Daily Archives: October 1, 2012
Power outage hits downtown and north Berkeley
UPDATE 10/2 7:45 am: About 111 residences remain without power Tuesday morning after an outage affected much of Berkeley overnight. PG&E does not yet know when those people will have their power restored.
Power went out to 12,425 people at 9:38 pm on Monday, plunging much of downtown, the north side, and the north Berkeley hills into darkness. PG&E was able to restore power to the majority of customers at 10:22 pm, but by 11 pm the power was out again, … Continue reading »
The Berkeley Wire: 10.01.12
Morning full moon, 09.30.12. Photo: seaangel12
Cal seismologists help install quake warning system in BART (Daily Cal)
Berkeley’s Chris Anderson on drones and the maker movement (TIME)
Open streets are coming to Berkeley (Sunday Streets)
Renaissance man sparks life into East Bay art scene (Diablo)
Ansel Adams prints found at UC Berkeley (SF Chronicle)
History professor Henry May dies (UC Dept. of History)
Activists hold “Sitting Olympics” to protest Measure S (Daily Cal)
Four goats in a Mercedes: Naturally, this is Berkeley
Dayna Macy stepped out of her home in the Berkeley hills today and saw her neighbor Mike in his Mercedes, along with four goats. No big deal. Mike keeps the goats, and a few beehives, at his home and he was merely taking his four-legged pals to his friend’s bike shop where they would be put to work eating the grass behind the store.
Living lawn mowers are a fact of daily life in Berkeley, after all — if … Continue reading »
Berkeley’s King school voted one of nation’s “coolest”
Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Middle School is one of the “25 coolest schools in the nation” according to Scholastic Parent & Child magazine whose annual list aims to showcase public schools that inspire.
The selection — which ranges from an elementary school in Wisconsin that’s using assistive technology to untap the potential of disabled kids to the nation’s largest online public school, based in Florida — also has an underlying agenda, says Parent & Child Editor in Chief Nick Friedman.
“We want to change the conversation,” he says. “There is so much negative talk about public education in America and the need to ‘fix’ public schools. That story is covered. We want to focus on the positive.” Friedman says the editorial team works to identify aspects such as community involvement and student engagement at schools which make them models for everyone. … Continue reading »
Woman arrested in DUI collision, victim critical condition
A 24-year-old Oakland man is in critical condition after being hit by a car driven by 83-year-old woman who was driving under the influence in Berkeley on Sunday Sept. 30 at around 8:35pm.
According to Berkeley Police, the collision occurred at the intersection of Hearst Avenue and Spruce Street, near the north-west corner of the UC Berkeley campus.
The pedestrian was transported by the Berkeley Fire Department to a local hospital with severe injuries. The driver, Mary Lou Cordova from San Pablo, stayed at the scene and spoke with investigators. During the course of their investigation the driver was evaluated for driving under the influence and later arrested.
Grape harvest comes to Berkeley at Donkey & Goat
Jared Brandt, the co-owner and winemaker of Donkey & Goat on Fifth Street in Berkeley, isn’t getting much sleep these days. It is harvest time all around California, and Brandt and his co-workers have spent hours driving to El Dorado and Mendocino Counties to help harvest Syrah and Pinot Noir grapes. Once the grapes are trucked back to the winery, they are sorted, some stems are removed, and then the whole clusters are put into barrels to ferment, just a few steps on the long path to becoming some of the winery’s award-winning wine.
“The next two weeks are going to be hard,” said Brandt, who owns the winery with his wife, Tracey. On Friday, Sept. 27, the winery processed four tons of grapes.
Many experts believe that the 2012 harvest will be the best in many years. The weather in northern California has been perfect, with hot days, cool nights, and a relatively dry spring. … Continue reading »
Cal Performances continues to provoke with “Rhinocéros”
The tragedy of a lonely man, confronted by his mortality and morality, has long been the stuff of playwrights, novelists, choreographers, composers and philosophers.
In a four-show Cal Performance appearance by the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris at Zellerbach Hall, Romanian-French playwright Eugéne Ionesco’s 1957 short story Rhinocéros explored solitary pathos in a metaphorical trampling of conformism in three acts.
The play, performed in French with English subtitles, follows the story of Bérenger, a disheveled white-collar grunt who’s prone to drink and to ogle Daisy, a coworker he adores. Falling instantly into arguments — with best friend Jean, with the competitor for Daisy’s affections, Dudard, and most often, with himself — Bérenger carves an anguished niche as rhinoceroses stampede into his village. Gradually, nearly everyone around him is swept up in desperate submission and they become the very beasts they initially fear. … Continue reading »
