Contents

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. -more-

-more-

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. -more-

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-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

Domestic violence -more-

Cat on a hot thin rug -more-

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. -more-

WORK IT OUT TOGETHER -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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

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

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-

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. -more-