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The “tap-tap-tap” you hear coming from the shops that line some of the narrow streets in Croix des Bosquets is the sound of artisans pounding nails into metal, crafting the recycled iron mermaids or butterflies that have given the bustling, dusty town, just 15 minutes northeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, its reputation for metal sculpture, says Jennifer Pantaléon, whose nonprofit, Zanmi Lakay, brings Haitian arts and crafts to buyers in the U.S. 

Haiti is just one of the countries whose crafts will be showcased at the this year’s East Bay Sanctuary’s International Holiday Crafts Fair Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 1 and 2), 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way.  

The fair will feature Kurdish rugs, textiles from Guatemala, and various crafts from cooperatives in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Palestine. 

Pantaléon says that while most of the crafts featured at the fair have not gone through a lengthy and sometimes expensive fair trade certification process, vendors vouch for the fact that the products were made under safe conditions and that the artists have been paid a fair price. 

“The U.N. soldiers [occupying Haiti] haggle—we don’t haggle over the price,” says Pantaléon, whose nonprofit funds job training and education for street children and former street children in Haiti. Pantaléon pointed out that these days there are few tourists in Haiti to buy the artists’ creations.  

Palestinian embroidery 

The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) is also hosting an international fair. The event is next Saturday, Dec. 8, noon-6 p.m. at St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. and features crafts from Palestine and rugs from Turkey. 

Among the offerings will be embroidered blouses, shawls, bags and wallets from the Women’s Embroidery Collective in the Dheisheh Refugee camp in the West Bank, Deborah Agre, MECA development director, told the Planet. 

“So many men are unemployed—the women use traditional crafts to support their families,” Agre said, adding that MECA has helped to build the structure in which the women work.  

Ceramics, olive oil, and olive oil soap from various parts of Palestine will also be available at the fair. 

KPFA too 

For locals willing to cross the bridge—or BART it—to “the city,” the annual KPFA crafts fair, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Dec. 8 and 9, includes numerous fair-trade buying opportunities among the more than 200 juried artists and craftspeople. 

The fair is at the Concourse Exhibition Center at Eighth and Brannan streets. Entry fee is $10 and $6 for seniors and disabled; under 17 are free. Shuttles run from Civic Center BART. 

Jan Etre, event coordinator, says sales by women’s cooperatives in Guatemala, Thailand, India, Napal and Haiti, whose crafts will be available at the fair, helps keep rural populations from migrating to overcrowded cities and keeps the women from having to sustain their families through prostitution. 

Dreams on Looms will be at the fair to showcase place mats, runners and pillowcases from northeast India. They are produced by highly skilled but low-income women weavers earning living wages and “hand-woven on bamboo looms by co-operatives of women belonging to the Bodo, Dimasa and Karbee tribes of Assam, residing in the Brahmaputra valley and nestled in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas,” according to the Dreams on Looms website.  

The KPFA fair also features live local music, including jazz artist Rhonda Benin, who performs at 4 p.m. Saturday. See www.kpfa.org/craftsfair/ for the complete lineup. 

St. Joseph the Worker 

For those who want to understand more about the formal fair-trade process and shop for fair-trade goods at the same time, St. Joseph the Worker’s Social Justice Committee is hosting a “Fair Trade Fair” featuring Laurie Lyser of TransFair, who will explain Fair Trade certification and show a short film.  

The event is at 7 p.m., Dec. 7 at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson Street. The venue is not wheelchair accessible. 

Fair-trade items available for purchase will be Divine Chocolate from TransFair, Palestinian Olive Oil from the Jewish Voice for Peace and coffee from Just Coffee, which calls itself “Coffee with a Conscience.” 

Bill Joyce, of the Social Justice Committee, says that the coffee co-op in Chiapas is able to offer work there, so that workers do not have to immigrate to the U.S. Joyce has visited the processing operation on the Arizona border. “It’s a two-car garage sort of thing,” he said. 

Elephant Pharmacy  

Al Briscoe, director of marketing for Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave., says among his favorite fair-trade gift items are colorful finger puppets from Peru—four-inch-tall lions, giraffes, elephants and more made from 100 percent alpaca wool. 

“They’re super soft and have great detail,” he told the Planet. Full-size puppets are also available. They’re marketed by Playful World, which brokers fair-trade agreements with the artisans. 

All officially certified fair-trade items in the store are noted, Briscoe said, adding that they carry some items transitioning to fair trade that are not yet certified. 

Other fair-trade items on the Elephant Pharmacy shelves are silk bags made from recycled saris, chocolate and coffee. 

Global Exchange  

The nonprofit Global Exchange store at 2840 College Ave. specializes in fair trade and carries items from 60 different countries. Assistant manager Marilyn Nebolsky especially likes the bamboo salad bowls from Vietnam. 

The artisans get paid a fair wage and the product is made from bamboo, a sustainable, easily renewable crop, she said. 

Take Nothing Home (but a paper) 

Rev. Douglas Moss of the Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St., El Cerrito invites the public to bring nothing home from the Dec. 1 sale (1-5 p.m.) but a gift certificate showing a purchase of cows, goats, gloves or a night in a shelter. 

“You’ll go home with no stuff in your hands,” Moss told the Planet on Tuesday. Many times gift giving becomes an obligation, but it should be a joy, he said. That’s where the certificate of purchase comes in. 

Instead of buying your grandmother talcum powder, you can spend $11 for milk and snacks for children in the Gaza Strip. Eleven dollars will also buy a rocket stove for use in Haiti—the stove uses half the wood a regular stove would. 

For $5,000 you can purchase two cows, two sheep, two oxen and two water buffalo destined for people in various countries around the globe. 

There will also be gifts to address local needs. One can purchase a night at YEAH, a youth shelter in Berkeley, or gloves for Friends of Five Creeks, which maintains local waterways. 

“It’s a way to do something and feel really good about it,” Moss said. 

Once known for tolerance toward the downtrodden, Berkeley turned a corner Tuesday night, advocates for the homeless and mentally ill say, when the City Council voted to give police greater power to give citations to people lying on city sidewalks. 

The business community, on the other hand, claimed victory in the eight-month fight to pass Mayor Tom Bates' Public Commons for Everyone Initiative, saying the measure begins to address the inappropriate street behavior of those who trample on the right of shoppers to enjoy the public commons and for merchants to earn their living. 

While the public filled the Council Chambers—with most expressing opposition to the proposed laws making it easier for police to cite people lying on the sidewalk—little resistance to the initiative’s increased restrictions on smoking was expressed.  

And most who spoke publicly also favored provisions for enhanced services to chronically homeless people, to be paid for by raising parking meter fees to collect an estimated $1 million in revenue. (Specifics on how the city manager’s office arrived at the $1 million figure will not be available until next week.) 

However, several speakers pointed out that services promised in the initiative, particularly increasing the availability of public toilets and funding supportive housing, could have been delivered without the tie to punitive measures. 

For attorney Osha Neumann, linking services with restrictions was like an abusive husband saying to his wife: “I'll support you, but you have to accept this abuse,” he told the council. 

Councilmember Max Anderson said no new laws are needed. “Some of these [services] could have been accomplished a long time ago ... We have to balance this some way so we don’t have to criminalize people to get them into these programs,” he said. 

The council vote on the initiative was divided into three parts: 

• A resolution that requires one warning (down from two) and no complaint to enforce a ban on lodging in public places—Berkeley police interpret “lodging” as lying down in a sleeping bag, sleeping, or having goods clustered around oneself—with enforcement a low priority between 10 p.m. and 6 p.m.” passed 5-3-1, with Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli, Betty Olds, Gordon Wozniak and Darryl Moore voting in favor, Councilmembers Dona Spring, Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson voting to oppose and Councilmember Linda Maio abstaining. 

• An ordinance that expands the number of commercial districts in which lying on the sidewalk is prohibited was approved 6-2-1, with Bates, Moore, Maio, Capitelli, Olds and Wozniak voting in favor, Worthington and Spring opposed and Anderson abstaining. 

• A third vote approved greater restrictions on where people can smoke also passed and, in concept, a 25 cent per hour meter fee hike to pay for various services for homeless persons. This vote was 8-0 with Anderson abstaining. 

The business community was represented at the meeting by the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Berkeley Association, the Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District and the North Shattuck Association.  

“Berkeley for a long time has tried to build a very big tent. We’re now in a situation where we’re having difficulty with parts of that tent,” Chamber CEO Ted Garrett told the council. “This [initiative] isn’t a panacea, but it’s the beginning of a win-win situation for everyone concerned.” 

Chamber President Roland Peterson, also executive director of the Telegraph Avenue BID, had lobbied for harsher laws, including one that would have punished people for prolonged sitting on the sidewalk.  

“There really are no new laws in this,” he told the council. “There are fine tunings on how it’s going to be enforced … This is one step in a much larger process. We’re going to be coming back to see how this has worked.” 

Wozniak blamed the stagnating business climate on Telegraph and downtown on the inappropriate behavior of people on the street. “On Telegraph and Shattuck, we have a very high commercial vacancy rate. We’re losing revenue. It’s very important that we do something about the problematic street behavior,” he said. 

Several Telegraph Avenue merchants, however, told the Planet in earlier interviews that they believed the numerous vacancies were caused by high rents, difficulties in getting city permits and the economy, including the bankruptcy of Tower Records and the nationwide scaling-back of the Gap stores, rather than the behavior of street people. 

Worthington told council colleagues that linking people lying on the sidewalk to under-performing business did not make sense. 

“When I hear business owners talking about problematic street behavior, they’re usually talking about someone standing and cursing or gesticulating wildly,” Worthington said. “Ironically, none of the measures here address that.”  

People aren’t afraid that someone lying down is going to hit them “and they don’t feel scared when they see somebody at nighttime sleeping,” Worthington added. “So these solutions to problematic street behavior—it’s inconceivable that they could work. None of those things address problematic street behavior.” 

Calling the initiative “disingenuous,” Kokavulu Lumukanda, a formerly homeless member of the Homeless Commission, called on the council not to support the initiative.  

“The homeless need more services and permanent housing and not coercion or punitive measures,” he said. 

Proposed Services Budget for Public Commons Initiative 

$1 million — to be raised with $.25 cent per hour increase in meter fees 

Public toilets: $142,000 

Supportive housing/outreach to chronically homeless: $350,000 

Transition age program: $100,000 

SSI Benefits advocacy: $78,000 

Centralized homeless intake system: $60,000 

Host program (guides on Telegraph/Shattuck to help tourists, report 

inappropriate behavior): $200,000 

Public Seating: $60,000 

Signs/outreach for smoking ban: $10,000 

—from Nov. 27 city staff report 

While enforcement for new restrictions against those lying on the sidewalk and smoking in commercial areas will likely begin within six weeks, new services—lauded by supporters as an integral part of the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative passed by the City Council Tuesday—will take more time. 

Police spokesperson Lt. Wesley Hester told the Planet Wednesday that the resolution making it easier to cite people for public “lodging” will kick in only after the police chief gives officers specific directions for implementation.  

The resolution amends local guidelines for enforcing a state law prohibiting “lodging” to require one warning and no complaint, with enforcement a low priority between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.” (The original resolution required two warnings; the citation was complaint-driven.) 

Attorney Osha Neumann told the council Tuesday that police were not waiting for the council to approve the new laws to crack down on the homeless. He alleged that they began as soon as the council approved the concept of the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative (PCEI) in June. 

Neumann spoke of three clients he said had been wrongly cited by police.  

A disabled woman who uses a wheelchair was cited for loitering near a school in Willard Park (next to the middle school) during the day, he said. A young man sitting against the locked gate of an empty store on a public sidewalk on Telegraph Avenue was cited for trespassing, he said.  

And a 62-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair, is legally blind, has been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, diabetes, arthritis, cancer and schizophrenia and is in constant pain, was cited for trespassing as she was sitting in a doorway of an empty storefront on University Avenue, Neumann said. 

The council had requested but was unable to obtain documentation on the frequency of quality-of-life citations, prosecutions and convictions—and the city manager’s office denied the Planet’s similar Public Records Act request—saying it was not possible to get that information from the Berkeley Police Department’s computerized records system. 

At the meeting, Councilmember Linda Maio repeatedly asked the police representative and city attorney how the prohibition against “lodging,” a state law, was implemented in Berkeley. She said sleeping people should not be harassed and wanted to be sure “people would still be able to sleep in sleeping bags.” 

The response was non-committal. “There would be no change in how we apply the law,” responded acting City Attorney Zach Cowan.  

“The main difference is that we could act without a citizen complaint,” Capt. Eric Gustafson, sitting in for the police chief, added. 

Maio pressed for specifics: “Under what circumstances would you invoke this law?” she asked.  

Gustafson said he could not think of an example, and Maio said: “We’re being asked to change something that is broken, but we don’t know what is broken about it. Why is it that we would disturb someone who is sleeping in a doorway?” 

The Berkeley Police Department Training and Information Bulletin Number 220 says: “…647(j) [the state law prohibiting lodging] applies when there is probable cause to believe that the person is lodging outside for the entire night on public property … Factors to consider in deciding whether to cite for violation of PC 647 (j) include whether the person: is on or in a sleeping bag or bedroll; is sleeping; has other belonging[s] clustered around and/or otherwise appears to be staying for the entire night; appears or is reported to have been at the location for an extended period of time.” 

Asked by the Planet for specifics about how officers currently implement prohibitions against lodging, Hester said it is up to an officer’s discretion.  

Asked to explain enforcement as “low priority,” Hester gave an example: if a person is seen “lodging” and if a robbery is in progress, the officer will respond to the robbery. 

New Ordinances 

The ordinance expanding prohibitions against smoking to larger areas within commercial districts, in parks and near health facilities, child care facilities and senior centers, and the ordinance prohibiting lying in all commercial areas will get a second reading at the Dec. 11 council meeting and take effect 30 days later. 

To pay for new services, new revenue—an anticipated $1 million annually—will be raised from a 25 cent per hour increase in parking meter rates. The council will consider an ordinance to that effect in January. Lauren Lempert, consultant on the PCEI, told the Planet Wednesday she expects meters to be recalibrated by March.  

To approve new services, the council must pass specific ordinances or resolutions and then approve contracts with vendors. In some instances, vendors will bid on the services.  

Lempert said she thinks increased advocacy for homeless persons to get disability payments, Medi-Cal and food stamps (for which the council has tentatively set aside $78,000) could begin soon after the council formally approves the services, given that the Homeless Action Center already does this work and can be asked to expand it. 

Lempert said expanding bathroom hours could happen in January or February (for which $142,000 is set aside) and new supportive housing for 10 to 15 of the city’s most difficult to house chronically homeless people (at $350,000) could be in place by April. 

Services that will go out to bid will take longer to implement. With council approval, they could include hiring “hosts” (at $200,000) to watch commercial areas for inappropriate behavior and help tourists and increasing public seating and trash receptacles (at $60,000). 

In a report to the council on PCEI, Lempert referred to the possible establishment of a community court where people would not be criminalized for acts of lying on the sidewalk, lodging, smoking or other quality-of-life offenses, but instead be allowed or required to perform community service and go into mandatory drug/alcohol treatment programs. The report does not include a formal proposal or costs for the court. 

As the new laws kick in, opponents of the Public Commons initiative promised to continue to fight it, with local resident Carol Denney telling the council to expect a “lie-in” on the sidewalk at the Downtown Berkeley Association offices. 

A vehement burst of community protest compelled the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) to postpone permitting BioFuel Oasis to establish a filling station at 1441 Ashby Ave. Thursday. 

More than fifty people turned up to voice a position on the controversial project, which proposes to displace Kandy’s Detail—a black-owned car wash business—and restore the historic use of the site as an automobile fueling station. It previously was used for selling petroleum-based gasoline. 

The board voted unanimously to give property owner Craig Hertz, current tenant Kandy Alford and BioFuel Oasis two months to reach an agreement about shared use of the site. 

While proponents of the all-women cooperative BioFuel Oasis, currently located at 2465 4th St., stressed the station’s need to relocate to a larger site and the benefits of biodiesel automotive fuel, neighbors complained of prejudice against the black community, and said that the city’s planning department had given preferential treatment to the proposed new tenants. 

Co-founded by Jennifer Radtke and Sara Hope Smith from a community project in 2003, the business is the first biofueling station in the East Bay.  

The proposed filling station would include an above-ground 6,000 gallon fuel storage tank. The four existing driveways and two fuel pump islands—which allow up to four vehicles to be fueled simultaneously—would be retained.  

“We want to transform the site into an oasis-like setting,” said David Arkin, project architect. “Our model is Cafe Roma.” 

Arkin added that the business has been forced to move from its current location because of the long wait customers go through. “The two pumps will make the fill up easier,” he said. 

The station’s approximately 2,000 customers will be able to access the pumps from 7 a.m. to midnight. 

Although the owners of the fueling station said that the hours of operation would lead to “more pairs of eyes” in the neighborhood, some board members disagreed. 

“Yes, it would make a difference to have more pairs of eyes but it would also create a different level of vulnerability,” said Deborah Matthews, Mayor Tom Bates’ new appointee to the ZAB. 

Board member Jesse Anthony said that he was worried about the congestion the station would cause at the intersection of Ashby and Sacramento avenues. 

“Don’t you think that’s a wrong place to have a fueling station?” he asked. 

“We have looked and looked and looked,” said Radtke, who like other co-op members calls herself a BioFuel Oasis owner-operator. “Unfortunately there is no other site in Berkeley.” 

Dave Fogarty, the city’s economic development director, said that the other sites available in Berkeley were not zoned for fueling use because of restrictions on auto uses. 

He added that there were virtually no sites available in the city where Kandy Alford could relocate his car wash. “If he did, he would have to comply with new laws regarding waste water disposal, which the existing car wash business is not in compliance with,” Fogarty said. 

According to the Biofuel plan, existing fuel pump canopies would be removed to provide vertical clearance for taller vehicles, and new, taller canopies with solar panel roofs would be constructed on the existing brick columns. Ten on-site parking spaces would be provided. 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted against declaring the site a landmark in June, and advised the applicant to incorporate some of the scalloped beam details from the building and existing island canopies into the new structure. 

“What BioFuel is proposing is fantastic,” said Hertz. “It’s the best thing that happened in and around that area ... It makes economic sense. I have asked Kandy if he wants to move to another place or share the site, but he doesn’t want to do it.” 

Hertz added that Alford was six months behind on his rent and was facing eviction. 

“He was not able to pay his rent because he was in the hospital,” said Pamela Isaacs, who identified herself as a spokesperson for Alford. “He is still sick ... We are not against BioFuel Oasis but we don’t want it in our neighborhood. This is all about gentrification, about getting rid of black businesses.” 

Toya Groves, a member of the Four Corners Association, a neighborhood community group formed to protest the project, said that the project ignored the retention and encouragement of black businesses in South Berkeley and the revitalization of the community’s economic base. 

“It goes against the goals of the South Berkeley Area Plan,” she said. “Kandy’s is a cornerstone of the South Berkeley community which hires and serves the community it is a part of ... You are saying that BioFuel will revive the neighborhood’s economy but they themselves are in a financial bind. The planning department waived fees of up to $8,000 for the proposed project because of financial hardship and even prepared the EIR for them. This is institionalized racism ... It’s splitting two community groups who should be together.” 

Board member Terry Doran called the carwash an “asset to the community.” 

“Do you have any idea of how to make the transition better for Kandy?” asked board member Suzanne Wilson. 

BioFuel oasis owner-operator Margaret Farrow said that no specific ideas had been discussed at this point.

For some, council meetings are drudgery. But for Dimitri Belser, president of the Ed Roberts Campus board of directors, and others who came to Tuesday’s meeting to support the ERC, the session proved to be exactly what they had hoped for. 

“Tonight, that dream [of Ed Roberts Campus] could become a reality,” said Belser, just moments before the unanimous council voted to give $2 million to the project that will house seven nonprofits that serve disabled people, a fitness center for the disabled, and childcare. The campus will be located on the east Ashby BART station parking lot. 

With $4.5 million approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission Wednesday and new funding from BART, the ERC has the $44 million it needs to break ground for the project that has been 12 years in the making. 

Councilmembers expressed concern that they were taking funds originally intended for a sound wall between Aquatic Park and the freeway, but pledged to find new funding for the wall, estimated to cost more than $5 million. 

In other council actions: 

• Councilmember Kriss Worthington withdrew a resolution supporting Metro Lighting workers in a dispute with their employer, saying that he placed it on the agenda with inadequate research. 

• By unanimous vote and without discussion the council gave a $50,000 sole source contract to Build It Green to do the groundwork for a pilot project funded by the city and the Department of Energy to get more homes and businesses to use solar energy. 

Solano Ave. BID 

At around midnight, Susan Boat, owner of the salon Scissors and Comb on Solano Avenue, addressed the council along with several other Solano Avenue business owners, calling for dissolution of the Solano Avenue Business Improvement District. 

They said they were not speaking simply for a handful of business owners, but that they brought with them petitions from 130 business owners calling for the dissolution of the district. The petitions, they said, represent nearly 60 percent of the membership and 59 percent of the value of the assessments. 

The merchants said they object to the involuntary nature of the district and the domination of Albany merchants on the board of the nonprofit—the Solano Avenue Association—that houses the BID. (There was a separate BID board that recently dissolved itself.) 

Economic Development Manager Dave Fogarty said in a phone interview on Thursday that it is up to the City Council to decide if the BID should be dissolved. The item was not on Tuesday’s agenda and, to date, has not been scheduled. 

Berkeley’s tree-sitters and their supporters are getting ready for Sunday’s celebration that will mark the end of the first year of a colorful campus protest. 

The events—slated for 2 to 6 p.m.—come as university officials have announced their plans to cut branches used to provide food, water and other supplies to the arboreal activists. 

“We’ve been getting a lot of interest from the press,” said Doug Buckwald, organizer of Save the Oaks at the Stadium and a plaintiff in the litigation challenging the university’s plans for a grove of California Live Oaks along the western wall of Memorial Stadium. 

“We want everybody to come out,” said Zachary Running Wolf, who started the protest by ascending the trunk of a redwood at the grove on the morning of last year’s Big Game day. 

Running Wolf has been arrested nine times in the intervening months.  

Campus police have been making frequent arrests of tree-sitters and their supporters, racking up five on Thanksgiving day. 

The university has erected two fences around the grove, adding a layer of barbed wire at the top after protesters repeatedly scaled the fence. 

Meanwhile, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller has been deliberating on the legal challenges filed by the city, two environmental groups, the Panoramic Hill Association and an assortment of other plaintiffs, including City Councilmember Dona Spring. 

Councilmember Betty Olds, environmentalist Sylvia McLaughlin and former Mayor Shirley Dean even took their own brief turn in the trees earlier this year, attracting attention from the New York Times and other national media. 

But the student turnout has been small at the Berkeley campus site where the university plans to build a $120 million high -tech gym and office complex. 

In Santa Cruz, a tree-sit launched Nov. 8 has succeeded in attracting larger numbers of students, who are protesting that campus’s Long Range Development Plan and its call for significant increases in students and buildings. 

Word of the university’s intent to cut branches on the edges of the grove surfaced last week, and formal confirmation came in an e-mail sent Monday from the office of the general counsel of the UC Board of Regents. 

The notice, sent by attorney Kelly Drumm, said the decision is “based solely on an assessment of security needs” by UC Berkeley Police Chief Victoria L. Harrison. 

Attorneys Stephan Volker and Michael Lozeau had asked that university officials consult with them before any action was taken, but in the e-mail Drumm said that the chief “believes that discussion of potential police actions in advance of those actions could compromise the effectiveness of those actions and exacerbate an already dangerous situation.” 

City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak met with university officials last week to raise concerns of his constituents that the tree-trimming operations could adversely impact the landmarked Gayley Way streetscape. The street was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose best-known creation is New York City’s Central Park. 

The Student Athlete High Performance Center planned for the western rim of the stadium is one of several projects in what the university calls the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

The legal action now pending in Judge Miller’s court alleges that the environmental documents the regents approved for the gym complex aren’t legally adequate. Another aspect of the challenge centers on alleged violation of the Alquist-Priolo Act, which governs construction on or adjacent to earthquake faults. 

The Hayward Fault, which state and federal geologists have judged the likely source of the Bay Area’s next major earthquake, splits the stadium from end to end. 

Running Wolf said he is challenging the project because he believes the stadium is the site of a Native American burial ground.

The Berkeley Board of Education selected the finalists Monday to fill the post of superintendent for the Berkeley Unified School District. 

The board started the selection process in September after Superintendent Michele Lawrence announced her retirement. Lawrence will step down Feb. 1. 

District spokesperson Mark Coplan said up to six candidates had been picked for interviews scheduled for Dec. 8 and 9. 

Although board vice president John Selawsky said he could not comment on the number of finalists, he described the final pool as diverse. 

“We have some current superintendents in it,” he said. “The goal is to interview them all in a one- or two-day period and then after the board agrees on the finalist to bring that person back for a final interview.” 

Selawsky said the board will announce the new superintendent after visiting the candidate’s current district. He said the announcement will likely be made before the end of the year. 

Some have criticized the board for what they called a secretive selection process. Mission Viejo-based Leadership Associates, the search firm hired by the board to guide the search, and board members have said it was important to keep the search confidential. 

“I continue to have grave concerns about this process,” said Cathy Campbell, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. “I think the board has missed an opportunity to advance a city-wide, community-wide approach to the challenges facing our district by having this closed-door, secret process, rather than a process that opens the door to community input. Three of the most important stakeholders in this district, parents, teachers and students, are completely excluded from any meaningful input into the decision.” 

Michael Miller, coordinator of the group Parents of Children of African Descent, agreed that the search process kept the public marginalized. 

“It’s quite distressing,” he said. “We want not only a qualified individual but someone who can meet the broad needs of our community ... While Michele Lawrence brought her skills in fiscal management at a time when our district was in financial difficulty, we now need a superintendent with the passion, skills, and experience to address issues of race and class and make student achievement the number one priority.” 

Selawsky said confidentiality was imperative for creating a strong pool of candidates. 

“Once it comes down to the final person it’s a different thing,” he said. “All personnel matters are confidential. If current superintendents end up not getting the job then their relationship with their community members get soured ... As a result we have to ensure them confidentiality.” 

Some Latino parents said that there was insufficient notice given to parent groups about the community meetings held in September. 

“There was excellent translation provided, but that was only at one meeting,” said Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, director of Centro Vida, a Berkeley Spanish-immersion preschool, a member of the Berkeley High Governance Council and parent of a Berkeley High junior. “I don’t think a lot of parents are even aware that there is a process underway or that there was an opportunity to talk about what they want in a new superintendent. Communication is the biggest barrier.”

State Schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell appears ready to turn over two more areas of control to the Oakland Unified School District on the recommendation of the Fiscal Crisis & Assistance Management Team (FCMAT), a move that could lead directly to the hiring of a new OUSD superintendent under local control.  

O’Connell’s office has set up a conference in Oakland for Friday morning (today) in which it will “announce the process of returning two additional operational areas to the Oakland Unified School District governing board: Personnel and Facilities.” 

FCMAT, the state funded school intervention organization, issued a report on Wednesday in which it recommended that O’Connell turn over control of those two areas. The state superintendent began controlling all five OUSD operational areas—including finance, community relations and governance, and pupil achievement—following a 2003 state takeover of OUSD resulting from a massive district budget shortfall.  

At that time, the local board lost all power, and the local superintendent, Dennis Chaconas, was fired and replaced by a state administrator hired by O’Connell. 

The FCMAT report also said that it was close to a recommendation of return to local control to OUSD in a third area: pupil achievement. Control over a fourth area—community relations and governance—was returned by O’Connell to the local board earlier this year on FCMAT’s recommendation from two earlier reports. 

Clearly ebullient OUSD board member Gary Yee described the leaps in FCMAT’s assessments of OUSD’s performance from last year to this as “remarkable,” and called the report and its recommendations “the most powerful good news we’ve seen in the district in some time.” 

Under the original SB39 legislation that authorized the 2003 state takeover of OUSD, the state superintendent has the sole power to grant the return of local control in any operational area following the FCMAT recommendation. Earlier this year, the legislature passed Assemblymember Sandré Swanson’s AB45 bill that would have taken the local control restoration discretion out of the superintendent’s hands and given that return automatically upon FCMAT’s recommendation. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed that bill. 

Following the release of this week’s FCMAT report, and even before O’Connell’s announcement of agreement with the organization’s recommendations, the OUSD board moved quickly to begin the process of employment of a superintendent. At Wednesday’s board meeting, OUSD Board President David Kakishiba said that he was putting an item on the board’s Dec. 8 retreat agenda that will “begin the dialogue on how we should go about the superintendent search process.” 

In a telephone interview held earlier on Wednesday, Kakishiba said that in past state takeovers of local school districts, the state has allowed the hiring of a local superintendent once three of the five operational areas have been returned to the local district. 

Kakishiba said that the granting of authority to hire a local superintendent after the return of three operational areas “is not set out in law, but it has been the past practice. Vallejo is the most recent example where that took place.” 

If O’Connell follows through with his announced plans to return the two additional areas to local control as expected, it would eventually mean a bifurcated administrative system in OUSD, in which the state-appointed administrator—currently interim administrator Vincent Matthews—would have sole and final authority over the areas of finance and pupil achievement, using the board as an advisory body only in these two areas. 

The board would set policy in the three remaining operational areas—community relations and governance, facilities management, and personnel management—and run them through the newly-hired local superintendent, but Matthews would act as a trustee in those areas, with the ability to veto any policies or actions if he considers them harmful to the district’s fiscal recovery. How that bifurcated administration would actually act in operation—and how much or little leeway and deference the state administrator would give the local superintendent and board—is unknown. 

O’Connell’s actions following the most current FCMAT recommendations—if he does follow through with abiding by them—contrasts sharply with his past treatment of OUSD. O’Connell ignored FCMAT’s recommendation of local control return in the area of community relations and governance for two years, and then granted it only after Swanson filed his proposed AB45 legislation, which would have taken the return authority out of O’Connell’s hands. 

At Wednesday night’s board meeting, board members gave the assemblymember full credit for moving the local control process forward. 

“I know that we didn’t have any of these areas returned until Swanson intervened,” board member Kerry Hamill said. “Before his bill was introduced, the process was dead.”

FCMAT rates on a 10-point scale, with scores given to several individual standards within each of the five operational areas (community relations and governance, finance, facilities management, personnel management, and pupil achievement), and then the operational area itself is given an average of the individual standards scores.  

FCMAT only recommends return to local control of an operational area when the average of that operational area is at 6 or above, and where no individual standard within that operational area is given a score of less than 4. 

The most recent scores and how they changed from FCMAT’s last OUSD report: 

Community Relations and Governance 

(already returned to local control) Up 0.27 points, from 7.0 in 2006 to 7.27 in 2007.  

Personnel Management  

(recommended for return to local control) Up 1.4 points, from 5.2 in 2006 to 6.6 in 2007. 

Pupil Achievement 

(falls just below FCMAT recommendation for return to local control) Up 0.87 points, from 5.0 in 2006 to 5.87 in 2007. 

Financial Management 

(not recommended for return to local control) Up 1.3 points, from 4.0 in 2006 to 5.30 in 2007. 

Facilities Management 

(recommended for return to local control) Up 1.28 points, 5.8 in 2006 to 7.08 in 2007. 

The complete FCMAT report is posted on both the OUSD and FCMAT websites. 

Planning Commissioners began their trek through one of Berkeley’s most complex and cabalistic arts Wednesday night—deciphering the city’s policies on density bonus and inclusionary housing. 

Spurred by a City Council request made last spring, the city planning staff was ready to propose a zoning ordinance amendment that would have changed the law applicable to West Berkeley’s mixed-use residential (MU-R) zone, easing requirements (in that area only) for developers to provide low-income housing.  

But a majority of the commission wasn’t willing to schedule a hearing on the proposed ordinance without first considering its overall impacts on affordable housing supplies and its relationship to city policies designed to encourage development of less expensive housing. 

The inclusionary ordinance requires that 20 percent of units in projects of five or more apartments or condominums must be allocated for lower-income tenants in the case of apartments, or in condominium buildings for buyers who make less than 120 percent of area median income. 

In lieu of building the units, developers may pay a city fee that is supposed to be used to build affordable units elsewhere in Berkeley.  

The impetus for the council’s request for the West Berkeley zoning change was its rejection of an appeal by Berkeley developer Edward Adams to build a four-unit, three-story housing project at 2817 Eighth St. 

Under the current ordinance, the council and the Zoning Adjustments Board decided they had no option but to reject the project as it had been proposed. 

Current zoning allows for six units on the site, and the city’s inclusionary ordinance requires that the developer must pay a fee to help build affordable housing elsewhere if he fails to build up to a lot’s capacity. 

Adams told the commission that he had reduced the number of units to accommodate the desires of neighbors, but that the project would die if he had to pay inclusionary housing fees and other fees and costs which might add up to a third of a million dollars. 

“We would like to be able to do four units without a fee,” he said. 

Commissioner Harry Pollack and Chair James Samuels were ready to move for a hearing on a staff proposal for an amendment allowing for fewer units in the West Berkeley district on lots currently carrying a requirement for five units or more. 

While density standards now apply in the city’s R-1, R-1A, R-2 and R-2A residential districts, the West Berkeley zone is the only commercially-zoned area in the city where they are mandated. 

There are also no equivalent standards for the R-3 and R-4 zoning districts. 

City Assistant Planner Claudine Asbagh said the rationale for the district was to create a buffer zone between the city’s manufacturing and light industrial district and the residential neighborhoods to the east. 

Commissioner David Stoloff said he was concerned that the impact of a policy change could lead to a loss of affordable housing in the city. He didn’t want the Planning Commission to reach any decision before the city’s Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) weighed in with its own opinion. 

But planning staffer Alex Amoros, a relatively new hire, said that the proposal hadn’t been scheduled for the HAC. 

Commissioner Gene Poschman said that he and Susan Wengraf had pushed for creation of the inclusionary ordinance and the MU-R district in part “so there would be no loopholes for four-unit projects” like the one Adams had proposed. 

But he said he was also concerned because if a developer decided to build the required five or six units to meet the city’s inclusionary needs, the state density bonus law—mandating the city to allow the developer to build additional mass as a bonus for creating affordable housing units—could push the project up to seven units or more. 

Poschman said he was also concerned by a pending proposal to cut the inclusionary fees for units in high-end condo projects from 62 percent to 40 percent, while no similar reductions had been proposed for lower-cost condos.  

“I think Gene is saying he doesn’t want to look at a small piece, but at the whole thing,” said Pollack. “I’m saying that I want to look at this one small piece.” 

“I’m concerned about the impact on affordable housing here in Berkeley,” said Helen Burke, who urged a delay in action. “If it waited this long to get to us, what would be the harm of waiting a couple of months and looking at the whole picture?” 

“I am opposed to a public hearing for the same reasons as Helen,” said Stoloff, who often finds himself on the other side of votes from Burke. 

Land Use Planning Manager Debra Sanderson said a staff shortage had caused the delay in bringing the issue to the commission, and that staff viewed the proposed change as one of a number of “cleanup” ordinances they would be bringing to the commission in coming sessions. 

Stoloff offered an alternative motion, to put off any decision on a hearing till more information was at hand, but his proposal failed on a 3-3-1 vote to get the five votes needed for passage, with Larry Gurley abstaining and Roia Ferrazares, Samuels and Pollack voting no. Commissioners Dacey and Wengraf were absent Wednesday. But the motion to hold the hearing also failed to get the five votes needed for passage. 

Ferrazares said that when the question comes back for discussion, she would like to have a representative from HAC on hand to present that commission’s views. 

“I want to hear why MU-R is different from other zones, and I want to hear how this change might negatively affect the inclusionary ordinance,” she said. 

Wednesday night’s focus reflects increasing attention paid to West Berkeley by city staff and the council. 

Reconsideration of MU-R standards follows in the wake of the creation of zoning amendments which paved the way for car dealerships to set up operation in areas of West Berkeley where they were previously excluded. 

That move was spurred by Mayor Tom Bates, who said the rezoning was needed to keep dealerships—and the sales taxes they generate—from fleeing the city. 

Dealers and city staff said car manufacturers want dealerships concentrated in locations near freeways, while most of Berkeley’s dealers had been traditionally located on Shattuck Avenue. 

Other changes now under consideration would change the definition of what kinds of arts qualify for protected properties in West Berkeley, a move backed by the Civic Arts Commission, responding to a proposal to transform the old Peerless Lighting plant and surrounding land in West Berkeley into a large project that would feature corporate offices and labs as well as a small number of new live/work studios. 

The current definition of arts is limited to traditional manual crafts, while the new definition would extend privileges to artists who create with computer technology. 

Berkeley has been losing live/work artist units in recent years, with new units not keeping up with the attrition as properties are either demolished or transformed into more upscale projects.

The administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums moved swiftly to consolidate its recent police 12-hour day arbitration victory, announcing that the Oakland Police Department will be broken up into three “geographically accountable” command areas effective Jan. 19. 

Under the plan, police officers will work exclusively within their command areas, each area under the command of a single captain responsible for activities on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis.  

The new structure will replace OPD’s current shift command structure, in which patrol officers are moved throughout the city wherever needed. Dellums administration and police department officials believe the geographically accountable command structure is the first step towards instituting community policing in Oakland, a system that has long been talked about and called for, but never fully put in place. Officials also hope the move will be a major step in getting a handle on Oakland’s crime problem. 

One of the divisions will cover the North Oakland-West Oakland area, one the East Oakland area from Lake Merritt to High Street, and one from High Street to the San Leandro border. 

The announcement on the geographic division breakup comes only days after a national organization ranked Oakland as the fourth most dangerous city in the nation, and while Dellums is considering the adoption of a detailed community policing plan that would coordinate all of the city’s violence abatement services—from increasing street lighting to moving against problem properties to police actions—through the already existing, geographically based Service Delivery System. 

Dellums also said this week that he was preparing a list of six or eight proposals to present to Oakland City Council in the near future to increase both the number of police officers recruited by the Oakland Police Department and the number who actually make it through the academy and hiring process.  

Oakland currently has approximately 719 officers, 300 of them patrol officers, some 80 short of the authorized strength of 803. City and police officials have conducted an intense recruitment campaign in recent years to bring the department up to full strength, but the city has been hampered by the fact that only 50 officers are actually hired out of every 1,000 who respond to the recruitment. 

In addition, some Oakland community groups have been calling for an increase in the police strength to as many as 1,100. No group, however, has yet offered a plan how that number of police would be recruited or retained, or paid for if they were actually hired. 

While the geographical division plan has been in existence for years, OPD Chief Wayne Tucker said that it was impossible to fully implement under the district’s 10-hour shift pattern. Tucker proposed moving to 12-hour shifts, which he said would allow entire groups of officers to be assigned exclusively to one of the three proposed geographic areas in the city. The Oakland Police Officers Association police union opposed the 12-hour shift plan and the matter went to arbitration, where an arbitrator ruled in Tucker’s favor earlier this month. 

Flanked by police officials and key City Councilmembers at a press conference held Tuesday at Oakland’s Martin Luther King Jr. Way Emergency Operations Center, Dellums called the move to the geographical command structure a “major step forward. This is more than symbolic change. This is real change towards our goal of safety in Oakland.” 

Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan, speaking for an absent Chief Wayne Tucker, who was called to court on police arbitration matters, said the new system “gives us the opportunity to manage and respond to crime trends” in specific geographic areas in a way that is not currently possible, adding that the department has already begun meeting with groups and residents to explain the new system, with a Dec. 11 public presentation scheduled. Jordan said that the department has been phasing in the new structure for months, and expects it to be fully operational when the department switches over on Jan. 19. Still, he asked the public to be “patient and supportive” during the transition period before expecting full results. 

Councilmember Jean Quan was upbeat about the new system, saying it will make her constituent responsibilities much easier. 

“Currently, if someone asks me about a specific crime committed in my district, I have to find out which particular shift the crime occurred on before I know which commander to go to,” Quan said.  

In addition, she said that under the present shift command structure “we can’t look at crime trends properly because they happen over different shifts” with different commanders, different ways of collecting information and reporting problems, and different methods of attacking the problems. Under the new structure, Quan said, “now I know that a single captain is responsible for my area.”  

Quan added that the new geographical division structure will allow the police department to move from merely responding to 9-1-1 calls to “having more responsibility to look at the sources of the crime problems.” 

But Community Policing Advisory Board Chair Don Link was more cautious, saying that while he supports the structure change, “the devil is in the details. A change in the attitude and the culture of the police department must take place as well.”  

Link said he would be “watching carefully” to see that the structure change actually results in “24-hour protection” for Oakland citizens.  

Former Oakland Police Department tech writer Phil McArdle, who has written a book on the history of the department for the Arcadia Publishing Images of America series, said in an interview this week that OPD operated under a geographic division structure in the early part of the last century, with precincts run by individual captains. McArdle said that corruption among some of the precinct heads forced the city to consolidate into its current citywide command structure during the 1950s. 

Former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown moved briefly towards the re-establishment of police geographic divisions following the recommendations of a consultant’s report, but later abandoned the effort. Council Public Safety Committee Chair Larry Reid said that during the time geographical divisions were in operation “we had some reduction in crime in my district.”  

Reid said that with the return of the system, he was confident that “this city will, in fact, be a safer city.” 

Asked at the press conference who should get credit for the geographic division plan, since it was first introduced by Brown, Dellums said that while he would like to take credit himself, “this has been an evolutionary process. In the last election, the people spoke clearly that they wanted the city to embrace community policing. Along the way, other people wanted to get there, but the beauty of this moment is, we’re here now.” 

On Dec. 15, hundreds of people around Berkeley will come to eat a holiday meal at Berkeley High School (BHS) from 1-5 p.m. The BHS Associated Student Body (ASB) is calling on Berkeley residents and businesses to help by volunteering or donating money or food.  

“Last year I think we fed between 350 and 400 people,” said Edith Jordan, BHS student activities director. ”There was plenty of food for everyone and I hope that we can continue to feed even more people this year.” 

This year, student government has been working with other organizations to put on the holiday meal, so they can concentrate their resources. At the beginning of this month, ASB began collecting cans from students in their second period class and will award a prize to the class that brings in the most cans. 

The holiday meal has been a tradition at the school for many years, where teenagers help prepare and serve food for anybody who wants to come.  

“I like to see the kids doing stuff,” said Jordan. “Everyone gets really excited when they’re doing stuff that has a meaning.” 

There are three morning shifts, three afternoon shifts, and then a shift for clean-up. People are asked to volunteer for as many two-hour shifts as they like. However, the school is still looking for more volunteers and donations. Anybody can volunteer, not just BHS students. 

People who want to donate should call 644-8990 or bring food to room D148. 

It’s time to submit your essays, poems, stories, artwork and photographs for the Planet’s annual holiday reader contribution issue, which will be published on Dec. 21. Send your submissions, preferably no more than 1,000 words, to holiday@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Deadline is 5 p.m. on Dec. 16.

Domestic violence 

On Wednesday at 3 a.m., a woman called to report that her spouse had abused her on the 1400 block of 7th street. Berkeley police arrested the 41-year old man.  

Battery  

At 5:10 p.m. on Wednesday, a caller reported that two Berkeley High School students were fighting in front of Round Table Pizza on University Avenue. Nobody was arrested.  

Robbery 

At 7:58 p.m. on Wednesday, a 17-year-old man was arrested for robbing two other men on the 2000 block of Prince Street. He took a wallet with cash, identification cards, and credit cards.  

Drug arrest 

At 11:14 p.m. Wednesday night, Berkeley Police arrested a 31-year-old man under the influence of methamphetamine who had narcotics paraphernalia on him on the 2500 block of Hillegass.  

Theft 

On Tuesday shortly after 10 a.m., a woman reported that her cell phone had been stolen on the 2100 block of Dwight Way. No suspects are in custody. 

Reported Graffiti 

At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, an employee of the skate park on 10th and Harrison streets called in to report that there was graffiti at the park. Nobody has been arrested in connection with the case.  

Cat on a hot thin rug 

A Berkeley woman who sought to comfort her kitty by giving it a nice warm bed on a cold night can thank that same cat for saving her from the fire. 

Berkeley firefighters were called to the home in the 1200 block of Peralta Avenue, where they found flames shooting up next to a floor furnace. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said a woman placed a rug over a floor furnace—which, he said, is never a good idea. The rug caught fire, quickly spreading to the nearby flooring. 

The cat commenced to wailing, awakening its caretaker, who called 9-1-1. The arrival of firefighters kept the damage to about $25,000, said Deputy Chief Orth. 

Boarding house blaze  

A $50,000 blaze in a Berkeley boarding house left 40 UC Berkeley students without a home, and university and Red Cross official scrambling for places to house them. 

Firefighters were summoned to 2438 Warring St. at 2:23 p.m. Friday, where they found one of the rooms in flames. “That room didn’t have sprinklers, for reasons that are unclear to us,” said Orth.  

Hall sprinklers kept the blaze confined to the single room. 

If you want a good laugh, type “sex on the sidewalk” into Google News. This will give you the opportunity to witness, firsthand, the birth of an urban legend. And where has it been born? Why, in our beloved San Francisco Chronicle, of course. Carolyn Jones reported on Tuesday that: “The new plan cracks down on yelling, littering, camping, drunkenness, smoking, urinating and sex on sidewalks and in parks.” I know she was at the City Council meeting—so was I, and I saw her. But where did she get that sentence? Never mind, it’s been picked up all over the map as the key component of whatever the City Council thinks it passed on Tuesday night.  

Fox News headline: Berkeley, Calif., Cracks Down on Sex on Sidewalks, in Parks. And from the online right-wing publication The American Thinker: No More Sidewalk Sex in Berkeley? 

Yet another chapter in the Chronicle’s on-going contribution to the Bezerkeley legend... It almost seems like their reporters use those 10-minute breaks for the caption-writer to sneak out and puff on a joint.  

And sex on the sidewalk is merely the most eye-catching part of that sentence. Almost all the rest of it is fictitious, too. In actual fact, all the council acted on was new penalties and regulations concerning where people may smoke or lie down. A councilmember who deserves protection as a confidential source quipped privately that you can still have sex on the sidewalk, you just have to do it standing up from now on.  

In fact, even though I’ve been in Berkeley off and on since 1959, I’ve never seen any sidewalk sex, though I did notice still-legal out-in-the-open sex in broad daylight in a parked car on Parker Street not too long ago. Of course, I averted my eyes immediately. 

You can find a reality-based account of what happened at the meeting elsewhere in this issue. If you don’t believe the Daily Planet, you can also find most of the facts about what happened online in the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, or even the Daily Cal.  

The central delusion about what the council did on Tuesday was one which the councilmembers shared. Several of them, card-carrying bleeding-hearts that they are, seemed to believe that what they were passing was an even-handed combination of sticks and carrots. The sticks were real, all right, but the carrots were conceptual, virtual, faux—or as Wobbly Joe Hill used to sing, Pie in the Sky Bye and Bye. 

Joe wrote a parody of a hymn which was used by sanctimonious preachers trying to reform the street people of his day, just about a hundred years ago:  

Long-haired preachers come out every night, 

Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right; 

But when asked how ‘bout something to eat 

They will answer with voices so sweet: 

(Chorus:) 

You will eat, bye and bye, 

In that glorious land above the sky; 

Work and pray, live on hay, 

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. 

These days the preachers are more likely to be short-haired, and the religious people are more likely to be on the side of the poor, but the pie in the sky tastes about the same. 

All of the remedies for the plight of the crazy and reckless folks who live on the streets which the well-intentioned consultant suggested were not enacted on Tuesday, despite reports in other media, and will probably never be. The mechanism for funding them—raising parking meter fees—won’t even be considered until the Jan. 15 council meeting, and specific budget items will follow even later, “bye and bye.”  

In the meantime, the police have been given virtual carte blanche for rousting sleeping people whenever and wherever that they want—a Merry Christmas to you, sir, and God Bless You Every One. No added shelter beds, no new toilets, no more blankets just yet, sorry about that. But you’ll be sure to get citations for sleeping in the wrong place, and if you don’t pay the fine you’ll go to jail and/or lose your disability check. 

A few councilmembers came close to figuring out that they were participating in a shell game, though ultimately they couldn’t find the hidden pea. Max Anderson pointed out that $142,000 for public toilets could and should have already been available from the general fund, that enough toilets shouldn’t have to wait for a fee increase. Betty Olds echoed the urgent need for public toilets, but made no move to have them provided promptly. Linda Maio made a valiant attempt to highlight the irrationality in the resolution which stepped up enforcement of state laws against sleeping in public, but was defeated by double-talk from Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan and of course the mayor. Spring and Worthington as usual were intelligent and articulate, but they might as well have been talking to fence posts.  

A particularly unattractive part of the program was an orchestrated parade of ex-addicts singing that hallelujah, they’d been saved. One of them, a white guy, read a long litany of past sins, with the moral of the story that he’d finally reformed when he stopped claiming his civil rights. That particular bone stuck in the throat of African-American councilmember Anderson and others of us who are proud veterans of the civil rights struggles of the past 40 years. To be fair, the testifier probably didn’t write his own speech. None of this had any connection with what was actually on the agenda. 

An elderly woman started in on a tale of how her parents used to sit on a bench on Shattuck in the ’50s, but couldn’t get to her point because there was a one-minute sound-byte time limit for comments. It seemed like she was asking for more penalties for bad behavior, though it wasn’t quite clear. As she left the mic, she said that she’d only come because she’d been asked to—by an assistant city manager. Since when has it been the job of city staff to round up allies to speak in the public comment period? 

When the consultant finished her lovely upbeat report on what might help solve the identified problems, the mayor jumped in, as he frequently does, to restate what she’d said in his own inimitable style. No vegetarian he, he promised to “put meat on the bones.” Phony baloney and conceptual carrots would be a better description of what’s likely to be the filling of the PCEI pie-in-the-sky. 

In the past few years, all sorts of goodies have been put on the public table and then snatched away. The sound wall at Aquatic Park and the warm pool are two examples that have come up in the last month alone. Just to keep everyone honest, the Planet will be publishing the list of services promised on the Public Commons menu on a periodic basis, and we’ll be keeping score.  

Smart money would bet that the parking fee raise will happen, all right, but most of the public benefits it’s supposed to fund will never materialize. The money will be spent for other things, and then perhaps the manager will ask for new taxes or bonds to fund the social services: a classic bait-and-switch transaction. 

WORK IT OUT TOGETHER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last night I watched the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board’s hearing on allowing a bio-fuel installation on the corner of Ashby and Sacramento. It’s presently held by a car-wash operator who is behind on his rent. He is black. The hearing was heated and became a racial clash, black vs. green white women who wish to run the fuel station. Some black folks screamed and yelled about the possibility of racism, etc. It seems to me that the obvious “Berkeley” solution should be for both operations to join forces: bio-fuel and car-wash together. It would be mutually beneficial to both. You know, the popular song: “Black and white to-geth-er-er.” Seems like of all the cities in America, we should be able to work this conflict out “together.” 

Robert Blau 

• 

‘ETHNIC CLEANSING’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Jean Damu’s article about the eviction of Kandy’s Kar Wash, he uses the term “ethnic cleansing” to refer to the anticipated displacement of a black business by a business owned by white women. I cringe at the inappropriate use of this term, which is a euphemism for genocide. A Wikipedia listing reads as follows:  

“Ethnic cleansing refers to various policies or practices aimed at the displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory in order to create a supposedly ethnically ‘pure’ society. The term entered English and international usage in the early 1990s to describe certain events in the former Yugoslavia. Its typical usage was developed in the Balkans, to be a less objectionable code-word meaning genocide,...ethnic cleansing has become improperly used to describe a situation wherein poorer ethnic groups are being displaced economically, by other, generally more affluent ethnic groups.” 

It is not genocidal when a business is evicted from its location, sad as that may be for those who have patronized it. Nor is every misfortune which comes upon a black business necessarily “anti-black.”  

Deborah Cloudwalker 

• 

BERKELEY PARKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the Nov. 27 article by Steven Finacom about parks in Berkeley, a correction is in order: While the author states: “In 1974, Berkeley voters approved Measure Y, which provided $3 million for new parks. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the planning and creation of Cedar Rose Park, Strawberry Creek Park, Ohlone Park on land that had been cleared to build BART through north-central Berkeley, and the purchase of the old Santa Fe Railroad right-of-way,” Ohlone Park was actually created in the summer of 1969, in the spirit of People’s Park. Both represent the beginning of the modern communitarian ecology movement, which the late Karl Linn recognized in our brief but intense friendship and conversations when he asked me to devise a plan for gardener safety in the parks along the BART path in North Berkeley after a spate of robberies in the gardens. 

If Karl were alive today we would split the MacArthur Grant he expected to receive, and we would have continued to join forces as the male and female sides of the druidic park building impulse. 

Wendy Schlesinger 

• 

PUBLIC COMMONS  

CONTROVERSY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can’t help but notice the behavior of many Cal students and football fans during parties on game days. Individuals at these parties typically drink heavily in public; assemble in groups that block the sidewalks; leave piles of food wrappers, cans, and bottles everywhere along the streets and sidewalks near the stadium; allow underage drinking; frequently urinate in public; and generally act in a very noisy and sometimes belligerent manner. All of this occurs with nary a peep from our law enforcement personnel—who duly observe much of the activity. 

Coincidentally, many of these behaviors are the very same ones condemned in Mayor Bates’ “Public Commons for Everyone” initiative! So, the solution is apparent: Dress the street people on Telegraph Avenue and downtown in proper Cal regalia, and let them have at it as they wish. For added merriment, Oski can even teach them a few Cal drinking songs. There you have it—a major social problem solved for the price of a few T-shirts and caps. 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

COMMONS FOR NAZIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What is disturbing about the Commons for Nazis Initiative is that it constitutes one more step in the slow but relentless march toward fascism. What has been set in place is a mechanism whereby the fascists in our midst can get whatever they want from government whenever they want it. With a convincing act of pretense at compassion by Linda Maio, who abstained, the steamroller of local fascism just flattened a few hundred more lives. But it is not the damage to those lives that is most disconcerting; it is the acceptance of fascism by many citizens of Berkeley that is doing inestimable damage to everyone. 

Peter J. Mutnick 

• 

OVERDEVELOPING EL CAPITAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I recently took a day trip to Yosemite, and was upset to see contrails over El Capitan. In previous years the public was able to enjoy national parks that were completely pristine, but now worsening pollution threatens their natural beauty. At the rate we are going future generations will remember the pollution of national parks more than their awe-inspiring beauty. That is why it is absolutely essential that Sen. Feinstein votes to fully fund California’s National Parks. 

Jon Peaco 

• 

GMO LANGUAGE SUBSTITUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Richard Brenneman’s two-part report gets at the heart of the matter in exposing the fact that genetic modifications would play a role in producing biofuels. The media has played down the fact that, in this context, synthetic biology is the same as genetic engineering. Language substitution to minimize public opposition was used during the 2004 California stem cell proposition 71 campaign when the term somatic cell nuclear transfer was used instead of embryo cloning to deflect criticism that human embryo cloning would employ the same techniques. 

Whether the food or husk part of the crop is genetically modified is irrelevant in terms of damage to the environment from gene-flow associated with large scale GM-crop plantations, for example, or in terms of creating new patentable agri-fuel crop germplasm. By any terminology, the socio-economic impact to the already marginalized poor is undeniable and cannot be masked. 

Nazreen Kadir 

Institute Scholar in Science and Public Policy 

Western Institute for Social Research 

Oakland  

• 

LEAVE THE TREES ALONE  

— ONE YEAR LATER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Day by day now, the assault on nature takes a devastating effect on Cal football. Have you noticed we can’t seem to gain any ground since the UC police started enforcing the criminal UC Regents edict to cut the oaks down? Let’s not play down the Oppenheimer curse, where shortly after the atom was split by the good Doctor, Mother Earth said “Whoa, that’s enough winning for a while.” 

The oil spill in the bay, the Save the Oaks tree sitters, and BP’s secret contracts all beckon a looming face-off with Mother Earth. Come Dec. 2, it will mark one year since the Berkeley tree-sitters have stymied UC Goliath into thinking twice before slashing and burning their way to a new “state of the art” athletic training facility. Perhaps this will go down in Berkeley history as how the courageous, yet simple act of tree-sitting could make the UC bomb makers pause in mid earth raping mode. Bravo to bravery! 

Where was BP when the oil spill in the bay took place? Why weren’t they showing by example what pitching in together to heal the earth is all about? No , instead we should have chanted “BP or Be Free” the minute they crossed into the Berkeley Free State. Could it be they are just another profit seeking parasite seeking to drain a public university of it’s sense of rage? Or just jaded in their own history of oil spills as in Alaska? 

BP = Bad People, BP = Beautiful Profit. 

Has anyone taken notice that there are thousands of acres of parkland behind Memorial Stadium where potential athletes can run, hike, and sweat their way to a trophy season? No matter how much money he has, and it’s up to $3 million, or a million per loss and counting, one can hear Napoleon Tedford bellowing into the wind about what it takes to “compete,” and the sacrifices we peasants and nature lovers must endure. Gimme a break! 

Stoney Burke 

• 

MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is ironic when we hear that the United States is “using its influence” to bring about a peaceful resolution to the Israel- Palestine conflict, and an end to the occupation of the Palestinian Territories. 

The reality is that the occupation would end immediately if the United States stopped its massive funding of the occupation. 

This talk of the United States being an “honest broker” is so cynical. It’s not a broker. It’s the major financier of the occupation enterprise. 

Carolyna Marks 

Founding Director,  

World Wall for Peace  

• 

IMPEACH CHENEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is my greatest fear that Kucinich’s resolution HR-333 will be buried and lost in the House Judiciary committee, when it is the only symbol and gesture of hope for this country getting back on the path to freedom, justice and the American way. The United States is purportedly a nation of laws which no man or entity is above. How nauseating is it that our vice president and president disregard the nation’s will, silence our elected officials, and do not hold themselves accountable to the Constitution. Both of them lie and twist the truth constantly and against reason: The Downing Street memos reveal that the president fixed the facts to match the policy which lead us into a five-year illegal occupation of Iraq; the FISA courts have been a blunder and it would seem that 80,000 American citizens are being spied on without warrants—many, one presumes, holding office a la Watergate; and an N.O.C. CIA agent’s identity has been revealed, apparently as political payback. This last act is considered treason. Seventy-five percent of the American populous believe this vice president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. What will it take for this Congress to begin to act on behalf of the people’s will? 

Tara Daly 

Oakland 

• 

THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT EUGENE’S BRT SYSTEM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read with great interest Mr. Buchwald’s kind description of Lane Transit Districts (LTD) EmX bus rapid transit system. The system has been very successful attracting a large number of new riders: since opening in January, ridership has increased by approximately 90 percent over the service the EmX replaced. 

I wanted to provide some comments on the EmX service that may be helpful to the discussion. 

The EmX route is four miles long and consists of approximately 63 percent exclusive right of way. The LTD Board of Directors goal was and still is for 100 percent exclusive right of way. In the development of the EmX project certain compromises were made as a result of limited right of way, property impacts and trees. To ensure that the project was built, the LTD Board of Directors reluctantly agreed to run in mixed in the general purpose lanes along certain sections of the corridor. The largest section of mixed traffic operation occurs in the Glenwood area, which is about to undergo a complete urban renewal. As part of the vision for the area exclusive EmX lanes are proposed. 

The loss of on-street parking was a particular issue during the development of the EmX project. Where possible, alternative parking arrangements were sought, however the project resulted in approximately 70 parking stalls being eliminated. 

Currently no fare is charged on the EmX service. The reasons for this decision were that a small number of passengers currently pay cash, and the limited extent of the EmX route requires that most passengers transfer to a regular bus to complete their trip: thus paying a fare on the regular bus. LTD plans to introduce fares on the EmX service on opening of the second route in 2010. 

The introduction of the fare will likely result in a dip in ridership: a recent survey estimated that between 10 and 15 percent of new riders would not continue to ride once a fare is imposed. 

I trust that the above will help in your communities dialog about bus rapid transit. While l know very little about AC Transits plans to develop a bus rapid transit system l would encourage the community to be open to ways of providing as much exclusive facility as possible, as only this will ensure that the bus rapid transit is reliable and rapid well into the future. 

Graham Carey 

BRT Project Engineer 

Lane Transit District 

Eugene, Oregon 

• 

FOURTH AMENDMENT  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Bush administration and Homeland Security Department couldn’t convince Americans that using cable employees to spy in our homes was OK so now the White House is using firefighters to act as Big Brother, to spy and inform on Americans, with pilot programs in cities throughout the country. The reasoning behind the latest move is that unlike police officers, firefighters can enter hundreds of thousands of homes legally and with no warrant. Since when have Americans become the terrorists and let’s hope that firefighters don’t harbor any prejudices. 

Doesn’t the Fourth Amendment prohibit the illegal and unlawful and unwarranted searchers of residences? 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

Life is Much Better in Jail 

A humble submission inspired by the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative, with seasonal greetings. 

I was a junkie I lived on the street 

I had no money and nothing to eat 

A kindly policeman came by one fine day 

And changed my perspective on living that way 

(Chorus:) 

In jail! In jail! 

Don’t bother paying my bail! 

Give me a blanket and three squares a day 

Life is much better in jail! 

I had no direction when I was a kid 

I loved to be free didn’t care what I did 

My civil rights were just weighing me down 

But now getting busted has turned me around 

(Chorus) 

My civil liberties I have to say 

Just clouded my judgment and got in my way 

Pull up your bootstraps and reach for the stars 

Life is much better by far behind bars 

(Chorus) 

I was a treesitter up in the grove 

They told me to leave but I just wouldn’t move 

I had no respect for the cops til I saw 

They could take me to jail for no reason at all 

(Chorus) 

By Carol Denney

In last Friday’s issue of Berkeley Daily Planet, Jonathan Stevens asks one of the most discussed questions today: “Whom do we blame....” for the failures in public education? This is easy to answer: let’s start with the citizens of California, who passed Proposition 13 and began the process of starving what was once considered the premier public education system in the country. That initiative quickly gutted the state budget and made it unlikely that, without an appeal, California could ever add the per pupil funding expenditures necessary to achieve the results citizens say they desire. California has the highest class sizes in the nation and moves between 40th and 48th in per pupil expenditures (depending upon which numbers one uses). Thank God for Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, and one of the few to be as consistently stingy as we are with our students. Nina Simone said it all in her classic song! And thanks to Berkeley citizens for Measure A and all of the bond measures which have supplemented the district budget.  

Stevens announces that more money for teachers and teaching won’t “solve the problem of teachers fleeing the field.” I urge him to talk to teachers five years into the profession who are aware that their dreams of owning a home will go unfulfilled. Every teacher (and probably many parents) knows a former colleague who left for greener pastures; many of us know several. There’s the beloved former teacher who told me many times, “I could never do this if (my husband) didn’t earn so much.” It’s one thing to make financial sacrifices for five years; it’s quite another to accept an entire career of such sacrifices. A teacher at the beginning of her career has a much different perspective than one leaving the profession. As a result, those credential classes with new teachers Stevens speaks of are more like 12-step meetings or sessions for returning war veterans; a bunker mentality dominates. Fortunately I earned my credential in a “working teacher” program which meant that my classmates were mostly veteran teachers from outside the state. Conversations with experienced teachers may feature the same themes, but will function differently and affect the participants differently, too! What frustrates a new teacher may inspire a veteran teacher, and vice versa. As we begin to experience the present teacher shortage, the State of California must find money to ensure both competitive salaries and excellent working conditions. All teachers have a brother or sister or parent whose jaw drops when we describe these facets of our work experience. 

Stevens prefers that any budget enhancements go to improved working conditions—ironically, also a cost item—that will “guarantee teachers the opportunity to practice their trade in peace and safety.” After some dozen years serving on the BFT negotiations team, I have heard district negotiators repeatedly refer to working conditions as cost items. (That’s why schools are exempted from Cal/OSHA provisions; the state is unwilling to commit the funds necessary to ensure high quality working conditions). Over the years, I have noted many improvements teachers and the district desire delayed because of their cost. Due to Measure A, our district doesn’t have to make those kind of hard decisions, but before the initial maintenance measure was enacted I, as the BFT safety officer, spent many days checking classrooms throughout the district for adequate heat and lighting, spot-checking for mold, and ensuring that each classroom phone could access the office. So: Mr. Stevens wants a more intimate environment in which students can be inculcated with the virtues of plurality and social justice? In other words, Mr. Stevens wants more classrooms? Well, it’s gonna cost real dollars to do so. How else to explain the district’s failure to implement the state’s ninth grade class reduction? Not enough money and not enough space. I share Stevens’ concern about improving working conditions; at BHS, for the last several years, more than half of the teachers have shared classrooms. That means that teachers lack the opportunity to make each classroom a viable and productive learning space. That’s why the South of Bancroft Committee is so committed to building additional classrooms and why all of the new structures on the campus are so important; keeping the Old Gym means keeping teachers in substandard classrooms and ensuring that we will never have enough. The new structures at BHS, along with the increased voluntarism on site and new leadership are responsible for a better learning environment and, I believe, happier students and teachers. Stevens has it half right: we deserve it all, and only improved salaries and working conditions will draw attract the teachers we need to fill California’s classrooms—on the scale we will need, there aren’t enough of the martyrs and nuns to fill those burgeoning vacancies. Talk to a veteran teacher: there are fewer martyrs in that generation. 

After 20 years in Bay Area classrooms, I have seen the same fights that he has seen. For starters, most of the fights I have witnessed at Berkeley High School, where he worked for a year, and where I have toiled for some 17 years, are not racially charged. They are—no solace to me, an African-American male—intra-racial fights; that is, they are fights within groups, not interracial, between members of different groups. Additionally, they are usually single gender; few teens seek out members of the opposite sex to fight, honoring that old code: If you’re a boy, you should never hit a girl! Fortunately, few of these fights repeat; our dean and counselors usually bring the parties together, counsel the students and negotiate a truce, inform the parents, send the parties home for a few days and move on to the next fight.... whenever that occurs. Mr. Stevens lamentably succumbs to the same spirit of hyperbolic sensationalism he rues. I don’t see fights on campus for days or weeks at a time... though I have come to expect them close to the Thanksgiving and the December holidays. How’s that for irony? Furthermore, the number of fights on campus has shrunken markedly over the years. 

Finally, I have learned too that what happens in my classroom may not be happening in the classroom next door. This is also true of districts. As someone who has worked in West Contra Costa, Oakland Unified and Berkeley, I know how dangerous it is to compare districts and schools. Each district, each school, each classroom has its own ethos. Stevens makes a big mistake in comparing such different environments; they cannot be conflated and compared easily. Two of them remain in receivership, under the control of a state administrator. You can’t come to Berkeley High School without noticing that there is something good happening every day somewhere on campus: guest speakers, student presentations, art displays, computer programming, sporting events or exercise, field trips. You can hardly turn your head without hearing the words “achievement gap” and seeing myriad attempts to address it. Much of what makes Berkeley different is the money that has been made available to its teachers through the BHSDG, In Dulce Jubilo, and BSEP. Don’t go to You Tube for horror and success stories about education in your local district: volunteer, join a committee, talk to children, call a teacher. You might learn something. You might like what you hear.  

Alan E. Miller, a former Berkeley Federation of Teachers vice president, teaches English at Berkeley High School.  

In “The State of Education” in the Nov. 23 Daily Planet, teacher Jonathan Stephens decries the “diminishing intellectual returns” in today’s classrooms, but fails to appreciate the deepened understanding of other cultures and behaviors, and the internalization of the idea of justice, that students achieve in today’s multi-cultural equal-opportunity classrooms. 

I was unfortunately educated in the segregated South. There we all learned to read and write and do math, but most of us would happily give up a little of those skills if we could have had the richer experience of diversity and justice. 

How pallid were our occasional schoolyard fights in that era, compared to the spirited conflicts that Mr. Stephens has “witnessed nearly every day,” and which he misinterprets as “racially charged violence.” There is no reason to think that students hurling racial epithets at each other as they fight are necessarily being “racial”—name calling is only natural when adolescent feelings boil over into physical conflict. 

Mr. Stephens writes, “Until we create a classroom culture that can guarantee teachers will have the opportunity to practice their trade in peace and safety, the problems facing us will only get worse.” 

Surely Mr. Stephens would not want to return to the safe and peaceful mono-cultural classrooms of the segregated South? The conditions he has witnessed are just “growing pains” that may take a century or two to work themselves out as we move closer to the dream we share with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of a colorblind rainbow society. 

The following text is the United In Action “Talking Points for Superintendent Selection Process,” submitted to the Leadership Associates (“Leadership”) consulting group. Leadership is the agency contracted by the BUSD to find our next superintendent. 

United in Action believes that the stakes are far too high to simply hire a competent administrator. While we need the experience and skill set that will continue to maintain and enhance our infrastructure, we cannot continue to sacrifice the success and well-being of our students. The data are irrefutable. We are failing to educate our black and brown students at record levels, throughout the entire district.  

The 2007 CA STAR test results show that 77 percent of our second-grade African-American and Latino students are less than proficient in English-Language Arts, while more than 80 percent of our eleventh-grade African-American and Latino students are less than proficient. We must have leadership that will make student achievement the number one priority.  

We have outlined the qualities that we believe are absolutely essential for this position. We feel duty-bound to inform those in our community who may not be aware of the critical need for education reform. 

About the selection process: 

1. Berkeley is a unique and diverse community with many political, racial, ethnic, social, and economic divisions. The selection process lacks a community envisioning process to develop a shared set of community values and priorities regarding the new superintendent. In fact, the community meetings scheduled with the search team reflect and perpetuate these divisions by grouping only similar organizations together, rather than grouping diverse organizations together to facilitate consensus amongst the community. How will the consultants adequately represent the community vision when there has been no shared process in identifying our values and priorities? 

2. The process is too fast to address the goals and desires of our community. Similar selection processes in the past have not met our needs and this process is not likely to meet our needs either, unless there is more time allotted to developing a shared set of community values and priorities.  

3. The process does not enable the community to get to know the candidates in any real sense to differentiate whether they are good at selling themselves or good at solving our serious educational problems. The process is closed, the community role is marginalized, and the community's ability to qualify candidates to ensure we find a superintendent that we can support and who will support the change we feel our districts needs is undervalued by the process. 

Important Qualities for our next Superintendent: 

Our most recent superintendents have brought important skills for the improvement and success of our school district. Jack McLaughlin brought his skills in facilities construction at a time when many of our schools were being rebuilt, while Michelle Lawrence brought her skills in fiscal management at a time when our district was in financial difficulty. We now need a superintendent with the passion, skills, and experience to address issues of race and class and bring our community together to ensure the academic success of all of our students. This superintendent should: 

1. Hold student achievement as their highest priority. 

2. Have a proven track record of addressing issues of race, class, and equity in a large urban community similar to Berkeley. 

3. Understand institutional barriers to achieving educational equity. 

4. Be a community builder, with a demonstrated ability to build and lead a collaborative partnership with parents, teachers, staff, and the greater community. 

5. Have the ability and desire to enter into intentional and respectful relationships with city government, institutions of higher education (UC Berkeley and community colleges), community resources, and state and federal resources. 

6. Have experience in preschool through adult education, and understand and value the importance of continuing and alternative education (B-Tech, Independent Studies, the Adult School). 

7. Have proven commitment and innovation in recruiting and retaining teachers of color, and development of a professional development plan with the focus of helping boost the achievement of low-performing students and engaging all students.  

8. Have demonstrated experience in implementing a data collection system to systematically monitor student performance, and to inform targeted intervention efforts at the classroom, school, district levels. 

9. Be sensitive to the needs of special needs students, and have demonstrated ability in meeting these needs. 

Michael Miller is a coordinator for Parents of Children of African Descent. 

Richard Brenneman’s comment in Nov. 20 issue of the Planet continues to point to the deficiencies of the BP grant and agrofuel programs, but the real deficiency has gotten little mention until Dr. J. Overpeck’s statement on the last IPCC report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Nov. 18. In the front page article, Dr. Overpeck, director of the University of Arizona, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and member of the IPCC, is cited as saying “It’s going to get warmer” from industrial emissions remaining in the atmosphere for decades to centuries without making mention of new emissions that will be adding to raise the level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) mainly carbon dioxide. The real issue that has to be addressed to get some control of global warming is finding a means to remove some of the 35 percent overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. In the same article, Dr. S. Schneider of Stanford cited that overload in the article as being the main cause of warming seen in the last 40-50 years. Almost all proposals for curbing of emissions from vehicles and power plants, which still allows some adding to that 35 percent, and for growing agrofuels, which allow a lot of non-energy generating recycling of that gas, do nothing to remove any of that 35 percent. 

Again I call attention to my commentaries on June 12 and Oct. 26, in which the pyrolysis process is detailed to be applied to our wasted agrofuel crop dumped in our massive organic waste disposal program. That costs megabucks in maintaining the dumps or in composting, where we allow carbon dioxide to be reemitted needlessly after nature had so kindly trapped it for us in biochemicals. The frenzied call for agrofuels totally ignores how much land and water will be getting usurped from food production, which will be avoided by using our organic wastes as agrofuels. The pyrolysis process as detailed can be set up for none of that gas to be given off needlessly as all the carbon goes to charcoal for burial or organic chemicals useful for making drug and plastics. 

The benefits that can be realized using this process are enormous for both the economy and the environment. We would be removing some carbon dioxide from ever getting reemitted via biodegradation. We could get some energy free of needless emissions of GHGs, especially with the development of splitting water to get hydrogen, which was recently reported by Max Plank Inst. scientists. We would kick our oil addiction retaining megabucks sent to foreign countries having leaders with little friendliness to America. With the heating used in pyrolysis, we would destroy the hazardous germs and toxics in our massive waste disposal mess while recovering megabucks spent in maintaining dumps to prevent the escape of those hazards. And in time we would eliminate any new environmental messes of coal mining as well as the ever increasing losses of lives in coal mining. 

Along with pyrolysis, we should greatly expand our use of windmills to collect some energy from the brisker winds being caused by the excess of released heat energy from our fossil fuelishness, and that released energy stays trapped on the globe by the GHGs. The last IPCC report and the UN-SEG report from Sigma Xi out last spring warn of greater wind velocity causing damage and soil erosion, so why not reap the wind for electricity generation. Several groups are now calling for a ban on new coal fired power plants and should call for windmills to generate much of our future electricity. 

Unfortunately, those reports only talk of curbing emissions that will do nothing to reduce the overloads of heat energy and carbon dioxide already causing all the problems described in the reports with the authors’ warnings of the problems getting worse. The pyrolysis process as I have somewhat detailed will give us a means to start removing those overloads albeit slowly. That is how we have to get control of the real global warming cause. The pyrolysis process is the alternative for sustainability and for getting control of the real global warming cause that the emission curbing and agrofuels proposals can not achieve. 

Fremont resident James Singmaster is a retired environmental toxicologist.  

Last summer, I happened to be walking with an out-of-town couple who had come, early, to a Paramount Theater concert and, with some time to kill, wanted to know if I knew of any good places in the downtown area to get something to eat. I did, actually. Several places. But Jack London Square seemed too far for them to walk and, with little city signage to help them along the way, I thought they might be mistrustful of any directions a strange local might give them that took them off Broadway to Old Oakland or Chinatown. They got a hot dog from one of the vendors who works outside the Paramount events, I think, and an opportunity was lost. 

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the Dellums administration should concentrate its retail development plans away from downtown and into the existing community commercial districts. By that suggestion, however, I did not mean to imply that downtown should be abandoned. The Jerry Brown 10K plan was designed to attract new residents into the downtown area so that retail would follow. I would suggest that while we are waiting for the retail, the Dellums administration ought to adopt a different strategy: Make the existing downtown attractive for both residents and visitors, to the point that there is a sufficient critical mass of shoppers and eaters and foot traffic to get the attention of the retail businesses that are so important to our tax needs. 

And the key point is that such a plan will require far fewer city dollars than were used, say, to subsidize Forest City or the Fox renovation. What is needed to revitalize Oakland’s downtown is not so much money, after all, but rather a change of thought process, purpose and direction. 

Let’s go back to the out-of-town couple coming to the Paramount Theater event, and looking for somewhere to eat downtown, beforehand. What could the city have had in place, downtown, to help this couple find what they wanted, and what the city—almost desperately—wants them to be able to find? 

First-off, a free downtown shuttle would be nice. 

AC Transit used to run one several years back, but the service became one of the casualties of the transit district’s ongoing budget problems. My suggestion is that the City of Oakland needs to revive that service as a necessary component for downtown revitalization, either in connection with AC Transit or, if AC Transit is unwilling, the city should either run its own shuttle service or contract the job out to some other organization. 

Such a shuttle could run a route along the downtown areas where the city wants to direct the most dollars, and continue until all of the venues close. One suggestion would be to start somewhere around the uptown area—where the city is anticipating new residents moving into the Forest City Project—running past both the Paramount and the Fox, when the Fox begins operating as an entertainment venue, going down Broadway past the City Center and the Marriott, making a loop west through Old Oakland on its southward trip to Jack London Square and then east through Chinatown on its way back uptown. A component might also include a trip down 14th Street to the beginning of Lake Merritt and back, particularly as the city begins to move on the Measure DD improvements to provide an overground, visible, and walkable connection of the western end of the lake to the estuary. That would allow a pass-by of both the Oakland Museum and—if we ever open it up again as an entertainment venue—the Kaiser Convention Center. The city could provide uptown-downtown maps which include a list of places along or near the shuttle route to eat, to shop, and to take in entertainment. The city—or AC Transit—could also provide drivers who could answer appropriate questions. Yes, this would be an extra cost to the city. But the city already spends far more money on developer subsidies directed towards downtown revitalization. An uptown-downtown free shuttle would seem a necessary component to that revitalization, at a relatively minor cost. 

But what about the encouragement of foot traffic? 

Well, first, signage would help, considerably. Wherever we think large groups of people are likely to congregate—and then, again, periodically along the way—the city should erect signage in the uptown-downtown area which directs pedestrians to various sections. The signage would not necessarily advertise specific businesses but instead would let pedestrians know that “this way”--for example-- lies Chinatown, with its collection of shops and restaurants, and “that way” lies Old Oakland, with its bars and grills, world food outlets, bookstores, and other amenities. Periodically spaced, unmanned kiosks where brochures can be placed—something you almost always see in cities interested in catering to tourism—would also help. One ought not to have to find the Chamber of Commerce headquarters or duck into the lobby of the Marriott, if you know where the Marriott is, to find such things. 

That being said, making the walk more amenable and inviting between these destination points would also be a plus. 

The most serious impediment to encouraging foot traffic between City Center and Jack London Square is the 880-Broadway overpass—or underpass, depending on your point of view—between 6th and 5th streets. With the marked police car parking lot directly adjacent, and the police headquarters only a couple of blocks away, this is probably one of the safer stretches to walk in Oakland. But it doesn’t appear that way. Instead, the walk under the overpass is dark and foreboding and appears dangerous, and the aging collected pigeon droppings along the sidewalk give it a distinctly unsanitary appearance as well. Despite the inviting view of the city’s lighted Holiday Tree clearly visible at the entrance to Jack London Square only five blocks away, it is easy to imagine city visitors coming from the Marriott early in the evening, stopping at the overpass, peering down the street, deciding that, no, there’s probably nothing of particular interest or value down that direction, and turning back. 

This is clearly a case where a lemon should be turned to lemonade. Increasing the lighting under the 880 overpass would be a distinct plus. So, perhaps, would be tacking up poster boards along the pilings on each side and using them as mural space for local artists. Cleaning up the birdshit on a regular basis is, well, a necessity. An added touch might be to theme the underpass as a gateway arch and passage, with appropriate signage over the top in each direction. 

The suggestion of mural art through the underpass invites another suggestion, that the city should encourage walking through the uptown-downtown area not only as a way to get to a particular destination, but also for the pleasure of the walk itself and the things seen along the way. Several Oakland neighborhoods are already demonstrating the power of that process by having entire sections of houses with spectacular holiday light displays—the area near Seminary Avenue and MacArthur being one such example—so that folks make it a habit every year to drive the kids over and through, just to have a look. 

In such a way, Oakland could encourage walking in the uptown-downtown area, just for walking’s sake. 

West Oakland business advocate Steve Lowe long ago suggested that the city use the many vacant store windows along lower Broadway between the overpass and Jack London Square to house doll and toy displays. The idea was never picked up by the city, and one wonders why. It appears to be one of those win-win-win situations, all the way around. The city gets the uptown-downtown walking traffic it desperately wants, the displaying collectors and artisans get free publicity and exposure, and the owners of the vacant buildings get a rise in their property values as the size of the crowds increase. 

But such displays ought not to stop with dolls and toys. In several places in its downtown, the City of Berkeley sponsors art displays in vacant windows. Oakland ought to follow suit, with themed displays along selected walking routes, some of them cultural, some of them historic, some of them seasonal, changing them periodically so that pedestrians would be encouraged to come back from time to time. 

There are other social concerns of course, about who Oakland has been trying to attract to its uptown-downtown area and who it has been trying to keep out, and our inability as a city to come to some sort of terms with our young Black and Brown population. Resolving that problem would go a long ways towards resolving the problem of an underused uptown-downtown. But that’s an issue we’ve often talked about, and a subject for another time. 

Meanwhile, I’m no city planner, so I haven’t done a cost breakdown of the above suggestions. But I often walk or ride in the uptown-downtown area, and I see its deficiencies. I often hear the complaints and concerns that there are not enough places in the area to shop or eat. My concern is that the city is not doing enough to steer the public to the places that are already there. These are my suggestions of how to alleviate that problem. I am sure the professional city planners in Oakland can come up with a far better list, if they put their heads to it. 

In 1948, University of California enrollment at the Berkeley campus reached 22,000 students, making adequate housing the number-one problem facing the student body. That year, the California Alumni Association published the book Students at Berkeley, which contained a large chapter devoted to housing and analyzed potential student housing sites. 

The Northside was judged unsuitable for student housing owing to “very unfavorable topography” and “remoteness from the center of student activities.” Older buildings—the Victorians and Colonial Revivals now prized as historic resources—were also deemed inadequate for student habitation. 

As an example of “adaptation of old and unsuitable buildings,” the book displayed two photos of Victorians, one of which was the North Gables boarding house at 2531 Ridge Road. The 19th-century houses were unfavorably compared with the university-owned Stern Hall, built in 1942. 

The 1962 Long-Range Development Plan (LRDP) for the campus proposed new university buildings to be constructed on four Northside city blocks facing the campus between Highland Place and Scenic Avenue. Existing structures—public or private—were to be demolished, including the historic Cloyne Court Hotel, North Gate Hall, and Drawing Building, all designed by John Galen Howard, and the former Beta Theta Pi chapter house, designed by Ernest Coxhead. 

On the Southside, the housing development suggested by the Alumni Association dictated a radically clean sweep of the twenty city blocks between College Avenue, Bancroft Way, Fulton Street, and Dwight Way, retaining only “institutions of quasi-public and social character” and the Telegraph Avenue-Bancroft Way business district. The rest was to be occupied by “elevator-type living centers” with “generous open space for recreation and amenity.” 

Miraculously, the sweep wasn’t quite as radical as intended, and many historic buildings on both sides of the campus were spared. On the Northside, Cloyne Court Hotel, North Gate Hall, the Drawing Building, Beta Theta Pi, and many pre-1923 residences were eventually designated as landmarks. The Victorian at 2531 Ridge Road—for which a landmark application was never written owing to insufficient information—not only survived but continues to house students. 

This charming, turreted house, now divided into six apartments, was one of the earliest homes built in the Daley’s Scenic Park tract. The first improvement on the site was recorded in 1892, and by the following year it had more than doubled. After passing through two owners in as many years, the property was acquired by one William Fisher, who may have briefly lived in the house but never long enough to be listed in the Berkeley directory. 

Next door, at 2527 Ridge Road, another Victorian went up at the same time. This house was acquired by James and Margaret Pierce, who lived in it until 1904, when they became managers of the newly completed Cloyne Court Hotel and sold their home to the Swiss vice-consul, John Freuler. Until the mid-1910s, Strawberry Creek ran in its natural channel across the back yards of both houses. 

Unlike its next-door neighbor, 2531 Ridge Road was always occupied by renters. Beginning in 1899, it was the home of Mrs. Annie E. Benson, a 65-year old widow from Pennsylvania. In the 1900 U.S. census, Mrs. Benson listed her occupation as Landlady. This in itself was not remarkable, but the 1900 census revealed two facts about Mrs. Benson that were remarkable indeed. For one, her race was listed as Black, making Annie Benson the only African-American head of household on the Northside. The one other person listed as Black in the neighborhood at the time was a domestic living in the household of her employers. (Five other persons—the wife and four children of realtor Herman Murphy—were also listed as Black in 1900; however, all subsequent census records marked them as White.) 

The second revelation about Mrs. Benson is even more interesting. In 1900, her tenants at 2531 Ridge Road were Austin and Ethel Lewis and their three children. 

Attorney, writer, socialist, and civil libertarian, Austin Lewis (1865–1944) was a highly visible figure in his day. Born in England, he immigrated to the United States in 1890 with his parents and siblings. The family arrived in Berkeley circa 1898 and established the private Glenholm School in their home on the corner of Shattuck Ave. and Berryman Street, at the current entrance to Live Oak Park. 

Why Austin Lewis, who was practicing law in San Francisco, chose to leave the family home and move into a rental on Ridge Road is not apparent, unless he did so expressly to help Annie Benson. 

Lewis was a tireless activist and lecturer in support of labor and women’s suffrage. Shortly after his arrival in Berkeley, Lewis published a series of books on socialism. The first was a translation of Friedrich Engels’ Feuerbach: The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy (1903), followed by his own The Church and Socialism (1906), The Rise of the American Proletarian (1907), The Militant Proletariat (c. 1911), and Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1910s). 

In 1901, Berkeley gained another socialist in the figure of future mayor J. Stitt Wilson (1868–1942), a former Methodist Episcopal minister turned lecturer, who in 1903 bought a Maybeck-designed house on Highland Place, two blocks to the east of the Benson-Lewis household. The house—built in 1896 and destroyed in 1956—is known to architectural historians as the Laura G. Hall House, but considering that Ms. Hall occupied it for no more than a year, while Stitt Wilson owned it for several decades, it might be more appropriate to name it after him. 

Like Lewis, Wilson published socialist tracts, including The Message of Socialism to the Church and The Impending Social Revolution, or The Labor Problem Solved (both in 1904). Unlike Lewis, Wilson was obliged to publish them at his own expense. 

Lewis and Wilson were the two luminaries of the Socialist Party, and both ran in California gubernatorial races on their party’s ticket. In 1906, Lewis garnered 5.1% of the votes in a four-way race won by Republican James N. Gillett. Four years later, Wilson collected 12.4% of the votes in a three-way race won by Republican Hiram W. Johnson. Lewis, who ran for the U.S. Congress from the Fourth District that year, came in third behind the Republican and Democratic candidates. 

As friend, mentor, and sometime lawyer to a large coterie of writers and poets, Austin Lewis counted Jack London, Herman Whitaker, and George Sterling in his circle. Influenced by Lewis, London wrote The Iron Heel, a dystopian novel set in the future and depicting the triumph of capital over socialism. 

In September 1909, Lewis was one of 25 literary figures who organized the Press Club of Alameda, which would evolve into the California Writers’ Club. At the time, the club was the only California organization of its kind to include both men and women members. Lewis was elected as the club’s first president. 

Among the causes that engaged Lewis’s interest were the efforts to free Tom Mooney and Warren Billings—two labor leaders falsely accused of planting a bomb in a 1916 San Francisco parade—and to repeal California’s criminal syndicalism law, which classified dissident speech as a felony punishable by imprisonment. 

The Lewis family stayed at 2531 Ridge Road only briefly. By 1901 they had moved to 3108 Harper Street, and two years later they decamped for Oakland, where they lived at 3103 Stuart Street (in 1927, Highland Hospital would be built across the street from their house). Annie Benson, now listed in the directories as a cook, continued living at the Ridge Road house until 1904, when she moved to 1536 Shattuck Avenue. Her new house stood on the site now occupied by the parking lot between the French Hotel and Bank of America. 

While the Swiss vice-consul was living next door, 2531 Ridge Road became the home of William O’Brien, a blacksmith. In 1919, the house was taken over by Edna G. White (1884–1957), a former school teacher from Illinois, who established in it a boarding house for female students. She called it North Gables. 

North Gables was run along the lines of a co-operative. Residents paid $25 a month ($30 in the ’40s) for room and board, supplementing their rent payments with five weekly hours of work that included cleaning, cooking, serving, dish washing, gardening, and repair. About a quarter of the thirty lodgers worked an additional two hours a day and lived rent-free. 

Like all such living accommodations, North Gables required the approval of the Dean of Women and underwent regular inspections. During the 1920s, it was expanded fore and aft—the front façade, which had originally featured a polygonal window bay in the southeast corner and a small entrance porch at the southwest, gained a deep porch running across its entire length, with a sleeping porch above it. 

North Gables weathered the Depression and World War II, enabling a great many girls of slender means to obtain university education. The boarding house ceased operation in 1949, after Miss White’s health deteriorated. The building has since passed through many hands and was eventually converted into apartments. Its former next-door neighbor is long since gone, having made way for the Hotel Slocum, now known as the Stebbins Hall co-op, named after Dean of Women Lucy Ward Stebbins, who in 1933 awarded North Gables third-place honors for scholarship. 

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

Photograph: Daniella Thompson  

2531 Ridge Road, built in 1892, is one of the oldest buildings on the Northside. 

It’s post-Thanksgiving: socially, it’s December. Time to think about holiday shopping.  

Sure, some people have got all their gift-shopping done, either in mid-July or in last year’s post-holiday sales. They have more storage space than anyone I know, and/or they lack the true Spirit of the Wild Hunt. (You didn’t think the Wal-Mart frenzy had anything to do with that newfangled Christ guy, did you?) The rest of us are just now getting into gear. 

If you have a gardener to shop for, it shouldn’t be too hard. First: You have live stuff to consider. There are seeds, late bulbs, and plants for the garden and house all over the place. In this season an indoor plant is a good idea; there’s no need to worry about late freezes and it’s always good to have one more bit of green living at one’s elbow to make the wait for Spring easier.  

For elegant and practical gifts, go browse at Hida Tool and Hardware. Be prepared to walk sideways, because the shop is tiny and full of good stuff. Sometimes you can find things you never knew you (or your giftee) needed, like cuffs that cover the arm just above glove level, for working on junipers or roses or any prickly plant. They look all superhero-cool too.  

Check out the long-reach pruners, the various hoes and weeders, the incomparable saws, the irreplaceable hori-hori trowel/knives. My personal art-object favorite is the right- or left-handed one-side-beveled grafting knife. This is one piece of shaped metal with a wicker wrap around the handle for a Neolithic look, which would make it retro even if it’s a 500-year-old design.  

Hida doesn’t sell Felco brand pruning shears, oddly enough. Sure, Felcos are a Swiss brand, but where’s the International Luv?  

If you really really love your gardener, consider a pair of Felcos as a present even if she or he already had one. I’m saying this as a multiple-Felco owner, despite one of the major advantage of the brand: You’ll never have to buy another pair because every part is replaceable. Mostly it’s a new cutting blade that’s needed, and that only after several years’ resharpening.  

Felcos ain’t cheap but they’re a good investment. You might spend $50 to $75 on a pair, but those replacement blades cost less than $10 and they make the old pair feel brand-new.  

A sharpener for the blade is a good lagniappe—giving the shears a lick or two before every job, rather like steeling a kitchen knife, makes work a pleasure and a sharp blade is better for the plants you’re pruning too. I have a simple pair of flat diamond files that I’ve almost worn out after 20 years. They cost under $10 together and take up very little pocket space.  

The rub is this: It’s hard to surprise your gift-getter with Felcos because they really ought to be tried on first. There are 14 models, to fit all sorts of hands (including left ones) and uses. I use #8—in case some Felco Fairy would care to visit me.  

Next week: more gift ideas. 

Felcos:  

Hida Tool and Hardware Company 

1333 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley  

(510) 524-3700 or (800) 443-5512 

http://www.hidatool.com 

9:00 a.m.. - 6:00 p.m. Monday—Satuday  

Closed Sunday 

Mrs. Dalloway's Literary and Garden Arts  

2904 College Avenue, Berkeley  

(510) 704-8222 

Mon—Wed 10 a.m.—7 p.m. 

Thurs—Sat 10 a.m.—9 pmm. 

Sunday noon—6 p.m. 

http://www.mrsdalloways.com 

Also try the nearest hardware, nursery, or garden store, e.g.Yabusaki’s Dwight Way Nursery, East Bay Nursery, Berkeley Horticultural Nursery. 

Online: http://www.felcostore.com 

Welcome to my watershed. I really like it here but it is, basically, a big clay bowl and we’re all salad. 

Some of us get lucky by being up on the edge of the bowl or on one of the ridges on the inside, but most of are not and so it gets wet under our houses. 

This image is intentionally over the top but I want to get you started thinking about this in a larger context. We are in a watershed filled with creeks, springs, aquifers and culverted water-ways. If you put clay soils on top of this system of waterways, you can imagine that you end up with something like your first experience on the potter’s wheel. Everything is slippery and it’s hard to maintain a rigid or fixed form. 

You might imagine that it’s rather hard for a house to remain truly rectilinear, plumb and square when resting on this sort of thing. Add to this the fact that many houses were built on “filled” soils that were brought to the site to create a level surface (or because it was cheaper than hauling off the excess soil from local works such road building) and it’s easy to understand why these houses are so wracked and warped. The filled soils may have seemed stable when they were first installed but the loading of many tons of house combined with a few good rains and, voila, you’ve got Trouble (right here in River City!). 

“Filled” soils compact under load or when water is added and many houses have “differential” settlement (one area has settled more than another) that is attributable, in part, to this effect. 

When contractors started building here in the 1800s, they didn’t pay drainage or soils issues much heed and so many of the houses built up through the early 1900s have settlement which stems from these oversights. By 1940, foundations got much stronger and so could “bridge” over soft spots without settlement to a much greater degree. We also observed better site preparation beginning in this time period and the avoidance of filled soils was one such improvement. 

In short, the soils conditions we find locally (and in many other parts of the globe) require that buildings be able to withstand a certain amount of earth movement and poor drainage. 

Many of these issues are hard to resolve without great sums of cash. However, there is one factor in this scenario that is, at least somewhat, manageable and that is the water. 

Wet soils move more than dry soils.  

We can’t really change the soil we’re on (well you can but, boy, it’s really expensive) but you can keep it dryer. There’s no perfect drainage system but if we endeavor to keep the soil below our houses dry we can slow the movement quite a bit and have more stable, less weirdly shaped homes. 

If you’re on a hillside you have a more complex problem, although your water issue may not be as bad as some that I see in flatter areas. 

If your crouton is located on the side of the salad bowl, it’s working it’s way slowly to the bottom of the bowl. Add more dressing, it will get there faster. If your crouton is on the bottom of the bowl, it’s not moving so fast, although it may be sitting in too much Balsamic Vinaigrette. 

As water softens the soils below hillside homes, they will tend to move downhill more rapidly than they will when they’re dry. Those of us who get to live in the hills are, therefore, living in mobile-homes. Gravity not only pulls our houses downhill, it also applies force “differentially” and many hillside homes show separations or cracks that result from different parts of the house moving in different direction and/or at different rates. 

One cause of differential settlement is that the wetting of soils is never uniform. Even if the soils you rest upon are completely homogenous, they will not be getting wet in a uniform manner because water flows in funny and surprising ways, although some aspects of this are predictable. For example, water will flow down against the back of your house (if your house faces downhill), creating wetter soils there. This can make the back wall settle more than the rest. 

The result of uneven wetting is, often, uneven settlement. As I’ve indicated, this is more true with early foundation than with modern ones due to their breadth and strength. 

There also may be harder soil beneath some parts of your house and regardless of wetting, that part might always be held aloft while other parts drop away. 

Settlement can occur just as easily on soils of uniform strength when some parts are kept much dryer than others. Often the middle of the house is staying dryer and does not settle as much as the edges which are wetted to a greater degree. This is not consistent, though, since some houses have deep portion near the middle (especially hillside homes which are cut away for basements or garages). These houses often exhibit the reverse effect with the middle settling faster than the rest because the middle supports rest upon wetter soils in a depression that holds water. 

Just to make matters all the more confusing, our local clay bed has the disconcerting propensity to rise and fall as it wets and dries. Expansive clay soils will push houses upward as they get wet (because the clay takes on water and holds it) and then lower these structures down as they dry out. This is sometimes referred to as “clay-jacking.” 

This turns out to be a locomotive process when you add gravity. Hillside homes are driven downhill very slowly because every time they rise and fall, they get pushed a little further downhill. 

At this point I feel obliged to stop the drama and say that most of the houses I see are not being affected by these forces enough to require any significant repair. Few houses remain truly square after 6 or 8 decades of being subjected to these effects but, in most cases, these changes can be spackled and ignored. 

So, let’s review. You’re living in a crouton on the side of a bowl of Caesar. 

Remember to ask for the dressing on the side. 

Next time, I’ll explain about how to do that and the solution is French (the drain, not the dressing). 

D.W. Griffith is known these days primarily for his large-scale epics Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). And while these films contributed greatly to the history and art of motion pictures, they do not fully convey the range and power of Griffith's talent, nor are they his most enjoyable films. 

Some of his most satisfying work was done a much smaller scale. Some of the short films he made for the Biograph company prior to Birth of a Nation are among his best work, like tales in miniature told with deft skill and economy. And some of his less grandiose features are more heartfelt, more sincere, and far less bombastic than the epic crowd-pleasers on which his reputation rests today. 

True Heart Susie (1919) is one of a series of films Griffith referred to as his "short story" pictures. It is a small, gentle film, one of the director's pastoral romances in which he celebrates with warmth and nostalgia the sort of rural village life in which he was raised. The film has just been released on DVD by Image Entertainment in an excellent transfer produced by David Shepard. 

Lillian Gish plays a country lass, a plain girl in love with the boy (Robert Harron) across the way. When his father denies him the chance to go to college, Susie quietly sells her cow and a few other belongings to anonymously pay the boy's tuition. But when he returns from college to become the village teacher, he is seduced by and marries another girl in the village, a wild one of questionable sincerity.  

The plot becomes a bit contrived from there, as Griffith does everything he can to ensure that, through no fault of the boy or Susie, the vampish wife is taken ill and dies as two secrets come to light: the wife had concealed transgressions against the husband, and Susie was in fact the boy's true benefactor. Thus Griffith's 19th century morals are conveniently kept intact as he reunites his two saintly characters while focusing all blame on the vamp. 

But this is in part what makes the film so engaging. It's a simple tale, with simple plot points and simple emotions. And Lillian Gish handles the role beautifully. For viewers not familiar with Gish, the performance may seem a bit odd, for Gish is in a sense playing with her own screen image, gently chiding the simple girlish role she has been given on the one hand, yet delivering wonderfully understated emotions scenes on the other.  

While epic dramas full of action and showmanship may have satisfied Griffith's ego, it is the smaller films like True Heart Susie that reveal the true soul of the director—his warmth, his sentimentality, his reverence or a 19th century vision of female purity, and his passion for the everyday drama of everyday life.  

The disc comes with a bonus feature, Hoodoo Ann (1916), a Griffith-supervised light comedy which he wrote under a pseudonym.  

True Heart Susie 

Directed by D.W. Griffith.  

Starring Lillian Gish, Robert Harron. 

Image Entertainment, $24.99. 

www.image-entertainment.com

The great thing about DVD is that it has given the major studios the opportunity to finally do right by the classics in their archives. For the first six or seven years of the format’s existence, the studios were, for the most part, content to simply reissue their back catalogues in cheap editions, often without any attempt to remaster the image.  

But over the past few years, as box-office receipts have declined, studio bosses finally seem to be coming around to the reality that if these films are going to survive and be seen, they will be seen in the home, and thus it pays to provide definitive editions that will endure. 

Thus Warner Bros. has just released a lavish boxed-set edition of the film that put the studio on the map back in 1927. The Jazz Singer almost single-handedly ended the silent era and launched Hollywood on whole new trajectory. 

D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation ushered the art form into its maturity in 1915, kicking off the first great era of motion picture innovation and achievement; The Jazz Singer brought the great cinematic decade of the 1920s to a close, halting the entire medium in its tracks for a couple of years as filmmakers struggled to harness and master the new sound technology.  

One of the unfortunate aspects of these two cinematic milestones is that they are both marred by racism, a fact that greatly obscures their legacies. In 1999 the Directors Guild of America changed the name of its highest award, which since 1953 had been named for Griffith, in light of the stereotypes perpetuated in his most famous film. And The Jazz Singer, though widely known by name, is rarely seen today. 

The fact is, The Jazz Singer isn’t that good a film anyway. Important, yes, and largely misunderstood, but not good. It’s really a silent film, with just a handful of sound sequences, most consisting of the ever-energetic Al Jolson singing and sweating and dancing, often in blackface. The combination of silence and sound proves an awkward hybrid at best. 

The legend says that it was Jolson’s singing that drove a stake into the heart of silent film, but the truth is both more subtle and more interesting. Audiences had experienced sound pictures before, usually in the form of musical interludes, but these were of such crude quality that the innovation didn’t stick; the clumsiness of the available technologies only intruded on the dream-like quality of silent film. What startled audiences of The Jazz Singer and got them hooked on sound was a few improvised minutes of dialogue. Jolson, seated at the piano, finishes a song, turns to his mother and engages in some insignificant patter. The off-hand nature of the exchange gave the illusion that the audience was eavesdropping on a real-life moment, and it was that sense of intimacy and verisimilitude that truly launched the sound era.  

Sound had been a huge gamble for Warner Bros. At the time, the studio was at the bottom of the heap and desperate to climb to the top. So they took a chance on sound and came up with the hit they so desperately needed. Their success sent them to the forefront of the industry, with all the other studios playing catch-up. The new medium brought with it a host of technical problems—satirized with great accuracy in Singin’ in the Rain (1950)—leading to a period of static, stage-bound films with little artistic merit. As stated in The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk, an excellent documentary included in the set, it seemed that audiences preferred mediocre sound films to great silent films. 

The new three-disc set includes a wealth of material placing the film in its proper historical context, including commentary by film historians Ron Hutchinson and Vince Giordano; short films of Jolson from the era; The Dawn of Sound, which provides a great overview of the advent of synchronized sound, the impact of The Jazz Singer, and the demise of the silent film; and a full disc of Vitaphone sound shorts, films of Vaudeville acts of the 1920s. These films may be quaint, static and strange by modern standards, but they provide a valuable and rare historical record of the sort of entertainment that movies replaced, and to which The Jazz Singer pays tribute. 

THE JAZZ SINGER 

(1927) 

Three-disc set featuring commentary, documentary and Vitaphone sound films of Vaudeville acts. $39.95.

When Bertolt Brecht and G.W. Pabst decided to collaborate in bringing the former's Threepenny Opera to the screen, both men were at the peak of their careers. But the collaboration would be anything but smooth. Indeed it was fraught with conflict, as so many Brecht projects were.  

The film has just been released on DVD by Criterion in a two-disc edition that features a beautiful transfer of the German film along with a host of features, including commentary by film scholars David Bathrick and Eric Rentschler, the French version of the film, and a documentary and essay on the adaptation from stage to screen. 

Brecht drafted the original screenplay, but delivered something far different than he was asked for. Rather than simply bringing the original play to the screen, he drastically altered it, adding and removing scenes, rearranging the structure, and greatly altering the content and focus of the tale.  

Brecht had already clashed with composer Kurt Weill over the play itself, each man claiming credit for the production's success. Now he clashed with Pabst, who took Brecht's script and bent it to his own aims. But as Bathrick and Rentschler point out in the disc's commentary track, the two men may not have been so far apart as they claimed. Each was perhaps reluctant to credit the other with the film's better qualities and reserved the right to scapegoat the other should the critics be unkind. 

Shortchanged by the film, however, is Kurt Weill, for few of his compositions made it onto the screen. 

The final product, though it may bear relatively little resemblance to the stage production, is an excellent film and a milestone of early sound cinema. Pabst often replaces scenes of dialogue with imagery, with long gazes, with near-silent shots in which the actors convey the plot without words. And at a time when the camera had been rendered almost stagnant by cumbersome sound equipment, Pabst's camera roams through the sets with fluidity and ease. If the camerawork at times seem similar to Fritz Lang's M, released that same year, there is good reason: Both films were shot by legendary cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner. 

There are other similarities between the two films. Both examine the criminal underworld, and do so with a blend of humor, intrigue and distaste. And both feature wonderfully sustained sequences of cat-and-mouse amid the squalid streets. One image in Threepenny Opera is especially striking: One of Mack the Knife's henchmen has stolen an armchair and is running through the streets with police in pursuit. He crosses a courtyard, invisible beneath the chair, looking like an ant carrying its booty back to the nest. He scurries across the courtyard and out of view, only to appear again with the police right behind him, firing bullets into the upholstery. 

In America, the reaction to synchronized sound technology had been extreme. The first couple of years worth of American sound films were filled with wall-to-wall talk; the audience was rarely given a break from the endless chatter of showgirls and dandy men about town. It seemed everyone was a wit, armed with a ready punchline for every situation. In Germany, by contrast, sound was being used more judiciously and with greater sophistication. Filmmakers like Pabst and Lang did not give up the virtues of the more image-focused cinema of silent pictures. Rather than treating sound as an end in itself, they used it as a means to an end, as another tool in the creation of compelling cinema. Sound was used as atmosphere, or fused into the story as a plot point, and often employed in one sequence merely to draw greater attention to the silence of another sequence. 

The result is a film of richness and depth, with sound and image combining in the creation of a sharply rendered underworld. The words of Brecht, the music of Weill, the images of Pabst and Wagner — a fruitful collaboration of some of Germany's greatest talents. 

Threepenny Opera 

Directed by G.W. Pabst 

Criterion Collection, $39.95. 

www.criterion.com

Vocalist and Berkeley resident Lorna Kollmeyer—Lorna K. to her many Bay Area fans—is topping off her 15-year “overnight success” career of singing the American songbook with a live recording session for her first CD at the Plush Room in San Francisco Monday evening, Dec. 3. 

Titled In My Room, her CD will feature songs by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, “along with ‘Nature Boy,’ and two French numbers inspired by Petula Clark,” said Kollmeyer. “I grew up in L.A.’s South Bay area, not far from the Beach Boys, and have been integrating their songs into my repertoire the past couple of years, interpreting them in a jazz idiom. They belong in the American songbook along with Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart—as Leonard Bernstein also believed.” 

Kollmeyer, who took up Afro-Cuban conga drumming in the mid-’80s, began singing after meeting guitarist Ned Boynton, her first husband, and playing for his indie rock group out of Oakland, The Bunyups. “My first exposure to jazz was sitting in with Ned’s combo on Latin numbers,” Kollmeyer recalled, “and listening to Ella and Sarah in his record collection—then hearing Paula West when some friends hired us to back her up at a party.” 

She has attracted a large, loyal fan base from her remarkable sense of contact with her audience and constant enriching of her repertoire. “I wasn’t inspired till now to record,” she said, “But I’ve found my voice doing covers of these tunes, and am finally in the realm where I’m comfortable with my improvisational skills enough to honor a song yet do something different with it, make you want to listen to it.”  

Much of her performing has been in the city, at Enrico’s and Shanghai 1930, but Lorna K. has performed at Downtown in Berkeley—and her band, The Dunes, is all Berkeley High graduates: Greg Sankovich, piano; Tom Griesser, saxophone; Kurt Ribak, bass; Bryan Bowman, drums. The Plush Room gig will be one of the last for that important cabaret venue; after New Year’s, Rrazz Productions, which handles Kollmeyer, will relocate to the Nikko Hotel.