Three public meetings will be held on allocation of Measure WW funding for three neighborhood parks. Strawberry Creek Park will be the subject of the first meeting scheduled for Wednesday January 21 at 6:30 PM in the Green Room of the Corp Yard at 1326 Allston Way.

Willard Park Play Area will be discussed on Saturday January 24 at 10 AM at the Corp Yard, followed by the Marin Circle meeting on Wednesday January 28 at 6:30 PM at the Live Oak Park Community Center, 1301 Shattuck Avenue at Berryman. -more-

NAM Editor's Note: In the past decade, the police department in Richmond, Calif. has undergone a dramatic transformation. Spearheaded by an openly-gay and white chief in charge of policing this largely African American and Latino city, the changes are now bearing fruit, with crime down and trust between officers and the residents they are meant to protect on the rise. As departments nationwide look for ways to improve community ties in the wake of police killings in Ferguson and New York, Richmond stands as a promising template.

RICHMOND, Calif. – Richmond’s police department is undergoing something of a renaissance these days, thanks in part to decades of reform that have moved the department from its longstanding enforcement-driven model to one that focuses more on building trust with the public. -more-

it's hard to believe in the daytime
there where the brother was hit
shot like a dog by the dumpster
this was some serious shit
kissed by some fool with a shotgun
arguing over some buy
people just act like it's natural
everyone wants to get high

-more-

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, a small number of environmental activists from West Berkeley met in a local café for the purpose of taking the next step in putting an end to air pollution in their neighborhood. West Berkeley has long faced various forms of health threat from industry in that area, principally from Hanson Asphalt and Pacific Steel Casting. -more-

You give Councilman Jesse Arreguin far too much credit in your January 16 editorial ("Berkeley panels to discuss police issues on Saturday").

Arreguin does not propose to reign in excessive force by the police department.

Arreguin proposes to legitimize and indemnify the use of police violence to suppress dissent.

As you noted Arreguin has placed two items on the council's agenda. One of these calls for an independent investigation of BPD's response to protesters on December 6. The other item proposes to update the City's standing orders to the police department regarding so-called crowd control.

The outcomes are predictable, should these items pass. -more-

While no religious groups are immune to violence, there is clearly a greater propensity of violent outrage from Islamist extremists. To murder innocent people, shouting “God is Great’ is surely an affront to Islam and the Creator whom they claim to worship.

However, before we drench ourselves in a false sense of virtue we need to view past events to better understand how we, in the Western world, might have stirred the collective outrage in Muslim countries. -more-

In an act of enormous courage, more and more Israelis are refusing to perform their mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Many of those who refuse are subject to opprobrium and portrayed as treacherous. Mimicking the playbook of former President Bush – “you are either with us or against us” a popular bumper sticker reads “A real Israeli doesn’t dodge the draft.”

The strong reaction of the government is indicative that their tight control of young Israelis is weakening. Open letters of ‘refusenicks” were published by a group of high schoolers, veterans of the intelligence Unit 8200, alumni and former staff members of the highly prestigious Israel Arts and Sciences Academy. -more-

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities,” set amidst the French Revolution in 1789. So might begin a tale of 2015 where the US economy is booming, yet citizens feel hopeless; where we are continually presented with technical wonders, but elect fools to Congress. The paradoxical tone of 2015 should not be surprising because Americans are laboring under the stress of four wars. This is an opportunity for liberals. -more-

Persons with a psychotic type disorder have brains that more easily accept thoughts as being facts. A person with a schizophrenic brain does not have the same ability, compared to someone non-afflicted, to know what is real versus what is merely a thought. -more-

"Look up one day and all you got left is what you ain't spending."

The scene is the station office of a jitney outfit in Pittsburgh's Hill District, 1977, where the drivers sit around waiting for a call to pick-up, talking, arguing, playing checkers ... The rhythm of mostly street speech is cut only by the ringing of the phone, the invariable answer: "Car service"and— an occasional message for Shealy, the neighborhood numbers runner, who comes and goes ...

It's 'Jitney,' the eighth of August Wilson's 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle, a century of African American life, decade by decade, as performed by the Lower Bottom Playaz of West Oakland, directed by their founder, Ayodele Nzinga, in what was a good two-weekend run at the end of the holidays at the Flight Deck on Broadway in Uptown Oakland. -more-

Noir City, the annual festival of film noir at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco will be running from this weekend through to next, January 16-25, with a dozen double (or triple) bills, priced at $10 per program—or a $120 "passport" for all programs, plus opening night reception with refreshments and entertainment at 6 p. m. -more-

Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony’s Music Director, presided over a 70^th birthday for himself in a gala concert Thursday, January 15, 2015, at Davies Hall. As might be expected, this concert came up short on great music but long on schtick. What can one expect from a concert whose featured work for six pianos and orchestra was sketched out by Franz Liszt in 1837 but apparently never com-pleted and never performed by Liszt in its intended version. This work, Hexameron, or “Grand Bravura Variations on the March from Bellini’s I Puritani, for Six Pianos,” was ‘reconstructed’, as it is said, by Robert Linn from orchestral cues in Liszt’s solo piano scores. Michael Tilson Thomas may well have been the first to organize a performance of the six piano and orchestra version in a 1971 concert in Boston. MTT also led San Francisco Symphony in a similar performance of Hexameron in a 1985 concert here. More about this work later in this review. -more-

Compared with his later St. Matthew Passion (1729), Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion (1724) may today seem somewhat stodgy. But to the congregation of St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig who heard the St. John Passion performed on Good Friday of 1724, this work must have seemed revolutionary. Only recently appointed Kappelmeister in Leipzig, (after this post was turned down by Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner), Bach no doubt sought to show Leipzig what he could do; so for his inaugural work in Leipzig he transformed the musical account of Christ’s Passion from plainchant and an occasional chorale sung by the congregation to a multidimensional work with choruses, recitatives, arias, and chorales. -more-