Palo Alto Weekly 12.18.2009 - Section 1

Palo Alto

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Audit zaps Taser proficiency Page 3

w w w.PaloA ltoOnline.com

How Palo Alto will look and function in the future page 16

Page 32

Spectrum 14

Eating Out 30

Movies 33

Crossword/Sudoku 52

N Arts Behind the mansions, moguls of Atherton

Page 23

N Sports Another basketball test for Stanford women

Page 35

N Home Net-zero house with architectural integrity Page 41

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Upfront

Local news, information and analysis

High-speed rail authority proposes higher fares

New business plan considers funding sources, revises ridership figures for rail line

by Gennady Sheyner he California High-Speed Rail Authority is banking on billions of private dollars, extensive federal support and riders willing to shell out more than $100 to take the new train between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the agency’s new 145-page business plan reveals.

The plan, which the rail author-

T

ity released this week, lays out the agency’s strategy for transitioning from the planning stage of the project to actual implementation. It includes the rail authority’s newest estimate of how many people would ride the 800-mile line and its strategies for acquiring funds — plans that have met with skepticism from its opponents.

California voters approved a $9.95 billion bond for the high-speed rail system in November 2008, but many Peninsula residents and city officials have since grown disenchanted with the project. State legislators criticized the agency’s previous business plan and mandated a new one before further state funding is issued.

Among the most significant changes detailed in the new business plan are the agency’s proposed fares for traveling between Bay Area and Los Angeles. The rail authority had previously projected train fare

to be about $55, or half the price of the average airfare between the two regions. The new plan, however, raises the ticket price for the same trip to about $104.75, or 83 percent of an average airline ticket.

The authority acknowledged that raising the fares would lower the number of riders from a previously estimated 58 million passengers in 2035 to 41 million passengers.

But because lower ridership would require fewer trains and less maintenance, the higher fares would increase the system’s revenues by 13

percent in 2035, when the 800-mile system is scheduled to be completed.

Jeff Barker, the rail authority deputy director for communications, said the new numbers don’t signify a policy change but merely present one alternative business model.

He also said the rail authority will continue to use the “50 percent of airfare” model in its environmental reviews because this model allows the rail authority to plan for the im(continued on page 8)

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Auditors urge Taser review Stun gun has been used seven times, sometimes without effect

by Sue Dremann

P

Veronica Weber

Asil Broussard, 6, shows off her paint-covered hands after completing an art project at the Boys and Girls Club in East Palo Alto.

HOLIDAY FUND

Active art for local kids Peninsula Boys and Girls Club offers enriching opportunities with Art in Action

by Karla Kane

I

n an East Palo Alto Boys and Girls Club classroom on a recent afternoon, 9-year-old Jessica Matriz stared at the paintcovered palms of her classmates in amazement.

“It’s about to get messy!”

Jessica and around 15 other children had just completed an

exercise in Impressionistic fingerpainting. They’re participants in quite literally a hands-on program called Art in Action, which provides art education they may otherwise never experience.

Art in Action is a nationwide nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing art history, apprecia-

tion and techniques to classrooms and kids lacking access to art.

With $5,000 in funding from the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund, an Art in Action pilot program was implemented locally last year to provide after-school visual-art education to around 170 children, mostly of elementary-school age, at the Peninsula Boys and Girls Club branches in East Palo Alto and east Menlo Park.

The funding pays for the specialized curriculum and licensing; high-quality art prints of influential and famous artworks; basic supplies such as paint, paper

and clay; and on-site training for teachers.

Art in Action gives the students the chance to express themselves and use art supplies, participants said.

“We get to be creative,” Maria Serrato, 9, said of the program, as she examined her painting-in-progress.

Classmate Jessica said she especially enjoys the medium of paint.

“I like painting anything. Everything!”

The East Palo Alto and Menlo (continued on page 11)

alo Alto police zapped an allegedly bellicose man with a Taser outside a bar early last Saturday morning, two days after a police auditors’ report recommended the department review its Taser policies and training program.

The Saturday incident involved two men fighting shortly after 1:30 a.m. at Dan Brown’s bar at El Camino Real and El Camino Way in south Palo Alto. One of the intoxicated men confronted the arriving police officer and interspersed profanity with a challenge to the officer to fight, according to Lt. Doug Keith.

The officer drew his Taser and told the man — who was 6 feet 1 inch and 240 pounds — to calm down, then fired the Taser when the man failed to respond, Keith said.

The man, identified as Henry Uili, 24, then gave up and was placed under arrest on misdemeanor charges of being intoxicated in public, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace, Keith said.

But Uili’s wife, identified as Mele Makasini, also 24, then placed herself between officers and her husband until she was arrested for obstructing an officer, also a misdemeanor, Keith reported. Uili was examined at Stanford Hospital before being taken to jail, Keith said.

The incident brings the number of Taser incidents to seven since police started carrying the weapons in 2007, after several years of contentious debate about their use. At the time, concerns swirled nationally about the “non-lethal” alternative to use of guns in difficult situations. There have been hundreds of Taser-related deaths (continued on page 5)

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Upfront

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 John Squire, Editorial Intern Be’eri Moalem, Arts & Entertainment Intern 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 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.

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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 Š2009 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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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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450 CAMBRIDGE AVE, PALO ALTO, CA 94306 (650) 326-8210

Palo Alto doesn’t need more hotels and condos. —Kirsten Essenmacher, a Palo Alto resident who urged the City Council this week to “save Palo Alto Bowl.� See story on page 5.

Around Town SO LONG, FAREWELL ... Four members of the City Council — Mayor Peter Drekmeier, Vice Mayor Jack Morton, Councilman John Barton and Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto, sat through their final council meeting Monday night. During the meeting, the Canadian-born Morton received an unexpected send-off from a talkative hockey player speaking with a thick French accent. Referring to the vice mayor as “Jacque Morton,� the speaker praised the vice mayor for bringing an ice rink to Palo Alto and his passionate demeanor (specifically mentioning the rage in Morton’s eyes when he read the police audit of the city’s Children’s Theatre investigation). The children in Canada, the speaker said, sing songs about Jacque Morton in school, the speaker said. The man is a national hero and a true Canadian, he continued. “If you had Jack Morton as mayor you’d have ‘skate to work day,’� said the speaker, who bore striking resemblance to radio personality Vince Larkin of KZSU. “I can’t tell you how proud we are of him.� The four outgoing council members will get their official send-off in the first council meeting of January.

SUNNY DAYS ... Veteran community volunteer Sunny Dykwel (think Partners in Education, Palo Alto Downtown Business and Professional Association, schoolbond and parcel-tax campaigns, Friends of Lytton Plaza, Palo Alto Parks and Recreation Commission, Palo Alto PTA Council, Palo Alto Family YMCA, Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, Palo Alto University Rotary Club and Palo Alto Black and White Ball) was recently named one of the 100 Most Influential Filipina Women in the United States by the Filipina Women’s Network.

To honor her, the Palo Alto City Council issued a proclamation Monday, with Mayor Peter Drekmeier commending Dykwel for the extraordinary contributions she has made to the community.

Dykwel, upon accepting the resolution, immediately joked that she had initially intended to give a long speech — but preceding her at the microphone was Sam Yates, the always verbose

artist who developed the Color of Palo Alto project, who spoke for 13 minutes after receiving his proclamation. Dykwel, therefore, gave her remarks in a tidy one minute, saying that she was “truly amazed� to be named one of the 100.

BEST FOOT FORWARD ... The foot of a rare and little-known dinosaur is looking for a new home after it ends its display at a Palo Alto store, the Nature Gallery in Town & Country Village. The foot once belonged to a smallish raptor called Oviraptor philoceratops, meaning one who seizes eggs, because egg shells were found near bones. But it was later determined the eggs were the same species, not those of another dinosaur — a 70-millionyear bum rap “cold case� solved by forensic evidence. The store is also running an e-mail quiz for local kids: whoever can first identify the fossil in the picture we send them, along with its age, will win a small fossil of their own. About 50 kids from Palo Alto, Redwood City and beyond are participating, according to store consultant Carolyn Digovich.

IDENTITY CRISIS ... Palo Alto’s Utilities Advisory Commission has gone through a transformation in the past year, expanding to seven members, with four of them new. Now the City Council is wrestling with the question of how to best utilize this group of energy experts. At a Monday study session, city officials weighed the benefits of adding new powers to the commission.

These included oversight over the city’s fiber network and its wastewater services. Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto said the field of utilities has transformed in recent years, with renewed focus on energy conservation and “smart meter� technology, which provides real-time information on energy use. John Melton, chairman of the commission, said the group feels it should deal with all issues that fall under the umbrella of the city’s Utilities Department. The council formed a subcommittee to further consider the changing role of the board. N

Upfront

eH re’s Your Holiday Gift from

LAND USE

Hotel, townhouses to replace Palo Alto Bowl City Council approves new mixed-use project featuring hotel, 26 townhouses

by Gennady Sheyner

A

Taser review (continued from page 3)

reported in the years since.

Independent police auditors Michael Gennaco and Robert Miller, of the Los Angeles-based OIR Group, submitted an interim report to the Palo Alto City Council last week, assessing complaints against the police department related to Taser incidents. “Considering that ... the department has now had six Taser deployments since Council authorized the purchase of a Taser for every PAPD officer and in light of the recent appointment of a new Chief of Police, we believe it is appropriate to take stock of all of the incidents to determine whether the current policy and training regime is optimal,� the auditors wrote.

Gennaco met with police Chief Dennis Burns Monday morning.

The auditors’ report also covered a variety of other complaints, ranging from alleged excessive use of force to improper arrest and discourtesy.

Most were determined to be unfounded, but two resulted in discipline of the officers involved. One pending case involves an off-duty officer who was arrested by another police department after he rolled his vehicle in a single-car accident. The officer was later convicted of driving under the influence and rolling his vehicle and is assigned to desk duty pending final resolution of his status in the department.

Auditors have conducted bi-annual evaluations since 2007, reporting directly to the council.

While the auditors did not fault the department in two of four cases (both still under departmental review), Taser deployment has been hit-or-miss, sometimes having no effect or in one case missing the intended target entirely, according to

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fter serving Palo Alto for more than half a century, Palo Alto’s only bowling alley will soon be demolished to make way for a new hotel.

The City Council voted 7-2 Monday night, with Vice Mayor Jack Morton and Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto dissenting, to approve a proposal by Aaron Barger of Barry Swenson Builders to replace the bowling alley at 4309 El Camino Real with a new development featuring a 167-room hotel and 26 three-story townhouses.

The project received the green light despite pleas and protests from local bowlers and pangs of nostalgia from the council.

More than a dozen area residents attended the meeting in a last-ditch effort to save the bowling alley.

Bowler Mary Howland called Palo Alto Bowl a truly “unique� facility. “It’s a place where there are older

Palo Alto, 3990 90 El Camino Real at the corner of Los Robles

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people and younger people, people of all religions and all races,� Howland said. “I don’t know of any place in Palo Alto that offers this kind of recreation.�

Resident Kirsten Essenmacher also urged the council to “save Palo

Alto Bowl.� “Palo Alto doesn’t need more hotels and condos,� Essenmacher said. “We need to save this invaluable resource in our city for current

the report.

One case rose to the top of the auditors’ concerns.

Auditors are still evaluating use of a Taser on a man seen in a parked car apparently smoking from a glass “crack pipe.� When the man refused to exit the vehicle and appeared to search for something under the car seats, officers smashed a window and used the Taser to get him out of the car.

Perhaps the best known of the seven Taser-use incidents, which was not covered in the Dec. 9 report, involved Tony Ciampi, a 42-year-old homeless man who slept in his van south of downtown Palo Alto. On March 15, 2008, officers responding to a neighbor’s complaint used a ruse (pretending to radio for a tow truck to remove the van) to get Ciampi to leave his van, which was parked on a residential street, then used Tasers on him during an altercation.

A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge dismissed felony charges against Ciampi in December 2008, citing the illegality of the ruse.

Ciampi has filed suit against the city in federal court alleging civilrights violations in addition to an $11 million claim. Palo Alto city attorneys have said they are interested in settling the case.

In their recent report, auditors praised the department’s 2009 upgraded documentation of Taser incidents, providing a more thorough evaluation. But the auditors found the deployment of the weapons to be inadequate. They cited a case in which an officer fired a Taser at a man but missed, after being confronted by a group of highly intoxicated and belligerent men. “The fact that the Taser missed its target demonstrated the need for continued training in order to ensure officer proficiency as well as the limitations of the tool and the need for officers to be ready to deploy other force options, if necessary.

“That said, we acknowledge the dilemma of the officer who deployed the Taser against one suspect while still struggling to handcuff another suspect. The mere fact that the officer missed the target does not necessarily demonstrate bad judgment or insufficient training,� the auditors wrote.

In the Ciampi case, officers fired at Ciampi three times. The first time, the Taser wire bounced off Ciampi.

In another case, two juveniles wielding plastic pipes threatened and chased a construction worker.

When police attempted to stop the youths, they became combative. A sergeant attempted to fire a Taser at one, aged 16, but the Taser malfunctioned, the auditors wrote. The sergeant attempted to zap the youth with the Taser in “stun-drive mode,� applied directly to the body for five seconds.

The second youth then fought with police and the Taser’s stundrive mode was also used. But neither youth seemed to be affected by the shocks, according to the report.

In both cases, the auditors determined the Taser use was justified to subdue violent suspects. Department policy allows for Taser use on older juveniles. The shocks did not injure the subjects in either case, according to the report.

In the fourth incident listed in the report, an officer applied the Taser twice during a struggle with a combative drunk-driving suspect. That episode is currently being investigated. “We will be conferring with the new chief on Taser-related issues and will report the results of those discussions as well as our conclusions regarding the Taser use in this case in our next report,� the auditors wrote. N Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be e-mailed at sdremann@paweekly.com.

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Upfront

Palo Altans see their city as a mecca for parks, schools and quality jobs, but most believe the city’s child care services and affordable housing programs are woefully inadequate, a newly released survey shows.

The city’s latest Service Efforts and Accomplishments report, which tallies the city’s achievements and gauges popular opinion, shows that most residents are generally pleased with the city’s overall level of services, though slightly less so than in previous years.

This year, 80 percent of residents rated the overall service quality as “good� or “excellent� — a 5 percent drop from 2008. This was the fifth straight year the percentage has declined.

The survey also showed that residents now view “public information� and “street-tree maintenance� as the two areas most strongly correlated with overall service quality. City officials believe this relates to September’s cutting down 63 holly oaks on California Avenue, enraging residents throughout the city.

The tree-removal may also help explain why only 53 percent of the surveyed Palo Altans felt the city’s “overall direction� is “good� or “excellent,� compared to 63 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, residents’ overall satisfaction with the city’s public-information services dropped from 76 percent last year to 68 percent this year.

But residents also found much to love about their city. Compared to other cities, Palo Alto ranked in the 98th percentile as a “place to work,� in the 93rd percentile as a “place to live� and in the 92nd percentile for “overall quality of life.� N —Gennady Sheyner

School parcel-tax vote likely in May, not April Palo Alto voters will have to wait until May 4 to vote on a new parcel tax to fund Palo Alto schools for the next six years, school officials told the Board of Education Tuesday night.

District Superintendent Kevin Skelly told the Board of Education that a public hearing on the proposed tax — scheduled for Tuesday night — needed to be postponed to Jan. 12, along with a board decision on whether to ask voters to replace the current school parcel tax with a larger one.

The board originally had been scheduled to vote on a ballot resolution to replace the current $493-per-parcel-per-year tax with a $589 tax.

However, officials discovered a bureaucratic glitch in their original plan for an April 6 mail-in election date, forcing them to move the proposed election to May 4.

District officials are seeking a new, six-year parcel tax to replace the current one, which generates $9.6 million a year, about 6 percent of the school district’s operating budget. The tax requires a two-thirds approval by voters residing within the Palo Alto Unified School District. N — Chris Kenrick

Palo Alto woman surprises burglar in her bedroom A suspected residential burglar and convicted car thief was surprised in the bedroom of a Palo Alto woman in her Sierra Court home about 3 p.m. Tuesday, police reported today.

Det. Brian Philip said the woman questioned the man, who said before he quickly left that he climbed in through her bedroom window.

The woman reported that he walked down the street after he left her house.

Philip said officers arriving at the scene spotted the man near his vehicle.

He was identified as Carlos Colin, 38, of Newark, and a records check determined that he was on probation for auto theft, Philip said.

A search of the vehicle turned up watches, jewelry and other items, Philip said.

A later interview “revealed that the suspect may be responsible for additional Palo Alto residential burglaries,� Philip said. N — Palo Alto Online staff

Palo Alto eases parking rules for the holidays Palo Alto is relaxing its parking rules this holiday season to encourage more shopping at its retail districts.

Starting Dec. 15, drivers may park for three hours at two-hour zones in downtown and the California Avenue Business District, City Manager James Keene announced at Monday night’s City Council meeting.

The parking rules will be relaxed until Jan. 3, Keene said. “The enforcement will be extended for three hours in support of encouraging shopping in our city,� Keene said.

The city’s posted signs will remain the same, Keene said, but parking enforcement will be relaxed. All other parking restrictions will continue to be enforced, according to a city news release. “It has been an annual tradition for the City to ease its parking rules during the holidays,� Deputy City Manager Steve Emslie said in the release. “We want visitors to come to Palo Alto to shop, dine and enjoy the festive atmosphere, without getting a ticket.� N —Gennady Sheyner

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12/20/09 12/29/09 1/10/10

C H I L D R E N ’ S H O S P I TA L

Your Child’s Health University Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital offers classes and seminars designed to foster good health and enhance the lives of parents and children.

MULTIPLES BREASTFEEDING SEMINAR Join other expectant parents of twins or more in a class designed to focus on the special considerations of breastfeeding multiples.

- Wednesday, January 6: 7:00 - 9:00 pm

HEART TO HEART SEMINAR ON GROWING UP Informative, humorous and lively discussions between parents and their pre-teens on puberty, the opposite sex and growing up. Girls attend these two-part sessions with their moms and boys attend with their dads.

- For Girls: Wednesdays, January 6 & 13 - For Boys: Mondays, January 25 & February 1

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GRANDPARENTS SEMINAR Designed for new and expectant grandparents, this class examines changes in labor and delivery practices, the latest recommendations for infant care and the unique role of grandparents in the life of their grandchild.

- Sunday, January 31: 1:00 - 3:00 pm

PEDIATRIC WEIGHT CONTROL PROGRAM Start the new year with a family-based, behavioral and educational weight management program that promotes healthy eating and exercise habits for overweight children and their families. More than 80% of children achieve long-term weight loss through this program – and parents lose weight too!

The new session starts soon. Please call (650) 725-4424 to register. Spaces are limited.

Call (650) 723-4600 or visit www.lpch.org to register or obtain more information on the times, locations and fees for these and other courses.

L U C I L E PA C K A R D

C H I L D R E N’S H O S P I T A L C A L L TO D AY TO S I G N U P F O R C L A S S E S ( 6 5 0 ) 72 3 - 4 6 0 0 *> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ iVi LiÀÊ£n]ÊÓää ÊU Page 7

Upfront

High-speed rail

Online This Week

R EL ATIONSHIP BA NK ING

Personal | Business

(continued from page 3)

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.

CHP officers hunt for asphalt-throwing assailant personal needs: well-strung racquet, new can of balls, 2nd serve ace

Authorities are looking for the person who threw a chunk of asphalt onto a California Highway Patrol car in Mountain View Wednesday, shattering a rear window and startling the officer inside. (Posted Dec. 17 at 9:09 a.m.)

Arrest made in indecent exposure case Police announced Wednesday that they have arrested the “noon duty aide� who allegedly exposed himself to an eighth-grade girl in an empty room at Graham Middle School earlier this month. (Posted Dec.

&

17 at 8:57 a.m.)

Drunk-driving crackdown starts this weekend Bay Area law-enforcement agencies Friday are kicking off a winterholiday crackdown on drunk drivers this week by stepping up patrols and checkpoints throughout the region. (Posted Dec. 17 at 8:19 a.m.)

business needs: long-term vision, sharp managers, a finger on the pulse

Body of local nurse found, one year later The body of Donna Dowell, an El Camino Hospital nurse who went missing a year ago, has been found by a hiker near Calaveras Reservoir, authorities announced. (Posted Dec. 16 at 8:50 a.m.)

Eshoo bill targeting loud ads passes House For decades, loud TV commercials have been among the leading complaints to the Federal Communications Commission, says Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto. (Posted Dec. 16 at 8:47 a.m.)

John Conover loves his work at Borel Private Bank in San Mateo. He also loves to play tennis. When it comes to banking, understanding both the business and the personal needs of his clients helps to build stronger working relationships.

Decision on Paly portables postponed to Jan. 12 Palo Altans need another month or so to understand better why 13 portable classrooms should occupy one end of the quad at Palo Alto High School for the next three years, the Board of Education decided Tuesday night, delaying the decision to Jan. 12. (Posted Dec. 16 at 1:27 a.m.)

Jury convicts M-A track coach for pushing boy

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After a four-day trial, a San Mateo County jury on Friday convicted a longtime Menlo-Atherton High School cross-country coach of misdemeanor battery over his response last May to three Hispanic boys after their soccer ball hit the side of his house trailer. (Posted Dec. 15 at 9:25 a.m.)

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pact of a higher number trains. “We are years and years away from setting up the ticket prices and our Board of Directors, legislators and the community will have a chance to discuss it,� Barker said. “What we’ve done is present one scenario under which this is a viable project that doesn’t need government subsidy.�

The plan also notes that the projected cost of the new rail line has ballooned from $33.8 million to $42.6 million, though 80 percent of that increase was attributed to inflation and the new methodology used to calculate costs.

The new plan highlights the rail authority’s efforts to raise the needed funds and to boost its outreach efforts as it transitions from planning to implementing the new line.

It also identifies a variety of risks — including financial and political — that could derail the controversial project.

According to the new business plan, the California High-Speed Rail Authority hopes to acquire more than $17 billion from the federal government for the project, which has attracted waves of skepticism and opposition in the Peninsula. The agency also hopes to get more than $4 billion in local grants and $10 billion to $12 billion in private funding.

Steve Emslie, Palo Alto’s deputy city manager who has been working with a coalition of Peninsula cities to track the progress of the controversial project, said the agency’s anticipation of private funds is one of the most problematic aspects of the new business plan. Emslie characterized the agency’s plans for private investments as “optimistic.� “It really doesn’t give a lot of definition of where the private money

Dec. 14 at 11:21 a.m.)

(continued on next page)

UPCOMING EVENTS

Good Morning, Palo Alto!

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Upfront will come from,” Emslie said. “I don’t think in the last 100 years there has been a public transportation system that actually made money without a lot of subsidy.”

The business plan bases its projections for private contributions on its assumption that the rail system, unlike most transit services, “is expected to generate significant operating surpluses.”

The new business plan is the High-Speed Rail Authority’s response to criticism from state officials who characterized its previous business plan as not being rigorous enough. In March, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office criticized the agency’s existing business strategy and its organization, which relies on a small core staff that delegates most of the work to consultants.

The state Senate Budget Subcommittee subsequently required the rail authority to create a new business plan as a condition for future funding.

Sen. Joe Simitian, who was on the Budget Subcommittee that reviewed the rail authority’s funding request last spring, said legislators were also concerned about insufficient community engagement by the rail authority. He recalled one committee hearing in which more than 30 Palo Alto residents asked state legislators to require more public outreach by the rail authority.

“There was concern regarding the rigor of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s business plan and, more specifically, about its plans for com-

munity engagement,” Simitian said.

“It’s not just about listening but also about responding to and considering the concerns that people raised.”

In November, the agency approved a multi-million-dollar contract with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

The new business plan vows to increase and improve its outreach efforts by “refocusing its outreach teams,” upgrading its Web-based outreach tools and strengthening its partnerships with legislators and local government agencies. The document also acknowledges the rail authority’s acceptance of the “context-sensitive solutions” approach to designing the Peninsula segment of the line.

The approach, which gives stakeholders a greater say in the design process, was accepted after extensive lobbying by the group of concerned Peninsula residents who have since formed the group, Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design (CAARD).

Simitian said the plan will be carefully reviewed by various legislators and committees in the coming month. Simitian also said he and Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, plan to hold a public meeting in Palo Alto on Jan. 21 to discuss the business plan and other high-speed-rail-related developments with area residents. N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

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CityView A round-up of

Palo Alto government action this week

City Council (Dec. 14)

Palo Alto Bowl: The council approved a proposal to replace Palo Alto Bowl with a 167-room hotel and 26 townhouses at 4309 El Camino Real. Yes: Drekmeier, Klein, Burt, Schmid, Espinosa, Yeh, Barton No: Morton, Kishimoto

Board of Education (Dec. 15)

Portable classrooms: The board authorized bidding for relocation of portable classrooms to make way for new construction at Gunn High School and Ohlone Elementary School. A vote on a similar measure for Palo Alto High School was postponed until the Jan. 12 meeting. Yes: Unanimous

Finance Committee (Dec. 15)

Fiscal year 2009 budget: The committee voted to accept the comprehensive annual financial report, with the city ending the year with a $809,000 surplus in the General Fund (taking into account the non-transfer of $4.8 million from the General Fund to the technology fund). Yes: Unanimous

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Parks and Recreation Committee (Dec. 15)

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Proposed golf fees for 2010: The committee voted to increase the rate for weekday play from $37 to $38 and instituted a resident discounted rate ($36), beginning Jan. 11, 2010. Yes: Dykwel, King, Losch, Markevitch No: Crommie, Walsh Absent: Davidson Priorities for 2010: The committee set its priorities as recreational facility and park needs, open-space protection and stewardship, community health and wellness, community-services planning and policy recommendations. Yes: Unanimous

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LET’S DISCUSS: Read the latest local news headlines and talk about the issues at Town Square at www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Public Agenda CITY OF PALO ALTO ‌ The city has no meetings scheduled for this week.

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Park clubhouses each hold an Art in Action class twice a week, with age-appropriate lessons and activities. Earlier this week, East Palo Alto Art Director Jordan Fong, who has led the lessons since September, directed young students to create a beach landscape scene in the style of Impressionist artist Pierre-August Renoir.

Fong explained the concept of a horizon line, then instructed the class on using mixtures of yellow, blue and green to make sand, sky and water.

Fong emphasized that Art in Action not only allows kids to create their own artwork but also teaches them art appreciation and cultural history. “We try to expose them to the master artists and major art genres and teach them how to interact with museums and exhibits,� he said as he offered high-fives to his beaming students and distributed dollops of paint and cornstarch.

Menlo Park Boys and Girls Club Art Director Sandra Salsbury, like Fong, said the combination of creative expression and background information makes the program special. “Art in Action ... adds both to kids’ creative and academic experiences,� she said.

According to Salsbury, the Art in Action program comes at a crucial time for local students due to budget restrictions in public schools. “With schools currently getting so little state funding, art is the first thing to get cut,� she said. “If their parents are unable to afford private art-enrichment lessons, they need to get it somewhere else. Art in Action gives them access to art education they wouldn’t normally receive.�

Being able to create art without the pressures of grades and the regular school environment is another benefit of the program held at the Boys and Girls Club, Salsbury said.

Art in Action also gives the students the chance to show off their work for the community, cultivating a pride in their accomplishments. A Peninsula art show (including the East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City clubhouses) was recently held. Another exhibit, featuring more products of the Art in Action classes, will be held at the East Palo Alto clubhouse in January.

Monday’s group of children reveled in the messy-yet-structured hands-on project. “We get to do everything here.

And it’s exciting because we’re using cornstarch,� 6-year-old Asil Broussard joked, singing a refrain of “cornstarch� in an operatic voice as she worked and requesting more glitter from Fong.

Educational though the program may be, she’s in it for the fun. “It’s not a class; it’s where we do art!� she said. N Editorial Assistant Karla Kane can be contacted at kkane@ paweekly.com.

The Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund raises money for local nonprofit programs that serve families and children in need. For more information about donating to the Weekly Holiday Fund, see page 32.

r

(continued from page 3)

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Palo Alto Bowl (continued from page 5)

residents and future generations.”

Council members shared the residents’ sentiments and said they were sad to lose Palo Alto Bowl. Pat Burt said his family has been bowling there for three generations. Yiaway Yeh said he celebrated his 30th birthday there. Larry Klein said his children and grandchildren also had their birthday parties there.

But the majority ultimately agreed that the proposed project was what the city envisioned when it rezoned the site about three years ago to allow commercial development.

“I think it’s a community asset and I’ll be sorry to see it go,” Klein said. “But the City of Palo Alto doesn’t own Palo Alto Bowl.”

Klein also said the approval process for the project has been a “model one,” featuring numerous commission reviews, extensive outreach to the surrounding neighborhood and application changes based on feedback from critics.

The council members also agreed that the project is a much-needed revenue generator at a time when hotel revenues are plummeting.

Staff estimated that the new hotel would generate about $850,000 a year in transient-occupancy taxes, which the city gets from hotel stays.

Revenues from these taxes plummeted by 10.8 percent between fiscal years 2008 and 2009.

Construction on the new hotel is scheduled to begin in fall of 2010, Jim Baer, a member of the development team, told the council.

Morton and Kishimoto, both of whom concluded their eight-year tenures on the City Council Monday night, cast the only votes against the project. Morton characterized the proposed development as too massive and unattractive. He called for landscaping improvements and a more modulated frontage.

“I cannot, on (my) last night after eight years, support another wall on El Camino,” Morton said. But his suggestion to send the project back to the Architectural Review Board for further revisions failed to win support.

The project also includes a new pedestrian and bicycle path along the eastern edge of the property, connecting Monroe Drive and Cesano Court. The new path would create a safer passage for children who currently use El Camino Real to travel to school, Planning Director Curtis Williams said Monday.

The city’s Architectural Review Board and the Planning and Transportation Commission had both approved the project in recent weeks.

Councilman John Barton argued Monday that if the City Council doesn’t follow suit it would risk a lawsuit from the developer.

“Like many political decisions, we’re faced with the challenge of what’s the right thing to do and the legal thing to do,” Barton said. “I appreciate Palo Alto Bowl; I used it. But the real question is not saving Palo Alto Bowl but the zoning rights of the property owners.” N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

Pulse

A weekly compendium of vital statistics

Palo Alto Dec. 8-14 Violence related Arson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Attempted suicide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Other/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Theft related Commercial burglary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Residential burglaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Shoplifting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Vehicle related Auto recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Misc. traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Theft from auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Vehicle accident/minor injury . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/prop. damage . . . . . . .4 Vehicle tow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Alcohol or drug related Drunk in public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Drunken driving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Possession of drugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Miscellaneous Disturbing the peace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Indecent exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Lost property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Misc. penal code violation . . . . . . . . . . .2 Noise ordinance violation . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Psychiatric hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Other/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Warrant/other agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Menlo Park Dec. 9-15 Violence related Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Sexual assault. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Spousal abuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Theft related Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Identity theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Residential burglaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Shoplifting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Other/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle related Auto recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Auto theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Driving w/ suspended license. . . . . . . . .4 Driving w/o license . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Hit and run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Theft from auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Vehicle accident/ minor. injury . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/ no details . . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/ prop damage . . . . . . .4 Vehicle tow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Alcohol or drug related Drug activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Drunken driving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Registrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Miscellaneous Coroner case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Disturbing/annoying phone calls. . . . . . .1 Info. case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Located missing person . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Lost property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Medical aid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Property for destruction . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Warrant arrest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Other/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Deaths

Ola Cobb

Ola Mae Cobb, 94, a former East Palo Alto and Menlo Park resident, died Dec. 15.

She was born in Wagoner, OK. She was a devout Jehovah’s Witnesses for more than 70 years.

She is preceded in death by her children, Daniel and Deborah Cobb.

She is survived by her children, Lois Fleming of Stockton; Samuel Cobb of Modesto; Jonathan Cobb of East Palo Alto; and Robert Cobb of Ensanada, Mexico.

A memorial service will be held Dec. 26 at the Kingdom Hall, 1026 Chicago Ave., Modesto, at 3 p.m.

Answers to this week’s puzzles, which can be found on page 52

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Died on December 7 at the age of 90. Born and raised in San Francisco, Warren graduated from Stanford University, but was a lifelong fan of Cal, his father’s alma mater. His wife of almost 67 years, June Blackaller Spieker (1921-2009), was a Cal co-ed when they met while sailing to the South Pacific; they married in 1942. The war years were spent in Southern California at Santa Ana Army Air Base; ‘overseas’ duty was Catalina Island where Warren was charged with troop entertainment. His only brush with ‘hostilities’ came while umpiring a baseball game in which he pronounced Joe DiMaggio OUT! Following World War II the Spieker family had grown with a son and daughter; they settled in their new home in Atherton and the family grew with 2 more sons. Warren loved country living on the Peninsula and was a lifelong local businessman, starting Menlo Motors in the ‘50s, which evolved into Redwood Lease Company. He devoted himself to his family and hosted the Kids Swim Carnival in the backyard pool for scores of years, as well as Boys Club events for his sons and their friends. He was a sports enthusiast as a participant, a fan, or a cheerleader for his children. He was immensely proud of having attended 76 consecutive Big Games, a record that still stands. A member of Menlo Park Kiwanis, he enthusiastically organized the City Swim Meet at Burgess Pool each summer in an attempt to provide wholesome competition and entertainment for all the local kids. The Kiwanis Club also hosted his lunchtime lectures on travel, his passion. The memoirs of his travel years are collected in ‘Spieking of Travel’.

Warren and June traveled to more than 200 countries together; he was driven by his interest in history. Legend has it that he even had a dog shipped from Paris to surprise his wife who always had a dog or 2 to complete the family.

There was always a sparkle in his eye, a toast on his lips, and a laugh in his heart. He was a keen jokester and everyone was fair game. He was surrounded by family and friends, always and everywhere. He is survived by his 4 children, 13 grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts may be made to the Kiwanis Foundation in memory of Warren Spieker. Donations may be sent to the Kiwanis Foundation, P.O. Box 311, Menlo Park CA 94026. A memorial mass at Nativity Church in Menlo Park is planned for family members.

Sarah, Sally to all of her friends and Nonni to her grandsons, passed away December 8, 2009. She was surrounded by her family in her Menlo Park home of forty four years.

Sally was born November 27, 1933 in Washington D.C. to Maj. Gen. John W. (Jazz) and Marion B. Harmony. Many of her fondest memories were of the time that she spent with her parents, She remained a devoted daughter throughout her lifetime.

Sally graduated from high school from Marymount International in Rome, Italy. She received her B.A from the University of Maryland, where she served as President of the Delta Gamma Sorority and was chosen to be a Cherry Blossom Princess. She began her career as a teacher in New Jersey and went on to teach at Sarah Dix Hamlin in San Francisco. After taking time off to raise her two children, she returned to teaching at Trinity Parish School in Menlo Park. Upon retirement, she continued to pursue her love of literacy by tutoring students in her home and volunteered at the Oak Knoll Library for twenty years.

Sally loved music and was a patron of the San Francisco Symphony for over twenty five years. She shared the passion for music with her grandson by introducing him to the Ragazzi Boys Chorus. She was a devoted gardener, a gourmet cook, an avid reader and cultured traveler. For over thirty years, she enjoyed the serenity she found in the family's vacation home in Lake Tahoe.

Sally was married to her beloved husband Thomas J. Sullivan for 45 years. She was a devoted mother to her children Carrol and Stephen. She adored her grandchildren, John and Matthew.

She is survived by her husband, children, son-in-law Robert Cleveland, grandchildren, brother-in-law Gerald Sullivan S.J., sister-in-law Angela Sullivan and her many nieces and nephews.

Sally was a generous and loyal friend who will be dearly missed.

A memorial will be held in her honor at Holy Trinity Parish in Menlo Park at 2:00 PM on December 19, 2009. A private interment will take place at the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery.

Memorial contributions may be made in her name to: The Ragazzi Boys Chorus, 20 N. San Mateo Dr., Suite 9 San Mateo, CA. 94401.

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Palo Alto Weekly • December 18, 2009 • Page 13

Editorial

Review of Taser use is timely and necessary Palo Alto police auditors’ call for overall review of Taser-related policies and training is appropriate for these ‘sometimes lethal’ weapons

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o fatalities have occurred from the seven instances in which Palo Alto police officers have used Tasers to help subdue or control suspects in police contacts. But nationally, the list of Taser-related deaths has climbed into the hundreds.

In a new report to the Palo Alto City Council last week, police auditors Michael Gennaco and Robert Miller detail four of the lesser-known circumstances in which Tasers were used, concluding that most were appropriate — with some glitches such as missing the mark or the Taser not being effective in two instances.

Concern about the use of Tasers is not new. When Tasers were first proposed for Palo Alto police in 2005, the Weekly published a cover story, “Shock Value,” that detailed concerns nationally about the use of Tasers — then billed almost exclusively as a “nonlethal” alternative to guns.

But even then there were about 50 known deaths linked to Taser use, since grown to at least 10 times that, according to sketchy and evolving national statistics.

Tasers in Palo Alto were finally recommended only after extended, contentious hearings by a special citizens task force.

Regrettably, the most ardent local critics of Tasers have used a tactic of personal attacks and name-calling against city and police officials in their incessant anti-Taser, largely e-mail diatribes. This polarizing approach has been a serious setback to any balanced look at the use and risks of Tasers in Palo Alto.

The auditors are correct in their recommendation that Palo Alto city officials review Taser-use policies and training procedures.

The auditors praised the department for improving Taseruse reporting: “This year, the Department has upgraded the documentation of Taser incidents, providing a more thorough and well structured evaluation,” they wrote. “We believe this will enhance the Department’s ability to evaluate and improve the utility of this still relatively new tool.”

The department also has improved its willingness to report Taser-use incidents as part of routine reports on arrests, rather than withholding such information for a later report on Taser incidents as it did for a time.

According to police reports generally, one of the most effective uses of the Taser is as a deterrent: belligerent individuals quickly decide to comply with instructions when a Taser is aimed at them.

But it is clearly a misnomer to call them non-lethal.

They need to be defined as lethal weapons that most of the time don’t kill.

‘Thanks’ in hard times means helping others

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n the “spirit of giving” of the impending holiday season, the Weekly each week publishes on its website (www.PaloAltoOnline.com) an expanding list of community-based organizations that provide services, counseling, clothing and even food for families and individuals who especially need help during an extra-difficult economic time.

The holiday season is a time to pause from shopping and preparations for family festivities to feel a sense of thanks for what most of us do have. And giving back to one’s community is a priceless part of that feeling.

The list and a summary of programs or services are part of the Weekly’s contribution to enhancing the very best, most positive aspects of our community and region: those nonprofit organizations that channel the energies of hundreds of volunteers to make like better or easier for our neighbors.

The listing is in addition to the Weekly’s own Holiday Fund, now underway to raise $260,000 or more for local organizations that provide specific services for children and families. People may give online through the Palo Alto Online website, and organizations can get grant-application forms there as well.

Some donors are responding to the hard economy by increasing their gifts.

One woman, raised in Palo Alto, has traditionally given $500 each year to the Holiday Fund in memory of her late father. This year she doubled that amount, knowing that hard times may reduce donations from some others.

This spirit of generosity is what makes a community extra special, and the Weekly is proud to have a share in that. Please join us in that sharing this year.

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Spectrum Editorials, letters and opinions

Project Cornerstone Editor, Palo Alto is an incredible community, and I have enjoyed my first six months working at a church in Palo Alto.

I am in awe at all of the amazing people and groups that exist to support young people in the city, especially after the tragedies in the past few months.

Through my experiences as an elected official in another part of the county, I have become familiar with Project Cornerstone and the developmental asset model. This is a model that has transformed communities throughout the state and nation.

I am excited to hear the Palo Alto Arts, Parks, and Recreation departments support this model. The Palo Alto YMCA and Gunn High School have recently expressed interest in integrating the asset approach into Gunn.

Project Cornerstone’s work is based upon the Search Institutes’ Forty Developmental Assets, which are the experiences, values, relationships and opportunities that all children and youth need to thrive.

The latest brochure from Project Cornerstone asks three important questions. Have you smiled at a child today? Do you know your neighbors by name? Have you asked a teenager about his or her interests?

I encourage individuals and groups to find out more about the organization and the movement by visiting www.projectcornerstone. org/index.htm I also invite you to join me in saying hello to, learning the names of, and spending a few minutes getting to know the incredible young people in our community.

Everyone has a role to play — at home, in school, in faith communities, in neighborhoods and in the larger community.

Chris Miller Youth Ministry Director, Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish

Ban Tasers Editor, Tasers ought never be carried by anyone other than the most discerning police officer. Thus, the tool ought not be standard issue in the Palo Alto Police Department.

The PAPD is best served by getting back to the basics of law enforcement.

Ban tasers in Palo Alto.

Ronna Devincenzi El Camino Real Palo Alto

Climategate?

Editor, Where has the Palo Alto City Council been that apparently it, along with most citizens of Palo Alto, are unaware of the current Climategate scandal at the University

of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, where prominent scientists in the climate field have been cooking, deleting and changing data on global warming to make it fit the current “theory” and discrediting and firing any scientist who disagreed with the current “accepted” version.

This has all come about because of the Freedom of Information Act and a whistle blower on the inside in the U.K. who simply couldn’t stand the lying any more and made public e-mails from the past 10 years between the top scientists in the field, these same scientists whose figures played prominently in Al Gore’s and the U.N’.s theory.

In the whistle-blower e-mails it becomes clear that they had tremendous financial advantages in pushing the people-cause-globalwarming theory even though they were in a major dilemma to explain why we have actually been cooling for the past seven or eight years.

Why hasn’t your newspaper covered what may turn out to be the largest scientific scandal in this century? It’s all over Europe, Australia, the Middle East but not printed in Palo Alto or the Bay Area in general.

Isn’t journalism about printing the truth? Just look up Climategate

and you’ll find out all about it if you don’t already know.

Shame on you for not covering it.

Nancy Deussen Greer Road Palo Alto

Orwellian Obama?

Editor, President Obama said, “Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it’s incompatible with the very purpose of faith, for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us... The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached, their fundamental faith in human progress.”

In George Orwell’s book “1984,” the main character worked for the “Ministry of Truth,” dedicated to eliminating every vestige of the truth and replacing it with what the government said was truth.

Force is the typical U.S. response to problems. It reminds me of the (continued on next page)

U.S. military man during the Viet-

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

What do you think? A new survey shows strong satisfaction with Palo Alto city services: What do you like best about the city?

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!

Town Square

Guest Opinion Balancing economic needs and a climate catastrophe?

by Anna Eshoo limate change is one of the most serious issues facing our nation and our planet. Today we are at a key juncture of the climate change debate in the United States and internationally, both through the Copenhagen conference and generally as a turning point in time.

Given the economic crises we face, some say it would be better to walk away from this tremendous challenge now. But communities here and abroad expect leaders to rise to the challenge and do what’s necessary to create a clean-energy foundation for generations to come.

The people of Silicon Valley understand what we’re facing. Silicon Valley is where innovation is a way of life, and caring about our environment is not a political issue but a basic value.

We are alarmed at the damage being inflicted on our planet by greenhouse gases, alarmed by the growing threat of global warming and climate change on communities around the world, and alarmed by the threat to our own domestic tranquility caused by our reliance on fossil fuels and foreign oil supplies.

Climate change is undeniably and inextricably linked to the security interests of our nation. Last year, as chair of the House Intelligence Community Management Subcommittee, I held a joint hearing with Chairman Ed Markey’s House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. The hearing

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was on the national-security implications of global climate change.

From the testimony at this hearing it became clear that climate change could seriously threaten our national security as well as our allies’ security by exacerbating existing global problems such as droughts, resource shortages and extreme-weather events.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen presents an important opportunity to take global leadership in the fight against climate change. The recent Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment” finding, classifying greenhouse gases as a public-health danger, is a caution against inaction and makes clear the U.S. government’s intention to engage on this matter.

On May 28 the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which I’m a senior member, passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act. This legislation represents an historic effort to shape a new energy future for our country, to move the U.S. into a leadership position to address global climate change, and finally break our addiction to fossil fuels and advance alternative sources of energy here at home.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act guarantees an investment of $190 billion in new, clean energy technologies and energy efficiency which will create jobs and spur new industries. I worked tirelessly with the House leadership, as well as chairmen Henry Waxman and Markey to see that this legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26.

There must be decisive action on this issue, domestically and internationally. The consequences of “business as usual” are too great, and the price to the global environment,

There must be decisive action on this issue, domestically and internationally. The consequences of “business as usual” are too great, and the price to the global environment, economy and human welfare is too high to delay any longer.

economy and human welfare is too high to delay any longer.

In Silicon Valley, we understand not only the danger of climate change but also the economic opportunity it presents.

Our nation can and should be the numberone leader in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, developing green technologies and protecting our planet for future generations.

While the course may not be easy, our opportunities are vast and the cost of inaction catastrophic. N Anna G. Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, has represented the 14th Congressional District since 1993, with special emphasis on environmental, health, energy, technology and economic issues. She can be e-mailed via http://eshoo.house.gov .

Streetwise

“What types of developments would you like to see in Palo Alto?”

Posted Dec. 15 at 4:35 p.m. by Paul Losch, Palo Alto blogger: I am a big believer that Palo Alto is a special, but not unique, community. There are other towns that offer great opportunities and amenities, but Palo Alto has been very good with its offerings over the years.

They don’t all come from the city. Stanford provides many programs available to the public, as does the school district and private entities, including Palo Alto Bowl.

This is glue that holds us together. I really don’t care for bowling, but I attended numerous birthday parties at Palo Alto Bowl when my kids were younger.

I worry that many programs that are provided through the city’s Community Services Department are now at risk of getting cut or eliminated altogether.

While it is a shame to lose the bowling alley, it appears that this approval to get a Hilton Hotel in town will help the revenue line, which in turn means that fewer programs run the risk of getting cut.

I regret that Palo Alto Bowl is going away, and I hope that some of the revenue generated by this new hotel through the hotel taxes paid by patrons will keep alive other programs, mainly funded by city revenues, that otherwise would be cut or eliminated altogether.

Letters (continued from previous page) nam War who claimed his soldiers had to destroy a local village in order to “save” it!

Well, the U.S. was built on violence, as I’ve often said, and violence will also be its downfall one of these days. Sounds just like some governments today, and like many politicians included Obama!

Ted Rudow III Encina Avenue Palo Alto

Asked at Midtown Shopping Center. Interviews by John Squire.

Photographs by Veronica Weber.

Joe Johnson

Fern Koolpe

Tanya Dargel

Yash Jadeja

George Young

“A greener infrastructure with more bike lanes.”

“Not too much. We have a lot of development here. I guess single family homes.”

“I’d love to see more all-weather soccer fields. I have a husband who plays at Mayfield and they always need more space.”

“Low-rise buildings. I think it’ll maintain the same look.”

“Of course we need more low-cost worker residences. Retail doesn’t succeed in town, so I guess start-ups.”

Engineer Crestview Drive, San Carlos

Retiree Price Court, Palo Alto

Project Manager Drew Avenue, Mountain View

Marketing Consultant Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

Retiree Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto

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Cover Story

A CHANGING M

by Gennady Sheyner

most people, it’s simply too broad, too nebulous and too, well, comprehensive, to resonate with their parochial concerns.

But people may want to get involved. Councilman Greg Schmid expects the city’s revision of its Plan to be one of Palo Alto’s most critical debates of 2010, determining key issues such as whether Palo Alto should protect its neighborhoods from further growth or promote

economic growth through increased development.

Some significant portions of the Plan have become outdated since the dot-com boom 10 years ago, making the revision all the more important and timely, according to city Planning Director Curtis Williams.

“It’s a critical time, in terms of the economy being in the worst shape since the Great Depression and the unprecedented attention to consideration for environment,” Williams said. “There are some big-picture issues affecting this Comprehensive Plan that weren’t there in 1998.”

With the city’s finances drying up and the retail sector flagging, planners are now more focused on protecting commercial properties, attracting neighborhood-serving stores and generating revenues, Williams said.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, have been pushing for measures to make Palo Alto a “greener” and more sustainable city. Williams said

P the city intends to integrate policies on energy and water efficiency into the Plan’s existing chapters.

Transportation will also be a major issue of the revision, he said.

“There will be some discussion of concentrating housing closer to transit and creating more walkable and bikeable neighborhoods,” Williams said.

The process of revising the Plan, city officials hope, will provide the opportunity for community members and city planners to address these challenges, come to a consensus on where the city needs to go and devise the blueprint for how to get there.

alo Alto’s revision effort kicked off in October, when the Planning and Transportation Commission started digesting each of the Plan’s goals, policies and programs to determine which still apply, which demand revision and which should be nixed altogether.

Consultants have been producing reports about the city’s housing needs and economic potential.

Urban designers and residents have been planning the city’s vision for two dynamic neighborhoods — an area around California Avenue near Fry’s Electronics and the heavily residential neighborhood around East Meadow Circle and Fabian Way (see sidebar).

Meanwhile, the city’s vision for just about every other neighborhood is about to get a hefty injection of “sustainability” policies and programs that encourage more stores

Veronica Weber

ost Palo Altans never hear about the Comprehensive Plan. If they do, they’re usually livid about a proposed new building or development nearby, and someone points them to the lofty document to explain why it’s allowed.

The Plan, which is revised every 10 years, is subtle but powerful. It serves as the city’s official land-use bible and, at least in theory, guides just about every major land-use, transportation and economic decision. Council members and planning commissioners frequently cite its goals and visions to justify their votes on everything from new housing developments to governance practices.

Palo Altans care deeply about the issues within the Plan, even if they’ve never read the eight-chapter document. Last year, the city’s annual Service Efforts and Accomplishments Report showed “land use, planning and zoning” as one of the two areas (along with “street repair”) that most strongly correlated with residents’ overall satisfaction with city services.

Recent public hearings on large developments such as Alma Plaza, the College Terrace Centre and the new hotel planned for the Palo Alto Bowl site brought crowds of protesters to the Council Chambers.

Residents who were alarmed by the city’s September tree-removal operation on California Avenue can find the source of their problem in the Comprehensive Plan’s Program L-28, which directs the city to work with “merchants” and “property owners” to “create an urban design guide for the California Avenue business district” (which may help explain why residents in surrounding neighborhoods weren’t consulted before the city cut down 63 holly oaks from the bustling district).

Those upset about the funky art projects that developers occasionally provide as “community benefits” in exchange for permission to build dense projects should look no further than Policy L-73, which directs city officials to “consider public art and cultural facilities as a public benefit in connection with new development projects.”

In short, the Plan helps explain why Palo Alto looks, feels and functions as it does.

But despite the Comprehensive Plan’s power, few residents seem to be paying attention to the city’s current $850,000 effort to revise it, an endeavor that began in earnest in October and is scheduled to be completed in 2011. Though the document touches on just about every land-use anxiety, it rarely rises above the academic and bureaucratic realms. For

A cyclist rides through the new Vantage condominiums on East Meadow Drive in south Palo Alto.

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Cover Story

City resi dents, p lanners

undertak e $850, 00

0 ef ort how Palo A lto will loofk and

Clarum Homes is planning an eco-friendly office-and-residential building in the California Avenue business district, an example of locating housing near transportation. supply of residential land” in Palo Alto and states that the city “will continue to seek opportunities to rezone commercial land to residential and strongly discourage the conversion of residential lands to commercial.”

As residents of South Palo Alto learned in the ensuing years, the city’s strategy worked a little too well. Dense developments with

East Meadow Circle in south Palo Alto is the subject of city scrutiny, as planners and community members decide what its future will look like.

“We rushed through these changes to require mixed-use on El Camino Real so that we would have some commercial vitality,” Burt said.

These days, a developer must acquire a conditional-use permit and demonstrate the residential proposal is “perfect” for the particular site before the city approves, Burt said.

The changes seem to have worked. According to the Service Efforts and Accomplishments report, the number of housing units approved in Palo Alto dropped from 517 in fiscal year 2007 to 103 in fiscal year 2008.

D Weekly file photo

and less sprawl, more biking and less driving, more community services and fewer single-family homes.

Palo Alto isn’t the only city wrestling with its Comprehensive Plan. Every city has a grand strategic document (with names like the “Comprehensive Plan” or the equally vague “General Plan”) that it periodically revises. Such amendments give a city the chance to align its land-use bible with the facts on the ground and plans for the future.

Palo Alto’s Plan feels particularly outdated because of recent changes, however.

Schmid noted that Palo Alto had virtually no population growth over a 30-year period that ended in the mid-1990s, when the current Plan was written. Since then, population has ballooned by about 15 percent, including a 5 percent jump since 2005, according to the city’s new Service Efforts and Accomplishment Report.

In the first half of the decade, new, multi-family developments have popped up in local neighborhoods.

It’s what the city wanted — or thought it wanted at the time.

During the height of the dot-com era, when high-tech companies set up shop in Palo Alto, city leaders toiled to protect neighborhoods from encroachment by commercial developments. The “Housing” chapter in the current Comprehensive Plan cites “the limited

grand-sounding names (Arbor Real, Echelon, Altaire) sprang up in the south end of the city.

Census figures show that Palo Alto’s housing stock spiked by 8 percent between 2000 and 2009.

The growth added cars to local roads and students to local schools.

Schmid referred to these developments as “mini-fortresses” that stand isolated from surrounding neighborhoods and contribute to school overcrowding and traffic congestion.

“In 30 years, (no developments) had gotten built, but suddenly we had a wave of them,” Councilman Pat Burt said. “We got Arbor Real, and we were ready to have other types of Arbor Real-type developments at Palo Alto Bowl and other places of town.”

The city responded in 2006 by revising its Zoning Ordinance, which flows directly from the Comprehensive Plan. Burt, who took part in the revision, said one of the major accomplishments was making it tougher for developers to build residential projects like Arbor Real, a 181-unit townhouse development on El Camino Real that for many people has become a paradigm of the cramped, new developments.

function in the future

Courtesy of the City of Palo Alto

Courtesy of Clarum Homes

to envision

Transportation hubs are the focus of city and regional planners, who hope to build denser housing nearby.

espite the Zoning Ordinance fix, housing remains at the forefront of the debate over what Palo Alto of the future should be. Depending on whom you ask, the city either has far more houses than it can handle or a dramatic housing shortage.

Palo Alto residents have complained about overcrowded schools, declining city amenities due to the influx of new neighbors and the loss of the “small-town feeling” with which they grew up.

But regional planners stress the need for cities to build more housing so people don’t have to commute long distances to their jobs, clogging roadways throughout the area.

Putting a sharper point on it,

California’s Senate Bill 375 now requires jurisdictions that don’t add enough new homes to produce a housing study every four years.

Ignoring SB 375 could imperil the city, according to Palo Alto planning Commissioner Lee Lippert.

“If we choose to ignore the numbers, others will take advantage of SB 375 and other regional agencies will tell Palo Alto what to do,” Lippert said, citing the possibility Palo Alto would lose the power to update its own Comprehensive Plan.

Both city leaders and residents recognize Palo Alto’s unique housing problems. The city has more than twice as many workers as residents — an imbalance that forces tens of thousands of people to drive to and from Palo Alto every day, causing traffic congestion and parking shortages throughout the city.

But while residents frequently grouse about massive new housing developments, they’re also acutely aware of the glaring shortage of affordable housing. Palo Altans rank their city in the 11th percentile for “availability of affordable quality housing” (which translates roughly to a grade of F-), according to the Services and Accomplishments Report. The city is also in the 19th percentile for “variety of housing options.” (continued on page 19)

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Cover Story

A tale of

two neighborhoods

C

alifornia Avenue and East Meadow Circle are both heading for major transformations as part of Palo Alto’s revision of its Comprehensive Plan.

The former epitomizes the city’s best chance to create a future that aligns with principles of New Urbanism. The latter symbolizes its ongoing effort to atone for the landuse sins of its past.

Each exemplifies, in some ways, the city’s transformation since the current Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 1998.

Since January, planning staff, urban-design consultants and residents from the two neighborhoods have been meeting to draw up new visions for the two respective areas.

Armed with glue-sticks and multicolored construction paper, Palo Altans have been redesigning land-use maps, debating the pros and cons of new housing and dreaming aloud of future amenities such as bike paths and new public parks.

The selection of these neighborhoods as the subjects of “concept area plans” has everything to do with local and regional trends since the late ‘90s. The dot-com boom brought an injection of businesses to the California Avenue zone, which is bounded by Alma Street and El Camino Real on the north and south and by College and Lambert avenues. Now, several buildings that were previously used for offices and light industry stand vacant, though the area still bustles with an eclectic range of stores, small businesses, housing complexes and public buildings such as the Palo Alto Courthouse.

The area’s proximity to the Caltrain station has made it a prized asset for regional planners and proponents of New Urbanism, who

Palo Alto’s revisions to its Comprehensive Plan look to transform California Avenue and East Meadow Circle

by Gennady Sheyner want to see denser neighborhood centers, more bikeable streets and more mixed-use developments near transportation hubs. New state policies and laws, most notably Senate Bill 375, tie land use to transportation and offer grants to cities that avoid sprawl and build dense developments near bus stations and train lines.

City Planning Director Curtis Williams noted that much of the California Avenue concept plan area is zoned Pedestrian and Transportation-Oriented Development (PTOD) — a designation that allows developers to build dense mixed-use and residential projects. Other portions are zoned for industrial use and are primed for rezoning. Some of the manufacturers who set up shop there during better years have left, including Agilent. The concept plan will consider what to do with these sites.

Already, city officials have been plotting to use the area for dense development in response to recent population growth. A year ago, the City Council welcomed the city’s first PTOD-zoned project, an eco-

friendly development by Clarum Homes that includes four residential units upstairs and offices on the ground floor. Councilman Sid Espinosa said the Clarum project “ushers in a new vision for what can exist on California Avenue.”

But clearly, not everyone is excited about this new vision. At the first meeting on the California Avenue concept plan, participants almost came to blows and had to be restrained after moderator David Early, a consultant whose firm is helping the city put the two concept plans together, suggested that residents appear to be open to some new housing. Tempers flared after residents maintained that new housing and new offices are the last things they want to see in their neighborhood.

Others said they were skeptical of the PTOD model and its assertion that if you put housing near a train people will stop driving.

Doug Moran, a Barron Park resident who attended the meetings, is among the skeptics. He said the city appears poised to bring new residents and offices to the busy area. He points to new office-heavy developments, including the recently approved College Terrace Centre, which includes close to 40,000 square feet of office space, and the soon-to-be-reviewed development at 195 Page Mill Road, which includes 84 apartments and 50,000 square feet of research and development space.

“What you see here is that the residents and the city consultants have very different notions of what should happen,” said Moran, a former co-chair of Palo Alto Neighborhoods, a residents’ group. “They’re pitching these ‘mixed-use’ projects with a huge amount of offices, some housing and very little retail, and they’re not making a realistic

projection on how many people are actually using the train.”

Moran said the city should focus on supporting existing retailers and retaining Fry’s Electronics, a lucrative revenue generator that is located in the southeast corner of the concept plan area.

But many of the residents who participated in the workshops on the California Avenue Concept Plan also agreed on a few basic premises.

Though most opposed bulky housing developments, many participants said they were open to housing above retail along the Caltrain corridor. Participants also stressed the need to protect retail, build more parking structures and preserve the simple, unpretentious character of California Avenue.

Early’s company, Design Community & Environment, plans to transform the residents’ vision into architectural renderings and return for a third meeting in early February.

I

f the California Avenue concept plan represents the “new vision” for Palo Alto, the East Meadow Circle area represents the city’s attempts to atone for the trends of the recent past.

The concept-plan area, located in south Palo Alto next to the Mountain View border, includes a wide range of light-industrial businesses, including the satellite-manufacturing giant Space Systems/Loral. The city’s consulting firm estimated that there are about 3,500 people working in this area.

But in recent years, new housing developments began to crop up around East Meadow Circle. The city’s Comprehensive Plan encourages new “family housing” and until recently, its zoning code had allowed construction of residential projects in

the industrial and commercial zones.

So when the dot-com boom became the dot-com bust and commercial use started to fizzle, the industrial neighborhood was stampeded by housing developments featuring more than 500 new residential units.

Now, Palo Alto is thinking of new land-uses for the industrial sites and looking to provide the residents and workers in this crowded neighborhood with stores, bike paths and other neighborhood improvements.

“What we’re doing is focusing on making this East Meadow Circle and Fabian Way area a better place for people who are living there and working there,” Early said at a workshop. “We’re thinking about connections to surrounding neighborhoods and we’re thinking about how to incorporate recent developments such as the Echelon housing project and the Campus for Jewish Life.

“It’s not about putting in additional housing,” he said.

At subsequent meetings, residents lobbied for safer bike paths, better access to the baylands, more retail and more park space. Some said they’d like to see the area around the Campus for Jewish Life rezoned to “neighborhood commercial (CN),” a designation that allows grocery stores, restaurants and other businesses that cater to the immediate neighborhood. Residents also said they were open to rezoning properties along Charleston Road and east of San Antonio Road from lightindustrial to “service commercial (CS),” which allows larger retailers that serve the whole city and that generally require more parking.

The Planning and Transportation Commission is scheduled to review the concept plan for the East Meadow Circle and Fabian Way area on Jan. 27. N

Veronica Weber

Cars are parked outside Space Systems/Loral, as residential buildings belonging to the new Campus for Jewish Life in south Palo Alto rise in the background.

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Vision

(continued from page 17)

The planning commission, which has just begun revising the Comprehensive Plan’s Housing chapter, is now considering radical changes to the section.

The chapter’s current vision statement vaguely describes the city’s commitment to a “variety of housing opportunities” and the city’s “special emphasis” on “family housing and housing that addresses the health care, child care, transit, recreation and social service needs of all Palo Alto residents.” But given the recent glut of new housing and its lack of space for new developments, many believe that “family housing” is just about the last thing Palo Alto needs these days.

Commissioner Arthur Keller has persistently argued the city has more than enough market-rate family housing and that the Comprehensive Plan should encourage affordable housing, small condos and residences for seniors and young professionals.

Complicating matters, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), a regional agency charged with making sure Bay Area cities provide their “fair share” of housing for the region, has asked Palo Alto to build 2,860 new housing units by 2014 — a mandate that most city officials have all but dismissed as laughable, if not impossible.

Councilman Larry Klein called the agency’s housing mandate “a 20th-century solution to a 21stcentury problem.” Burt said the numbers are based on the longgone boom days of the dot-com era.

“There’s a recognition that the state housing authority mandates and ABAG mandates were pushed out in a period where there was rapid growth going on,” Burt said.

“We’re in a period of contraction, but we’re still getting mandates for all types of housing.”

But the city has reasons to pay attention to what regional planners are saying. Williams said cities that ignore ABAG requirements risk losing state funding for planning and transportation. The city’s nonprofit developers could have a harder time getting state grants.

Rebellious cities also risk getting involved in legal battles with the state. In June, State Attorney General Jerry Brown sued Pleasanton because of the city’s housing cap.

In October, California Supreme Court of Appeals ruled against Irvine after the city challenged a state mandate to zone for 35,000 units of housing by 2014 — a requirement that the city argued is impossible to meet. Irvine lost its case despite years of litigation and support from 20 other cities.

Burt said the state has recently taken a more aggressive stance toward cities that shrug off the housing mandates.

“Every year, the state is trying to create more and more hammers to make sure the cities toe the line on this,” Burt said. “Now, the trend is not just to sue the cities that ignored the state mandates, but to also go after cities that made the

effort but had the state disagree with their efforts.”

Like a voice in the wilderness, Lippert has been the planning commission’s most vehement proponent of zoning for more housing.

Last week, he split from the majority of the commission and argued that zoning for dense housing is a must, given state requirements.

Building more housing, particularly near transportation hubs, would also help the city reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions, he argued.

“If we don’t deal with the increase of housing in the community, if we don’t deal with the (state) demands that say we have to build more housing, then we’ll have to deal with more traffic because people will be commuting to this area,” Lippert said. “We’ll see diminished levels of service when it comes to roads and service.”

T

he debate over the Housing chapter, as well as the rest of the Comprehensive Plan, is expected to stretch over the next (continued on page 22)

Courtesy of the City of Palo Alto

Cover Story

The City of Palo Alto’s current planning efforts include transforming the area encompassing Charleston Road at Fabian Way.

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A community health education series from Stanford Hospital & Clinics

Beyond Medical Basics:

in situations where the lives of a patient and family have been turned upside down in a second, a social worker is the person who helps a family get organized to cope.

Hospital Social Workers Blend Compassion and Counseling

Even before the Carrigans arrived at Stanford to be with their son, hospital social worker Tim Chamberlain had phoned them, ready to help them cope not only with the emotional impact of what had happened but with practical issues as well. Among those was the question of recovering Andrew’s motorcycle. A local towing company had it and the charges were mounting. Chamberlain was ready to take care of the paperwork to get the bike released. “He went above and beyond the call to solve a problem, relieving us of some stress in the middle of everything else that was going on,� said Jim Carrigan.

As the days passed, and Andrew slowly defied an initially poor prognosis, Chamberlain continued to be someone whose compassion and understanding

In his first meeting with the Carrigan family, Chamberlain said, “We talked about what had happened and we talked about the feeling of being afraid he might not survive. Part of my reward is being able to offer support, to say, ‘It’s appropriate for you to be afraid.’ But we also talked about how it was okay to maintain hope. There is nothing wrong with hope.�

was crucial. Not only was Chamberlain willing to let Carrigan vent his frustration, but he remained a proactive champion even after Andrew was discharged.

What the Carrigans discovered at Stanford was that pivotal element of care supplied by a particular group of professionals. “Social workers are the cement that binds all the disciplines,� said Will Gressman, interim director of the Hospital’s Social Work and Case Management Department. Whether a patient is waiting for an organ transplant, or receiving treatment for cancer or recovering from an accidental trauma, Stanford’s care team includes a social worker.

Norbert von der Groeben

Jim Carrigan was in shock. Three thousand miles across the country, his son Andrew was lying comatose at Stanford Hospital, bones broken up and down the left side of his body. And, a few hours after he’d been hit by a car while riding his motorcycle on Highway 9, he also suffered a stroke that disabled his uninjured right side. Carrigan and his wife Sue were overwhelmed.

Seeing the Whole Picture Every day, social workers gather with nurses and physicians to talk about their patients, reviewing their progress, working together to make sure that the non-medical needs of each are considered and addressed. For one patient, a social worker might be helping with insurance issues; for another, the most important service might be to arrange for a family visit.

“We’re problem solvers,� said social worker manager Michael Thomas. “We answer all manner of questions and all sorts of non-medical problems come to us. We fill that role of being an emotional support to patients and families, identifying things that might be obstacles to doing well here in the hospital and to a smooth transition out of the hospital.� “People go to a hospital and can be pretty clueless,� said Jim Carrigan. “When something catastrophic happens, you need to ask as many questions as possible. You’re dealing with so many people and then there are shift changes. You would be lost unless you really get a handle on it.�

Norbert von der Groeben

' " ) ( '

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Page 20ĂŠUĂŠ iVi“LiÀÊ£n]ÊÓää™ÊUĂŠ*>Â?ÂœĂŠ Â?ĂŒÂœĂŠ7iiÂŽÂ?Ăž

As Andrew’s family rallied, Chamberlain continued his work.

For many families, he is the person who educates them about practical matters, including disability insurance. But he’s always checking in, asking, “How are you coping?�

“He went above and beyond the call to solve a problem, relieving us of some stress in the middle of everything else that was going on.� – Jim Carrigan, father of Stanford Hospital patient Andrew Carrigan Someone like Chamberlain is that person “you can go to and say, ‘This is what I need,’� Carrigan said. And

Handling Difficult Realities “It’s a very subtle science,� said Thomas. “We have to tell people things they really don’t want to hear and tell them in a way so there can be a productive outcome for the family. It can be very challenging, especially when there’s a lot of emotion and a lot of anger.�

In the most difficult circumstances, social workers must find a way to quickly address issues of life and death. “We see a wide variety of situations that have an emotional impact on a patient and patient’s family. For instance, a patient may have been in a car with their best friend and maybe they lived and their best friend didn’t,� said Thomas. “We want to respond to those issues from as close to the onset as we can, with education and support because that can have a positive influence on the immediate and long-term well-being of a patient.�

Sometimes, the impact of a social worker’s words is not obvious during a

special feature tions between transplant candidates and transplant recipients as another way of educating those candidates about the change they face, focusing on coping skills and the lifelong need to follow a medical regimen that protects their health. “I can yack away at them, but there’s nothing like hearing it from a person who’s walked the walk,�

David said.

“We’re problem solvers. We answer all manner of questions and all sorts of non-medical problems come to us.� – Stanford Hospital social worker Michael Thomas

Norbert von der Groeben

With her cancer patients, Sandy Chan makes sure that they have the chance to talk about their feelings. “Doctors can be busy, and patients have these things they want to say, but they’re not always able to tell them. They

(

hold these things in,

' ( &

feeling as though they

shouldn’t be feeling them. But the deeper patient’s stay in the hospital, Thomas you can get in, the more you can find said. “Sometimes we are planting seeds out, the more you can do.� we hope will grow at some point in the future.� Recently, he received a voice“Our goal is to make sure patients have mail message from a former patient all the information they need to make who said she still had his card and that good decisions,� she said. she had stopped drinking after he had talked with her while she had been “Social workers are the cement hospitalized five years earlier. She that binds all the disciplines.� didn’t leave her last name, but she’d wanted to thank him.

Thoughtful Guidance

Stanford Hospital’s Department of Social Work and Case Management provides a wide array of services and information.

They include: discharge planning assistance and referrals to lodging resources supportive and adjustment counseling crisis intervention financial assistance insurance, Medicare, Medi-Cal, state disability and Social Security psychosocial evaluations support groups education and consultative services medical care preference documents

Other Hospital resources include: Stanford Health Library 650.723.9863. healthlibrary.stanford.edu The Hospital’s Guest Services Department 650.498.3333. stanfordhospital.org/forPatients/patientServices/ Farewell to Falls 650.724.9369 Aging Adult Services 650.498.3333 Stanford Cancer Supportive Care Program 650.725.9481 Art for Health, massage therapy, Pet Assisted Wellness, music, smoking cessation. Call 650.498.3333

– Will Gressman, Interim Director, Stanford Hospital Social Work and Case Management Department

And even when patients are no longer patients, social workers keep their best interests at heart. Weeks after Andrew left the hospital, his father called Chamberlain for help with an insurance issue. “Let me check,� Chamberlain said. Less than 10 minutes later he called back to say he’d found the missing piece of paper and had sent it on its way.

Norbert von der Groeben

The better a social worker understands a patient, the better medical treatment plans can be implemented.

Social worker Evonne David, who works with transplant patients and their families, has become expert in analysis of key psychosocial elements in order “to develop a therapeutic alliance that keeps everyone engaged,� she said, including a patient’s support person. She also arranges conversa-

How Hospital Social Workers Can Help

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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,â€? 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. *>Â?ÂœĂŠ Â?ĂŒÂœĂŠ7iiÂŽÂ?ÞÊUĂŠ iVi“LiÀÊ£n]ÊÓää™ÊU Page 21

Cover Story

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Vision

(continued from page 19)

two years and play out in countless planning commission meetings.

The commission is also scheduled to hold a joint meeting with the City Council in February to discuss the revisions. Schmid, a strategic planner and a South Palo Alto resident, said the revised plan should help the city determine which projects and policies to support in the coming years.

Schmid regularly refers to the Comprehensive Plan when debating the benefits and impacts relating to particular projects or policies. He said he tends to support those projects that most closely follow the Plan’s “vision statements.”

In January, he cast the lone vote against Alma Plaza, a mixed-use development in south Palo Alto that features 37 houses, 14 belowmarket-rate apartments and a grocery store. The project will occupy a former shopping center site. He cited the project’s incompatibility with the Plan and said he had to “vote his conscience.”

Schmid said the revised Comprehensive Plan should provide the council and city residents a context for debates over future projects.

Most importantly, it should help city officials and citizens find a balance between Palo Alto’s many identities, he said.

“What do we want to be 10 to 15 years from now?” Schmid asked.

“Do we want to expand? Do we want to protect our neighborhoods?

Support Stanford? Be the capital of Silicon Valley?

“The Comprehensive Plan should help us make those trade-offs.” N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

TALK ABOUT IT

www.PaloAltoOnline.com What should Palo Alto’s future look like?

Talk about it on Town Square at Palo Alto Online.

On the cover: The Palo Alto Bowl on El Camino Real is scheduled to be torn down and replaced with a hotel and housing.

Photo illustration by Shannon Corey; photo by Veronica Weber

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

by Rebecca Wallace

T

To preserve it, the Watkins-Cartan House was cut in half and moved from one Atherton lot to another in 1998.

TWO CENTURIES IN

ATHERTON

New history book depicts the mansions and moguls of this Peninsula town — and the hard times as well

Top: Lucie Stern casts a fond look at her daughter Ruth. The two stayed at their Atherton estate for several years after husband and father Louis Stern died, then moved to Palo Alto, where Lucie was a noted philanthropist. Above: The Beltramo family still owns Beltramo’s Wines and Spirits in Menlo Park. In this turn-of-the-century photo, family patriarch Giovanni is the hatless man in the center.

John and Frank Merrill with some animal friends, including a stuffed monkey riding the dog Julia Whoopus.

wenty years ago, Peninsula historians Pamela Gullard and Nancy Lund published a book on Palo Alto’s early years. Next up was a history of Portola Valley in 2003.

With their new book, “Under the Oaks: Two Hundred Years in Atherton,” the pair call on the moguls and grand ladies of Atherton’s past. Marion Oster, president of the Atherton Heritage Association, says this is the first history of the town.

The 281-page tome mixes photos of gingerbread-trimmed mansions and feathered hats with diary excerpts, newspaper snippets, watercolors and drawings, and anecdotes from lives lived at the end of long driveways. Contemporary photos of residents’ gardens show the town is still seen as a place for peacefully living the good life.

Much of the book focuses on the town’s pioneer families, who in the 1800s began ambling down the Peninsula from San Francisco looking for a fogless place to summer. Estates may now be carved up, but names live on in town streets and other local landmarks: Selby, Flood, Watkins. Holbrook and Palmer.

Lucie Stern.

Many of the men were business tycoons; the women could be just as driven, managing huge home budgets and households. Lucie Stern, of course, was among the many women who became philanthropists.

After she moved from Atherton to Palo Alto, her donations made the Lucie Stern Theatre and other civic institutions possible.

“These are the kinds of people who built the West,” Lund said.

They built their own castles, too. One of the most striking structures pictured in the book is the Linden Towers mansion put up by James and Mary Emma Flood east of Middlefield Road. Festooned with carved woodwork, the white house had 42 rooms, a tower standing 150 feet, a dining table seating 40 people, and a game room with glass mosaics of men playing chess, cards and billiards.

Journalists of the day called the house “Flood’s wedding cake.”

As quoted in “Under the Oaks,” a writer for the San Francisco journal The World described the house as “probably the most magnificent country house in America.”

“Everything is a symphony in white and gold. ... The grounds are lighted by hundreds of gas lamps with ground glass shades,” the writer wrote. “Statuary of the most chaste and eloquent design (continued on next page)

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Arts & Entertainment (continued from previous page)

and of exquisite workmanship gives the finish to the velvet-like lawns and closely trimmed hedges.� And this was a summer home.

Still, “Under the Oaks� is not simply a catalogue of wealth. As an unfortunate parallel to our times, the history also follows families into the dire financial straits caused by the 1906 earthquake and later the Great Depression. Businesses suffered, land prices plummeted, and men looking for work wandered in town and gave residents a fright, Gullard and Lund wrote. “To help the so-called hobos, citizens worked with the Atherton police department to set up a soup kitchen near what is now Holbrook-Palmer Park.�

As for the Linden Towers mansion, it was demolished in 1934 after James Flood’s son was unable to maintain it.

In writing the book, Gullard and Lund experienced the Depression vividly through the eyes of Charles Holbrook Merrill, a 1906 Stanford University graduate and wealthy businessman who saw his family company, Holbrook, Merrill and Stetson, close in the ‘30s. The financial pain could be seen in large and small ways, as Merrill wrote in his diary: “Should have gotten a hair cut today and when I told Minnie (an employee) I was going down to the barber shop she said, ‘Why Mr. Merrill, your budget was exhausted

on Sept. 7.’ ... I’ve never been this way before and it seems strange to have to think before making even a small purchase or even go into a family conference as to whether or not we should take in a movie ... �

This diary was one of the greatest research resources that Gullard and Lund drew on. “The Merrill family has the most remarkable family archive that you could ever imagine,� Lund said, adding that the Merrills were very generous in sharing photos, memories and documents. Gullard and Lund enjoyed Charles Merrill’s “wonderful casual style� and his openness in shar- Nancy Lund, left, and Pamela Gullard in a courtyard between Atherton’s library and ing difficult emotions, town hall.

Lund said. settlers.

That might have pleased one of Reading first-person accounts of “To be invited into a historic home the book’s more unconventional people’s lives, Gullard said, “feels and have the paintings explained, subjects, Gertrude Atherton, who very intimate. You feel very grate- it’s a rare privilege,� Lund said. One was herself a prolific author. Her ful that people put that down on man rolled out an enormous family published works included a history paper.� tree; other people let the historians of California, volumes of short stoOverall, “Under the Oaks� was a into their gardens. ries and essays, and novels such as project about six years in the mak“We were just sort of uncovering “Black Oxen,� a best-seller in the ing. Gullard and Lund dug into things step by step,� Gullard said.

United States in 1923. town archives, did research at the The pair originally began workGertrude Atherton, however, did San Mateo County History Museum ing together on the Palo Alto history not have the town named for her, in Redwood City and made many book around 1983. Lund, a teacher, as many believe, according to “Unlibrary visits. But there was some- was expecting to be let go by the der the Oaks.� That honor went to thing special about meeting with the Las Lomitas School District due to her father-in-law, the businessman Merrills and other Atherton fami- declining enrollment, and was look- Faxon D. Atherton. Still, she lives lies, descendants of the town’s early ing around for something else to do on vividly in the book as the town’s with her life. Historical research in- Dorothy Parker, dropping bon mots trigued her. while challenging traditional womLund enlisted Gullard as a part- en’s roles. Her 1948 San Francisco ner, but the Menlo Park short-story Chronicle obituary, quoted in the writer was at first skeptical that his- book, said Atherton “lived eagerly tory could be as interesting as fic- and fully and cared not a fig for antion. That changed when she read other’s opinion.� some personal histories. “They were She was also easier to find inso full of life,� said Gullard, who formation about than many other has also been a judge in the Week- women from history, Gullard and ly’s short-story contest.

Lund said; many documents might As it happened, Lund didn’t get include very little about women — let go, and is still a teacher along and list them only under their huswith being Portola Valley’s town band’s names. historian. Proceeds from the Portola As time went on, that changed Valley history book she wrote with as Atherton evolved with the rest Gullard, “Life on the San Andreas of the nation. Later sections in the Fault,� helped to finance the current book deal with the two world wars Atherton book. “Under the Oaks� and the post-war boom — and how is selling for $75 at Bell’s Books Atherton struggled to keep its lush in Palo Alto and other local stores. identity as estates were divided into Although Lund acknowledges there smaller parcels. may be “a narrow market� for the An essay by longtime Menlobook, she says it’s selling well.

Atherton High School teacher Veronica Weber

Atherton

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James MacKenzie also traces the changes at M-A since its 1951 founding. Over the decades, the Vietnam War and other world events “helped to bring about an end to the early era of complacency,� he wrote.

East Palo Alto’s Ravenswood High School closed in 1976, creating dramatic demographic changes at M-A; ultimately there was “a racial schism that lasted for decades.�

The picture grew brighter with changes in academics, including more demanding college-prep classes, and capital improvements such as a new gym, MacKenzie wrote.

Meanwhile, at the private Menlo School, a battle raged in the ‘90s about whether to knock down the Douglass mansion after the hall was feared seismically unsafe. Inventor Leon F. Douglass had worked in the hall on his estate to develop innovations for the early film industry. “Historic-minded citizens were aghast� at Menlo School’s plan to raze Douglass Hall, Gullard and Lund wrote. A legal fight ensued, and the school finally agreed to preserve the building with the help of a capital campaign to renovate it.

Another mansion that survived the years was the 1860s WatkinsCartan house. A couple who bought the home in the dot-com boom days of 1998 wanted to tear it down, and offered to move it to the town’s Holbrook-Palmer Park. After the town rejected the plan, Rhoda and David Herron bought the house and moved it to another Atherton street, where it still stands.

Moving day was quite a scene, according to the book: “The 3,600square-foot house was cut in half, gently lifted from its foundation and placed on long steel beams. Power lines were temporarily moved, tree branches were cut, and two tow trucks with winches and cables pulled and pushed the segments of the house over a steel plank bridge and over Menlo’s athletic fields to its new site.� Past meets present.

Not all of the mansions, of course, were so fortunate. Some, like Linden Oaks, were demolished, while others were lost to fire. Lund says that’s part of why “Under the Oaks� is an important book — it gathers pictures of these homes and other pieces of history that people might not otherwise see. “Everybody should know about the roots of their community,� she said. “It’s good to have a sense of place and belonging, good to know who came before.� N Info: For more about “Under the Oaks,� go to www.athertonhistory. com.

Calling all artists: The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District is planning a coffee-table book to celebrate its 40th birthday and is looking for submissions of poetry, paintings, photography and other art. Read more at Weekly arts editor Rebecca Wallace’s blog, Ad Libs, at blog. paloaltoonline.com/adlibs.

CITY OF PALO ALTO NOTICE TO DESTROY WEEDS NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that on December 14, 2009, pursuant to the provisions of Section 8.08.020 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code, the City Council passed a resolution declaring that all weeds growing upon any private property or in any public street or alley, as deďŹ ned in Section 8.08.010 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code, constitute a public nuisance, which nuisance must be abated by the destruction or removal thereof.

Peninsula Christmas Services

NOTICE IS FURTHER GIVEN that property owners shall without delay remove all such weeds from their property, and the abutting half of the street in front and alleys, if any, behind such property, and between the lot lines thereof as extended, or such weeds will be destroyed or removed and such nuisance abated by the city authorities, in which case the cost of such destruction or removal will be assessed upon the lots and lands from which, or from the front or rear of which, such weeds shall have been destroyed or removed; and such cost will constitute a lien upon such lots or lands until paid, and will be collected upon the next tax roll upon which general municipal taxes are collected. All property owners having any objections to the proposed destruction or removal of such weeds are hereby notiďŹ ed to attend a meeting of the Council of said city, to be held in the City Chamber of the City Hall in said city on January 11, 2010, at seven o’clock pm., when and where their objections will be heard and given due consideration.

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Christmas Eve at Bethany 5:00 p.m. Family Christmas

FIRE CHIEF CITY OF PALO ALTO

Children tell the story of Jesus, as shepherds, angels, wisemen, and the holy family.

Join us between services and enjoy wonderful food and Christmas cheer!

Palo Alto UniďŹ ed School District 25 Churchill Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94306

December 18, 2009

REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL/SOFTBALL MULTI-USE FIELD The Palo Alto UniďŹ ed School District is inviting qualiďŹ cation information from highly qualiďŹ ed and experienced Contractors to provide General Construction Services to the District for the new construction of the Palo Alto High School Multi-Use Field.

7:00 p.m. Christmas with Quadre The horns of Quadre create the music of Christmas, as we celebrate the birthday of Jesus.

ST. MARK’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH PALO ALTO CHRISTMAS EVE

10:00 p.m. Candlelight Christmas

4:00 pm Children’s Christmas Pageant & Communion 10:00 pm Festive Choral Christmas Eve Holy Communion beginning with Carols

A quiet and contemplative time to listen, sing, and reect on the birth of Jesus Christ.

BETHANY LUTHERAN CHURCH

CHRISTMAS DAY

1095 CLOUD AVENUE MENLO PARK

10:00 pm Holy Communion with Carols 600 Colorado Ave, Palo Alto (650) 326-3800 www.saint-marks.com

at the corner of Avy & Cloud

www.bethany-mp.org

Interested ďŹ rms are invited to submit their QualiďŹ cations as described below, with one (1) original and four (4) copies of requested materials to: Palo Alto UniďŹ ed School District Facilities Department 25 Churchill Avenue, Building “Dâ€?

Palo Alto, CA 94306 Attn: Arnold Teten Questions regarding this request for qualiďŹ cations (“RFQâ€?) may be directed to Tabitha Williams at twilliams@pausd.org ALL RESPONSES TO THIS RFQ MUST BE RECEIVED BY 2:00 PM, TUESDAY, JANUARY 19, 2010.

This is not a request for bids or an offer by the District to contract with any party responding to this RFQ. The District reserves the right to reject any and all Proposals. All materials submitted to the District in response to this RFQ shall remain property of the District and may be considered a part of public record

CHRISTMAS WORSHIP SERVICES Family Worship Service & Reception Sunday, December 20, 9:30 a.m.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service & Reception Thursday, December 24, 10 p.m.

Woodside Village Church 3154 Woodside Road, Woodside, CA

650.851.1587 www.wvchurch.org

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5JSNSXZQF (MWNXYRFX 8JW[NHJX FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, UCC

All Saints’ Episcopal Church

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' %%% ! $ & !" $ & # Sunday, Dec., 13th–Christmas Pageant Sunday,

Join Us for a Glorious Christmas Celebration

Dec., 20th–Festival Worship with Brass and Choir Christmas Eve, December 24th 3:30 & 5:00 pm Family Services 10:00 pm Candlelight Service

Christmas Eve 5:00 pm 10:30 pm 11:00 pm

Family Worship with Choir & Blessing of the Crèche Musical Prelude with Choir Festive Candlelight Worship

10:00 am

Communion & Carols

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH PALO ALTO 305 N. California at Bryant • 327-0561 • www.firstbaptist-paloalto.org

Christmas Day

Sunday, December 20, 10:00 AM: Worship, "The Wonder of Love" Nursery & Children's Sunday School 11:30 AM: Christmas Brunch ĂĄ Thursday, December 24, 5:30 PM: Christmas Eve Family Service

Sunday Worship 8:00 am & 10:30 am 555 Waverley Street at Hamilton, Palo Alto (650) 322-4528 www.asaints.org

Stanford Memorial Church Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Services Thursday, December 24, 5 pm Christmas Eve Ecumenical Family Service Sermon by the Rev. Joanne Sanders Please bring new, unwrapped gifts for children in need.

Doors open at 4:15 pm.

Thursday, December 24, 9 pm Christmas Eve Festival Eucharist Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan Thursday, December 24, Midnight Catholic Christmas Eve Mass

Jesus is the Gift

Friday, December 25, 10:30 am Catholic Christmas Day Mass http://religiouslife.stanford.edu

HOLY TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN MENLO PARK

CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS WITH US! Wherever you are in your journey, whether church is familiar or not, we welcome you to join us for one of our Christmas services. Whether you prefer a simpler children’s service or a more traditional service with the Church Choir infused with the sense of the sacred that ďŹ lls Christmas Eve night, we invite you to join us.

Christmas Eve (All services will be about an hour) 4:00 pm 6:00 pm 9:30 pm 10:00 pm

Children’s Communion Service with Pageant Christmas Communion Service with the Festival Choir Carol Sing Christmas Communion Service with the Festival Choir

10:00 am

Christmas Day Communion with hymns

Christmas Day

330 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park (between El Camino Real and MiddleďŹ eld Road) 650-326-2083 www.trinitymenlopark.org Page 26ĂŠUĂŠ iVi“LiÀÊ£n]ÊÓää™ÊUĂŠ*>Â?ÂœĂŠ Â?ĂŒÂœĂŠ7iiÂŽÂ?Ăž

Celebrate

Christmas Eve! 4:45, 8:15

FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH OF PALO ALTO A WELCOMING AND RECONCILING CONGREGATION

&

10:45PM

650-323-6167 www.FirstPaloAlto.com 625 Hamilton Ave. (at Webster) Palo Alto, CA 94301

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Thursday, December 24, CHRISTMAS EVE: 5pm Family Holy Communion Service 10:00 pm Lessons and Carols 11:15 pm Candlelight Holy Communion Service Friday, December 25: 11:00 am - Holy Communion Service $56!, 7!9 s ,/3 !,4/3 (),,3 www.stlukeschapel.org

(650) 941-6524

Thursday, December 24

Christmas Eve 4:00 pm | 6:00 pm | 11:00 pm Candlelight Worship & Communion

Friday, December 25

Christmas Day 10:00 am

Carols & Lessons

www.gracepa.org

Valley Presbyterian Church in the Redwoods 945 Portola Road, Portola Valley, CA 650-851-8282 www.valleypreschurch.org

Christmas Eve Worship

St. Bede’s Episcopal Church 2650 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, 854.6555 www.stbedesmenlopark.org

Celebrate the Season of Promise Fulfilled!

Thursday , December 24th Christmas Eve 4:00 p.m. Christmas Pageant and Holy Eucharist 10:00 p.m. Festal Choral Eucharist

Friday, December 25th Christmas Day 9:00 a.m. Holy Eucharist with Carols, Rite I

5:00 pm 10:00 pm -

Candlelight Service Candlelight Service Lessons & Carols

St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Parish, Palo Alto Our Lady of the Rosary, 3233 Cowper Street St. Albert the Great, 1095 Channing Avenue St. Thomas Aquinas, 751 Waverley Street

CHRISTMAS EVE – THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24TH 4:00 pm Family Mass – Our Lady of the Rosary (Children’s Christmas Pageant during Mass) 6:00 pm Family Mass – St. Albert the Great (Children’s Christmas Pageant during Mass) 6:00 pm – St. Thomas Aquinas 7:00 pm – Our Lady of the Rosary (Spanish) Midnight Mass 12:00 am – St. Thomas Aquinas (Gregorian)

CHRISTMAS DAY – FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25TH 7:30am – St. Thomas Aquinas; 9:00am – St. Albert the Great; 10:30am – Our Lady of the Rosary; 10:30am – St. Thomas Aquinas; 12:00 Noon – St. Thomas Aquinas (Gregorian)

*>Â?ÂœĂŠ Â?ĂŒÂœĂŠ7iiÂŽÂ?ÞÊUĂŠ iVi“LiÀÊ£n]ÊÓää™ÊU Page 27

Arts & Entertainment

Tired of High Utility Bills?

GreenQuest Home Solutions can help you:

Paly graduate Christopher Tin, photographed at Abbey Road Studios, is best known for “Baba Yetu,� his setting of the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. It was featured in the computer game Civilization IV.

Lower your utility bills Make your home green Make your home more healthy and comfortable year-round Assist with home rebates

Call us for a FREE 18 point HomeHealth Check-Up

�Saving The Earth One Home at a Time�

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Member of Build It Green and Northern CA Green Builders

Neil McConachie

(650) 493-6000

‘A compositional nomad’

A Guide to the Spiritual Community

Composer traverses the landscapes of video-game, classical and film music

First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto Sunday Services – 8:30 & 10:25 Sunday School – 9:00 Rev. Love & Rev. McHugh OfďŹ ce Hours: 8-4 M-F

625 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto

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

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This Sunday: Festival Sunday with Choir and the Oxford Street Brass David Howell preaching: Making God Easier to See Christmas Eve Services: 3:30, 5:00 & 10:00 p.m.

An Open and Affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ

Stanford Memorial Church University Public Worship Stanford Memorial Church Sundays, 10:00 am There will be no 10:00 am UPW services on December 20th, December 27th and January 3rd UPW will resume Sunday, January 10th Happy Holidays from Stanford Office for Religious Life http://religiouslife.stanford.edu

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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

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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

Page 28ĂŠUĂŠ iVi“LiÀÊ£n]ÊÓää™ÊUĂŠ*>Â?ÂœĂŠ Â?ĂŒÂœĂŠ7iiÂŽÂ?Ăž

by Be’eri Moalem

C

omposer Christopher Tin’s biggest hit (so far) has been “Baba Yetu,� a setting of the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili.

On Tin’s new album, “Calling All Dawns,� “Baba Yetu� combines the energetic African rhythm of the South African-based Soweto Gospel Choir with the powerful shimmering sound of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Conga drums thump and French horns crescendo while the warm voices blend with the strings, singing the Swahili words: “Baba yetu, yetu uliye Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina!� The song is a joyous celebration. “Baba Yetu� was originally featured in the computer game Civilization IV, and has since gained a remarkable popularity. It won Tin the Game Audio Network Guild’s Best Original Vocal Song (Choral) award in 2007, and has also been featured as accompanying music for the choreographed fountains at the foot of the world’s tallest skyscraper, in Dubai.

Tin started composing music during his junior year at Palo Alto High School, but has been transcribing and arranging songs since he was 10. He started taking private piano and music-theory lessons at age 5. “My early childhood education consisted of transcribing Beatles songs — that’s how I developed my ear, and my sense of melody,â€? he says. He also lists influences ranging from Prokofiev to Radiohead and BjĂśrk as inspiration, though he says that his favorites often sound nothing like his own music.

Tin attended Stanford University, where he was a member of the Japanese Taiko drum ensemble and also conducted the a cappella choral group Talisman. He also studied at Oxford and the Royal College of Music in the United Kingdom. “I started out wanting to be a musical-theater composer, actually — still do want to be one, in fact. I’ve been a bit of a compositional nomad, ranging from scoring films to commercials, to video games, to live installations and giant fountains, to operating-system sounds for Microsoft, to software music for Apple,� he says.

Tin’s independently produced CD, “Calling All Dawns,â€? features choral pieces in 12 languages: Swahili, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, French, Latin, Irish, Polish, Hebrew, Farsi, Sanskrit and Maori. The music blends world flavors with western film-scoring technique. Despite the wide variety of tongues employed, the emotional message of each song is made clear by the universal language of music. “I needed a device and a ‘raison d’être’ for connecting them all in one song cycle,â€? Tin says, “and gradually an idea emerged. The message would be that the human experience is universal; that we all are born, love, hate, cry, pray, age and die, and then watch the cycle carry on.

I decided to chart the life cycle as it pertained to every human on the planet, regardless of color or religion.�

Tin composed most of the music in 2007, and in December of that year, he traveled to London to record the Royal Philharmonic in the legendary Abbey Road Studios. The ensuing couple of years were spent “reaching out to singers, then producing, polishing and mixing

the album to be as perfect as I could make it,� Tin says. “The level of obsessive detail I put in bordered on the ridiculous. I would listen to songs over and over again, trying to decide whether to raise a vocal part a tenth of a decibel or not. That’s how deeply I got into it.�

Working with artists from so many different backgrounds was a cultural journey. Tin traveled to places such as Johannesburg, Montreal and Tokyo to work with a variety of musicians: professional exacting classical musicians; singers who learn by ear and are used to improvisatory freedom; and renowned mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who shattered all stereotypes of the opera diva by acting gracefully and accommodatingly in recording sessions. Tin also had to learn the business side of the production process, handling contracts and agents.

Bill Hare, a Milpitas recording engineer who has worked with Tin for the past 15 years, has also recorded hundreds of other musicians. In an e-mail interview, he said of “Calling All Dawns�: “I was very impressed with the overall scope of the project, and that ANYONE was able to pull such a feat off independently. That it’s musically excellent is pretty much a given — I wouldn’t expect less from Chris — but from a project-management point of view, it’s nothing short of miraculous!�

The experience was also sometimes amusing, in part because the album was in so many languages, Hare said. “Much of the time when a singer (or group of singers) would come in, there wouldn’t be anyone in the room who actually spoke the language being sung. It was fun watching the process of figuring out how to pronounce words, via phone calls to native speakers and pronunciation charts.�

Tin currently lives in Santa Monica where he keeps busy orchestrating and composing a variety of projects.

He recently wrapped up the music for a racy video starring Lindsay Lohan with his new band, Stereo Alchemy, and is also working on the audio-side of user interface (those whooshes, clicks and beeps that accompany electronic commands) for a major cell-phone company.

Music is a notoriously difficult area to succeed at, especially composition. But Tin has been successful as a full-time composer due, he says, to “hard work, determination, never wanting to be told the odds, and never believing them when I was told. “On top of that, though, I have to think that I’m doing something right on the musical side of things. ... Almost every gig I’ve gotten was because either someone heard something that I wrote and fell in love with it, or someone whom I worked for referred me for a job. If you write good music, your name will get out there, and the jobs will come on their own. Do good work, be a nice person, and people will want to work with you,� he says. “I’ve always emphasized melody. I believe that if you can write a great melody, you’ll never have a shortage of work,� Tin adds. N Info: To hear samples of the music from “Calling All Dawns� and to learn more about Christopher Tin, go to christophertin.com.

MEXICAN The Oaxacan Kitchen 321-8003 Authentic Mexican Restaurant

of the week

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

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

This IS the best pizza in town Spot A Pizza 324-3131 115 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto

Full Service – Fresh Fish Market

Voted Best Pizza in Palo Alto

8 years in a row!

INDIAN

Green Elephant Gourmet

www.spotpizza.com

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

(650) 494-7391

Darbar Indian Cuisine 321-6688

Burmese & Chinese Cuisine

129 Lytton, Downtown Palo Alto

3950 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto

Lunch Buffet M-F; Open 7 days

(Charleston Shopping Center)

4115 El Camino Real, Palo Alto

Award Winning Fish & Chips

Available for private luncheons Lounge open nightly Happy Hour Mon-Fri 4-6 pm

Janta Indian Restaurant 462-5903

Dine-In, Take-Out, Local Delivery-Catering

369 Lytton Ave., Downtown Palo Alto

CHINESE

Lunch Buffet M-F; Organic Veggies

Chef Chu’s (650) 948-2696

ITALIAN

1067 N. San Antonio Road

Spalti Ristorante 327-9390

on the corner of El Camino, Los Altos

417 California Ave, Palo Alto

2008 Best Chinese

ÝµÕ Ã ÌiÊ `ÊUÊ"ÕÌ` ÀÊ }

MV Voice & PA Weekly

www.spalti.com

Jing Jing 328-6885

Pizzeria Venti 650-254-1120

443 Emerson St., Palo Alto

1390 Pear Ave, Mountain View

Authentic Szechwan, Hunan

www.MvPizzeriaVenti.com

Food To Go, Delivery

Fresh, Chef Inspired Italian Food

Restaurant Mon-Sat 11-8:30 pm Fri ‘til 9pm

SEAFOOD

Market Mon-Sat 9-7 Closed Sunday

Cook’s Seafood 325-0604 751 El Camino Real, Menlo Park

751 El Camino Real, Menlo Park 650-325-0604 or 322-2231 www.cooksseafood.com

Seafood Dinners from $6.95 to $10.95

THAI Thaiphoon Restaurant 323-7700

www.jingjinggourmet.com

www.mings.com New Tung Kee Noodle House

Full Bar, Outdoor Seating www.thaiphoonrestaurant.com Best Thai Restaurant in Palo Alto

JAPANESE & SUSHI

3 Years in a Row, 2006-2007-2008

Fuki Sushi 494-9383

STEAKHOUSE

Ming’s 856-7700 1700 Embarcadero East, Palo Alto

543 Emerson St., Palo Alto

4119 El Camino Real, Palo Alto Open 7 days a Week

Sundance the Steakhouse 321-6798 1921 El Camino Real, Palo Alto

MEXICAN

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

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www.sundancethesteakhouse.com

520 Showers Dr., MV in San Antonio Ctr.

Search a complete listing of local restaurant reviews by location or type of food on PaloAltoOnline.com

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Eating Out RESTAURANT REVIEW

Near the corner of tahini and hummus Mediterranean Wraps offers a tasty glimpse of Middle Eastern cuisine

by Dale F. Bentson

T Veronica Weber

he Middle East isn’t so far away after all — or at least the tasty, fresh and filling east end of Mediterranean cuisine isn’t.

Mediterranean Wraps on University Avenue in Palo Alto incorporates Greek, Jordanian, North African and other ethnic foods of that region into a quasi-fast-food environment. Open since April, the eatery is located on the site of the vanished Andale Mexican Restaurant.

Physically, not much has changed. Diners still order from an overhead menu, pay and sit.

The food is brought. The decor is a

The chicken and beef kabab plate comes with rice and a Greek-style salad.

tad shinier than before and Middle Eastern music holds sway over the dining area. Functional tables and chairs are spaced so there is never that sardine-in-a-tin-can feeling, even during busy times. A few tables linger on the front patio, ideal for observing the reconstructed Lytton Plaza.

This is the second Mediterranean Wraps in Palo Alto. The original, now 12 years old, is located on California Avenue. Both are owned by partners Abdul Lama and Abraham Khalil, who also operate the Kan Zeman restaurant in downtown Palo Alto.

Hailing from Jordan, Lama and

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GREEN AND APPLES Crisp Garden Lettuce topped with Bleu Cheese, Walnuts, Cranberries, Granny Smith Apples and a sweet Vidalia Onion Dressing.

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Eating Out Khalil were college buddies at San Jose State University. Khalil trained as a computer engineer while Lama became an aeronautical engineer.

Early into their careers, neither liked their chosen profession, and, 22 years ago, opened an insurance brokerage.

But there was a more primal calling for the partners — food. “We enjoy the restaurant business very much,� Lama said. “Our recipes are traditional, adjusted for local tastes.

The lamb and beef shawerma combo plate was a lot of food for the money, all fresh and flavor-packed. ... This is the kind of food we ate in Jordan. “We use the best ingredients; everything is fresh made from start to finish. We make hummus twice per day, marinate all our own meat.

Cleanliness is very important to us.

Everything is kept very clean.�

Lentil soup, Greek salads, meat kababs and many vegetarian offerings are the essence of the menu, along with shawerma plates and wraps, where the meat comes from a large vertical rotisserie. Chunks of fat in the meat keep it juicy for long periods on the rotisserie, and the meat makes delicious, flavorful, sandwiches.

Besides the tender meat, the lamb and beef shawerma combo plate

($11.99) included chopped fresh tomatoes, dolmas, a tabouleh salad (minced vegetables, olive oil and spices), hummus dip and warm pita bread. It was a lot of food for the money, all fresh and flavor-packed.

Chicken shawerma plates and various combinations of meats are also available.

I was a little surprised with the falafel deluxe ($6.99). Not that it wasn’t deliriously large and chockablock full of eggplant, potato, lettuce and chopped vegetables dressed with a light tahini sauce (sesame seed paste, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice). The wrap itself left me somewhat perplexed; it was more Mexican-styled tortilla than Middle East pita.

Actually, it was a little of both.

The wrap featured what is called lafa or taboon bread in the Middle East, making it slightly chewy, tortilla-thin and fairly elastic. It didn’t tear when loaded up with ingredients. According to Lama, the wrapper is made specially for Mediterranean Wraps.

I was particularly fond of the beef kabab plate ($11.99). Two skewers with about a half pound of meat were nestled atop a mound of moist white rice, sliced onions, chunks of green pepper, hummus, a chopped vegetable salad and warm pita bread. The beef was juicy without being fatty, with a good flavor profile.

Mediterranean Wraps offers tasty side dishes too: hummus, baba ghanoush (mashed eggplant with spices), tahini, mujadarah (rice

and lentils). The fried eggplant was worthwhile ($2.75), a filling, goodsized plate with a squiggle of tahini sauce.

Three baklava dessert bites were available. I liked the walnut baklava ($1.95), which was sweet enough to satisfy without jarring the teeth, and sticky, soft and fresh-made, nutty and respectably flaky. Other flavors were pistachio and chocolate.

Mediterranean Wraps is fast enough food for those on a timeline. The ingredients are fresh, high-quality, colorful and tasty. It’s a good place for an anytime snack, a midday repast or a leisurely dinner — and a great alternative to anything that comes in a bun. It’s a spot that can satisfy both meat eaters and vegetarians. N

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( CLICK AND GIVE

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Last Year’s Grant Recipients

Support our Kids

with a gift to the Holiday Fund.

E

ach year the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund raises money to support Give to the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund and programs ser ving families and children in the Palo Alto area. Since your donation is doubled. You give to non-profit the Weekly and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation cover all the groups that work right here in our community. administrative costs, every dollar raised goes directly to support community It’s a great way to ensure that your charitable programs through grants to non-profit organizations ranging from $1,000 to donations are working at home. $25,000.

Adolescent Counseling Services .... $10,000 Art in Action .......................................... $5,000 Baby Basics of the Peninsula, Inc. ... $1,200 Bread of Life.......................................... $5,000 Breast Cancer Connections ............... $5,000

Non-profit grant application and guidelines at www.PaloAltoOnline.com

California Family Foundation .............. $2,500 Cleo Eulau Center................................. $5,000 Collective Roots.................................. $10,000 Community Legal Services in EPA .... $7,500

243 donors through 12/17/09 totalling $70,487 with match $140,974 has been raised for the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund

Community Working Group, Inc......... $7,500 Downtown Streets, Inc. .................... $10,000 East Palo Alto Children’s Day Committee ..................................... $5,000 East Palo Alto Kids Foundation ........ $10,000 East Palo Alto Youth Court .................. $7,500 Environmental Volunteers .................. $3,000 EPA.net................................................... $5,000 Foothill-De Anza Foundation .............. $7,500 Foundation for a College Education .. $5,000 Hidden Villa ........................................... $5,000 InnVision .............................................. $10,000 Jordan Middle School PTA................. $5,000 Kara ...................................................... $10,000 Midpeninsula Community Media Center ........................................ $5,000 Music in the Schools Foundation ...... $5,000 New Creation Home Ministries ......... $7,500 Nuestra Casa ...................................... $10,000 Opportunity Health Center ................ $10,000 Palo Alto Art Center Foundation ........ $5,000 Palo Alto Drug and Alcohol Community Collaborative (PADACC) .................... $10,000 Palo Alto YMCA .................................. $10,000 Reading Partners ............................... $25,000 St. Elizabeth Seton School.................. $7,500 St. Vincent de Paul Society ................ $6,000 TheatreWorks ....................................... $5,000 Youth Community Service ................... $7,500

CHILD CARE CAPITAL GRANTS Children’s Center .................................. $5,000 Family Service Agency........................ $5,000 The Children’s Pre-School Center ..... $5,000

And with the generous support of matching grants from local foundations, including the Packard and Hewlett foundations and the Peery & Arrillaga family foundations, your tax-deductible gift will be doubled in size. A donation of $100 turns into $200 with the foundation matching gifts.

Whether as an individual, a business or in honor of someone else, help us beat last year's total of $260,000 by making a generous contribution to the Holiday Fund.

With your generosity, we can give a major boost to the programs in our community helping kids and families.

18 Anonymous 4275 Ed & Margaret Arnold ** Tom & Annette Ashton 200 Bob & Corrine Aulgur ** Greg & Anne Avis 250 Larry Baer & Stephanie Klein ** Richard Baumgartner & Elizabeth Salzer 300 Lovinda Beal ** Vic Befera 100 Kenneth Bencala & Sally O’Neal 100 Tatyana Berezin 100 Bonnie Berg ** Sherie L. Berger 200 Lucy Berman 1000 Al & Liz Bernal ** Gerry & Harriet Berner ** Roy & Carol Blitzer ** Steve & Linda Boxer ** Braff Family 250 Richard & Carolyn Brennan ** Eileen Brennan 150 Mae Briskin ** Allan & Marilyn Brown 500 Sallie I. Brown ** Gloria Brown 200 Bruce Campbell ** Leon & Abby Campbell ** Bob & Micki Cardelli ** Barbara Carlisle ** George Cator ** George & Ruth Chippendale **

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David Labaree & Diane Churchill 300 Frank & Donna Crossman ** Robyn H. Crumly ** John & Pat Davis ** Bob & Anne De Busk 100 M. Dieckmann 200 Ted & Cathy Dolton ** Attorney Susan Dondershine 200 Eugene & Mabel Dong 200 Tom & Ellen Ehrlich ** Jerry & Linda Elkind ** Hoda Epstein ** Leif & Sharon Erickson 250 Stanley & Betty Evans ** Russ & Alice Evarts 300 Steven & Helen Feinberg 1000 Solon Finkelstein 250 Gerry & Ruth Fisher ** Debbie Ford-Scriba 50 Mike & Cathie Foster 500 Chet & Pat Frankenfield ** David & Betsy Fryberger 100 John & Florine Galen ** Gregory & Penny Gallo 500 Robert & Betsy Gamburd ** Matt Glickman & Susie Hwang 200 Paul Goldstein & Dena Mossar 50 Margot Goodman ** Wick & Mary Goodspeed ** Diane Greenberg 500

Richard & Lynda Greene 250 Hahn Family ** Michael & Nancy Hall 1000 Ben & Ruth Hammett ** Phil Hanawalt & Graciela Spivak ** Havern Family 2500 Walt & Kay Hays ** Alan Henderson 100 Vic & Norma Hesterman ** Richard & Imogene Hilbers 225 Patricia Hoehl 100 Roland Hsu & Julia Noblitt ** Donna James 1000 Jon & Julie Jerome ** Zelda Jury 100 Edward Kanazawa **

Michael & Marcia Katz Eric Keller & Janice Bohman Sue Kemp Richard Kilner Larry Klein Hal & Iris Korol Art Kraemer Tony & Judy Kramer Mark Kreutzer Karen Krogh Donald & Adele Langendorf Patricia Levin Susan Levy Stephen & Nancy Levy

100 250 250 ** 500 ** 50 ** 75 ** 200 100 500 **

(continued on next page)

Donate online at PaloAltoOnline.com Enclosed is a donation of $_______________ Name __________________________________________________ Business Name __________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________

Make checks payable to Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund and send to:

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The Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund is a fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. All donations will be acknowledged by mail and are tax deductible as permitted by law. All donors will be published in the Palo Alto Weekly unless the coupon is marked “Anonymous.” For information on making contributions of appreciated stock, contact Amy Renalds at (650) 326-8210.

Holiday Fund (continued from previous page) Pam Mayerfeld 100 Drew McCalley & Marilyn Green 100 Hugh O. McDevitt 250 John & Eve Melton 500 Elizabeth L. Miller ** David & Lynn Mitchell ** Stephen Monismith & Lani Freeman 50 Diane Moore 300 Les Morris 200 Jeremy Platt & Sondra Murphy ** David & Virginia Pollard 150 Joe & Marlene Prendergast 200 Don & Dee Price ** Milk Pail customers 902 Bill & Carolyn Reller ** Amy Renalds ** Jerry H. Rice 100 Susie Richardson ** Teresa L. Roberts 250 Peter & Beth Rosenthal 300 Paul & Maureen Roskoph 100 Norman & Nancy Rossen ** Don & Ann Rothblatt ** Al & JoAnne Russell 200 Ferrell & Page Sanders 100 Darrell DufďŹ e & Denise Savoie ** John & Mary Schaefer 100 Stan Schrier & Barbara Klein ** Ken Schroeder & Fran Codispoti 250 Jeanette Schroyer ** Mark & Nancy Shepherd ** Martha Shirk 500 Richard & Bonnie Sibley ** Bob & Diane Simoni 200 Andrea Smith 100 H. & H. Smith 100 Art & Peggy Stauffer 500 Charles & Barbara Stevens ** Robert & Susan Tilling ** David & Nehama Treves 200 Tony & Carolyn Tucher ** Marian Urman 300 Kellie & Dana Voll ** Jerry & Bobbie Wagger ** Leonard & Jeanne Ware ** Roger & Joan Warnke ** Ted & Jane Wassam 250 David R. Wells 50 Ralph & Jackie Wheeler 350 Wildower Fund ** Ron Wolf 50 Doug & Susan Woodman 250 John E. Woodside ** Mark Krasnow & Patti Yanklowitz ** George & Betsy Young ** Steven Zamek 100

Mr. Dave Miller Mathematician Maureen Missett Mr. Lew Silvers Superintendent Skelly Joy Sleizer Sandy Sloan Marjorie Smith Super Second Graders in Rooms 6, 8 & 10 @ Briones School Marilyn Sutorius Sallie Tasto

** ** ** ** 100 50 ** 100 100 100

In Memory Of Helene F. Klein Arlee R. Ellis Fred Eyerly Bernard G. Leonard Steve Fasani Florence Kan Ho Maria Harden Bob Donald Helen Rubin Max & Anna Blanker Irving & Ivy Ruben August King Nancy Ritchey Nancy S. Kirk Josephine Abel Carl W. Anderson Carol Berkowitz John D. Black Leo Breidenbach Patty Demetrios Stan Dixon Bob Dolan Mary Floyd Sally Hassett Bob Henshel Alan Herrick Al Jacobs Bertha Kalson Mae & Al Kenrick Bill Land Emmett Lorey Theresa McCarthy Betty Meltzer Ernest J. Moore Kathleen Morris Al & Kay Nelson Al Pellizzari, our Dad Thomas W. & Louise L. Phinney Florence Radzilowski Pomona Sawyer Eloise B. Smith Robert Spinrad Jack Sutorius Yen-Chen Yen Dr. David Zlotnick Irma Zuanich

In Honor Of Nixon School 200 Nicole Barnhart ** Warren Cook Family ** Talented tutor Peter Hughes ** Godson Charlie Hughes ** King/Brinkman Family ** Longstreth Family ** Laura Martinez ** Elizabeth Mc Croskey **

**

** ** ** ** ** ** 50 50 150 150 150 ** ** ** ** ** ** 400 ** 1500 150 1000 ** ** ** ** 100 ** 1000 ** ** ** ** 200 2500 ** **

Movies OPENINGS

Avatar ---

(Century 16, Century 20) James Cameron can crown himself king of the 3-D world. He has crafted a science-fiction fantasy filled with visual wonder that never forgets that story — not digital technology — keeps movies from sinking under the titanic iceberg of spectacle and special effects. An imaginative premise, combined with the fanciful flora and fauna of a faraway moon, plunges the viewer into an otherworldly experience.

Put on those silly 3-D spectacles and have some fun.

Cameron’s plot focuses on Jake

Sully (Sam Worthington of “Terminator Salvation�), a disabled ex-Marine lying in a VA hospital.

He’s tapped to replace his late twin brother in a multinational corporation’s avatar program, which mixes human DNA with that of the native Na’vi population living on Pandora, the company’s mining colony. The “dumb grunt,� who has no avatar training, must quickly learn how to manage his remotely controlled, 10foot-tall body in the most hostile environment known to man. The payoff? The jarhead gets his legs back.

Things get more complicated when the avatar team headed by Dr. Grace

Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) realizes that science and peaceful diplomacy are only part of its mission.

An efficient storyteller, Cameron (“The Terminator,� “Titanic�) makes every detail count. His original narrative recalls familiar archetypes and genres. The underdog on a heroic adventure is a movie staple, but the fantastical creatures and hypnotically beautiful plants of Pandora are unique — and connected in an eco-spiritualism that blends today’s environmental concerns with ancient traditions centered on oneness with nature. The indigenous people share a bond with everything from their ancestors to flying dragons and floating jellyfish-like beings.

Recalling both westerns and war films, “Avatar� pits the corporation’s military muscle against the bow-and-arrow wielding Na’vi. A gung-ho colonel (Stephen Lang of “The Men Who Stare at Goats�) commands the invading forces to destroy the “savages� and their sacred places to gain access to Pandora’s natural resources. Cameron gives the conflict a heart by developing a romance between Jake and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana of “Star Trek�), who teaches him the language and ways of her tribe. Similar to “Dances with Wolves� and “The Last Samurai� in so many ways, this generic hybrid also assumes the patronizing attitude of positioning a white man as savior.

Stereotypes hurt the film, particularly during the battle for Pandora.

The Na’vi don war paint and whoop it up like wild Indians on horseback. (continued on next page)

** ** 250 30 ** 100 250 200 100 100

A Gift For Ro & Jim Dinkey Frank & Terry Brennan The Lund Family

50 250 100

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Movies (continued from previous page)

Hiss-worthy villains are laughably one-dimensional. Females snarl all the time, particularly the feline-like Neytiri and the gum-snapping helicopter pilot played by Michelle Rodriguez (“Fast & Furious”).

Fortunately Mauro Fiore’s cinematography never fits the negative 3-D mold. Don’t expect coming-at-

you visuals. Instead he constructs deep space, immersing the viewer in the midst of the action.

The overall result is well worth the price of admission.

Rated: PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking. Occasionally in the fictional

Real Estate Matters DON’T TAKE EVERYTHING If you plan to move while your home is still listed for sale, you may face a marketing challenge - the vacant home. While lived-in homes may be more attractive during showings, there is much you can do to present your vacant property successfully.

On the outside, give your home an occupied look by asking a neighbor to park their car in your driveway, open and close your drapes, and retrieve any mail that still arrives and have a lawn service maintain the yard.

On the inside, create a sense of space by leaving some strategically placed pieces of furniture, like a few chairs, tables and lamps.

If you remove furniture that reveals blemishes on the walls, repair and repaint those. If you notice that the carpeting is faded after you've moved furniture, consider replacing it if possible.

Keep it feeling pleasant indoors

during all seasons by keeping your power on after you move, and having a neighbor or family member set the temperature at a minimum comfortable setting according to seasonal conditions.

Your agent will have even more suggestions for marketing a vacant home, so put that experience to good use.

Jackie Schoelerman is a Realtor with Alain Pinel Realtors and a Real Estate Specialist for Seniors.

Call Jackie for real estate advice.

J a c kie Sc ho e ler ma n www.schoelerman.com DRE

# 01092400

650-855-9700

Na’vi language with English subtitles. 2 hours, 42 minutes.

— Susan Tavernetti

Me and Orson Welles ---1/2

(CineArts) Few American dramatists ever towered over the worlds of stage, screen and the airwaves like Orson Welles. Though he’s remembered by many for his later career difficulties and financial woes, Welles’ twenties included an astonishing five-year run comprising the landmark stage production “Voodoo Macbeth,” the infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast and “Citizen Kane,” a film commonly argued to be the greatest ever made. The new film “Me and Orson Welles” revisits the heady days when Welles was part “boy genius,” part “enfant terrible.”

Based on Robert Kaplow’s novel, “Me and Orson Welles” transports the audience to 1937 New York, where the larger-than-life director is staging his adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” Ostensibly the story belongs to the “Me” in the title: a 17-year-old aspiring Bohemian named Richard Samuels (Zac Efron). In a moment of whimsy, Welles hires Richard off the street to play the small part of Lucius, and thus begins a whirlwind week in which the teen will live and learn from a legend while experiencing the first blush of love. Though he’s sarcastically warned, “You’re not getting anything but the opportunity to be sprayed by Orson’s spit,” Richard has a ringside seat to history and a chance to discover himself in the process.

While watching the mercurial Welles storm around his Mercury Theatre, Richard befriends soonto-be-famous actors Joseph Cotton (James Tupper) and Norman Lloyd (Leo Bill). Like every other man in the company, Richard is taken with production assistant Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), a conspicuously smart and ambitious woman who sees her current job as a stepping stone to another with Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. Almost entirely unconscious of anyone’s needs but his own, Welles keeps his cast and crew on call ‘round the clock, though he frequently disappears for extramarital quickies or to perform one of the radio shows that pays the bills (the re-creation of a Discover the FRENCH FILM CLUB OF PALO ALTO at PALO ALTO ART CENTER 1313 Newell Road December 18th Doors open at 6pm Movie 7:30pm Special Holidays - Soiree de Gala Music, Christmas Buffet and wine, and dance or sing along the songs of Edith Piaf

MOVIE TIMES 2012 (PG-13) ((

Century 20: Fri.-Tue. at 11:55 a.m.; 3:25, 6:55 & 10:15 p.m.

An Education (PG-13) (((

Aquarius Theatre: 6 & 8:30 p.m.

Armored (PG-13) (Not Reviewed)

Century 20: Fri.-Tue. at 7:50 & 10:05 p.m.

Avatar (PG-13)

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

(((

The Blind Side (PG-13) ((

Century 16: Fri.-Tue. at 1:05, 4:05, 7:05 & 10:10 p.m. Century 20: Fri. at 1:25, 4:20, 7:30 & 10:25 p.m. Sat. also at 10:25 a.m.

Brothers (R) ((( Century 20: Fri.-Tue. at noon, 2:35, 5:10, 7:45 & 10:30 p.m.

Did You Hear Century 16: Fri.-Tue. at 11:20 a.m.; 1:55, 4:40, 7:15 & 9:50 p.m.

About the Century 20: Fri 11:35 a.m.; 12:35, 2:10, 3:05, 4:45, 5:40, 7:20, Morgans? (PG-13) 8:15, 9:50 & 10:45 p.m. Sat. also at 10:10 a.m.

(Not Reviewed) Disney’s A Century 20: Fri.-Tue. st 11:35 a.m.; 2, 4:25 & 6:50 p.m.

Christmas Carol (PG) ((( Fantastic Mr. Fox Century 16: Fri.-Tue. at 10:50 a.m.; 1:10, 3:20, 5:35 & 7:50 p.m. entury 20: Fri. & Sun.-Tue. at 11:15 a.m.; 3:45 & 8:10 p.m. Sat. (PG) (((( C at 8:10 p.m.

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

Century 16: Fri.-Tue. at 10:25 p.m.

Invictus (PG-13) (((1/2

Century 16: Fri.-Tue. at 11:35 a.m.; 1, 2:45, 4:10, 5:50, 7:10, 8:55 & 10:20 p.m. Century 20: Fri. & Sun.-Tue. at 11:20 a.m.; 1, 2:30, 4, 5:35, 7:10, 8:40 & 10:15 p.m. Sat. also at 9:55 a.m.

The Maid Guild: 3:30, 6 & 8:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun. also at 1 p.m.

(Not Rated) ((1/2 Me and Orson Welles (PG-13) (((1/2

Palo Alto Square: Fri. & Sun.-Tue. at 1:50, 4:35, 7:15 & 9:55 p.m.

The Metropolitan Century 20: Sat 10 a.m. Palo Alto Square: Sat 10 a.m Opera: Les Contes d’Hoffman (Not Rated) (Not Reviewed) .

Old Dogs (PG) (Not Reviewed)

Century 20: 5:55 & 10:25 p.m. Fri. & Sun.-Tue. also at 1:30 p.m.

Planet 51 (PG) (Not Reviewed)

Century 20: Fri.-Tue. at 11:50 a.m.; 2:15 & 5:15 p.m.

Precious: (R) (((1/2

Aquarius: 4:30, 7 & 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Sun. also at 2 p.m.

The Princess and Century 16: Fri.-Tue. at 10:55 a.m.; 12:15, 1:20, 2:40, 3:55, the Frog (G) ((( 5:15, 6:20, 7:35, 8:45 & 9:55 p.m. Century 20: Fri.-Tue. at 11:30 a.m.; 12:45, 2, 3:10, 4:30, 5:45, 7, 8:15, 9:30 & 10:40 p.m.

Sat. also at 10:15 a.m.

Red Cliff (R) ((( Aquarius: Fri.-Sun. at 2:30 p.m.

The Road (R) (((1/2 The Twilight Saga: New Moon (PG-13) (Not Reviewed) Up in the Air (R) (((1/2

Palo Alto Square: Fri.-Sun. & Tue. at 2, 4:40, 7:20 & 10 p.m.

Century 16: Fri.-Tue. 12:35, 3:40, 6:45 & 9:45 p.m.

Century 20: Fri 1:40, 4:35, 7:35 & 10:35 p.m. Sat also at 10:40 a.m.; Century 16: Fri. Tue. at 10:45 & 11:40 a.m.; 12:40, 1:25, 2:25, 3:25, 4:15, 5:20, 6:15, 7:20, 8:05, 9:05, 10:05 & 10:40 p.m.

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

( Skip it (( Some redeeming qualities ((( A good bet (((( Outstanding Internet address: For show times, plot synopses, theater addresses, trailers and more information about films playing, visit www.PaloAltoOnline.com/

CBS radio broadcast is one of the film’s many comic highlights).

Welles fans will be beside themselves enjoying the esoteric detail captured by screenwriters Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr., associates of director Richard Linklater. Down the line, Linklater has enlisted the right people for the jobs: the charming Efron to reach (and educate) an audience that’s never heard of Orson Welles, or never cared; production designer Laurence Dorman to craft the ingenious period recreations of New York City and cinematographer

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COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH RELATIVITY MEDIA A CASTLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT/BANTER FILMS PRODUCTION MARY STEENBURGEN ELISABETH MOSS PRODUCED MICHAEL KELLY WILFORD BRIMLEY SAM ELLIOTT “DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS?” MUSIC COEXECUTIVE

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with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf Read the review, watch a video preview of the movie and read the full menu online at www.frenchfilmclubofpaloalto.org

STARTS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18

Established in 1977, the French Film Club is an independent non-profit Organization, open to the public.

For full program and archives, go to:

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Dick Pope (“Topsy-Turvy”) to shoot them; and above all, Christian McKay to do the impossible: convince us that this is Orson Welles.

McKay first played Welles in the celebrated one-man show “Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles.”

His prodigious talent and shrewd judgment of character take him well beyond impersonation to capture Welles’ essence as a gifted artist and a gifted bluffer, a master manipulator and magician. Without McKay, “Me and Orson Welles” would be unthinkable as a film; with him, Linklater’s delightful celebration of the arts turns out to be one of the season’s most surprising gifts.

Fri thru Tues ONLY 12/18 - 12/22 Me and Orson Wells 1:50, 4:35, 7:15, 9:55 The Road 2:00, 4:40, 7:20, 10:00

— Peter Canavese For a review of “An Education,” which critic Peter Canavese gave three stars, go to www.

PaloAltoOnline.com/movies.

Sports Shorts

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

It’s just another showdown

IN THE NEWS . . . Former Stanford baseball standout Michael Taylor has been acquired by the Oakland A’s, who sent third baseman Brett Wallace to the Toronto Blue Jays to get the 6-foot-6, 250-pound Taylor, an outfielder.

Taylor has just 30 Triple A games under his belt but will be given a chance to win the starting job in left field. Taylor spent two years with the Philadelphia Phillies’ organization, which sent Taylor to Toronto as part of a package deal that sent Roy Halladay to the Phillies. Taylor, who turns 24 on Saturday, batted .312 in 314 minor league games . . . Palo Alto’s Brian Martin and his partner Mark Grimmette won a race-off in Lillehammer, Norway, to earn the No. 2 luge doubles berth on the U.S. Olympic Team for the Winter Games in Vancouver in February.

Stanford senior center Jayne Appel scored 10 points and added 10 rebounds in a 71-55 win over No. 7 Duke on Tuesday, and will play another big role Saturday when the No. 2 Cardinal hosts No. 3 Tennessee.

(continued on page 37)

Stanford’s football trip to the Sun Bowl brings Beeler home to face his old team

ON THE AIR

by Rick Eymer hase Beeler had no choice. From childhood, it was ingrained in him to become a big supporter of Oklahoma (or Oklahoma State) football and the athletic programs. When it came time to make a decision between Stanford and the Sooners, the Sooners were his first choice.

“I was literally walking into the signing ceremony at my high school (Jenks) gym with my parents and I saw my extended family and decided I couldn’t play so far from them,” Beeler said. “It came down to Stanford and Oklahoma and I made my decision at 3 or 4 p.m. on signing day.”

He transferred to Stanford after one year, solely for academic reasons, and faces his old team for the first time since moving west.

Beeler saw action in five games, making one start, as a true freshman in 2006. The offensive guard started against Tulsa, and also saw action against Oregon, Texas, Colorado and Iowa State.

C

Saturday

Alex Oppenheimer/Stanford Athletics

Men’s basketball: Stanford at Northwestern, 11 a.m., XTRA Sports (860 AM); KZSU (90.1 FM) Women’s basketball: Tennessee at Stanford, 11:30 a.m.; Comcast Sports Net Bay Area; KZSU (90.1 FM)

Tuesday Men’s basketball: Stanford at Texas Tech, 5 p.m.; XTRA Sports (860 AM); KZSU (90.1 FM)

Wednesday Women’s basketball: Stanford at Connecticut, 2:30 p.m., 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

by Rick Eymer t’s one down and two more big tests to go for Kayla Pedersen, Jayne Appel and the rest of the Stanford women’s basketball team that is in the midst of its toughest stretch of the year.

Four days after beating No. 7, No. 2 Stanford (8-0) will welcome No. 3 Tennessee (8-0) on Saturday, and this will be no pop quiz for the when the rivals take the floor. Then it’s off to Hartford, Conn., where Stanford will take on No. 1 Connecticut next Wednesday on national TV (2:30 p.m., ESPN2).

Talk about a tough schedule.

Plenty can be accomplished by Stanford over this period of eight days — taking over the nation’s top spot, for instance — but just don’t expect Pedersen to be chatting it up.

She’s not a big talker, just a doer.

Her teammates call her ‘The Silencer’ because she keeps to herself while constantly making her presence felt and quieting the opposition with her steady, rugged play.

Pedersen, a junior forwarded who’s a big part of what’s regarded as perhaps the best frontline in America, merely shrugs and says its part of her personality.

She’s among the team leaders in points (19.5), rebounds (8.5) and 3-point field-goal percentage (.455) for Stanford, which is all set for its important nonconference game against visiting Tennessee at 11:30 a.m.

Appel and Nnemkadi Ogwumike may be flashier, but Pedersen blends into the scheme of things from wherever she plays on the court. Deadly inside, deadly outside, The Silencer readies herself to strike.

“She’s doing a great job at the 3 spot,” Stanford coach Tara VanDer-

I

Keith Peters

OF LOCAL NOTE . . . Sacred Heart Prep senior Heather Smith, the 2009 Central Coast Section Division II Most Valuable Player, will continue her water polo career at Bucknell University next season. Smith scored 65 goals while helping the Gators win their third straight CCS Division II title this season. Dalan Refioglu, another SHP senior, will continue his golf career at St. Mary’s College next season. Refioglu was the MVP of the West Bay Athletic League last spring in the medalist at the WBAL tournament . . . Palo Alto resident Kent Slaney of the Palo Alto Lightning Track Club, earned All-American honors after competing at the National Cross Country Junior Olympics in Reno last weekend. Competing in the Bantam division, Slaney finished 12th out of 253 runners with a time of 11:37 over the course. It was a 20-second improvement over his previous best. Palo Alto’s Claudia Denoue, also competing in the Bantam division, was 69th out of 253 runners while clocking 13:52. Only the top 25 runners in each division earned All-American status . . . Online registration for the 2010 Menlo-Atherton Little League season will open Monday.

Boys and girls between the ages of 5 1/2 and 16 (by April 30, 2010) are eligible. Registration can be done online at www.m-all.org

No. 2 Stanford hosts No. 3 Tennessee, then faces No. 1 UConn

Chase Beeler will face his old team, Oklahoma, in the Sun Bowl.

He remains in touch with Oklahoma defensive tackles Gerald McCoy and Adrian Taylor, and knows most of the vaunted Sooners’ defensive players. He’s spoken with Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford on occasion as well.

“I am going to try and cull some of that knowledge from the depths of my memory,” Beeler said. “Gerald and I worked against each other in practice during one-on-one drills.”

His mother has requested 20 tickets and there will be several more family and friends in attendance. All Beeler asks is that no “UO paraphernalia be visible and no outward cheering for the Sooners.”

Beeler still has some residual Sooner pride; he nearly wore an Oklahoma T-shirt to last weekend’s Bowl Show.

“You pick it up in grade school,” he said. “It’s like it’s in the textbooks.” (continued on page 36)

Palo Alto Weekly • December 18, 2009 • Page 35

Sports NATIONAL AWARDS

All-American status for Stanford duo Gerhart, Marinelli are first team in football

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T

he awards keep coming for Stanford senior running back Toby Gerhart, but now some of the other Cardinal players are being recognized as well. Gerhart and senior right tackle Chris Marinelli on Tuesday were named to the Associated Press’ All-America team.

Gerhart, who rushed for a Stanford single-season record 1,736 yards and 26 touchdowns this season to lead the nation in both categories, was a first-team selection while Marinelli, a stalwart on the offensive line that allowed a Pac10-low six sacks on the year, was named to the second team.

Gerhart also was named a first team All-American by Sporting News. In addition to last week’s announcement naming him to the Walter Camp Foundation and Football Writers Association of America All-America teams, Gerhart becomes Stanford’s first consensus All-American since wide receiver Troy Walters in 1999.

Gerhart, who was named the recipient of the Doak Walker Award last week honoring the nation’s top running back, ranks second in the nation in rushing, averaging 144.7 yards per game, and he leads the nation in scoring (13.33) and touch-

Stanford football (continued from page 35)

Beeler, who was moved to center this year, will have another adjustment to make when Stanford (8-4) travels to El Paso to meet Oklahoma in the Brut Sun Bowl on Dec. 31.

After working with redshirt freshman Andrew Luck all season, he’ll be snapping the ball to senior Tavita Pritchard, who will start the game as Luck recovers from surgery on a broken bone in a finger on his right hand.

Beeler said it won’t be much of a difference. “Andrew asked me about that on the field the other day,� Beeler said. “It makes a little bit of difference because you do develop a rhythm.

But it’s not that big of an adjustment.

I’ve taken snaps with Tavita the past two years.�

Pritchard’s popularity with his teammates has also helped. “He seamlessly, tremendously moved in,� Beeler said. “On the first day of bowl practice it felt like nothing had changed. He fits that leadership and quarterback role so well. It has to be a special moment for him and, almost, a fitting end.

He recognized that the program was bigger than any one player. “He accepted his role without complaints,� added Beeler. “You may not see it but he contributed an unbelievable amount to this team.�

Beeler was sitting out a year due

Courtesy Associated Press

COURAGE - COMMUNITY - KINDNESS - LOVE OF LEARNING

Stanford’s Toby Gerhart finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting last week in the closest vote in the award’s 75-year history. downs (26). He has rushed for 100 or more yards in 10 of Stanford’s 12 games this season, including three games in which he rushed for 200 yards or more. He has also carried the ball 10 or more yards, 50 times this season, according to ESPN, the nation’s highest.

The Heisman Trophy runnerup was at his best down the stretch, as he averaged 185.5 yards a game and scored 13 touchdowns over Stanford’s last four contests against No. 7 Oregon (223), No. 11 USC (178), California (136) and Notre Dame (205). The Cardinal posted a 3-1 record in those games to finish the regular season with an 8-4 overall record, its most wins in a singleseason since the 2001 campaign.

Marinelli, who has made 38 starts in his Stanford career, anchored an offensive line that paved the way for the most productive rushing attacks in school history -- helping the

Cardinal amass 224.3 yards a game on the ground this season. The line allowed just 0.50 sacks per game, second fewest in the country behind Boise State (0.38).

to transfer rules when Pritchard made his first career start against USC two years ago. “I remember that it was the best week of practice ever,� Beeler said. “That game made it apparent to everybody that we were on the rise.

The turnout on campus to greet the team afterward was the jolt that put the spark back.�

Pritchard lost his starting job to Luck last spring and handled the demotion like an old pro; almost the same way he handled himself when he learned then starter T.C. Ostrander suffered a seizure after a loss to Arizona State two years ago.

He had a week to prepare for his first start, against top-ranked USC in Los Angeles. This year he had a month to get ready mentally and physically. “I’ve always tried to practice just like I’m the starter every week,� he said. “There’s not much difference in that sense. I’ve been the backup before. Going back to being the backup I adopted more of a mentorship role with Andrew. Of course I always want to be the guy on the field but winning is fun too.�

Luck has credited Pritchard for helping him make the adjustment to starter, and for being an extra set of eyes. “Every quarterback worth his salt wants to play and Tavita is that kind of quarterback,� Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh said. “His relationship with Andrew has helped; the way they interact and depended on

with each other. Tavita plays vicariously through Andrew and coached him some. They have always been in each other’s corner.�

The good news is that Pritchard has the playbook down cold, so there won’t be any reason to change the offensive philosophy. Pritchard, in fact, has helped Luck in terms of the offense. “Tavita is capable and talented,�

Harbaugh said. “He’s sharp on the game plan. We expect him to be very effective. He has the experience and has prepared to play every week.�

Pritchard will be making his 20th career start for Stanford. He has completed 244-of-449 passes for 2,747 yards with 15 touchdowns and 22 interceptions in 26 career games, including 19 starts. Stanford is 7-12 in his starts, and he’s best remembered for engineering Stanford’s 24-23 victory over the top-ranked Trojans in 2007 that, statistically, is the biggest upset ever.

At the team banquet last week, Pritchard was sitting at the head table with his fellow seniors. Each one is given a chance to say a few words and introduce the next senior.

When senior defensive end Dan Priestley introduced Pritchard, the room spontaneously exploded with a standing ovation. “I was overwhelmed,â€? he said. “I didn’t think I would be emotional but as I stood up I may have teared up. I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. It was all about those seniors I was up there with.â€? â–

Women’s volleyball Stanford junior Cassidy Lichtman was named first team All-American by the American Volleyball Coaches Association on Wednesday. Senior Janet Okogbaa and junior Alix Klineman were named to the second team and junior Gabi Ailes earned honorable mention.

Klineman was named to her third All-American team, while Lichtman, Okogbaa and Ailes are honored for the first time.

Lichtman did just about everything but drive the team bus for the fourth-ranked Cardinal (23-8), which reached the Sweet 16 before losing to Michigan in the regional semifinal. â–

Sports

Stanford’s O’Hara wins another national award Cardinal senior star is named Women’s Player of the Year by Soccer America

S

tanford senior forward Kelley O’Hara was named Women’s Player of the Year by Soccer America on Thursday after a season in which she led the Cardinal to the NCAA championship final, shattered school records, and led the nation Mug Name in scoring.

O’Hara (26 goals, 13 assists, 65 points) became the first Stanford player to receive the award since Julie Foudy in 1991.

Stanford players were prominent among Soccer America’s honors.

O’Hara and forward Christen Press (21 goals, 16 assists, 58 points) — the nation’s highest-scoring tandem —were named to the first team of Soccer America MVPs, essentially the publication’s All-America team.

Senior Ali Riley, the Cardinal’s swift left outside back, was named to the second team.

Stanford placed three on the AllFreshman first team for the second consecutive season: central defender Alina Garciamendez, right outside back Rachel Quon and defensive midfielder Mariah Nogueira.

No other school had three AllFreshman players.

For O’Hara, this is her second player of the year award, after sharing Top Drawer Soccer’s top honor with Press.

O’Hara, who broke school season records in goals and points and led the nation in both categories, is a finalist for three prestigious playerof-the-year awards. Among those is the Hermann Trophy, college soccer’s top honor. The winner will be revealed Jan. 8 at a ceremony in St. Louis that O’Hara will attend.

She also is a finalist for U.S. Soccer’s Young Female Athlete of the Year and the Honda Soccer Sports Award, which acts as a qualifier for the Honda-Broderick Cup, the highest honor in collegiate women’s sports. â–

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veer said after the Cardinal beat No. 7 Duke, 71-55, on Tuesday night. “She’s steady and she’s a terrific talent. She recognizes things.�

Pedersen drew an early foul against the Blue Devils and left the court momentarily, seething at herself. When she re-entered, Pedersen played with a quiet confidence that helped Stanford take control in the first half. “I’m quiet,� Pedersen said. “That’s just me. I was upset about getting the early foul and came back in with a chip on my shoulder.�

Pedersen will be an important part of the game plan if the Cardinal wants to remain unbeaten at home over the last three years. She’s scored in double figures in every game thus far, including four 20plus efforts.

Duke grabbed 25 offensive rebounds over the taller Cardinal and that’s a red flag for VanDerveer. “Tennessee players are glass eaters,� said VanDerveer. “They’ll look at this and they’re drooling. Maybe it will get our attention. We need to rebound and that’s something we are going to work on.�

Appel, Ogwumike and Pedersen accounted for 26 of Stanford’s 39 rebounds in the win over Duke. “We could have boxed out a little more,� Ogwumike said. “Rebounding is about our will.�

Tennessee has won 13 of the past 14 meetings between the two teams, although the Cardinal beat the then-No. 1 Lady Vols the last time they came to Maples Pavilion on Dec. 22, 2007, a 73-69 overtime win.

Stanford lost in overtime, 79-69, at Tennessee last year. Three of the past eight meetings have been decided in overtime and Stanford has lost by three or fewer points in three other of those games.

Tennessee owns a 21-5 record against Stanford, the only school with a winning record (with at least two decisions) against the Cardinal.

The Lady Vols will also test Stanford’s current 34-game home winning streak, which matches the third-longest in school history.

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Stanford junior Kayla Pedersen scored 22 points in Tuesday’s win over Duke and is averaging 19.5 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.

The Cardinal is also off to its best start in 13 years. Stanford opened the 1996-97 season with nine consecutive wins before losing at Old Dominion.

Men’s basketball Stanford sophomore guard Jarrett Mann has come a long way and still has room to grow. He didn’t have a particularly good statistical night in Stanford’s 71-70 loss to visiting Oklahoma State on Wednesday night, yet he played well enough to boost his stock at point guard.

Through the first 12 minutes of the contest Mann faced the kind of pressure he’ll see more often in the Pac-10. He committed seven of the Cardinal’s nine first-half turnovers but then finished with nine of 13. “I call it growing pains,� Stanford

coach Johnny Dawkins said. “He was a lot better in the second half and it was good for him to see that.

He stabilized the offense and made the right adjustments.�

Mann, who had previously never committed more than five turnovers in a game, also had seven assists and 10 points, solid numbers that any coach would accept. “We took care of the ball and we were able to come back,� Dawkins said of overcoming a 15-point deficit midway through the second half. “It’s a tough loss, losing with the last possession. We have to grow into it.

It’s all a process.�

Stanford (5-4) goes on the road to play at Northwestern on Saturday and then travels to meet Texas Tech on Tuesday in the final game of the Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series. â–

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The senior forward helped the Knights win three soccer matches and outscore the opposition by 10-1 as she produced five goals and two assists as Menlo improved to 6-0 for its best start to the season in more than a decade.

The junior wrestler, who normally competes at 140 pounds, won two matches at 152 (one by pin), and added a pin at 145 pounds while going undefeated and helping the Titans win three dual matches and the Gunn Quad team title.

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Davante Adams

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Palo Alto basketball

Keaton Carano

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Drew Edelman

Reed Foster

Menlo basketball

Menlo-Atherton basketball

Sophie Sheeline

Richard Harris

Menlo soccer

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Natasha von Kaeppler Castilleja basketball

Joseph Lin Palo Alto basketball

Eve Zelinger*

Will McConnell

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To see video interviews of the Athletes of the Week, go to www.PASportsOnline.com

WATER POLO

CCS champs are honored on the all-star squads

D

‘What’s

your

The Pal o A l t o St or y Pr oj ect

story?’

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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.

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avid Culpan was Mr. Offense and Ben Dearborn was Mr. Defense. That combination of seniors led the Sacred Heart Prep boys’ water polo team to a 24-5 record this season, topped by a 15-6 victory over Menlo School in the Central Coast Section Division II championship match.

Not too surprising, Culpan and Dearborn were named co-Most Valuable Players on the 2009 AllCCS Division II team selected by a panel of top local coaches.

Culpen capped a third-straight section title for SHP with seven goals against Menlo in the finale.

Dearborn, meanwhile, also was nothing short of sensational with 15 saves in the finale.

Girls Menlo-Atherton senior Rebecca Dorst and Sacred Heart Prep senior Heather Smith led their respective water polo teams to pres-

tigious championships this season and have been duly recognized for those efforts.

Dorst was named the CCS Division I Most Valuable Player for the second straight year while Smith earned MVP honors for a first time in Division II. While Dorst was unable to help the Bears win this season’s section title — M-A suffered a second-straight overtime loss to St. Francis — the NorCal title earlier in the season (against some of the top teams in the state) was the most prestigious of the season.

Smith was unable to help the Gators achieve a NorCal crown, she did help the Gators finish the season with a 22-8 record and a third straight CCS Division II title. N (For a complete list of all four CCS water polo teams, go to www.PASportsOnline.com)

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Choir, orchestra and soloists will present Bach and Holiday Lights in concert under the direction of Shulamit Hoffmann.

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Expires 12/25/09

Uggs Donald Pli Shoes ner Handba & gs

Kicks

Stuart W eitzman

1060 Evelyn Street Menlo Park, CA 94025 650.328.KICK (5425)

allets Hobo W

Jack Rogers Sandals Bern ar

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20% OFF

complete custom framing order (Through 12/31/09)

4HIS (OLIDAY 3EASON 4HINK 3HOP "UY¨ ,/#!, hen you are shopping for the holidays, W remember your community and support your locally owned independent businesses.

• It makes us unique. There’s no place like the Peninsula! Homegrown businesses are part of what makes us special.

Local merchants know the community and are experts in selecting merchandise that is based on what you like and want.

Shop with awareness. In a down economy with many businesses at risk, you are voting with your dollars. If you value a diverse local economy, choose to support these and other independent, locally owned businesses.

• It creates local jobs. Local businesses are the best at creating higher-paying jobs for our neighbors.

1047 El Camino Real Menlo Park 650.323.1097

30% Off Holiday Cards & Calendars Exquisite Artisan Jewelry 15% Off with coupon (Offer may not be combined with any other promotions.

Offer good through 12/21/09.)

1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park (650) 324-4321 www.keplers.com

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• It keeps dollars in our economy. For every $100 a consumer spends, local businesses give back $68 to the local economy, chain stores only give back $43.

When you do, more of the dollars you spend remain in the local community compared to big box and chain stores.

Here are some good reasons to shop at locally owned businesses this holiday season and all year:

Holiday Sale

650-366-0411 www.tomsoutdoorfurniture.com

Why we should shop locally this holiday season

— OPEN M-SAT 10-5:30 / SUN 11-4 —

Mon-Sat 10:00 - 6:00 Next to Su Hong

1445 Veterans Blvd, Redwood City

• It helps the environment. Buying locally saves transportation fuel. Plus you get products that you know are safe and well made, because our neighbors stand behind them. • It nurtures our community. Studies show that local businesses donate to community causes at more than twice the rate of chains. • It conserves tax dollars. Spending locally ensures that your sales taxes are reinvested where they belong, right here in your community.

www.hometownpeninsula.org This message is brought to you by Hometown Peninsula, an alliance of locally-owned independent businesses. We strive to maintain our unique community character, to educate local residents that purchasing locally creates a strong local economy and bring back the vibrant hometown to our communities that is being displaced by national chains and online stores.

Christopher Radko

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Nutcrackers, glass ornaments and musical snowglobes from world renowned designer Christopher Radko.

The Art of Being a Woman

Available at...

BK Collections 342 State Street, Los Altos • 650.948.0198 Fine Gifts and Jewelry from Around the World Phone orders are welcome, we gift wrap and ship.

1139 Chestnut St. Downtown Menlo Park s -ON 3AT