A couple of months ago I heard the buzz of saws and found that the magnificent tree with an incredible canopy that provided much appreciated summer shade was coming down. I watched as the large healthy tree with a thick trunk, probably near 100 years old, the age of the houses on this block was fed into the chipper. I couldn’t stop thinking about what a waste it was to grind up a trunk that could have been milled into lumber for any number of projects.

Margo Schueler took a different approach when she had to remove what she called a wonderful tree, a canary pine and wrote it up in NextDoor.

“Last month we had a large non-native pine taken down from our West Berkeley home. There were many compelling reasons to remove this wonderful tree but we had struggled with this decision for over a decade. Fortunately, we found Mike Hudson on Nextdoor and he was able to mill 5 - 10 foot sections into wonderful lumber now drying in stacks for future building. Cost 65% of the bid to grind and dispose of the tree. Very happy with this direction. Even happier on reading this article ; “Reforestation Hubs Are Saving Urban Trees From Heading to Landfills” Did you know that the US is losing 36 million [urban] trees every year? Several organizations have stepped up with creative solutions to save the wood, reduce carbon emissions and create jobs.

“More wood from cities goes into landfills than is harvested from US National Forests,” says J. Morgan Grove, a research forester at Baltimore Field Station, USDA Forest Service. Thank you Mike!

I went to see the stacked drying wood for myself, amazing! 

The damage and destruction to People’s Park is still painful no matter how it settles, but if those magnificent trees were turned into wood for housing that would at least be more palatable than piles of wood chips. When I spoke with Margo about milling the tree instead of chipping, she told me that Mike Hudson told her he had offered to mill the redwood trees whose roots were destroyed (a condition of the approval had been to preserve the trees) by the developer for the 1698 University at McGee mixed-use project. 

The developer refused the offer, because it would take two days to mill the trees into lumber so the trees were chipped. That was in August 2018. The project still isn’t finished four years later from all appearances. Something is very wrong with this picture, when a developer couldn’t stop for two days out of four years to turn redwood trees into usable lumber. And something is very wrong with a city and a university that doesn’t have a vision or a requirement to change this course, and whose only solution is landfill and piles of mulch. 

From doing a little reading there is a lot of resistance to turning urban trees that are cut down into lumber to make way for developments, expansion or to remove them because of their growing size and proximity to existing structures. Berkeley was cutting down trees to rehab streets until neighborhoods rose up in objection. 

I wish this were the end of the story. The article referenced by Scheuler has a list of resources, that I have yet to check out. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/reforestation-hubs-are-saving-urban-trees-from-heading-to-landfills?utm_source=Next+City+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c28eb8580f-DailyNL_2022_05_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcee5bf7a0-c28eb8580f-44126641 This morning before I could hit fast forward, the ad for Aspiration.com https://www.aspiration.com/ started to play. It is a promotion for a credit card that theoretically offsets destructive anti-environment choices and behavior with planting a tree with a credit card swipe. The message: Make all that spending feel good. I might have been taken in by such an ad if I didn’t know most of these programs are a failure as far as the trees go. There is a lot more available on the nature of trees and forests, but a good start is listening to The Daily, The Sunday Read: ‘Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?’ https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS81NG5BR2NJbA/episode/MTg2MDZjOWMtNzRmMS00NTI1LThjYTMtOTQzOTNjYTUzMGY0?hl=en 

Saving the world and planting trees requires more than a swipe of a credit card and sticking seedlings in the ground. Whether those seedlings even survive at all is a big question. At the top of the list should be whether the location selected is appropriate for trees, and does the tree species selected support the local ecosystem, meaning is the tree native to the area, and will the tree support native birds and insects? Then there is ongoing care for the first three years or so when a seedling or young tree is taking root. 

Even here in Berkeley with a tree planting grant, it is not guaranteed that the trees selected and planted support local ecosystems. The city is following up with care for the critical early years of the newly planted trees, but I wonder about the “younger” trees that are already here that look to be suffering and dying from the drought especially in the Sacramento Street median. 

The first project reviewed at the Thursday Design Review Committee (DRC) was a 5-story mixed-use building at 1820 San Pablo between Hearst and Delaware, the location of the former Albatross bar. To understand how the building is allowed 5 stories when the permitted number for this location is 4 stories,, this additional floor is the reward known as a “density bonus” for designating 4 units as very low income in a base project of 33 units. Setting aside four units for very low-income households, the project gained a density bonus of 11 more units and another floor making the total five floors and 44 dwelling units. 

Brad Gunkel, the architect, for 1820 San Pablo was trying to add design interest so this 5-story block would not look like just another BUB (big ugly box). What Gunkel thought would be a nice addition to the design, untreated wood starting on the third floor for the northern third of the building facing San Pablo, was the subject of considerable objection first noted by West Berkeley resident Phil Allen and then the DRC members. All agreed that the untreated wood would not age nicely as Gunkel described and would instead deteriorate within a few years and require replacement. Charles Kahn DRC member expressed concern, saying that, “rather than being a gift to the neighborhood, this would degrade and would be more a curse…” The DRC voted unanimously to continue review with a list of requested revisions and modifications to be incorporated before proceeding to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). 

The second DRC project at 2403 San Pablo at Channing, the former Omega Salvage Store, is a co-housing condominium project with 1, 2 and 3-bedroom units for a total of 36 units, with a large communal kitchen and great room and over 10,000 square feet of open space (six times more than required) designed by the people who plan to live there and are looking toward a future of aging in place. It is a lovely project and passed out of committee with an ask to make the San Pablo ground floor exterior more interesting. My vote would be to add a mural. 

Committee member Steve Finacom said this about the co-housing project, “I’m very positive about this and I wish we saw more projects like this in terms of massing and setback and height, because all the issues that came up in in most of the previous projects we’ve seen, the huge buildings built at property line that overshadow neighbors and that don’t have any real open space, that’s all addressed here…” 

My neighbor who normally doesn’t follow projects, though he hears a fair amount of complaining about them from me, took a cruise through recent projects approved by ZAB with the two R & D projects in West Berkeley grabbing his attention. He commented: “Why are they building parking lots for people to drive to work instead of housing so they can walk, I bet there is a lot of housing that could go up instead of those parking lots…” He is right. 

There was a lot of complaining about the parking lots when the projects were being reviewed, but none of us thought to suggest that housing ought to go on the sites instead of cars. That won’t happen next time, but to actually require housing instead of parking lots, that demands city action. And city action invariably falls into the cycle of referrals to the city manager and the Planning Commission whose agenda is tightly controlled by the Planning Department where little bubbles up. 

The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met on Monday with Mayor Arreguin invited to discuss the $650,000,000 general obligation bond that will be on the November ballot. It wasn’t really clear what passing the bond would mean for restoring the Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and the Veterans Buildings. The mayor started with enthusiasm for raising funds and said the revitalization “could” be funded with the bond, but then diverged to tapping Congresswoman Barbara Lee for $50 million for the Civic Center as being reasonable. It was all pretty “vague” with the list of other things for bond spending like “complete streets” bike and pedestrian plans, sidewalks, waterfront, etc. 

Arreguin said the bond package would be spread over 48 years instead of the usual 30 to bring down the cost to $40.91 for each $100,000 of assessed value. This is the projected annual cost to property owners, not total cost of paying back the money to investors (the bond holders) as that was estimated to be around $1.2 billion in the August 3 Council meeting discussion and documents. And even that number is in question given the last-minute revisions from the Finance Department (instigated by citizen Lomax finding calculation errors) and all the variables of spreading the bond tranches (sliced portions of the bond) over 20 – 30 years with repayment over 48 years. 

The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project is mixed. The project was conceived to remake the fountain as a monument to honor and recognize local Native American history and has close to $1 million in funding, which is all good. But, the current difficulty is the consultants hired to finish the design and implement the project are resistant to participation from the indigenous people who are native to this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone who the project is supposed to honor. The Lisjan/Ohlone have no reservations or protected land. The description of shutting down the voices of the Native Americans made me think of the Sioux Tribe orphan Mose in William Kent Kreuger’s novel, This Tender Land. As a small child Mose was discovered next to his murdered Indian mother with his tongue cut out. 

The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) started on Wednesday morning with a planning workshop that could be titled “Dream Big.” It is a plan for expanding ferry service from 10 terminals and 6 routes to something like 21 terminals and 29 routes, with 18 vessels currently, needing 61 vessels for the most expansive proposal, with somewhere in between for more moderate dreaming. https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b081722aDECK.pdf 

The problem is always funding including how to fund WETA for current service. The answer to how to finance expansion, the purchase of all those new vessels and build new facilities is supposed to come sometime this fall in another workshop. As summarized last week fares made up only 16.7% of the revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. It is all the other federal, state subsidies, ballot measure J (Contra Costa Transportation Authority) and a share of bridge tolls that supports WETA. Next time you are in a traffic jam at the Bay Bridge, instead of being frustrated, think If all of these cars weren’t driving across the bridge, there wouldn’t be enough money for WETA ferries to stay afloat. 

The question which isn’t being asked is how many transfers or modes of transportation are we willing to use to get to a desired location, though the inconvenience of ferry boarding locations does occasionally come up. 

I live in the flats near the high school. As I drove to the Marina, I thought about what it would be like to use a ferry to commute to San Francisco. Getting to a Berkeley ferry would require a bus, drive or bike ride, then the ferry ride, followed with BART, bus or bike on the other end. Ferry locations just aren’t convenient unless you live next door and are maybe headed to a ballgame in SF. In the WETA survey, ferries as a means of transportation for commuting to and from work rated the lowest as desirable and as transportation to an event as the highest. I never considered the ferry when I lived in SF and worked in Oakland after the earthquake. It was bus to BART to shuttle. As soon as the bridge opened I was back in my car for the convenience. 

There are always people excited about expansion of ferry service whether it makes sense or not and a city representative from the Hercules area filled that role. 

One question on electric ferries was answered. Electric ferries must be small or they are just too slow to compete with other modes of transportation including heavy fuel oil or marine diesel-powered ferries. 

In closing, I can’t help thinking about Smedley Butler every time I hear about Haiti and sending Haitian asylum seekers back to Haiti. The U.S. made mess in Haiti started before 1914, but it was in that year that the invasion by the marines was planned and Smedley Butler became the ongoing leader of the occupation. 

Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America’s of America’s Empire by Jonathan Katz is an absolutely fascinating book looking at history and regime change through the war hero Smedley Butler beginning with his joining the marines at 16 and ending in 1934 when Smedley Darlington Butler blew the whistle and testified before a two-man panel of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities on the planned fascist putsch by American industrialists. 

In 1924 Smedley Butler was granted a leave of absence from the Navy and inducted as director of the Department of Public Safety of the City of Philadelphia, where Butler introduced war tactics into policing in the city of Philadelphia. 

An interesting twist in the 1934 coup in planning is the American Liberty League, with founders from the American elite multimillionaires of manufacturing and oil and the losing candidates to FDR and the New Deal. Their declared aim was to “combat radicalism, preserve property rights, uphold and preserve the constitution.” A book I finished a couple of weeks ago, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America , by Kevin M. Kruse, picks up in the 1930s where the planned coup ended. Did the elites find religion as the next useful path to sway the public into rejecting social programs? That is for us to decide. 

Regime change is our country’s history, and it looks like what goes around comes around. 2022 is a critical election year and who wins this year’s elections will determine the future of democracy. An August 2022 NBC poll of 1000 registered voters found the number one concern is “threats to democracy.” It was rated ahead of cost of living, jobs and the economy, immigration, climate change, guns, abortion, crime, other and COVID in that order. 

I recommend both books, Gangsters of Capitalism and One Nation Under God and if I can keep up on my reading there will be a stack of interesting suggestions in the coming weeks.

In a 3 X 6 piece of cardstock mailed to me in a mass mailing from NAMI, soliciting donations, they hit the nail on the head. The message on that card emphasized the essential truth that an acceptable housing situation is essential for a mentally ill individual to recover. This is the first time I've seen something from National Alliance on Mental Illness that resonated with me to such an extent. 

I've been perplexed that NAMI, in a series of emails, has endorsed Governor Newsom's Care Court proposal, in what seems to me like an automatic response that lacks sufficient thought. I do think Newsom should run for President, because Biden may have less of a chance of beating Trump in the next Presidential race. Newsom projects a lot of energy, is much younger than Biden, and could give Trump a far bigger challenge. Trump attributes the epidemic of gun violence to "the crazies." This has made many people in NAMI take a dim view, and rightly so. 

However, I disagree with Newsom's Care Court idea. I believe there could be better potential solutions that make more sense. Care Court assumes the causes of homelessness are "noncompliance" and substance abuse, leading to poor decisions. This assumption is flawed. 

Mentally ill people need housing, and this is my vision: to live without the continual fear of displacement, without harassment of any kind from anyone, and to live in a safe, clean, spacious, comfortable, air-conditioned unit. This should be granted across the board to people with severe psychiatric problems who have lived in California ten years or more--or should be granted federally. 

However, there is a SUBSTANTIAL DRAWBACK to my concept. When housing is handed out to disabled people, good housing in which the responsibilities are limited and the rent is artificially low, it will attract many who do not have an actual disability, and people in droves would try to board this bandwagon. If countermeasures for this are implemented, such as increased rigor in proving disability, it will be that much harder for Americans with genuine disabilities to obtain much needed benefits of any kind. 

Tackling housing for people with psychiatric disabilities will require a lot of ingenuity and forethought. 

To change tack: 

Mentally ill people, in the housing I've proposed, may need supervision. If so, this must be done in a non-punitive manner--without the threat of displacement as a method to enforce such supervision. Mentally ill people need help. We need psychiatric, medical, and psychological treatment. We need friends. How many people have discussed the arguably universal need for sexual fulfillment where it applies to mentally ill people? 

Air conditioning isn't a luxury, it is a physical and medical need. The medications we are mandated to take often interfere with the body's ability to cool itself. Complications of being medicated, and complications of varying levels of self-care (such as excessive weight and insufficient exercise) are reasons that a lot of mentally ill people can die from too much heat. 

Mentally ill people should not be woken at one in the morning because a neighbor wants a cigarette, or because someone in the carport is trying to repair a defunct vehicle and is making noise at it, and so on... These are two of many examples of harassment, and we need our sleep. 

However, apartment managers should not have a punitive system for disciplining residents who are having difficulty following rules. Something else must be thought of. I get it that the threat of repercussions could be the only way to get some people to behave. Yet, others could learn better behaviors or could learn how to follow rules and policies through educating that person and helping them clarify their thinking. And some will never be able to correct themselves, regardless of anything, including punishing. 

Mentally ill people, where we live, must be protected from a criminal element. In a parasitic and/or predatory manner, criminals take advantage of many disabled people. I've lived at low-income apartments for more than thirty years, and I am all too familiar with the junk that accompanies low income and disabled housing. Criminals should not be considered in the same category as mentally ill, and we should not be lumped together with criminals in the context of social programs. I don't know how this issue can be addressed. 

Trump isn't afraid of getting in legal embroilments because he has a lot of judges in his pocket, including those at the U.S. Supreme Court. We should have Newsom running against Trump because he could beat Trump handily. When Newsom is President, he should make good on his campaign promises. And this includes helping disabled people. And remember this: good housing and the absence of threats are necessary for us to get well and stay well. 

In the 2017 re-edition of her 1986 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which American women are reduced to being mere bearers of children, with no rights of their own, Margaret Atwood noted that, “In the wake of the recent American election” (the 2016 election of Donald Trump) “fears and anxieties proliferate. Basic civil liberties are seen as endangered, along with many of the rights for women won over the past decades and indeed the past centuries.” While hesitating to predict the future, either back in 1986 or in 2017, Margaret Atwood has here expressed exactly the problems we now face after the Trump-packed Supreme Court revoked Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to ban all or almost all abortions, thereby eliminating a woman’s constitutional right to choose whether or not to bring a pregnancy to term, regardless of the circumstances in which she became pregnant, even in some states if it was by rape and/or incest. 

As a result of this 2022 Supreme Court decision, we now see an alliance of Trump supporters, Evangelicals, White Supremicists, Tea Party followers, old-time John Birchers, and ultra-partisan Republicans joining together to ban all or most abortions in most states. Indeed, in some traditionally conservative states, they have already placed legislative limits or outright bans on abortions. 

As Margaret Atwood knew back in 1986, religion will often be used to front tyranny. While not being anti-religion per se, she warned against the use of religion to promote facist tendencies in American society. The fictional republic of Gilead of which she wrote in 1986, “is based on a foundation of the seventeenth-century Puritan roots that have always lain beneath the modern-day America we thought we knew.” Now those Puritan roots are coming back to haunt us in the America we thought we knew. It is truly harrowing for all of us who cherish democracy. 

Today, there are now many strands coming together to promote these Puritan right-wing values. Let us examine them. Among many white Americans, though by no means all, the fear of the replacement theory is relevant. As we heard from white supremicists in Charlottesville, South Carolina, there is an extremist group of white supremicists who adamantly insist that they will refuse to be replaced by non-whites (or Jews) as the foremost, privileged group of American citizens. And they will not hesitate to use violence to hold onto that privileged position of whites in America. These are some of the same people and white supremicist organizations who led the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the US capital in an attempt led by Donald Trump to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election victory of Joe Biden and the defeat of Donald Trump. 

So how does the current anti-abortion strategy of these right-wing groups fit in? Well, as Margaret Atwood insightfully recognized in writing The Handmaid’s Tale, control of the reproductive rights of women is always a political issue when conservatives seek to assert their power, both electoral and ideological. In the current climate, how does this resonate? First and perhaps foremost, their anti-abortion strategy reinforces age-old stigmas attached to having an abortion. This means that among whites, even among the well-educated, there will be hesitancy to resort to abortion even when it is clearly in the interests, medical, financial and emotional, of the women who do not feel ready to bear a child. Need it be said that this hesitancy among white women will result in an increase in white babies being born and thus contribute to maintaining whites in the foremost position of power and privilege in America. 

Secondly, the near or total ban on abortions will mean that black and brown women will find it increasingly more difficult to obtain abortions. Now you might think that this works against the conservatives’ ambition to limit black and brown births to maintain white hegemony. However, given that black and brown women are statistically much more prone to death in childbirth than white women, this will mean more deaths of black and brown women. Further, it will drive them to seek illegal and often unsafe abortions, thereby further reducing the population of black and brown women and children who are deemed a threat to continued white hegemony. This is an often unidentified but very real — and very calculated — strategy of conservatives to perpetuate white hegemony in America. In the face of this conservative onslaught, not only on abortion rights but also on voting rights, I think progressives and even moderately liberal citizens and independents need to recognize the seriousness of this threat and respond to what Margaret Atwood called a “Mayday” appeal. A “Mayday”appeal, as she notes, comes from the French “m’aidez” or “help me.” 

So what we need now, in the face of this vicious onslaught on our civil liberties, and, indeed, on our democracy as a whole, is to come together and help one another to reject the worst aspects of what Margaret Atwood identifies as our Puritan heritage and reassert our commitment to the civil liberties that are our true heritage. In the 2022 mid-term elections, we need to fight hard to maintain the Democrats’ fragile majority in both the House and the Senate. With the help of women voters who will reject the Republicans’ ambitions to limit or ban their rights to abortion, we can actually gain seats in both the House and Senate, and thereby further the efforts of the Biden administration to pass legislation that is greatly needed to reinvigorate America as a forward-looking nation not flirting with fascism but forging ahead with respect to civil liberties that are inherent in our heritage. When the alternative is fascism, we must all respond to Atwood’s “Mayday” call to stop this facist swing in its tracks and reassert our commitment to democracy and civil rights for all, even as we recognize and work steadfastly against the fascist tendencies within our American society.

Basic fundamental Jewish teachings, in Leviticus, states categorically, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Torah outlines some specific ways that this mandate can be put into practice: “You shall not steal; nor shall you deal falsely nor lie to one another…. You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him…. 

It's a pity that this wonderful homily has been systematically ignored by Israel since it drove out the Palestinians in 1948. Israel’s latest crime was to launch raids raid on Palestinian Human Rights Organizations and then accuses them of being “Terrorist” Groups. It is a ludicrous assertion given Israel has been censured by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Council for its appalling behaviors. 

Details of the raid are as follows: Israeli forces raided and closed the offices of seven Palestinian civil society rights groups in the occupied West Bank. The raid came as the United Nations condemned Israel for killing 19 Palestinian children in recent weeks, and 100 days after Israeli forces shot dead Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp. Sahar Francis and Brad Parker, senior officials with two of the human rights groups condemned Israel’s Gestapo attacks. 

Israel’s human rights group, B’Tselem, Amnesty International and other human rights groups harshly condemned Israel’s actions and praised the Palestinian groups targeted. One Amnesty official said, “These organizations have contributed enormously to human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and across the globe, yet Israeli army boots trample all over their work.” 

Democratic Congressmember Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and 21 other congressmembers sent a letter to the Biden administration demanding public rejection of the Israeli designation of Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist” groups. 

Israel has only been propped up by $billions of US taxpayer money by successive US administrations, too timid to resist pressures from powerful lobbyists. By killing innocent men, women and children and ignoring its own, simple but poignant scriptures, Israel has lost its humanity and its very soul.

On Saturday, August 20, the War Memorial Opera House hosted the 2022 Merola Opera Grand Finale. This event showcased the 31 young artists of this year’s Merola program, which is widely regarded as the foremost opera training program for young singers, pianists, and stage directors.

Swiss conductor Patrick Furrer, who recently appeared at the helm of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in their French-language Don Carlos, led the San Francisco Opera Center Orchestra in this Merola Grand Finale. The stage director was Matthew J. Schultz. The program began with Patrick Furrer conducting a brisk rendition of the Overture to Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. 

Following this opener soprano Ashley Marie Robillard was Susanna and bass-baritone William Socolof was Figaro in the opening scene from Le Nozze di Figaro. Robillard was a fine Susanna and Socolof sang well as Figaro, though his bass-baritone voice was quite a bit deeper and darker-hued than that of most Figaros. A bit later in this concert, William Socolof gave a splendid rendition of O misère des Rois from L’enfance du Christ by Hector Berlioz. Next on the program was countertenor Cody Bowers deftly offering a lament from Handel’s rarely performed opera Amadigi di Gaula. Then soprano Olivia Prendergast and tenor Jonghyun Park expertly sang the duet Ange adorable from Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod. Following this came what may have been this concert’s most difficult number to sing, the tipsy aria Albert the Good from the opera Albert Herring by Benjamin Britten. This highly declamatory aria was given superb vocal treatment by tenor Chance Jonas-O’Toole as Albert. 

Next came a number from what was for me the totally unfamiliar opera Highway 1, USA by William Grant Still. This duet, Listen, Mary, trust me, was well sung by baritone Scott Lee and soprano Adia Evans. Then we heard the fortune-telling number from Bizet’s Carmen, excellently sung by mezzo-soprano Maggie Renée, soprano Olivia Prendergast, and mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner as a doomed Carmen. Erin Wagner’s performance was highlighted by a thrilling high note as she resigned herself to death as her fate. After the afore-mentioned aria O misere des Rois sung impressively by bass-baritone William Socolof we heard soprano Maggie Kinabrew as a lovelorn Adina and bass-baritone Seungyun Kim as an outwitted Dr Dulcamara in the charming number, Quanto amore! from L’elisir d’amore by Gaetano Donizetti. And following this came the famed aria Una furtiva lagrima from the same opera, here brilliantly sung by tenor Jonghyun Park, who made this aria even more expressive by often singing mezzo voce. Next came the wedding-night duet from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly brilliantly sung here by soprano Amanda Batista as Cio Cio San and tenor Moisés Salazar as Pinkerton. For her part, Amanda Batista was a revelation: she has a huge, voluptuous voice that was thrilling to hear. And Moisés Salazar was also thrilling with his ardent repetitions of the word “Vieni.” To close out the first half of this Merola Grand Finale we heard soprano Chelsea Lehnea as Lucia, tenor Sahel Salam as Edgardo, and bass Andres Cascante as Enrico in Chi mi frena in tal momento from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, in which number the principals were joined by all the Merolini. Chelsea Lehnea was an excellent Lucia, Sahel Salam seemed over-matched vocally as Edgardo, and Andres Cascante was an impressive Enrico. 

After intermission we heard mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner as the composer in Sein wir wieder gut from Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. Then came the desperate number Qu’ai je vu? Je frémis, je chancelle brilliantly sung by soprano Olivia Smith as Leila and baritone Andres Cascante as Zurga from Les pécheurs de perles by Georges Bizet. In this impassioned duet, Leila admits she loves Nadir, thereby redoubling Zurga’s jealousy and desire for revenge. Next we heard soprano Arianna Rodriguez as a fetching Norina and tenor Chance Jonas-O’Toole as an ardent Ernesto in the charming duet Tornami a dir che m’ami from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. Following this came bass Edwin Jhamaal Davis as Banquo doing his best Paul Robeson impersonation in the aria Come dal clef precipita from Verdi’s Macbeth. Next we heard the charming cherry duet from L’amico Fritz by Pietro Mascagni, here sung by soprano Celeste Morales as Suzel and tenor Sahel Salam as Fritz. While Celeste Morales was fine as Suzel, Sahel Salam continues to mystify me vocally. His tenor voice has a unique metallic tone, almost brittle at times. Though he sings well, there is something not altogether pleasing in his tone, and it is difficult to imagine what roles might suit this unusual voice. 

Following this came the aria I love him from the opera, totally unfamiliar to me, Blue by Jeanine Tesori. Here mezzo-soprano Veena Akama-Makia acquitted herself well, as she ended nearly every declaration with the words “Go figure.” Next came one of this concert’s highlights, the aria O tu Palermo from Verdi’s I vespri Siciliani brilliantly sung by Chinese bass-baritone Le Bu, whose voice is resplendent and technique impeccable. Following this came mezzo-soprano Nikola Adele Printz in the quirky aria Am I in your light? from Doctor Atomic by John Adams. Then we heard soprano Chelsea Lehnea as Marguerite, tenor Moisés Salazar as Faust, and bass-baritone Seungyun Kim as Mephistopheles in Alerte! Alerte! from Faust by Charles Gounod. Following this came the famous Act II duet Dunque è proprio finito of Rodolfo and Mimi from Puccini’s La bohème, here beautifully sung by soprano Adia Evans and tenor Daniel Luis Espinal. Finally, all the Merolini joined together to sing Tutto nel mondo è burla from Verdi’s Falstaff.

“Iacta alea est.” That’s what Julius Caesar is supposed to have said when he led his army across the Rubicon river in his bid to take over Rome.

“The die is cast.” We’ve gone over and we can’t go back. The deadline for becoming a candidate for the Berkeley City Council was last Friday, August 12, and now not only have the dice been thrown, the hats are in the ring, Well, District 8 candidates got an extension to August 17 since incumbent Lori Droste isn’t running, but now their time is up too. And it turns out that hats in Berkeley are in short supply this time around.

You can see the spreadsheet listing those who filed the required paperwork here:

Lucky you. Finding it cost me three phone calls to city staff plus seven clicks guided by a pleasant fellow in the City Clerk’s office, the last of which produced a chart obscurely entitled “Roster of Candidate Activity.” Yes, the COB’s new web interface is as bad as they say it is, but when you get there this is an informative document.

What can we learn from it? Well, we already knew that four council seats will be on the November ballot. It seems that no one has the nerve to challenge Kate Harrison, the darling of the progressive planning wonks who care about District 4, the downtown center of the city. That’s the one which has been most adversely impacted by the BUB Boom, aka the Big Ugly Box Boom, even though Councilmember Harrison has valiantly tried to control it.

Next, we have the other heavily BUB impacted district, District 7. That’s the one that was set up by former councilmember Kriss Worthington and now-mayor Jesse Arreguin as a sinecure for ASUC leftovers who want to move slowly into the adult world.

It’s the “student district”. What that means is that it has the lowest registration rate as compared to population, and the smallest turnout among registered voters in any council district. Apportionment is based on population, not numbers of actual voters. It turns out that most students don’t care much about voting in Berkeley.

If you believe that, short of malfeasance in office, incumbency provides a massive advantage in any election, and I do, Rigel Robinson (former or perhaps current Association of Students of the University of California External Affairs Vice President) looks like a shoo-in, though his undergraduate days are behind him. He admits to liking tall buildings, and gets support, financial and otherwise, accordingly.

Nobody is running against him either. Few students want to commit to staying in Berkeley for a four-year term as a councilmember, and there are few non-students in District 7, so Robinson attracted only one potential opponent, recent UCB graduate Aidan Hill.  

Hill is progessive, passionate and a good speaker. He shows up to speak at the Council Zooms (formerly known as meetings) and volunteers for leading edge progressive groups like Food Not Bombs. His best chance of winning would be getting a good turnout from long-term residents plus a weak turnout from the transitory students.  

The ongoing threat to People’s Park might play a role. Robinson views it as a great building site; Hill wants it to remain a park. UC snuck in under the radar and cut down many trees last week, climate change be damned, but further demolition and/or construction has been stayed by the appellate court until October.  

Sadly, Hill took out preliminary papers but failed to file, so Robinson will just coast into another term.  

Which leaves two more districts which seemed for a hot minute to be really up for grabs.  

These seemed interesting because they’re the only ones which might have tested the virtues and the vices of Berkeley’s ranked choice voting, since they have more than two candidates. Voters can specify not only their faves, but also their second, third and fourth choices if any.  

Let’s look first at District One.  

BART’s plan to turn its North Berkeley parking lot into a cash-register multiple development with a strong majority of profitable “market rate” (=expensive) apartments has gotten a lot of the folks in adjacent neighborhoods really roiled. Several new issue groups of various types, fueled by extensive social media and petitions, have been burning up the airwaves with their indignation. Their slogan is that it’s not simply a housing crisis, it’s an affordable housing crisis.  

Most of these voters believe that public land acquired by eminent domain should be used for public purposes, in this case especially for housing for low income residents. Their YIMBY opponents appear to believe that building high-priced apartments on the BART parking lot will magically trickle down to house people now living outside or in RVs in District 1.  

Incumbent Rashi Kesarwani is Miss YIMBY in person, a true believer in supply-side housing dogma. She was a headliner at 2021’s YIMBY Gala in San Francisco. She’ll get the votes of voters in her district who believe in building even more market-rate apartments—but how many of those does District 1 have?  

Another hot planning issue in District 1 is the transmogrification of the Hopkins neighborhood shopping area, primarily for the benefit of the bicycle lobby. Mobility-challenged voters are starting to get grouchy about the city of Berkeley’s trendy romance with biking—the picture backing the city’s new website is a glamorous shot of a fancy bike. The enthusiastic able-bodied, on the other hand, want more bike accommodations in traffic planning. Might this affect the election?  

For change-seekers, there are two good choices. Architect Elisa Mikiten has been on the Planning Commission and the Police Review Commission. Those who care about such things seem to give her a strong B+/A- on the former and a C+ on the latter, but I don’t myself know the details of her record as yet. Michai Freeman, a quadriplegic wheelchair user and a person of color, is someone I’ve often seen online as an active participant in various vigorous progressive organizations, especially the Disability Commission. If I lived in District 1, which I don’t, I would appreciate the opportunity of voting for both of these candidates in 1-2 order (not yet saying which is first).  

Which brings me to District 8, where I do live. Here there’s enough information online about those who have taken out filing papers to know what’s going on.  

First, there’s already a candidate’s website online which will tell you all you need to know about one of the candidates. That would be Mark Humbert, who presents as the proverbial Old White Guy, a long-time Elmwood homeowner who practices law in San Francisco. (By my standards, of course, he’s a youngster—in his late 60s.)  

Do you think everything’s pretty much fine in Berkeley right now? Then Humbert’s your guy.  

Looking at his website, you know where he stands, since he’s already lined up endorsements from the governing majority of the current Berkeley City Council, the folks that have brought us city government as we know it today.  

That includes incumbent District 8 Councilmember Lori Droste, who’s not running again, Mayor Jesse Arreguin, who’s got two more years on his second four-year term, and continuing councilmembers Susan Wengraf (who’s represented the Berkeley Hills since before many of this year’s voters were born), Ben Bartlett and Terry Taplin, plus incumbents Rigel Robinson and Rashi Kesarwani who are running this year for another 4-year term.  

Why do we even bother with elections? Those In Charge seem to have already anointed Droste’s successor.  

Nevertheless, I was very pleased to learn that at least two more excellent candidates had entered the fray and three more had taken out at least preliminary papers.  

Mari Mendonca is known to me as a sparkplug in Friends of Adeline, the active community which has come together in the neighborhood which includes the Ashby BART station and is now a prime target of for-profit developers.  

Mari’s a Berkeley High graduate, a contemporary of my daughters. Her home is situated in the bite out of South West Berkeley’s District 3 which was added to District 8 in the latest reapportionment to make the numbers come out right. She’s a renter, a tenant activist who’s been on the Rent Board.  

I see Mari sometimes at the Adeline Farmers’ Market on Tuesdays. Last Tuesday she asked me to sign her nominating papers, and I obliged, secure in the belief that ranked choice voting would let me vote for her in some order.  

The other promising candidate was Mary-Lee Smith, whom I met at a house party not long ago. She’s an attorney and a parent, a homeowner in the Bateman neighborhood.  

Unfortunately, Smith withdrew from the race at the last minute.  

Two more candidates filed on Wednesday for District 8, but I haven’t yet found out much about them. Googling produces no record of civic involvement for either.  

Mendonca would add a fresh independent point of view to a Berkeley City Council which increasingly seems to be in thrall to a staff which has forgotten how to get good things done and instead thinks up new bad things to do on a regular basis.  

Prime example: Hiring pricey consultants to create a plan to “monetize” Cesar Chavez Park.  

What else is the average Berkeley voter upset about? Maybe it’s the creeping tentacles of YIMBYism? Maybe it’s the BART towers? And did we mention potholes? Bicycles? Parking? People’s Park? Willard Park? Homelessness?  

It’s an endless list.  

All I know about this race is anecdotal: many voters just seem to think that It’s Time for a Change.  

At least in Districts 1 and 8 ranked-choice would have given these voters two excellent options to rank first and second with some prospect of getting lucky with one of them. But here we’ll deploy yet another cliché: the handwriting is on the wall,  

What we have now is a city council election where the candidates provide little opportunity for meaningful change: Two unopposed incumbents, another with incumbent advantage, though her opponents are creditable, and a fourth who’s the clear choice of the current council majority.  

Berkeley needs a real discussion of why fewer and fewer people want to serve on our city council.  

And then there’s that proposed $650 million bond issue which would go on the November ballot. It is already viewed in some quarters as the only opportunity to express displeasure with how the city’s being run…but that’s too much to talk about today.

Thanks for asking--those of you who have wondered why there's no new issue this week. The Berkeley City Council has entered its long vacation, and much of city government has slowed to a crawl. Submissions to the BDP are also lagging. I've decided to slow down myself for this couple of weeks. When interesting articles come in, I'll just add them to the current issue when I get around to it.

A Pox on Kiosks Redux

Worries over the pandemic problems raised by the prospect of towering electronic bulletin-board kiosks installed on Berkeley sidewalks has receive some validation. The concerns are that the IKE Kiosks—designed to attract passersby and encourage them to touch the interactive screen repeatedly in search of information on local businesses and entertainment—could become viral "superspreaders."

This concern has now spread to another potential virus-vector—street lights with pedestrian "walk" buttons.

At intersections around town, public announcements have been appearing above the "Walk/Don't Walk" buttons on heavily trafficked intersections.

The signs read: "Don't Spread Covid-19! Don't Push the Button! Walk sign is now automated. Wait for [symbol of a pedestrian] to cross. APS push button still works for blind or visually impaired." 

Honoring the Oaks 

Just noticed a new piece of art on one of the inner pillars of the downtown Trader Joe's. It's a tribute to the beloved Oaks Theater on Solano. The portrait shows the Oaks' signature tower and its marquee in all its pre-closure glory. The letters on one marquee notes the arrival of Berkeley's TJ's ("Opens June 11, '10) and the other "now playing" marquee announces a screening of "Two-Buck Chuck" starring none other than "Charles Shaw." 

A Driver Is De-coffee-nated 

On a recent UC campus stroll up Frank Schlesinger Way, an approaching car rounded a tight curve near the campus steam plant. Suddenly there was a clatter, followed by a splatter. 

I looked up and saw the middle of the road was coated in a puddle of coffee spilled from a mug that the driver had apparently placed atop the car before driving off. 

The driver braked to a stop and clambered out to retrieve the remains of his mug. The cap had been knocked off by the impact and had come to a rest further down the road. 

The driver looked up and spotted me looking down at his misery. He shrugged his shoulders and offered a perfect description of his plight: "Geez! It looks like my decaffeinated coffee has been de-capitated!" 

Fashion Plates 

• AURINGS (If the Periodic Table is any guide, I'm guessing "Gold Rings") 

• Blue Tesla: C745M1 (A fan of Vince Staples' Def Jam song "745"—as in "See, am one.") 

• Ford Focus: CAPSICM (Someone who likes the peppery supplement capsicum?) 

• SUV4LAB (someone who commutes by car to Lawrence Livermore? Someone who shares his/her SUV with a pet Labrador Retriever?) 

Beyond NIMBY and YIMBY 

It occurred to me that there's a missing demographic in the Housing Battle's War of Acronyms. The debate over the survival of single-family homes Is not just a two-sided squabble between the Not In My Backyard and Yes In My Backyard factions. There's a third community that is playing an equally hardball role in the smack-down over the future of housing. We need an acronym for the pro-development forces that are pressing for densification at all costs. The five-letter shorthand that best describes their unspoken philosophy could be YIYBY (pronounced "YEEBEE"), which stands for Yes In Your Back Yard. 

Independence for "Washington's Taiwan"? 

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi provoked the Chinese government into a major military frenzy over her reckless roadtrip to Taiwan, the US followed up with a new provocation—a team of four House Democrats and one Republican that flew to Taipai in a public show of support for Taiwan's ruling government. This diplomatic insult came one day after President Biden invited Taiwan to attend a US-sponsored "Summit for Democracy" in October. 

Here's a thought for China to consider. Instead of mounting military exercises, naval drills, and fighter-jet fly-overs on the borders of Taiwan, maybe it's time for some Beijing-tit-for-some-Washington-tat. 

What if a delegation from China announced it would be dropping in to visit the governor of Hawaii—and offering China's support to defend Honolulu from political encroachment from Washington. China could even offer support and solidarity to the long-established Hawaii Sovereignty Movement, an indigenous entity that cites endemic homelessness, poverty, and economic marginalization as grounds for demanding Hawai'ian sovereignty, self-determination, and self-governance. 

The case may be stronger for Hawai'i than for Taiwan. 

While Taiwan has been called a "breakaway republic" with a politically contested history, Hawaii was an independent nation that was invaded and seized by the US. In 1893, US troops illegally toppled the matriarchy of Queen Lili'uokalani and, in 1898, Washington illegally annexed the islands. 

A hundred years later, President Bill Clinton signed an official apology for the forced take-over of the island nation. The US resolution formerly admitted that, prior to the US invasion, "the Hawaiian people lived in a highly organized, self-sufficient, subsistent social system based on communal land tenure with a sophisticated language, culture, and religion." 

Imagine Washington's reaction today if China were to invite Hawai'ian leaders to attend a "Summit of Solidarity" in Beijing with other Pacific Island nations. That might add some perspective to DC's political gamesmanship over Taiwan. 

And then there's the geophysical reality: while Taiwan sits about 80 miles east of Mainland China, Hawai'i is located a whopping 4,827 miles from the US. 

What Have They Done to the Rain? 

The State of California has targeted Big Tobacco for fouling our drinking water. State-sponsored TV ads (broadcast under the banner of UNDO.org) are warning that the filters on cigarettes not only wind up as litter on the land and in our waterways, they also pose a health risk because they are made from nonbiodegradable microplastic—15,000 impervious strands in every discarded cigarette butt. And because Big Tobacco is churning these pollution pills out at the rate of five trillion per year, microplastic remnants now constitute a major source of pollution found in all of Earth's oceans—and in the body tissue of birds, animals, and humans. 

But wait! There's more bad news on the horizon (and in the water cycle)! According to an August 2 article in the journal, Environmental Science & Technology, an array of man-made chemicals known by the initials PFOA and PFOS can now be found everywhere on Earth—in the cities, in the forests, in our waterways, in the oceans, in snowflakes, in rainwater, and is even present in our blood. Researches have a nickname for these "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substancnces." They're known as "Forever Chemicals" because (like radioactive leftovers) they remain present and potentially deadly for "thousands of years." 

Harmful levels of PFOA chemicals are now found everywhere on Earth—even in the most remote locations. Ian Cousins, the Stockholm University professor who authored the ES&E report, puts his findings simply: "rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink." 

Once again, heedless corporate greed has left our planet mired in a preventable mess carried out (and covered-up) in the pursuit of short-term profit. This is not just a case of "terraforming"—redesigning the planet to abet human survival. These are acts that have altered the environment in ways that degrade the ability of plants, birds, insects, fish, and animals (including humans) to survive. This is an offence that deserves its own name. Instead of "terraforming," our irresponsible industries have committed the crime of "terra-deforming." 

Back in the late 1950s, the world became concerned about the harm of open-air nuclear testing. In 1962, Berkeley's beloved songwriter Malvina Reynolds wrote a memorable lament for a world in which raindrops had become something to fear. Her song (also recorded by Joan Baez and Marianne Faithfull) was called "What Have They Done to the Rain?" Sadly, Malvina's song has acquired new relevance today. 

Lives on the Line 

On the 77^th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, World BEYOND War's John Reuwer sent out this grim, commemorative email: 

Remembering Hiroshima in the light of many current issues with some notes on lives that matter:
Black Lives Matter = There is deadly racism
All Lives Matter = There is no serious racism
Pro-war = Only Lives on our side Matter
Nuclear weapons = NO LIVES MATTER 

News Flash: The US Is a Flawed State  

In a recent online chat, journalist and peace activist Nicolas J. Davis offered the following illumination: 

"An East German guy who now lives in the US told me that East Germans realized that what their media told them about their own country was a bunch of propaganda, but the mistake they made, he said, was to therefore assume that what they were told about the West was also just a bunch of propaganda, too. 

"Now that he had lived in the US for several years, he understood that East German reporting on the West was quite accurate — there really are millions of people living in poverty with no social safety net, millions living on the street, a dog-eat-dog rat race that leaves most people behind, and corrupt governments serving only plutocratic, oligarchic and military-industrial interests." 

"Arming Ukraine": Banned Documentary Can Still Be Seen 

Following complaints from the Ukrainian and US Governments, CBS has expunged its critical documentary, "Arming Ukraine," from the Internet. 

However, the censored investigative report has been preserved for viewing on Bitchute. 

Will the US Ever Become a Real Democracy? 

It's long past time for the US to become a real democracy and that requires graduating from the Electoral College. 

According to Pew Research Center data, in January 2021, 55% of Americans wanted to become a true democracy while 43% wanted to hold on to the Electoral College. In the latest Pew survey, 63% of Americans now support using the popular vote, while only 35% wish to keep the Electoral College system.  

So far, five US presidents have taken office after losing the popular vote—John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.  

There are 538 electors, one for each US senator and US representative. Washington, DC casts three Electoral College votes in presidential elections even though it has no voting representation in Congress. 

According to the Pew survey, 80% of Democrats prefer a popular vote with only 42% of Republicans supporting the change. 

Welcome Back, Founders Sing! 

From the satirical songsters at Founders Sing: 

(August 9, 2022) — After the FBI’s surprise raid of Mar-a-Lago, the big question on everyone’s lips is: “Will Trump Run… from the LAW?” Guess he should’ve flushed every last piece of paper he ever laid his big fat magic marker on. Somebody must’ve snitched! Let’s all celebrate this momentous turn of events. Enjoy! Big shout out to Barry Manilow! 

Things are different now, and it's time for thoughtful reconsideration.

People's Park itself is different, having suffered UC's chainsaw display destroying hundred year-old redwoods, oaks, and pine. Community resistance and a court-ordered stay put an end to the destruction. It's still People's Park, but now resembles the park some of us remember from 1972, a park with a lot of work to do to restore gardens and replant trees after UC's repeated efforts to destroy the garden that stopped a war.

The awareness level of community-wide resistance is different now, too. Few acknowledged before today the fact of the potential for violence over the park despite years of historic battles more famous than the university itself. Whoever it is among the UC regents, UC's administration, or city leadership who thought twelve stories of construction on People's Park would be easily accomplished knows what the Alameda County Sheriff's Office has plainly stated: this will not be easy and could cost lives.

But there's another important consideration, especially for a Berkeley City Council which has yet to even meet with representatives of the People's Park Historic District Advocacy Group (PPHDAG)[1], a group which successfully envisioned not just the historic Park's retention as open space but its use as the primary vantage point for the wealth of more than a dozen landmarked historic properties surrounding it like a necklace of architectural jewels.

The People's Park Historic District Advocacy Group's success in getting unanimous support at the California Historic Commission's hearing and the admission of People's Park to the National Register of Historic Places accomplished at least two crucial things. First, Berkeley's internecine squabbles over the Park's use, abuse, and future are no longer as important as its recognition as a national historic resource now belonging to the nation, not just the UC administration, a crucial repository of shared history.

The second is the recognition which should obligate the Berkeley City Council and the university to respect a national review process different from what little local process was offered to the public before this moment, a moment severely compromised by the pandemic in any event. People's Park is nationally recognized as a significant representation of our shared history, and its alteration or loss is now the legal purview of a much wider group of people who recognize the site's historic importance along with that of Kent State.

The Berkeley City Council lit the fuse, covered its eyes, and put its fingers in its ears long before People's Park's recent inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. It's time to listen and to reconsider. They can choose a bloodbath on southside. Or they can mark this moment by honoring the scholarship and research this effort took years to bring about with an appropriate ceremonial recognition when the Berkeley City Council comes back from its recess. It's time, at the very least, to recognize that we don't need to destroy parks to create housing given the abundance of alternative locations both on and off campus for not just more housing, but more parks, a recognition which is required by CEQA. The more housing we create, the more parks we need.

------------------------------------------------- Carol Denney is a co-founder and former advisory group member of the People's Park Historic District Advocacy Group

You may have heard the astounding statistic estimating that about one in four adults suffer from some type of mental condition in a given year. Additionally, if my memory serves me, one in three hundred adults suffer from a schizophrenic-type illness. 

Many people with a psychiatric disorder have professional jobs, college degrees, and high levels of achievement. However, when we seek help from the mental health treatment system, and when we become diagnosed and medicated, the original problem may be compounded with an entirely new set of problems. Once you are in the clutches of the mental health treatment system, and they've got you diagnosed and medicated, you could be unemployable and could be treated as subhuman. It is potentially a path to rejection, to poverty, and to wondering "What happened?" 

The decision of seeking help from the treatment system (versus not) is sometimes made for us, rather than it being a choice. In my life circumstances, the condition was bad enough that I really had to be in treatment. If a psychiatric problem is severe, then we can't ignore it and can't treat with alcohol, with pot smoking, or with immersing ourselves in work. When we have something severe, we must be in treatment, and it is simply not good enough to try mindfulness, homeopathic remedies, or any kind of "natural" cure. Once stabilized on something that truly works to treat severe symptoms, that's when we have an opportunity to try mindfulness or other alternative ideas. And this must be in addition to medication and counseling, not instead of them. 

However, when the above-described scenario takes place, we could be facing some harsh collateral realities. 

The prejudice against mentally ill people is one the few remaining socially acceptable forms of bigotry. We've been taught by the Civil Rights Movement that hating people due to race, gender, sexual preference, or physical disability, is bigotry and is an indication of ignorance. This upgrade in human consciousness hasn't taken place on its own. Marginalized groups had to stand up, make themselves known, and had to fight for their rights. And it is clear we aren't all the way there. Yet, a lot of progress has been made. 

However, it is very hard for severely mentally ill people, especially those who are medicated, to organize and stand up. Additionally, the Patients' Rights Movement, which did exist in past decades, has been decimated, possibly by the overwhelming strength of newer medications, or possibly due to a form of social engineering. 

A psychiatric disability continues to be a major obstacle to living, due to the impairment of the disability, due to the additional impairment caused by medication, due to the invalidation of many treatment practitioners, and, finally, because the public perceives us in a bad light. 

Because of that prejudice, many people with mental illness will not seek help. And many of the ones who seek help do so in secrecy, and give no indication to coworkers, and even many friends, that they have a condition. It can cost a person their job and it can cost a person many of their friends. 

I have spoken with small business owners who had mental illness. Their condition had not been severe enough that it prevented them from working. They told me about it, yet it wasn't something they advertised to those employed by them. It is sometimes easier for a mentally ill entrepreneur to open themselves to another mental health consumer, compared to some others. 

I usually haven't hidden my psychiatric condition for most of the past forty years that I've had it. My willingness to share is because under some circumstances, not all, I'm thick in the skin. 

Mental illness can ruin your life. But you don't have to let that happen. I use mental illness as built-in subject matter for numerous pieces of writing that I sell. This is a way of capitalizing on misfortune. I think more mentally ill people should become psychiatrists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and mental health treatment professionals. And this group, the mentally ill, credentialed experts, (which I wouldn't qualify for) should write about it. This is a strategy for uplifting mentally ill people, and for finally getting us some respect. 

Comedian and activist, Jon Stewart arrived in Washington with a clear agenda, - passage of the PACT Act to help veterans suffering from health problems related to toxic burn pits. Jon’s rapid-fire diatribes shamed Republicans who had previously blocked passage of the bill claiming there was insufficient funding. Jon exposed the hypocrisy, blatant falsehood and flip-flopping forcing Republicans to acquiesce and support the bill. 

Jon’s great performance reminds me of the classic movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, staring James Stewart. The movie depicts self-serving legislative bodies of being compromised by elite power brokers. What was sorely omitted in the debate in Congress is the millions of innocent civilians in foreign lands who continue to suffer devastating health issues, horrible birth defects early deaths resulting from toxic fumes and chemical agents such as Agent Orange. This dioxin was sprayed in very large quantities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Depleted uranium was heavily used in Gulf War 1 and 2. We mourn the loss of 2,977 people killed on 9/11 but not apologized and compensate the Iraqis who died our “shock and awe” attacks, all based on false intelligence of WMD’s. Millions of Afghanis died victims of “misguided precision guided drone attacks resulting in a Taliban victory and devastating impact on girls' education. 

The lyrics of the folk song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone . ." should be hung on the walls of Congress and the Pentagon as a sobering reminder of the $trillions squandered in foreign wars and the death of millions of innocent civilians.

I think I love August with city council on vacation. This coming week looks wonderfully light. 

DO NOT MISS Love Letters to the Park This is the absolutely lovely book that is just as the title states a love of a park and the public response to the Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP) from April to July 2022 compiled and edited by Martin Nicolaus. You can read the pdf with this link https://chavezpark.org/new-book-love-letters-to-the-park/ 

After you read it, sign the Petition for saving Cesar Chavez Park https://chavezpark.org/petition-to-save-chavez-park-from-bmasp/ and send off an email to city council at Council@cityofberkeley.info Council needs to hear from you.  

After we skate over the news, I’ll get to the main topic of this Diary. 

As I start this Diary the country is in a whirl over the FBI descending on Mar-a-Lago, the Espionage Act listed on the search warrant and Trump taking the 5th over 440 times in the Manhattan District Attorney investigation of the Trump business. I confess nothing would make me happier as an end to Trump’s lifetime of criminology (the book Criminology on Trump should drop on my doorstep any day) than to see him in an orange jumpsuit without the hairspray for the combover. 

Here in Berkeley it is blessedly quiet now that we have a stay at Peoples Park. It is thanks to the Peoples Park Historic District Advocacy Group that we have the attorney Tom Lippe representing the group and the stay to stop construction. You can bet UCB won’t give up and there are court battles ahead. Everything you need to know to donate to the cause to save Peoples Park is in this link: http://www.peoplesparkhxdist.org/donate-now/ For full disclosure, I dug out those paper checks I rarely use and dropped off my donation. 

Nothing of consequence happened at the city meeting I did attend. Two house additions were approved at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) with the promise of full schedules for the two meetings in September. For those who are finding six and eight story buildings as their new neighbor attending the DRC meeting this coming Thursday would be a very beneficial introduction to the process. All the details are in the Activist’s Calendar. 

I lost focus on the rambling Civic Arts Commission Grants Subcommittee meeting Friday morning and exited early. 

WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) is meeting on Wednesday at 10 am for planning and 1 pm for the board meeting. Seems the WETA Chair and staff took a trip to Sweden and Norway to check out zero emission ferries. That report should be interesting. I wonder if they did any sightseeing while they were there, like ferry rides to interesting places. 

Going through the financials, fares covered only 16.7% of the FY 2022 operating costs. Without Federal COVID-19 rescue funds, WETA would have been deeply underwater. Those funds covered 44.1% of total operating expenses. For June, the last month of the fiscal year 2022 when WETA reached 80% of pre-pandemic ridership, fares covered 19% of the operating cost and federal assistance made of 67%. It is unclear how Berkeley expects WETA to pick of the cost of a Berkeley pier and ferry and contribute to bailing out the Marina fund. It looks more like WETA is looking to Berkeley for the bailing out. 

I deviated from my reading plan for the week and picked up This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor by Susan Wicklund with co-author Alan Kesselheim. The title really describes the book; Dr. Wicklund’s personal journey, patient experiences and the threats and harassment that physicians and their families face to provide this critical piece of reproductive health care. Wicklund writes about security escorts, being armed, colleagues who are murdered, the constant danger from anti-abortion extremists and support for her chosen career. 

With the Supreme Court ending Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion is on the ballot nationwide either directly with ballot initiatives or indirectly through who is elected. While national survey after national survey places 60% of the population supporting access to abortion, that is not the case for the Republicans who dominate legislatures in 26 states. They are banning abortions where they have the power to do so. If Republicans take over the House and the Senate, they are promising a nationwide abortion ban. 

Despite an overwhelming vote in conservative red Kansas by 59% on August 2 to maintain access to abortion, just days later, in Indiana, the state that allowed a pregnant 10-year old from Ohio access to an abortion, Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law a sweeping ban on abortion starting at conception with exceptions only for rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality or when necessary to prevent severe health risks or death. 

This November we will be voting on California Proposition 1, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment. 

A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to prohibit the state from interfering with or denying an individual’s reproductive freedom, which is defined to include a right to an abortion and a right to contraceptives. 

A “no” vote opposes this amendment providing a right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution. 

The East Bay Times editorial board started their August 14 editorial with this, “In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s essential that California voters amend the state Constitution to ensure reproductive choice.” 

No matter how we vote in November, even with an expected overwhelming “yes” to protect reproductive freedom in California, Federal law overrules states. What happens nationally matters. 

In all the discussions, books, shows for or against abortion, one thing that is rarely mentioned is the number 39. Thirty-nine is the average number of years between the onset of menstruation and menopause. Later life pregnancies are not that common, but the possibility of pregnancy hovers over all of those years. 

Nearly four decades is a long time and there are bound to be birth control, family planning failures. If the desired family size is two children the chart in The Turnaway Study gives the expected number of additional pregnancies which might be anywhere from 0 to 7. The zero is with the Implants and nine would be needed. Withdrawal is the least reliable. If abortion is used as birth control the estimate is 30 early medication abortions or 25 second trimester abortions.  

That 39 year time may even be longer in the future. Though the average age is twelve, the onset of menarche (first period) is slowly moving earlier and may start when a child is as young as 8 years old. Some of those most rabidly anti-abortion oppose terminating a pregnancy in a child’s little immature body. 

The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having or Being Denied an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster is the only book that really brings fertility, abortion, pregnancy and the impact on women’s lives into the full frame. I picked up the audiobook first from the library, but there is so much information I purchased the book to keep as a reference. 

I continually marvel at how access to birth control and access to abortion really changed women’s lives. Women these days have so many opportunities and there are still doors to open, but with the loss of abortion all the gains made since Roe v. Wade in 1973 are slipping away for millions of women in this country. 

The Turnaway Study chronicles the differences between women who had or were denied an abortion. Women denied abortion were poorer, stayed in abusive relationships longer, had to give up career and education plans. Their children were also impacted, especially with the higher incidence of poverty. Surprisingly women who continued their pregnancy and gave up the baby for adoption had the poorest emotional outcome. Pregnancy is not without risk. Two women in the study died of complications and this was even when the study deliberately excluded women with life threatening pregnancies. 

Managing the national juried art exhibition “Choice” for Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) in 2013 was really a turning point for me. That is when I learned to start the conversation on reproductive rights, abortion at every opportunity, really anywhere and everywhere I happened to be next to another person long enough to strike up a conversation. The conversations spilled over to friends and I opened up about my own abortions. 

I didn’t have a wrenching personal story to tell. I never risked my life for an illegal abortion. I was never conflicted in my decision for any one of my three abortions. I was and am just so grateful abortion was legal when I needed it. It was always the stories from other women that were far more interesting or the stories they wouldn’t tell that I knew about.  

I think of one friend who shared she had multiple miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy before her daughter was born. I wonder what kind of care would she get if all this was happening right now if she lived in one of these draconian states that bans abortions. Would she get the medical care she needed or would the doctors be so afraid of losing their license and being sent to prison that they would withhold intervening until her life hung by a thread? 

Would those miscarriages be misinterpreted as a self-induced abortion? Would she be in a legal battle instead of a grandmother with a daughter and two grandchildren? These aren’t far-fetched questions to ponder anymore. Even without these post Roe questions according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women 1300 women were arrested or charged in the U.S. from 2006 to 2020 for their actions during pregnancy. 

There is the friend from my childhood who had an illegal abortion when we were about twenty. I wouldn’t have known about it if it hadn’t gone so badly, she nearly died. Her mother told my mother and my mother told me. I had this text exchange with my friend some weeks ago, after a lunch where two of us talked endlessly about the end of Roe and our support for access to abortion while my friend sat silent. 

Me: Have you ever talked openly about your own abortion. I was waiting for you to say something when I said I had three. 

Friend: No, not going to. Haven’t talked about mother’s either 

Me: At one of my public speaking engagements I spoke about all three of you. 

I don’t know why she won’t talk about it, maybe it was too traumatic, maybe she has regrets or maybe she is afraid of the repercussions if it got out in her closeknit circle of friends or at her church. After all her mother confessed on her deathbed that she was condemned by her pastor when she revealed to him that she had had an abortion at the onset of WWII. 

The “three” in this text message is her younger sister who is also a close friend. One night several years ago when I started a discussion on abortion, my own and her sister’s brush with death from an illegal abortion It never occurred to me that she didn’t know. Oops! These two sisters are incredibly close and shared everything or so I thought. As the evening wore on, we talked about how we are shamed into silence over what is so common for so many of us. We spoke of her mother’s deathbed confession and then she talked with me about her own abortion. 

I knew the two sisters spent a week together after the fall of Roe. I called the younger sister and asked if during that week with the end of Roe on the news day and night, did they ever talk about their own abortions or access to abortion. The answer was no. 

The question that keeps coming up for me is how is it that three women, a mother and her two daughters, two sisters, all three who love each other very much and are incredibly close couldn’t share and talk with each other about this one thing, abortion and the abortions that each one of them had? We are all in our 70s now and still holding back. Where does that leave us if women who have had abortions and that is around one in three to one in four of us continue to wall ourselves into silence? 

We are in the majority and yet, because we have been led to believe that all we need to do is send off another donation and we can or should hide in the closet of silence and abortion shame, we have been outflanked by Concerned Women of America (CWA) the well-organized, evangelical activist group of over 3 million promoting biblical values through advocacy and all the other anti-abortion organizations. It is long past time to learn from the CWA strategies, 98% of them vote, 93% have signed a petition, 77% have boycotted a company, 74% have contacted a public official and nearly half have written a letter to the editor. That is a lot of activism. 

How many of us does it take to come out of the closet to talk to family, friends, neighbors, strangers to solidly secure reproductive freedom? How many of us does it take to outdo the activism of CWA and like groups? Certainly, thus far it is not enough of us or we wouldn’t be in this downward, backwards spiral. 

Dr. Wicklund writes in her book that she always gives her patients the option of seeing the tissue removed if they want to. She describes one exchange with a young woman, who wanted an abortion and whose extended family was trying to stop her, 

“’That’s all?’ She says when I show it to her. She escapes into her own thoughts for a minute and looks at me with hesitation. ‘What is it you’re thinking I prod.’ ‘How can it be that my uncle believes I am less important than that tiny bit of tissue you just took out of me?’” 

Abortion was my choice when my method of birth control failed, but choice is not just about having access to abortion. It encompasses all choices, if and when to be a parent, method of contraception and termination of pregnancy. It is about celebrating a wanted pregnancy and weeping over a pregnancy not fulfilled. It is terminating a pregnancy without regret or feeling conflicted with loss wishing circumstances were different. Choice is all of these things. Choice is what each of us must be free to decide for ourselves. 

To have that choice we need doctors nurses, midwifes, doulas, pharmacists who are on our side and if things go wrong, complications arise, they must be free to intervene and not hamstrung by abortion bans. 

It is up to us where we go from here. And, how we vote is critical

On August 8, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) served a court-authorized search warrant on Trump. The focus of the FBI search of Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago seemed to be focused on records Trump admitted failing to return to the Archives after he left office for obstruction of justice, violating the Espionage Act and the removal or destruction of records. 

In another display of shameless hypocrisy, Trump called the search “prosecutorial misconduct” and the “weaponization of the Justice System.” This from a former president who while in office created a DOJ headed first by Jeff Sessions, then by political hack, Matthew Whitaker, and then under William Barr, to do his personal bidding for his friends, political allies and wealthy donors. A former president who believed and still believes that he is above the law. 

Trump used the search to solicit political donations from his supporters who, I'm sure, will gladly open their wallets.

Worth Noting:

Monday – The noon Community for a Cultural Civic Center meeting really does meet for only 1 hour and looks to be updates. Peace and Justice Commission meets in the evening at 7 pm. I will be attending only because I try to track city meetings and summarize what happened for you.

Wednesday - WETA (ferry service) has a planning workshop at 10 am in the morning and board meeting in the afternoon at 1 pm. If you don’t attend, which I expect you won’t, use the link to take a quick cruise through the budget/financials and see that it is federal assistance and bridge tolls that is keeping WETA afloat not fares.

Thursday – is the “preliminary design review” (first introduction) of two 4-story mixed-use (commercial and housing) at the Design Review Committee at 7 pm. The Landmarks Preservation Commission is expected to announce a special meeting for Thursday – there is no posting, check later.

Friday - Commission on Health Entheogenic Plants Subcommittee meets at 2 pm.



Attorney Tom Lippe (excellent reputation) is representing Peoples Park Historic District Advocacy Group. That is how the stay was secured to stop construction. The group needs your help for continuing court battles. Donate online or send a check https://www.peoplesparkhxdist.org/donate-now/



Save Cesar Chavez Park petition https://chavezpark.org/petition-to-save-chavez-park-from-bmasp/



As always check https://berkeleyca.gov/ for short notice/late postings during the week.



Monday, August 15, 2022 

Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) at 12 noon 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84610947314?pwd=MytWamtoR1VRSU5WMEZEclZyOEJNdz09 

Teleconference: 1-699-900-9128 Meeting ID: 846 1094 7314 Password: 004451 

AGENDA: 3. $650,000,000 Bond Measure, 4. Phase 2 Civic Center Vision Plan, 5. Turtle Island Monument Project Update, 6. Maudelle Shirek Building Video! 

https://berkeleycccc.org/ 

Peace and Justice Commission at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/846006511438 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 846 0065 1143 

AGENDA: 8. Discussion on reinstating Burma/Myanmar in Berkeley’s Oppressive State Ordinance, 9. Workplan, 10. Discussion and Action on Selective Services Resolution 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/peace-and-justice-commission 

Wednesday, August 17, 2022 

Water Emergency Transportation Authority at 10 am  

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89718217408 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 897 1821 7408 Password: 33779 

AGENDA: 4. Business Plan Workshop in am then break meeting to resume no later than 1 pm, 9. Reports of Staff, A. Scandinavia Zero-Emissions Findings (Chair and staff traveled to Norway and Sweden to see electric ferries in person), Passenger Experience (ticket purchasing) Upgrade Update, 11. Revisions to FY 2023 Budget and Salary Schedule. 

https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/next-board-meeting 

Thursday, August 18, 2022 

Design Review Committee (DRC) at 7 pm 

Videoconference: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89881419595 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 898 8141 9595 

AGENDA: 1. 1820 San Pablo (between Hearst and Delaware) – preliminary design review – demolish the existing commercial building and construct a 4-story, 43,277 sq ft 44 unit mixed-use building with 5,718 sq ft of commercial area. 

2. 2403 San Pablo (at Channing) – preliminary design review – demolish the existing 8,252 sq ft 1-story commercial building and construct a 4-story mixed-use development with 603 sq ft retail tenant space and 39 dwelling units (condominium) totaling 53,013 sq ft with 24 auto parking spaces and 39 bicycle parking spaces. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/design-review-committee 

Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) 

Agenda: The LPC is expected to call a special meeting. Check for a posting after Monday. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/landmarks-preservation-commission 

Friday, August 19, 2022 

Commission on Health Entheogenic Plants Subcommittee at 2 pm 

Videoconference: https://cityofberkeley-info.zoomgov.com/j/1616439941?pwd=ZU9MV2p3dG1RblQ5UFl1Vi8vZ3lXUT09 

Teleconference: 1-669-254-5252 Meeting ID: 161 643 9941 Passcode: 425911 

AGENDA: 3. Informational Presentation, 4. Respond to questions and concerns from the public, 5. Proposal for recommendation. 

https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/community-health-commission 

++++++++++++++++++++ 

LAND USE CALENDAR: 

Public Hearing to be scheduled 

1201 – 1205 San Pablo at ZAB Date 9/29/2022 

2018 Blake 10/6/2022 

Remanded to ZAB or LPC 

1205 Peralta – Conversion of an existing garage 

Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with the End of the Appeal Period 

Bad news on tracking approved projects in the appeal period. Samantha Updegrave, Zoning Officer, Principal Planner wrote the listing of projects in the appeal period can only be found by looking up each project individually through permits online by address or permit number https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/Online-Building-Permits-Guide.pdf 

The website with easy to find listing of projects in the appeal period was left on the “cutting room floor” another casualty of the conversion to the new City of Berkeley website.  

Here is the old website link, Please ask for it to be restored. 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/planning_and_development/land_use_division/current_zoning_applications_in_appeal_period.aspx 

WORKSESSIONS: 

September 20 Residential Objective Standards for Middle Housing at 4 pm 

Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations 

Cannabis Health Considerations 

Civic Arts Grantmaking Process & Capital Grant Program 

Kelly Hammargren’s comments on what happened the preceding week can be found in the Berkeley Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com under Activist’s Diary. This meeting list is also posted at https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

If you would like to receive the Activist’s Calendar as soon as it is completed send an email to kellyhammargren@gmail.com. If you wish to stop receiving the weekly summary of city meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com