Palo Alto Weekly 03.19.2010 - Section 1

Palo Alto

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City, Foothill revive Cubberley sale talks Page 3

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Voting for trust

Re-inventing how America votes in a digital democracy Page 20

Spectrum 16

Movies 31

Eating Out 35

ShopTalk 36

Puzzles 60

N Arts Eclectic jazz musician goes solo

Page 26

N Sports Stanford women open NCAAs

Page 37

N Home Oodles of charm on home tour

Page 45

Perinatal Diagnostic Center

Packard Children’s Hospital

Obstetric Anesthesia

Center for Fetal Health

Stanford School of Medicine

TOGETHER WHAT DREW US HERE AS DOCTORS, DRAWS US BACK AS PATIENTS.

www.lpch.org

Obstetricians Karen Shin and Mary Parman spend their days caring for pregnant patients and delivering babies. Now that each doctor is pregnant with her first child, the choice of where to deliver is clear: right here where they deliver their patients’ babies, at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

“At Packard, every specialist you could ever need is available within minutes, around the clock. When you’ve seen how successfully the physicians, staff and nurses work, especially in unpredictable situations, you instinctively want that level of care for you and your baby.”

To learn more about the services we provide to expectant mothers and babies, visit lpch.org

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Upfront

Local news, information and analysis

Palo Alto hesitant about landfill-gas contract Council committee wants to take a new look at city’s renewable-energy goals

by Gennady Sheyner alo Alto should reconsider its renewable-energy goals before it makes any long-term commitments to a “green energy” provider, a City Council committee recommended Tuesday night.

The Finance Committee was dis-

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cussing a staff proposal to sign four 20-year contracts with the energy firm Ameresco, which is planning to build four landfills in the Central Valley and capture and burn methane at those landfills to generate electricity. The Utilities Department

negotiated the $284.5 million contract over the past few months as part of its effort to increase the city’s renewable-energy portfolio.

Ameresco, which currently supplies 9 percent of the city’s electricity from five existing landfill-gas power plants, hopes to start building the four new ones before the end of this year. The landfills would provide up to 166,000 megawatt-hours per year of energy.

But committee members balked at the staff proposal, citing uncertainty over energy prices and the prospect of rapid technological change. Instead, the committee said the city should re-evaluate, and possibly lower, Palo Alto’s renewable-energy goals.

Councilman Greg Scharff said he was concerned about locking the city into a 20-year contract given the unpredictable fluctuations of

energy prices. He also said he was concerned about all of the city’s renewable power, with the exception of wind, coming from one company.

If the city were to sign the contracts, 21 percent of Palo Alto’s total electricity supply (and 64 percent of its renewable energy) would come from Ameresco.

The contracts would have helped (continued on page 6)

LAND USE

City considers sale of Cubberley Council to meet Monday on terms for potential sale to Foothill

by Chris Kenrick

the Palo Alto living room of Gary and Rona Chevsky.

A second team with 15 members, mostly doctors and nurses from Palo Alto Medication Foundation and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, is in Haiti this week.

“When the earthquake first happened I thought, ‘No, I won’t go,’” said Choi, who had performed medical relief work following Hurricane Katrina and the wildfires in San Diego. “But over time we saw great need.

“There were so many physicians and nurses who wanted to go but couldn’t take a whole month off, which is what (relief agencies) were asking.

“So we decided to start an or-

2008 plan to tear down part of Cubberley Community Center to build a major new “educational center” for Foothill College has resurfaced.

Palo Alto officials are scheduled to meet in closed session Monday night to discuss “price and terms of payment” for a potential sale of the city-owned portion of Cubberley to the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.

Foothill’s objective is the same as it was when negotiations broke down two years ago — to construct a “state-of-the-art” educational center along with joint-use community facilities on the city-owned 8-acre portion of Cubberley, Foothill sources said Wednesday.

Cubberley is located at 4000 Middlefield Road.

The goal would be to upgrade or replace the 54-year-old infrastructure with modern facilities and try to work with the city and the Palo Alto Unified School District on partnerships to enhance educational opportunities, a high-level Foothill source said.

Currently, Foothill leases 40,000 square feet of Cubberley — which closed as a high school in 1979 — as its Middlefield Campus. It has more than 1,000 full-time-equivalent students.

The remaining 27 acres of Cubberley is owned by the Palo Alto Unified School District and is leased by the city for use as a community center.

Officials with Foothill and the City of Palo Alto provided few

(continued on page 8)

(continued on page 9)

A Veronica Weber

Pi in the sky?

Lucille Nixon Elementary School fifth-grader Maggie Wang colors in her share of the humongous paper quilt she and her 22 classmates are preparing in honor of “pi” day, which was March 14. Each square represents one digit of the infinite number pi (3.14...), the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

COMMUNITY

Doctors see will to survive amid ‘stench of death’ Health team shares stories with donors, volunteers on Haiti relief trip

by Chris Kenrick alo Alto physicians displayed heart-wrenching photos of Haitians in a “thank you” presentation Tuesday night to volunteers and donors who supported a recent medical relief trip there.

A team of 13 doctors and nurses from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Stanford Hospital & Clin-

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ics, Kaiser Permanente and the City of San Francisco told stories of Haitians rallying for survival, amid the stench of death, after losing children, spouses, parents and homes.

“There is unlimited need, and there are amazing stories of care and compassion,” said trip orga-

nizer Dr. Enoch Choi, a physician in Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Urgent Care Department.

Choi and others described their frenzied, bootstrap efforts to assemble the trip — including support from Palo Alto schoolchildren and a wide array of community donors and volunteers — following Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake Jan. 12.

The Haitian government has put the death toll at 230,000 people, and international agencies say as many as 3 million people have been affected by the disaster.

Choi is organizing health-care teams to go to Haiti each month for a week of service.

The first group, which included Choi, worked in Port-au-Prince from Feb. 15 to Feb. 21, and shared their experiences Tuesday night in

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Upfront

CIVIC CENTER, 250 HAMILTON AVENUE BROADCAST LIVE ON KZSU, FM 90.1 CABLECAST LIVE ON GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 26

(TENTATIVE) AGENDA-SPECIAL MEETING-COUNCIL CHAMBERS MARCH 22, 2010 - 7:45 PM CLOSED SESSION 1.

Cubberley 2.

Review of Council Procedures and Protocols and Referral to Policy & Services Committee

3.

Adoption of Council Priorities & Workplan

450 CAMBRIDGE AVE, PALO ALTO, CA 94306 (650) 326-8210 PUBLISHER William S. Johnson EDITORIAL Jay Thorwaldson, Editor Jocelyn Dong, Managing Editor Carol Blitzer, Associate Editor Keith Peters, Sports Editor Tyler Hanley, Express™ and Online Editor Rebecca Wallace, Arts & Entertainment Editor Rick Eymer, Assistant Sports Editor Chris Kenrick, Gennady Sheyner, Staff Writers Sue Dremann, Staff Writer, Special Sections Editor Karla Kane, Editorial Assistant Veronica Weber, Staff Photographer Jeanne Aufmuth, Dale Bentson, Colin Becht, Peter Canavese, Kit Davey, Iris Harrell, Sheila Himmel, Kevin Kirby, Jack McKinnon, Renata Polt, Jeanie Forte Smith, Susan Tavernetti, Robert Taylor, Contributors Martin Sanchez, Mike Lata, Editorial Interns DESIGN Shannon Corey, Design Director Raul Perez, Assistant Design Director Linda Atilano, Diane Haas, Scott Peterson, Paul Llewellyn, Senior Designers Laura Don, Gary Vennarucci, Designers

A Guide to the Spiritual Community First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto Sunday School for all ages – 9:00 a.m.

Sunday Services – 10:25 a.m. “The children in our midst, the mission at our doorstep, a place of hospitality and grace�

625 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto

(650) 323-6167 s WWW &IRST0ALO!LTO COM FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, UCC

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This Sunday: It Does Not Mean What You Think it Means Rev. David Howell preaching

Jazz Concert with Taylor Eigsti on March 28 at 7:00 pm An Open and Affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ

Stanford Memorial Church University Public Worship Sunday, March 21st, 10:00 am

“Gorging Ourselves in the Body Politic�

Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann All are welcome.

Information: 650-723-1762

Music featuring University Organist, Dr. Robert Huw Morgan http://religiouslife.stanford.edu

We Invite You to Learn and Worship with Us.

FPCMV welcomes our new Pastor Timothy R. Boyer.

Biblically based Sermons and Worship Service 10:30 AM. www.fpcmv.org 1667 Miramonte (Cuesta at Miramonte) 650.968.4473

INSPIRATIONS

A resource for special events and ongoing religious services. To inquire about or make space reservations for Inspirations, please contact Blanca Yoc at 326-8210 x6596 or email byoc@paweekly.com

PRODUCTION Jennifer Lindberg, Production Manager Dorothy Hassett, Blanca Yoc, Sales & Production Coordinators ADVERTISING Walter Kupiec, Vice President, Sales & Marketing Judie Block, Esmeralda Flores, Janice Hoogner, Gary Whitman, Display Advertising Sales Neil Fine, Rosemary Lewkowitz, Real Estate Advertising Sales David Cirner, Irene Schwartz, Inside Advertising Sales Cathy Norfleet, Display Advertising Sales Asst.

Diane Martin, Real Estate Advertising Assistants Alicia Santillan, Classified Administrative Asst.

EXPRESS, ONLINE AND VIDEO SERVICES Rachel Palmer, Online Operations Coordinator Molly Stenhouse, Online Sales Consultant BUSINESS Mona Salas, Manager of Payroll & Benefits Elena Dineva, Mary McDonald, Sana Sarfaraz, Cathy Stringari, Susie Ochoa, Doris Taylor, Business Associates ADMINISTRATION Amy Renalds, Assistant to the Publisher & Promotions Director Alana VanZanten, Promotions Intern Janice Covolo, Receptionist Ruben Espinoza, Courier EMBARCADERO PUBLISHING CO. William S. Johnson, President Michael I. Naar, Vice President & CFO Walter Kupiec, Vice President, Sales & Marketing Frank A. Bravo, Director, Information Technology & Webmaster Connie Jo Cotton, Major Accounts Sales Manager Bob Lampkin, Director, Circulation & Mailing Services Alicia Santillan, Circulation Assistants Chris Planessi, Chip Poedjosoedarmo, Computer System Associates The Palo Alto Weekly (ISSN 0199-1159) is published every Friday by Embarcadero Publishing Co., 450 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306, (650) 326-8210. Periodicals postage paid at Palo Alto, CA and additional mailing offices. Adjudicated a newspaper of general circulation for Santa Clara County. The Palo Alto Weekly is delivered free to homes in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, East Palo Alto, to faculty and staff households on the Stanford campus and to portions of Los Altos Hills. If you are not currently receiving the paper, you may request free delivery by calling 326-8210. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302. Copyright Š2010 by Embarcadero Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. Printed by SFOP, Redwood City. The Palo Alto Weekly is available on the Internet via Palo Alto Online at: www.PaloAltoOnline.com Our e-mail addresses are: editor@paweekly.com, letters@paweekly.com, ads@paweekly.com.

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PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

We may very well be shooting ourselves in the foot. — Sid Espinosa, Palo Alto City Councilman, on the recommendation to postpone adoption of a $284.5 million contract for renewable energy. See story on page 3.

Around Town

ONE TREE, TWO TREES ...

For the first time in nearly two decades, the city named after a tree is preparing to count its trees. The Palo Alto City Council approved a $156,894 contract this week with the Davey Resource Group for an inventory of street trees. The city last counted its roughly 36,000 street trees in 1989 and, as a new staff report points out (and as California Avenue frequenters can’t help but observe), things have changed over the past two decades. Under the current contract, Davey Resource Group would assess each tree, update the information in Palo Alto’s TreeKeeper inventory and provide the city with a report that includes “the structure, function, value and maintenance needs of the city’s tree resource.� The project will be largely funded by a $120,000 state grant, with the city footing the rest of the bill. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of June.

GOING, GOING, GONE ... Local volunteers in Palo Alto’s upcoming school-parcel-tax campaign are joking that they should auction off their black and fluorescent-green “YES ON A� lawn signs on eBay. “We distributed 1,000 lawn signs, and I couldn’t believe how fast they went,� said Support Our Schools Campaign Co-Chair Tracy Stevens. “We’re out of them, and we’re not getting any more.� However, student and parent volunteers in the Measure A campaign are distributing “Palo Alto Schools Rock� posters created by artist and Fairmeadow School parent Kris Loew. They’re also selling “Palo Alto Schools Rock� T-shirts and gearing up for a community rally for Measure A on April 3 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Lytton Plaza. “As a community, we embrace our schools,� said Campaign Co-Chair Anna Thayer, a Paly alumna and mother of four. The third campaign co-chair, Al Yuen, a Duveneck father of four boys, has done his part by enticing a local Chinese-language newspaper, the World Journal, to write an article about Measure A. MEMORIAL ROAD ... She taught blind people to read, promoted a vibrant downtown and encour-

aged businesses to go green long before “green� became Palo Alto’s most repeated buzzword.

But it was Betty Meltzer’s drive to plant trees along El Camino Real that proved to be her most visible contribution to Palo Alto.

Meltzer, a civic leader who died in September 2008, earned a special proclamation and a video tribute from the City Council Monday night. Mayor Pat Burt highlighted Meltzer’s many civic achievements and recalled a chat he had with her about the El Camino project several years ago. “She just had this remarkable rare spirit that was infectious,� Burt recalled. “We ended up spending two or three hours talking about everything that mattered, and it was a wonderful experience.� City officials aren’t the only ones impressed with Meltzer’s accomplishments. Last year, the state Legislature decided to commemorate Meltzer’s efforts on behalf of El Camino Real by naming a stretch of El Camino after her. Now, drivers zipping down El Camino Real between Page Mill Road and the San Francisquito Creek are driving on what is officially known as the Betty Meltzer Memorial Highway.

TALKIN’ RAIL ... About a year ago, Palo Alto formed a new City Council ad hoc committee to monitor California’s controversial $43 billion high-speed-rail project and report its findings to the full council. Since then, the committee added a fourth member and began attracting larger crowds of rail watchdogs and state officials to their meetings. Ad hoc groups typically meet for a few months and then disband, but the City Council formally acknowledged this week that the rail issue isn’t going away any time soon. The council designated the rail group as the City Council’s third “standing committee� (along with the Finance Committee and the Policy and Services Committee).

The committee currently consists of Mayor Pat Burt and council members Larry Klein, Nancy Shepherd and Gail Price. In recognition of the group’s growing importance, city officials also announced this week that the rail committee meetings will now be televised. N

Upfront TRANSPORTAION

Plans for California Avenue discussed, debated City would reduce number of lanes on ‘Avenue of the Arts’ from four to two

alo Alto residents debated plans for changing California Avenue Tuesday night, in particular shrinking the number of lanes from four to two.

The meeting at Escondido Elementary School was the first of two outreach meetings conducted by the city to review the second phase of the California Avenue Streetscape Improvement Project, which focuses on the business district.

This phase of the Improvement Project involves re-paving the road and making two wider traffic lanes — one in each direction — out of the four current ones, city Transportation Engineer Rafael Ruis said.

The change would eliminate “that multiple-threat situation, where the car in the right lane will stop for a pedestrian, but the car in the left lane keeps on going. If you go and wait down there for five minutes, I’m sure you’ll see it happen,” Ruis said.

The city would also convert all California Avenue parking spots to diagonal parking, Ruis said. Some spaces are currently parallel.

“Our concept plans show 20-24 additional spaces and four to five more handicapped spaces. Right now, there is only one,” Ruis said.

Other changes include new furniture and newspaper kiosks up and

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down the street and a new fountain in the plaza at the end of the street, near the train station, Transportation Planner Gayle Likens said.

Many of the meeting’s attendees debated the efficacy of the planned lane changes.

Palo Alto resident Brent Barker said dangerous traffic situations could occur as drivers will take time to adjust to the new lane configurations.

“There will be a transitional period where cars are trying to move around each other,” he said.

Palo Alto resident Lawrence Garlin said the planned lane changes will make California Avenue safer by increasing the distance between bicyclists and parked cars.

“Bicycles being struck by car doors is the leading cause of bike deaths,” he said.

California Avenue business owner Jane Radford-Barker said she and other business owners think the lane changes will increase traffic congestion in the area.

“California Avenue business owners have one major complaint: They’ve never been asked what they think. They don’t want anything changed,” she said.

Ruis gave examples of nearby commercial districts with two-lane

Courtesy of City of Palo Alto

by Martin Sanchez

This cross-section of the California Avenue Streetscape Phase 2 plan indicates one lane each way for through traffic, as well as a turning lane at intersections and a median strip.

street layouts similar to the planned California Avenue changes. With more than 19,000 cars daily, University Avenue in Palo Alto and Castro Street in Mountain View both have twice the traffic of California Avenue with minimal congestion, he said.

Safer conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians could also “enhance business” in the area, he said.

Mike Sartor, Palo Alto’s assistant director of public works, said the city would apply for a Transportation for Livable Communities grant to fund the next phase of streetscape changes. These additional modifications could include concrete bulbouts at street corners, added planters along the street and further changes to the fountain plaza, he said.

These proposed changes “would of

TECHNOLOGY

Palo Alto employees boogie for Google In latest effort to show support for ‘Fiber for Communities’ application, city turns to the Village People

by Jocelyn Dong irst, the mayor of Duluth, Minn., jumped into a nearfreezing Lake Superior in February. Then Topeka, Kan., renamed itself “Google” for the month of March. On Monday, the quest to impress search-engine giant Google took a disco turn in Palo Alto as city staff and residents exuberantly leapfrogged and jived in front of City Hall to the tune of “YMCA” by the Village People.

Uncharacteristic for a city known for its debates over composting and zoning? Maybe — but decorum goes out the window when stakes are high.

Monday’s dance event, captured on video and posted on the city’s Facebook page, “Palo Alto for Google Fiber,” was the city’s most lighthearted plea yet to win the affection of Mountain View-based Google, which has launched a nationwide competition called “Fiber for Communities.” The winning cities will receive a fiber-optic system capable of providing residents and organi-

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zations with a 1-gigabit-per-second connection to the Internet. That, according to Google, is about 100 times the speed the average American has access to now.

“It was kind of loosey-goosey. We weren’t sure what we were going to get,” said Steve Crow of Crow Digital Media, the video’s producer. The aim was for a “flash mob” type video, he said, referring to an event in which people spontaneously gather to do a silly or seemingly random activity and then disperse.

What he got was teens running across the screen piggyback and businessman Tommy Fehrenbach strutting in coat and tie with leapfrogging youth. Behind them, a crowd of about 40 people, including Deputy City Manager Steve Emslie, Utilities Director Valerie Fong and former Mayor Bern Beecham, did their best to rock out, while other city employees “raised the roof” with their hands.

At the appropriate time, four teens unfurled the core message: “Palo

Alto for Google Fiber.”

“The video is designed to show Google what a fun community we are and how we are behind this,” said Crow, who was approached for the work by City Councilman Yiaway Yeh. The city’s application to Google is due March 26. It likely will include a different and more decorous video featuring top city officials making their pitch directly to Google, according to Bob Harrington, adviser to the mayor on broadband issues.

The city is also trying to spur as much community enthusiasm as possible, since Google’s decision will factor in the amount of support that community members show for the plan.

Crow said city leaders want to encourage residents and business owners to make their own videos on the theme of “What would your life be like at the speed of Google?” — a slogan he coined and the city adopted.

“Google’s 1 gigabit will empower a future that we can’t envision as of

course come back to the community for input, discussion and modification” should the city acquire a grant, he said. Grant applications are due in April and the city could hear back by July, he said.

The grant is being offered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area’s transportation planning agency.

The MTC has allotted $6 million in grants for Santa Clara County, of which Palo Alto plans to apply for $500,000 to $1 million pending city council approval, Sartor said.

The city unsuccessfully applied for similar grants twice before, Sartor said — once in 2006 to fund the current re-paving efforts and once in 2005 for the replacement of 50 trees along California Avenue, which took place last September.

“One thing that’s changed since 2005 is that we’ve already invested in the project,” Likens said. She said this commitment to streetscape changes could strengthen the city’s grant application.

The next community meeting has not been planned but will likely take place in the latter part of April, Sartor said. N Editorial Intern Martin Sanchez can be e-mailed at msanchez@ paweekly.com.

yet, but we’ll be working in it and living in it,” Crow said, likening the “revolution” to the introduction of television to a radio-only world.

Meanwhile, neighborhood associations are weighing in on the idea. On Tuesday, the Barron Park Association board approved supporting the city’s bid for Google Fiber. The board selected a group of residents to prepare the nomination statement, according to board Vice President Art Liberman.

The College Terrace Residents Association board already voted to nominate Palo Alto, according to recent past board chair Greg Tanaka.

“We actually will be sending out notices to all residents and letting them know how they can help to get fiber to Palo Alto,” he said, adding that there are many Google employees living in the neighborhood, which abuts Stanford University.

Other neighborhood groups have taken a less formal approach, emailing information about Google Fiber to their residents.

Harrington said the stoking of community support is “going well,” although the city’s general approach tends to be methodical — not zany.

“It’s the typical Palo Alto effort and response,” he said. “It’s very studied. There are levels of trust that have to be equal or exceeded before action is taken.”

People have to feel they under-

stand and trust information before they will ask their friends and colleagues to support a plan, he said.

“I’m optimistic by the time the deadline comes ... plenty of people will feel comfortable enough and spread the word,” said Harrington, who himself has attended three meetings a week in an effort to help Palo Alto win the fiber system.

With a week and half to go, the city is entering the final stretch.

“10 days and 7 hours,” Harrington said Tuesday morning, chuckling. “I have a counter on my Google page to watch it.” N Managing Editor Jocelyn Dong can be e-mailed at jdong@ paweekly.com.

READ MORE ONLINE

www.PaloAltoOnline.com View the city’s plans for California Avenue at www.cityofpaloalto.org/ calave. You can also join a discussion about California Avenue on Town Square on Palo Alto Online.

WATCH THE VIDEO

www.PaloAltoOnline.com The dance video is posted at www. facebook.com/paloaltogooglefiber. Talk about the Google Fiber initiative on Town Square on Palo Alto Online.

Corrections

In the obituary for Lela Meyer (Palo Alto Weekly, March 12, 2010), the date of marriage was incorrect.

She married Dr. Robert Meyer in 1938. The Weekly regrets the error.

To request a correction, contact Managing Editor Jocelyn Dong at 650-223-6514, jdong@paweekly. com or P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302.

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Upfront

Online This Week

These and other news stories were posted on Palo Alto Online throughout the week. For longer versions, go to www.PaloAltoOnline.com/news or click on “News” in the left, green column.

Memorial service set for Tesla employee

Friends and family of Andrew Ingram, the youngest victim of the Feb. 17 plane crash in East Palo Alto, plan to celebrate Ingram’s life at a March 27 memorial service. (Posted March 18 at 2:51 p.m.)

Stanford backs Palo Alto’s fiber drive

If Google’s founders listen to their alma mater, Palo Alto may very well succeed in its bid to be selected for the company’s fiber project.

(Posted March 18 at 9:45 a.m.)

Paly senior places fourth in Intel Talent Search

Palo Alto High School senior Lynnelle Ye has placed fourth in the Intel Science Talent Search, one of America’s oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competitions. (Posted March 18 at 8:58 a.m.)

Men shot in East Palo Alto during rugby game

Two men were shot while watching a women’s rugby game in East Palo Alto on Tuesday evening, a police captain said Wednesday. (Posted

NOTICE OF PUBLIC REVIEW PERIOD AND PUBLIC HEARINGS ON PALO ALTO’S COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT (CDBG) PROGRAM This is to notify the general public and other interested parties that a 30-day public review period for the Palo Alto’s draft Community Development Block Grant 2010-15 Consolidated Plan/2010-11 Annual Action Plan will begin on March 22, 2010 and end on April 23, 2010. The draft Consolidated Plan identifies local community development needs and sets forth a strategy to address those needs. The draft Annual Action Plan describes the activities the City plans to fund under the 2010/2011 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program. These activities are intended to meet Palo Alto’s affordable housing and community development objectives described in the draft Consolidated Plan for the period 2010-2015.

Copies of the draft plans will be available on March 22, 2010 at the Department of Planning and Community Environment, 250 Hamilton Avenue, 5th Floor, Palo Alto, CA 94301, on the City’s website at http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/cdbg or by calling Kathy Marx, CDBG Coordinator, at 650-329-2428. Interested parties are encouraged to submit written comments on the proposed draft Action Plan during the public review period, or to comment at the public hearings and meetings described below.

The City Council will allocate an estimated amounted of $1,048,370 in CDBG funding. The estimated amount of the annual CDBG entitlement grant is $733,890. $241,001 is available from program income received in previous years or anticipated in fiscal year 2010/2011 and $73,479 is available for reallocation to new activities from CDBG funds received in previous years. All the proposed activities are consistent with the CDBG program’s national objective of giving priority to activities which benefit low- and verylow income persons. The funds will be used to fulfill the priority needs in the draft Consolidated Plan.

Public Hearings and Meetings The City of Palo Alto Finance Committee will hold a Public Hearing on April 6, 2010 to review the draft CDBG Consolidated Plan for 2010-15 and the proposed 2010/2011 CDBG funding allocations (one-year Action Plan) as recommended by City staff and the CDBG Citizens Advisory Committee. The Public Hearing will be held at 7:00 p.m., or as soon as possible thereafter, in City Hall, Council Chambers, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto.

The Palo Alto City Council will hold a Public Hearing on May 3, 2010 to approve the Finance Committee recommendation to adopt the draft 2010-15 Consolidated Plan, draft 2010/11 Action Plan and associated 2010/11 funding allocations. The Public Hearing will be held at 7:00 p.m., or as soon as possible thereafter, in City Hall, Council Chambers, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto.

ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn more about the City’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), please contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at 650.329.2550 (voice) or by e-mailing ada@cityofpaloalto.org.

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March 18 at 8:45 a.m.)

Patrol car windows smashed in East Palo Alto

The rear windows of two East Palo Alto police patrol cars were smashed over the weekend, a police spokesman said Wednesday. (Post-

ed March 18 at 8:40 a.m.)

Small fire kept small by passerby, quick response

A fire in the front portion of a house in the 3000 block of Louis Road Wednesday afternoon was kept small by an alert pedestrian and quick response from the Palo Alto Fire Department, according to fire officials. (Posted March 17 at 9:36 p.m.)

Jurors begin deliberation in Koloto murder trial

The defense attorney for a man accused of murdering 27-year-old Philip Lacy during a robbery in downtown Palo Alto two years ago reiterated to jurors Tuesday morning the crime was not a random, opportunistic act of violence and that his client killed Lacy in selfdefense. (Posted March 17 at 8:43 a.m.)

Palo Alto to do outreach on recycling, ‘privacy’

Palo Alto will conduct more outreach before drafting a new recycling ordinance, and address “privacy” concerns before considering enforcement provisions, city officials said this week. (Posted March 16

at 7:13 p.m.)

Adult school website earns international award

The Palo Alto Adult School has been honored for the “excellence” and “functionality” of its website by the Learning Resources Network, an international association of lifelong learning. (Posted March 16 at 3:40 p.m.)

Mountain lion sighting in Atherton

A mountain lion sighting was reported at a home on Park Lane in Atherton late Sunday night, police said. (Posted March 16 at 12:23 p.m.)

Armed men rob Willow Road gas station

Two men armed with handguns held up three employees at the 76 gas station on Willow Road Monday night. (Posted March 16 at 12:21 p.m.)

Paly news website a national finalist — again

Palo Alto High School’s student-run online news website is among the finalists for a national scholastic journalism award for the eighth year in a row. (Posted March 15 at 4:50 p.m.)

Varian hydrogen-tank leak equalizes, fixes itself

A hydrogen leak from a storage tank at Varian Associates Sunday morning stopped on its own about noon as the pressure in the tank equalized to the warmth of the day, Fire Chief Nick Marinaro reported.

The whitish-vapor cloud dissipated quickly and posed little danger to Barron Park homes a short distance away, he said. (Posted March 14 at

10:24 a.m.)

Smoky fire on Byron Street related to dishwasher

A basement fire related to a kitchen dishwasher caused about $75,000 damage to a two-story house in the 1100 block of Byron Street Saturday afternoon, fire officials reported. (Posted March 14 at 9:02 a.m.)

Landfill gas (continued from page 3)

the city achieve its official goal of getting 33 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2015 — a target the City Council adopted in 2007. The council also specified that the Utilities Department achieve this target without increasing electricity rates by more than 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Tom Kabat, the Utility Department’s senior resource originator, said the four Ameresco contracts beat out 38 other proposals the city received from renewable-energy providers. The new contracts with Ameresco would have increased rates by slightly less than 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, falling just under the city’s threshold.

The four contracts would have raised Palo Alto’s electricity rates by about 4 percent, according to a staff report.

But Scharff suggested that the city is focusing too much on its renewable goals and not enough on utility rates. If local electricity bills become higher than those in surrounding cities, residents will start to wonder why the city needs a utilities department in the first place, he said.

Palo Alto’s average residential electric bill is currently about $76 a month, compared to $105 in Redwood City, Mountain View and Menlo Park, which get their electricity from PG&E. Scharff also proposed that the city move its target date for 33 percent renewable energy from 2015 to 2020 to make it align with proposed state mandates.

Vice Mayor Sid Espinosa and Councilman Greg Schmid shared Sharff’s view and agreed that the city needs to review its energy goals.

But Espinosa also acknowledged that not signing the contracts could ultimately prove costly.

Ameresco has indicated that it needs to start construction by the end of this year to qualify for federal-stimulus funding. Staff said delaying the signing of the contract would jeopardize the “attractive pricing” in it.

“We may very well be shooting ourselves in the foot by coming back with another contract in however many months that costs a lot more and might not make financial sense,” Espinosa said.

Palo Alto currently gets about 18 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, a number that is expected to go up to 21 percent in 2012 because of other energy agreements. The city gets renewable energy through two wind-power contracts and from five other Ameresco landfills.

The company is planning to start building the four new landfills by the end of this year and have them produce energy by 2013. N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

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Sign up for Express, our new daily e-edition.

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Are party store Diddams and Mexican restaurant Casa Isabel closing? Read the latest in ShopTalk on page 36.

Upfront TAXES

Menlo mom wonders: Who wins with Prop. 13?

Concerned about diminishing school funding, Jennifer Bestor examines effects of 1978 property tax measure

by Renee Batti t’s been called California’s “third rail” — as in, untouchable.

When billionaire Warren Buffet was serving as candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger’s economic adviser during the 2003 gubernatorial race, he touched it.

Proposition 13, Buffett said, was damaging the financial health of the state, and needed to be repealed or changed.

Zap. Under immediate fire over his adviser’s comment, the soonto-be-elected governor recovered by telling the world that he had admonished Buffett never to mention Proposition 13 again, or he would be forced to do 500 sit-ups.

Buffett appears to have reined

I

himself in since that time, but questions about Proposition 13’s fairness and financial consequences haven’t gone away.

Menlo Park resident Jennifer Bestor had long heard many arguments for and against Proposition 13, which was passed in 1978 to control rapidly rising property taxes in the state. About three years ago, when she was the incoming treasurer of the parents’ group at her son’s school, Oak Knoll in Menlo Park, questions about the property-tax law’s consequences, particularly on the state’s schools, became more pressing.

As the budget news from Sacramento became increasingly dire, Bestor recalled an opinion piece she

had read in the Palo Alto Weekly several years before: The writer “pointed to the increasing share of property tax paid by single-family homes in Santa Clara County and the decreasing portion paid by commercial landlords,” Bestor recalls.

She asked herself: Does the same trend exist in San Mateo County?

And if so, are commercial-property owners paying their fair share toward public services — schools, parks, police and fire services, and public works?

Then one day, during a meeting at which Superintendent Ken Ranella of the Menlo Park City School District painted a bleak picture of the district’s finances and likely pro-

TRANSPORTATION

Palo Alto to fight high-speed-rail ‘betrayal’ bills Proposed bills could allow controversial project to bypass environmental regulations

by Gennady Sheyner alo Alto is girding for battle against proposed legislation that could make the California high-speed-rail project exempt from environmental regulations.

“There is great concern that this is a real betrayal of the commitments made to this city and this council and the communities up and down the Peninsula,” Mayor Pat Burt said during a City Council discussion Monday night.

He cited statements made by both state and rail-authority officials — even as the authority was quietly working on legislation to nullify the review requirements.

The city has hired consultants and a lobbyist to help it obtain and analyze information relating to the project, currently estimated at $43 billion. The initial line would stretch from San Francisco to Los Angeles and pass through Palo Alto along the Caltrain tracks, prompting creation of a five-city Peninsula Cities Consortium.

One of the city’s goals would be to oppose a series of state bills that exempt the project from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), city officials said at a Monday night discussion of the project.

Several council members said they were concerned about the prospect of the controversial rail project being exempted from CEQA, which mandates detailed environmental reviews and public hearings for major projects. Over the past year, Palo Alto and other Peninsula cities used the CEQA process to send comments to the rail authority and challenge the agency’s decisions.

Burt, who represents the city on the consortium, said the CEQA review is the cities’ primary avenue for communicating with the rail au-

P

thority. Burt said a number of state officials have referred to CEQA as the “principal way in which our concerns will be protected.”

The proposed bills would exempt “critical infrastructure projects” from review. The bills would enable the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency to select projects to be exempted from environmental review.

Burt said that would undermine the few legal protections communities currently have against the rail authority.

Vice Mayor Sid Espinosa said the new CEQA exemption bills are the most interesting new development pertaining to the rail project.

Palo Alto recently hired Ravi Mehta of Capitol Advocates to lobby for the city on high-speed-rail issues in Sacramento. City staff is working with Mehta to “oppose any legislation which would diminish or circumvent the current protection or

in any way create exemptions from CEQA and court review for major infrastructure projects each year, including but not limited to the California High-Speed Rail Authority,” according to a city staff report.

Palo Alto and its neighbors on the Peninsula have aggressively used the environmental-review process to challenge the authority’s plans and assumptions. City officials have been reviewing recent reports from the authority and attending public hearings on the project.

The authority recently revised its program Environmental Impact Report — a comprehensive, 1,200-plus-page analysis mandated

by CEQA — because of a lawsuit from Menlo Park, Atherton and a coalition of nonprofit groups. The authority completed the report in July 2008, but had to decertify it last year after a Sacramento County Superior Court judge ruled that there are flaws in the analysis.

gram cuts, Bestor crossed a line.

“It was like a big dog picked me up by the scruff of the neck and shook me,” she said.

“I told myself, I can’t just wonder about this — I have to figure it out.”

Countless hours later — hours spent in the county assessor’s office, in county and city archives, and poring over assessment rolls she had purchased — Bestor has come to the firm conclusion that, while Proposition 13 has generally worked for homeowners as voters had intended, “For commercial landlords, it’s been an incredible windfall.”

Commercial-property tax, she said, “has evolved in a way that not even the direst opponents of Prop. 13 envisioned.”

Bestor, a talented writer as well as a dogged researcher, took a whimsical approach to spreading the word about her findings: She composed an open letter to Warren Buffett, which she sent last week, in which she offers: “Please let me know how I can help you with the sit-ups. We desperately need to get some energy from

that third rail.”

Bestor, who has an MBA from Stanford University and is a former high-tech executive, collected countywide tax statistics, but her most focused research was on properties in the Menlo Park City School District. She did a parcel-by-parcel examination of commercial properties on Santa Cruz Avenue and residential parcels in her own Allied Arts neighborhood.

Before she started her project, she said, “I wrote down all of my bad assumptions.” The most erroneous among them: Commercial-property owners pay more of the property-tax burden than residents.

What she concluded after gathering data and crunching numbers from the assessor’s office was startling: Although the countywide property-tax burden was almost equally shared between homeowners and commercial property owners in 1978, “By 2008, homeowners were paying two-thirds and commercial property owners one-third (of prop-

On Monday, Palo Alto officials said they intend to send the authority a fresh list of concerns about the environmental review, including criticism of the agency’s recently released ridership and revenue projections, which showed sharply lower ridership estimates and substantially higher fares than earlier reports.

Deputy City Manager Steve Emslie said the EIR for the project “is not based on sound financial analysis and therefore makes it difficult to ascertain what the options are.” Emslie is scheduled to bring the list of comments back to the council April 12. The comment period for the revised EIR ends April 26.

Nadia Naik, co-founder of the local rail-watchdog group Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design (CARRD), urged local residents to comment on the revised EIR. She said the entire document, not just the revised sections, is subject to public comments. Naik also pointed out that some of the rail authority’s most controversial decisions, including its choice of the Pacheco Pass over the Altamont Pass as its preferred Peninsula route, were based on the program EIR.

“Now is your chance to get in there and make comments that you would’ve made back in the day if you had awareness of it,” Naik said.

The city also plans to submit a separate list of comments on the “alternatives analysis” that the authority is scheduled to release next month. The analysis evaluates various design options for the Peninsula segment, including at-grade tracks, elevated tracks, trenched tracks and deep tunneling.

But even though the analysis won’t be out for at least three weeks, several council members said the city should lobby the authority for underground tunnels.

Council members Greg Scharff and Nancy Shepherd both said the city should firmly oppose any plan to build an elevated rail line and demand tunnels. Councilwoman Karen Holman urged her colleagues to avoid committing to any design options until a fuller analysis is available.

“It’s premature because we don’t have the EIR,” Holman said. “We don’t know what any of the impacts are.” N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

(continued on page 10)

*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 7

Upfront

Haiti

(continued from page 3) David Chao, courtesy of the Enoch Choi Foundation

ganization to send medical professionals for short-term missions. The idea is to mobilize and send folks quickly after a disaster, not only to provide medical relief, but spiritual care. And also to disseminate best practices through technology and other means.�

Dr. Steven Lane, a Palo Alto Medical Foundation leader in electronichealth records, tested an electronic health-record system deployed through iPhones during the February trip.

Lane’s test was part of a larger effort by Harvard University and the United Nations to create an international standard for electronic health records in disasters around the world.

Such a system could create a database, dramatically improving efficiency and saving lives and money by electronically matching up real-time needs with available resources.

San Francisco internist and blogger Jan Gurley, another member of the February team, told of a gasping baby, near death from pneumonia and dehydration. She watched him recover after treatment like a time-lapse photograph of a flower blooming.

Haitians have established “homes� in the median strip of what had been a four-lane road, Gurley said. “There’s no raised median — just a strip of concrete,� Gurley said. “They’ve taken over the median and two lanes. And it’s not like the ve-

As part of the volunteer medical team that recently traveled to Haiti, Tom Major (right), an emergency-room nurse at Stanford Hospital, assesses victims of the January earthquake. hicles are going by at 2 mph. They’re going by fast. “There’s tremendous need everywhere, and in the middle of the devastation also a weird normalcy, with people setting up shops and selling things.�

Palo Alto Medical Foundation internist Jeffrey Croke said the doctors and nurses in many cases interpreted not just the medical symptoms of the quake victims but their very experiences.

He told of an amputee who had injured her leg after rushing back into a building to grab her 2-year-old. “She was wondering whether she was ever going to walk again or whether she would ever get out of the tent city,� Croke said. “I told her she was a hero (by res-

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cuing her child); that her life was made in that moment; that she would forever be a hero. I was able to help her interpret that.�

Physical therapist Cheryl Bencala told of a spontaneous outbreak of song among sick and dying patients in a tent hospital. “At the end of the day I hadn’t eaten or had any water. A nurse shared her water with me. We were sitting down for a quick break and all of a sudden this incredible a capella singing starts in the tent next to me. “These people are on IVs, with drainpipes coming out of them because of lung infections, and all of a sudden there’s this whole chorus of ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness.’ “This was a sign to me that Haiti’s going to make it out of this situation because they still have hope,� said Bencala, who plans to return to Haiti with the April team.

Choi said 42 health professionals have indicated an interest in traveling over the next two months, and airline tickets have been purchased for 14 of them.

Besides Choi, Lane, Gurley, Croke and Bencala, the February team included vascular surgeon Chong Lee and intensive-care nurse Melinda Porter of Kaiser; cardiologist James Freeman and nurses Tom and Jacque Major of Stanford; University of Michigan medical student and Stanford graduate David Chao; Randy Roberson of Telehelp.org and Jesse Mendoza of Jordan International Aid. The current team in Haiti includes physicians Meg Durbin, Susan Gay Anderson, Philip Strong and Thomas W. McDonald and nursepractitioner Jenny Bauer of PAMF; physician Jim Laroy and nurses Vanessa Valdez, Cynthia Stewart, Carlee Stewart, Alexandra Norrlof, Kaveri Mozumder, Wendy Carolina Miyares and Eden Jackson of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital; Mendoza of Jordan International Aid and Pastor Steven Moran.

Choi thanked a host of community organizations, including many local elementary and middle schools, the Palo Alto Menlo Park Parents Club, local business donors and his own church, Abundant Life Christian Fellowship of Mountain View, which he said was the fiscal agent for the February group. N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be e-mailed at ckenrick@ paweekly.com.

News Digest Local teens describe their stresses on ‘Dr. Phil’

Nearly a dozen teens from the Palo Alto area told a national audience last Friday night that stress in their lives comes from trying to meet the expectations of peers, family, school and getting into college.

The teens appeared on television’s “Dr. Phil� show March 12.

The show did not specifically name Palo Alto. Dr. Phil interviewer Hill Harper, who had pre-taped the discussion with teens earlier in the week, said he was in Northern California “in an area where there have been a number of deaths by suicide� to talk with teens about what’s going on in their lives.

Palo Alto city and school officials had urged the show’s producers not to mention Palo Alto or the cause of death in the suicides.

In the discussion about stress, 18-year-old Michaela told Harper, “You have all these classes, all this homework, and then your parents. “They try not to pressure you, but they have all these high hopes and dreams for you, and you feel that on your shoulders.�

Sahela, 15, said, “You see people who take five more AP classes than you do or have five more extracurricular activities than you do and then you feel like, ‘Am I doing enough?’�

In other interviews on the same Dr. Phil segment, called “Teens Under Pressure,� Dr. Phil discussed “the alarming rise� in teen suicides nationwide, and spoke with mothers of two East Coast girls who said they fear their daughters — grief stricken over the suicides of their friends — may take their own lives. At the end of the show, Dr. Phil promised the women he would arrange for psychiatric help for the girls.

The segment can be viewed in the archived shows on the Dr. Phil website (www.drphil.com). N — Palo Alto Weekly staff

New farmers market bound for Lytton Plaza

Palo Alto’s effort to open a new farmers market downtown resurfaced March 15 when the City Council approved a staff proposal to bring the new market to Lytton Plaza.

The new Palo Alto FarmShop will make its debut at the prominent University Avenue plaza some time in the next month and will be open every Wednesday from 3 to 6 p.m. The council voted 8-0, with Larry Klein absent, to support a staff proposal for the new market, which would feature bands and fresh produce from Capay Valley Growers, a farmer collaborative in Yolo County.

Last year, Palo Alto partnered with Capay Valley Growers to start a new farmers market at King Plaza, in front of City Hall. But that experiment fizzled after fewer than 20 city workers signed up to participate in Capay Valley’s community-supported agriculture (CSA) program.

After spending $24,000 to open and sustain the new market, the City Council voted in October to cut off public subsidies for the market, effectively ending the pilot project.

The new market, by contrast, will not depend on public funds. Instead, it will rely on a volunteer coordinator, unpaid bands and contributions from several local businesses. N — Gennady Sheyner

Palo Alto firefighters push law to prevent layoffs

Palo Alto’s firefighters union is spearheading a new ballot measure that would keep the city from reducing staffing levels at the Fire Department without voter approval.

The measure, which Palo Alto Fire Fighters Local 1319, hopes to place on the November ballot, would require the city to set the current staffing level at the department as a “minimum number� that must be “continuously maintained.�

Any proposal to eliminate positions, close a fire station or reduce the department’s paramedics emergency medical services would require the approval of both the City Council and the voters, according to the measure.

The union is proposing the measure at a time when city officials are increasingly looking for ways to cut costs and reduce staff to close a growing budget shortfall. The city’s budget deficit is projected to balloon from $6.3 million in the current fiscal year to $19.6 million in 2020 if the city doesn’t find new revenue sources or reduce costs. The city’s total budget is $140 million, not including the Utilities Department.

The union needs to collect 5,446 signatures from Palo Alto’s registered voters to get the measure on the ballot, City Clerk Donna Grider said. This represents 15 percent of the city’s registered voters.

The union’s 109 full-time-equivalent members make up about 10 percent of the Palo Alto workforce. The firefighters earn an average salary of $104,878 as well as an average of $16,001 in overtime earnings, according to city data. The average salary is $178,387 when benefits are factored in. N — Gennady Sheyner LET’S DISCUSS: Read the latest local news headlines and talk about the issues at Town Square at www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Upfront

Foothill

Anyone who may have knowledge about allegations that a member or members of Stanford Law School may have communicated negative information about former Stanford Law School students between 2001 and the present, is urged to call 415-205-8925. All responses will be kept confidential.

Information may be pertinent to a pending lawsuit, case #CIV489678,filed in San Mateo County Superior Court.

ADA

(continued from page 3)

Courtesy of Foothill-DeAnza Community College District

details this week about Monday’s meeting.

“Foothill showed an interest in constructing a new education center on the city-owned portion of Cubberley,” Assistant City Attorney Don Larkin said. “It’s a continuation of some negotiations that were going on a few years ago and fell by the wayside.”

In January 2008, Foothill unveiled plans for a new, 100,000-square-foot, two-story structure at Cubberley that would house the community college’s growing student population.

The center would focus on “college skill, career pathways and life-long learning,” according to a city report.

It would share a dance studio, art space and a child-development area with the city, the report states.

At the time, city staff estimated the sale price at $35 million, or $1.4 million a year (as compared with Foothill’s year-to-year lease, which in 2008 generated about $800,000 a year).

The City Council discussed the idea at a study session but took no action. Most council members supported the concept, but a few — along with some residents — resisted the idea of selling any part of Cubberley. Some members discussed a long-term lease.

Foothill officials expressed a desire not to invest substantial funds into buildings on land the commu-

nity-college district would not own.

ADA Funding for the STUDENTS PARKING campus was to have come from the 2006 REACH PROG. voter-approved bond Measure C, which alloted $40 million for site acquisition and CLASSROOMS CAFÉ construction, Foothill-De Anza trustee LARGE FORUM Bruce Swenson said at the time.

In August 2008, ATRIUM in the city’s last discussion with the CLASSCHILD ROOMS district, Foothill’s DEVELOP. executive director ADMINISTRATION/ of facilities said the STUDENT SERVICES Middlefield Campus DROP-OFF could function with POINT half the proposed square footage, or as little as 50,000 square feet of classroom space.

Meanwhile, in In 2008, Foothill College unveiled its conceptual March 2009 the plan for the Middlefield Campus, which included community-college a two-story educational center. district announced a partnership with University of California, Santa Manager James Keene, Deputy City Cruz, and the NASA Ames Re- Attorney Donald Larkin, Deputy search Center to build a new educa- City Manager Steve Emslie, Direction and research center on 75 acres tor of Administrative Services Lalo of land in the NASA Research Park Perez and Real Property Manager at Moffett Field.

Martha Miller. N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can Monday night’s council discussion is scheduled for 7:45 p.m. in the be e-mailed at ckenrick@paweekCity Council chambers of City Hall, ly.com. Managing Editor Jocelyn 250 Hamilton Ave. The council, in Dong contributed to this report. closed session, w`ill meet with City

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Upfront

CityView

Prop. 13

(continued from page 7)

A round-up of

Palo Alto government action this week

City Council (March 15)

Michelle Le

erty taxes), despite the fact that the major development in the county over those 30 years was commercial property east of (Highway) 101.”

The growing tax-burden imbalance reflects the fact that houses change hands far more frequently than commercial properties. Under Proposition 13, the tax rate is capped at 1 percent of a property’s assessed value, and that value can be increased by no more than 2 percent annually.

That formula is kept in place until the property is sold, at which time it is reassessed to determine its value at the current market rate.

In 1986, voters passed Proposition 58, which allows property to be passed from parent to child with no reassessment of the property.

Bestor’s research of Menlo Park properties — particularly of parcels on one commercial strip and one residential street — sheds light on how the provisions of propositions 13 and 58 created the lopsided taxburden equation.

Looking at Menlo Park’s main downtown street, she found that of the 56 commercial parcels on Santa Cruz Avenue, 23 are at the 1978 assessment (plus 2 percent per year) level. Of those 23 parcels, only four are owned by the same people who owned them in 1978. Eleven have passed to a son or daughter, and in a number of cases are held in family trusts.

By contrast, of the 53 residential parcels in Bestor’s neighborhood, 13 are owned by the same people who held them in 1978, and two are held by children of the 1978 owners, so are taxed at the 1978 level. The assessments of two other parcels were affected by other factors.

The other 36 parcels (including Bestor’s) have been reassessed after changing hands, she said.

“My street is paying its way,” Bestor said. For homeowners, she added, “I think that Prop. 13 did what people hoped it would do. It allowed people to stay in their homes and families to plan their financial futures.”

On the other hand, commercialproperty owners who are assessed at 1978 levels are not paying their way, she said. “Does it really make sense to subsidize family trusts, major real-estate corporations and developers, who make smaller and

Jennifer Bestor searches through old Polk’s directories listing businesses and residents by street in Menlo Park for 1978 in the Menlo Park Library. smaller contributions (proportionally) to public services each year?”

In her letter to Warren Buffet, Bestor cited a downtown Menlo Park example to underscore the inequity: “The Trader Joe’s property — the ‘new’ market in town — contributes just $7,471 of general tax towards our local services (for two-thirds of an acre of prime commercial property) compared with Draeger’s up the street at $66,585. It isn’t Trader Joe’s, of course, that’s paying the tax — if they’d bought the property when they moved in, that parcel would be contributing 500 percentplus more.

“Trader Joe’s leases it from a family trust, descendants of the 1978 owner ... with an address on a leafy street in Cape Cod. Since landlords charge what the market will bear, it’s fair to guess that the property-tax savings are accruing to those folks in Massachusetts — while the costs are borne by school kids and residents of Menlo Park.”

The consequences of the “windfall” to many commercial property owners go beyond the diminishing revenue to schools and other public services, she said. Business people who operate out of property they purchased in the last decade or so are at a disadvantage in the marketplace because their tax burdens are much higher than competitors paying a 1978-level property tax.

Another citation in Bestor’s letter: “Thea nondescript little gas station on El Camino near my house pays $30,148 a year in property tax for the privilege of selling me less expensive gasoline than the two Shell stations ($14,214; $17,214), the Union 76 ($15,920), and the Chevron ($20,388) down the street.”

Meanwhile, all property owners,

no matter what their tax burden is, benefit equally from the public services paid for through taxes, Bestor said. If a building catches fire, or a business is being robbed, publicly funded emergency workers will rush to the scene as quickly for a property owner paying $7,000 a year as they will for one paying $66,000.

Also, she noted, business owners benefit from an educated workforce, making quality schools important for a strong business community.

So what is to be done? Bestor suggests capping Proposition 13 benefits for commercial property owners at 20 years. “Every 20 years, non-residential property is reassessed at market value, then gets to enjoy another 20 years of tax relief,” she wrote.

She also suggests a system whereby properties can be reassessed gradually so as not to overburden assessors’ offices and a process for appealing reassessments.

Bestor also is attempting to launch local fundraising efforts that would focus on commercial property owners who benefit from lower tax levels. “I have the feeling these people are ready to be asked,” she said.

“They need strong schools and a vibrant residential community just as much as anyone else does.”

Recently, she met with a leader of the Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation and with a member of School-Force, the Belmont-Redwood Shores Education Foundation, to discuss such an effort. It’s too early to know whether the idea will catch fire, but it’s safe to predict that Bestor will do what she can to spark the flame. N Renee Batti is news editor of The Almanac, the Weekly’s sister paper.

She can be e-mailed at rbatti@almanacnews.com.

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High-speed rail: The council discussed the latest state legislation pertaining to the proposed high-speed rail project and the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s recently revised program Environmental Impact Report for the Bay Area-to-Central Valley segment of the rail line. Action: None Farmers market: The council voted to approve a staff proposal for a new farmers market on Lytton Plaza. The market would be self-sustaining and would be open on Wednesday afternoons. Yes: Burt, Espinosa, Scharff, Schmid, Yeh, Holman, Shepherd, Price Absent: Klein Stanford water: The council voted to approve the water assessment for Stanford University’s hospital expansion project. Yes: Burt, Espinosa, Scharff, Schmid, Yeh, Shepherd, Price No: Holman Absent: Klein

City Council Finance Committee (March 16)

Landfill: The committee discussed signing a 20-year contract with four landfill-gas power plants owned by Amaresco. The committee decided not to sign the contracts until city officials have a broader discussion about Palo Alto’s renewable-energy goals. Yes: Unanimous

City Council High-Speed Rail Committee (March 18)

High-speed rail: The board discussed the city’s strategies for public outreach and pending state legislation. Action: None

Architectural Review Board (March 18)

222 University Ave.: The board approved a proposal for a new front façade and awnings at the existing retail building at 222 University Ave. Yes: Unanimous 1213 Newell Road: The board approved a request by the city’s Utilities Department for construction of an emergency water-well facility next to the Community Gardens at Main Library. Yes: Unanimous

Public Agenda PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to hold a closed session with officials from the Foothills De Anza Community College District about a possible sale of city property at the Cubberley Community Center. The council also plans to adopt a work plan to address its 2010 priorities and to discuss its procedures and protocols. The closed session is scheduled for 7:45 p.m. on Monday, March 22, in the Council Chambers at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.).

The regular meeting will follow.

BOARD OF EDUCATION ... The board plans to confer tenure on 36 teachers, vote on whether to support Palo Alto’s bid for the Google fiber project, and discuss an air-conditioning retrofit for Gunn High School, conceptual designs for renovations at Fairmeadow Elementary School and schematic designs for upgrades to Jordan Middle School. The tenure celebration will be at 5 p.m. and the meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, in the board room of district headquarters (25 Churchill Ave.).

PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION ... The commission plans to hear a presentation on leadership and mentoring opportunities for teens in the Community Services Department; to discuss the potential for youth involvement in the commission; to discuss the city’s budget challenges in the 2011 fiscal year; and hear an update on recreational opportunities for dog owners. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23, in the Council Conference Room at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.).

PLANNING AND TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION ... The commission plans to review Site and Design requests for 805 Los Trancos Road, a new 11,184-square-foot home in the open space (OS) district, and for the construction of a new greenhouse and foot shed next to the Duck Pond in the Baylands. The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 24, in the Council Chambers at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.).

HIGH-SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE ... The committee plans to continue its discussion of California’s high-speed rail project, including public outreach strategies and the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s environmental documents. The meeting is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 25, in the Council Conference Room at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.).

LIBRARY ADVISORY COMMISSION ... The commission plans to discuss the March 18 community meeting on the library bond projects; hear a report on the fiscal year 2011 city budget; and hear reports from commission subcommittees on 2010 priorities.

The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, in the Council Conference Room at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.).

Transitions

Commitment To Excellence

Original Ownership Since 1975

BIRTHS

Submitting Transitions announcements

The Palo Alto Weekly’s Transitions page is devoted to births, weddings, anniversaries and deaths of local residents.

Obituaries for local residents are a free editorial service. Send information to Obituaries, Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302, or fax to (650) 326-3928, or e-mail to editor@paweekly.com. Please include the name and telephone number of a person who might provide additional information about the deceased. Photos are accepted and printed on a space-available basis.

The Weekly reserves the right to edit obituaries for space and format considerations.

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Margaret Ann (Coull) Carroll, 91, of Palo Alto passed away with her daughters, Alison and Janet, and niece, Ginny Thornton, at her side March 5, 2010.

Margaret was born in Porterville, California and attended Fresno High School.

She received her B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University in 1946.

She worked for Stanford Research Institute for 28 years as an Economic Analyst.

She raised her three children in Los Altos as a single mother where she lived for 28 years. She returned to Palo Alto where she resided for 31 years.

She was a devoted mother to her three children, and known by all for her kindness, friendliness, and warmth to everyone she met. Maggie, as she was known by many, loved to entertain and socialize with her many, many friends. She enjoyed playing bridge, reading books, traveling, and volunteering. She was an excellent cook.

Her animal companions were much loved and enjoyed.

Margaret particularly enjoyed over the course of 29 years being a manager and volunteer for the first Palo Alto Farmers Market in downtown Palo Alto. She was a charter member and developed many lasting friendships with the growers and purveyors.

Margaret was a devoted supporter of Stanford University. She was an avid sports fan and enjoyed watching tennis matches and basketball games, in particular, Stanford Women’s Basketball. She was a big fan and member of the Fast Break Club (fan support group) for many years. Margaret also volunteered at the Cantor Art Center.

Margaret is survived by her brother, Thomas Coull (Martha) ; her children, Alison Barta (Joe), Janet Nemeth (Tony), and Scott Carroll (Christine); her nieces Ginny Thornton, Cathy Barkett and nephew Thomas Coull; grandchildren, Fletcher Nemeth and Kristen Barta. She delighted in the lives and accomplishments of her grandchildren.

No funeral services are planned. She requested the Neptune Society to scatter her ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

A celebration of Margaret’s life will be held in the Spring.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to Stanford University for the benefit of Stanford Women’s Basketball.

PA I D

Marjorie Deming Ward Gerow passed away peacefully in her sleep on March 3rd, 2010. Marjorie was born on September 28th, 1920 (89 years) and had been recently living with her daughter Ann Gerow in Lodi California. Marjorie was the daughter of Archibald MacDonald Ward and Dorthy Gunn Ward both deceased. Marjorie had been married to Bert Alfred Gerow (deceased, 2001) for 59 years. She is survived by five children, Ward Deming Gerow of Presque Isle, Maine, Ann Burdette Gerow of Lodi California, Claudia Jeanne Gerow of Modesto, Laura Adrienne Dayharsh of Palo Alto, and Mark Ellis Gerow of Menlo Park. She is also survived by seven grandchildren, Geoffrey Ward Gerow, Mark Ellis Gerow, Gary Bert Miller, David Wayne Gerow-Gilbert, Emily Ann Gerow-Gilbert, Kelsey Evans Dayharsh, and Katie Ward Dayharsh, and three great-grandchildren, Jacob Charles Gerow, Charlotte Faith Gerow, and Anna Grace Gerow.

Marjorie was born in San Francisco and attended the San Francisco Academy for the Arts, followed by the University of California at Berkeley.

She lived most of her life with husband and family in Palo Alto California and around Stanford University where husband Bert had been a professor of anthropology for many years and she a homemaker. She loved children, learning, and art and was an avid reader and gardener.

A celebration in honor of Marjorie’s life was held on Sunday March 7th and attended by family and close friends. Those wishing to make donations may do so in her name to the Alzheimer’s Association (www.alz. org), the California Academy of Sciences (http://www.calacademy.org), or the Hospice of San Joaquin (www.hospicesj.org).

PA I D

O B I T UA RY

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NOTICE OF A PUBLIC MEETING of the City of Palo Alto Architectural Review Board (ARB)

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Births, marriages and deaths

Andrea Cu and Christopher Kim of Los Altos, a daughter, Feb. 12.

Caisa and Adrian Brown of Palo Alto, a daughter, Feb. 16.

Michelle and George Underwood of Palo Alto, a daughter, Feb. 23.

Megan and David Lampert of Atherton, a daughter, Feb. 26.

Joanna and David Oshman of Palo Alto, a daughter, March 4.

Rose and Ramon Jimenez of Menlo Park, a son, March 5.

Nicole McGovern and Junryo Watanabe of Menlo Park, a son, March 5.

Erin and Anthony Paruszewski of Menlo Park, a daughter, March 7.

Brian and Jennifer Roberts of Menlo Park, a daughter, March 9.

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OBITUARY

Please be advised that Thursday, April 1, 2010, the ARB shall conduct a public hearing at 8:30 AM in the Council Chambers, 1st Floor, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Any interested persons may appear and be heard.

310 University Avenue [10PLN-00050]: Request

by Joe Kazlauskas on behalf of Milpitas Dixon LLC for architectural review of illuminated above canopy signs for Walgreens. A sign exception is requested. Exempt from the provisions of CEQA per Section 15301. Zone: CD-C (GF)(P).

California Avenue Streetscape ChangesPhase II: Request by Public Works Engineering for a Study Session on the proposed California Avenue streetscape modifications from El Camino Real to the CalTrain Depot that include replacement of street furniture (benches, bicycle racks, news racks, etc), addition of bicycle racks, crosswalk improvements, and restriping of traffic lanes and automobile parking spaces.

Phase II includes improvements to the plaza at the end of the street.

The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn more about the City’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), please contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at 650.329.2550 (voice) or by e-mailing ada@cityofpaloalto.org.

Amy French Manager of Current Planning

ALAN DUDLEY WELLS Alan Dudley Wells, 82, died quietly at Kindred Hospital in Folsom, CA. Jean Margaret Armstrong, his wife of almost 62 years, was by his side. They resided in Jackson, CA and Rubicon Bay in Lake Tahoe. Alan was born and raised in Palo Alto. Alan attended Lytton Elementary School, Jordan Middle School, Palo Alto High School and San Jose State University. Alan was in the Army from 19451947. He was the son of James Bertrand Wells, a professor of engineering at Stanford University and also a graduate of Palo Alto High School, and Clare French Humphries. Alan was the third of five sons – Ted, Jack (deceased), David and Richard. He met Jean, a graduate of

Sequoia High School in 1946 and they were married on June 27, 1948. Alan had a very full life with Jean, raising five children – Janet Brandt (husband Peter), Carol Knight (husband Rick), Michael (wife Lisa), Rick, and Jeff (wife Debi). Alan and Jean have twelve grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Alan worked as an electrician at Stanford University for 41 years. He loved Dixieland jazz and one of his favorite past times was attending the Sacramento Jazz Festival every May, but what Alan loved most was spending time at their cabin in Tahoe surrounded by his fun-loving wife and family.

Visitation will be held from 11am-12pm at Roller Hapgood Tinney Funeral Home, 980 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA on Friday, March 19. The funeral will start at 12pm with internment to follow at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, 695 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto. www. rollerhapgoodtinney.com PA I D

O B I T UA RY

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19 thA

A weekly compendium of vital statistics

CALL FOR ENTRIES www.PaloAltoOnline.com

POLICE CALLS Palo Alto

March 10-16

Violence related Assault with deadly weapon . . . . . . . . . .1 Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Child abuse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Domestic violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Family violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Theft related Commercial burglary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Credit card forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Identity theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Residential burglary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Shoplifting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Vehicle related Abandoned auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Abandoned bicycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Auto recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Auto theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Bicycle theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Bicycle safekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Hit and run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Lost/stolen plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Misc. traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Suspended license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Theft from auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Vehicle accident/minor injury . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/property damage. . . . .7 Vehicle impound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Alcohol or drug related Drunk in public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Drunken driving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Possession of drugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Miscellaneous Casualty fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Disobeying court order . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Disturbing the peace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Lost property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Municipal code violation . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Noise ordinance violation . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Outside assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Possession of stolen property . . . . . . . . .

Prowler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Psych. subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Suspicious circumstances/sex crime . . .1 Unattended death. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Warrant/other agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Menlo Park March 10-16

Violence related Armed Robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Theft related Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Vehicle related Abandoned auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Auto theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Driving w/ suspended license . . . . . . . . .4 Hit and run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Theft from auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Vehicle accident/prop damage. . . . . . . .1 Vehicle tow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle tampering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Alcohol and drug related Drug activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Substance possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Miscellaneous Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Info case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Juvenile problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Lost property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Mental evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Medical call. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Other/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Outside assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Probation violation/arrest . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Returned missing person . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Warrant arrest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Atherton

March 10-16

Violence related Assault and battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Theft related Attempted burglary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Burglary residential/commercial . . . . . . .1 Vehicle related Misc. traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Suspicious vehicle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Vehicle accident/prop damage. . . . . . . .3 Vehicle traffic hazard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Vehicle code violation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Alcohol or drug related Narc offense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Miscellaneous Animal call. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Construction/building check. . . . . . . . . .8 Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Fire call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Juvenile problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Lost/stolen/or found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Medical aid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Meet citizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Other/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Outside assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Road hazard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Suspicious circumstances . . . . . . . . . . .3 Suspicious person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Town ordinance violation . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Trespassing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Tree down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Welfare check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Weapon charge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 911 hang-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

VIOLENT CRIMES Palo Alto

Fabian Way, 3/10/10, 3:38 p.m.; child abuse/neglect.

400 Block Emerson Street, 3/12/10, 12:34 a.m.; domestic violence/battery.

3000 Block Alma Street, 3/13/10, 2:22 a.m.; battery.

Encina Avenue, 3/13/10, 12:42 p.m.; family violence.

East Charleston Road, 3/13/10, 3:52 p.m.; family violence/battery.

30 Block Encina Avenue, 3/14/10, 4:23 p.m.; battery.

500 Block Emerson Street, 3/16/10, 8:51 p.m.; assault with a deadly weapon.

‘What’s

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NOTICE OF A SPECIAL PUBLIC MEETING of the Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commision

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The Palo Alto Story Project

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Stories about Palo Alto, as told by local residents as part of the Palo Alto Story Project, are now posted on the Internet.

Watch them at www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Please be advised the Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC) shall conduct a special meeting at 6:00 PM, Wednesday, March 31 , 2010 in the Civic Center, Council Chambers, 1st Floor, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Any interested persons may appear and be heard on these items.

Staff reports for agendized items are available via the City’s main website at www.cityofpaloalto.org. and also at the Planning Division Front Desk, 5th Floor, City Hall, after 2:00 PM on the Friday preceding the meeting date. Copies will be made available at the Development Center should City Hall be closed on the 9/80 Friday.

NEW BUSINESS. Study Session: 1.

Study Session of Transportation Element Programs and Policies for the Comprehensive Plan.

Public Hearing: 2.

Fairmeadow Neighborhood Single Story Overlay: Planning and Transportation Commission review of a previously initiated zone change for Starr King Circle and vicinity from R-1 singlefamily residential to R-1(S) single family residential with a single story combining district.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Meeting of March 10, 2010.

NEXT MEETING: Special Meeting of April 7, 2010 at 6:00 PM *Quasi-Judicial items subject to Council’s Disclosure Policy

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Questions. Any questions regarding the above applications, please contact the Planning Department at (650) 329-2440. The files relating to these items are available for inspection weekdays between the hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. This public meeting is televised live on Government Access Channel 26.

ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn more about the City’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), please contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at 650.329.2550 (voice) or by e-mailing ada@cityofpaloalto.org. *** Curtis Williams, Director of Planning and Community Environment

Menlo Park

710 Willow Road, 3/15/10, 8:21 p.m.; armed robbery.

Atherton

500 block Middlefield Road, 3/10/10, 11:35 a.m.; simple assault/battery.

Answers to this week’s puzzles, which can be found on page 60

4 8 7 9 3 2 5 6 1

6 1 3 8 7 5 9 4 2

2 5 9 1 6 4 8 3 7

7 6 4 2 8 9 1 5 3

3 9 5 7 4 1 6 2 8

8 2 1 3 5 6 7 9 4

9 4 2 5 1 8 3 7 6

5 3 8 6 2 7 4 1 9

1 7 6 4 9 3 2 8 5

Fresh news delivered daily Sign up today www.PaloAltoOnline.com *> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 13

Peninsula Easter Services

A resource for special events and ongoing religious services.

For more information please call Blanca Yoc at 650-326-8210 ext. 6596 or email byoc@paweekly.com

Los Altos Lutheran Church From death into life, Good Friday into Easter Palm Sunday: March 28th, 9:00 AM Celebration with palms & the passion story Maundy Thursday: April 1st, 7:30 PM Jesus washed their feet & said love one another Good Friday: April 2nd, 2:00 PM Meditating on the mystery of the cross: a service of prayer Good Friday: April 2nd, 7:30 PM Service of shadows: watching & waiting through the night

Holy Week and Easter

The Easter Vigil: Saturday, April 3rd, 6:30 PM Walking into light and life: The ďŹ rst Easter service.

at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church

Easter Sunday: April 4th, 9:00 & 11:00 AM Easter brunch and children’s activities at 10:00 AM Easter Party: Saturday, April 3rd, 2:00-4:00 PM Bible stories, crafts and egg hunt 460 South El Monte at Cuesta 650-948-3012 – www.losaltoslutheran.org

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Make the journey from darkness to light, captivity to freedom, death to life - the complete pilgrimage of Holy Week and Easter.

Palm Sunday (3/28 | 8:30 am, 10:45 am) Maundy Thursday (4/1 | 7:30 pm) Good Friday (4/2 | 12 pm & 7:30 pm) Easter Vigil (4/3 | 7:30 pm) Easter Sunday (4/4 | 8:30 am, 10:45 am)

3149 Waverley Street | Palo Alto, CA 94306 | 650 494-1212 | www.gracepa.org

Discover Hope HOLY THURSDAY - APRIL 1 MUSICAL PERFORMANCE: "SHADOWS" A SERVICE OF TENEBRAE - 6:30PM

EASTER SUNDAY - APRIL 4 SUNRISE SERVICE & COMMUNITY BREAKFAST - 6:30AM EASTER MORNING WORSHIP - 10:25AM

2650 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park www.stbedesmenlopark.org April 1 âœĽ MAUNDY THURSDAY 12 noon Footwashing 12:10 pm Holy Eucharist & Healing Rite 7:15 pm Foot Washing in Narthex 7:30 pm Holy Eucharist April 2 âœĽ GOOD FRIDAY 12 noon Service of music, reflection, and prayer 7:30 pm Meditation on the Passion of Christ April 3 âœĽ HOLY SATURDAY 9 pm Great Vigil of Easter, Holy Baptism & Eucharist April 4 âœĽ EASTER DAY 8 am Eucharist with Hymns 10:15 am Sung Eucharist 11:30 am Easter Egg Hunt in the Courtyard Nursery available 10-11:30 pm April 5 âœĽ EASTER MONDAY Parish Office closed

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Peninsula Easter Services Journey to Easter

Join us during Holy Week Maundy Thursday • Good Friday • Easter Sunday

Sunday Worship 11:00 AM Childcare/youth

WESLEY UNITED METHODIST

For worship times, see www.fprespa.org/worship

470 Cambridge Ave (one block off California) Rev. Karen Paulsen

1140 Cowper, Palo Alto

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All Saints’ Episcopal Church

!NGLICAN #HURCH s 4HE "OOK OF #OMMON 0RAYER MAUNDY '//$ &2)$!9 %!34%2 35.$!9

4(523$!9 !02), !02), .OON PM 10 AM (OLY #OMMUNION !02), PM

555 Waverley Street at Hamilton, Palo Alto (650) 322-4528 www.asaints.org

3OLEMN ,ITURGY OF 4HE 0ASSION &AMILY 3ERVICE P M (OLY #OMMUNION PM (OLY #OMMUNION 3ERVICE $56!, 7!9 s ,/3 !,4/3 (),,3 s

Join Us for Holy Week and Easter!

Palm Sunday 8:00 am Worship Service 10:30 am Worship with Choir Maundy Thursday 6:00 pm Light meal in Parish Hall 7:30 pm Foot washing & Communion Good Friday 12:00 pm Worship Service 7:00 pm Stations of the Cross Great Easter Vigil 8:00 pm Candlelight Worship with Choir Easter Sunday 8:00 am Festive Worship 10:30 am Festive Worship with Choir Followed by Egg Hunt & Brunch!

7HERE 0ASSES OVER 2OBLEDA WWW STLUKESCHAPEL ORG

Holy Week Services April 1 April 2 April 4

6:00 pm Seder Dinner Noon & 7:00 pm Good Friday Services 9:30 am Easter Festival Service

FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH UCC

Children’s Easter Egg Hunt after the service!

1985 Louis Road, Palo Alto (650) 856-6662 www.fccpa.org

Bethany Lutheran Church 1095 Cloud Avenue, Menlo Park 650.854.5897

Maundy Thursday, April 1st Soup Supper & Service of Tenebrae, 6:30pm Good Friday, April 2nd Service of Contemplation, noon

Celebrate Easter with Us This Year Holy Trinity Episcopal Church For us, Jesus represents the place of intersection between our lives and God’s Life. At that intersection, we discover what new life really means. We invite you to join us for Holy Week and Easter services, as we are all invited to share new life in Christ.

Palm Sunday, March 28 – 8:30* & 10:30* AM Maundy Thursday (The Last Supper) April 1, 6:00* PM (with simple meal)

A resource for special events and ongoing religious services.

For more information please call Blanca Yoc at 650-326-8210 ext.6596 or email byoc@paweekly.com

Easter Sunday Celebration Worship at 9:30am & 11:00am Oxford Street Brass & The Hallelujah Chorus Easter Egg Hunt following 9:30 Worship

’

An open and affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ

Good Friday, April 2 7:00 AM & Noon The Great Vigil of Easter Saturday, April 3, 7:00* PM Easter Sunday, April 4 6:30 AM, 8:30* AM, 10:30* AM *Indicates child care available 330 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park (650) 326-2083 www.trinitymenlopark.org *>Â?ÂœĂŠ Â?ĂŒÂœĂŠ7iiÂŽÂ?ÞÊUĂŠ >Ă€V…Ê£™]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 15

Editorial

High-speed rail must follow CEQA Bills to nullify California Environmental Quality Act rules for high-speed rail project should be rejected

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he battle over the California high-speed-rail project has moved from concerned communities to the offices and corridors of power in Sacramento.

Bills have been introduced that would nullify longstanding environmental- and community-impact protections under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for projects deemed to be “critical infrastructure.”

Backers of the rail plan naturally would characterize the project as critically important. They seem to believe new laws are needed to keep the project from being stalled by a swarm of local lawsuits along the 800-plus-mile route between San Francisco and Los Angeles — the initial phase of the project. The lead bills of several are AB 1805 and SB 1010, both titled the “CEQA Litigation Protection Pilot Program of 2010.” They would exempt from judicial review a lead agency’s certification or negative declaration of an environmental impact review. The bills are working their way through legislative committees.

Palo Alto Mayor Pat Burt characterized the legislative moves as a “betrayal” of the public-outreach process that officials of the State of California and the California High-Speed Rail Authority have promised local officials concerned about the impacts on their communities.

At the same time, one bill has been introduced, AB2121, that would effectively terminate the rail project by pulling the plug on some or all of its funding, in the face of growing doubts about its financial viability.

But Burt emphasized that several state officials have told local representatives that CEQA is the “principal way in which our concerns will be protected.”

The proposed bills would exempt “critical infrastructure projects” from CEQA review. The state’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency would be empowered to designate projects to be exempted.

Burt, who represents Palo Alto on the five-community Peninsula Cities Consortium, formed last year, said the CEQA review is the cities’ primary means for communicating with the rail authority in a way that assures they will be heard.

Exemptions from environmental review would seriously undermine the legal protections communities now have relating to the project, presently estimated to cost nearly $43 billion — a cost many expect to grow over the years it would take to build the project.

But cost is not the current issue. It’s trust. And it’s a matter of basic credibility — some in a prior age might call it honor for those officials who have cited CEQA as a protection for local officials, assuring them that their questions will be heard, their concerns heeded and their environmental-review rights guaranteed.

It really should come as no surprise that some supporters of the project would seek to end-run CEQA. They have already been caught by it, with a court ruling that the initial environmental impact report was lacking in key areas for the San Jose-to-Gilroy corridor, and in its relative assessment of the Pacheco Pass vs. the Altamont Pass routes.

California’s legislative Analyst March 2 released a follow-up report on the project, still laden with sharp criticisms of process, conclusions and assumptions and citing numerous gaps in High Speed Rail Authority projections — all vulnerable points under CEQA. To counter a growing number of news articles and editorials challenging the project, including virtually every facet of the project’s financial projections from ridership to revenues, the authority board in November voted $9 million to hire a big consulting firm to help with its outreach efforts up and down the state. Those funds will be wasted if the authority and its supporters persist in efforts to nullify CEQA rules.

The cities are responding to the end-run efforts in Sacramento.

Palo Alto has hired Ravi Mehta of Capitol Advocates to lobby on high-speed-rail issues. City staff is working with Mehta to “oppose any legislation which would diminish or circumvent the current protection or in any way create exemptions from CEQA and court review for major infrastructure projects each year, including but not limited to the California High-Speed Rail Authority.”

If the high-speed rail plan moves forward on the Peninsula, or anywhere else, it should be done with full CEQA protections in place.

Page 16ÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ

Spectrum Editorials, letters and opinions

Utilities response

Editor, This is in response to a recent article about a fiber-optics business customer leaving the California/ Park Avenue area due to power outages.

The city’s electrical network comprises over 446 miles of overhead and underground conductors, and more than 10,000 transformers and switches spread across 10 square miles. The city provides a high level of electric service reliability due to continuous system maintenance and monitoring. For example, when we observed increased age-related cable failures, we implemented the underground-cable replacement program. Since 1995, 41 miles out of 100 miles of underground cables in the electric system have been replaced, including the recent completion of a substantial system rebuild in the California/Park Avenue area at a cost of $ 1.2 million.

Palo Alto’s system consistently fares well. In fact, the city loaned PG&E transformers when its system became overtaxed, its inventory ran low and its customers experienced prolonged outages during summer heat and winter storms.

Outages are caused by different factors such as equipment failure as well as tree limbs, birds, rodents and Mylar balloons (the cause of a recent outage) contacting power lines; cars crashing into power poles; and third parties digging into or contacting electrical conductors — most causes beyond anyone’s control.

Our extensive fiber optic system is even more resilient than our electric system with only two outages in more than a decade that impacted a small section of the fiber system.

The city’s Utilities workers are proud to serve this community and are committed to providing the safest and most reliable services possible.

Sincerely, Valerie Fong Director, Palo Alto Utilities

Yellow-light cameras

Editor, In Mayor Pat Burt’s “State of the City” address he enthused about all the money Palo Alto can make from so-called red-light cameras.

Actually they’re “yellow light” cameras because they’re only profitable when yellow lights are short-timed (usually three seconds). When they’re timed properly (around four seconds) the number of infractions plummets permanently, making the cameras lose money, as both the Texas and Virginia departments of transportation discovered (see www.highwayrobbery.net).

As for public safety, those horrendous crashes we read about aren’t caused by people trying to beat a yellow light by milliseconds (the norm for red-light camera tickets).

They’re caused by people completely ignoring the stoplight, roaring through intersections an average of five seconds after the light turned red. Which means the purpose of these cameras is overwhelmingly revenue, not safety. And it’s easy to prove. Just install the cameras with four-second yellow lights and see what happens.

But even if they were profitable, it subverts the very idea of justice to treat our police department as a profit center. That’s like Third World countries where cops routinely shake down civilians. Such practices ruin public respect for the law. And those whopping fines come out of citizens’ discretionary spending. Yellow-light cameras redistribute income from citizens and local retailers to city employees and an Australian company.

Mayor Burt doesn’t seem to grasp how wrong his statements are. Our deficit stems from paying city employees vastly more than comparable private-sector workers. Fix that first.

Lee Thé San Antonio Road Palo Alto

Pro-anaerobic process

Editor, I have been following the discussion around the future of Palo Alto’s composting facility with keen interest.

I believe that the anaerobic-digesting process is worth pursuing wholeheartedly. It promises to earn the city money, produce biofuels or electricity to power vehicles or buildings, reduce trucking of compost and municipal and dried effluent waste, and conserve the currently used gas burned for sewage-sludge incineration.

I understand that siting seems to be an issue, but fully agree with Walter Hays’ remarks (published recently in two local papers) that the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest run would be to have the parkland be a tad smaller or even include the green roof of the building as part of the park, with the added benefit of being able to emphasize Palo Alto’s contribution to a livable future through interpretive signs and the wonder of standing atop a hidden facility.

If Palo Alto pursues this sensible (continued on page 18)

YOUR TURN The Palo Alto Weekly encourages comments on our coverage or on issues of local interest.

What do you think? What advantages or disadvantages do you see in the Foothill College’s “new campus” plans at Cubberley?

Submit letters to the editor of up to 250 words to letters@paweekly.com.

Include your name, address and daytime phone number so we can reach you.

We reserve the right to edit contributions for length, objectionable content, libel and factual errors known to us. Anonymous letters will generally not be accepted.

You can also participate in our popular interactive online forum, Town Square, at our community website at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Read blogs, discuss issues, ask questions or express opinions with you neighbors any time, day or night.

Submitting a letter to the editor or guest opinion constitutes a granting of permission to the Palo Alto Weekly and Embarcadero Publishing Co. to also publish it online, including in our online archives and as a post on Town Square.

For more information contact Editor Jay Thorwaldson or Online Editor Tyler Hanley at editor@paweekly.com or 650-326-8210.

Check out Town Square!

Hundreds of local topics are being discussed by local residents on Town Square, a reader forum sponsored by the Weekly on our community website at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Post your own comments, ask questions, read the Editor’s blog or just stay up on what people are talking about around town!

Guest Opinion If ROTC returns will it compromise Stanford’s core mission?

by Charles Drekmeier here appears to be much concern these days about “identity”: Who or what it is we are, what we need and what we, as individual persons or as organizations, should become.

There is a glaring exception: institutions of higher learning which, with minimal restrictions, continue to accept — often gleefully — the sponsorship of outside interests whose purposes are remote from the promotion of knowledge and wisdom and of those skills and insights that will enhance our humanity.

The large number of such sponsorships by businesses and the military-industrial complex threatens to overshadow the original purpose of Stanford University and other universities.

History Professor David Kennedy and Engineering Professor William Perry last week proposed to the Academic Senate that Stanford do its part to provide our country with military officers lest our age-old tradition of the citizen soldier be seriously compromised.

The proposal was to create a committee to review the possibilities of returning ROTC to the Stanford campus, and the committee has begun to meet.

Strangely, they do not call for a reinstituting of military conscription, which would seem an obvious way to achieve a citizen army.

Such an army, which may or may not be a “tradition,” is a problematic concept to begin with. Both Napoleon and Frederick the Great claimed to have such an army: Napoleon was

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certainly closer to the truth. In the early years of its operation Napoleon’s ventures had a liberating effect for many of Europe’s peoples, yet it later in its metamorphosis became an instrument of autocracy.

But perhaps more to the point today’s military forces feature un-manned aircraft, privately-contracted “militias” and other methods of warfare (and the killing of those who are not soldiers) that put such concepts as “citizen army” back into mothballs.

We are somewhat shy about admitting that today’s “volunteer” army may be other than that. By their own testimony, many of those who enlisted simply couldn’t find a decent job elsewhere.

What does “citizenship” mean in a society characterized by extremes of wealth and various expressions of discrimination?

And, if a note of cynicism is permitted, does the army provide something of a cushion for problem that need to be solved elsewhere — as in federally financed work programs?

Someday a faculty committee, drawing from many disciplines, will study possibilities for moving from a “security state” to (for want of a congenial term) a “facilitating state.”

It’s pointed out that the Vietnam War brought strong anti-war feelings to Stanford (as elsewhere).

The university was implicated in ways not always acknowledged: There was forbidden usage of Stanford computers by SRI for programming amphibious landings in North Vietnam. Close ties with the military and with agencies that make Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex look naive are persistent and will continue to be.

It is hard to believe that the military has not

I should say, for the record, that I am myself a veteran of the ROTC. But it was the high-school variety, the Second War was raging and it was long ago and far away, in Wisconsin. This has limited relevance — except for the impression I retained of a kind of learning that is tied suffocatingly to training manuals and which discourages any independent thinking. We need to remind ourselves that a core principle of a great university is the fostering of critical thinking.

profited from Stanford connections. I would like to believe that it is not just the hang-up over “don’t ask, don’t tell” that has crippled the relationship (as the faculty proponents suggest).

Afghanistan may very well look like another misguided adventure which university-

educated brains designed and that, despite the absence of a draft bringing the way close to home, opposition to killing will be a distinguishing feature of universities.

Stanford has Knight fellowships for journalists who wish to participate in studies here and it would not be remiss to establish such an opportunity for military officers and noncommissioned men. But ROTC curricula developed apart from the usual academic quality controls is something else.

And the university would, for its part, be reluctant to meddle: That sort of thing isn’t done. In recent years ethics courses have proliferated on the campus and certainly there is much for military representatives to learn.

Practitioners of one kind or another — talented and accomplished artists and theologians and businessmen et al — have something to teach us. No question. But this must be done within the prophylaxis, so to speak, of this last of the great guilds.

I should say, for the record, that I am myself a veteran of the ROTC. But it was the highschool variety, the Second War was raging and it was long ago and far away, in Wisconsin.

This has limited relevance — except for the impression I retained of a kind of learning that is tied suffocatingly to training manuals and which discourages any independent thinking.

We need to remind ourselves that a core principle of a great university is the fostering of critical thinking. N Charles Drekmeier is professor emeritus of political science at Stanford, and is the father of former Palo Alto Mayor Peter Drekmeier. He does not use e-mail, but communications may be sent for forwarding to editor@paweekly,com.

Streetwise

What do you think about the city’s plans to check Palo Altans’ garbage for recyclable items?

Asked at the Midtown

shopping center and California Avenue. Interviews by Martin Sanchez. Photographs by Vivian Wong.

Lauren Jamison

Linda Lopez-Otero

Sheila Dunn

Nicole Roma

Jimmy Bray

“I think it’s a good idea because we should be more green, but at the same time, people should do what they want with their garbage. I’m kind of undecided.”

“I think it’s a good idea in the sense that we could educate people. We need more education on recycling — and reusing!”

“I think it’s a good idea. I’m so impressed with the city of Palo Alto’s recycling and composting systems. If this is going to encourage people to use them, then go for it.”

“I think it’s a good idea. If they realize they have to pay, they will recycle more in the future.”

“I think it’s a great idea. We’ve got to save the planet! We can only help, but we have to do our part.”

Senior Administrator Burlingame

Retired Sand Hill Road, Palo Alto

Unemployed Dudley Street, Stanford

Housewife Abrams St., Stanford

Music-business Owner Blossom Hill Road, San Jose

*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 17

Banish ‘vulture’ funds

Letters (continued from page 16)

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energy management and poised to lend our experience and leadership to communities worldwide.

I hope we keep these thoughts under consideration as we go forward in discussing the future of our composting operations.

Lawrence Garwin College Terrace Palo Alto

Class size

Editor, Even in modern education we are taught that the ideal school class size is about a dozen, and never more than two dozen at the most.

Even the teachers whose business is education have discovered this through years of experience and we should be able to take a tip from their common sense.

Enormous high schools and mammoth universities have become heartless machines, producing unguided students.

There was more individual attention — much more than in the school.

You just can’t produce that kind of product with the massive machinery, mass production and rapid, hasty, impersonal assembly-line type of an operation of our present educational systems. It’s impossible.

They have come out in identical molds of dead, lifeless, mindless, leaden robots.

Ted Rudow III,MA Encina Ave Palo Alto

Editor, In a world of sinking morality, a group of vulture funds have successfully diverted millions of dollars of write-off loans to Third-World countries into their pockets.

These funds purchase ThirdWorld debt for pennies on the dollar and sue debtor countries for massive profits. For example, an impoverished Liberia, where 80 percent of the people survive on an average of $1, recently lost more than $20 million of aid money to two vulture funds.

This outraged British lawmakers who have recently crafted a bill — the Debt Relief Bill — that would prohibit unscrupulous investors from robbing debtor countries.

The U.S. should follow Britain’s example by outlawing such funds.

We should heed the words of the president of Liberia — the first woman president in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — that vulture funds “are so unfair to poor countries; have a conscience, and give this country a break.�

Please write to your lawmakers and urge them to support Representative Maxine Waters’ bill to outlaw these funds.

Tejinder Uberoi Stuart Court Los Altos

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THE PALO ALTO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND THE PALO ALTO WEEKLY are pleased to announce the

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31st ANNUAL TALL TREE AWARDS April 29, 2010 Crowne Plaza CabaĂąa 4290 El Camino Real Mediterranean Ballroom

Stories about Palo Alto, as told by local residents as part of the Palo Alto Story Project, are now posted on the Internet.

Watch them at www.PaloAltoOnline.com

5:30-7:00 p.m. Silent Auction 7:00-9:00 p.m. Dinner and Program

Honoring OUTSTANDING CITIZENS

VIC & MARY OJAKIAN

19 Annual

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Online registration: www: PaloAltoChamber.com FOR RESERVATIONS AND INFORMATION Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce

CALL FOR ENTRIES ENTRY DEADLINE: April 2, 2010, 5:30pm

(650) 324-3121

with Ayelet Waldman Breast Cancer Connections is hosting a breakfast speaker event with Ayelet Waldman, author of The New York Times best-seller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace.

Ayelet is a bold author who writes about thought provoking topics regarding her life and family with wit and brutal honesty. She gained notoriety through her confessions in The New York Times style section to loving her husband more than her children. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to miss this entertaining morning of laughter and celebration. Friends, mothers and daughters, and supporters of Breast Cancer Connections (BCC) are encouraged to attend.

When: 4UESDAY !PRIL s A M Where: Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club 2900 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA Cost: $100 per person | $3,000 per table of ten 2EGISTER ONLINE AT WWW BCCONNECTIONS ORG EVENTS FUNDRAISERS OR CALL (650) 326-6299 x17 BCC accepts check, cash, VISA and MasterCard.

Why Attend?

Support a great cause while enjoying the morning with a loved one or friend. Ayelet is an inspirational author who speaks about life with humility and charisma.

Questions: Please contact Jill Nelson (650) 326-6299, ext.17 jill@bcconnections.org Proceeds from the event will beneďŹ t Breast Cancer Connections, a 501(c)(3) nonproďŹ t organization in Palo Alto. BCC provides free services to individuals facing breast cancer, including diagnostic services for young, uninsured women unable to afford these critical procedures.

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ENTRY FORM & RULES AVAILABLE at www.PaloAltoOnline.com For more information call 650.223.6508 or e-mail arenalds@paweekly.com

Breakfast Speaker Event

Judges

Call for Entries

VERONICA WEBER

Veronica Weber, a Los Angeles native, first began working at the Palo Alto Weekly in 2006 as a photography intern. Following the internship, she was a photographer for The Almanac in Menlo Park. She is currently the Weekly staff photographer responsible for covering daily assignments and producing video and multimedia projects for PaloAltoOnline.com. She has a BA in Journalism from San Francisco State University and currently resides in San Francisco.

19th Annual Palo Alto Weekly Photo Contest

Categories and Prizes U PENINSULA PEOPLE

UĂ&#x160; Ă&#x160;*

ADULT

1st Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $250 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to University Art, and a One-year Membership to Palo Alto Art Center 2nd Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $200 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to Jungle Digital 3rd Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $100 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to Bear Images

ADULT

1st Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $250 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to University Art, and a One-year Membership to Palo Alto Art Center 2nd Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $200 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to Jungle Digital 3rd Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $100 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to Bear Images

1st Place - $100 Cash 2nd Place - $50 Gift Certificate to University Art 3rd Place - $25 Gift Certificate to University Art

YOUTH

1st Place - $100 Cash 2nd Place - $50 Gift Certificate to University Art 3rd Place - $25 Gift Certificate to University Art

U VIEWS BEYOND THE PENINSULA ADULT

1st Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $250 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to University Art, and a One-year Membership to Palo Alto Art Center 2nd Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $200 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to Jungle Digital 3rd Place â&#x20AC;&#x201C; $100 Cash, $100 Gift Certificate to Bear Images

YOUTH

*Any image of people or places shot outside the Peninsula

1st Place - $100 Cash 2nd Place - $50 Gift Certificate to University Art 3rd Place - $25 Gift Certificate to University Art

ANGELA BUENNING FILO

-1 Ă&#x160; -

*Los Altos north to San Francisco

YOUTH

*Los Altos north to San Francisco

Angela Buenning Filo photographs landscapes in transition, most recently focusing on Silicon Valley and Bangalore, India. Her photographs have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Jose Museum of Art and will be on view later this year in the new terminal of the San Jose Airport.

DAVID HIBBARD

ENTRY DEADLINE: April 2, 2010, 5:30pm Entry Form and Rules available at:

www.PaloAltoOnline.com

For more information call 650.223.6508 or e-mail photocontest@paweekly.com

David Hibbard, a Menlo Park resident, has photographed natural landscapes and wild places most of his life. He is represented by Modernbook Gallery in Palo Alto. He is the author of, "Natural Gestures," published by Edition One Studios last year.

BRIGITTE CARNOCHAN

In November-December, Moderbook Gallery in Palo Alto will be exhibiting Brigitte's new photographic series "Floating World". Her series "Imagining Then: A Family Story 194147" was recently featured in Color Magazine.

She teaches regularly through the Stanford Continuing Studies Program.

www.PaloAltoOnline.com

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g n i t o V ust r t r o f Christian Pease

Palo Alto technology nonprofit aims to revolutionize how Americans vote and put trust back in the ballot box

by Christian Pease ike many startups that aim to do something big, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation in Palo Alto began with an “Aha!” The epiphany belonged to Gregory Miller, 50, a technology marketing executive who earned a law degree in intellectual property and is now Digital Voting’s chief development officer.

“Back in November 2006 I was entrepreneur-in-residence at a local venture-capital firm. The week of the election I happened to have a conversation with one of the partners about what we called ‘malformed’ markets, and we naturally turned to a discussion of the voting-systems industry, which was failing on all fronts at the time — bad products, dysfunctional business models, the works,” Miller said.

“It’s a lousy business if you want to make money for your investors and do a good job for voters.”

Miller turned to friend and colleague John Sebes, 47, a Silicon Valley veteran with a background in computing infrastructure and security.

“He dropped by the house one afternoon and started telling me about how messed up voting machines are,” said Sebes, who is now the organization’s chief technology officer. “I was naive

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enough to think it would be a simple technical fix and signed on.”

Located in downtown Palo Alto, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation’s goal is to build a publicly owned digital elections system that is practical, secure, affordable and above reproach.

It would include voter registration, ballot design, voting, and counting and reporting of election results.

“Re-inventing How America Votes in a Digital Democracy” is the nonprofit organization’s slogan.

“Our mission is to make digital voting and election automation believably honest, even under intense scrutiny in the closest, most contested races,” said Sebes, while sitting in his Lytton Avenue office recently.

“There are three requirements for this. First, ensure to the greatest extent possible that only those entitled to vote can successfully do so, minimizing potential fraud,” he said.

“Second, make registration and voting as accessible, inclusive and easy as possible, maximizing participation in our democratic process.

“And lastly, make the casting and counting of ballots completely open to public examination, auditable and

Christian Pease

Norbert von der Groeben

Gregory Miller, top, co-director and chief development officer for Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, presents Trust the Vote to invited guests at a private home; voters wait in line to cast their votes at St. Andrews Methodist Church, Palo Alto, in November 2004; John Sebes is co-director and chief technology officer for the foundation.

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Cover Story

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Our job is not to be a think tank or an advocate for election reform. We are a handson, nonprofit developer of election software.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x201D; John Sebes, co-director and chief technology officer, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation trust, contrasting with the widespread skepticism about existing commercial voting systems. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once we got a handle on the issues, we knew our focus should be on building things,â&#x20AC;? Sebes said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our job is not to be a think tank or an advocate for election reform. We are a hands-on, nonprofit developer of election software.â&#x20AC;?

This realistic, â&#x20AC;&#x153;fix what is thereâ&#x20AC;? utilitarian view attracted initial funding from Mitch Kapor, the San Francisco-based entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of Lotus Development, a software powerhouse in the salad days of personal computing.

Kapor also introduced Sebes and Miller to Aleks Totic and Pito Salas, both Internet and personal-computing veterans, to round out the bench of managers needed to move the startup from ideas to action.

The Foundation is now in its third

year of a plan that may take up to eight years to complete. It has a technology â&#x20AC;&#x153;roadmapâ&#x20AC;? in place and is actively engaged with elections officials in eight states.

Its flagship project, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Trust the Vote,â&#x20AC;? is well underway, with its first software product â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a voter-registration platform â&#x20AC;&#x201D; already in use by the largest non-partisan voter-advocacy group in the country. cross the country, when most voter registration forms are processed or election ballots counted, a computer system is somehow involved, according to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

This is true even in small states such as New Hampshire, which has fewer than 760,000 registered voters compared to Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s estimated 14.9 million.

Bowen traveled to New Hampshire on Election Day in 2008 to investigate whether all ballots were still counted by hand. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I watched,â&#x20AC;? Bowen said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In most of the places Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d been told that they hand-counted all the ballots they actually didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. They only hand-counted one, maybe two races, and the rest they counted by computer.â&#x20AC;?

The use of computers in election processes caused little discernable public concern until the 2000 national election, when George W. Bush edged out Al Gore for the presidency in a hairline vote in Florida. Nearly a decade later the bitter legacy of hanging chads, butterfly ballots and a split Supreme Court deciding who would occupy the White House still lingers.

Despite the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002 and billions of dollars spent to improve voting technology, trust-eroding problems still occur. The 2004 national election, narrowly won in a handful of precincts dotting battleground states like Ohio, was dogged by controversy.

Just two years later, voting-machine failures were widely reported during the 2006 midterm election. Bowen ordered a top-to-bottom review and recertification of all voting machines in California. She decertified many of them while ordering stricter procedures for those remaining.

Although the 2008 Presidential election was less controversial, Sebes and Miller remain adamant that problems with digital voting have not gone away. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Greater margins of victory in

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(continued on page 24)

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Christian Pease

therefore verifiably accurate.â&#x20AC;?

He paused, smiled and then deadpanned, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that simple, really.â&#x20AC;?

Sebes and Miller, who have known each other for more than 15 years, started by immersing themselves in the fundamentals for legal, accurate and efficient elections, not just in California but across the nation. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Along the way we established key partnerships with state secretaries and elections directors, various taskforces, public policy and interest groups and, of course, other technologists,â&#x20AC;? said Sebes, a Zen gardener and aspiring trumpet player in his spare time.

This exercise convinced them the software programs that drive digital elections should be â&#x20AC;&#x153;open sourceâ&#x20AC;? and emphasize enterprise-computing practices that have been proven to have high integrity in the private sector.

And to be successful, the system must be designed from the start to enable incremental adoption and easy adaptation, and it must win the public

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, left, answers questions from the audience while Gregory Miller, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation co-director and chief development officer, looks on.

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A community health education series from Stanford Hospital & Clinics

Twenty years and thriving:

just one or ones designated by their doctor.”

Stanford Hospital Health Library Opens Fourth Branch at Oshman Family Jewish Community Center

The Library’s current holdings include 8,000 catalogued volumes, 700 health-related videos, a database of nearly 400 medical journals, thousands of articles from 2,200 general interest publications and a large Chinese language consumer health collection. The Library was the first part of the Hospital to have its own Web page.

It also began capturing physician talks and publications as archived and accessible documents and videos.

The doctors also talked about treating her with a new approach called intraoperative radiation−then in clinical trials at Stanford Hospital, but already demonstrating good results. Pinkston wanted to know about this technique, about her particular cancer and about other options. Her daughter thought she had the perfect answer. “Call my friend at the Stanford Hospital Health Library, the branch at the Cancer Center,” she said. “I know she can help you.”

Soon, Pinkston was working with Stanford Health librarian Nancy Dickenson at the library’s Cancer Center branch.

Dickenson, like the Library’s other experienced medical librarians, had access to a broad range of resources to compile a packet individualized for Pinkston. “We went back and forth for several days,” Pinkston said. “She was amazing because she found all kinds of articles for me, all kinds of Web sites.

She got articles out of medical Web sites I couldn’t get into.”

With Dickenson’s help in finding the particular information useful for Pinkston, she began her treatment with an increased confidence in the outcome. She decided to have the new therapy; she has been cancer-free for six year. “Without Nancy,” she said, “I don’t know if I would have gone to a health library for help.”

“We always knew what the cutting edge was and aimed for that.”

– Barbara Ralston, Stanford Hospital Vice President for Guest Services and International Medicine This year, the Stanford Hospital Health Library celebrates its 20th anniversary, and the opening of a new, 1,500-squarefoot branch at the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center. That new branch, and another to be opened soon at an East Palo Alto health clinic, furPage 22ÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ

nishes five locations for the patients, their families and others whose need to find answers is unique and immediate.

Beginnings−and a new location Each branch has a collection crafted to include materials that reflect its location.

The Cancer Center library has the most information about cancer. The Hospital’s collection has more material about surgery, transplants and cardiac issues – the primary causes for hospitalization.

The newest branch, at the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in South Palo Alto, which is adjacent to the Moldaw Family Residences for seniors, offers classes, lectures and activities with older adults in mind. The educational programs were developed at the Stanford Research Prevention Center, the Stanford Patient Education Research Center and the Hospital’s Aging and Adult Services. Physicians and staff from the Hospital will teach all the classes.

The Health Library was one of the very first hospital-based libraries in the U.S. to open with such a focused collection. “It was the dawn of consumer awareness,” said Barbara Ralston, the Hospital’s Vice-President for Guest Service and International Medicine. “We’d moved from ‘Dr. Spock’ to ‘Our Bodies, Our Selves.’ People were starting to have dialogs with their physicians.”

The value of this information hit home with Ralston around the same time. She became ill far from home and couldn’t find anywhere with information about her illness. “I felt paralyzed and helpless,” she said. When she returned to Palo Alto, she volunteered to join an effort, in its early stages, to open a health library that the Hospital would support.

The first branch opened at the Stanford Shopping Center.

“Our assumption was that people would stop by and ask questions

Norbert von der Groeben

For a decade, the same radiologist read Gwen Pinkston’s mammograms. Then one day she took one look and said, “I don’t like this.” Within days, physicians diagnosed Pinkston with a small cancerous tumor in her right breast.

The Library gets requests for information from around the world for everything in the When Gwen Pinkston was diagnosed with breast cancer six years health spectrum, Cain said. ago, her daughter suggested she could find answers to some of The OFJCC branch in South her questions from the Stanford Hospital Health Library.

Palo Alto is also a resource center with expanded programming and space for classes and support about colds and flus,” Ralston said. “Ingroup meetings. stead, we had people walking over from the Hospital with their IV poles in tow.

We had people coming in saying, ‘My “Illness makes you feel helpless. significant other was just given a devKnowledge is power.” astating diagnosis.’ We were supposed – David Spiegel, MD, Director, Stanford to be a mom and pop project, but we Hospital Center for Integrative Medicine always knew what the cutting edge was and aimed for that.”

Health lectures are held throughout the year and cover topics from all clinical Within two years, the Hospital branch services at the Hospital. Many of the was open. The Library had advisory and lectures are videotaped and accessible review boards filled with Stanford Hosthrough YouTube and the University’s pital physicians and others. “There was iTunes collection. Sixty of those videos nothing in the library that wasn’t vetted are available for purchase. The lecture by a Stanford physician or someone with series is also recounted quarterly in an proper qualifications,” Ralston said. electronic newsletter, Notes from the DocTalks, archived on the Library’s Web site.

New Technology

“The biggest difference between the early days of the library and now is technology,” said the Library’s Director, Nora Cain. “We just have access to so much more now. The Internet has changed the game. And our library, unlike some, is able to give people access to information from many sources, not

While technology may be the means to transport information, Ralston said, “it’s still about one human being helping another.”

The new branch at the OFJCC, on the other side of the city from the Hospital, Ralston said, allows the Health Library to

Gwen Pinkston has been cancer-free for six years and lives an active life that includes enjoying the vintage car she and her husband, Art, own an

What’s at the Stanford Hospital Health Library Resources: t print, online, databases, video, online books

Norbert von der Groeben

The newest branch of the Stanford Hospital Health Library and Resource Center, at the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in South Palo Alto, has plenty of room for readers. reach out to the general community. And we have an onboard group of patrons.”

Valuable Help The Library has always been strongly supported by the Hospital’s physicians, including Sarah Donaldson, MD, an oncologist who decided she wanted to volunteer there. Since then, part of her conversation with her patients involves resources so they can learn more. “When I am their doctor, I tell them about the resources that are available. And if it’s a patient with cancer, I tell them about the library and the support groups in the same breath as I’m telling them about everything else,” Donaldson said.

When she does that, she knows she may have avoided a common problem. “Physicians do their best to educate their patients, but maybe you’re starting at the wrong level, or the patient’s not really listening to what you’re saying,” she said. “A lot of patients get misinformed by going to an inappropriate source.”

Ultimately, she said, “It’s much more rewarding as a physician to see a patient who knows a lot about what they’re dealing with.”

The availability of so much information can be problematic, said David Spiegel, the Hospital’s Director for the Center of

Integrative Medicine, an early supporter of the Library. “With the Internet, you can go from too little to too much.

Health care is ever more sophisticated and complicated. The Health Library plays an important role.”

“We went back and forth for several days. She found all kinds of articles for me.”

– Gwen Pinkston, former Stanford Hospital patient

Spiegel, one of the first physicians to study the value of medical treatment that included support groups, understands very well the shock of a serious diagnosis. “Illness makes you feel helpless. In the case of cancer, your body turns on you. One of my patients told me he’d started to think of his body as a dog that wouldn’t obey,” he said. “And knowledge is power.”

Having someone mediate the flood of information is a valuable tool in moving forward. The help of a medical librarian “can help them prepare mentally for the next step,” Donaldson said. “Sometimes it can help them make decisions about their treatment options because they have enough to really look at those options, based on scientifically-based information. They can feel more confident about their decision and have a more meaningful dialog with their physician.”

“We help people get started,” Ralston said, “to get centered, to develop a base of knowledge, to move step by step at their own speed.”

Community Programs t Free lectures and programs at the Health Library are held at all its branches and at the Redwood City Public Library. This month’s programs and lectures at the Nancy Abreo is the librarian at the Oshman Family Jewish Community newest branch of the Stanford Hospital Center include: Health Library and Resource Center, at the Oshman Family Jewish Community t March 24, 7 pm. Health Care Center in South Palo Alto.

Reform Explained and Debated.

Robert Jackler, MD, Edward C. and Amy H. Sewall Professor in Otorhinolaryngology t March 25, 7 pm. Long-term Care for You or Your loved One. Don Rush, Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program (HICAP) t Wednesdays, 10:30 am. Strong for Life, an exercise program designed by physical therapists for older adults to improve strength, balance and overall health.

Norbert von der Groeben

Personal Touch t Health Library librarians have special knowledge of available medicine and health materials t Librarians prepare information packets customized to each patron’s needs

Norbert von der Groeben

d cherish.

special feature

For more information and a calendar of events, visit healthlibrary.stanford.edu

Health Library Locations Oshman Family Jewish Community Center 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto 650.855.9396 Hours: 10am-6pm Mon-Fri

Stanford Hospital 300 Pasteur Dr., Palo Alto 650.725-8100 Hours: 9am-5pm Mon-Fri

Stanford Cancer Center 875 Blake Wilbur Dr., Palo Alto 650.736.1713 Hours: 9am-5pm Mon-Fri

Main Branch Stanford Shopping Center Palo Alto, 650.725-8400 Hours: 10am-6pm Mon-Sat, until 9pm Thursday

healthlibrary@stanfordmed.org 800.295.5177, TTY: 650.723.1216

All research searches are free, and available by email.

Plans for the new Stanford Hospital include a library that will serve as a health information commons, she said. “We’ll be developing our technology capabilities but we’ll also be looking at ways to personalize our services even more.”

information. I even found the article he’d remembered reading. He was so happy. He just wanted information.”

Stanford Health Library librarian Carmen Huddleston cannot forget the evening a man came in, just as she was closing the library. He was clearly upset. “His son had had a very serious head injury and the father wanted to know about a treatment using lowered body temperature. I pulled him some

Since her experience with the help available at Stanford’s Health Library, Pinkston has talked to friends who’ve been diagnosed with cancer. “They come out of their doctor’s office with sketchy info. It was really important for me to have that help from Stanford.”

His father came back later to tell Huddleston that his son had survived.

Stanford Hospital & Clinics is known worldwide for advanced treatment of complex disorders in areas such as cardiovascular care, cancer treatment, neurosciences, surgery, and organ transplants. Consistently ranked among the top institutions in the U.S. News & World Report annual list of “America’s Best Hospitals,” Stanford Hospital & Clinics is internationally recognized for translating medical breakthroughs into the care of patients. It is part of the Stanford University Medical Center, along with the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. For more information, visit stanfordmedicine.org. *> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 23

Cover Story

Christian Pease

Christian Pease

Open Source Digital Voting Foundation officers John Sebes, left, co-director and chief technology officer; and Pito Salas and Alex Totic, core technology team co-leaders, hit the road, meeting with local election officials.

A panel of experts including Mitch Kapor, left, founder of the Kapor Foundation; Heather Smith, director of Rock the Vote; and California Secretary of State Debra Bowen was moderated by Gregory Miller, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation co-director and chief development officer, at a private home. (continued from page 21)

2008 undoubtedly helped,” Miller said. “But that, together with the fact that a lot of expensive voting machines got thrown out, only serves to obscure serious vulnerabilities that continue to plague the entire elections process.

“In our view the trend looks pretty clear — there likely will be more, not fewer, highly contentious elections

going forward. And where victories are paper thin, there are likely to be problems.”

Miller asserts that the nation’s elections infrastructure hasn’t improved significantly since the 2000 election.

“It’s scary when you think about it.

It’s nothing less than a political and civic mid-air collision of the first order, if not an outright constitutional crisis, just waiting to happen.”

Bowen supports the continued use

of paper ballots, particularly as source documents when detailed audits are needed. But she says computers are also a necessary tool for conducting elections.

“I think at this point it’s unrealistic to expect in California that Dean Logan (Los Angeles County registrarrecorder) and his staff are going to find a way to hand count 4 million ballots with 120 races each,” Bowen said.

“I think we need to take advantage of the power of the computer where we can, but back it up with systems that tell us when we might have made a mistake so we don’t make it an irreparable mistake.”

While the Digital Voting Foundation philosophy is that there is a role for automation in election operations, Sebes said a new digital system is no cure-all.

The paramount objective of elections reform goes deeper than automation, he said.

“There are plenty of things about elections that need thoughtful attention and improvement. But the really important ones — and probably the hardest ones — don’t have anything to do with computers; notable among them are laws and procedures in need of reform. In the meantime, we want to take things as they are and make them better.

“To be blunt about it, we mostly want to take computers and technology out of the mix of finger-pointing and cynical blame-gaming that only serve to turn people away and undermine our most important rights and responsibilities as free people.” key premise of the Digital Voting Foundation is that elections software should be developed and maintained using an “open source” approach. But what is open-source software?

Webopedia, an online encyclopedia of computer technology, defines it as “a program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design free of charge, i.e, open. Open source code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon

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the code and share the changes within the community.”

Since the coding is available for review at all times and contains no trade secrets, there is nothing that is hidden from view and therefore unknown or unknowable.

“There is a saying in our (high technology) industry about open source,” Miller said. “That when a thousand eyes are looking all bugs are shallow. And what that means is that ... you can’t hide anything, there are no trap doors, there are no secret ways in, there are no easily modified things while no one is looking.”

Advocates of open source contend the process leads to better software, that needed fixes and improvements are accelerated and that it is far more difficult, if not impossible, to add malicious capabilities that go undiscovered for long.

Bowen, who is widely respected in the Valley for her technology savvy, acknowledges the benefits — but adds that open-source software cannot, in and of itself, guarantee fair and unfettered elections.

Voters shouldn’t trust it any more than they would vendor proprietary products “just because some computer experts say that type of system is fine,” she said.

But “it certainly could go a long way in election transparency.”

Sebes agrees: Transparency is the attribute most valued by the Digital Voting Foundation staff in its quest to make elections trustworthy.

“We are not open-source zealots.

In this case it just makes good, practical sense.” ixing and improving the patchwork of information technology used to register voters, administer elections and count votes is anything but straightforward.

For example, Los Angeles County, at 4,082 square miles, is the largest voting jurisdiction in the United States. With more than 4.3 million registered voters in the county — a number greater than that of 25 individual states and Puerto Rico — it is also one of the most diverse and complex. There are 88 cities in the county with 4,394 polling places.

Twenty-five different elections were held between 2006 through 2009 for which ballots were provided in seven languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese) as well as assistance for three others (Armenian, Cambodian, and Russian).

In contrast, California’s smallest

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county — Alpine — lists 799 registered voters on its rolls. Santa Clara County has 789,175 voters. Thus, there is no workable “one size fits all” approach to elections automation.

The Digital Voting team chose voter registration as the place to start for its first production software release.

Among all electoral activities, voter registration is one of the most debated, partisan and controversial.

Loose procedures can lead to voter fraud, allowing illegal immigrants to cast ballots, for example. Yet onerous registration procedures can result in voter suppression by making it overly difficult for the poor, the young and others to vote regularly or at all.

Overlying this debate is the reality that voter registration — especially in densely populated areas — imposes significant burdens on understaffed elections offices that must process paper applications.

The paper burden reaches to the top: “If you were to walk into my office about three weeks before the voter registration deadline (you would) see all of us, including me, sorting out voter registration forms to send to the 58 counties by hand,” Bowen said.

As many as 60,000 registration cards arrive daily at Bowen’s office during that time.

Processing the paper registration forms is a challenge.

In California, it usually goes something like this: Each form is manually inspected at the registrar’s office of the county where the applicant resides. When a form is rejected, its applicant is notified by mail and invited to try again.

Information contained in registrations that are accepted is manually typed into one or more computerized systems that manage voter rolls.

Each county currently maintains its own list but eventually the state will provide a centralized system.

Bowen has said that data entry, like any repetitive task, is prone to error, especially during peak periods.

The result arguably encompasses the worst of two worlds, according to the Digital Voting staff: For wouldbe voters, the manual-registration process can be slow and unforgiving; for elections officers, the process is labor-intensive and error-prone.

“This is precisely the kind of conundrum we are trying to address,” Sebes said. “We’re happy to embrace the need for paper documents, but want to make them easier to fill out and, where possible, eliminate manual data entry,” while allowing for local adaptations and incremental, one-

Cover Story step-at-a-time implementation, which government agencies want and need.

In Digital Votingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s registration system, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;wizardâ&#x20AC;? guides would-be voters to fill out a form online, which can then be printed out. The program prevents applicants from printing registration forms that are incomplete or contain errors. This alone improves the quality of applications arriving at elections offices, thus reducing workloads and improving accuracy, Sebes and Miller assert.

The Digital Voting design can also attach a unique barcode to and capture the data in each application at the time it is printed, which makes it additionally trackable.

In one scenario, an elections clerk could receive an original, signed application. Instead of manually entering the information into the local voter-management system, the clerk would merely call up the digital copy by scanning in its barcode.

The signed original would then be checked against its image. If there is a match, approval can be completed with a single keystroke.

This speeds the approval process and reduces errors and costs, according to Digital Voting.

Also, with barcodes, audits could analyze data that would reveal whether an individual clerk or other â&#x20AC;&#x153;insiderâ&#x20AC;? appears to reject a disproportionate number of voters who live in a given neighborhood or are affiliated with a particular political party, for example.

For California, Digital Votingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s registration software would not only be freely available and open, it also would accommodate signed paper applications as required by current law, making them easier to manage and audit. Sebes believes the system would offer â&#x20AC;&#x153;the best of both worlds, automation and paper,â&#x20AC;? conserving scarce staff and fiscal resources while building confidence in the registration process and elections as a whole.

One of the largest nonprofit organizations involved in voter registration deployed Digital Votingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s software in 2009. Rock the Vote, which focuses on younger voters, is the single largest third-party registrar in the country, according to Executive Director Heather Smith.

During the 2008 election cycle 2.6 million citizens registered directly or indirectly through Rock the Voteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s online services, which it currently hosts across about 23,000 partner sites â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including blogs, Facebook pages and MySpace profiles.

Since going live last September, 40,000 people have used the Rock the Vote online system to register to vote. Sebes said he expects

to see a larger spike this summer. igital Voting is actively working with eight states â&#x20AC;&#x201D; California, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington â&#x20AC;&#x201D; collaborating with some on specific Trust the Vote components. More than 25 percent of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voters reside in these states.

It is also in conversations with officials in another 11 states, including Michigan and Texas â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a group encompassing another 25 percent of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voters.

The foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leaders hope that by demonstrating the capabilities of its voter-registration program there might be acceptance of open-source software at the federal level, as well as certification of Digital Votingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s software in upcoming national elections. Much of the work is related to two key pieces of Congressional legislation: The 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act and its follow-on bill, the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act. These laws are intended to streamline registration and voting for the 6 million Americans â&#x20AC;&#x201D; military and civilian â&#x20AC;&#x201D; deployed or residing abroad. They require the states to make online registration available to them. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Near-term we hope to work with some of those states to help build the capabilities they need to conform with overseas and expatriate voter requirements,â&#x20AC;? Sebes said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re very excited about what that means in terms of motivating broad support for putting reasonable and open digital-elections solutions in place going forward.â&#x20AC;?

Sebes and Miller say they already have partnerships in place, an understanding of elections requirements, software that has been deployed and blueprints for the future. Much more work lies ahead.

Digital Voting needs to broaden its financial support and attract an ever-wider community of volunteer contributors. And without a critical mass of technologist and other contributors, it risks failure, like so many startups, despite good intentions.

But Sebes and Miller are hopeful their venture will bring about the large-scale change theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve envisioned. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once the voting systems in place are broadly viewed as trustworthy itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more likely that a serious national conversation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not just another polarizing food fight â&#x20AC;&#x201D; will emerge next time we have a big problem, which in our view is highly likely to occur,â&#x20AC;? Sebes said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The conversation we need is about larger, more salient issues, like arcane statutes and electoral processes, all in urgent need of calm discussion and sensible reform.â&#x20AC;? N

D

Don Feria

About the cover: John Sebes is co-director and chief technology officer for the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.

Photo by Christian Pease and Joseph Garappolo.

Joe Villareal samples new touchscreen technology at Palo Alto City Hall in October 2003.

TALK ABOUT IT: How much trust do you put in computerized voting systems?

Share your thoughts on Town Square at www.PaloAltoOnline.com

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Your FEEDBACK

MAKES A DIFFERENCE

HELP CREATE THE NEW RECYCLING & COMPOSTING ORDINANCE, FILL OUT THE ONLINE SURVEY. Nearly 43% of what we throw in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;garbageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is actually recyclable. To reach our community goals of Zero Waste by 2021 and 15% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, the City is creating a new Recycling and Composting Ordinance to restrict these items from the garbage.

Please take this brief survey and provide your feedback on the elements of the proposed ordinance. They were derived from the ideas generated at the four community meetings held in last month combined with research on similar ordinances from other cities. Results from this survey and the feedback from the four additional public meetings held in early March will help to further reďŹ ne the ordinance elements and create a draft ordinance.

Complete the Survey by March 22 www.cityofpaloalto.org/recyclingsurvey

(650) 496-5910 zerowaste@cityofpaloalto.org *>Â?Â&#x153;Ă&#x160; Â?Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Ă&#x160;7iiÂ&#x17D;Â?Ă&#x17E;Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160; >Ă&#x20AC;VÂ&#x2026;Ă&#x160;ÂŁÂ&#x2122;]Ă&#x160;Ă&#x201C;ä£äĂ&#x160;U Page 25

Arts & Entertainment A weekly guide to music, theater, art, movies and more, edited by Rebecca Wallace

BASICS

BACK TO

JAZZ MUSICIAN TAYLOR EIGSTI EXPLORES NEW BANDS, NEW STYLES, BUT GOES SOLO ON MARCH 28

by Rebecca Wallace

J

azz pianist Taylor Eigsti is all over the place. A typical page in his calendar might include gigs with his trio and quartet, a two-man show with guitarist Julian Lage, or a concert with a symphony orchestra.

Then there’s his newest band, Free Agency, in which the musicians spice it up with dashes of R&B, electronic music and Romantic classical music. The band features drums, electric bass, voice, Eigsti’s piano and other keyboards. As Eigsti says on his website, “I don’t believe in absolute musical monogamy.”

On March 28, Eigsti goes back to basics with a solo piano show. The New York musician, 25, also returns to his Peninsula stomping grounds — he grew up in Menlo Park — to perform at the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto.

Eigsti doesn’t often perform solo, he said in a phone interview. The venue has to be just right.

“I like it to be a very comfortable setting,” he said. “Playing solo piano is like the loneliest art form. I’m used to going to a gig and being really inspired by other people.”

But he said he feels good about the “nice, intimate vibe” at the Palo Alto church, where he’ll play in the main sanctuary that was renovated in 2007 with the help of two acousticians, and seats about 400. Once Eigsti gets rolling in a solo concert, he said, “you go into a trance-like state and live in the moment and see what comes out.”

What comes out will probably not be just jazz. Eigsti has become taken with the minimalist sounds of the Spanish Catalan composer and pianist Federico Mompou (18931987), and plans to play some works by him. Also in the mix: music by the alternative rock band Coldplay.

“I try to get away with as strange a combination as I can,” Eigsti said, laughing.

Pianist Taylor Eigsti plans to go beyond jazz by playing music by Coldplay and the minimalist composer Federico Mompou at a Palo Alto concert.

Page 26ÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ

(continued on page 27)

Arts & Entertainment

Back to basics (continued from page 26)

The March 28 concert is part of the ongoing jazz series at First Congregational. Past performers have included pianist/keyboardist Dick Hyman; local duo Tuck & Patti; and the quartet Le Jazz Hot. Concerts are followed by Q&A sessions.

Tyler Cobbett, who runs the jazz concert series, said he hopes Eigstiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talent and youth will inspire younger audience members to take up an instrument. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Taylorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performances combine the excitement associated with contemporary composition with great respect for past jazz giants,â&#x20AC;? Cobbett said.

Eigstiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unusual blend of musical styles is more than just a young player testing his wings. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s already a seasoned performer, having started his stage career at the age of 8. By 12, he was opening for Al Jarreau and Diana Krall. His recordings have earned him two Grammy nominations, and heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s played and recorded with jazz musicians including Dave Brubeck, James Moody and Ernestine Anderson. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the most amazing talent Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever come across. Remember him,â&#x20AC;?

Brubeck was once quoted as saying about Eigsti.

Eigsti traces his musical evolution, with its blend of styles, to watching the jazz pianist David Benoit play when Eigsti was growing up. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I would go see him do a show with the San Francisco Symphony and see him play his music, which was really energetic,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d watch him have the support of 115 musicians all around him, and the textural landscapes that you get into when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re using the symphony orchestra.â&#x20AC;?

Now Eigsti is exploring those same landscapes. In January he and Free Agency performed with the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra, and in May he and his trio will be on stage with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. The San Jose concerts will include an original work written by Eigsti.

Another big project for Eigsti is his new album, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Daylight at Midnight,â&#x20AC;? set to come out on Concord Records on July 27. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a four-musician album also featuring singer Becca Stevens, bass player Harish Raghavan and drummer Eric Harland. Eigsti is clearly pleased about the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s camaraderie, especially since the musicians will tour together once the CD is out. â&#x20AC;&#x153;One of my general rules now is I try to only travel with good friends.

Or new good friends,â&#x20AC;? he said.

Learn the Guitar this Spring Eigsti said â&#x20AC;&#x153;Daylight at Midnightâ&#x20AC;? is melody-focused and accessible. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re mostly tunes that come out of the rock world, and some of my tunes and classical pieces,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complexity throughout the record, but a melody drives the whole thing.â&#x20AC;?

Eigsti is also including an instrumental quirk: Besides playing the piano on the album, he also did some tooling around on a Mellotron, an early electro-mechanical keyboard that can also have the flavor of, say, strings or a flute because of the attached audio tapes that play back recordings.

The bandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CD-release party will also be the last concert of the summer at this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Stanford Jazz Festival, held on Aug. 7 at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on campus. Eigsti will also perform with trumpeter Nicholas Payton on Aug. 3. N

Carol McComb's "Starting to Play" workshop includes the FREE use of a Loaner Guitar for the duration of the classes.* Regular cost is just $160 for nine weeks of group lessons, and all music is included. *"Starting to Play" meets for one hour each Monday night for nine weeks beginning March 29th. Students are encouraged to bring their own guitar, but both nylon-string and steel-string loaner guitars are available.

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What: Jazz pianist Taylor Eigsti plays a solo show.

Where: First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, 1985 Louis Road When: 7 p.m. Sunday, March 28 Cost: Tickets are $30.

Info: Contact the church at 650-8566662 or go to www.fccpa.org. Eigstiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website is at tayjazz.com.

As part of the ongoing jazz series at the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, the quartet Le Jazz Hot recently played at the renovated sanctuary.

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Arts & Entertainment

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Where age is just a number

Luz (Roxane Carrasco, left), Gregorio (Tommy Gomez, center) and Candelario (Daniel Valdez, right) enact a lively family scene with Gabby (Dena Martinez, rear).

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Theatrical comfort food Entertaining â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sunsets and Margaritasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is a family comedy everyone can relate to

by Chad Jones xploiting stereotypes, it seems, is acceptable only in the name of comedy. The New York Jewish community had Neil Simon (and later Wendy Wasserstein) exposing their foibles to the world, and in more recent years, we get such plays as Joe DiPietroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Over the River and Through the Woodsâ&#x20AC;? to show us just how funny Italian Americans can be.

The kind of comedy that trafficked in cultural generalities flourished on stage for decades, then migrated to the slick, swift silliness of the sitcom, where the writing eventually grew sharper and the laughs carried more sting.

The need for gentle stage comedies that begin by showing us how different we are and end by underscoring our similarities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t families crazy? Arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t aging parents a pain in the tuchus? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; diminished, which is kind of too bad.

Not every night at the theater needs to be a dark, bloody Martin McDonagh comedy or a fraught comedy/drama hybrid from the camp occupied by a host of younger writers including Sarah Ruhl and Theresa Rebeck. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s such a thing as theatrical comfort food, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what TheatreWorksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sunsets and Margaritasâ&#x20AC;? turns out to be.

The JosĂŠ Cruz GonzĂĄlez comedy now at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto is immediately familiar.

Scenic designer Frank Sarmiento plops us into the comfy confines of the Serenata Colorado Restaurant & Cantina, a colorful Mexican restaurant in a tiny Colorado town.

This is the kind of place weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re told (in somewhat clumsy exposition) that has been the heart of the barrio for 50 years. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s even a spot where Charo has chosen to dine.

E

THEATER REVIEW A husband and wife enter bickering. With a sigh of contentment (and maybe a hint of disappointment) the gears of efficiently frenetic family comedy begin clanking and whirring.

The issue at hand is not whether the loyal son will end up putting his increasingly loco papa into an old folksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; home, but rather the sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s struggle to fulfill one of his dead motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest wishes: that he step out of his fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shadow and become his own man.

The son, Gregorio (Tommy A. Gomez), is a career fireman now suffering from panic attacks. The attacks are comic in nature because in real life, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d pop pills to dull the anxiety.

Here, he breathes into the paper bag he always keeps in his pocket.

The out-of-control senior citizen is Candelario â&#x20AC;&#x153;Candyâ&#x20AC;? Serrano (Daniel Valdez), and we meet him in an original, rather explosive way (letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just say that Sarmientoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s set holds more than a few nice surprises). And if that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enough, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waving a pistol and running around in his underwear.

Ay, papi! Arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t families crazy?

Oh, but wait. The wackiness has only begun. The rules of comfort comedy mean that every character has to be a type regardless of the culture being mined for laughs. Here, the playwright partners Gregorio with a tough-but-loving wife (Roxane Carrasco) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Is there any other kind? He has a clothes-designing son (Miles Gaston Villanueva) harboring secrets and a talent for tricking out his electric wheelchair with street-ready hydraulic lift. He also

has a daughter (Dena Martinez) so whiny and shrill that only dogs can hear portions of her performance.

Martinez is a skilled comic actor who manages to find a few nice comic moments in this lesbian Latina Republican who is unable to decide on Ashley, Amber or Courtney for her newbornâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name.

Throw in an undocumented waitress (Erika Yanin Perez-Hernandez) espousing political beliefs and a goofy sheriff (Nestor Campos Jr.), and we have a stage sitcom recipe chock full oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; nuts.

But hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the funny thing: Playwright GonzĂĄlez and director Amy Gonzalez (no relation, though they have known each other since they were kids growing up in Southern California) serve it all up in a smooth, gently entertaining package. There are genuine laughs amid the schmaltz, and Gomez as Gregorio works hard to anchor the mayhem in some real emotion.

GonzĂĄlezâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s script also nods in the direction of magic realism with truly delightful results. Without the otherworldly visits from Lucinda Serrano as a variety of apparitions (including a hilarious Our Lady of Guadalupe by way of Bette Midler at her brassiest), this would be pure sitcom territory. But the visions, which Gregorio sees when passed out from his panic attacks, add some unexpected fizz to the otherwise predictable twists of this familial tale.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy to love Our Lady when she pops out the front of a car, mic in hand, and says in perfect standup fashion, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s good to be back in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hood.â&#x20AC;?

Aside from a few curse words, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about as edgy as things get (continued on page 30)

Arts & Entertainment

A haunting tale In Dragon’s well-cast ‘Burn This,’ four characters try to find their way

by Kevin Kirby

THEATER REVIEW ritten by Lanford Wilson in the mid-1980s and currently in production at Dragon Theatre, “Burn This” is the story of four people finding their way in the aftermath of an untimely death.

A week prior to the play’s opening scene, Robbie, a dynamic young dancer in New York City, drowns in a freak boating accident, along with his lover, Dominic.

Left behind are his roommates, Anna (a fellow dancer) and Larry (a rather fey cog in the Madison Avenue advertising machine), as well as his older brother Pale, an explosive, substance-abusing restaurateur from New Jersey. Also caught up in the turmoil is Anna’s tepid love interest, Burton, an old-moneyed, prepschooled narcissist who supplements his fortune by writing schlocky scifi screenplays.

Dragon’s production is competently directed by Dale Albright, who, for good or ill, has chosen to de-emphasize the play’s ‘80s roots.

Costumes, hairstyles and decor are all period-neutral. If the characters didn’t keep talking about snorting coke, we could almost believe the play was contemporary.

Albright has cast the show well and has gotten measured performances from his actors. Sarah Kate Anderson’s Anna is quietly haunted and creatively blocked by the loss of her longtime friend and collaborator. Her vulnerability is obvious but not overstated. As Larry, Danny Martin is gay enough to make the point without descending into caricature.

Jeff Clarke seems to struggle a bit with Burton in Act I, as Wilson has given him a rambling, self-involved, wildly irrelevant monologue with which to start the show — all about the Canadian tundra, screenwriting and the love lives of 18th-century whalers. Since we’ve barely met the character and are still trying to orient ourselves to the plot, we’re not quite sure what to make of all this.

Clarke’s performance feels more grounded in Act II, when it appears that his love life may become an indirect casualty of Robbie’s boating accident.

Matthew Lai faces a similar challenge as Pale. Arriving unannounced at 5 a.m. and pounding on the door until a half-asleep Anna lets him in, he fills his first few minutes on stage with a furious, unrelenting, cokedup rant about parking in the city. But Pale’s tirade — and everything that comes after — is driven by grief and fear transmuted into anger. Lai taps into the depth of Pale’s distress, and the resulting performance is electrifying and dangerous.

When Pale (who claims always to be too hot — one of several “burning” references in Wilson’s script) begins peeling off layers of clothing in front of a barely dressed Anna, we sense where this is going. Lai

W

St. Elizabeth Dancer Anna (Sarah Kate Anderson) is saddened and creatively blocked by the death of her friend in “Burn This.” and Anderson handle the physical aspects of the ensuing seduction beautifully, with a candor not often achieved by actors in non-professional theater.

The question that remains, of course, is what this encounter means for Pale and Anna. Is each clinging to the other merely as a means of staying connected to Robbie, or is there something more? The story plays out somewhat predictably, but Albright and the Dragon cast never let it look like a foregone conclusion.

In the four years since Dragon Productions moved into its current 40-seat house in downtown Palo Alto, Artistic Director Meredith Hagedorn has been exceptionally adept at choosing plays that are appropriate for the venue: plays that benefit from the intimate scale of the space and that can be successfully mounted without enormous sets or huge crowds of actors.

Even Hagedorn’s more ambitious choices have generally succeeded, due in no small part to the work of Ray Gasparinetti, the company’s most frequent scenic designer. Gasparinetti has pulled off the improbable more than once, as when he built an entire restaurant kitchen and dining area on Dragon’s tiny stage for Tina Howe’s “Art of Dining.” This time around, though, Hagedorn has

chosen a play that wants a more spacious set than Gasparinetti can deliver.

This may seem like an odd criticism. After all, the cast of “Burn This” numbers only four, and there is only one brief scene in which all of them are on stage simultaneously.

Further, the closeness of Dragon’s quarters puts the subtleties of the characters’ emotional journeys right in the laps of the audience — indeed, in this intimate space, Lai and Anderson can devastate us with the tiniest of gestures.

On a purely utilitarian level, the set works. The actors have a couch to sit on, a refrigerator to rummage in, windows to stare out of. Gasparinetti does his best to suggest the high ceilings and open beams of a New York loft, but on a visceral level it just doesn’t work.

Looking at a kitchen, dining area and living room crammed into 300 square feet, bordered by dark windows, we feel that we are in a dingy studio, not a cavernous bohemian loft in which — as Anna explains — she and Robbie have left most of the space empty so that they can dance.

Worse yet, the set cramps the playwright’s metaphors. Wilson is not shy about doling out obvious symbolism to illuminate the

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Stanford Golf Course Monday, May 17, 2010 11 AM Shotgun For information, please call the Development Office

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St. Elizabeth Seton School is a Catholic Community school that offers a realistic private school choice for East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park families. Seton’s doors are open to all students regardless of their ethnic, religious and socio-economic background.

(continued on page 30)

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Arts & Entertainment

‘Burn This’

(continued from page 29)

play’s themes. One recurring image, present both in Burton’s description of his latest screenplay and in Anna’s explanation of the choreographer’s art — “You have bodies, space ... distance, relationships ... “ — involves isolated individuals trying to make connections across the vast gulfs that separate us all. Every character in the show is, in some way, involved in this same pursuit, but with all of them sitting right on top of each other it’s hard to feel it. There’s simply no room for the metaphor to echo and magnify.

It’s a larger problem than one might imagine, but it’s certainly not

‘Sunsets’

(continued from page 28)

here, but one of the rules of comfort comedy is that you don’t push too hard or let too much of the real world in. You could certainly never call “Sunsets and Margaritas” cynical.

Give the playwright credit for not mucking things up with silly romances but rather sticking to his goal of seeing a middle-aged, baby-boomer son deal with his increasingly dangerous father and for confining the romance to that of long-married spouses gamely working through their own issues.

This mostly straightforward (save

enough to scuttle the performance.

Anderson and Lai turn in admirable work and are well supported by Martin and Clarke. All in all, “Burn This” is a solid evening of theater and a nice addition to Dragon’s 10th anniversary season. N What: “Burn This,” a Lanford Wilson play presented by Dragon Productions Where: Dragon Theatre, 535 Alma St., Palo Alto When: Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., through April 4 Cost: $20 general admission, $16 for students and seniors Info: For more information, or for ticketing online, go to www. dragonproductions.net. For 24/7 box office help, call 800-838-3006.

for the salty blessings of Our Lady) family sitcom works toward a resolution that will make everybody happy. N What: “Sunsets and Margaritas” by José Cruz González, presented by TheatreWorks Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto When: Through April 4 with 7:30 p.m. shows Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 p.m. shows Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. shows Saturday and Sunday, and 7 p.m. shows Sunday.

Cost: Tickets are $29-$62 with student, senior and educator discounts.

Info: Go to www.theatreworks.org or call 650-463-1960.

COLUMBI A PICTURES PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH RELATIVITY MEDIA AN ORIGINAL FILM PRODUCTION AN ANDY TENNANT FILM “THE BOUNTY HUNTER” WITH CHRISTINE BARANSKI MUSIC EXECUTIVE WRITTEN PRODUCED

BY GEORGE FENTON PRODUCERS WINK MORDAUNT ORI MARMUR ROBYN MEISINGER DONALD J. LEE, JR. RYAN KAVANAUGH

BY SARAH THORP

BY NEAL H. MORITZ DIRECTED

BY ANDY TENNANT

SORRY, NO PASSES ACCEPTED FOR THIS ENGAGEMENT

Art

Darren Waterston

The dense, intricate 16th-century forest landscapes of the Northern German painter and printmaker Albrecht Altdorfer have offered heady inspiration for Darren Waterston.

In his “Tondo” series of new monotypes, Waterston, a San Francisco artist, offers his own take on landscapes with deep gray-blues and careful lines. He’s currently showing the series and other works at Palo Alto’s Smith Andersen Editions; a press release from the gallery says his work “isolates and exaggerates qualities of the landscape tradition, compressing the imagery into small, round pictorial spaces.”

Waterston recently printed the monotypes at the Smith Andersen press. His paintings and works on paper are in permanent collections including those at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Palo Alto show closes on March 24, and a closing reception is planned for this Saturday, March 20, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the gallery at 440 Pepper Ave. For more information, go to www.smithandersen.com or call 650327-7762.

Music

‘A Tribute to Herbie Hancock’

Museums don’t curate just exhibitions. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem has curated a concert and tribute, paying homage to the groundbreaking jazz composer and keyboardist Herbie Hancock. On Wednesday, March 31, bassist and museum co-director Christian McBride headlines that concert at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium.

Hancock’s career has included being a pioneer of electric jazz (as well as a Miles Davis sideman in the ‘60s), and audience members will hear those sounds and many others when McBride and his band take a tour through Hancock’s body of work.

The band features saxophonist Bennie Maupin, trumpeter Eddie Henderson, trombonist Michael Dease and keyboardist Geoffrey Keezer.

The 8 p.m. concert will also have a local opening act.

Stanford Ph.D. drama student Sebastián Calderón Bentin is organizing a program of short spoken-word pieces written in response to songs by Hancock.

Two other events are also planned in the days preceding the concert. On Monday, March 29, Jazz Museum co-director Loren Schoenberg gives a free jazz/tech talk at 8 p.m. in Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. On March 30, Schoenberg will also give a free short performance at 6 p.m. at the Community School of Music and Arts, 230 San Antonio Circle, Mountain View.

For the main concert on March 31, tickets are $34/$38 for adults and $10 for Stanford students. Other discounts are available for groups, non-Stanford students and youths. Go to livelyarts.stanford.edu or call 650-725ARTS.

‘The Eye of the Beholder’

A new show of 45 works at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center reflects the diverse and discerning taste of Ruth Halperin, a longtime art lover and donor to the museum. A clayand-cowrie-shell head from Liberia, a textural wood sculpture by German artist Ursula von Rydingsvard, and a photo

by British artist Andy Goldsworthy demonstrate the range of media and voices.

Most of the works on display were given to the center by Ruth and Robert Halperin, or bought with funds from their foundation. Ruth Halperin, according to the museum, “was drawn to works of art based on esthetic qualities of line, texture and form rather than subject or source.

When seen together, the works This 20th-century mask from the reveal common Ivory Coast is a Cantor Arts Cenattributes across ter purchase made possible by the cultures in the Robert and Ruth Halperin Foundesign and cre- dation. It’s now on display at the ation of pleasing museum as part of a tribute to the and beautifully Halperins. made objects.”

The exhibition opened this week and runs through May 30 in two galleries in the musem off Palm Drive at Museum Way. Open hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Thursdays until 8.

Go to museum.stanford.edu or call 650-723-4177.

Music and art

PAUSD concert and art show

Scholarships are the aim of the 18th annual chambermusic concert held by the music teachers of the Palo Page 30ÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ

Alto Unified School District. When these teachers, who work with students in grades one through 12, perform on March 27, proceeds will go toward scholarships for district music and art students.

Also taking part are the district’s art teachers; they’ll display their creations and offer them for sale, with proceeds also contributing to scholarships to be used toward students’ music and art.

District students in music ensembles will get to audition later for scholarships (as long as they attended the concert), and art scholarships are meant to benefit a collaborative work of art to be shown at next year’s event, organizers said.

The event starts at 3:30 p.m. with an art preview, followed by the 4 p.m. concert. A 5:15 reception ends the event. Admission is $15 general ($12 in advance) and $5 for students and seniors. Call 650-329-3944 or e-mail music@pausd.org.

Toni Gauthier

STARTS FRIDAY, MARCH 19

CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES

Worth a Look

Bassist Christian McBride will perform at Stanford in a tribute to jazz pioneer Herbie Hancock.

Movies

Movie reviews by Jeanne Aufmuth, Peter Canavese, Tyler Hanley and Susan Tavernetti OPENINGS

The Most Dangerous Man in America ---1/2 (Aquarius) Few personal stories on the national stage hinge on so dramatic a change as the one Daniel Ellsberg underwent during the Vietnam War. His tale of irrepressible conscience returns â&#x20AC;&#x201D; told largely in his own words â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlichâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Oscar-nominated documentary â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.â&#x20AC;?

Those who lived through the Vietnam era probably wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find much in the way of revelation here, but the filmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thorough recounting of (and accounting for) Ellsbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s character arc serves as a reminder of history that we seem to have doomed ourselves to repeat in the defining military quagmire of today.

For younger generations, Ellsbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story may be something of a shocker and a political thriller (and, to some degree, a heist movie) punctuated by choice audio cuts of a profane and seemingly crazed president since nicknamed â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tricky Dick.â&#x20AC;? This is the film for anyone who ever doubted that one man can make a difference.

Stylistically, Goldsmith & Ehrlich work in the vein of Errol Morris. Like â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Fog of War,â&#x20AC;? this film incorporates a few stylish inserts but primarily provides an up-close profile of a man in a position to make or break war policy through his work. Ellsberg worked as a strategic analyst at the government-sponsored military think tank The RAND Corporation and, for a time, within the defense and state departments, over some years helping secretaries of defense (including Robert McNamara) to sell the case for war. In narrating his own story, Ellsberg recalls his gradual discomfort with the misrepresentation of facts to justify grand-scale conflict.

While Goldsmith & Ehrlich succinctly lay out the political circumstances influencing Ellsbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s divergence from the company line, they also strongly embrace the human element, with Ellsberg recalling the influence of his girlfriend (and later wife) Patricia, his children and his own childhood trauma in making an otherwise lonely historic decision: to leak to the media the top-secret McNamara study of 20 years of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam, soon infamous as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the Pentagon Papers.â&#x20AC;?

It didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take long for Ellsberg to become a fugitive then defendant, political lightning rod and cause celebre. (Added bonus: Like â&#x20AC;&#x153;All the Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Men,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Most Dangerous Man in Americaâ&#x20AC;? cĂŠlèbrates newspapers in their heyday.)

Branded a traitor by many of his former friends and colleagues, Ellsberg also immediately became the hero of the anti-war movement. Still a spiritual leader within the protest community, a now-septuagenarian Ellsberg seems to harbor no regrets, and the talking heads (including John Dean and the late Howard Zinn) testify to the import of the manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions.

The echoes of contemporary politics are loudly implicit, but even on a strictly human level, Ellsberg makes a deserving subject and a role model for making a hugely difficult but deeply considered personal change and, ever since, staying true to his moral compass.

Not MPAA rated. One hour, 33 minutes. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Peter Canavese

Repo Men -(Century 16, Century 20) The Biblical book of Ecclesiastes maintains â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is nothing new un-

der the sun.â&#x20AC;? But to watch â&#x20AC;&#x153;Repo Menâ&#x20AC;? is to think, â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is nothing new under the video billboards of a futuristic dystopian skyline.â&#x20AC;?

Cinematic science-fiction devotees will be counting up the cultural touchstones in Miguel Sapochnikâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s film of Eric Garciaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s novel â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Repossession Mamboâ&#x20AC;? (screenplay by Garcia and Garrett Lerner). Parts of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Blade Runner,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Loganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Run,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fahrenheit 451â&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Brazilâ&#x20AC;? can be seen in the machinery of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Repo Menâ&#x20AC;? (not to mention the 2008 cult film â&#x20AC;&#x153;Repo! The Genetic Operaâ&#x20AC;?). In an unspecified near future, a sinister corporation called The Union offers organs for sale. The only hitch? If you fall 90 days behind in paying the exorbitant bills, a repo man will be after you with a stun gun, a knife and a terrible bedside manner.

Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker) are two of The Unionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best repo men, and bestfriendly adversaries since boyhood. Remyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wife (Carice van Houten) insists that her husband move into sales, but Remy and Jake are adrenaline junkies who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to put an end to their field partnership. Then, whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meant to be Remyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s last job goes horribly wrong, necessitating an organ transplant. Now that the heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the other chest, so to speak, will Remy have the heart to go back to work? More importantly, will he be able to make his payments?

As a morality play, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Repo Menâ&#x20AC;? is more than a little ridiculous (â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gee, was it wrong for me to kill all those people? Now that I could be killed, I guess so!â&#x20AC;?) and hardly relatable. But despite being shot in the fall of 2007, the movie is now perfectly positioned to take advantage of the healthcare debate. Unfortunately, the satire doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get any more complex than â&#x20AC;&#x153;What if the mortgage crisis were over livers instead of houses?â&#x20AC;? Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an amusing idea as far as it goes, and it certainly gives the plot a freaky urgency. But when Union boss-man Frank says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;em buying, not thinking,â&#x20AC;? he could just as well be a Hollywood executive.

A trite extramarital romance between Remy and a wasted singer named Beth (Alice Braga) is dead on arrival; 10 organ transplants have made her a credit default waiting to happen, but otherwise her character is a cipher. Only David Cronenberg would find the pairâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body-invasive S&M love scenes hot, and their come-ons are laugh-out-loud awful (Her: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ask me about my lips.â&#x20AC;? Him: â&#x20AC;&#x153;What brand are your lips?â&#x20AC;? Her: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all me.â&#x20AC;? Cue aggressive snogging).

Though Braga is a blank, Law anchors the picture nicely, and Whitaker and Schreiber lend humorously zesty support.

Once the frisson of the gory premise becomes familiar, and the nominal psychological credulity of the first act passes, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little to sustain interest beyond the usual run, gun and slash tactics.

As the Beltway craws into action on nationwide reform, Judeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new movie dramatizes the worstcase scenario of health care intertwined with the profit motive. If only the movie hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sat on the shelf, maybe it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have taken so long for a Law to become a bill. (Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m here all week â&#x20AC;&#x201D; tip your waiters...)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, language and some sexuality/nudity. One hour, 41 minutes. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Peter Canavese For reviews of â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Girl with the Dragon Tattooâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Diary of a Wimpy Kid,â&#x20AC;? go to www.PaloAltoOnline.com/movies.

BASED ON THE INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER â&#x20AC;&#x153;THIS DYNAMITE THRILLER SHIVERS WITH SUSPENSE. In a word, WOW!â&#x20AC;?

Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

www.dragontattoofilm.com

STARTS FRIDAY, MARCH 19TH Available Soon in Paperback: The Girl Who Played with Fire

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

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Campbell (408) 559-6900 (800) FANDANGO 910#

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San Jose (800) FANDANGO 983# Morgan Hill (408) 778-6500

CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR THEATRE INFORMATION AND SHOWTIMES

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Movies

MOVIE TIMES

# $ %&

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Fri & Sat Only 3/19-3/20 The Ghost Writer 1:25, 4:20, 7:15, 10:10 The Runaways 1:45, 4:30, 7:20, 9:55 Sun - Thurs 3/21-3/25 The Ghost Writer 1:25, 4:20, 7:15 The Runaways 1:45, 4:30, 7:20

Upcoming Events Chamber Mixer

Palo Alto's 1st LEED Gold Building Celebration Wednesday, March 24 5:30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;7 pm Palo Alto OfďŹ ce Center 525 University Avenue Palo Alto $10 members, $20 non-members

Palo Alto Young Professionals

Note: Screenings are for Wednesday through Thursday only.

A Prophet (R) (((1/2 Century 16: 9:05 p.m.

Alice in Wonderland (PG) ((

Century 16: 11:40 a.m.; 1, 2:25, 3:45, 5:10, 6:30, 7:55 & 10:30 p.m.; In 3D at 11 a.m.; 12:20, 1:35, 3:05, 4:30, 5:50, 7:15, 8:35 & 9:55 p.m. Century 20: Noon, 1:20, 2:40, 4:05, 5:20, 6:40, 8:05, 9:20 & 10:40 p.m.; In 3D at 12:45, 2, 3:20, 4:45, 6, 7:30 & 10:10 p.m. Fri.-Sat. & Mon.-Thu. also at 11:30 a.m. Fri.-Tue. & Thu. also at 8:45 p.m.

Avatar (PG-13) (((

Century 20: In 3D at 12:50, 4:20 & 8 p.m.

The Bad Sleep Well (1960) (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed)

Stanford Theatre: Fri 7:30 p.m.

The Bounty Hunter (PG-13) (Not Reviewed)

Century 16: 11:20 a.m.; 2, 4:35, 7:35 & 10:20 p.m.

Century 20: 11:15 a.m.; 12:35, 1:55, 3:15, 4:35, 6, 7:20, 8:50 & 10:05 p.m.

Brooklynâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Finest (R) ((1/2

Century 20: 1:05, 4:10, 7:10 & 10:15 p.m.

Crazy Heart (R) (((

Century 16: 11:10 a.m.; 1:50, 4:25, 7:25 & 10 p.m.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (PG) ((

Century 16: 11:50 a.m.; 2:15, 4:40, 7:10 & 9:30 p.m.

Century 20: 2, 4:30, 7 & 9:25 p.m. Fri. & Sun.-Thu. also at 11:30 a.m.

The Ghost Writer (((1/2 (PG-13)

Century 20: 11:25 a.m.; 1, 2:20, 3:55, 5:15, 6:50, 8:10 & 9:50 p.m. CinĂŠArts at Palo Alto Square: 1:25, 4:20 & 7:15 p.m. Fri.-Sat. also at 10:10 p.m.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Not Rated) ((((

Guild Theatre: 1:45, 5 & 8:30 p.m.

Green Zone (R) ((

Century 16: 11:30 a.m.; 12:50, 2:10, 3:30, 4:50, 6:15, 7:30, 8:55 & 10:10 p.m. Century 20: 11:35 a.m.; 12:55, 2:20, 3:40, 5:05, 6:25, 7:50, 9:10 & 10:35 p.m. Sat. & Sun. also at 10:15 a.m.

Aquarius Theatre: 2:30, 5:30 & 8:30 p.m.

Bistro 412

The Idiot (1951) (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed)

Stanford Theatre: Wed 7:30 p.m. Thu 7:30 p.m.

7:30 p.m.

March 23 5:30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;7 pm 412 Emerson Street Palo Alto

Kagemusha (1980) (PG) (Not Reviewed)

Stanford Theatre: Sat 2:50 & 7:30 p.m. Sun 2:50 & 7:30 p.m. Mon 7:30 p.m. Tue 7:30 p.m.

The Lower Depths (1957) (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed)

Stanford Theatre: Wed 5:15 & 10:30 p.m. Thu 5:15 & 10:30 p.m.

Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Not Rated) (((1/2

Aquarius Theatre: 2, 4:30, 7 & 9:30 p.m.

Mother (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed)

Century 16: 12:55, 4, 7 & 10:05 p.m.

Our Family Wedding (PG-13) (Not Reviewed)

Century 16: Noon, 2:30, 4:55, 7:20 & 9:45 p.m.

Century 20: 11:25 a.m.; 1:50, 4:25, 7 & 9:30 p.m.

FREE with registration: www.PaloAltoChamber.com/NewsandEvents

Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce

122 Hamilton Avenue

Palo Alto

(650) 324-3121

www.PaloAltoChamber.com

design by harrington design

The Hurt Locker (R) (((1/2

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: Century 20: 11:10 a.m.; 1:55, 4:40, 7:35 & 10:20 p.m.

The Lightning Thief (PG) (Not Reviewed) Remember Me (PG-13) (

Century 16: 11:05 a.m.; 1:40, 4:20, 7:05 & 9:50 p.m.

Century 20: 11:10 a.m.; 1:45, 4:30, 7:15 & 9:55 p.m.

Repo Men (R) ((

Century 16: 11:35 a.m.; 2:20, 5:05, 7:45 & 10:25 p.m. Century 20: 11:55 a.m.; 2:35, 5:15, 7:55 & 10:40 p.m.

The Runaways (R) (Not Reviewed)

Century 20: Fri 11:40 a.m.; 2:15, 5, 7:40 & 10:20 p.m.

CinĂŠArts at Palo Alto Square: 1:45, 4:30 & 7:20 p.m. Fri.-Sat. also at 9:55 p.m.

Sanjuro (1962) (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed)

Stanford Theatre: Sat - Tue 5:40 & 10:20 p.m.

Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Out of My League (R) (Not Reviewed)

Century 16: 11:15 a.m.; 12:30, 1:45, 3, 4:15, 5:30, 6:45, 8, 9:15 & 10:30 p.m. Century 20: 11:45 a.m.; 2:25, 4:55, 7:45 & 10:25 p.m.

Shutter Island (R) (((

Century 16: 12:35, 3:40, 6:55 & 10:15 p.m.

Century 20: 12:20, 3:45, 7:05 & 10:15 p.m.

Throne of Blood (1957) (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed)

Stanford Theatre: Fri 5:30 & 9:55 p.m.

( Skip it (( Some redeeming qualities ((( A good bet (((( Outstanding Aquarius: 430 Emerson St., Palo Alto (266-9260) Century Cinema 16: 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View (800-326-3264) Century 20 Downtown: 825 Middlefield Road, Redwood City (800-326-3264) CinĂŠArts at Palo Alto Square: 3000 El Camino Real, Palo Alto (493-3456) Guild: 949 El Camino Real, Menlo Park (266-9260) Stanford: 221 University Ave., Palo Alto (324-3700) Internet address: For show times, plot synopses, trailers and more information about films playing, go to Palo Alto Online at http://www.PaloAltoOnline.com/

Szechwan & Hunan Gourmet

Fresh news delivered daily Page 32Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160; >Ă&#x20AC;VÂ&#x2026;Ă&#x160;ÂŁÂ&#x2122;]Ă&#x160;Ă&#x201C;ä£äĂ&#x160;UĂ&#x160;*>Â?Â&#x153;Ă&#x160; Â?Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Ă&#x160;7iiÂ&#x17D;Â?Ă&#x17E;

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MEXICAN The Oaxacan Kitchen 321-8003 Authentic Mexican Restaurant 2323 Birch Street, Palo Alto 1 ÊUÊ

,ÊUÊ/ Ê"1/ÊUÊ / ,

also visit us at 6 Bay Area Farmer’s Markets www.theoaxacankitchen.com

PIZZA Pizza Chicago 424-9400 4115 El Camino Real, Palo Alto This IS the best pizza in town

AMERICAN

CHINESE

Armadillo Willy’s 941-2922

Peking Duck 856-3338

1031 N. San Antonio Rd., Los Altos

2310 El Camino Real, Palo Alto

Range: $5.00-13.00

We also deliver.

Hobee’s 856-6124

Su Hong – Menlo Park

4224 El Camino Real, Palo Alto

Dining Phone: 323–6852

Also at Town & Country Village,

To Go: 322–4631

Palo Alto 327-4111

Winner, Palo Alto Weekly “Best Of”

Burmese Green Elephant Gourmet

Spot A Pizza 324-3131 115 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto

POLYNESIAN Trader Vic’s 849-9800 4269 El Camino Real, Palo Alto Dinner Mon-Thurs 5-10pm; Fri-Sat 5-11pm; Sun 4:30 - 9:30pm

INDIAN

Lounge open nightly

Burmese & Chinese Cuisine

129 Lytton, Downtown Palo Alto

3950 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto

Lunch Buffet M-F; Open 7 days

Pizzeria Venti

www.spotpizza.com

Available for private luncheons

Darbar Indian Cuisine 321-6688

DINNER BY THE MOVIES AT SHORELINE’S

Voted Best Pizza in Palo Alto

8 years in a row!

(650) 494-7391

of the week

Happy Hour Mon-Fri 4-6 pm

SEAFOOD Cook’s Seafood 325-0604 751 El Camino Real, Menlo Park

(Charleston Shopping Center)

Janta Indian Restaurant 462-5903

Seafood Dinners from

Dine-In, Take-Out, Local Delivery-Catering

369 Lytton Ave., Downtown Palo Alto

$6.95 to $10.95

CHINESE

Lunch Buffet M-F; Organic Veggies

Open 7 days a week serving breakfast,

1067 N. San Antonio Road

Spalti Ristorante 327-9390

1390 Pear Ave., Mountain View (650) 254-1120

lunch and dinner

www.mvpizzeriaventi.com

on the corner of El Camino, Los Altos

417 California Ave, Palo Alto

Happy Hour 7 days a week 4-7 pm

2008 Best Chinese

ÝµÕ Ã ÌiÊ `ÊUÊ"ÕÌ` ÀÊ }

Full Bar, Banquets, Outdoor Seating

MV Voice & PA Weekly

www.spalti.com

www.scottsseafoodpa.com

Jing Jing 328-6885

Pizzeria Venti 650-254-1120

THAI

443 Emerson St., Palo Alto

1390 Pear Ave, Mountain View

Thaiphoon Restaurant 323-7700

Authentic Szechwan, Hunan

www.MvPizzeriaVenti.com

543 Emerson St., Palo Alto

Food To Go, Delivery

Fresh, Chef Inspired Italian Food

Full Bar, Outdoor Seating

www.jingjinggourmet.com

JAPANESE & SUSHI

www.thaiphoonrestaurant.com

Chef Chu’s (650) 948-2696

Ming’s 856-7700 1700 Embarcadero East, Palo Alto www.mings.com New Tung Kee Noodle House 520 Showers Dr., MV in San Antonio Ctr.

ITALIAN

Scott’s Seafood 323-1555 #1 Town & Country Village, Palo Alto

Best Thai Restaurant in Palo Alto

Fuki Sushi 494-9383

3 Years in a Row, 2006-2007-2008

4119 El Camino Real, Palo Alto

STEAKHOUSE

Open 7 days a Week

MEXICAN

Sundance the Steakhouse 321-6798 1921 El Camino Real, Palo Alto Lunch: Mon-Fri 11:30 am-2:00pm

Voted MV Voice Best ‘01, ‘02, ‘03 & ‘04

Palo Alto Sol 328-8840

Dinner: Mon-Thu 5:00-10:00pm

Prices start at $4.75

408 California Ave, Palo Alto

Fri-Sat 5:00-10:30pm, Sun 5:00-9:00pm

947-8888

Õ}iÊ i ÕÊUÊ iÃÌÞ iÊ,iV «iÃ

www.sundancethesteakhouse.com

Page 34ÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ

Search a complete listing of local restaurant reviews by location or type of food on PaloAltoOnline.com

Eating Out

Veronica Weber

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Arnisia paidakia (mesquite-grilled rib-cut lamb chops) impressed a Weekly reviewer as “sweet, fragrant, slightly smoky.”

At Evvia, fine dining is no myth Palo Alto restaurant caters to the Greek god and goddess in all of us

by Dale F. Bentson oon after we walked in the door at Evvia, we knew we were going to have a delicious dinner. No wonder. The fare was aromatic, rustic and enticing, and the decor Mediterranean chic.

There were linen-lined tables, oversized urns of fresh flowers and an open kitchen with a spit turning lamb and chickens in a huge woodburning fireplace. The uniformed

S

staff members were friendly and knowledgeable, and the wine list approachable.

A reservation was necessary on Monday evening, and on every other night of the week. Even in these lean times, Evvia, which reopened quickly after a fire last fall, is as wildly popular as it has been for the past 15 years.

The food is well-balanced too.

Many Greek restaurants are guilty of the over-saltiness that comes from feta, olives, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, sausages, anchovies and herb blends. At Evvia, the saltiness — while there — does not overwhelm any dish. Rather, it complements and draws flavors out.

In all, there’s not much to complain about with Evvia, save for the high-decibel noise level. Yet

the hubbub is a decidedly happy chatter amongst the mixed crowd of business-expense diners, families and twosomes in for a romantic dinner.

(Evvia’s sister restaurant, Kokkari, is an equally popular San Francisco location tucked away in Jackson Square, on the northern waterfront. Same ownership with essentially the same menu.)

One evening, we were stuck in knotted traffic on U.S. 101 and called Evvia to ask if they would hold our reservation. No problem, I was told: The table would be ready when we arrived. That’s the kind of attention that ensures repeat business.

After we arrived, crusty bread arrived at the table right away. Olive oil was poured, and the pleasurable business of deciding which tempting menu selections to order soothed our jangled urban nerves.

Starters were just the right-sized portions, enough to encourage the appetite and pique the taste buds.

Spanakotiropita ($8.75) was buttery golden-brown phyllo pastry stuffed with braised spinach, feta cheese and herbs. It was like a flaky, healthful mini spinach-andcheese pie.

In anginares souvlaki ($12), the flavors of skewered and grilled chunks of artichoke and eggplant were enhanced by a creamy and slightly sour Greek yogurt.

The crispy zucchini cakes, kolokithokeftethes ($8.75), were served with slices of cucumber and skordalia (a thick potato and garlic sauce). Since zucchini has little flavor, the cakes were merely the vehicle for the skordalia, which was silky and tangy. Gigantes ($7.50) were giant baked organic white beans with tomatoes, leeks and herbed feta. Served in a mini tureen, this was a hot and hearty little vegetable stew.

Roasted butternut squash ($6.50) with brown sage butter was good, but lacked the depth of flavor of other appetizers.

Of the entrées, I still cannot decide which was my favorite. The kotopoulo ($23.75), accented with lemon and oregano, was an intoxicatingly aromatic rotisserie chicken. The scents didn’t just waft from the plate; they made a dramatic and alluring statement of their own. It would be inconceivable not to love this dish.

The smoked half chicken was bronzed on the outside, juicy and succulent on the inside. The flavors were marvelous. The chicken came with olive oil-basted roasted heirloom squash and potatoes that had benefitted from drippings of the rotisserie meat.

The mesquite-grilled rib-cut lamb chops, arnisia paidakia ($31), also came with olive oil-roasted potatoes. The meat was perfectly pink, not bloody on the inside — exactly as I had ordered it. The lamb was sweet, fragrant, slightly smoky, rich and simply irresistible.

Katsiki yiouvetsi ($26.75) was tender, moist braised goat. Goat is relatively low in fat, so it needs to be marinated or basted while cooking to preserve its delicate flavors.

Evvia’s version was served in a medley of roasted tomatoes, green beans, Greek olives, orzo and herbed feta.

Another evening, we ordered dorade ($32), which was one of the three whole-fish specials offered daily. The dorade had been mesquite-grilled and basted with lemon-oregano vinaigrette. Braised greens and potatoes accompanied.

Dorade is small, tender Mediterranean white fish with rich, meaty, succulent flavors. It is the classic fish of Marseille’s bouillabaisse.

Due to overfishing, the specimen on our plate was not wild but came from a natural-environment aqua farm. No matter; the flavors were delicious. Note: As with many Mediterranean fish, there was an abundance of small bones. Eat with caution.

Moussaka ($19.75), a deepdished baked casserole with eggplant, lamb ragout and potatoes, was topped with a rich yogurt bechamel. I couldn’t eat it all. There had to have been a half-pound of ground lamb layered with the vegetables. The yogurt béchamel added a milkiness and slight acidity that harmonized nicely.

The eclectic wine list encompassed mostly Mediterranean wines from Greece, Italy, France and Spain, along with a large se(continued on page 36) Evvia, 420 Emerson St., Palo Alto; (650) 326-0983 Hours: Lunch: Weekdays 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Dinner: Mon.Thurs. 5:30-10 p.m.; Fri. 5:3011 p.m.; Sat. 5-11 p.m.; Sun. 5:30-9 p.m.

Website: www.evvia.net

Reservations Credit cards

Banquet

Valet & Lot

Outdoor seating

Parking

Full bar Children Wheelchair access

Catering

Noise level: Loud

Bathroom Cleanliness: Excellent

*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 35

Arts & Entertainment

ShopTalk

by Daryl Savage

DEMISE OF DIDDAMS — OR NOT? ... One of Palo Alto’s most established businesses, Diddams, the popular downtown toy and party store, is calling it quits — with a latebreaking maybe. “But not because we want to,” owner Steve Diddams said. “We’re actually in good shape. I have six other stores. It’s only Palo Alto and it’s only because our landlords have not offered us a new lease.”

The store at 215 Hamilton Ave. is set to close March 27, which incidentally is the store’s 20th birthday. “It’s a hell of a way to celebrate an anniversary,” one employee said. The 10,000square-foot-store with the dark-green awning is selling all its remaining merchandise at half-price. Steve Diddams’ Palo Alto store was his first. “It’s depressing,” he said. “This was my baby. ... My mother and father helped paint the walls when we first got here.” But Diddams learned this week that there is a chance a last-minute lease offer may happen, which could throw

the close-out sale into reverse.

Still, business is challenging in downtown Palo Alto these days in any event, he said. “Retail sales are lousy around here.”

Diddams said he believes some of the nearby shopping-area developments also cut into sales, referring to the extensive renovation of the Town & Country Village shopping center and the nearly four-year-old Charleston Plaza, whose tenants include REI, Best Buy, and Bed Bath & Beyond.

The closing of Diddams adds another darkened storefront to the area. Next door is the shuttered Waterworks, the high-end bath shop that closed more than a year ago. That store remains empty with the exception of a few bathtubs left behind. Now half of that 200 block of Hamilton is vacant.

Sharing the same fate is another longtime establishment.

Quaint, unpretentious Mexican restaurant Casa Isabel is closing April 2. The 31-year-old familyrun business at 2434 Park Blvd.

is one of Palo Alto’s oldest restaurants. “Our landlord has refused to renew our lease,” owner Mayra Lopez wrote in a letter to customers. “I left El Salvador in 1974 because ... I wanted to live in peace. I knew that in America if I worked hard I could make a better life for my family. ... Many of you have become like family to me. I have seen your families grow, have seen you have children and those children have children. All of you are dear to me and I will miss you very much,” she wrote.

JUDAICA SHOP ARRIVES ...

The hole left with the January 2009 closing of bob and bob, a Jewish gift and book store at 4500 El Camino Real in Los Altos, is finally being filled — at least partially. A new Judaica gift shop is planning to open in Palo Alto’s new Oshman Family Jewish Community Center on Fabian Way. The shop, Miriam’s Well, is putting on the final touches as it prepares for its limited opening March 21 and a full opening in mid-April. “The shop is small; it’s about the size of my garage. And it’s a closet compared to bob and bob,” said Michelle Booth, who started Miriam’s Well five years ago in her Foster City home. The business took on a life of its own.

“It was all word of mouth,” Booth said. “It’s kind of taken over my house. I’m looking forward to

DINNER BY THE MOVIES AT SHORELINE’S

Pizzeria Venti

Evvia

moving everything out of my home and into the JCC.” Booth sees a great need for a traditional Judaica shop. “Not everybody likes to order online. I’ll be providing a community as well as a gift shop,” she said. “And it’s still a work in progress. Expect it to be a little funky at first. But in a year from now, it will evolve into something beautiful.”

A shop in Town & Country Village is also offering a small selection of Judaica. Ruti’s, an Israeli clothing store that opened in November, has decorated its shelves and windows with menorahs, mezuzas and palmshaped amulets called hamsas.

“I’m shocked how popular they’ve become and that they sell so well,” owner Ruti Zisser said. The colorful Judaica items are intricately designed and account for about 10 percent of the store’s sales. Like Booth, Zisser started her business in her home. “I had more than 3,000 people on my mailing list when I was working out of my home. It was time to take a risk. I saw the space at Town & Country, I fell in love with it and here I am,” she said. N

(continued from page 35)

lection of West Coast wines. Most red wines and higher-acid whites work best with this kind of hearty fare. Excellent bottles were to be had in the $40 to $80 range with a few exceptional wines priced accordingly. Corkage fee is $20 per bottle, waived with the purchase of any 750-ml bottle.

Desserts were worth saving room for. I lapped up the yiaourti me meli ($7.25), which was homemade yogurt topped with walnuts and Medjool dates, all drizzled with honey. The arborio rice pudding, rizogalo ($8), with honeyroasted peaches, and sprinkled with cinnamon, was as good as rice pudding gets.

Galaktoboureko ($8.25) was golden phyllo wrapped around a vanilla bean-semolina custard, ideal with the pistachio ice cream.

Bougatsa ($8), phyllo again, this time wrapped around warm ricotta cheese dotted with diced Granny Smith apples and dulce de leche ice cream.

General manager Panos Gogonas has been with the company since inception. He and chef Mario Ortega keep Evvia an exciting restaurant venue with cordial hospitality and food that is dynamic, earthy and sweet-scented.

Evvia doesn’t cater to the Greek gods, but its patrons are treated as such. N

Heard a rumor about your favorite store or business moving out, or in, down the block or across town? Daryl Savage will check it out. She can be e-mailed at shoptalk@paweekly.com.

The History of The Olive The olive is one of the plants most often cited in literature. The Roman poet Horace mentions it in reference to his own diet, which he describes as very simple: “As for me, olives, endives, and smooth mallows provide sustenance” Lord Monboddo comments on Mo the olive in 1779 as one of the foods preferred by the ancients and as one of the most perfect food. Olive oil has long been considered sacred and is mentioned over 30 times men in the Bible and seven in the Quran with some living olives trees ddating back over 2,000 years. With this kind of history there is no wonder that we have identifi ide ed this recipe from the Le Marche region of Italy as a true example of the power of th the king of all fruits.

From our kitchen to yours.

Buon appetito!

Chef Marco Salvi, Executive Chef

Split Chicken with Olives & Pine nuts Mezzo Pollo con Olive e Pignoli A 4- 5 pounds boneless, chicken breast A 1 teaspoon salt A 2 tablespoons extra- virgin olive oil A 1 tablespoons butter A 4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced A 2 bay leaves, preferably fresh

1390 Pear Ave., Mountain View (650) 254-1120 www.mvpizzeriaventi.com

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Hours: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday

A ½ cup pitted brine- cured green Italian olives A ½ cup pitted oil- cured black Italian olives A ½ cup white wine- Pinot Grigio or similar A ½ lemon A ¼ cup toasted pine nuts

To prepare: Season the chicken all over with the salt.

Put the olive oil and butter in the pan, and set over medium- low heat. When the butter is melted and hot, lay in the chicken pieces; drop the garlic cloves and bay leaves in the spaces between the chicken.

Cover the pan, and let the chicken cook over gentle heat, browning slowly and releasing its juices. After about 8-10 minutes, uncover the pan, turn the pieces, and move them around the pan to cook evenly, and then replace the cover. Turn again in 10 minutes or so, and continue cooking covered. *After the chicken has cooked for 20-25 minutes, toss the olives onto the pan bottom, around the chicken, and add the wine. Raise the heat so the liquid is bubbling, cover, and cook, gradually to concentrate the juices, about 5 minutes.

Remove the lid, and cook uncovered, evaporating the pan juices, occasionally turning the chicken pieces and olives. Toss the pine nuts around the chicken, and continue cooking uncovered, turning the chicken over gently until the pan juices thicken and coat the meat like a glaze.

Turn off the heat, and serve the chicken pieces on a platter or in a shallow serving bowl.

Spoon out the sauce and pine nuts and drizzle over the chicken. Squeeze ½ lemon over the top and serve.

Sports Shorts

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Driving force in NCAAs

MARCH MADNESS . . . Menlo School grad Blake Schultz is headed to the Final Four. The senior co-captain scored 29 points to help Williams College down Brandeis, 71-57, on its home court at Chandler Gym in Williamstown, MA in the NCAA Division III sectional final last Saturday.

Schultz, the NESCAC Player of the Year, and Josten’s Trophy winner, also grabbed seven rebounds as the Ephs (29-1) added to their ongoing school record in-season win streak of 20 games. Williams meets Guilford (30-2) in one of the national semifinals Friday at 5 p.m. in Salem, Va. WisconsinStevens Point and Randolph Macon meet in the other semifinal.

The Ephs are making their fifth trip to the Final Four, most of any Division III team. Elsewhere, Gunn High grad David Riley scored 15 points and grabbed five rebounds but Whitworth University fell to Eastern Mennonite University, 7471, at Guilford College’s ReganBrown Fieldhouse in Greensboro, N.C. on Friday in the NCAA Division III sectional semifinals, or the Sweet Sixteen.

Friday College baseball: Pepperdine at Stanford, 6:30 p.m.; KZSU (90.1 FM)

Saturday College baseball: Pepperdine at Stanford, 2 p.m.; KZSU (90.1 FM) Men’s volleyball: Cal Baptist at Stanford, 7 p.m., KZSU (90.1 FM) Women’s basketball: UC Riverside at Stanford, 7:30 p.m.; ESPN or ESPN2; KZSU (90.1 FM)

Sunday College baseball: Pepperdine at Stanford, 1 p.m.; KZSU (90.1 FM)

Monday Women’s basketball: NCAA second round at Stanford, 6:30 p.m.; ESPN or ESPN2; KZSU (90.1 FM)

SPORTS ONLINE For expanded daily coverage of college and prep sports, please see our new site at www.PASportsOnline.com

osalyn Gold-Onwude has her name etched into the Stanford record books twice, right there on page 133 of this year’s media guide. She shares a special record with her fellow starters from the previous two years — games played in a season.

That may not appear to be much of an accomplishment on the surface, but those names who share the top spot confirms solidarity beyond the stat sheet. Gold-Onwude has stood with Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen, Jeanette Pohlen and Candice Wiggins throughout her five years in the Cardinal program.

Jillian Harmon is not on the single-season games played list, but Gold-Onwude has certainly followed her example, as well. Harmon and Gold-Onwude share the distinction as Pac-10 All-Defensive team members.

“What’s most important is the chemistry we’ve developed,” GoldOnwude said. “It’s special to get to know the players and watching them develop. That goes beyond basketball. These are my good friends for the rest of my life.”

This year, conference coaches deemed Gold-Onwude worthy of wearing the conference’s Co-Defensive Player of the Year mantle. The fifth-year senior guard had a big say in Stanford’s record-setting defense this season. The Cardinal allowed conference opponents to score a mere 53 points a contest, a school record. Stanford has allowed 54.0 points a game overall, which would

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Senior guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude (21) will play an important role in Stanford’s postseason stretch drive as the Cardinal attempts to return to the NCAA Final Four and get a rematch with No. 1-ranked Connecticut.

(continued on page 41)

Pinewood girls face a tall task in NorCal final, a final barrier before state basketball finals

by Tim Goode he path to the California Interscholastic Federation state finals for the Pinewood girls’ basketball team has one final barrier, Bradshaw Christian, a familiar opponent who the Panthers beat on last yearís run to the state title game.

Top-seeded Pinewood (25-6) and No. 2 Bradshaw Christian (24-8) will meet on Saturday at Folsom High for the Northern California Division V championship at 1 p.m.

Bradshaw Christian fell to Pinewood in last yearís NorCal semifinals, 79-35, before the Panthers went on to beat Branson in the finals. The Pride returns with much of the same talent from last year and most of it tall.

Bradshawís starters are 6-foot-2, 6-1, 5-11, 5-9 and 5-0.

“They have size at every spot,” said Pinewood coach Doc Scheppler.

In this 10th trip to the NorCal finals, Pinewood plans to counter Bradshaw Christianís height advantage the same way it did last year — with defensive pressure and a quick, attacking offense.

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“We are going to pressure the ball. They have to bring the ball 75 feet up the court and we are going to make that a treacherous ordeal,” Scheppler said. “Last year we forced turnovers early and hit shots early and we were up 35 at half. We are going to do everything we can to make this a full-court game.”

The Pride will have to choose whether to stay in a zone, where its height is an advantage, or extend its defense to try to prevent Pinewood’s usually potent three-point shooting. “Our style of play is such that it will be difficult for them to take away what we want to do,” Scheppler said.

Pinewood and Bradshaw Christian have common opponents in Eastside Prep and Lowell of San Francisco. Pinewood beat Lowell, 62-50, and went 2-2 against Eastside Prep. Bradshaw Christian lost to Lowell, 46-40, and to Eastside, 53-33.

“All comparisons indicate we are a better team but you never know,” Scheppler said. “We’re looking at taking care of business. We were there last (continued on page 38)

Vivian Wong

ON THE AIR

by Rick Eymer

Kyle Terada/Stanford Athletics

OF LOCAL NOTE . . . The Palo Alto National Junior Basketball (NJB) 6th grade girls’ All-Net team won the NorCal championships and will be traveling to Anaheim in two weeks to represent Palo Alto in the national tournament.

The team is the only one from the Palo Alto chapter to qualify for the finals out of all teams grades 5th through 8th. The championship game had the Palo Alto All-Net girls beating the 6th grade team from the Foothill chapter, 46-30.

Both teams were tied for first place during the regular league season. The game produced Palo Alto’s best shooting outing of the year. The Palo Alto Knights will hold registration for the 2010 season on Saturday at the Palo Alto High football field parking lot from noon until 3 p.m. Players age 5-15 are eligible to compete and can register in person or at www. paknights.com. Practice starts in August.

Stanford’s Gold-Onwude will play key role in the postseason

Pinewood junior Hailie Eackles (23) will be counted upon in Saturday’s NorCal finals. *> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊU Page 37

NorCal hoops (continued from page 37)

year. We know the gym, the venue and the type of pressure that exists in a NorCal championship game.

We are excited to play in another NorCal championship game and we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hide it.â&#x20AC;?

The winner will advance to the Division V state championship game in Bakersfield on March 27 at 9:30 a.m., facing the winner of the St. Anthony-Montclair Prep game from the Southern California bracket.

Pinewood earned a trip to the NorCal finals for a second consecutive year, and the fourth time in six years, after beating visiting North Coast Section champion Branson, 51-40, last Saturday in the semifinals. Bradshaw Christian (Sacramento) advanced with a 50-39 win over Head-Royce in the other semifinal.

The usual high-scoring Panthersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; offense was anything but to start the game. The Bulls (18-15) didnĂ­t allow Pinewood a field goal until its first

possession of the second quarter and the usually sure-shooting Panthers made just two three-point attempts.

Both threes came in the second quarter as the Panthers regrouped and recovered from a 6-5 first quarter deficit. Jenna McLoughlin and fellow junior Miranda Seto each connected on long range jumpers, and McLoughlinĂ­s trey came right after her bucket on the previous possession and gave Pinewood its biggest lead of the half at 21-16. â&#x20AC; McLoughlin continued her clutch play into the third quarter, where she scored 12 more of her gamehigh 20 points. â&#x20AC; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jenna was huge tonight,â&#x20AC;? said Scheppler. â&#x20AC;&#x153;She was our matchup advantage tonight. When she came back from the injury she was 60 to 70 percent and she keeps getting stronger. She had 15 points in the CCS finals and now sheĂ­s back to 90 percent.â&#x20AC;?

McLoughlin returned a month ago from an early season knee injury and has been improving as the season wears on. She will get another week to build. She also had a team-high nine rebounds.â&#x20AC;

PinewoodĂ­s defense flourished in the pivotal third quarter. The Panther forced Branson into 10 turnovers and limited the Bulls to two field goals while gaining its biggest lead of the game, 41-24, going into the final quarter. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our start was because of nerves,â&#x20AC;?

Scheppler said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We couldnĂ­t finish any play. We got to the rim we just couldnĂ­t finish cleanly. Once we got settled in the second quarter and then starting forcing turnovers we were alright.â&#x20AC;?

PinewoodĂ­s offense was at its best when it spread the court for one-onone matchups. It continued to run a spread court offense into the fourth quarter but focused on using the clock on each possession. Point guard Seto handled the ball under pressure and helped reduce PinewoodĂ­s turnovers in the second half. After eight in the first half, the Panthers cleaned it up and lost just two possessions in the third quarter.

Seto had 14 points and six rebounds and junior Hailie Eackles had six points, seven rebounds and pair of blocks and assists. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We did a great job of defense,â&#x20AC;?

Scheppler said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We kept them under pressure and forced some turnovers. ItĂ­s great to be in the NorCal finals.â&#x20AC;? N

Vivian Wong

Sports

Pinewood junior Jenna McLoughlin came up big with 20 points and nine rebounds to help lead her team into the NorCal finals.

Growth and the Schools A panel discussion about Palo Altoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future

Vivian Wong

!PRIL s P M Channing House

Pinewoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (L-R) Jenny Hansen, Casey Cairo, Kelly Doran and Angelina Mapa hope to be celebrating again on Saturday when the Panthers go after a state finals berth in the NorCal Division V championship.

! LOOK AT THE CENTRAL QUESTION OF GROWTH S IMPACT ON OUR SCHOOLS

Moderator John Barton will be joined by panelists Ray Bacchetti, Gail Price, Fran Wagstaff, and Dana Tom.

Co-sponsored by: Greenbelt Alliance, Palo Alto Housing Corporation and Sierra Club (Loma Prieta Chapter)

Page 38Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160; >Ă&#x20AC;VÂ&#x2026;Ă&#x160;ÂŁÂ&#x2122;]Ă&#x160;Ă&#x201C;ä£äĂ&#x160;UĂ&#x160;*>Â?Â&#x153;Ă&#x160; Â?Ă&#x152;Â&#x153;Ă&#x160;7iiÂ&#x17D;Â?Ă&#x17E;

Season ends for Castilleja, SHP and Pinewood hree local basketball seasons all came to a sudden end in the quarterfinals of the Northern California playoffs last week as Castilleja plus the Sacred Heart Prep and Pinewood boys all lost.

If one loss was more frustrating than the others, it has to be Castillejaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. The Gators dropped a 5339 decision in the Division V quarterfinals to visiting Head Royce, a team Castilleja had beaten earlier in the season (39-36) on Head Royceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home floor.

While Castilleja (20-10) and Head Royce (29-5) played evenly for the

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first 29 minutes of the game, the game changed when junior Natasha von Kaeppler picked up her fourth fould with three minutes left in the third quarter.

With Castilleja holding a two-point lead with 11 minutes still to play, Gatorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; coach Jez McIntosh pulled von Kaeppler (who finished with 20 points) to save her for the fourth quarter. At that point, Head Royce took advantage of von Kaeppler being on the bench and went on a 17-0 run to put the game out of reach.

In the boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; NorCal Division IV quarterfinals, host Sacred Heart

Prep fell to St. Patrick/St. Vincent (Vallejo), 64-47. The Gators (23-6) actually held a 27-23 lead with 5:30 left in the third quarter before the visitors eventually broke the game open with a 12-0 run in the fourth quarter.

In the boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; NorCal Division V quarterfinals, Pinewood (20-8) fell behind early and had too much of a deficit to make up before losing to top-seeded Branson, 49-41, at College of Marin. The Panthers, playing in NorCals for the first time in 14 years, were held to just 3-of-17 shooting in the first half. N

Sports PREP SOFTBALL

It was perfection times two Castilleja’s Albanese, Paly’s Jenks both throw perfect games on same afternoon

by Keith Peters ammy Albanese of Castilleja and Kelly Jenks of Palo Alto High have a lot in common.

Both are seniors. Both pitch. Both are the aces of their respective softball teams.

Both are headed to college with scholarships next fall — Albanese to Northwestern and Jenks to Santa Clara (for soccer). Their home fields are less than a mile apart and, on Tuesday, both accomplished something on those fields that is rare to the sport.

Both pitched perfect games.

Jenks struck out 14 in a 5-0 nonleague victory over visiting Woodside. Albanese fanned 18 in a 2-0 nonleague win over Gunn.

Albanese took only 70 minutes to mow down the Titans while Jenks took just a little longer to dispose of the Wildcats. For Albanese, it was her third no-hitter this season. For Jenks, it was her first-ever perfect game.

“I never try to pitch a perfect game,” Albanese said after striking out the side in the top of the seventh.

“But, it’s a nice bonus.”

Albanese has pitched perfect games before — she reportedly has 13 in her career. She has struck out more, as well. She even pitched what amounted to two full games last year, a 14-inning effort with 37 strikeouts that landed her in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd.”.

Thus, Tuesday’s no-hit perfection was just another gem in what has become a sparkling resume for the Northwestern-bound Albanese, who did her best to keep the perfect game out of her head.

“I try to keep it out of my mind,” she said. “I’m superstitious.”

A black cat could have crossed her path on Tuesday and she could have shattered a mirror, or walked under a ladder. None of that would have mattered as Albanese mowed down the Titans (5-2-1) with precision.

Albanese struck out the side in the first four innings and fanned the first two hitters in the top of the fifth before Gunn freshman Casey Maltz grounded out for the first non-strikeout of the game. In the sixth, Gunn freshman Nikki Schwardt popped out to Castilleja catcher Annie Apffel and sophomore Claire Collins grounded out to first baseman Annie Cardinal. That was it for Gunn as far as getting the bat on the ball.

The rest was all Albanese (4-1-1), who now has 120 strikeouts.

“She’s the real deal,” said Castilleja first-year coach Robert Burley.

Not only did Albanese star on the mound, but she manufactured the winning run. With two out in the fourth, Albanese singled, reached

Keith Peters

Keith Peters

S

Castilleja senior Sammy Albanese struck out 18 and pitched a perfect game, winning 2-0 over Gunn on Tuesday.

Palo Alto senior Kelly Jenks struck out 14 while pitching the first perfect game of her career on Tuesday.

second on a passed ball and stole third. Noticing that Gunn catcher Carly Fisher was returning throws to pitcher Claire Klausner very quickly, Albanese timed a delayed steal perfectly and scored.

“If it’s a 0-0 game, I’m going to try to get into scoring position,” Albanese said. “It was two outs, two strikes . . . I might as well try.”

Burley said there was no doubt, after watching how the ball was being returned to Klausner, that Albanese was going to be sent home.

With the game all but wrapped up, Albanese gave herself a cushion when she drove in Aryana Yee with a sacrifice fly to right in the sixth.

Yee had walked and moved up on an infield single by Ginna Freehling.

Castilleja’s win ruined the return of Klausner, who started her career at Castilleja. She was a Gator from the sixth to eighth grade before transferring to Gunn. Klausner struck out eight on Tuesday.

“It’s unfortunate she didn’t say,” Albanese said. “We tried to keep her . . . she’s a great pitcher and has a bright future.”

Which is what they used to say about Albanese — and still do.

Less than a mile away, Jenks was taking a bit longer to accomplish what Albanese did in about 70 minutes. For Jenks, the wait was well worth it.

“I felt really comfortable the whole time,” Jenks said of the experience. “My curve was working well, as was my rise and knuckleball (changeup). Until the fifth inning I wasn’t thinking about it. In the sixth

jump to a 2-0 lead. Junior Grace Stafford walked in the first inning and stole two bases, including home, to post the first run. Sophomore Caitlin Tirador repeated that feat — earning a walk and stealing two bases, including home, for a 2-0 lead in the second inning. Palo Alto had seven stolen bases in the game.

Palo Alto’s bats came alive in the

Keith Peters

inning, it started to come into my mind a little bit.”

Jenks was in control throughout, going to a 3-2 count only once — to the second batter in the top of the seventh.

And when it was over?

“I was excited,” Jenks admitted.

“And kind of surprised.”

Paly used stolen bases early to

Castilleja’s battery of pitcher Sammy Albanese and freshman catcher Annie Apffel was a winning combination against Gunn.

sixth as the Vikings collected five hits on their way to a three-run inning. Senior Caroline McDonnell had the big hit, a triple, to drive in a run. She also had a triple in the fourth inning. Jenks and senior Kristen Dauler also delivered RBI hits. For Paly, junior Mariah Philips had two hits, including a double.

Paly’s first-year coach Tim Anderson actually was more impressed with how his offense, which has been struggling of late, came together.

“Kelly’s going to do her thing,” Anderson said. “But, it’s not a onedimensional thing. We can’t rely on one player.”

Jenks didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy her perfect game. She was back on the mound Wednesday to face visiting Branham in another nonleague game. While she wasn’t perfect this time, she only allowed two hits and no runs for a third straight game as the Vikings (4-0) posted a 6-0 triumph.

Palo Alto’s hitting continued to come around. In the first, Grace Marshall led off with a double and Stafford followed with a single.

Lauren Bucolo drove in the first run with a sacrifice fly and Anna Gale laid down a bunt hit, scoring another run. Jenks followed with a hit and McDonnell drove in the third run of the inning.

That was all Palo Alto would need.

Jenks will be back on the mound Friday when Palo Alto visits Los Gatos to open the SCVAL De Anza Division season. N

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Sports ATHLETES OF THE WEEK

Jenna McLoughlin

Drew Pearson

Pinewood School

Palo Alto High

The junior center scored 25 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in two NorCal Division V basketball wins, scoring a season-high 20 points in a 51-40 semifinal win over Branson to help carry the Panthers into the NorCal finals.

The senior won three tennis matches all in three sets, winning once at No. 1 singles and twice at No. 2 while helping the Vikings win three times and remain tied for first place in the SCVAL De Anza Division.

Honorable mention Sammy Albanese Castilleja softball

Ty Cobb Sacred Heart Prep basketball

Maggie Brown

Alec Haley

Menlo lacrosse

Menlo-Atherton tennis

Hailie Eackles*

Tom Kremer

Pinewood basketball

Claire Klausner

Sacred Heart Prep swimming

Max Lippe*

Gunn softball

Pinewood basketball

Miranda Seto

Reed McConnell*

Pinewood basketball

Jasmine Tosky

Sacred Heart Prep basketball

Dalan Refioglu

Palo Alto swimming

Sacred Heart Prep golf * previous winner

To see video interviews of the Athletes of the Week, go to www.PASportsOnline.com

PREP ROUNDUP

Palo Alto baseball continues winning ways in league

t’s a new season with a new coach, Erick Raich, and a new attitude for the Palo Alto baseball team. A winning record makes it all the better.

The Vikings remained tied for first place in the SCVAL De Anza Division by rallying for a 5-2 victory in eight innings over host Los Altos on Wednesday.

Thanks in part to monster home runs by junior first baseman T.J. Braff and junior catcher Will Glazier, the Vikings improved to 2-0 in league (6-3 overall) and stayed atop the division along with Los Gatos (3-0), a 14-6 winner over Homestead.

Palo Alto will host Los Altos on Friday (3:30 p.m.) and then visit Saratoga on Saturday in a makeup game before hosting league co-favorite Wilcox next Wednesday, also at 3:30 p.m., in the first of two big games with the Chargers (2-1).

On Wednesday, Palo Alto had to rally from a 2-1 deficit for much of the game until Braff hit a solo

I

Page 40ÊUÊ >ÀV Ê£ ]ÊÓä£äÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ

bomb in the bottom of the sixth inning to tie it. The teams battled into the eighth inning, until Glazier hit a three-run shot over the left-field fence to take the lead.

Paly’s senior ace Scott Witte came in to shut down Los Altos in the bottom half of the inning to secure the win.

In nonleague action Tuesday, Menlo School jumped out to ninerun lead over host Menlo-Atherton and coasted to a 10-6 victory. The Knights (5-2) scored all nine runs with two outs, before the Bears battled back to pull within four before losing to the Knights.

Offensively, the key blow for Menlo was a grand slam by Danny Diekroeger in the second, one of his four hits on the day. Robert Wickers added three hits and three RBI for the Knights.

The big blow for M-A (2-3) was a two out two-run double in the sixth.

Junior Jake Bruml pitched five ef(continued on page 42)

Sports

NCAA hoops

Associated Press

Stanford’s (L-R) Kayla Pederson, Nnemkadi Ogwumike and Jayne Appel all are finalists for the John R. Wooden Award.

STANFORD ROUNDUP

Stanford’s Big Three are Wooden finalists Baseball team plays host to Pepperdine in three-game series; Cardinal softball has busy weekend ahead hosting invitational

by Rick Eymer o one who has watched the second-ranked Stanford women’s basketball team this year needs to be told just how well Stanford’s “Big Three” of center Jayne Appel and forwards Nnemkadi Ogwumike and Kayla Pedersen have played.

Any one who has seen them play will also find it no surprise that all three were named finalists for the John R. Wooden Award, the award’s committee announced Tuesday.

Stanford and Connecticut each has three players on the 22-person list. The winner will be announced April 9 at the Wooden Award ceremony.

Ogwumike was named Pac-10 Player of the Year after leading the conference with 18.3 points per game and a 63.5 percent shooting percentage. She’s second with 9.4 rebounds.

Appel recovered from offseason knee surgery to earn All-Pac-10 team honors after averaging 13.8 points and 9.2 rebounds a game and shooting 54.3 percent.

Appel set both the Stanford and Pac-10 all-time rebounding records, and currently stands at 1,228 heading into the NCAA tournament.

She became only the third player in school history to reach both the 2,000-point and 1,000-rebound career marks.

Pedersen recorded career-best numbers with 16.1 points and 9.2 rebounds as well as a 39.7 percent three-point shooting rate, all three rank fourth in the conference.

N

Baseball Right-hander Jordan Pries (1-1, 5.00) is scheduled to take the mound Friday night when No. 23 Stanford opens a three-game nonconference series against visiting Pepperdine in Sunken Diamon at 6:30 p.m.

The Cardinal (7-4) plays seven of its next eight games at home, with a visit to Pacific on Tuesday the lone

road trip.

Menlo School grad Kenny Diekroeger leads Stanford with a .382 average, followed by Colin Walsh at .325.

Pepperdine, the 1992 national champion, and Stanford are meeting in a three-game series for the first time in 18 years, though they met in the 2008 regional, with the Cardinal beating Pepperdine twice.

The Waves (6-9) feature a stingy duo of pitchers in lefty Matt Bywater (1-2, 1.59) and righty Cole Cook (1-2, 2.70). Despite their losing records, the pair has helped Pepperdine to a 5-2 record against nationally-ranked opponents.

Stanford relief pitcher Brian Busick owns an 0.90 ERA over five appearances, while fellow relievers Chris Jenkins (1.80), Alex Pracher (2.45) and Mark Appel (2.70) have all been pitching effectively through the early part of the season.

Softball Stanford esumes its busy schedule with a full complement of games this weekend at the Stanford Louisville Slugger Invitational.

The No. 10 Cardinal hosts Cal Poly, St. Mary’s, Princeton and Santa Clara as part of the Invitational.

Stanford (15-3) opens against the visiting Broncos Friday at 6 p.m.

Saturday’s doubleheader with Princeton at 2:30 p.m. and St. Mary’s at 3:45 p.m. will also feature the appearance of two-time Olympian and Stanford grad Jessica Mendoza, who will be available to sign autographs between games.

All-American outfielder Alissa Haber entered her senior season with a .395 career batting average, second all-time behind Mendoza in the Cardinal record books.

Haber and Mendoza are the only players in school history to enter their senior year as a three-time AllAmerican. So far in 2010, Haber is (continued on page 43)

also be a school record if the season ended today.

Gold-Onwude may not have received as much attention as her teammates, but her teammates know exactly how valuable she is to the second-ranked and top-seeded Cardinal (31-1) as the program shifts into a higher gear Saturday with a first-round NCAA tournament game against No. 16 seed UC Riverside (17-15) at 7:30 p.m.

No. 8 seed Iowa (19-13) and No. 9 seed Rutgers (19-14) are matched in the other first round game at 5 p.m.

The two winners meet Monday at 6:30 p.m. with a berth in the Sacramento Regional at stake.

Gold-Onwude arrived at Stanford as a misplaced New Yorker (she was raised in Queens) her freshman year and has since found peace and happiness in California. She wouldn’t completely call herself a born-again west coaster but she enjoys coastal living.

“I love California,” she said. “I love the weather, the quality of life, everything about it. I’m cool either way.”

She’s also cool with her role on the team, since defense is more than shutting down the opponents’ offense. A good defense can spark a thunderous offensive explosion and that is what happened this year.

Stanford outscored its opponents by an average of over 23 points a game.

Think points off turnovers and those can skyrocket during the course of a game.

Gold-Onwude has been an integral part of three of Stanford’s top four defensive teams in terms of opponents’ scoring average. Coincidence or conspiracy? Neither, as Gold-Onwude’s reputation as a bulldog on defense has been carefully cultivated. OK, so it was not so careful. The woman just plays hardnosed defense.

You can ask anybody on the Stanford coaching staff. Please enter into evidence, Menlo School grad Kate Paye’s statement. Paye is an expert witness, having earned her own reputation as a competitor at Stanford between 1991 and 1995. Paye’s senior year produced a 60.8 opponents’ scoring average, still among the program’s top 10.

“I know she was a hard worker and tough player,” Gold-Onwude said of her coach. “But I could take her (one-on-one). Kate always gives me defensive secrets and steps, like the push step to make up the distance the offensive player tries to create with her first step. Defense is one of those things that takes effort and hard work and that’s what Kate demands.”

Paye appreciates Gold-Onwude’s attitude.

“Roz probably thinks she can take Kobe Bryant one-on-one,” she said.

“She’s fearless and one of a kind.

When she sets her mind to something she’ll get it done.”

The last time Stanford earned a No. 1 seed was in 1998, when the Cardinal hosted No. 16 seed Harvard at Maples Pavilion, and lost.

Stanford remains the only basketball team — men or women — to lose to a No. 16 seed in the NCAA

David Gonzales/Stanford Athletics

(continued from page 37)

Stanford senior Rosalyn Gold-Onwude has been an integral part of three of Stanford’s top defensive teams (in terms of scoring average). tournament.

In fairness, there’s a big difference between teams. Still, it’s a history lesson worth avoiding.

“That might be relevant to the coaching staff, but it’s too far in the past for the players,” Gold-Onwude said. “Harvard was an extreme example. What’s more relevant to us is the loss to Florida State on our home court three years ago. That’s something we do not want to experience again.”

In 142 career games (another listing in the school record books upcoming), Gold-Onwude has score 725 points on 258-of-721 shooting, knocked down 118 3-pointers, made 91 free throws, grabbed 399 rebounds, recorded 356 assists, and made 110 steals.

This was, by far, her best offensive season as she averaged nearly seven points a game and shot 40 percent from the field and 75 percent from the foul line.

“She’s also our best screener,” Paye said. “If we need to set a screen to get someone open, we’ll use Roz. She’s our best post passer too, getting the ball to Jayne, Neka and Kayla. She’s taken to studying the game, opposing players and tendencies. As coaches we tell her we depend on her and her teammates depend on her. She’s brought it every single day to practice and games. Roz’s foundation is as a defensive player and that has given her a lot of confidence.”

STANFORD FIELD First and second round at Maples Pavilion Saturday’s games 5:30 p.m.: No. 8 seed Iowa (19-13) vs. No. 9 seed Rutgers (19-14). Once sitting with a 1-6 record in Big Ten Conference play, the Hawkeyes reeled off 11 wins in their final 14 games and advance to the NCAA tournament for the third consecutive season. Rutgers is one of seven teams from the Big East to earn a bid, its eighth-straight trip to the dance 7:30 p.m.: No.1 seed Stanford (31-1) advanced to the tournament after becoming the first team in Pac-10 history to go undefeated during the conference season and winning the conference tournament. No. 16 seed UC Riverside (17-15) had an aggressive nonconference schedule that paid off for the Highlanders in the end. They advanced to the tournament by winning the Big West Conference tournament.

Monday First-round winners meet at 6:30 p.m.

Even more impressive is the ease by which she assumed a leadership role among a group of All-Americans, all-stars and all-conference players this year.

“Roz fills a lot of different roles since she’s been here,” Paye said.

“She was the starting point guard as a freshman, and a small forward for us, believe it or not, two years ago. Now she’s the off-guard and defensive stopper. It’s neat to see her mature as a person and a player.”

And Gold-Onwude has her own all-conference label to show for her efforts. N

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Sports

19th Annual Photo Contest

Prep roundup

CALL FOR ENTRIES

(continued from page 40)

ENTRY DEADLINE: April 2, 2010, 5:30pm ENTRY FORM & RULES AVAILABLE at www.PaloAltoOnline.com For more information call 650.223.6508 or e-mail arenalds@paweekly.com

fective innings for Menlo, allowing only two earned in picking up his first victory of the year.

Boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; golf With freshman Andrew Buchanan and junior Bobby Pender both turning in 1-under-par rounds of 35, Menlo had no problem registering a 188-233 victory over host Crystal Springs-Uplands in a West Bay Athletic League dual match on Wednesday at Crystal Springs Golf Course. Menlo also received evenpar rounds of 36 from juniors Patrick Grimes and MJ Cootsona in the teamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lowest round of the season.

Elsewhere on the perfect afternoon, St. Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s-bound senior Dalan Refioglu shot a 1-under-par 34 to lead Sacred Heart Prep to a 193-237 dual-match victory over host Pinewood in WBAL action on Wednesday at the par-35 Palo Alto Hills Country Club. The Gators maintained first place with their 3-0 record (5-0 overall). Jeff Knox (38), Brett Van Zanten (39), Kevin Knox (41) and Andrew Vetter (41) rounded out the scoring.

In the SCVAL De Anza Division, Palo Alto swept matches from Mountain view and Los Altos in a double-dual at Shoreline Golf Links on Wednesday. The Vikings defeated Los Altos, 190-204, and topped Mountain View, 190-204, to improve to 5-0 this season. Michael Yuan shared medalist honors with a

@ the speed of Google

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Join these community supporters! Stanford University, Stanford Hospitals and Clinics, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Chamber of Commerce, IDEO, Palo Alto Unified School District Administration, and many others, are supporting Palo Altoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effort. We need your support, also!

Nominate Palo Alto today. Go to www.facebook.com/paloaltogooglefiber and follow the easy instructions to fill out the online Google nomination form by the deadline at 5 PM, March 26, 2010!

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Boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lacrosse With Chris Brown and Chris Kvamme both scoring three times, Menlo held off visiting Los Gatos, 9-7, in a Peninsula Athletic League match on Tuesday. Phil Taylor, David Lee and Kyle Bullington also scored for the Knights.

In another PAL match, MenloAtherton fell to host Burlingame, 10-4. Zander Rohn scored twice for the Bears while Ryan Johnston and Drew Uphoff added solo goals.

Girlsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lacrosse With Charlotte Biffar, Leigh Dairaghi and Brianna Boyd all scoring two goals each, Palo Alto remained unbeaten with an 11-3 SCVAL season-opening victory over visiting Leland on Wednesday. Eight different players scored for the Vikings (1-0, 3-0), who jumped out to an 8-0 lead and cruised to the win.

On Tuesday, Martha Harding scored six goals and added four assists to lead visiting Castilleja (1-1) to a 20-5 victory over host Harker on Tuesday. Charlotte Geighan-Breiner added four goals.

In another nonleague match, Menlo-Atherton dropped a 13-9 decision to visiting Los Gatos despite getting four goals from Christina Rodgers.

Katie Kelley added two goals for the Bears (2-3).

Elsewhere, Gunn dropped a 16-3 decision to host Burlingame.

Boysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tennis Menlo tuned up for this weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s National High School Boys Invitational Team Tournament in Newport Beach with a dominating 7-0 victory over visiting Sacred Heart Prep in a WBAL dual match on Tuesday.

The Knights (5-0, 7-0) juggled their lineup and still swept every match in straight sets while losing only a total of 11 games on the day.

Menlo got a victory from every class in singles as sophomore Justin Chan, senior Patrick Chase, freshman Richard Pham and junior Andrew Carlisle lost only a combined seven games.

Menlo is the No. 2 seed for the National Invitational while CCS cofavorite Saratoga is No. 3. The top seed is University (Irvine). Menlo will open Friday morning against Beacon School of New York City.

A victory means a second-round match against the winner of Seattle Prep and Beverly Hills High. Menlo could meet Saratoga in Saturday morningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s semifinals.

In the SCVAL De Anza Division, Palo Alto remained unbeaten with a solid 5-2 victory over visiting Los Gatos on Tuesday. The Vikings (4-0, 8-2) split the singles but swept the doubles behind the tandems of Peter Tseng-Grant Audet, Jujhaar Singh-Michael Li plus Scott Monismith-Jeff Wang.

Also in the division, Gunn took care of visiting Lynbrook, 5-2, with Rajeev Herekar leading the way with a 6-1, 6-2 victory at No. 1 singles. The Titans won it thanks to a sweep in doubles behind the tandems of Simon Kaubisch-Roy Peleg, Scott McKenzie-Paul Wang and kevin Macario-Jo Atlas.

Gunn (3-2, 5-4) came back on Wednesday for a makeup match and defeated Homestead, 5-2. N

Sports

Stanford roundup (continued from page 41)

hitting .491 with 28 hits on 57 atbats. She has tallied 20 runs, five doubles, a triple and four home runs.

She has a team-high 47 total bases and is slugging. .825.

Freshman pitcher Teagan Gerhart is 9-2 with a 1.84 ERA on the year. Junior Ashley Chinn owns a career 30-6 record. She has thrown 28 complete games, including 10 shutouts. Opponents are hitting .194 against her this season.

Women’s gymnastics Kristina Vaculik, a Canadian international gymnast who will join Stanford next season, captured two gold medals and two silvers at the World Cup in Cottbus, Germany over the weekend.

Vaculik won the uneven bars and floor exercise and was second on vault and the balance beam at one of the most competitive stops on the World Cup circuit.

Men’s volleyball Stanford plays for the first time as the No. 1 team in the nation. The Cardinal were voted to the top spot on March 8 but hasn’t played since because of finals.

Stanford (12-4) hosts NAIA No. 1 Cal Baptist (13-5) on Saturday at Burnham Pavilion at 7 p.m.

Stanford is currently tied with Pepperdine (at 10-4) for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation lead.

Women’s water polo Nationally No. 2-ranked Stanford, (2-0, 16-1) returns from a two-week break due to final exams and will host No. 6 Arizona State in a MPSF match at Avery Aquatic Center at 1 p.m.

The match will be a special one for Stanford, which will be honoring the program’s six Olympians in addition to hosting a free autograph session following the match.

On hand will be Ellen (Estes) Lee (Class of 2002 and Olympian in 2000 and ‘04), Margie Dingeldein (Class of ‘02, Olympian in ‘04), Allison Gregorka (Class of ‘07, Olmpain in ‘08), and Jessica Steffens (Class of ‘10, Olympian in ‘08).

Two other Olympians, Jackie (Frank) De Luca (Class of ‘03, Olympian in ‘04) and Brenda Villa (Class of ‘03, Olympian in ‘00, ‘04 and ‘08) will not be present. Villa was called back to Italy last weekend while Frank is in medical school in Hawaii and is on call.

Arizona State (0-1, 12-6) enters Sunday’s game coming off of a win last Sunday. The Sun Devils are led

by Lynlee Smith, who is second in the MPSF with 1.81 goals per game.

Stanford is the top-scoring team in the MPSF with 13.08 goals a game, and stands third with a 5.77 goals-against average.

Wrestling Stanford juniors Zack Giesen and Justin Paulsen, sophomore Nick Amuchastegui and freshman Ryan Mango are headed for the NCAA championships in Omaha this weekend.

The tournament began Thursday at the Qwest Center and continues through Saturday. N

GUIDE TO 2010 SUMMER C AMPS FOR KIDS

n n o e C c p t i o m n a C Sports Camps

Spring Down Camp Equestrian Center Portola Valley Spring Down camp teaches basic to advanced horsemanship skills.

All ages welcome. Daily informative lecture, riding lesson, supervised hands-on skill practice, tacking/untacking of own camp horse, and fun horse arts and crafts. www.springdown.com 650.851.1114 Champion Tennis Camps Atherton CTC provides an enjoyable way for your Junior to begin learning the game of tennis or to continue developing existing skills. The 4-6 year olds have fun learning eye-hand coordination and building self-esteem! www.alanmargot-tennis.net 650-752-0540 SOLO Aquatics Menlo Park Two great programs — SOLO Day Camp: One-week sessions of 5 full days (9:00 – 4:00) featuring instruction in swimming and fun activities; lunch included. SOLO Sharks Program: Spring/Summer weekly afternoon swim clinics for all ages and abilities. www.soloaquatics.com 650-851-9091 YMCA Peninsula Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Redwood City day and overnight camps for youth Pre-K through 10th grade. Enriching lives through safe, fun activities. Sports, arts, technology, science, and more. Field trips and outdoor fun. Accredited by the American Camp Association. www.ymcasv.org/summercamp.com 408-351-6400 Matt Lottich Life Skills Woodside At Matt Lottich Life Skills, all of our camps focus on giving high-level basketball instruction while highlighting the life skills that this sport reflects. Grades 2-11, two camp styles — Day and Elite Camps. www.mllscamp.com 1-888-537-3223 Stanford Baseball Camps Stanford All Day or Half-Day Baseball Camps for ages 7-12, Stanford Baseball camps feature personalized Baseball instruction, fun activities and drills, and exciting Baseball games.

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Summer Institute for the Gifted Berkeley/Hillsborough Gifted students in grades K-12 can participate on the renowned Summer Institute for the Gifted (SIG) program. Hosted at some of the most famous colleges and universities in the U.S., SIG combines both traditional summer fun and a challenging academic schedule. Day programs are available for younger students. www.giftedstudy.org 866-303-4744 The Girls’ Middle School Summer Camp Mountain View New from GMS - Day camp for girls entering grades 4-7. Explorations in Science, Technology, and the Arts in the morning, Moving and Making, includes sports and games, swimming, arts and crafts, in the afternoon. www.girlsms.org/summercamp 650-968-8338 Woodland School Summer Adventures Portola Valley For kindergarten through 8th grade. Offers academics, sports, field trips and onsite activities. June 28 - July 30. www.info@woodland-school.org 650-854-9065 Oshman Family JCC Camps Palo Alto The Oshman Family JCC offers outstanding camps for preschoolers through teens. With both traditional camps and special focus camps like sports, travel, performing arts and more, our innovative staff will keep campers entertained all summer! www.paloaltojcc.org 650-223-8600 Stratford School - Camp Socrates Bay Area Academic enrichment infused with traditional summer camp fun—that’s what your child will experience at Camp Socrates. Sessions begin on June 28 and end on August 13 with the option for students to attend for all seven weeks or the first four weeks (June 28-July 23). Full or half-time morning or afternoon program are available to fit your schedule. 12 locations. www. stratfordschools.com 650-493-1151 Write Now! Summer Writing Camps Palo Alto/Pleasanton Emerson School of Palo Alto and Hacienda School of Pleasanton open their doors and offer their innovative programs: Expository Writing, Creative Writing, Presentation Techniques, and (new!)

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BE ACH V ILL A S AMENITIES INCLUDE: Luxury 2- and 3-bedroom whole ownership villas, lagoon-style and lap pools, fitness center and beachside bar. Plus, adjacent white sand blue lagoons, fine dining, championship golf, private marina and award-winning spa.

COURTESY TO BROKERS

No Federal agency has judged the merits or value, if any, of this property. Access to Ko Olina Resort amenities may be subject to the payment of fees, membership requirements and other restrictions. Centex Destination Properties does not own or control the marina, golf course, other amenities or land outside Beach Villas at Ko Olina and does not guarantee the current or future use thereof. Amenities within Beach Villas at Ko Olina may be owned by a third party and may be subject to the payment of mandatory fees and membership. Some photographs above have been digitally enhanced and may change in the actual development. Prices, incentives, standard features and upgrades are subject to change without prior notice or obligation. These materials shall not constitute an offer in any state where prior registration is required. Void where prohibited by law. Project Broker—Centex Homes d/b/a Centex Destination Properties.

WARNING: THE CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF REAL ESTATE HAS NOT INSPECTED, EXAMINED OR QUALIFIED THIS OFFERING.

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