One of the country’s leading education scholars, John Aubrey Douglass, presented an informative lecture this evening on the life and death of California’s higher education system. Sponsored by the Alameda County Office of Education, the lecture capped a visiting scholar series held at the Oakland Museum of California. Starting with a historical overview, Douglass showed …
The Berkeley Post Office is on the auction block in one of the slimiest backroom deals in the sordid history of pol-fin clubbiness. This centrally located building is a 99-year old architectural and cultural landmark, but it’s not just a building. OK, it’s just another piece of real estate, another sales commission to the mega-broker …
The photo shows something we almost certainly WON’T see in a real emergency: the Berkeley Fire Department. Saturday (4/27) was the Citywide Emergency Drill, and I joined other neighbors from this block and the next in a dry run of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) procedures. The neighbors a block away, who had been …
Inmates in Nazi concentration camps sometimes managed to perform music. That same spirited determination in the face of extreme hardship animates the Gaza Music School. It was established in 2008 thanks to a grant from the London-based Qattan Foundation. At the end of its first year, Israeli bombers — made in the U.S.A. — destroyed …
One of the highlights of our recent vacation in Ecuador was the carnival celebration in Ambato. Known as the Garden City, Ambato sits two hours by bus due south of Quito. It’s a special town — it was completely destroyed by a huge earthquake in 1949 at a loss of 6,000 lives. To commemorate its comeback from …
