Worth Noting



MONDAY

• 10 am, Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee discuss Responsible Psychedelic Drug Policy;
• 2:30 pm Agenda & Rules Committee on the June-27 Draft Agenda for City Council.
• 3 pm African American Holistic Resource Center Community Meeting
• 6 pm Mental Health Services Act Community Input Meeting

TUESDAY

• 4 pm City Council Special Session on Fire Department Community Risk Assessment Report
• 6 pm City Council Regular Meeting includes Budget, Surveillance Ordinance, T1

THURSDAY

• 12:30 pm Arts Organizations Preparedness 101
• 6:30 pm, Fair Campaign Practices Commission and Open Government Commission meet concurrently, with several reports, donor contribution policy, public participation in City Council meetings and public records act
• 7 pm Mental Health Commission
• 7 pm Design Review Committee

FRIDAY – 8:40 pm Movies in the Park, From the Rough

SATURDAY – 4 pm Music in the Park, (R&B.Soul)

Check the City website for late announcements and meetings posted on short notice at: https://berkeleyca.gov/

Directions with links to Zoom Support for activating Closed Captioning and Save Transcript are at the bottom of this calendar.

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BERKELEY PUBLIC MEETINGS and CIVIC EVENTS<>

Sunday, June 11, 2023 – No public meeting listed.



Monday, June 12, 2023 -more-

On Thursday, June 8, San Francisco Symphony’s music director Esa-Pekka Salonen led the first of three scheduled performances at Davies Hall of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s 2006 opera Adriana Mater. In light of the very recent death of Kaija Saariaho at age 70, this was an emotion-laden event, and SF Symphony dedicates these performances in honor of the extraordinary life and work of Kaija Saariaho. Moreover, several of Saariaho’s lifelong closest collaborators were involved in this production. Esa-Pekka Salonen, himself from Finland, acknowledges that Saariaho’s family and musical life have always been deeply intertwined with his own. For example, Salonen conducted the world premiere of Adriana Mater in 2006 at Paris’s Opéra Bastille, en event that was unfortunately marred by a last-minute technicians’ strike. Moreover, stage director Peter Sellars, who staged our SF Symphony production, has worked often with both Saariaho and Salonen, including at the Paris premiere of Adriana Mater in 2006. At Davies Hall on Thursday night, Peter Sellars gave a very emotional pre-performance talk about the opera Adriana Mater and about his longterm involvement with Kaija Saariaho and her music. Sellars will offer similar talks before each performance at Davies Hall on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Finally, the librettist for Adriana Mater was Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf, a longtime friend and collaborator with Kaija Saariaho. -more-

Mr. Mopp's Tops the List

It's a new month—and it's the month of June—so my fave neighborhood bookstore, Mr. Mopp's (on MLK and Rose), has prepared a new window display devoted to the theme of gay pride.

As usual, the Mopp's crew takes pride in its work and has assembled a shelf-mounted rainbow of book titles. Here's a brief scan of some of the offerings.

Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag

Queer, There and Everywhere

Julian Is a Mermaid

She, He, They, Them: Understanding Gender Identity

Queer Ducks: The Natural World of Animal Sexuality

Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle

My Moms Love Me

My Two Dads and Me

The Stonewall Riots

Bodies Are Cool

The Unabomber and Me

The death of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, brought back some memories. Memories of the time I was fingered as a Unabomber suspect—a turn of events that brought the FBI—and various media hounds—to my door. A 4,000-word article in the July 20, 1995 edition of The Washington Post described how the adventure began:

"Gar Smith heard a knock at the door. It was about 5 in the afternoon and he wasn't expecting anyone. Two guys in suits and shiny shoes flashed badges — the FBI. One of them said, 'We've received a tip that you may be the Unabomber.' -more-

The climate crisis has reached a critical point, and the recent record-breaking Canadian wildfires serve as a stark reminder of the urgency of this issue. The skies across much of North America were filled with smoke sending air quality alerts for approximately 100 million people. Shockingly, New York City now holds the unfortunate title of having the worst air quality among major cities worldwide. This is not just an isolated incident; it is a glimpse into our future in the climate crisis. -more-

In mental illness, in some rare instances, a brief neurological quirk might allow for the unlocking of romanticism.

I can look to the past and sometimes I can remember much of the delusional content of past psychotic episodes. When I remember my past delusions, they are framed in terms of them being delusions, and they do not reinstate themselves just because I can remember them. And at the same time, I can see how in some of the delusions, there are tiny bits of speculative truth, even though the beliefs were essentially false.

In my psychotic episode of 1990, the subject matter of the delusions might be worthy of note. Or it might even be worthy of fictionalizing. My mind was jarred back to the memory of it when reading the work of another contributor in the May 28 issue of the Planet. I had musings of birds as a once incredibly advanced, but since devolved form of life, something previously far higher than "homo sapiens." And, when I was in a waiting area of Herrick and was being asked a ton of questions and answering them as well as I could in my mentally disjointed state, at times I could hear the chirping notes of birds. A hallucination? Probably.

The canary in a coal mine is not merely a figure of speech. It was the predecessor of modern air sensing equipment. It was a way for coal miners to know whether it was safe in the tunnels or whether they had better evacuate because of unsafe air. The tunnels of coal mines can contain methane and/or carbon monoxide, both of which can kill humans. The canary in the mine would die first because it was more sensitive to these toxic gases. At that point, the miners knew they had to evacuate. -more-