On my kitchen wall there’s a poster with a slogan from World War II Britain: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” In the wake of the recent presidential debate (also known as The Debacle), pundit wannabes could ...

Berkeley City Hall’s efforts to enable the University of California's expansion in Berkeley have taken a new turn. Having already facilitated the school’s colonization of residential areas in ...

Now that I have been so slow to finish off this Activist’s Diary and fallen into covering two weeks of meetings, it feels like the world has shifted again. Trump’s visit with Viktor Orban at ...

The venerable Takács Quartet, formed in 1975 in Budapest, is now in its 49th year. Cellist András Fejer is the only current member who formed the original Takács Quartet when all its members were ...

After multiple stops and starts, I hope to finally get this off my desk. It has taken nearly three weeks from my first day of COVID episode two (the first was Delta in 2021) to feel normal again. I am ...

AGENDA: Use the link and choose the html option or see the agenda listed at the end of the calendar. AGENDA: 6. Presentation from the Berkeley Housing Authority on the Section 8 Program in Berkeley, 7 ...

Update: Councilmember Harrison has informed the Planet that she is continuing her campaign for Mayor of Berkeley. The election for that office is in November. I have decided to resign from the ...

Two disturbing responses to last night's City Council meeting. The first, Sophie Hahn's shocking statement at Kate Harrison's resignation. Ms Harrison carefully delineated her principled stand in her ...

With City Council on winter recess and most of the meetings for the year over, I turned on the audiobook version of McKay Coppins’ book Romney: A Reckoning and finished it in 2 ½ days while I put off ...

Once again there is a lot to cover as I pull the last two weeks on the local scene together. To ease the posting and reading here is Part I. Part 2 will follow on what is coming to us in more proposed ...

A crowd showed up at City Council on October 2, 2023. It was a new crowd, a young crowd, full of people who hadn’t been there before. And many of them appeared to be new to council’s procedures. There ...

I write as a former Board member of the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board who has participated in the long-stalled planning process for Berkeley's transfer station. While I am sure ...