InBerkeley

I hesitate to suggest you go to hear Michael Pollan speak tonight in Berkeley, not because he isn’t smart and entertaining, but because last time I went up to the campus to hear him hold forth, the place was so packed many of us were relegated to an ante-room and had to settle for watching him on small screens.

Still, that was a free shindig and tonight’s event requires one to buy a ticket, so Pollan’s enormous fan-base may not come out in such full force — even if he is on home turf.

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” author and J-School prof will be talking about his philosophy—“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” — in Cal Performances’ Strickly Speaking Series, tonight at 8pm at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. Tickets cost $16–$30, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org.

[Photo: Ken Light.]

Celebrity, Events, Food, Journalism, People, UC Berkeley Michael Pollan

Bill Fujimoto, who left Berkeley’s Monterey Market earlier this year, has been hired as a consultant by Lafayette grocer Diablo Foods according to a report in Diablo Magazine:

Since Fujimoto’s arrival in July, Diablo Foods has begun offering more seasonal fare from such farms as Full Belly in Capay Valley and Goldbud in Placerville.

Fujimoto, shown above with his wife Judy, says he may open his own store, possibly in Contra Costa county.

Bill Fujimoto: what’s fresh now, June 24 2009
Monterey Market Mystery, June 12 2009

Business, Food, News, People Bill Fujimoto, Monterey Market

The announcement by philanthropist Warren Hellman (left) that he is pledging $5 million to kick-start  a new online Bay Area news service in conjunction with KQED, UC’s journalism school and possibly the New York Times has prompted a variety of responses.

Robert Gammon in The East Bay Express probably came out most strongly against the initiative, saying it represented a threat to Bay Area journalism as well as to the long-term fortunes of journalism students in the area.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given his position as an adjunct professor at the J-School, Silicon Valley new-media consultant Alan Mutter passed no comment on the development and merely reported it on his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur.

Susan Mernit, who is about to launch hyperlocal blog called Oakland Local, was ambivalent on her own blog, but concluded that, “As much as I worry that Hellman’s project will suck $$  from my own little project and other wonderful smaller sites I see emerging, the Hellman project feels  more like a replacement for something we’ve lost — the big (bloated?) newsrooms of the corporate papers — not the local sites that are close to their community.”

All the major news media have reported the initiative whose website can be found here and its Facebook page, launched just today, has already attracted about 240, mostly encouraging, followers.

Journalism, Non-profits, People, UC Berkeley, University Bay Area News Project

Kermit Lynch is a Berkeley institution and a national treasure, as anyone who has visited his wine store, or read his wine-related newsletters or book knows. He’s been around town for a long time, seen it all and amassed an impressive knowledge of the hallowed grape along the way. (One consequence is that he now spends half the year enjoying la belle vie in Provence.)

The thing is, just when you think you’ve got him pegged, along comes the revelation that he’s not a wine buff at all — or at least that isn’t his first love. Lynch started out as a musician, back in the drug-hazed Berkeley of the late 1960s, when he sang in a band and dreamed of one day getting a record contract.

Well that day has arrived, as some 40 years later Lynch is celebrating the release of his first album – a blend of soft rock, folk and blues — called Man’s Temptation. As he told Jancis Robinson recently in the Financial Times: “It was quite a thrill to get a record contract at 67. When I read it I thought, ‘Wow, I’m really something.”

Celebrity, Music, People, Wine

Being raised first by parents with drug abuse and mental illness problems in a house filled with homeless people, prostitutes and drug dealers and then from the age of 12 in some truly Dickensian homes in the foster care system doesn’t usually result in a childhood with much potential for success. Oh, and by the way, add dyslexia to the mix.

But don’t tell that to Lily Dorman-Colby, a Berkeley High School graduate who was just named by Glamour magazine as one of the top 10 college women of 2009.

Despite the fact that only 2 percent of foster children graduate from college, Lily is now in her senior year at Yale, has been an advocate for foster care reform, and intends to go to law school.

You can read more about Lily’s inspiring story in this article by Martin Snapp in the El Cerrito Journal, and on page 240 of the October 2009 issue of Glamour with Gwen Stefani on the cover.

Education, People

Two researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, are among 10 recipients being recognized for their environmental achievements with the 15th annual Heinz Awards, announced today by the Heinz Family Foundation.

Ashok Gadgil, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering and faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Kirk Smith, UC Berkeley professor of environmental health sciences, will each receive $100,000 for the strides they have made toward a more sustainable and cleaner environment.

Gadgil, 58, who also holds a position as deputy director in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, was recognized for his work as a researcher, inventor and humanitarian. The foundation cited Gadgil’s efforts to understand airflow and pollutant transport in buildings, which helps to reduce health risks, improve energy efficiency and enhance the quality of life in developing countries.

Smith, 62, was recognized for his research exposing the relationships among air pollution, household fuel use, climate and health. The foundation noted that he was the first to recognize and quantify the magnitude of the pollution exposure resulting from cooking indoors with solid fuels, such as wood and other biomass. About half of the world’s population uses such fuels daily, and the health impacts – ranging from pneumonia, tuberculosis, cataracts and chronic lung diseases – are disproportionately felt by the poorest women and children in developing countries.

On Oct. 28, each recipient will receive a $100,000 unrestricted award along with a medallion at a private ceremony in Washington, D.C.

Additional information about Teresa Heinz, the Heinz Family Foundation and each of the recipients is available online at www.heinzawards.net.

(Photos by Peg Skorpinski.)

Environment, People, UC Berkeley

Here’s an interesting commentary today by Lainey Feingold in the BeyondChron blog, postulating that the actions of Ally Jacobs and Lisa Campbell that lead to the discovery of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard support the controversial “wise Latina” statement made earlier this year (at UC Berkeley, no less) by then Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

But Jacobs’ hunch echos the one line of Justice Sotomayor’s stellar written and spoken record that was grist for the right-wing media mill: “I would hope,” Sotomayor said during a speech on the UC Berkeley campus in 2001, “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” After several others in law enforcement let Garrido slip through their fingers, the richness of Jacobs’ and Campbell’s experience saved the life of a young woman and her two young daughters.

via BeyondChron: San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily News.

Issues, People, UC Berkeley

As political pressure mounts for a thorough investigation of the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees in the years after 9/11, one local iteration of the debate over torture, civil rights, and national security refuses to die down. Whether you see it as a tempest in a teapot or the gravest of moral battles, the subject of former Justice Department lawyer and torture apologist John Yoo’s ongoing role as a professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law is still a hot one. So hot, in fact, that it may have started to warp the law school’s bureaucratic judgments.

via San Francisco News.

Education, People, UC Berkeley

For Caroline and Renee Thomas  Jacobs, the family dinner has always been one of the most important parts of the day, the one place where they and their two young sons could sit down together around the table to share food and conversation, and just reconnect and enjoy each other’s company. But as two busy professionals – Caroline working in operations at Apple and Renee working for a high-end kitchen supply retailer – they were finding these dinners were becoming harder and harder to do. Then, about three years ago, they realized that pretty soon they were never going to be able to have their family dinners at all, and that this was not the kind life they wanted. They decided they needed a change, and so Caroline left her job to become an at-home mother.

Caroline and Renee had also always wanted to start their own business together, but again, with two crazy jobs they had talked about it, but never really had the time to do anything. Once Caroline was home, however, they started thinking about what they wanted to do and what their passions were, and decided they wanted to find a way to make it easier for busy couples like themselves to have the family dinners they had struggled to maintain.

The result is ReneeGourmet™, a small, family-run business managed from their home in El Cerrito, practically in the shadow of FatApple’s restaurant, and just a stone’s throw from Berkeley’s infamous gourmet ghetto. As their web site states: We seek to “feed family time” with wholesome, ready-to-bake meals proven to bring the family to the table.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Caroline around their kitchen table and talk about their new four-month-old business. I also got to sample some of their homemade pizzas.

“Renee’s always been the chef in the family, and she’s a big foodie and all that, and she came upon the idea of family dinners,” Caroline explained. “Technology has also played a major role in allowing us to do this with me at home, our web site, email, a Facebook page and a mobile phone. Without all this technology, it would have taken a lot more capital to get this off the ground.”

For now, the 12-inch homemade pizza is ReneeGourmet’s flagship dish, and they offer several interesting varieties as well as custom combinations. I tasted both the pepperoni pizza and the Mediterranean Madness, which includes sun-dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, feta cheese, red onion, fresh basil and pine nuts, and both were delicious and truly looked homemade. The pizzas can be ordered with either regular or whole wheat crusts, and Renee also offers a unique gluten-free crust. Renee is also looking to expand their offering, and is testing new recipes for lasagna and macaroni and cheese, but these are not yet generally available to all customers.

A basic 12-inch cheese pizza – called Sonny’s – costs $14, while the combination pizzas will set you back $16, and discounts are available if you order more than 5 or 10 at a time. A wide variety of toppings, fresh herbs and cheeses are available for you to make your own custom pizzas, too. Or, you can join the Pizza Club and Renee will design a unique pizza just for you each month based on seasonal ingredients, your order history and stated likes and dislikes. They’ll even accommodate food allergies. Orders can be placed by email or phone, and Caroline recommends ordering all pizzas at least two days in advance (custom pizzas require it).

Read more…

Business, Food, General, People Pizza

When it comes to understanding the horror that was American slavery, there are two periods: Before Kenneth Stampp and after Kenneth Stampp.

Read more at SFGate.

People, University Deaths, People, UC Berkeley