a Franco-Japanese production by Nagisa Oshima, the director whose films were recently featured at the Pacific Film Archive, focuses on a true story about an incident that occurred in Japan in 1936, an incident that garnered great controversy at the time. Today, the film is admired as the story of the complexity of an obsessive sexual relationship, depicting how eroticism in Japanese culture is often morbid or death-obsessed. Not available in home video until 1990, this version is uncut and runs for 102 minutes and stars the excellent acting of Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda, in very realistic and unsimulated sexual situations. This is not a film that could have been shown at the PFA festival of Oshima films. 

Criterion’s edition includes commentary by film critic Tony Rayns, interviews with Oshima and actors Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda, and an essay by film scholar Donald Ritchie.  

—E. C. Jeline  

Friends of Eddie Coyle 

Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) is a crime drama that picture the 1970s thug life in full swing, with muscle cars, bank heists, backroom dealings, and a ticking high-hat groove for a score. Bleary-eyed Robert Mitchum wears the role like a battered old sportcoat—familiar, comfortable, almost imperceptible.  

It’s a film heavy with the threat of violence, and though the threat never comes to fruition, it is a palpable presence as each thug and each cop, each link in the chain of crime and crime detection, works to undermine another link. Where the chain of activity stops and who is stuck at the end of it is like a game of deadly musical chairs, or a shell game in which each man applies his skills to the limit but ultimately is left merely hoping that he’ll come away lucky in the end.  

Crime is portrayed as such a deadly, difficult game that one has to wonder why a steady job wouldn’t be easier and possibly more lucrative. But that’s the essence of the drama—these men thrive on the game, on the danger, on the imminence of death. It’s not the spoils, it’s the thrill of the lifestyle, the heightened drama of the everyday.  

The disc features a commentary with director Peter Yates, an essay by film critic Kent Jones and a 1973 Rolling Stone interview with Mitchum.  

—J.F. DeFreitas

On the corner of Bonita Avenue and Berkeley Way stands an elegant Colonial Revival brick building that might have been transplanted whole from a New England town, where it might have served as a Masonic lodge. 

Bonita Hall was, in fact, a venue for local lodges during the first three decades of the 20th century. Beginning in 1906, the assembly hall on its second floor was used by local chapters of organizations such as the Native Daughters of the Golden West, Grand Army of the Republic, Daughters of Pocahontas, Knights of the Maccabees, Ancient Order of Foresters, Modern Woodmen of America, Knights of Pythias, Order of Owls, and Companions of the Forest. Here they held officer installations, banquets, dances, whist parties, musical entertainments, bazaars, and bonbon socials. The Berkeley baseball team gave a hop here on the first Saturday in September 1906. Entre Nous, a social organization of Berkeley young people, held its initial dance here in June 1913. 

A social hall may not have been what the building’s owner, William G. Black, initially had in mind. Black (1865-1943), a Maine-born brick mason and contractor, needed a warehouse for his business. When he took out a building permit on Aug. 30, 1905, it was for a brick dwelling of two stories. The “dwelling” entry was probably a clerical error—Black did not require a new dwelling, having moved only the previous year into a large Italianate house at 1930 Delaware St., two short blocks to the north. 

In moving to his new residence, Black didn’t have far to go. From 1898 to 1904, the Black family resided a block to the east, in a charming Victorian cottage at 2012 Delaware St. Earlier still, between 1894 and 1897, they owned and occupied a similar Victorian cottage at 1612 Virginia St. All three houses are still standing 

Nobody knows why and how William G. Black and his wife, Luella F. Parsons, came to settle in Berkeley. They first appeared in the city directory in 1894, briefly residing at 1937 Berkeley Way—only half a block away from the site where they would build Bonita Hall. Luella, 18 months older than her husband, hailed from Plymouth, Mass. Her seafaring father died while she was still a child, and perhaps this early loss instilled in her self-sufficiency, for she appears to have been the family’s business head. One newspaper account described her a contractor, and all the Blacks’ properties, which multiplied from year to year, were registered in her name. 

The Blacks married in 1885. Two twin daughters, Hattie and Helen, were born to them in 1891 while they were living in Massachusetts. In 1900, the U.S. census taker found them in Berkeley, residing at 2012 Delaware St. with Luella’s widowed mother, Ellen Parsons. Mrs. Parsons was declared insane in 1905. Nor did the Blacks see happiness in their daughters, both of whom married precipitately and were divorced within two years. In addition, the family’s animals were the victims of a dog poisoner and horse thieves. 

On the business front, however, all went swimmingly. In an audacious promotional ploy, William used both his residence and Bonita Hall as standing advertisements for his fireplace- and chimney-building abilities. Two fireplaces were installed on the exterior wall of Bonita Hall above street level. The Black home at 1930 Delaware St., whose bracketed Italianate style dates it to the 1870s or earlier, received three Arts and Crafts clinker brick chimneys, one of them ingeniously perforated to expose a small window. This house was evidently moved from an unknown location to its current site around 1902, since the assessment records show no improvements on the lot until 1903. 

The clinker brick chimneys were part of a general remodel the Blacks performed on their new house before moving in. Another notable feature is the square cupola on the roof, also seen on Bonita Hall. Fire insurance maps show that after 1903, the house was enlarged toward the rear. Its assessed value more than tripled in one year, rising from $500 in 1903 to $1,800 in 1904. By 1906, the Blacks had acquired the two adjoining lots to the south, constructing a water tower and an accessory building that included a stable for their horses. 

The year 1906 was a watershed for the Blacks, as it was for Berkeley. The influx of San Francisco earthquake refugees swelled the city’s population, triggering an unprecedented building boom. The Blacks wasted no time in acquiring the remaining three vacant lots south of their homestead. This purchase put in their hand the entire east side of Bonita Ave. between Delaware Street and Hearst Avenue. On the three southern lots they erected four identical two-story Colonial Revival houses, of which only one, 1807 Bonita Ave., remains. The other three were demolished in the 1960s for BART construction along Hearst Avenue. 

Also in 1906, the Blacks built a commercial store building at 1942-46 Bonita Ave. This charming two-story building survives practically intact. Still on a roll in 1912, the Blacks added a warehouse and stable to Bonita Hall. 

While the Blacks were residing at 2012 Delaware St., architect and Civil War veteran William H. Wharff built himself a house next door, on the corner of Milvia Street. The Wharff house, a large Colonial Revival affair clad in clapboard, inexplicably rises from a base of clinker bricks, a material also used in the front stairs’ parapets. Did William Black build the brick parts and perhaps even the entire house? And did Wharff, a fellow Maine native, advise on the design of Bonita Hall? Wharff, a senior member of the local Grand Army of the Republic lodge, was likely the one who encouraged Black to include a lodge hall in his warehouse building. 

About 1910, the building’s ground-floor space was leased to the U.C. Express & Storage Company for its warehouse, but by the early 1920s, the company had moved to 2120 Berkeley Way. The Blacks’ little empire collapsed about this time. The reasons are unknown, but Luella’s death may have been the trigger. In 1925, the building was listed in the city directory as the American Legion clubhouse. The ground floor was converted into a 10-car garage. 

William Black moved to the Danville area, where he was recorded by the 1930 U.S. census as a 65-year-old widower working as an “on the job” bricklayer. He died in Santa Cruz in 1943. The Blacks’ successor at 1930 Delaware St. was William N. Hartshorn (1861-1947), a laborer and former fireman. In the mid-1920s, he replaced the stables with a four-unit bungalow court, still standing at 1803-1805 Bonita. The house itself was converted to four apartments before 1950. 

As the Depression deepened, Bonita Hall stood empty, while the number of the homeless unemployed increased. On Nov. 1, 1933, the Oakland Tribune reported that since January of that year, the Berkeley YMCA had “furnished 4,737 beds to needy transients and other deserving men […]. In addition, 5,233 free meals were served to transients in Bonita Hall, former American Legion headquarters which has been fitted up with beds and tables to provide for needs of transient unemployed.” To do so, the YMCA utilized funds allotted it by the Community Chest. 

In 1936, Bonita Hall was acquired by Arthur and Grace Mauerhan, who commissioned architect Clarence Mayhew to convert the building into a fine furniture showroom with a neo-Georgian touch. Arthur C. Mauerhan (1888-1951) was working for the San Francisco furniture store of Gullixson Bros. in 1920 when he met Grace Worstell Harnden (1896-1986), a doctor’s daughter from Big Sandy, Montana, newly arrived in town with her lawyer husband. 

Like Luella Black, Grace Worstell had pluck. At the age of 15, she left home on her own initiative, determined to get the high school education unavailable in her rural community. Having arrived in the Bay Area, she enrolled at the University of California, receiving her bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1925 and her Master’s in 1927. She was a Phi Beta Kappa and an Honorary Traveling Fellow in Philosophy. 

In 1925, Grace and Arthur married. Several years later, they launched a successful home decorating business. Early practitioners of the Tupperware sales method—perhaps even before Tupperware existed—they introduced new lines of furniture or fabrics to invited guests at tea parties in their showroom. They lent homeowners decorative objects to place in their homes on a trial basis. Grace delivered lectures on home decorating to women’s clubs around Northern California. 

Grace’s most popular topic was “How to Be Your Own Interior Decorator.” She often quoted William Morris, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” and advocated the three fundamental principles of function, character, and beauty. “If you are forced to choose among the three, choose in that order,” she advised. 

By 1950, the Mauerhan business occupied the entire Bonita Hall, with furniture warehouses in the adjacent annex and two buildings in the rear. The neighboring Cape Cod-style house at 1908 Bonita Ave. became a showcase home advertised as the “Little House next door.” 

After Arthur’s death in 1951, the business became Mauerhan’s-Sarnes. It continued until 1965, when the building was sold. The large newspaper ad announcing the public auction promised “$243,780 all new luxurious furnishings, imports, lamps, rugs, wall decor, antiques, etc. (3 entire buildings of exquisite decorator selections,” trumpeting the business as “The House of Quality Since 1937.” 

The building was then converted into three floors of offices and renamed Berkeley Bay Commons, a name that has since fallen into disuse. It was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 1979. 

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

Forced-air heating is stupid. I’m sorry if that’s what you’ve got; it’s also what I have, so you can feel bad for me, too. It’s not that we’re stupid. It’s just that heating air is a dumb way to heat space. It noisy, it’s dirty, it’s not especially efficient and it takes up a huge amount of space in a home. In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, let me apologize, go back, slow down and explain what forced-air heating is. 

Most of us have forced-air heat if we live in our own houses. If you have an apartment or a very small house, you might have a wall or floor furnace, but the common heating in homes on the left coast is forced-air. 

Forced-air heating is made up of a big box (the furnace) that contains a set of burners, a blower and a “heat exchanger.” This last part is a magical place where noxious gases give up their heat to clean, cool air along the surface of a metal barrier. This barrier is called a heat exchanger and is the heart of any forced-air system. 

The system also includes a set of ducts (this is the really stupid part). These end up ruining lots of really nice houses by intruding into ceilings, walls, soffits and other places that we liked before the ducts got there. Taking an older house and adding forced-air is one of the best ways to screw it up. True, there are artists in the field who can do amazing things with minimal intrusion, but many purveyors of this mundane commodity lack said finesse and sort of molest these innocent, unsuspecting homes. 

Unfortunately, the alternatives (such as radiant “hydronic” heating) are just too expensive for the time being, and so forced-air is what we’ve got. Therefore, in the interest of conciliation, I’d like to offer some thoughts on how to proceed onto the field of battle. 

So you’re ready to replace your current heating system. Perhaps you have a forced-air unit and it’s old and you’ve been told that it’s time to upgrade. If you haven’t had an expert look at it in a year or three, it’s probably time for a check-up. Perhaps you’re concerned about your carbon footprint (or similarly, your heating bill). If any of these things are true, you should know that this is a very good time to get greener because you can get a huge tax break by buying a high-efficiency furnace and simultaneously lower your heating bill by 20-30 percent.  

Our fairly fabulous new president signed a bill back in February of this year (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) that gives a nice big tax credit (assuming you will be paying some tax this year) to people who buy certain pieces of equipment and among these are certain high efficiency furnaces. The tax break is 30 percent of the total installation cost and is capped at $1,500.  

This means that if you buy a furnace that costs $5,000 bucks, you can take $1,500 off your tax bill, making the furnace upgrade $3,500. Now a new furnace could be more than this with the addition of the accursed ducting, but if you already have viable ducting and a gas feed to the area where the new forced-air unit will live, the cost may be less than $5,000. In any event, this is a very good deal and will go poof at the end of next year.  

There are actually a whole bunch of incentivized items that can earn this tax credit. All offer a 30 percent tax credit with a cumlative total of $1,500. This includes Energy Star rated windows and skylights, insulation, water heaters, air conditioners and solar electric systems, but the list is much longer. These are all listed at energystar.gov/taxcredits. 

As I’ve mentioned, you win two ways with this upgrade (and maybe more if your furnace is old, dangerous, noisy or otherwise corrupt). Once with a big tax credit, which is basically free money, if you have to pay more than $1,500 in taxes, and again with a reduced heating bill for many years to come. Even those of us lucky enough to live west of the Sierras can benefit from a lower heating bill. If you have an old and inefficient heating system, you are probably throwing away 30–40 percent of your heating bill on waste heat. Modern, high efficiency, “condensing” furnaces, such as those that are approved as a part of the stimulus package can be 95 percent efficient or better, meaning that you could potentially save over 30 percent on the heating portion of your utility bill.  

We spend more on electricity than on heat, due to the mild climate, but a savings of 30 percent on your heating bill is very likely to provide more than enough financial benefit when calculated against the real cost of the furnace over a 10-year period (say $350 a year) and a new furnace will probably last twice that long and perhaps 10 years more than that, bringing the cost down to something under $125 a year. Keep in mind that energy costs are likely to ascend, not descend, making this choice even smarter than it already seems to be. 

For some, these new furnaces may pay for themselves in five years or less, but there are other issues as well. A new high efficiency furnace is a bouquet of flowers to the planet for all those extra trips in the car just to buy shampoo. Replacing inefficient carbon burning equipment is a manageable way to decrease your first-worldishness. We lucky, rich Amerikans use a huge percentage of the world’s resources and were only recently surpassed in environmental impact by China, a country about four times as populous as we. We owe it to the planet and to our children to take the $1,500, upgrade the noisy old furnace and pocket the savings. Aren’t we just too selfless? 

Before we’re done, let me share a few last thoughts regarding “condensing,” high-efficiency furnaces, since they’re not your father’s Oldsmobile. 

Condensing furnaces get their name from the nature of their exhaust systems. Natural gas furnaces all produce steam as the primary product of combustion, which is pretty nice when compared with oil or coal. It’s why we call it clean natural gas (CNG) as opposed to clean coal (which gets my vote for oxymoron of the decade). The steam that exhausts from a 95 percent furnace has been so closely shaved of heat (it’s almost all going to heat your house) that these flue gases may turn to liquid in the flue system and must be carefully managed. If this liquid is not well managed, it can wreak all sorts of havoc inside the furnace. So, modern condensing furnaces have several ways to deal with the water.  

First, the flues all tip downward, back toward the furnace so that they don’t end up dripping down the outside wall, eating the paint and staining the stucco (this water ends up being acidy and somewhat sulfurous). The water runs into a drain that may (if gravity allows) run outside to some point near the ground, where it can drain to soil. If gravity doesn’t allow, this water must be pumped away using a small reservoir and pump near the furnace. If furnaces are not installed level or have blockages, they may retain water, gurgle or become clogged. They may also rust through and require replacement in too short a time, turning the good deal bad. 

Therefore, when hiring an installer, don’t hire the cheap gal or guy. Hire someone who can intelligently discuss these issues. If you do have a furnace that gurgles, get it looked at. It may be drowning. 

Now I don’t feel any less critical of forced-air units than I did 10 minutes ago. Forced air is still clumsy. There’s no icing for that cake. That said, a high efficiency furnace can save a lot of money and a lot of carbon and that’s a good thing. I guess this makes it less stupid and I think that will make you pretty smart.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6 

Peace Day and Origami Cranes with a reading of “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” from 3 to 5:30 p.m. in the 4th flr Story Room of the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6236. berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

“Persepolis” Film showing in support of the uprising of the Iranian people, followed by discussion at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 6390 27th St., midtown Oakland. Donation $5-$15 sliding scale. 848-1196. 

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. 

“Backpacking 101” covering all the fundamentals at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

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. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 

Earthquake Safety Class for families from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

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 

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, AUGUST 8 

Bay Area Peace Lantern Ceremony at 6:30 p.m. at North end of Aquatic Park, in honor of the 64th Anniversary of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) Bombings. www.progressiveportal.org/lanterns 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland Uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Berkeley Path Wanderers: Campus, Holy Hill and Northside Walk Meet at 10 a.m. at Founders Rock, Galey Rd. at Hearst. This walk has some steep hills. 520-3876. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Walking Tour of Piedmont Avenue Meet at 2 p.m. at the Avenue Elementary School, 4314 Piedmont Ave. at John St. Cost is $10-$15. Sponsored by The Oakland Heritage Alliance. 763-9218. 

Survivors International “The Massacre in Gatumba” with testimonies, video presentations at 3:30 p.m. at Oakland Main Library, West Auditorium, 124 14th St., Oakland. 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society meets to discuss WWI Fighter Planes, presented by Jim Folger & Bob Denison at 10:30 a.m. at the Albany Veterans Hall, 1325 Portland Ave., Albany. 527-7118. 

Sushi for the More Adventurous A hands-on class to learn about the cultural and natural history of this ancient cuisine, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Cost is $30-$40. Registraion required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Chutes at the Beach at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach with cast and crew, Sat. and Sun. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Costs is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Family Shabbat Fun from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Jewish Gateways, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. RSVP to 559-8140. 

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.  

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.  

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.  

SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 

Toddler Nature Walk to look for butterflies, bees and other creatures, for ages 2-3 and their grown-up friends, at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Little Farm Open House Come grind some corn to feed the chickens, pet a bunny, groom a goat, or help out in the Kid’s Garden, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the Little Farm in Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Walking Tour of Chinatown Oakland Meet at 10 a.m. at the fountain of Pacific Renaissance Plaza, 9th St. between Webster and Franklin Streets. Cost is $10-$15. Sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. 763-9218. 

Family Explorations Day Summer Reading Program with stories, art activities, magic, cartooning and more from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Free.238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“The Living New Deal in the East Bay” a slide show and discussion with Gray Brechin at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian-Universalist Hall, 1924 Cedar St. 841-4824. 

Social Action Summer Forum “The Obama Administration and Social Justice” with Prof. Charles Henry, at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

Benefit for Nangchen Nuns “A Day of Meditation & Tibetan Qigong” at 10 a.m. at Dondrub Ling Dharma Center, 2748 Adeline. Donations. To register call 707-224-5613. 

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 

MONDAY, AUGUST 10 

Stroke Awareness Program with Harvey Brosler of the Stroke Support Group of Contra Costa County at 7 p.m. at Kensingotn Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

El Cerrito Art Association will discuss the October Art Show, at 7:30 p.m. in the Garden Room, El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane, El Cerrito. For information on the art show call 685-4747 or 558-1078. 

Drop-in Knitting Group Work on your own project or make pet blankets and children’s hats for donation. Yarn, needles and instruction provided. From 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 536-3720. 

Community Yoga Class 10 a.m. at James Kenney Parks and Rec. Center at Virginia and 8th. Seniors and beginners welcome. Cost is $6. 207-4501. 

TUESDAY, AUGUST 11 

Introduction to Wildlife Rescue A presentation by WildRescue with slides, video and hands-on activities, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $20. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Tomato Tasting from 2 to 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Derby St. at MLK Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Celebration of Sierra Wilderness with Darren Malloy of Friends of the Inyo and Yosemite climber Allen Steck, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

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 

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. 

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. 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Free Screening of “Smoke Signals“ as part of the Radical Film Nite with free popcorn and post-film discussion, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Albany Poet Laureate Christine Hutchins at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 536-3720. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom, MLK Student Union, UC campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 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, corner of Shattuck and Center. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13 

Merritt College’s Applied Urban Ecology Division A discussion with local permaculture designers at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

“Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything” with Daniel Goleman at 7 p.m. at the David Brower Center. Tickets are $25, available from brownpaper tickets. www.ecoliteracy.org 

East Bay Mac Users Group Geek Night, with Brady Frey & Build a Site Night at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the American Red Cross Bus, 1200 Clay St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

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. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14 

“The Band’s Visit” An Israeli film on cooperation at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists 1924 Cedar St. Suggested donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

“I Love Bugs” Check out a worm home and build your own cricket house from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $7-$8. www.habitot.org 

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 

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, AUGUST 15 

Ecology and History of Lake Anza with James Wilson, naturalist from 10 a.m. to noon at Lake Anza, Tilden Park. For details call 544-2233. 

Brooks Island Voyage Paddle the rising tide across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Books Island to explore the island’s natural and cultural history, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.. For experienced boaters who can provide their own kayak and safety gear. Cost is $20-$22. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Walking Tour of Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Bike Trip in East Shore State Park Meet at 8:10 a.m. at the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station, or 8:30 at the end of S. 51st St. in Richmond from a ride to Emeryville. Bring helmet, bicycle lock, sunscreen, lunch and liquids. RSVP to 547-1233. 

Walking Tour: Walking the Key System’s C Line A level walk from 10 a.m. to noon, sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. Cost is $10-$15.Meet at MacArthur BART station underpass on 40th St. 763-9218. 

“Astronomy and Evolution: From the Death of the Dinosaurs to the Stardust in your Bones” at 11 a.m. at Genetics and Plant Biology Building, Room 100 on the UC Berkeley campus. 

Chicken Round Up Visit with the free-range chikens at Tilden’s Little Farm, learn the different breeds and their habits, from 3 to 4 p.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Chevron Protest Rally at 11:30 a.m. at the Richmond BART station, followed by a 1 p.m. March on the Chevron Oil refinery. Sponsored by Mobilization for Climate Justice. 550-2836. http://actforclimatejustice.org/west 

Family Artmaking: “Blowin’ in the Wind” Learn about kites then make your own from 1 to 4 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. Cost is $7 per child. 465-8770. www.ocha.org 

Plant Families of California: A Medicinal Perspective from 12:30 to 6 p.m. at Blue Wind Botanical Medicinal Clinic, 823 32nd St., Apt. B, Oakland. Cost is $40. To register call 428-1810. 

Rock N’ Roll at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach with cast and crew, Sat. and Sun. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Costs is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.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, AUGUST 16 

Little Farm Goat Hike Join a short hike with the Little Farm goats as we explore the historic connections between humans and their ungulate friends, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. For ages six and up. 544-2233. 

Walking Tour: Scaling Leona Heights Covering the woods and fire trails of the Leona Greenbelt in East Oakland meet at 10 a.m. at McDonell Ave. and Mountain Blvd. Sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. 

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 

Sketching on the Farm A guided art exploration with a focus on farm animals and vistas, from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Little Farm. Bring pencils and paper. 544-2233. 

Social Action Summer Forum “Iran Today” with Ali Eshraghi, Iranian journalist, 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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Hugh Joswick on “Knowing Mind” 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