A group advocating for the protection of coast redwood trees in California and the state Department of Parks and Recreation are partnering to provide free admission on the day after Thanksgiving to 49 redwood state parks, some of which are in the Bay Area, the group's spokeswoman said. -more-

A Report on Berkeley’s “Affordable Housing 101” session, Nov. 14, 2015

It all began with the admonishment that this was to be a “learning session.” Well and good. But the student doesn’t always learn what the teacher proposes to teach. That is the risk, the “double edged sword” lurking in all propaganda.

We learned the familiar scale of income levels, for whom "affordable" means paying no more than 30% of a family’s income for housing. We learned that half of Berkeley’s renters are low income (generally those people earning below 80% of Area Median Income). And we learned that, from 2000 to 2015, the percentage of income spent on rent for extremely low income families has gone from 60% to 80%. There’s not much left for food and clothes.

Then we learned about the difficulties of financing affordable housing. Since corporate developers don’t make enough money on low rent buildings, it is up to non-profits to provide them. And they need funding. While 1400 affordable units had been built in this city over the last 25 years, that rate has not been maintained because the federal government has cut funding for such enterprises.

Berkeley, as a city, seems to be proud of its "learning" processes. This meeting was one of a series, in which it complimented itself on providing these chances to participate to the people. Prior meetings, complete with “pop-up” tents and tables, were set up to poll and survey the neighborhood (the Adeline corridor), to find out what the residents wanted. There was money involved. The city’s “Idea Center” that ran these events did so on a $750,000 grant from ABAG and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The purpose was to give the "populace" a voice.

What was lacking was how that "voice" translated into actual plans for the development of the area. No mechanism was described whereby the people would gain a seat at the planning tables, at which they could actually shape the course of things to come. But still, it was called "participation." The issues involved, from the neighborhood’s perspective, in these prior meetings, were clear. Affordable housing, no dislocation, no evictions; at several meetings, that was summed up as a call for a moratorium on market rate housing until the need for affordable had been satisfied. -more-

A small item showed up in The Berkeley Daily Planet around the same time as the Mayor Tom Bates team methodically passed their law criminalizing having more than two square feet of belongings in public.

A local artist had all of his work stolen from a storage facility. He had property stolen as well, property which apparently showed up later for re-sale at Moe’s Books and Amoeba Music on Telegraph Avenue. But his original artwork, a colorful collection including unique prints and monographs perhaps without the same immediate re-sale value appear to be gone forever.

Councilmember Linda Maio of District One told the whole town all summer “they can put their stuff in parks, they can sleep in parks, they can hang out in parks” to excuse her two square foot sidewalk law, generating a park-protective backlash that she used to grease the way to criminalizing more obvious attributes of homelessness with the usual sweeteners; non-existent bathrooms, storage, and services.

People who attended the overflowing City Council meeting were treated to a letter from the business (oh, yes, it is a business) run by Jack Petranker called the Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages which claimed their business (yes, it is a business) was down because of the terrible homeless people across the street whom they're not sure but might be stealing bicycles and are just so icky anyway. -more-

In the recent Democratic Presidential Debate, Bernie Sanders was right to hold Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire for her hasty, short-sighted decision to topple Saddam Hussein of Iran and Gaddafi of Libya. Her glib response that it was ‘a mistake’ is a gross understatement. Neither Hussein nor Gaddafi were an existential threat to the US. Their removal has plunged the whole Middle East into utter chaos. Sanders was also right to condemn ‘regime change’ as a core foreign US foreign policy objective. It has been an unmitigated disaster in destabilizing so many countries in the world. Western powers, most notably the US, Canada, France, the UK and Israel have flooded the Middle East, with billions of dollars in weapons sales. The US sold Saudi Arabia over $30 billion in F-15 Boeing fighter jets and Lockheed F-16 to bomb Yemen and Syria. The Emirates will be receiving a fleet of Predator drones to run spying missions. France has just completed a $10 billion contract with Saudi Arabia. -more-

I’m going to try to explain why, from a social justice perspective, the proposals in item 28 perpetuate the country’s history of racism, particularly against African Americans and Latinos. -more-

How they do it in Santa Cruz: Fighting a big corporation to save a community garden -more-

Barfing it up again: Why Are Redditors and a Cyber Bully Trying to Take Over San Francisco's Sierra Club? -more-

France and the free world are in mourning following the horrible Paris massacre on November 13 by at least seven gunmen, killing 129 and wounding another 352, 99 critically. -more-

Four years ago, US Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden; many Americans believed Al Qaida had been broken and the terrorist threat eliminated. The November 13th Paris Massacre demonstrated that terrorism has a new face: ISIL – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Where should the US do? -more-

Anxiety, that knot in your gut or that giddiness in your spine, isn't always a villain. Sometimes, your body is trying to tell you something. The message could be essential, or it could be erroneous. There is no absolute rule concerning whether you should push past anxiety, or heed it and back off. -more-

Physician- assisted suicide in California

Governor Jerry Brown has signed a measure allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to terminally ill patients who want to hasten their deaths. The new law is modeled after one that went into effect in 1997 in Oregon, where last year 105 people took their lives with drugs prescribed for that purpose. The California assisted suicide law will permit physicians to provide lethal prescriptions to mentally competent adults who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and face the expectation that they will die within six months. The law will take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns its special session on healthcare, which may not be until 2016. It is also allowed in Washington, Vermont and Montana, although in Montana it was by a court decision. -more-

If, as the saying goes, brevity is the soul of wit, then how astonishing is it that Richard Wagner’s comic-opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg somehow manages to be witty in spite of a running-time of over five hours. Of brevity, of succinctness, Wagner knew nothing. As in all his operas, here Wagner rambles on as if he had all the time in the world – and his audience’s world --at his beck and call. He belabors every dramatic issue and even manages to belabor some of the admittedly beautiful musical issues he explores in Die Meistersinger. Yet, somehow, Wagner brings it off admirably in this opera. To this day, Die Meistersinger remains Wagner’s most accessible and most popularly acclaimed opera. -more-

Noted harpsichordist Richard Eggar led the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in four of the six Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. I attended the Saturday evening concert, November 14, at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church. Before the concert began, Richard Eggar provided droll commentary, noting that these concertos were finished in 1721 and immediately sent off to the nobleman who had commissioned them, Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg. Apparently, the Margrave did not think highly of them, if indeed he even looked at the scores, which he filed away in his library. Upon the Margrave’s death in 1734, Bach’s scores were sold off in a job lot with a miscellaneous collection of music. Bach’s sons were not aware that their father’s Brandenburg Concertos even existed. -more-

African music’s superstar Youssou N’Dour came to a packed Zellerbach Hall with his band, Super Étoile de Dakar, on Saturday, November 7. Now 56 years old, Youssou N’Dour began performing at the age of 12 and became one of Africa’s most popular musicians in the 1970s, subsequently achieving international recognition as a musician and cultural ambassador of his native Senegal. Singing in Wolof, Senegal’s principal language, as well as French, and English, Youssou N’Dour draws on the West African griot tradition of praise singing and oral history. His music is a fusion of mbalax (a polyrhythmic West African dance music,) Cuban rumba, jazz, reggae, and soul. With his powerful, high-pitched griot voice and his charismatic stage-presence, Youssou N’Dour was named by Rolling Stone magazine as « the world’s most famous singer. » He was the subject of the filmed documentary Youssou N’Dour : I Bring What I Love, about Senegal’s divided reaction to his Grammy Award-winning album Egypt, a deeply spiritual album dedicated to a more tolerant view of Islam. In 2012, Youusou N’Dour assumed the office of Senegal’s Minister of Tourism and Culture. -more-

"I'd like to stand by the sea ... " -more-