October 2005 | Dock of the Bay
Radio Heads
Holly Kernan looks just too darn nice to be the head of the Bay Area’s sharpest investigative news team. But talk to KALW’s red-headed bundle of energy for just a few minutes and you see the steely glint of a determined newshound. Her team creates weekly, half-hour investigative segments that focus on environmental justice, ethnic communities, and the poverty gap. While Kernan noted KQED and KCBS do a great job at spot news, they are less adept at longer investigative pieces. KALW is determined to corner that market.
“One thing I love about radio is what you can do without a lot of bells and whistles,” said Kernan. “With radio journalism, you literally have to go somewhere and take the listeners there.”
Her team, at 91.7 on the FM dial, has been “taking listeners there” for two years, and is finally starting to get noticed for their efforts. A recent piece on the history of the G.I. Bill (it put thousands of demobilized W.W. II soldiers through college and arguably helped create the American middle class) has run nationally on scores of NPR stations. The piece cost only $2,000 to create — a pittance in this media market.
Another of the nearly two dozen KALW stories aired on public radio profiled an African American man’s effort to obtain a kidney transplant. It starkly illustrated how African Americans suffer high rates of kidney disease and have little access to organ transplants.
One story on the trafficking of women from around the world to U.S. brothels took months to make because KALW wanted to find a woman who was willing to give a first-person narrative, rather than relying on the words of advocates and experts.
In June, the KALW news team, under the tutelage of Kernan and station manager Nicole Sowaya investigated why the Port of Oakland (ostensibly a public entity) acts more like a private company — and why Oakland residents don’t see any of the Port’s profits.
It’s a pretty impressive record for a community station that relies on a volunteer news crew. Since Sowaya came on board in 2001, KALW, in conjunction with New California Media and other partners, has set up youth and senior training programs that have given volunteers the skills and ability to reach into their communities to do the kinds of stories that standard news reporters can’t do.
KALW’s reporters follow beats — environmental, demographic and artistic. They are a truly eclectic bunch that includes a retired teamster, a Dutch arts reporter, a private eye and a former PBS Frontline reporter.
Kernan is busy hustling up resources for her next big dream — a daily half-hour news broadcast costing $500,000 a year. KALW’s news shows, some of the most insightful radio reportage available, are archived online at kalwnews.org — Tim Kingston
Doctor Atomic
The music world will soon be rocked with a megaton blast of creative energy — the San Francisco Opera’s world premiere of Doctor Atomic. With music by Berkeley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams and libretto/staging by Peter Sellars, Doctor Atomic uses startling, recently declassified documents from Manhattan Project scientists to raise profound questions about the first atomic detonation that forever altered the course of human history.
While Mozart and Verdi often found their social commentary watered down by church and state censors, Adams and Sellars have been given tremendous freedom by SF Opera and its General Director Pamela Rosenberg. The spectacle interweaves newly revealed stories (including previously secret attempts to stop the detonation) with poetry that Manhattan Project Director J. Robert Oppenheimer sent to his wife Kitty (to avoid interference from government spies).
It is perhaps providential that Doctor Atomic débuts at a time when the wake-up call of Hurricane Katrina serves to illuminate the apocalyptic forces of global warming, war, AIDS, and cancer. As the Universe screams “Stop,” Adams, Sellars, and choreographer Lucinda Childs have seized the opportunity to use music and poetry to express the terrifying vision of the end to “all singing, all dancing, all entertainment.”
In a recent press conference, Sellars reflected on one of Adam’s musical passages — a sound collage created solely by power tools:
“In the countdown to the detonation of the bomb, at zero minus one minute, John has written four minutes of music that conveys the time inside of time, where it’s not just as the clock moves, but it’s what’s inside those seconds. What is at stake for every one of us, every one of those seconds.... Huge swaths of the electorate keep electing people who claim they can turn the clock back. The clock won’t turn back.”
Doctor Atomic is no bomb. It’s operatic dynamite. — Jason Victor Serinus
Doctor Atomic runs through Oct. 22. For tickets, contact (415) 864-3330 or sfopera.com. Standing room goes on sale 10am the day of the performance.
Calamity on the Klamath
For millennia, the indigenous Karuk maintained the Klamath Basin by controlled burning, careful plant harvesting, and regulation of salmon runs on the Klamath River. The salmon are central to Karuk ceremonies and worldview. Unfortunately, the California Water Code’s definition of “reasonable and beneficial use” overlooks the link between ecosystem management, spiritual practices, and tribal survival.
Today the Karuk are California’s second largest tribe, one of 15 indigenous groups that signed several (still un-ratified) federal treaties granting Washington control over 1.4 million acres of hunting grounds, rivers and watersheds. “The California Department of Natural Resources is failing miserably at managing tribal resources that they are mandated by law to protect,” says Karuk cultural biologist Ron Reed.
A string of Pacificorp hydroelectric dams on the Klamath blocks access to 350 miles of spawning habitat. “Our people are not getting enough food,” Reed warns, “It’s not just about the use of a river, it’s about our human rights.”
Denied their traditional river-based diet, the Karuk accepted government handouts of processed, high-starch foods — the diet of poverty. Crippling rates of diabetes and heart disease followed, leading to charges of “cultural genocide.”
With Pacificorp’s operating licenses up for renewal, the Hoopa, Yurok, Klamath and Karuk tribes — joined by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Association and Friends of the River — spent three years pleading with Pacificorp to consider the environmental and cultural impacts of the dams. Pacificorp addressed none of these concerns.
Reed was disconsolate. “You can sit there and say, ‘that acre of land with potatoes or alfalfa is worth this amount of money,’ but we are talking about cultural resources here. How can I put money-terms on these things? I threw my heart on the table for three years, saying these are the impacts of these dams on my people and it basically went unheard.”
After negotiations failed, tribal leaders traveled to Edinburgh last July to present their concerns at the annual stockholders meeting of ScottishPower, Pacificorp’s parent company. The publicity forced Pacificorp to begin a new round of negotiations. While the Karuk face the possibility of more long and potentially futile negotiations, their continued survival depends on access to a single fishing spot. — Gordon Feller
DON’T JUST GET MAD…. Take Action
Friends of the River, the Klamath Basin Coalition, and The California Wilderness Coalition (CWC) are three nonprofits that support Karuk tribal efforts to preserve their sacred sites and natural resources. A CWC report has identified the Klamath and Salmon Rivers as two of California’s most threatened “wild places.” These groups support direct action and letter-writing campaigns in support of the Karuk. To learn more and lend a hand, visit friendsoftheriver.org, calwild.org, and klamathbasin.info
Big Splash in the Car Pool
Vehicles emblazoned with City Carshare emblems have become a familiar part of the Bay Area’s alternative-transit mix that includes buses, ferries, bicycles, and taxis. But now Zipcar, the nation’s leading car-sharing company, has announced plans to open up a branch in the Bay Area. Is there room for a competitor?
SF-based City Carshare claims a growing membership base that now tops 4,000, and they are expanding to the East Bay. With 40,000 members nationally, Zipcar says it is adding 2,500 new members every month, and SF will be its first West Coast branch. “City Carshare has done a wonderful job of building awareness,” says Zipcar’s Vice President for Marketing Matthew Malloy. But he believes that Zipcar can offer cheaper rates, more vehicle choices, and better service.
Eliot Dobris, City Carshare’s Director of Marketing and Communication, welcomes the competition but notes a critical difference between the organizations. Carshare is “a nonprofit focusing on the Bay Area. Our top concerns are providing a great service... and reducing the impact on the environment.”
Both Zipcar and City Carshare agree that car-sharing programs are accelerating. “(Car-sharing) is a market that is growing so quickly nobody is fully tapping into the potential,” says Dobris. A UC Berkeley study found that, as of July 2005, more than 76,000 Americans were participating in car-share programs — a huge increase since car sharing was introduced to the US a little over a decade ago. And a Washington Post survey published last spring found that a quarter of Americans would be interested in replacing their main car with a car-sharing service. “This is no longer a movement,” says Malloy. “It is a category of transportation.” — Jennifer Liss
Sometimes a Great Lotion
Channing Street dead-ends at a rock-strewn hump supporting the railroad line abutting Berkeley’s Aquatic Park. This an unlikely place to find one the country’s leading organic skin-care companies, but cross the threshold of the spacious GratefulBody warehouse and you enter a world filled with greenery and some of the most endearing nature-rooted apothecaries this side of Middle Earth.
Marci Romano emerges from a thicket of shelves wearing a shower-cap and apron to guide us through aisles of bottled essences — slippery elm, milk thistle, calendula, lemon balm, flax and wildcrafted essential oils. Company founder Shannon Schroter, who started experimenting with all-natural compounds in his Berkeley home 28 years ago, is busy whipping gallons of creamy lotion in a big green plastic vat. This ocean of lotion will be decanted into tiny bottles of concentrated goodness.
Most commercial skin-care products (even some labeled “natural” and “organic”) are laced with synthetic compounds, toxic petrochemicals, GMOs and animal by-products. GratefulBody doesn’t believe in using your precious epidermis as a dumpsite for chemical wastes. “Your skin can’t really digest synthetics,” says Schroter, “it thrives on ingredients that have the biological integrity of nature.”
The company practices green business ethics by supporting local, sustainable, grassroots suppliers and promotes its products through “education and honest, non-exploitative marketing.” GratefulBody products are now available in 37 states and online at gratefulbody.com.
Another skin-care alternative comes from the Dis-scent company. As the name suggests, activists opposed to chemical-enriched corporate lotions founded this local start-up. Dis-scent and GratefulBody products are available in Berkeley at Elephant Pharmacy and the Ecology Center, in San Francisco at Rainbow Grocery and at Good Earth in Marin. — Gar Smith
Fund the Swami
If you’ve ever dreamed of being a publisher, here’s your chance. Swami Beyondananda (aka Steve Bhaerman) has a new book in the works (the ninth he has penned, co-authored or ghost-written) and he needs $50,000 to publish it. The Joy of Failure: When Loss Becomes Your Greatest Gain, co-written with psychologist Lynn Lawrence, is about “finding the seeds of success amidst the compost of failure.” Bhaerman’s lofty goal is to produce nothing less than “the most successful failure book in history.”
Veteran book publisher Dawson Church says that this tome “could take Steve over the top and expose his wisdom... to a huge national audience.” Church sent a fund-raising letter to friends that included the caveat to consider donations “a gift,” not a loan — a way of giving back to the tireless punning pundit who’s delighted audiences with his Tantric tantrums, laugh-out-loud newspaper columns and Karmic books.
This funding plan is a novel reversal of “vanity publishing” — you might call it “humility publishing” — and it comes with a pay-it-forward proviso: If book sales top 25,000, Church vows, “your gift will be re-gifted back to you.” Should the book sell 50,000 copies, your gift will be returned a second time — a 100% profit. Why be a Wall Street investor when you could be a Well Street investor?
Details are available at: www.joyoffailure.com and WakeUpLaughting, 400 W. Third St., Suite D-144, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. — GS
Green City Lofts
In August, The Dock ambled down to the Oakland-Emeryville border for the debut of GreenCity Lofts (GCL). A courtyard coffee bar was cranking out free Fair Trade cappuccinos and organic nut cakes as Oakland Sustainability Chief Randy Hayes told The Dock: “A lot of projects that call themselves green are really a pale shade of green. But this one is a nice shade of emerald.”
The developers followed the Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) standards to fashion a “diverse mix of loft, townhouse, and single-level plans.” The chemical paint factory that formerly occupied the site wasn’t demolished, it was “deconstructed.” Oakland requires that at least 50% of demolition rubble be recycled but the GCL crew set a record, recycling 94.7 percent of the debris.
Mayor Jerry Brown bestowed Oakland’s first Green Development Award on the Lofts and praised the project’s “energy and water efficiencies, steel construction, radiant floor heating systems, formaldehyde-free wheat straw-based cabinetry, non-toxic paint and natural flooring materials.”
One major obstacle the project faced was Emeryville’s 30-foot height limit. Emeryville’s eventual decision to allow the four-story complex was proof, Brown punned, that progress requires that we must all “lift our sites.”
Donning a hard hat, The Dock was given a special “beneath-the-scenes” look at the GCL’s trail-blazing hydronic heating system. In an unfinished apartment devoid of bamboo flooring, rooms were carpeted with twisting rows of red plastic tubing stapled onto thick pads of foam insulation. The tubes carry hot water from a natural-gas-powered boiler throughout the complex — one of the most energy efficient forms of space heating.
During a public tour of a finished apartment, The Dock ran into eco-visionary Richard Register (“Green Cities,” July 2005 CG ) who inquired: “How many parking spaces does this building have?” The GCL press kit lists room for 81 cars, 3 electric vehicles and 45 bicycles. “And how many housing units?” The Lofts are described as a “62-unit luxury condominium urban village.” Register harumphed that Berkeley’s Gaia Building offers 91 living units (19 low-income) but only 42 parking slots (including charging stations for electric vehicles). “So what makes this so green?” he asked.
Berkeley’s green buildings also sport rooftop gardens but the GCL is capped with a metal roof. Why no solar panels? Emeryville Public Works Officer Peter Schultze-Allen explained that solar panels were omitted after PG&E complained that it would be too difficult to “sub-meter” residents for individual electricity use. Maybe PG&E will reconsider in time for GCL to become part of California’s next Million Solar Roofs campaign.
GCL, 1007 41st Street at Adeline. www.greencitylofts.com — GS
Charities — What Gives?
The phone rings. It’s a caller from the Sisters of Charity Orphans’ Fatherless Fund (SCOFF). The mail arrives with a heart-rending letter from the Suffering Child-Amputee Mission (SCAM). Before you reach for your checkbook, you might want to fire up the Internet and look up SCOFF and SCAM on Charity Navigator, America’s largest charity evaluator (charitynavigator.org).
The Web site rates the claims of thousands of charities against their actual performance and it shows, at a glance, how much of the money raised was spent on relieving suffering vs. how much was spent on relieving administrative overhead. Charities are also ranked against one another with the best receiving a four-star rating.
If your would-be benefactors don’t rate a single star, you might want to reconsider your gift. And if you want to cut short a call from a solicitor who’s earned a Master’s Degree in Guilt-Tripping 101, just tell him/her that you’ll be happy to write a check once you’ve checked with Charity Navigator. That usually results in a quick: “God bless you and good-bye.”
In August, the folks at Charity Navigator, added a new trick to their role as watchdogs of the charity biz: they undertook an investigation of CEO salaries at the country’s 4,257 biggest charities and discovered a huge gap between the highest and lowest CEO salaries. While some nonprofit CEOs serve without pay, one charity paid its top man $1,578,014. Educational charities offered the biggest salaries while religious charities offered the least. The study also revealed a link between ZIP code and VIP load — CEOs in Boston, New York and Washington, DC pulled down paychecks that were 23% higher than those offered in Salt Lake City or Little Rock.
In a world awash in corruption, CN’s overall conclusion was fundamentally reassuring: “With an average salary of roughly $150,000, our findings prove that the majority of CEOs do not earn excessive pay.” Sandra Miniutti, CN’s Director of External Relations, expressed the hope that the study “helps improve the public’s confidence in the charitable sector as a whole.”
So what are CN’s top-rated charities? Here’s a short list: Tiger Woods Foundation. Lance Armstrong Foundation. The V Foundation (Bill Cosby), The Hole in the Wall Gang Fund (Paul Newman), Happy Hill Farm Academy (Dr. Phil), Washington University in St. Louis, Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, Carnegie Mellon University, Children’s Aid Society, Orphan Foundation of America, Asha for Education, Michigan Botanic Garden Foundation, Jane Addams Peace Association, US-Japan Bridging Foundation, Association for India’s Development, The Shade Tree, Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust, Oregon HEAT and CURE Childhood Cancer. — GS
Recommend this page to a friend
Top Ten pages recommended to friends:
