[Sent at 5:17 p.m. Tuesday] On March 8, 2011, just after 1:00 pm, the Berkeley Police Department received a call of “loud reports” in the area of the 1600 block of Blake St.

Officers investigating the call ultimately located an unresponsive adult male, apparently shot, in the rear yard of a house on the 1600 block of Blake St. Berkeley Fire Department paramedics confirmed the victim’s death at the scene.

Berkeley Police Homicide detectives are investigating the matter as a homicide. We are not releasing the identity of the deceased at this time. -more-

Presentation of a report to the Berkeley City Council on city recycling services sparked a vigorous protest and turnout of hundreds at a special 5:30 pm workshop yesterday.

The core issue was whether, as the consultants recommended, the City of Berkeley should shift curbside pick-up recycling services from the non-profit Ecology Center to an expanded City Solid Waste Division. -more-

A woman who was struck by a University of California shuttle bus Monday was in serious, but stable condition after surgery, a Berkeley police official said.

The 54-year-old woman was one of two female pedestrians who were injured Monday afternoon in Berkeley when one of the women was struck in a crosswalk by a University of California shuttle bus and the other injured herself trying to gain the bus driver's attention, police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said. -more-

‘Pulp History’ Reveals a Corporate Plot to Overthrow American Democracy

It was more than 25 years ago, while researching a story in a dark alcove of UC Berkeley’s little-visited newspaper library, that I chanced upon some transcripts from the first hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). What I discovered was shocking beyond belief. The records revealed an organized conspiracy to overthrow the US government but it was not one hatched by a secretive Moscow-directed Communist cell. HUAC’s initial alarm was focused on a plot bankrolled by the owners of major US corporations — including Goodyear, US Steel, JP Morgan, Heinz, and Maxwell House. -more-

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. -more-

The City Council honored the Centennial of Women's Suffrage in California with a proclamation at the March 8, 2011, Council meeting. Local celebrations and commemorations will concentrate in the Fall, around the October 10 one-hundredth anniversary of the election in which women won the vote in California. -more-

With a whimsical, free form, spirit of celebration, several dozen partiers took to the streets and parks of Berkeley Tuesday, March 8, 2011. Loosely organized around “The Church of the Great Green Frog”, the annual event coincides with Mardi Gras “Fat Tuesday”. -more-

The Alameda County Coroner's office has identified the man who shot himself while barricaded in his home in the 1800 block of Marin Avenue in Berkeley as Owen Davis. -more-

What is Kaiser Permanente Doing? Repeal McCarron-Ferguson to Control Insurance Costs;The Founders on War;The White Elephant Sale; Vote For the Balanced Budget; Berkeley Library Funds;Who Are the Anti-Abortionists; Get Rid of Guns -more-

Intimidated by both Upstream, which has threatened to sue, and its own City Attorney’s Office, the Richmond City Council’s wimped out majority exposed their jellied backbones last night and certified a final EIR (FEIR) for the Point Molate casino project that almost everyone agreed was substantially flawed, including other credible public agencies like the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) Bay Trail Project, the East Bay Regional Parks District and the West Contra Costa Transportation Advisory Committee. -more-

As a disabled person and a South Berkeley resident, I wouldn’t have voted for Measure FF if it had said that my branch library would be demolished. Did I miss something in the fine print? -more-

Was American CIA agent Raymond Davis secretly working with the Taliban and al-Qaeda to destabilize Pakistan and lay the groundwork for a U.S. seizure of that country’s nuclear weapons? Was he photographing sensitive military installations and marking them with a global positioning device? Did he gun down two men in cold blood to prevent them from revealing what he was up to? These are just a few of the rumors ricocheting around Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar in the aftermath of Davis’s arrest Jan. 27, and sorting through them is a little like stepping through Alice’s looking glass. -more-

As US warships approached, on February 22nd four American hostages were killed by Somali pirates. It was an ominous harbinger of the crisis in Washington, where Republican pirates are holding hostage the legislative process and threatening to kill the American dream unless their ransom demands are met. -more-

Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives are trying to terminate funds for foreclosure-prevention programs that help families fend off foreclosure and trying to strip the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of its funding before it even opens its doors. -more-

Ron Reagan suggests in his new book, My Father at 100; A Memoir (Viking/Penguin,) that his father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease while he was still in the White House. President Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994, five years after leaving office. He died in 2004 at age 93. Reagan's son (born 1958) writes that he believes his father would have left office before his second term ended in 1989 had the disease been diagnosed then. "I've seen no evidence that my father (or anyone else) was aware of his medical condition while he was in office," Reagan writes. "Had the diagnosis been made in, say 1987, would he have stepped down? I believe he would have." -more-

I remember from better than twenty years ago, an encounter with a counselor in a psychiatric hospital who said: “Hi Jack. Have you written any Pulitzer Prize winning novels lately?” A few years later, another counselor commented that I have a better chance of trying out for a professional basketball team than I have at becoming a professional writer. (I am five foot six.) -more-

I’ve been watching acorn woodpeckers in the Bay Area for years, from the Stanford campus to Point Reyes, and have always found these noisy, conspicuous birds engaging. “This sociable woodpecker impresses one as an exceptionally jolly bird”, writes ornithologist Alexander Skutch, “and certainly it is one of the most amusing to watch.” -more-

"I've been trying to write this play for 25 years," said famed Asian-American playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. "Finally I let go of everything--fact, fiction, documentation, history--and wrote. this is what came out." -more-

Two notable masterpieces of the modern orchestral repertoire, Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1919; a tribute to Debussy) and Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony in C Minor (1960; "dedicated to the victims of fascism and war," but considered an autobiographical work) share the Berkeley Symphony program, under the baton of Joana Carneiro, at 8 tomorrow night (Thursday, March 11) with Scottish composer James MacMullen's Seven Last Words from the Cross (1994), featuring the Symphony's first collaboration with the UC Chamber Chorus and Alumni, Marika Kuzma, director. -more-

At seventy, Nicholas Delbanco has racked up forty years of teaching and two dozen books of fiction and non-fiction. He has served as director of creative writing programs and prestigious literary panels and has himself been awarded several grants and honors. -more-

Lynn Nottage won the Pulitzer Prize for RUINED. I almost ended that sentence with a question mark. Hard to believe it won, since it is short on plot, action, and language. -more-

Since it’s about teenagers and ever since West Side Story, the text most taught and known is ROMEO AND JULIET. I have a personal relationship with the play. When I was a junior in high school, I cried when I finished it, and it hooked me on that fellow’s blank verse. I’ve directed it, and taught it, acted in it, and so I came with a critical eye to the performance at IMPACT THEATRE at La Val’s Pizza on Hearst. -more-