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300.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, June 28, 2001, Bay City News, “Tunnel Idea for Service between SFO, Oakland Airport”. The story was about discussions for a high-speed ferry or rail service to link Bay area airports to other transport lines in the region. When I wrote this brief story, Lea+Elliott and URS Associates were presenting their ideas to the media in Oakland’s Jack London Square.

Reviewing this short item in January of 2009, it seemed like a set of brilliant but expensive public transportation ideas being discussed. As of now, many of the ideas even for Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) improvements remain in need of public financing and completion. It at least demonstrates how long public transportation improvements take. If public transportation waits years for necessary structural repairs or upgrades, then the major roads and mass-transit systems remain vulnerable during California's earthquakes.

This is a big issue in the Golden State – transportation maintenance -- because earthquakes do not provide helpful hints beforehand. People think there are obvious signs preceding earthquakes, but there are not. You get an idea a massive one is approaching if you haven’t had one in a region for a century or so, but that’s not very helpful for your average politician. He/she can mention it after a quake and gain votes, but before the disaster, the warning is widely ignored.

People even want to find psychic miracles. It gets ridiculous. You might read about birds behaving erratically before earthquakes, for example. This is supposed to serve as notice. It’s comic to take this as useful insight, though. The train-riding man of January 26, 2009 on his way to work at 6 a.m. is not birding. He’s playing with his cellular phone on the platform or reading stock market quotes under the ground or water. In 1996, if you’d had a big quake and that poor man was under San Francisco’s bay, you might not have seen him alive again. California’s various transportation networks remain vulnerable to earthquakes, engineers warn.

On a more positive note, though, projects to improve the strength of BART’s Transbay Tube are today complete. The fantastic, detailed work has made BART safer, stronger for the commuter of 2009.

301.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, July 11, 2001, "Toddler Struck By Car While Trying to Cross; 2-Year-Old Hit By Car”. The small boy was unattended, at least momentarily. He tried to cross the bustling El Camino Real in Millbrae. Police there said they were checking the sobriety of the unrelated driver involved, but otherwise only reminded parents to closely watch children when near streets.

It seems no matter how often police issue such warnings to the public, accidents such as this are typical. Even over-protective parents turn their heads for seconds. Their toddlers dart forward impulsively in those few.

302.

Published news advisory by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, July 5, 2001, "Lanes Reopened in Concord by CHP after Fatal Accident”. This advisory is about a freak accident in Concord on Highway 242 early that morning. The female victim could have been on her way to work. A garbage truck somewhere near her on the highway ramp overturned, trapping her amid spewed trash. She was pronounced dead by the Contra Costa County Coroner before 6:30 that morning, the state’s highway patrol said.

One is tempted to picture this as a normal traffic fatality, but it’s not. A mishap with an overturned garbage truck can pose any number of hazards for the hapless victim. Consider the likely ingredients inside a garbage truck at 4:30 in the morning.

Rotting foods, broken glass, dirty needles, dog poop, toxic household chemicals, used condoms, stinking washcloths, beat-up shoes and soiled dentures; imagine the condition of the dead body facing the poor coroner. In these times of economic difficulty in January of 2009, even the homeless can be happy they’re not called for such work. Of course, all these possibilities were not in the original story. It was just a routine traffic advisory for that 2001 morning.

303.

Published news advisory by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, August 9, 2001, “Cheese Spill on Interstate Highway 580”. This advisory reports the collision of two big rigs. The accident hurled “approximately 4,200 pounds of cheese across a half-mile stretch of highway pavement.”

It happened near Castro Valley around midnight. It would be a business commute that morning, so California Highway Patrol crews had to hurriedly sweep up a huge, gummy blob.

Average temperatures in the Hayward/Castro Valley area in early August are usually between 75 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit; you just can’t allow 4,200 pounds of cheese to melt on I-580 as rush-hour traffic begins at 6 a.m.

304.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, July 21, 2001, “Search in Marin County for Elderly Alzheimer’s Patient; San Rafael Woman”. One of the things standing out in February 2009 about this brief story is the number of government employees who were asked to help in the search.

The Marin County Sheriff’s office led the search. Authorities from three other counties – San Mateo, Alameda and Sonoma – also joined in with boats and helicopters. Four rescue dogs played a role.

The same kind of teamwork is evident when other kinds of disasters occur in California. The dogs are trained for a variety of quick rescue operations. If you’re the victim, you’re more likely to be found today.

In 1956, this would not have been near possible except maybe on CBS’s then-popular “Lassie” show, which played on television from about 1954-1973. Today, it seems like the same dog is on a “reality” show at least once weekly.
305.

Published Datebook by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, July 6, 2001. Datebooks were for other California news organizations about upcoming events. In this case, scheduled BART talks with local unions, and a suspension hearing for a Walnut Creek pharmacy that allegedly provided contaminated medicine to area clinics. California’s governor was then Gray Davis, and he was taking peripheral, mediative action in negotiations with BART unions.

306.

Published Update on Advisory by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 23, 2001, “Update: Two-Alarm Blaze in Pacific Heights Controlled”. This minor blaze happened within two blocks of my then-address in San Francisco. There were no injuries. It was a three-story apartment building.

307.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, July 26, 2001, “Area Kids Help Evacuate Fremont Apartment Complex on Fire”. This interesting, early-morning fire story not only seems like an action tale written just for 8-year old boys, but brings to me childhood memories of East Bay freeways as they were in past years and are still.

In this story, the fire is reported as being in a building close to an on-ramp for the “Nimitz Freeway.” This makes the story immediately clear because you know just where you “are.”

Mention of the “Nasty Nimitz” brings to mind the thousands of times I heard the words “Highway 17” on radio reports of tragedy while growing up. Highway 17 was famous for wild deer and mountain lion hits, reckless driving, truck pile-ups, sharp turns, poor visibility at sections and narrow shoulders at others.

This highway had it all when it comes to horror. At least one cop was fatally struck while setting traffic flares after an accident in 2005 closer to Santa Cruz. An area of the freeway running through Oakland was destroyed by the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989; you certainly didn’t want to show the poor taste to celebrate the earthquake, but you were tempted to laugh because this one had the good sense to wreck a portion of the East Bay’s blood-and-guts-loving 17.

308.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 19, 2001, “Two Shootings Monday Night in Oakland”. Another set of the too-usual nighttime shootings in East Oakland. Because I had to write so many of these brief stories about shootings in Oakland between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., I came to consider gun control laws sad jokes.

These guys – usually alleged drug dealers -- are never walking around with properly-registered weapons. Area politicians and activists need to campaign directly and aggressively to residents in the high-crime areas as they exist, but never will. The general public and its elected leadership fear an honest discussion of East Oakland and the ungovernable violence among black men.

309.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 26, 2001, “Hayward Police Arrest Man for Alleged Homicide”. The alleged suspect was 19. I did not follow the case, but if he was tried and convicted of a crime similar to that outlined here from the first reports (a fight over money, a slam on a head, video of him trying to unload a dead body outside the immediate commercial district), he is probably sitting today – February 2009 – in one of California’s 33 prisons.

Why is that of any note today? Because he’s doing one of two things in early 2009 that he was not able to consider or choose in June of 2001.

First, he’s awaiting possible release because of prison overcrowding. California’s broke. A federal judge ruled in February 2009 that the state must begin to thin out the population of California’s prisons by releasing some. It’s probably not the case that he’s awaiting release, however, if he was tried and convicted of this murder. Since that is the possible case, he probably won’t qualify for release in 2009.

What’s the second thing he could be doing, then, assuming the federal court’s 2009 order to release prisoners holds? Finding room to stretch in his prison cell.

310.

Unpublished essay by Lurene Helzer, December 10, 1997, “Diplomacy under Netanyahu.” I corrected some obvious errors (lying, not laying) in this February 2009 review/inclusion of the essay that I wrote more than eleven years ago, but otherwise typed it in as it was originally written in late 1997.

Today, I could not write the same essay because I’m no longer politically active, and because my opinions have shifted substantially, have grown more conservative. I think the Palestinians are lost under Hamas, for one thing. They are losing economic opportunity with this leadership, and many, many other things.

I was still a member of JVP when I wrote this. It’s probably what motivated me to write it in first place. I don’t remember the essay generating much talk then, though, to be honest. I resigned from the group, Jewish Voice for Peace, by 1999 or early 2000, because my opinions about Palestinian actions and leadership then were growing increasingly dismal; I thought Israelis were negotiating with a brick wall by late 1999 or mid-2000. I thought they would get no further with Arafat at the helm.

Some areas of the essay bore me today, or are outright dumb and irrelevant. Other areas of it, like the mention of Hamas as it then existed and was increasingly repositioning itself, are interesting today. I write the word “enemy” in quotes in one section, which is never a good idea in political writing, by the way. It seems to mock one side or the other without cause. It should never be done in political writing.

That aside, my pointing to some of then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarks as worrying is interesting, since he is again, through 2009 election, taking a higher spot within Israel’s political leadership. I am calling some of his flippant (or hostile) 1997 diplomatic language unwise. I have no position on today’s Israeli elections, though. Today, I would wish them all luck, leave it alone there.

311.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Berkeley Daily Planet, April 15, 1999, “ATM fee limits endorsed: Banking industry opposes city’s ‘ridiculous’ ordinance”.

The council was considering an ordinance to outlaw 1991 usage fees for some ATM machines/networks in Berkeley, or the fees for some ATM transactions. It was a vigorous debate and sheds light today on why banks are so little understood and sympathized with in their massive crisis today.

A local banking industry spokesman, Greg Wilhelm of the California Bankers Association, opposed the 1991 proposal in a subsequent interview. A student group, The California Student Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), portrayed bank policies as, essentially, commercially injurious to California’s smaller financial institutions.

The proposed ordinance was meant to protect the interests of the customer who, for instance, stops in the convenience store to get a soda, has no cash, uses the freestanding ATM there, and is charged an extra few bucks to withdraw his own bank assets. The customer in this case is essentially paying an “intermediary” who maintains the ATM, as well as his own bank, for the transaction.

On February 19, 2009, it’s interesting to revisit the discussions. Berkeley Councilmembers Diane Woolley, Kriss Worthington, Polly Armstrong, Maudelle Shirek, and Linda Maio were all part of the discussion, as was Berkeley’s Mayor Shirley Dean. The most frequent argument of councilmembers was that 1999 banks were misguided or insensitive in their ATM policies, and that they ought to be kind to less-prosperous residents of Berkeley.

It shows the 2009 reader how banks were viewed by San Francisco Bay area residents then. They expected area banks, like Bank of America, to be commercially servile. This is a reasonable expectation to some degree, of course, but at the same time, banks are not charities. They are profit-making businesses, key financial intermediaries inside an economy.

When the attitude displayed in this story begins to surface in a “mass” sense, as the law of the land, you will probably always have things like the massive financial bailouts of 2008 and 2009, the sub-prime crises, foreclosures and more. The financial world cannot, for decades and decades, routinely serve the poor and simultaneously promote a healthy, vigorous economy.

This story reports a typical action of the Berkeley council as it then was, though. At least in those years, the city’s council seemed to back a lot of financial positions that were a waste of city staff’s time. I was waiting for them to pass a resolution at the next meeting that would limit the cost of a cheeseburger on Shattuck Avenue.

312.

Published letter to New York Times by Lurene K. Helzer, January 26, 1997. I’m encouraging the building of an “economically viable Palestinian infrastructure with a modern educational system.” I mention the Yitzhak Mordechai, then the new Israeli Defense Minister.

I still think the Palestinians need to build a stable economy and focus on their schools. They would make genuine progress because their neighbors would be eager to take part. World charity and sympathy, which is what they tap now, is unreliable, unpredictable, and has encouraged continuing bloodshed and instability in the territories up to today, February of 2009.

If they were able to make some kind of stable non-aggression pact with Israel, they would have direct access to fantastic economic and educational opportunity on virtually their own terms, in their neighborhoods. Peace would develop on its own.

This can be said regarding many of today’s adjacent nations, however. Compare the difference in relations between the United States and Canada, and the United States and Mexico. It largely lies in the respective educational standards and economic systems of the societies, however flawed they may be.

313.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer for East Bay Journal, January 18, 1994, “Guns ‘n needles in Berkeley”. Berkeley’s city council was taking a stand in favor of needle-exchange programs and gun control. California’s then-Gov. Pete Wilson did not support gun control laws or needle-exchange programs, according to the council. Gun laws have been on the books like beached whales for years. They can only affect those who obtain guns through conventional channels, through legal paths. These laws don’t affect the thug of East Oakland who murders his gang enemy with an illegal weapon. The witnesses of the murder are afraid to speak. It’s a worn story by 2009.

But the needle-exchange programs in 1994 were relatively novel. Health care professionals still say the needle-exchange programs lessen the spread of AIDS inside poor communities of major cities. Washington D.C. is reportedly the city with one of the highest HIV infection rates of the U.S., according to multiple sources.

As of 2009, AIDS has become sadly common in poor, African-American areas and in non-U.S. cities across the continent of Africa. Much of the HIV’s spread in the U.S. is due to heroin use with dirty needles.

Those drug users then spread HIV through unprotected sex with multiple sex partners. The sex partners, often women, either use drugs themselves or do not ask their partners obvious questions. Even if they do ask questions, they foolishly believe whatever they’re told. If it’s not that, they are prostitutes. Or they are married to men who cheat on them. Or they are sleeping with men who were just released from prison, men who were raped inside prison by the HIV-infected prisoners. Then, at the end of the line, the infected women have kids. Those babies are born with the virus.

The thing is, it’s a far, far uglier pandemic than people realize. It increases each year in black America and in the black populations across Africa. Activists in areas like Washington D.C. still like to say that stemming the epidemic is a matter of “public education,” but this is false in the United States.

People know quite well what spreads HIV and have known since the late-1980s. This is not to imply we should ignore the illness or cut education programs, but it’s really not about teaching people to wear condoms in Washington D.C. anymore.

314.

Unpublished letter to Lurene Helzer from Supervisor Dennis J. Oliver and Managing Editor Dick Rogers of the Hayward Daily Review, July 26, 1985. The positive letter was only confirming my work as an editorial (copy) clerk for the newspaper in 1984-1985.

I worked in the newspaper’s copy room with Lloyd Francis, Chris Arellano and Sandra Hoover. We ripped incoming items from the wire and delivered to editors. Then, we’d take news material/photos from the editors to the composing room upstairs. The editors had to the check work carefully for journalistic accuracy, legality and credibility.

Photographer Saul Bromberger stopped in sometimes to chat with Lloyd, along with Bay area photojournalist Howard Ford. (Hoover and Bromberger later married and had a family, I believe.) Francis probably helped me get my foot in the door. Ronald Reagan was then the U.S. leader, so many of the stories we ran were involving his decisions during the closing years of the Cold War.

I wrote some news for the paper and its related publications, but the letter couldn’t yet acknowledge this. I had yet to do the freelance writing work for them. I was still in college when I began working for them. I remember it being a fantastic place for a 21-year-old student to work in the mid-1980s.

315.

Press release for the Marines’ Memorial Club in San Francisco by Scott deCarrillo, written by Lurene Helzer, July 23, 2002, titled “Why Guadalcanal Matters for America Today”. Press release announced an event at the luxurious hotel and club for U.S. Marines featuring historians and participants of the 1942 Guadalcanal operation in the South Pacific.

I worked at the Marines’ club for a short time in their public relations office. I became too ill to continue working in the summer of 2002, but loved my time there. I was complimented that they hired me, especially since July of 2002 was only a few months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City.

The Guadalcanal presentation was made in cooperation with San Francisco’s Rotary Club on August 6 and 7th of 2002. Attendees could arrange a room at the Association’s immaculate downtown headquarters, and attend a private dinner at the club.

All U.S. Marines always feel protective of American security and integrity, of course, but will feel so profoundly following an attack on the U.S. This 2002 event was about a 1942 World War II battle, but the mood in San Francisco’s downtown was guarded in the wake of the attack in 2001 Manhattan.

316.

Unpublished letter of reference for Lurene Helzer, June 7, 1990, from Bureau Chief William B. Ries, United Press International, Jerusalem office. UPI's office was then on Hillel Street in downtown Jerusalem. I was a visiting student at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem for 1989-1990, so volunteered to do light filing in the office.

I just wanted to "hang out" a few hours each week while I was in Jerusalem. They did not need me there. I did nothing of importance for them, but I was able to observe some workings of the small newsroom during the first Intifadah, read the daily work of reporters. What did I learn? I learned over the weeks that covering domestic militants gets routine as the weeks drone on. The actions of the militants would weekly injure and kill others, destroy property, but the words and slogans were stale. Arafat lacked political talent as the rebellion wore on, and created little of long-term value for the Palestinian people.

I thought it was a loss for them. This was/is only my own observation, though. The reporters and editors I met with UPI did not make such comments in the office, or share with me their personal opinions. They focused on the story at hand, were personally reserved.

317.

Published article by Lurene Helzer, North Beach Now, San Francisco Monthly, August 21, 1991, about R. Alan Williams, political activist and artist.

The quotes today stand out because they are so candid. By the time I did this interview, Mr. Williams was elderly, growing weak. He was active in various battles associated with the Civil Rights era.

“One of my first memories is one of the last lynchings in Virginia and the faces on the people watching. It wasn’t so much the dead body as (the question of) what conditioning could produce someone laughing at the misery of that person that was being hanged. It was a tremendous shock to realize what the South was like,” Williams said.

But also, “I’ve worked for every minority you can think of. I’ve been in prison five times in my life. It’s all the same damned stuff. It could blow my mind. I would go to some event and they would make a terrible remark about another minority. I mean, when I first started I think I overestimated the human race. I used to think that through education and knowing each other we’d mellow out. Now, I think that the human animal was really overrated.”

“I lived in such a fantasy world. I didn’t want to believe that,” Williams said.

Williams also saw the White Night Riots up close after the infamous trial and conviction – on a lesser charge -- of SF Supervisor Dan White, who was found guilty in the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

“I think there are times when you have to say something…when a city does not represent 10 percent of the population, you have a right to burn the cars. You have a right to break those windows because nobody would listen to that minority,” he said of the 1978 gay community of San Francisco.

Williams was married and spoke of his departed wife with deep feeling. Her death, he said, was the most unbearable experience of all. It was around then that he stepped away from political activism, he said. It was an interesting interview.

318.

Assorted items relating to Lurene Gisee inserted here for record only: Poem written by high school writing instructor, Ray Hanby, about my interests in writing and in poetry, “…she walks the windy beaches at night/searching the stones for seasalts”, circa 1980; Certificate of Merit signed by State Student President, State Faculty President and Executive Secretary from Journalism Association of California Community Colleges awarded to Lurene Helzer, Chabot College, Fourth Place News Story, April 19, 1985; News photo in Hayward Daily Review, circa 1984, regarding former employer Walt’s Productions; Report for Lurene Helzer from Fremont Unified School District, January 18, 1973, from routine hearing test at Harvey Green Elementary School in Fremont, CA, I was in the third grade and was found to be deaf in my left ear; Letter of reference for Lurene Helzer by Fitness USA gym, December 30, 1983, confirming my work as manager of the Hayward gym, and other positions I held for Grecian Health Spa, as it was once known.

319.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer for East Bay Journal, January 18, 1994, “Emeryville responds to Kaiser’s relocation plans”.

In this story, Kaiser favored Emeryville as the site for a new medical facility, but residents organized an opposition group. Kaiser’s developers felt Emeryville was an easier site.

“‘I think that’s why Kaiser wants to come here, because Emeryville is such an easy get,’” [community activist Madeline Stanionis] said, adding that the city is so pro-development it embarrasses her.”

The residential activist had a point, to some degree. In 2009, Emeryville is a highly-profitable business location in the San Francisco East Bay. It has an Amtrak station, and a small marina. It was once an Ohlone village; the Ohlone tribe was Native American.