Richmond Councilmember Tom Butt writes: "The City of Richmond has a tradition of fireworks and the Oakland-East Bay Symphony on July 3 at at the Craneway Pavillion, part of the rehabilitated former Ford Assembly Plant and also part of Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park. As the fireworks begin, the Symphony breaks into a medley of stirring John Philip Sousa marches. This is the best Independence day celebration in the Bay Area."  

The Oakland East Bay Symphony provided a pops concert that had young and old audience members dancing in the aisles to top hits from the musical theater and movie tradition. A 13-year-old piano soloist, Mischa Gallant, played a movement from a Chopin concerto, and the enthusiastic audience clapped after all the flashy bits, just as they would in a jazz concert.  

ATHENS, Greece - 235 years after the American colonies declared independence from Britain, the passenegers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza call for a new American Declaration of Independence, this time from Israel. 

The passengers issued their call from the decks of the U.S.-flagged boat, The Audacity of Hope, which is currently confined to a Greek military pier near Athens, while its captain sits in jail. 

Like the Founders in Philadelphia, the passengers in Athens recognize that "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separataion." 

Just as the Founders cited "a long train of abuses and usurpations" committed by the British, The Audacity of Hope passengers detailed the Israeli abuses motivating their call for U.S. independence: 

• For generations Israel has engaged in a systematic campaign to disposess Palestinians of their lands and drive them from their ancestral homes.
• Since 1967 Israel has occupied East Jerusalem the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights in open defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and the Geneva Conventions. Residents of these occupied territories have been subjected to numerous forms of mistreatment, including military attacks, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions, and the confiscation of vast areas for the construction of illegal Jewish-only settlements and roads.
• Since the mid-1990s Israel has imposed an ever-tightening regime of economic strangulation on the Gaza Strip. Since 2006 in particular the 1.5 million people of Gaza have been kept in isolaton and under siege, with severely limited access to medical care, clean water, and construction materials needed to rebuild after Israeli military attacks. They have been prevented from fishing in their coastal waters, growing crops on much of their farmland, or exporting almost anything.
• Israel has used its powerful influence inside the U.S. to secure Washington's backing for these illegal and counterproductive policies. In addition to more than $3 billlion per year of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military aid, Israel has gained uncritical American diplomatic support, including repeated use of the American veto in the Security Council to stymy any U.N. effort to enforce international law and to hold Israel accountble for its crimes.
• In recent years Israel has reacted with brutal violence against international as well as Palestinian and Israeli activists who have dared to step in where the U.S. and the U.N. have feared to tread. On May 31, 2010, Israel's vicious assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters caused the deaths of nine unarmed human-rights volunteers, including the 19-year-old American citizen Furkan Dogan.
• This year Israel, in collusion with the U.S., has deployed a variety of economic, diplomatic, and other pressure tactics to undermine the sovereignty of Greece, Turkey, and other nations and force them to obstruct the Gaza Freedom Flotilla II in defiance of their own maritime regulations and procedures. In addition, Israel has carried out a campaign of unbridled distortion and defamation against the organizers and participants in this year's flotilla. When that failed, Israel's agents resorted to life-threatening sabotage operations against at least two of the flotilla's ships.

"Just as the original American Declaration of Independence inspired popular sturuggles for independence and democracy all over the world, we humbly call on other countries that have been subjected to Israeli pressure and manipulation, particularly Greece and Turkey, to join us in our campaign to rid our country of this scourge." 

Natural gas pipelines — like the one that erupted in a deadly 2010 blast that killed eight people in San Bruno — run along the margins of West Berkeley, parallel to the Eastshore Freeway. This has been known for some time but earlier this week, PG&E quietly mailed letters to a number of Berkeley businesses and residents warning that they may be located “within 2,000 feet of a natural gas transmission pipeline.” A Planet investigation reveals that several PG&E gas lines lie buried beneath 31 city blocks, with one major pipeline running right through the downtown — alongside the Police Department, City Hall, the Main Post Office, BART and the Shattuck Hotel. 

In a self-confessed attempt “to earn back the trust and confidence of our customers,” PG&E’s new president, Chris Johns, recently mailed an advisory letter to occupants of “homes and businesses located within about 2,000 feet of a natural gas transmission pipeline.” As a business recipient of PG&E’s effort to “enhance public safety awareness,” I received one of these alerts at my downtown Berkeley office. My initial response to PG&E’s attempt at “outreach,” was frustration as the critical information about the location of the nearest gas pipelines proved difficult to locate. After some dogged digging, however, my reaction turned to from frustration to utter shock. 

The phrase, “located within about 2,000 feet” of a pipeline, was clearly designed to grab attention. It appeared at the top right of the letter in large, bold, blue type. 

PG&E’s letter offered the following invitation: “To learn more about the location of our gas transmission pipelines, view our comprehensive online maps at www.pge.com/pipelinelocations.” 

Despite the promise to provide “information we can all use to help prevent accidents,” this link does not provide any pipeline locations. It simply leads to a 36-page letter on“Long Range Gas Transmission Pipeline Planning Input Top 100 Segments – 2007-2009” sent from PG&E VP Brian K. Cherryto the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and dated March 9, 2011. 

PG&E’s one-page alert also recommends a second Website — the National Pipeline Mapping System (www.npms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer). PG&E calls the NPMS a “useful tool” for people seeking information about natural gas transmission lines “county by county.” But a visit to the Website quickly reveals the NPMS is vastly over-rated. These maps reveal only the largest pipelines. Furthermore, the depiction of the larger lines turns out to be inconsistent with other maps of pipelines running through the East Bay. (There is, for instance, a pipeline that runs from the vicinity of Brookfield Village to service the Oakland International Airport. This line does not appear on the Federal map.) 

There is another built-in limitation to the NPMS maps (presumably designed to thwart terrorists) that renders them useless for anyone seeking detailed information. As spelled out in this federal disclaimer: “When you are zoomed in closer than a 1:24,000 scale (approximately 0.2 miles on the scale bar), you will notice that the pipelines have disappeared from the map. In order to see the pipelines, you must either zoom out or set the scale to 1:24,000 or a greater number. Data cannot be downloaded from the Public Viewer.” 

A second link on PG&E’s “pipelinelocations” Website invites visitors to “Download the Top 100 maps” (http://www.pge.com/planninginput/). This leads to a Zip file containing pdf maps that are identified only by numbers, not locations. (Because PG&E’s March 9 letter to the PUC only makes reference to 17 of the maps contained in the “Top 100” Zip file, most of these downloads are useless. Adding to the confusion, the “Top 100” list contains only 70 maps.) 

Where Are the Maps? 

In Mr. Cherry’s 36-page letter, a segment of the natural gas infrastructure called “Pipeline L107” is identified as being located in “Alameda” and is linked to “Map 2.” Opening this pdf file produces a map that shows a vast swatch of land — ranging from San Leandro to Tracy and Danville to Milpitas. While the county boundaries and roads are clearly marked, the pipelines are not. The only indication of the presence of a pipeline is a small, green mark drawn on the map just outside the southeast corner of the town of Livermore. Here, the document notes, PG&E plans to “convert this section from transmission pipeline to distribution feeder main.” 

Another segment, located southeast of the town of Scott’s Corner, near Sunol, was apparently placed on a watch list for corrosion in 2008. Happily, PG&E’s March 2011 document notes: “The external corrosion risk for segment 140 was reduced based on inspection of its coating condition, causing this segment not to appear on the 2009 list.” It was not explained how a simple inspection could reduce a corrosion problem. 

A similar situation is recorded for a section of pipe buried near Airport Way in Manteca: “The external corrosion risk for this segment was reduced based on investigation of pipe strength and wall thickness, causing this segment not to appear on the 2008 and 2009 lists.” 

PG&E also records other instances where existing problems were written off through the simple art of reevaluation. Referring to a pipeline in Fremont, PG&E informed the PUC: “The ground movement risk for this segment was reduced based on PG&E’s system-wide reassessment of US Geological Survey data on the severity of erosion, including in the area in which this segment lies, causing this segment not to appear on the 2009 list.” It is unclear whether the USGS was consulted and, if so, whether it agreed with the utility’s “reassessment” of the government’s view on ground-movement risks. 

Here Is PG&E’s Missing Link 

A call to the toll-free number in Chris Johns’ letter (1-888-743-7431) connects callers to the Information Hotline for Gas Transmission Locations at PG&E’s Fresno office. This office refused to reveal whether there were gas lines near a hypothetical intersection of “Addison and Sacramento” without the caller first providing “a PG&E account number.” The service agent offered to mail a map, claiming that the map contained information on the dates the pipelines were first installed but had no information on when the gas routes were last inspected. 

For any readers who may receive this PG&E mailing, allow the Daily Planet to save you some time and frustration. Here’s the skinny: In order to locate a map of PG&E’s East Bay gas lines, it is necessary to go to the following link: 

http://www.pge.com/myhome/edusafety/systemworks/gas/transmissionpipelines/. 

(Inexplicably, this link was not mentioned in Chris Johns’ letter nor was it referenced in PG&E’s new brochure, “Important Things to Know about Natural Gas Safety.” (Another link to PG&E’s interactive maps can be found at: http://www.pge.com/gasnetwork/transmissionpipelines/) 

An inspection of these pipeline maps (once withheld from public scrutiny by PG&E, under the pretext of “national security”) reveals some troubling information. Previously, it was believed that most of PG&E’s gas pipelines were located parallel to the Eastshore Freeway but these new maps show two parallel lines that burrow beneath more than 50 city blocks inside Berkeley proper. PG&E’s natural gas pipelines also lie buried beneath residential and commercial areas in Emeryville, El Cerrito and Oakland. 

Cities at Risk 

An Emeryville pipeline runs nearly two miles down Hollis, past the East Baybridge Shopping Center and under the MacArthur Freeway. If a rupture were to occur along this line, it could put at risk a number of local landmarks ranging from the Emeryville Community Organic Garden to the Pixar Animation Studios. 

In El Cerrito, the hidden pipeline runs parallel the west end of El Cerrito Plaza before angling down the Central Avenue corridor to the Eastshore Freeway. 

Another series of welded pipes sits buried beneath West Oakland, running 12 blocks down Linden Street — from 32^nd to Acorn. The pipeline runs beneath Lowell Park before angling east to Market Street and continuing south beneath the busy 880 freeway. 

In Berkeley, a southern route diverts from a larger pipeline system that begins at Seventh and Heinz and crosses Ashby before jagging west on Folger to follow Hollis through Emeryville. (If there were a rupture on this southern link, it could take out a number of high-profile sites including Ashby Lumber, Berkeley Bowl West, Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, Mancini’s Sleepworld, OSH, and John F. Kennedy University. 

Berkeley’s Hidden Gas Lines 

A major HCA (High Consequence Area) pipeline under Seventh Street runs the length of Berkeley. (At its northern end, the Seventh Street line turns east at Harmon, detours to Jackson and continues north to Hillside Avenue at the foot of Albany Hill Park.) On its path through Berkeley, the Seventh Street line begets several natural gas tributaries that thrust west into the city’s old industrial sectors — at Grayson, Carleton and Parker. 

As the Seventh Street pipeline reaches the James Kennedy Recreation Center, it sends another spur to the west, running down Virginia for five blocks, nearly reaching the Eastshore Freeway. There also is an odd, disembodied fragment of pipeline shown running alongside the Seventh Street HCA line just north of Gilman. 

But of greater concern are the two pipe systems that work their way east through Berkeley’s densely populated residential areas. The shorter of the two lines extends east from San Pablo Avenue and runs for ten blocks along Russell Street, passing the south end of San Pablo Park before ending abruptly at McGee Street. 

The longer stretch of buried pipeline begins in West Berkeley near Seventh and Allston Way (close to Black Pine Circle School). It is here that PG&E’s Seventh Street feeder lines branch off to send more than two miles of gas-filled pipes through the heart of Berkeley. 

How PG&E Puts Berkeley at Risk 

From Seventh Street, Berkeley’s major gas pipeline travels due east, traveling 21 blocks below the pavement of Allston Way until it reaches the western boundary of UC Berkeley. At this point it bifurcates, with one line continuing into the UC campus and another segment traveling north on Oxford for five blocks. (The map of the Allston Way line shows an anomaly between McGee and Roosevelt, where a short segment of pipe juts off to the south.) 

Berkeley’s buried gas line could hardly have been placed in a more central location. In addition to running through densely packed urban neighborhoods, it also penetrates the very heart of the city, running right alongside the Berkeley Police Department, City Hall and within one block of the Berkeley Public Library. If there were a gas line rupture along the western tip of this pipeline at Allston Way and Seventh, the 2,000-foot impact zone would engulf not only scores of local homes but a commercial district that would stretch from Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto to the Lanesplitters Pub on Sacramento. 

An accident further east would expose every business on University Avenue (and many homes on either side of this major artery) to potential disaster. Strawberry Creek Park straddles the pipeline while other landmarks, including the Berkeley Community Theatre, the Main Post Office, the Shattuck Hotel and other downtown landmarks, share a front-row seat next to the buried pipeline. 

If we were to map a 2,000-foot circle around the intersection of Allston Way and Shattuck, PG&E’s “impact zone” would run from University Avenue to the north and Durant Avenue to the south and from MLK Jr. Way to the west to Dwinelle Hall on the Berkeley Campus. (If a rupture and explosion were to occur in the pipeline section that lies buried inside UC’s boundaries, the 2,000-foot impact zone would envelope the entire Berkeley campus.) 

A rupture and explosion at Allston Way and Shattuck would endanger the Berkeley Community College, the downtown BART Station (the pipeline crosses the BART subway line) and the more than 100 downtown businesses, including the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Freight & Salvage, Scandinavian Designs, University Hall and “Berkeley’s Greenest Building,” the David Brower Center. The Brower Center is located at the very corner where the buried gas line makes a sharp 90-degree turn to the north before a second welded pipeline shunts high-pressure gas east, into the western third of the Berkeley campus. 

Faulting PG&E: We Need to Demand More 

Since 1986, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has found PG&E responsible for 132 “significant incidents”– incidents that resulted in 18 deaths, 64 injuries, and $41 million in property damage. Given the scale of death and destruction PG&E’s buried gas pipelines have already caused in Rancho Cordova in 2008 (one killed) and San Bruno in September 2010 (eight killed, more than 50 injured, 40 homes incinerated), it is imperative that Berkeley demand a through accounting to insure the safety of the aging pipelines that now lies hidden beneath the pavement, parks and schools of the city. 

On February 15, Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Jesse Arreguin called on the city to require PG&E to “identify the size, condition, age, location and last inspection dates of all natural gas pipelines in Berkeley that cross the Hayward fault.” The recommendation also called on PG&E to “install shut-off valves on pipelines crossing the fault.” 

As good as that recommendation was, these new revelations show that the demand for accountability did not go nearly far enough. According to PG&E’s own maps, none of their pipelines actually cross the Hayward Fault. The eastern-most pipeline terminates about 600-feet inside the UC Campus, where it apparently feeds the University’s Central Heating Plant. 

The City needs to compel PG&E to account for all the existing natural gas pipelines that currently underlie our neighborhoods — irrespective of the Hayward Fault. We need to know the condition of all these buried pipes and we need to demand that PG&E provide rigorous inspection, conscientious maintenance and, if needed, expeditious replacement of substandard pipes. In the meantime, automatic shut-off systems should be required on all existing natural gas lines within the city of Berkeley. 

A historic Berkeley building derided by some just last year as vacant and obsolete has been reborn as a handsome renovated structure providing expanded Berkeley quarters for a private cooking and nutrition school as well as a taste of important Berkeley history and distinctive architectural character. 

The project demonstrates once again that, contrary to common canards, adaptive reuse of Berkeley’s historic buildings is achievable and practical. Respecting the past is indeed relevant to both present and future. 

On the evening of Friday, June 24, Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts hosted a community open house at 1007 University Avenue, marking a new chapter in the evolution of this historic site and structure. 

100 or more visitors inspected the building and listened to talks on Bauman College programs and philosophy. The site is one of four Bauman College facilities in the West. 

The building features a former gymnasium with a vaulted roof turned into two cooking classrooms and a large multipurpose space. Offices, another kitchen, and classrooms occupy the rest of the facility. 

Renovated and refurbished to plans drawn up by local architect Charles Kahn, the 1949 structure looks well adapted to its new use. The programs moved from a smaller facility on Grayson Street in West Berkeley. 

Bauman staff I talked to during the open house said they enjoy the building, especially the “concrete grid form” walls that feature glass blocks in a series of repeating diamond patterns. 

“The glass blocks are wonderful. We love the building”, Bauman Operations Manager Karen Rotstein told me when we chatted in the bright entry hallway. She said that the glass blocks provide enough light that staff rarely need to turn on the artificial lighting, especially in the cooking classrooms where three walls glow with the diamond patterned glass. 

“Welcome to our brand new Berkeley campus! Doesn’t it look gorgeous?” one staffer told the assembled visitors inside that space; there was enthusiastic applause in response. 

The thick concrete and glass block walls keep out most sound and direct views from busy University Avenue, but flood the structure with subtly varied light. The one story structure is divided into a series of large and small spaces arranged for instructional and administrative use. 

The building, as it now stands, is a textbook example of how historic structures can be gracefully adapted to modern day uses. In fact, in this case and in others, historic preservation routinely brings old buildings into new uses while retaining distinct historic and architectural character. It’s a catalyst for, not a brake on, progress. 

Looking at this building today it is hard to imagine anyone arguing that it didn’t deserve landmark status and instead should be simply considered a “site” available for another generic anywhere infill development.  

Yet some made those arguments in the very recent past. 

What’s the history of the building? 

1007 University Avenue was built by the Mobilized Women of Berkeley—a social service organization founded during World War I—with design suggestions from Bernard Maybeck, and to complement a 1938 building Maybeck had designed next door for the Mobilized Women at 1001 University Avenue (that structure burned in 1975, and has been replaced). 

The Mobilized Women are important to the evolution of social services in Berkeley. In an era when government provided few programs for the poor and distressed, private charitable organizations—often established by community-minded women and sometimes assisted by UC student volunteers—stepped in to help. 

There were several of these groups operating in West Berkeley, aiding not only the poor but new immigrants to the community. They included the West Berkeley Settlement House, the Berkeley Day Nursery, a community health clinic, and the Mobilized Women.  

Remarkably, structures built for, and once serving, all of these groups from the 1890s to the 1950s are still standing on or near lower University Avenue between 6th Street and San Pablo.  

In a community that today prides itself on its social services, these buildings not only provide architectural variety and interest but also are also literally concrete evidence of how enlightened people in our community were working to aid the needy in previous generations. 

The Mobilized Women was an energetic group that refused conventional grants from the local “Community Chest” and, instead, funded their programs and services with other private donations and by collecting and selling recycled items.  

Newspaper recycling drives and a store operated by the Mobilized Women and selling donated used items were fixtures of the Berkeley cultural landscape for decades. They were “green” when it was just a color, not a cause. 

During the Great Depression the organization regularly appealed to the public for donations of used items from presentable work clothes and shoes to portable heaters and household furniture, which were refurbished and then sold for token amounts, allowing the buyers both to meet their needs and keep their dignity. 

The 1007 University building was described as a “recreation and welfare community center for youth” when the structure opened in November, 1949. 

In 1969, the Mobilized Women celebrated their 50th anniversary and decided to voluntarily go out of business, because government programs and social services had considerably expanded to meet key community needs once served primarily by groups like their organization. 

The University Avenue property was given to the East Bay Association of Retarded Citizens that operated programs there until 1999, when 1007 University was sold to the adjacent Amsterdam Art, a prominent local business selling art supplies, framing services, and art classes.  

After Amsterdam Art closed some years ago, the entire property was put up for sale. It was eventually purchased by Premier Cru, a wine merchant for “collectors, connoisseurs, and everyday wine lovers alike”, according to their website. 

The new owners planned to (and have) opened a retail store and other wine facilities in renovated buildings at either end of the block.  

Tension flared in 2009 when Susan Cerny nominated the 1949 structure for landmark status in a carefully prepared landmark application.  

Cerny—the author of two respected guidebooks to Bay Area architecture and several Berkeley landmark applications—did meticulous research in the Bancroft Library and elsewhere on the history of the Mobilized Women and the “concrete grid form” architecture that was developed in Berkeley by Bernard Maybeck and others and still lends a distinctive architectural style to West Berkeley. 

A number of buildings survive in this style but the Mobilized Women building is one of the most prominent and historic. All the other ones I know of have been reused for purposes ranging from a dance school to offices. 

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission designed the Mobilized Women building a City Landmark on July 20, 2009. The new owners, Fox Ortega Enterprises, Inc. (doing business as Premier Cru) appealed the designation to the City Council in a caustic letter from a lawyer, attacking Cerny’s application, calling her “over-zealous” and implying that she may have “intentionally omitted many materials.” 

“We are filing this appeal because we are of the view that the property is not of such historical or architectural significance so as to qualify for Landmark status”, the attorney wrote. The appeal relied in part a critique prepared by the office of local architect David Trachtenberg. 

Trachenberg later wrote (in a letter to the editor to the Planet on March 18, 2010), “I did express the opinion that landmarking the entire building is a less meaningful way to tell the story of the Mobilized Women of Berkeley (MWB) than building a ‘window box museum’.” 

The City Council sent the issue back to the Landmarks Commission to consider the Maybeck connection to the design of the building. Cerny patiently and ably defended the evidence in her application and supplementary materials. The Landmarks Commission made some modifications, but re-affirmed the core of the landmark designation. 

During the appeals process, at a public hearing in March 2010, Trachtenberg raised the specter of the designation potentially creating “one more landmark, vacant and most likely vandalized.” This is a common accusation by critics of landmarking. 

Commissioner Robert Johnson argued in contrast “a lot of creativity can be in taking old things, adding on to them, slightly modifying them to make something new.” 

Another commenter on the landmarking proposal was a small, currently pro-development group, Berkeley Design Advocates, which took Trachtenberg’s side, writing to the Landmarks Preservation Commission that “the proposing landmarking of 1007 University continues a troubling pattern of using the historic preservation process to freeze development on the city’s most important corridors and most appropriate development sites…this does little to preserve the past in a meaningful way.” 

This was a truly overblown and distorted piece of rhetoric. I would like to see the present day BDA—on whose steering committee I once sat—try to name all the alleged multitude of sites on Berkeley’s “most important corridors” where buildings have been landmarked and development “frozen” as a result. It would be a very short, and debatable, list. 

In any case, the relatively brief passage of time—a little over a year since the landmark designation issue was settled—has proven, in my view, Johnson right and Trachtenberg and Berkeley Design Advocates wrong, at least in the case of this building. 1007 University Avenue did not languish without economical use. 

Although the landmark status was affirmed, the building didn’t sit endlessly vacant and unusable. The owners found a tenant, Bauman College. A considerate architect for the remodel, Charles Kahn, was also engaged. (Trachtenberg separately designed the renovations of the two adjacent, non-landmark buildings that now house Premier Cru facilities). 

Instead of fighting landmarking Kahn and the new tenants came up with a plan—thoughtfully reviewed and approved without controversy by the Landmarks Commission at subsequent, low-key, hearings—to renovate the building and keep the essential structure and character intact, while modernizing it for current codes and uses.  

The Landmarks Commission accepted certain reversible changes to the structure—such as large pieces of visible ventilation equipment on the roof—as necessary modifications to accommodate the Bauman College program. 

The process worked—as it usually does in Berkeley, outside the headlines and stereotypes about landmarking—and the building is now back in use, presumably generating taxes, business, bringing visitors to Berkeley, and presenting a handsome refurbished street frontage, including a landscaped entry courtyard, along University Avenue.  

It’s also something unusual and special on University Avenue, in contrast to the array of anonymous stucco “infill” buildings that have been added along the street in the past several years and seem to represent the beginning and end of urban vision for many development advocates. 

When I supported both the writing and the affirmation of the landmark application I strongly believed in the adaptive reuse of the building, but didn’t think to imagine a cooking school as a tenant. Instead, I thought the building might make interesting shops around a courtyard, or a restaurant with both indoor and outdoor dining.  

But the Bauman College use looks like it will work very well. And while a private institution teaching “nutrition and culinary arts” may seem far from the original use and Mobilized Women vision, perhaps that’s not so. 

One of the early activities of the Mobilized Women involved publishing cookbooks containing “Conservation Recipes” designed “to meet, as far as possible, the needs of the housewife in conforming strictly to the latest rulings of the Food Administration” during World War I. 

Although the Mobilized Women had a different purpose than a cooking school, their cookbooks contain some advice that might be welcome in the Bauman College curriculum. “Use fruits.” “Use non-wheat cereals.” “Plan meals as if there were no bread to be had.” “Provide plenty of fresh vegetables if possible.” 

Their 1918 cookbook goes on to say, “with a generous fruit salad the dinner may be so planned that no dessert with be necessary.” “The freer use of fish, eggs, nuts and cheese is to be commended.” Use “fish, shell fish, poultry, game…dried peas and beans, nuts”, as opposed to “pork, ham, bacon, beef, mutton…”  

One of the cookbooks even contains a commercial advertisement for “Soy Bean Flour…takes the place of wheat flour...” 

So raise a cup of raw cacao, coconut, and chia pudding—as the attendees at the Bauman College opening did—to not only a new use but to an old building that now symbolizes both past and future in Berkeley. 

As architect David Trachtenberg recently wrote about another project, “Architecture provides a frame for life and good architecture gets better over time.”  

Indeed. That’s one thing the case of the Mobilized Women building does demonstrate.

Martin Snapp tells us that "mass uprising" has a new meaning at Berkeley's St Joseph the Worker church where there's a turn to the right in this leftist parish. The first two items in his blog will bring you up to date. http://martinsnapp.blogspot.com/

Can anyone name all the Berkeley neighborhoods? I've only lived here forty years and still can't, but I think I've discovered one I was overlooking while digging in on sinister Southside.

My discovery is not listed anywhere as a neighborhood but is near the historic Lorin district and is part of South Berkeley. Although in the Berkeley flats, my "discovery" lacks a name.

I'm calling it south of Ashby on Shattuck or SOAS. Darn. We just missed SOUS. I'm still working on it.

I was South-of-Ashby-on-Shattuck recently to check out the smoked barbecue brisket at Smokey J's, opened for less than a month and attracting overflowing crowds from word of mouth and twenty-five ecstatic YELPs, yielding a five of five rating. 

South of Ashby on Shattuck has been a barbecue center since when I moved here in 1970, home to Flynt's which was struggling for years and finally tossed in the towel the smoker-cook used to mop his brow. Now barbecue is back on Shattuck big time. 

Call it food of the masses; call it cheap eats, but you can chow down on pork rib tips, those fatty little pleasure pastures preferred by "Q" gourmets, for less than a fiver. Did I say $5. 

You read it right. That's $3 less than the competition, according to four competing Berkeley rib houses I called. 

"Do you have rib tips? I asked, adding, "what's wrong, can't afford to serve the whole rib?" But seriously folks, they sell the rib, not the tip. I'd better stop here before I risk obscenity. 

The comparison is apples to oranges, if you accept the bungled analogy, because the others don't even sell the tips, which are preferred by Q aficionados.  

Smokey's meat comes (by Mercedes?) from Marin. And what meat! The brisket is to-die-for and--at my age-- that's no metaphor. The competition is from hunger, although Everett & Jones on San Pablo isn't chopped liver. (Oops; that one also mis-fired). 

New customers are having reverse sticker shock. "OMG it's so cheap", they tell the young owner, a former hotel chef. Regulars repeat the store mantra: "barbecue is supposed to be cheap," at every opportunity. The spirited new fans are forming a good-natured community where you are encouraged to make new friends and pitch your "paper." 

You can also pitch Smokey's owner-chef with menu ideas and share your secret Q-tips with him. A Berkeley High graduate, Joshua Kemper, 33, was a hotel-chef before flying solo. And his flight is upward bound. 

The first time I was there (I've been back three times), I spoke with a potato-salad-freak, 

who gave me the address for the best potato salad in Oakland. Everyone at Smokey J's is driven mad-hatter by the smells of Q & A (accompaniments). 

Mad hatters? What else would you expect when you're on South of Ashby on Shattuck? The four block stretch of nightclubs, an astrologist named Holly, a radical barber shop, a "wellness" spa which can only be described as weird-ass, and a slew of radical organizations, which would rather not be publicized, just works. 

The Berkeley branch of the Black Panthers had its office in this neighborhood. It's been home to radicals for years and Berkeley does love its radicals. 

Smokey J's is sure to attract new customers to the legendary Starry-Plough (the Guinness is so creamy and smooth) and it's next door to La Pena, another legend, and the whole consortium of radical storefront institutions. 

I talked to a guy who plays a different instrument every day out of his van, was invited into a charming Victorian, and visited the weird-ass spa, which isn't really weird-ass at all; that's just my favorite term for everything. How about weird-ass south-of-ashby-on Shattuck. 

WASA. By jove I've got it! 

Open less than a month, this cozy rib-shack, at 3015 Shattuck between Ashby and Emerson has netted word-of-mouth throngs, some from as far away as Martinez. Kemper has already hired two helpers. 

He was a former chef, for Meridian Hotels before pursuing his own fortunes, and seems about to acquire one, judging from the crowds. If only he'd add sherry to his outstanding secret recipe Q sauce. . . (I always take some home and add the sherry where he can't witness the violation). 

Monday the store was closed and I stood, drooling, outside the door reading the menu and listening to the roar of my growling stomach. Smokey's is closed Tuesdays as well. 

But it will; be open July 4 in honor of yet another anniversary: of the marriage of barbecue and the Fourth. 

The menu includes chicken, sausage (made in-house) and the to-die-for brisket. The brisket manages to sport a rich crust and a juicy center--all smoky (the smoker is in-store). Everything bears the imprimatur of its chef, who has developed a rich, pasty sauce that could make him that fortune. But he needs to consider the sherry. 

Here’s a picture of the store menu. 

His meat rub is top secret. I wouldn't modify that. 

Smokey's keeps Berkeley hours (11 a.m. until 9 p.m.) which keeps me waiting too long for opening. I'm really stoked on this place. It's building like Chez Panisse (when it opened), which is its exact opposite. 

According to the following Yelper: 

"Its Nice and Clean and there are four Picnic Bench's inside for Communal Dining . The Kitchen is Open to view. 

Its a family type Operation . The owner is cooking. His girlfriend is cashiering and serving . There is also an assistant cook. 

The potato salad is a must try. The potatoes are cooked at the bottom of the rotisserie. The potatoes are drizzled with rotisserie-chicken Juices. Frigging yumminess. 

The BBQ meats are all prepared fresh daily. The Smell of smoking meat permeates the air. 

The Owner even set out plates of fresh-sliced Watermelon on each table." 

Ted Friedman. What can we say of him? He coulda been a contender. His reporter's backstory with the lurid stories behind the lurid stories will be available soon. Be sure to scroll down the front page to Ted Friedman's by-line each issue. 

Once again, the understandable anxiety about the guns which have been recovered from students at Berkeley High has surfaced, this time as a report from a committee formed to see what could be done about the problem. The group was convened after a series of frightening incidents where Berkeley High students were discovered to have guns on campus. Since then, the situation has attracted quarts of virtual ink. 

Our take is approximately the same as it was in March. Entirely too many teenage boys, in Berkeley and elsewhere, have access to handguns and are tempted to carry them for all of the usual reasons. An April front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle came up with the same conclusion, even, to my surprise, quoting by name the same student (a family friend) I’d previously quoted anonymously in my editorial: 

"People who bring guns are more scared than anything," said senior Jamil Whetstone, 18. "Half the time they show them off. Lets everybody know they got them. There are so many guns walking past you, you wouldn't know." 

Jamil’s an upstanding young man from a solid Berkeley home whose passion is being on the Berkeley High football team. He’s easy to talk to, not frightening or hostile in any way. He knows that he has to watch his back, not only at school but on the street, because guns are everywhere these days. 

Online comment chains appended to stories like this one perform a valuable function, providing a spontaneous soapbox for sincere people who need to vent their hopes and fears for the safety of their children. Unfortunately, they also provide a window into the biased conclusions of poorly informed people who believe that a vehemently expressed opinion can substitute for factual analysis. 

It’s a major contemporary cliché, yes, but one more time: “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” 

As far as I’ve been able to determine, no one has shown, based on real evidence, that a higher percentage of Berkeley High students carry guns than those in a matched group of similar young persons anywhere in any urban setting in California. Nevertheless, the committee report has drawn fire from a group of readers of two good summary articles on the topic published on the berkeleyside.com site. These commenters seem to believe that it’s possible for the Berkeley Unified School District to build an effective (or even literal) wall around the Berkeley High School campus to shield kids from the horrors of modern urban society. Similar comments can be found in various other online publications. 

Some of the commenters believe that the problem is that the school admits kids from outside the district… as if kids who are bonafide Berkeley residents are not also caught up in the culture of violence. In fact, transfer students are more likely to be ambitious outstanding kids. 

I’ve known a number of young people in recent years who were registered at Berkeley High—legally or illegally—from addresses where they don’t actually sleep every night. Many kids these days have more than one parental home from which to choose. 

Without exception, the ones I’ve known have been well-behaved high achievers with conscientious parents who chose Berkeley High because they wanted their kids to get the kind of superior education for which it’s famous. Some are jazz musicians recruited for the school’s world-renowned program. One girl who lives most of the time with her mother in Albany even won a major scholarship to an Ivy League school.  

The kids who are looking for trouble (or who fear trouble) and have the guns to prove it are just as likely to be domiciled in Berkeley as not.  

Close the campus for lunch? The report, sensibly, doesn’t hold out much hope for that tactic. Even if it were possible to confine all 3,000 Berkeley High students on the much too small downtown campus for lunch, it would do nothing to prevent ill–intentioned students from bringing their guns when they arrive in the morning (and the committee says that all six who were recently caught with weapons did just that.) Has any student picked up a gun at lunchtime? Not that I’ve heard. 

Metal detectors sound great, but there are plenty of guns around these days with mostly non-metal parts which can easily pass through them, and the lines would be unmanageable. ID cards offer no protection against legitimately enrolled students who carry guns, and there’s no reason to believe that the gun problem is confined to non-enrolled young people. The main committee recommendation which makes some sense is adding security personnel, both police and civilian, and making sure that they are dressed so that they can easily be identified if trouble requires their help.  

Many of the concerned citizens, both parents and others, still hope that public schools can summon up that Harry-Potteresque Invisible Wall to protect our young people from the troubles of the world around them, at least while they’re trying to study. But five random passersby on Market Street in San Francisco were recently caught in gang crossfire and wounded—and the same thing could happen on Shattuck in Berkeley, before or after school, involving students or non-students.  

Boys these days, sad to say, and even occasional girls, sometimes get ahold of guns, with predictable bad outcomes, whether on campus or off. It’s a problem that needs a more general solution, and it’s unreasonable to expect school officials to be able to solve it on their own. 

Because of vacations and other complications, no one from the Berkeley Daily Planet’s All Volunteer Army of unpaid reporters was available to watch the Berkeley City Council on Tuesday. I usually do that myself on the internet from the comforts of home, but I had previously signed up to take two ten-year-olds to watch Wagner from standing room at the San Francisco Opera. (Yes, yes, you might think I’m crazy, but they loved it—just like the mythology novels consumed in quantity by today’s literate pre-teens.)

Eventually I, and you, might watch the video online, and someone from the Planet crew might even post an analysis, but for a quick take it is instructive to check out how our colleagues at three of the sources which are now attempting to crack the less-than-lucrative Berkeley market saw the meeting. 

First, we have the report which feeds into the arrangement which somehow and sometimes links the Berkeleyside.com website, baycitizen.com, the S.F. Chronicle and the New York Times: 

Downtown Berkeley gets $1.2 million to give itself a makeover 

San Francisco Chronicle (blog) 

By Lance Knobel 

The Berkeley City Council last night approved the formation of the third property-based improvement district (PBID) in the city, increasing fourfold the funds available to the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) for environmental ... 

This particular story focuses on what happened at the council meeting to impact local merchants, which is appropriate for a publication which is looking for ads from that segment. 

A more general report, complete with comments, is on berkeleyside.com here: The writer also tried live-blogging from the meeting itself, a Herculean task, trying to do play-by-play in a game where the main action is hide-the-ball. 

Then we have the report produced by and for the local manifestation of the new Huffington-AOL merger, patch.com. 

The reporter here, whom I employed for many long years, can be counted on to discover what Berkeley’s old lefties (some would include me in their number) want to see in an otherwise grey landscape. 

Council Debates Budget: Streets vs. Services 

Patch.com 

By Judith Scherr 

The hot point at Tuesday night's council meeting on Berkeley's budget boiled down to a skirmish over $105000 out of a $319 ... 

Then there’s the perspective espoused by Dean Singleton’s Bay Area News Group, online as Inside Bay Area and in print somewhere near you as the San Jose Mercury, the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times, the West County Times, the Berkeley Voice, the Albany-El Cerrito Journal…and…and… and. 

They only have to pay one reporter to fill all of these news holes! The Big Picture is what works for many of these readers: 

Council approves West Berkeley research plan 

Inside Bay Area 

By Doug Oakley 

Aiming to bring more jobs and business to Berkeley's industrial area, the City Council Tuesday night voted to allow research and development companies in areas designated "protected space" for artists and small manufacturers. ... 

If you have time to read all of these divergent reports, you might be able to figure out what happened at Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting. It all did happen, but what happened of importance depends on your point of view. 

For The Rest of the Story, as Paul Harvey used to say, watch the video. 

Dan O'Neill

Joseph Young

Re the library editorial: 

I have to admit I have not followed every twist and turn in the recent library debate. Everytime I ventured into that thicket, I got a nasty headache, as well as the sneaking suspicion that there are better things to do with one's time than to join a fight that's already been fought, which brings me to my first point. 

It seems pretty obvious that the powers that be knew full well that any mention of "demolition" in the ballot measure could sink it, so they simply didn't mention it, knowing, again full well, that the demolition of at least one branch would happen. Gee, power politics in Berkeley, just as dishonest and cynical as anywhere else? Citizens being played for fools while those with a plan and too much time on their hands weave their tangled webs? You can go around spraying all the Eau de Process you want, but bullshit is still bullshit. Surely we haven't become so neutered by our sophistication that we can't recognize that. I thought people here were of sturdier stock, their skepticism forged and tempered by the battles of yore. 

Secondly, the idea of renaming the branch libraries to honor a person or perhaps some worthy ideal is fine, in theory. But the current geographical names also have meaning to people, rich meaning, in fact. And in any case, renaming of things takes time and energy and often involves more fussing than it's worth. Why not keep the names and use our energies on more immediate and serious matters. 

Jamie Day 

* * * 

Not Good in History  

President Obama [announced] a withdrawal of up to 10,000 U.S. troops by the end of the year. Under the plan, the United States would still have some 67,000 troops, plus thousands of contractors, in Afghanistan at the start of 2013—the same total as before last year’s surge. 

The U.S. leaders often are just not good on history. But the British started trying to pacify the Pashtun tribes of what are now northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, and were worried about the fanaticism of the akhond of Swat, and they sent tens of thousands of troops up there. They fought the Third Anglo-Afghan War. They fought engagements against the Mahsud tribe way back in the Teens and ’20s. And by 1947, as the British rule was ending in that region, it was more in turmoil and less under control than it ever had been before. 

So the full might of the British Empire was unable to bring order to those regions. And the idea that a relatively temporary American and relatively small expeditionary force can go into some of these provinces and shape them up for the long term, that was just very unlikely. 

Ted Rudow III, MA  

* * *  

Jersey Apology 

In order for me to feel appreciative for Mr. Jersey's apology, there are two elements missing. First, I wish for him to explain how he had failed "to understand the amount of community investment" that supports the rebuilding of the South and West Branches. For instance, he could have explained that when he joined CLU's efforts to thwart the rebuilding efforts, he failed to acknowledge the many community planning meetings that led to the decision to rebuild. His was a failure to learn and participate with neighborhood library users who desired better buildings, with library staff who desired safe buildings, with engineering and building experts who documented the deficiencies, and with hundreds of citizens who struggled to pass the Branch Library Bond so that these facilities can be rebuilt intelligently and cost effectively as has been envisioned. 

Secondly, we know that it was his work which gave substance to CLU and their lawsuit. Wouldn't it be nice if he acknowledged that his design and ideas could not demonstrate how South and West Branches could be "preserved." And that "the amount of community investment done by other firms.." amply demonstrated that they could not be remodeled to become better libraries and needed to be rebuilt. If he was to publicly state this, rather than a vague apology about his involvement, he would further undue the harm his involvement caused.. 

Another improvement on his apology would be to convince the CLU members of how harmful their continued lawsuit is to the community's library users. I am glad to see that he does not support suing any municipality. The plaintiff's basic premise is that there was a conspiracy to deceive voters and that the real issue is the "veracity" of ballot measures. This first ignores the Bond's underlying goal of improving the libraries, and second, ignores the evidence gained from studies and amply presented at public meetings demonstrating the need to rebuild two of the Branches. We must acknowledge that a vote for the Bond was a vote to improve the libraries, not to improve the preservation of existing buildings. What is at stake is the ability of community leaders to evolve intelligent decisions after examining all the evidence and for us to trust that they are acting in the public's best interests. 

What Mr. Jersey missed, and what the lawsuit plaintiff continues to miss, is that no building is as important as what goes on inside. When we rebuild our libraries, it is not the outside envelope that is significant. What is truly important are the books, videos, computers, tools and services that are offered freely to the public so that we can all nurture our life long pursuit of education and improvement. This ultimately will prevail as our Branch Libraries are rebuilt. 

Jim Novosel

I object to spending $5 million in Berkeley taxpayer bond revenues to provide facilities for students that may not even live in Berkeley while our own BUSD high school students lack sufficient classrooms. On June 29th you will be asked by BUSD officials to approve an agreement with REALM Charter School to fund their classrooms. Act responsibly to Berkeley taxpayers and students and vote NO. 

The costs of designing and building classroom facilities for the REALM Charter School at West Campus are proposed to be paid for out of the Measure AA bond fund. When the school board approved the REALM charter application, NO mention was made of asking Berkeley taxpayers to foot the bill for their facilities. California charter schools are legally required to admit any California resident. Students who are not Berkeley residents are free to apply and attend the REALM charter school. If approved, the school board is not meeting its commitments to Berkeley taxpayers in terms of transparency or accountability. 

Specifically, --The Measure AA bond measure of 2000 ($116.5 million) NEVER mentioned building a charter school as one of its intended uses. 

--Measure AA promised classrooms at BHS that never materialized. Instead taxpayers got a "state-of-the-art" transportation facility for $10 mil and a $25 mil rebuild of West Campus for administrators. 

--Bond Measures A and AA combined were supposed to assure seismic safety for all BUSD students. We have been told that our schools have been retrofitted to meet post Loma Prieta earthquake standards by the District, yet NONE have received Field Act certification. 

--Measure AA has NEVER had any regular citizen oversight NOR any annual financial audits, contrary to representations by BUSD officials. 

As a taxpayer, I don't want to support a half-baked charter school proposal that won't even serve Berkeley students. Check out the corruption and fraud with charter schools in Philadelphia due to lack of adequate oversight. (Investigating Charter Schools Fraud in Philadelphia http://www.npr.org/2011/06/27/137444337/what-happens-when-charter-schools-fail?ft=1&f=13) 

How about spending Berkeley taxpayer money (both bond and parcel tax revenues) solving BUSD's chronic problems with adequate, safe facilities and low student achievement? In tough economic times, let's focus our resources on BUSD students first.

It would be a very serious mistake for the City Council to approve the proposed “contract extension” with SEIU Local 1021 (Council item 48a on the June 28 Agenda). This agreement would effectively freeze and extend for three years a labor contract that pre-empts serious pension and fiscal reform in a time when local and national economic conditions are worsening. There is no need for precipitous action now before all pertinent factors are carefully considered, precipitous action that could have disasterous consequences. 

What would this new contract actually do? It would freeze wages for the next four years if City revenues continue in their sorry state. It would allow, by mutual agreement only and not starting until 2014, employee pension contributions of up to 3%, the exact percentage dependent upon CalPERS rates. It would implement a two-tier pension system for Local 1021 employees hired after January 1, 2012. It would delay planned layoffs until 2013 and eliminate no more than seven positions in the Solid Waste Division in that year. It would maintain current salary levels for those employees demoted or recycled as part of labor force reconfiguration. It would result in about $400,000 in annual savings plus future unstated additional amounts from “reduced” City CalPERS liability. 

What is wrong with this picture? 

All over California and the nation, public employees are taking substantial wage cuts and commencing substantial contributions for their many valuable benefits. This contract is not an example of such serious reform. 

The City of Berkeley has hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded and underfunded liabilities for pension obligations and decaying physical infrastructure. A full accounting of these liabilities has only just begun. How can a responsible local government allocate resources effectively until the full liability is known? 

While City employee compensation has increased by about 5% per year on average since 2000, many Berkeley taxpayers have experienced substantial income decline since 2000. Additionally, taxpayer pension assets have shrunk by about 20% and home values are down to 2003 levels and still falling. 

Berkeleyis way out of line when compared to regional norms with respect to its employees. Berkeley has about one employee per 73 residents, tied for first place out of twelve comparably-sized cities. The 12 city average is one employee per 113.50 residents, a 55% difference. Berkeley City employee fringe benefit costs are enormous: for Police, 66.44% of salary, and actually 74.42% when Workers Comp is included; for Fire, 53.99% and 64.81% respectively; and for Miscellaneous, 58.49% and 60.56% to 76.67%. Despite excellent salary and benefits with no employee contribution required, City workers also receive overtime and other above-salary cash payments that are hugely above the 12 city average—138% higher than average for Fire, 218% higher for Police, and 314% higher for Public Works. Some specific 2010 examples of total cash payments for the workforce covered by the SEIU Local 1021 contract under discussion: one Solid Waste Loader Operator had a Base Salary of $64,104, but somehow took home $132,625 in additional cash; a Solid Waste Truck Driver had a Base Salary of $67,306 but an additional $109,787 in payments; and a Solid Waste Worker with a $56,971 Base Salary received an extra $138,817.  

The City is facing, at least, $12-$15M, in annual operating deficits in addition to the hundreds of millions in unfunded longterm liabilities. In this light, and in light of the forgoing facts about the City workforce, the $400,000 in annual savings to be garnered by the proposed SEIU Local 1021 contract extension seems rather paltry. Any savings from the implementation of a two-tier benefit system for new employees are imaginary—given economic realities there will certainly be no new employees for the foreseeable future while the deficit from the current 1500 City employees continues long into the future. To present this contract to the public as a major cost-saving and belt-tightening effort is insulting. The worst part of this contract would be to pre-empt real and necessary fiscal reform, reduce government flexibility in hard times, and set a terrible example for the other labor contracts coming up. 

Berkeley Budget SOS urges City Council to reject this contract, carefully consider all of the issues, and proceed thoughtfully and methodically toward fiscal soundness. 

Why are there budget cuts after budget cuts to California's education system, to our state parks, environmental protection and to so many more of the institutions that had made California the best of our 50 states? The reason is that our state government is not a democracy. In our state, the majority is ruled by the minority. Necessary governmental investments in California's future quality should be maintained with a majority of the legislature voting to close tax loopholes on the very wealthiest corporations in our state. Democracy means majority vote decides. 

But California's law requires a two-thirds approval by the legislature, so the Republican's one-third minority blocks every attempt to raise revenue. They have even blocked putting the issue to the people in a general election. 

Studies such as those by the California Tax Reform organization show how over $20 Billion could be raised to support our State, just by making those who have benefited most pay their fair share. We need a democratic, majority vote on revenue relief solutions to our budget problem. 

The realization will hit any day now. It will be brutal for those who thought they could somehow create Rodeo Drive out of Telegraph Avenue, but the upside is that it will save years of police riots, court costs, and the bewildering schizophrenia of having the richest property owners in town kill off tourism by bad-mouthing Berkeley.

This is a college town. 

If you really want to you can arrest the guy from Sweden with the backpack sipping coffee and poring over a map trying to figure out how far Berkeley is from Santa Cruz. But there’ll be another one along in an hour or so. 

No matter how brutal we make our streets, how unaffordable we make our hotels and restaurants, rich property owners in Berkeley and the university itself would be wise to consider that having the University of California sitting like a cat in the sun in the middle of town is an attractive nuisance worth exploiting, rather than fighting. 

And it does mean listening to youth.  

It may be tough for the class that commands the country club to take, but it might save Berkeley a lot of money to take a few cues from the 30,000 or so young people who would love to shop, dance, join, learn, and participate in community events if they weren’t treated as such a threat by a town that can’t seem to grasp that not only are they here to stay, they have something to offer. 

It isn’t just the students enrolled on campus, but the wider culture they create by just being here that will always attract travelers, hitch-hikers, poets, artists, dreamers, and people who aren’t sure who they are yet but want to check out any town roaring with creativity and life. 

That’s us. That’s us at our best, and youth culture is a big part of it. The recent push-poll that flopped as an effort to support the proposed anti-sitting law revealed some valuable input from the students who took it, who wanted more dancing, more creative events, more art events available to them. 

We can do that – this town really does know how. But the people doggedly wed to the criminalization of poverty need to make a little room at the table for creative ideas. We’re a college town, and with a more inclusive attitude we can thrive in every possible way. We might even learn a thing or two. 

The 2,240-word screed on alleged “turf battles” over a community garden in North Oakland, published last week in the Berkeley Daily Planet, mischaracterizes what is essentially a kerfuffle of the author’s own making. In truth, there would be no controversy to speak of had Robert Brokl and his partner, Alfred Crofts, not grumbled to the city of Oakland about potential hazards posed by some citrus and avocado trees that are part of this modest food-growing effort. 

It was Brokl’s and Crofts’ grievance that resulted in the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee’s June 8 vote to require community garden organizers to obtain a conditional use permit at a cost of $2,900. Since then, Oakland city councilmember Jane Brunner has stepped up to pick up the tab for the permit on grounds that “it does not make sense to charge so much money from volunteers who are helping to maintain and improve a city park.” 

For more than a year, organizers of Dover Street Park’s “Healthy Hearts Youth Market Garden and Orchard” have worked on the project in close consultation with representatives from Brunner’s office, city parks and recreation and public works departments. As with most bureaucracies, conflicting advice was given about what paperwork and permits were needed, numerous emails between the parties show. 

Ultimately, however, this project is one that enjoys the support of the city and of the community, including more than 400 residents of the Dover Street area who signed a petition in support of the effort. As far as we know, it’s the nation’s first organic community garden to partner with an obesity prevention clinic. 

Thus, Brokl and Crofts may find themselves alone in this battle, which is unfortunate and ironic given that the pair was part of the core group that pushed to create Dover Street Park as part of the old Merritt College campus redevelopment more than a decade ago. They possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s byzantine zoning requirements and their expertise and energy can be a force for positive change in the face of major development threats, such as the proposed expansion of Children’s Hospital Oakland in 2007. Had the measure not been defeated, the high-rise would have cast a chilling shadow over the Dover Street neighborhood and bulldozed some people’s homes at taxpayers’ expense. 

As for Dover Street Park, for years, neighbors have been struggling to maintain this small, underutilized and overlooked playground located behind the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the North Oakland Senior Center. The threat of poor visibility, thorny vegetation and potential injuries due to tree climbing existed at the park long before the creation of the community garden project, yet now are suddenly cited as reasons for a conditional use permit. 

The food-growing project began in 2009 when councilmember Brunner and her staff facilitated a meeting between the Dover Street Neighborhood Group, a loose coalition of neighborhood volunteers; Phat Beets Produce, a local non-profit whose mission is to provide affordable access to healthy food for families in North Oakland and West Oakland; and the Healthy Hearts Obesity Prevention Clinic, which serves Alameda County children at risk for obesity. 

Phat Beets and Healthy Hearts were interested in meeting neighborhood delegates in order to create an innovative, communal garden around the edges of the park. With the guidance and encouragement of Brunner, parks and recreation and public works, the volunteers submitted a plan for a garden, procured an approval, and set about creating a small vegetable-growing oasis along the weed-invested park perimeter. 

Public works provided mulch and a water source. Brunner’s office offered to donate four fruit trees. Garden workdays were scheduled for each Wednesday evening and the first Sunday of each month. In addition to green thumb activities, the Dover Street Neighborhood Group hosted several park events including Summer Movie Night, National Night Out, and a celebration of Cesar Chavez Day, which attracted over 300 attendees. The Healthy Hearts Obesity Clinic created a summer internship for nine teenaged patients to help with garden maintenance. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has had her portrait painted on the park’s back fence. 

As a result of this newly found energy and enthusiasm, the park is getting cleaner, safer and more popular. Parents walk their children to the park from west of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, from the heart of Temescal and from the Berkeley border. Neighborhood daycare centers bring their broods to check out the collard greens and artichokes. Senior citizens stop by via wheelchairs, walkers, and on the arms of friends. 

Easter egg hunts, birthday parties, special holidays, and graduations are regularly celebrated within the park. Tai Chi enthusiasts habitually work out in its grassy oval center. Kids learn how to ride bicycles and scooters along the paved pathways. Newborns in strollers are rocked back and forth while their older siblings play on the slides and monkey bars. Gates are not locked because there is no longer a need to lock them. Nearby residents report no bothersome noise or suspicious loitering. 

A long-range plan for the garden will be soon submitted to the city for negotiation and fine-tuning. Phat Beets Produce, Healthy Hearts Obesity Clinic and the Dover Street Neighborhood look forward to putting in many more hours in the garden weeding, planting, hoeing, watering, laughing and getting to know our neighbors. We hope that you -- and Brokl and Crofts -- will join us in improving this budding urban oasis. 

Susan Parker and Yasmin Anwar are North Oakland residents and neighbors of Dover Street Park. 

For more information, visit the Dover Street Neighborhood Group Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dover-Street-Neighborhood-Group/126951537387171 

The Dover Park Connection blog is at http://doverparkconnection.blogspot.com/ 

Phat Beets Produce is at www.phatbeetsproduce.org 

Last week, renowned preservation architect Todd Jersey issued an apology to the City of Berkeley for consulting with Concerned Library Users (CLU) in conjunction with our lawsuit against the City. Our lawsuit arose from the illegal use of Measure FF funds to demolish, rather than renovate, two branch libraries – contrary to the plain language of the measure. What Todd did not apologize for – and what he shouldn’t apologize for – was his excellent work, which proved that the City was wrong about the need to demolish the South and West Branch Libraries. 

While CLU was saddened to see Todd put in this position, we understand why he felt he had to make this gesture in order to compete for projects in the City of Berkeley and other municipalities in the future. I was probably the first person to warn Todd that City officials were maligning him and that he was probably going to be blackballed on City projects. Yes, this is illegal, but this is also the City of Berkeley, where the Council majority openly flaunts disobeying the law, and sometimes, only a lawsuit has a chance of stopping them. That was at the end of March, and by April 1^st, Todd was able to confirm the story through his own contacts. I knew that telling Todd what I’d learned might affect his ability to continue to work with CLU, but it would have been unethical to withhold the information from him. 

In the months that followed, Todd became the object of anonymous, negative comments on Berkeleyside.com. Some were later traced back to Linda Schacht Gage, Capital Chair of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation and a possible candidate for the District 8 Council seat in 2014. Berkeley Daily Planet readers may remember my May 12^th commentary, The Making of a Controversy, in which I described how Schacht Gage had approached me in Moe’s Books on October 6^th, and said “If you go ahead with this lawsuit, I’m going to tell people that you don’t want minority neighborhoods to have new libraries.” http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2011-05-11/article/37839?headline=The-Making-of-a-Controversy-Opinion-Commentary- What many people don’t know is that the Berkeley Public Library Foundation intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of the City a few months after that incident and that some of their members are responsible for many of the ugly rumors and lies surrounding this lawsuit. In fact, most members of the City Council are foundation members, and Council member Darryl Moore is a former member of its board. Last winter, the Council approved a resolution allowing its own members to use taxpayer-provided discretionary funds to buy expensive tickets to attend the foundation’s gala dinner in February. 

I’ve had people ask me why the lawsuit was never settled in its entirety. (There was a settlement on one cause of action in December.) My intuition is that the City and the foundation don’t want to settle. All three parties to the case – CLU, the City of Berkeley, and the Berkeley Public Library Foundation – had a case management meeting on May 31^st. Alameda County Superior Court provides the option of mediation for cases on the way to trial, and we agreed to mediation, but the City and the foundation both declined. Our acceptance of the mediation option is consistent with the approach that we’ve followed since filing this lawsuit; we’ve been looking for creative solutions for the City’s illegal actions, because we support improving, renovating, and expanding our branch libraries. That’s why we consulted with Todd in the first place. 

Last winter, the City invited us to tour the South and West Branch Libraries. We brought Todd along to see if officials were telling the truth about demolition being the only option. Todd’s immediate impression was that he could find better solutions, while still preserving historic portions of these structures. He believed that a partial preservation option for the South Branch could be accomplished with substantial savings, because the City’s plan spent a considerable amount of money on constructing a new façade for the front of the building. A partial preservation plan that improved the existing façade would be far less expensive – not to mention greener. His ideas for the West Branch were consistent with the 2003 publicly-vetted plan for the building, which was abandoned when funding fell through. It is worth noting that the public, the City Council, the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Zoning Adjustments Board all approved of this plan. It had broad community support. Todd believed that a comparable design could be built for around the same amount of money the City was planning to spend on a new West Branch. We hired him on the spot. 

The City’s Environmental Impact Report later claimed that Todd’s designs were beyond the Measure FF budget, but Todd’s own calculations, which provided a range of expenses depending on materials, contradict this. We later submitted a letter from a professional cost estimator verifying Todd’s figures. 

After Todd’s apology, Moore made an odd statement hoping this might cause me to reconsider my actions. To be clear, I am not the Plaintiff. I don’t have the sole power to drop the lawsuit. I get only a single vote, but I don’t think anyone in CLU is impressed by this action. Members of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation have threatened us, and when that didn’t work they tried intimidating us. When that didn’t work, foundation members and City officials tried lying about us. Now they’ve turned to maligning an innocent person. There is an old saying that the definition of insanity is repeating the same act again and again and expecting a different outcome. We understand how ugly foundation members and City officials can make things for us. It’s just not a reason to drop the lawsuit, and each insult raises the bar for any possible settlement. For us, the road to a fair settlement would come through creative solutions and/or mediation. We’re not going to respond to bullying, but that’s the only tactic the City and the foundation seem to want to employ. As a result, we are prepared to go to trial. 

The one good thing about this latest episode is that now Todd Jersey will again have a chance to work for the City. Todd is an excellent architect, and we would all benefit from living in a city that featured his work. 

A page from My Commonplace Book ( a very old, traditional, personal literary form—a diary of short excerpts copied from printed books, with comments added by the reader): 

“ . . . a dark-green cover and the title, in gold print, English History. Arthur remembered it, dimly. Kings and Queens, dozens of them, wars, dozens of those too, and all of them with dates, as if anyone cared. Miss Karpenski said the purpose of studying history was that if you didn’t you were doomed to repeat it, but as far as Arthur could see the history books proved that you were doomed to repeat it anyway, so what was the point?”

— The Other Side of the Bridge (2006), a novel by Mary Lawson

Yet, I sometimes wonder if “Arthur,” the low-achieving non-reader, reached an insight that makes all my reading seem merely escapist. We have lived in a century of unprecedented literacy and scientific innovation. The country leading these intellectual advances was Germany, which also produced Hitler, and inspired the addition of a new word to our language: genocide. 

Now, when young people ask me my view of life from my eighties, I tell them honestly, if evasively, that the older I get the less I know. If pressed for clarification—and in a bad mood—I may use a term that sums up “Arthur’s” opinion. “Reruns. You know, reruns of a horror movie, each one more bloody, clumsy, and senseless than the original.” 

It’s been a while since we got backstage at the California Academy of Sciences. Last Friday evening was Curators’ Night, with various entomologists, anthropologists, and others available to discuss their work, plus guided tours of the collections. The museum put on a nice spread, too, including mysterious blue cocktails (alas, not Romulan Ale.) 

So Ron and I got to see the entomology vault, which reeked of mothballs, and the mammalogy/ornithology collection. Jewel-like buprestid beetles, dazzling Madagascar sunset moths, Galapagos finches collected in 1905 by the expedition that returned to find the Academy in ruins, walrus bacula (penis bones) like the one Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) once brandished at a witness during a Congressional hearing. In entomology we were shown a specimen tray of butterflies that dermestid beetles had attacked and reduced to a drift of dust. Later came the dermestids at work, reducing bird and mammal remains to bone. The dermestid room wasn’t quite as malodorous as we expected. “It doesn’t bother me anymore,” said Moe Flannery, our guide. “I just got used to it.” 

The insect collection alone, we were told, has 17.5 million pinned specimens and 3 million in alcohol, including 400,000 species of beetles alone. (Someone once asked the cranky Marxist biologist J. B. S. Haldane what attributes of God could be deduced from nature. “An inordinate fondness for beetles,” said Haldane.”) We learned about the Schmidt Sting Pain index. The bullet ant rates a maximum of 4 points (“Pure, intense, brilliant pain”), the Pepsis wasp or tarantula hawk 3 (“Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric”), honey bees a mere 2 (“Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.”) My hat is off to Justin Schmidt, who claims to have experienced the effects of the majority of species of stinging bees, wasps, and ants. 

The mothball-free mammal and bird shelves hold 28,000 mammal specimens, 96,000 bird skins, and 11,000 eggs and nests. They’re saving space for research associate Ray Bandar’s private collection of 6000 skulls, incorporating the world’s largest assemblage of California sea lion skulls, all still at his home. Our guide, Moe Flannery, told us sharks don’t like sea otters (too much hair) but relish young elephant seals (“They’re like marshmallows.”) 

Flannery explained that some specimens, like the Darwin’s finches, are too precious to travel. Recently a scientist who was studying bird diseases was allowed to take tiny samples from bird pox lesions on the finches’ feet. Analysis of the viral DNA in the lesions allowed her to pinpoint the arrival of the disease in the Galapagos Islands to 1878. It was probably introduced by a captive canary. How’s that for forensics? 

Downstairs, we talked to marine biologist Rich Mooi, with whom I had corresponded a few years back about a rare Bay-endemic crustacean called Lightiella serendipita. The creature, which is among the most primitive living crustaceans and looks like something from the Burgess Shale, was caught off the Richmond shore decades ago. Mooi had hoped it would turn up again during the Academy’s SF Bay:2K survey at the turn of the millenium, but no such luck. Its habitat may have been buried by river-borne sediment. 

Mooi was standing behind a card table covered with sand dollars of various shapes: all flat, some with internal slits, others with flanged edges. I asked him what that was about. It turned out to be a matter of hydrodynamics. The slits (lunules) and flanges (ambital notches) act as spoilers, keeping the bottom-dwelling creatures from being swept away by currents. Biologist Malcolm Tedford used wind tunnel tests to establish this in the early 1980s. In some species, current pressure is relieved by concave drainage channels that lead into the lunules. Pretty elegant. 

A few years ago I met a vendor at the Ashby flea market who was selling, along with the usual African beads and masks, necklaces of fossilized sea urchins. These were more inflated, more or less biscuit-like, than Mooi’s specimens, and lacked the holes. “They find them in the desert,” he explained—in Mali, I think, although it may have been Niger. Millions of years ago a tropical seaway cut across what’s now the Sahara Desert. Things change. 

Another change: the curators’ offices, which we walked through to get to the collection vaults, lack the accretion of Far Side cartoons and other newspaper clippings that I recall from open-house tours in the Academys’ old building. It may take decades to build up another such layer.s 

On June 16th, political pundits observed that liberals are unhappy with President Barack Obama and conservatives are displeased with GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney. If the 2012 presidential contest matches Obama and Romney, and their bases are turned off, how will this affect the outcome? 

The latest Pew Research poll helps answer the question. In 2012, Pew believes that 10 percent of potential voters, mostly young people, will not vote; Pew allocates the remaining 90 percent to three groups: “Mostly Republican,” 25 percent, “Mostly Independent,” 35 percent, and “Mostly Democratic,” 40 percent. (This reflects ideology not actual Party registration.) 

In 2008, the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, got 52.9 percent of the vote, and the Republican candidate, John McCain, received 45.7 percent. Liberals voted overwhelmingly for Obama (89 percent), conservatives did the same for McCain (78 percent), and the race was decided by “moderates” / independents, where 60 percent favored Obama. 

The Pew Research poll clarifies Obama’s reelection challenge. The President will have to retain “solid liberals” (16 percent of registered voters), “hard-pressed Democrats” (15 percent), and “new coalition Democrats” (9 percent), but this won’t give him a majority. To achieve his 2008 margin of victory, Obama must appeal to Independents, probably “post-modern moderates” (14 percent). In other words, Obama has to hold onto a block of voters that are liberal on social issues (abortion, gay marriage, marijuana) but whose opinions on foreign policy (the war in Afghanistan) and domestic policy (the role of government) run a wide gamut. Obama’s 2012 dilemma is how to hold onto a liberal base that is unhappy with some of his policies while attracting moderate voters. 

Romney has a similar but more difficult test. First, he must hold onto “Staunch Conservatives” (11 percent) who are the Tea Party activists. Then he must attract “Main Street Republicans” (14 percent). Next, Romney must sway all of the “libertarians” (10 percent) and all of the “disaffected moderates” (11 percent) but even then his total would only be 46 percent. Romney’s quandary is that he is the champion of only one of the elemental Republican groups, “Main Street Republicans.” The “Staunch Conservatives,” Tea Party activists, have their favorite candidate, Michele Bachmann. And the Libertarians have their own choice, Ron Paul. (A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gave Romney 43 percent of the Republican vote, with Bachmann and Paul each garnering 22 percent.) While it’s not likely that Bachmann or Paul can win the 2012 Republican nomination, it’s unclear whether their supporters will unify behind Romney. 

(Romney has an additional problem. Twenty percent of Republicans and Independents indicate they would not support a Mormon for President.) 

Barack Obama has the advantage so long as Democrats turn out their base, something they failed to do in the 2010 mid-term elections. In 2008 the generic House vote was 55 percent Democrat and 45 percent Republican. This flipped in the 2010 mid-term election where Republicans got 54 percent and Democrats 46 percent. The change was due to turn out: in 2010, Republicans got out their base and Dems didn’t. In 2008 the percentage of voters identifying themselves as liberal, moderate, and conservative was 22 percent, 44 percent and 34 respectively. In 2010 this shifted with liberals having 20 percent, moderates 38 percent, and conservatives an astonishing 42 percent. In 2010 the electorate was considerably older and whiter than it had been in 2008; this was the Tea Party phenomenon: white conservative seniors angry at government. But since then Democrats have regained their enthusiasm and a recent Gallup Poll noted a jump in Democratic Party affiliation. 

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Romney as the strongest Republican candidate against Obama. Nonetheless, Obama got 49 percent of the vote versus Romney’s 43 percent with 8 percent undecided. Splitting the undecided vote, the projected tally becomes 53 percent Obama and 47 percent Romney, similar to the 2008 Obama-McCain vote. 

Thus, the 2012 election seems to be Obama’s to lose. Romney has the more difficult political task. He has to unify the Republican Party – which is actually three different Parties – in a way that does not alienate the Moderate/Independent voters that he must have to win. 

To be reelected, Barack Obama must do three things: First, he has to repair relations with liberal democrats by deeds as well as words – withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was a good first step. Second, Obama has to make clear the differences between his candidacy and that of Romney or whomever the Republican Presidential nominee is – the more awful the GOP candidate, the easier this task will be. Finally, the Obama campaign has to turn out his base: solid liberals, hard-pressed Democrats, and new-coalition Democrats. 

Because Republicans won’t have an attractive candidate and, therefore, little chance of legitimate victory, their strategy will be to suppress the vote for Obama in key states. (They’ve already started doing this in states like Wisconsin with new voter-id laws that make it more difficult for Democrats to vote.) Whether or not the GOP miscreants are successful will determine who will vote in 2012 and the President’s reelection. 

Despite the Department of Defense's (DoD) official prohibition on women in combat roles, 111 female soldiers have died in Iraq and 28 have died in Afghanistan. Sixty percent of these deaths were due to hostile acts. About 200,000 women have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Women make up 14.6 percent of active duty military. Women attack insurgents with strike fighters and helicopter gunships, machine guns and mortars, ride shotgun on convoys through IED (improvised explosive device) terrain and walk combat patrols with the infantry. Actually, DoD and the military services have difficulty defining what it is that women cannot volunteer to do. What makes the Iraq and Afghanistan "hostilities" different from other hostilities is that there are no clear front lines. Therefore, the line between a combat job and a support job is oftentimes blurred. The question that must be asked, why shouldn't a woman be assigned a combat job if she is qualified and properly trained? 

As with the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" debate, opponents of allowing women to choose a combat job argue that the presence of women in small units that must operate for extended periods under fire, would be disruptive, or women would break the unit's tight cohesion and cripple its fighting spirit. But research has not borne out the myths that women are too weak for combat, can harm a unit’s cohesion, or are more prone to mental health disorders than men in combat. 

The Military Leadership Diversity Commission (MLDC) (http://mldc.whs.mil) has the task of evaluating and assessing policies that provide opportunities for promotion and advancement of minority members of the armed forces, including women in combat roles. On March 15, 2011, the MLDC recommended that the prohibition on women serving in combat roles be removed. Although, Congress repealed the combat exclusion laws in the January 1994 National Defense Authorization Act., the law still requires the services to submit proposed changes to existing assignment policy to Congress for review.  

The MDLC noted that the military is too male and too white. As for women in combat roles, the MLDC (http://mldc.whs.mil/download/documents/Final%20Report/MLDC_Executive_Summary.pdf) recommended that: 

"Recommendation 9— DoD and the Services should eliminate the “combat exclusion policies” for women, including the removal of barriers and inconsistencies, to create a level playing field for all qualified servicemembers. The Commission recommends a time-phased approach: • a. Women in career fields/specialties currently open to them should be immediately able to be assigned to any unit that requires that career field/specialty, consistent with the current operational environment. • b. DoD and the Services should take deliberate steps in a phased approach to open additional career fields and units involved in “direct ground combat” to qualified women. • c. DoD and the Services should report to Congress the process and timeline for removing barriers that inhibit women from achieving senior leadership positions."  

The DoD is reviewing the MLDC's recommendations. 

I note that New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Israel, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland allow women in combat roles.  

Today, military service is voluntary. Both men and women who join the military should be able to choose a combat job. The criteria for selection to a combat job should not be based on a person's sex but whether the person is qualified, capable, competent, and able to perform the job. Nothing more, nothing less. When a woman is properly trained, she can be as tough as any man.

From 1967-2005, Canadian writer-director-producer Allan King created notable documentary films, usually with only a camera operator and sound technician, typically without interviews and narration. Five of them are on DVD collectively titled The Actuality Dramas of Allan King: Warrendale (1967,) A Married Couple (1969,) Come on Children (1972,) Dying at Grace (2003, 148 minutes,) and Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company(released in 2010, 112 minutes.)

Dying at Grace commences with the on-screen declaration that “This film is about the experience of dying.” Close examination of the final days and nights of two men and three women follows. They are terminally ill patients in the Salvation Army’s Grace Medical Center Palliative Care Unit in Toronto. Fourteen weeks.

When asked why he made this film, King responded, “Self-interest is the reason I make most of my films. I'm getting older and I'm going to die. I thought I'd better find out what it's about.” And he expressed interest in hospice.  

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King followed Dying at Grace with one more film, his late-in-career masterpiece. Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company follows eight elders who are suffering from dementia, memory loss, and old age. They are residents in Baycrest, a large Toronto Jewish home for the aged. A special facility whether in Toronto or Riverdale. King does not overdo Baycrest’s uniqueness. His sights are on Max, Claire, Ida and company.  

Don’t assume that most so-called church homes, nursing homes, etc. are like Baycrest. Alas, it is not a typical facility. If you are able to purchase or borrow this film, recognize Baycrest’s uncommon aspects. A productive exercise for a gerontology or social work class would be to note individually and follow with a facilitated group discussion of some of them. Would you recommend this film for a senior center showing? King’s skillful small crew follows eight Baycrest residents for five months. There is no narration, no one tossing clipboard questions at them. Rarely do they glance in the camera’s direction. The same social worker talks several times with each resident, never down-- physically or condescendingly. And there are other special things about this person.  

The film opens on Claire's 89^th birthday. Max, a cheerful little man, always with hat and cane, is her close friend. Rachel is lonesome and dejected, missing her son, consumed by his failure to visit. (What about that visit?) Ida relies on memory for her solace. Helen has no memory and does not recognize her daughter, while her moods swing violently. Murray keeps his cap on and likes women. (Is either a unique factor of old age?) Memory is fleeting: Claire re-experiences the death of her close companion several times, each without remembering her previous grieving. Staff members bring medications and nutrition, provide care, and offer small talk.  

Demented people do not always totally lose their minds, feelings or identity. Spontaneously and without direction, they may express their feelings of love, hate, and humor. They may be happy, angry and lonely.  

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Hospice is a type and a philosophy of care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's symptoms, which might be physical, emotional, spiritual or social. Palliative care aims to reduce the severity of disease symptoms, pain and stress. The modern concept of hospice includes palliative care for the incurably ill provided in such institutions as hospitals or nursing homes, as well as care provided to those who would rather die in their own homes. Strictly speaking, the palliative care unit of Grace Hospital shown in Dying at Graceis not hospice.  

“Sometimes doctors and patients confuse palliative care with hospice care, which is for people who no longer need or want to treat their condition but want help managing their pain. Palliative care on the other hand, is often meant to help people who are still fighting their disease. But some fear palliative care because they think it means giving up. As a result, many patients don’t seek this care early in the course of their illness, when it could do the most good.” [“Easing pain; Palliative care is not what you think” by Karen Rafinski. AARP Bulletin. June 2011 v52 #5 pp14-15]  

The Salvation Army is an international evangelical Christian church known for charitable work. Its theology is mainstream Protestant. The five patients focused on in Dying at Grace are not interviewed by the filmmakers. Salvation Army female staff members do, however, “question” them. “I just feel finished,” responds one. Two Salvation Army officers appear, credited as Major R.N. and Major Chaplain. “Oh come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant” blares forth as Salvation Army instrumentalists and singers gather in the corridor outside rooms where a few feet away patients are in their death throes. An emphasis on death leading to green pastures permeates the film, but it is not an expose.  

Carmela is an elderly, religious Italian-Canadian with a family. She shares a room with Joyce, who is reluctant to take painkillers because she is afraid her powerful medications, vaguely termed "breakthroughs" by the center's staff, will cause her to die in her sleep. Towards the end, Major R.N. asks Carmela if she would like her to get a priest. An off-camera visitor’s voice asks how she would do that. She responds “I could ask around.” We are not privy to whether she did so.  

Eda is the most “active,” moving about in her wheelchair. But stuff happens. Her cancer had gone into remission, granting her a renewed sense of hope until a check-up reveals its return. She must cope with the disappointment. She is articulate even as we watch her descent over a few weeks until her body shuts down. Rick, a former Satanist biker who resists the discipline of the hospital, says he would rather die in a shootout than a hospital bed. Lloyd suffers from brain cancer and is supported by the constant presence of his partner of thirty years.  

Much of Dying at Grace is filmed in tight close-up, capturing the fear, confusion and medicated blankness of terminally ill human beings. The featured people are victims of cancer and other health problems. They also suffer from the effects of the palliative drugs. They are “terminal” and in pain. Filmmaker Allan King recorded their last days, motivated by the desire to manage the fear of death more effectively through understanding and insight. He died of brain cancer in 2009, age 79, at his home in Toronto.  

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As I watched these experiences of dying, I was reminded of the novel and film, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? And of Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s death-sentence by means of imprisonment. There’s no doubt in my mind that his years in state prison shortened his life.  

For an attempt at a jovial look at another, very different hospice, read Art Buchwald’s 2006 book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye;Reflections on Life and Death, written from a Washington, D.C. area hospice.He died in 2007 of kidney failure.  

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NEWS  

In September 2009, a 43-year old Alameda County mother of three learned she had advanced pancreatic cancer. Her pain and symptoms escalated quickly. She received home hospice care from VITAS, the nation’s largest for-profit hospice chain, which, following corporate policy, did not inform her about her options (a violation of California’s Right to Know End-of-Life Options Act.) She died in misery and severe pain.  

Nearly 6 in 10 voters in Washington state approved Initiative 1000, the 2008 Death with Dignity Act. It allows terminally ill patients with less than six months to live to end their lives with the help of a physician. In 1998, neighboring Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide.  

According to a new study quoted in an article by Nick Collins in The Telegraph (Great Britain, June 22, 2001), “Married men should be careful not to retire before their wives because there will be no one at home to look after them….”  

MARK YOUR CALENDAR: July, August, September. Confirm date, time, place.

Wednesday, June 29 Noon – 1 P.M. Playreaders at Central Berkeley Public Library. Meets weekly to read aloud from great plays, changing parts frequently. Intended for adult participants.  

Wednesday, June 29 6 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Movie: Get Low: A True Tall Tale.  

Saturday, July 2 12 Noon Albany branch of the Alameda County Library, 1247 Marin Av. Beef Bowl Anime Club meeting for adults. Contact: Ronnie Davis (510) 526-3720 x16. Also Saturday, August 6.  

Wednesday, July 6 Noon – 1 P.M. End of Life Planning Workshop at Central Berkeley Public Library. Responsible end-of–life planning can save heartache and help preserve family legacy. Learn the basics about wills, trusts, powers of attorney, advanced health care directives and more in a supportive setting. Also August 6.  

Wednesday, July 6 10 A.M.-noon North Berkeley Senior Center Advisory Council meeting. Public invited. 1901 Hearst. (510) 981-5190  

Wednesday, July 6 6-8 P.M. Albany branch of the Alameda County Library. 1247 Marin Av. Lawyer in the Library. Free 15 minute consultation with an attorney who will clarify your situation, advise you of your options, get you started with a solution, and make a referral when needed. Advance registration is required. Sign up in person at the Reference desk or call 510-526-3720 ext. 5 during library hours. Also Wednesday, August 3 and Sept. 7.  

Monday, July 11 7 P.M. Author Talk at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Av.. Amy Block Joy, author of Whistleblower, the nail-biting true story of what happens when someone with a lifelong habit of going along to get along is confronted with criminal activity she can't ignore. Whistleblower poignantly illuminates the dark for future truth-tellers. Free. (510) 524-3043.  

Tuesday, July 12 9 A.M. Mastick Senior Center, Alameda. Cane Do. Join John Dexheimer for self-defense and exercise. This specialized senior self-defense training class incorporates the use of a cane. Learn to hold, twirl, strike, poke, jab and block while exercising with your cane. Wear comfortable clothing and bring your cane! Sign up in the Mastick Office. A suggested donation of $3 per person is appreciated.  

Wednesday, July 13 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Albany branch of the Alameda County LibraryPoetry Writing Workshop. Christina Hutchins, poet laureate of Albany, will facilitate. Free. No registration required. Work on your poetry with a group of supportive writers. Contact: Dan Hess (510) 526-3720 x17. Also Wednesday August 10 and Sept. 14.  

Thursday, July 14 1 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, Alameda. Drumming Circle. Join the Mercy Retirement Community Drum Circle for a musical experience. Drumming is known to improve circulation in the hands and body, loosen stiff joints in the shoulders, arms, and wrists, and stimulate the mind. Sign up in the Mastick Office. Free.  

Friday, July 15 8 A.M. – 2 P.M. Compassion & Choices of Northern California is a participant in the Healthy Living Festival. Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Road. For information, email admin@compassionandchoicesnca.org  

Wednesday, July 20 1:30 P.M. BerkeleyCommission on Aging. Meets on 3^rd Wednesdays at South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis. Check to confirm (510) 981-5178.  

Monday, July 25 7 P.M. Book Club. Kensington Library, Seeing, by Jose Saramago. In his follow up to Blindness, Saramago returns to the capital on a rainy election day, where no one has come out to vote. The politicians are jittery… What began as a satire on governments and the efficacy of democracy turns into something far more sinister. Meetings are held on the fourth Monday of every month; each starts with a poem selected and read by a member with a brief discussion following. New members are always welcome. Free. (510) 524-3043.  

Tuesday, July 26 3-4 P.M. Berkeley Public Library, Central. Tea and Cookies. A book club for people who want to share the books they have read. Monthly on the 4th Tuesday. (510)981-6100.  

Wednesday, July 27 1:30-2:30 Alameda County Library, Albany branch. Great Books Discussion Group. Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw. Meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Facilitated discussion. Come to one meeting, or all meetings. Books are available at the Library. Parking! 526-3720 x 16.  

Wednesdays, beginning in August – 10:30-12 noon Parkinson's Yoga & the Art of Moving. Jewish Community Center East Bay – Oakland Branch, 5811 Racine St. (58^th & Telegraph). $120./month. Enhance mental focus, balance, strength, flexibility, voice function, and peace of mind through the Mind/Body practices of Yoga, Meditation, Toning, Chanting and Specific Movement Techniques. Perform the activities of daily living with greater ease, happiness, safety and effectiveness. Instructors Carol Fisher, RYI with John Argue. (925) 566-4181.  

Wednesday, August 3 10 A.M.-noon North Berkeley Senior Center Advisory Council meeting. Public invited. (510) 981-5190.  

Thursday, August 4 1:30 P.M. – 2:45 P.M. Emergency Preparedness. Free program for older adults, caregivers and service providers. Colleen Campbell, Senior Injury Prevention Coordinator, will discuss materials, display a sample GO KIT, and lead discussion. Alameda County Library Albany branch. Contact: Ronnie Davis (510) 526-3720 x16. Also at other branches; contact Patricia Ruscher, Older Adult Services (510) 745-1491.  

Wednesday, August 10 10 A.M – 2 P.M. Compassion & Choices of Northern California is a participant in the Healthy Aging Fair Festival. Chabot College, 25555 Hesperian Blvd., Hayward. Email admin@compassionandchoicesnca.org  

Wednesday, August 17 1:30 P.M. BerkeleyCommission on Aging. Meets on 3^rd Wednesday at South Berkeley Senior Center. Check to confirm (510) 981-5178.  

Saturday, August 20 11 A.M. Landlord /Tenant Counseling. Central Berkeley Public Library. Also Sept. 17.  

Tuesday, August 23 3-4 P.M. Berkeley Public Library, Central. Tea and Cookies. A book club for people who want to share the books they have read. Monthly on the 4th Tuesday. (510)981-6100.  

Wednesday, August 24 1:30-2:30 P.M. Alameda County Library, Albany branch. Great Books Discussion Group. Eliot's The Hollow Men and The Waste Land. Meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Facilitated discussion. Come to one meeting, or all meetings. Books are available at the Library. Parking! 526-3720 x 16.  

Wednesday, September 7 10 A.M.-noon North Berkeley Senior Center Advisory Council meeting. Public invited. (510) 981-5190.  

Wednesday, September 21 1:30 P.M. BerkeleyCommission on Aging. Meets on 3^rd Wednesday at South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis. Check to confirm (510) 981-5178.  

Tuesday, Sept 27 3 P.M. Tea and Cookies. Book club. Central Berkeley Public Library.  

Wednesday, September 28 1:30-2:30 P.M. Alameda County Library, Albany branch. Great Books Discussion Group. Morrison's Song of Solomon. Meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Facilitated discussion. Come to one meeting, or all meetings. Books are available at the Library. Parking! 526-3720 x 16.  

Helen Rippier Wheeler can be reached at pen136@dslextreme.com. Please, no phone calls.

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It would not be truthful to say a person with a major mental illness can have and do all the things that someone without a mental illness can. A major mental illness has ramifications that affect all parts of a person’s existence. “Why me?” is a commonly asked question, of a person who feels that he or she has been dealt an unfair hand by fate. One could come up with many answers to such a question. In fact it seems we are all dealt cards that are not “chosen” but are random, and it is up to each person to play those cards to the best of their ability. If you believe in God, it doesn’t have to include the narcissistic belief that God likes you better than someone else. Some people get cancer, a physical deformity, or could be given an apparently “perfect” body and then could later become a burn victim. There is not necessarily any “reason” why life gave someone a mental illness and someone else, not. (Neither is it a sign that you have done something wrong and are being punished for it.) 

A major mental illness may severely limit a person’s ability to generate income during part or all of the normally productive years. Not having a good income for many years of one’s lifespan then affects many other areas in life. Without income, it will be impossible to do many of the things one’s peers are doing, such as travel, buying a house, raising children. Many persons with severe mental illness could be lucky to have a checking account with a few hundred dollars in it. Without income and the ability that comes from it to keep up with one’s peers, we may have a feeling of being left behind. 

We may feel that we are denied the good things in life that other adults are getting. This can create a lot of grief. It can create bitterness when we see non-disabled relatives having moderate or great success in life, and when we then compare this to our own apparently lesser progress. 

A mental illness can cause a person to lose friends, or to never make friends in the first place. Once again, one of the doors to the good things in life has been slammed shut in our faces. A man in his twenties, thirties, or forties who has a chronic mental illness is not usually perceived as an appealing friend. People may be afraid to associate with us for fear of our unpopularity rubbing off on them. (Due to the nature of how groups function, this fear of unpopularity through association is not unfounded.) At the onset of a mental illness, whether this happens to someone in adolescence, early adulthood, or middle age, we may find that people who once were previously our friends will now have nothing to do with us. This can cause anguish. 

We may be stuck with going to treatment programs in which we are supervised and managed, and in which we are perceived and treated as a child in the body of an adult. I once went to a program in which an intern therapist assumed I was unable to make a cake from a cake mix without assistance. On the other hand, someone familiar with me recently hired me to diagnose and repair a laser printer—which I did without a problem. (Electronics is my other career.) The assumption that because we have a mental illness we are dumber than a young psychology student is not a valid assumption. 

So far, I have included limitations from a mental illness which are social or societal. The illnesses also limit a person’s existence through direct biological causes. For some persons with mental illness it can be difficult to go out into public places and deal with crowds. Due to the illness as well as the medication, an afflicted person’s ability to drive a car could be limited or nonexistent. The ability to multitask in a pressured situation is particularly out of the question for the writer of this column. Many persons with mental illness have a greater need for peace and quiet than do the non-afflicted. Also due to both the medications and the illnesses, the ability to read books is limited; or reading can require more effort. Due to medications and due to the illnesses, there may be a greater need for “comfort food.” 

Some persons with mental illness, rather than dealing with the frustrations of their life in a straightforward manner, turn to alcohol and illegal drugs. This bad decision only leads to negative consequences, and ultimately compounds the limiting factors in life. 

Some persons with a mental illness also have restrictions that are mandated by the court system. Conservatorship and other court orders are intended for those who can not handle their affairs in a self-directed manner. The limits that exist in the lives of persons with mental illness may seem daunting and unfair. However, when one door is closed, it could be an indication that another one should be knocked on. Choosing a purpose to your existence, one which is challenging but realistically attainable, is one way of dealing with the cards you are dealt.

Should it have slipped your memory, July 4th is just around the bend. With it comes the activities one associates with this favorite American holiday --especially the Oakland Municipal Band Concert, beginning at 1 p.m. at Lakeside Park. So bring our picnic and lawn chairs to the park to hear the opening concert, "All Sparkling Red, White and Blue." 

Horse lovers will be thrilled to learn that the world famous Lipizzaner Stallions will present their exciting show at the Oracle Arena, Saturday, July 9th, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., with half-priced tickets for children and seniors. (800) 745-3000. 

The always delightful Contra Costa Civic Theatre is showing "Gypsy", the Steven Sondheim musical about the celebrated strip teaser, Gypsy Rose Lee. Contra Costa Civic Theatre, El Cerrito, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through July 17. $15 - 24. (510) 524-9132. 

If you're opera-minded, get yourself over to the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, where Verdi's "La Traviata" will be performed July 9, 12, 15, and 17. (925) 943-SHOW. 

Another opera offering will be at the Hillside Club on July 10: two one-acts from Verismo Opera, Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi, at 3 p.m. on the afternoon of Sunday, July 10, with Eliza O'Malley and Fred Winthrop.(510) 644-2967. brownpapertickets.com 

For an outdoor performance on a warm evening, why not attend the classic musical, "Oliver", which opens July 8 at the Summer Session, Joaquin Miller Park? (925) 531-9597. 

Drop in on the Alameda South Shore Center on the 4th of July, for its Motordudes Zydeco Concert starting at 3 p.m., with dancing from 5 p.m. - 7 p.m., every Saturday, a free party with free parking! Corner of Park and Otis. (925) 974-0015. 

If you're into jazz, the Stanford Jazz Festival is celebrating its 40th Anniversary with a guest list that's out of sight. It will perform through August 6th at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium. (650) 725-2787. 

Does Flamenco dancing set your heart racing? Then by all means take in the Flamenco $50 Buffet Dinner and Show at Zio Fraedo's July 8, 7 p.m., 611 Gregory Lane, Pleasant Hill. (925) 933-9091. 

"Maestro's Enchantment", starring Joan Baez and Yevgeniy Voronin ( we haven't heard of him either), produced and performed at Teatro-Zinzanni in S.F. (415) 781-7800. 

A more modest offering is Tom Dudzick's comedy,"King O' the Moon", playing at Concord's Willow Theatre in the Willows Shopping Center through July 17th. "Winks with pain and winks with joy", says the Chicago Sun-Time. (925) 798-1300. 

It might be mentioned here that the Emeryville Senior Center lists some very attractive day tours in July -- the Gilroy Garlic Festival on July 30th (You haven't lived until you've had garlic ice cream!); the De Young Museum on Tuesday, July 5th for the Picasso Exhibit; and the Delta Discovery Cruise on Thursday, July 21st. 

We suggest that you ask to receive announcements of the Emeryville Senior Center's very worthwhile trips. (510) 596-3730. 

You say there's not much of interest going on in the Bay Area over the July 4th weekend. Think again!