Community

Busking for ballet lessons: Meet the Hoffman four-kid string quartet

Grand/Lake traffic bustled by on a recent sunny Saturday.  Parents pushed children in strollers; women carrying yoga mats chatted as they headed home from class; the coffee shops and cafes did a brisk business in iced beverages.  But in front of the Lakeshore Ave Peet’s Coffee, there was a small crowd of stillness as passersby stopped to listen to the Hoffman children, a four-sibling string quartet, who were busking to raise money for ballet lessons. Their mother, Jodi Hoffman, hovered…

J school dean discusses $5m Bay Area News Project

The Bay Area News Project, a nonprofit media venture that will start with a $5 million grant from Bay Area financier Warren Hellman,  will bridge gaps in coverage of local news issues while guiding reporters through an era of shrinking job opportunities and technological change, a leader of the project said Tuesday. Neil Henry, dean of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, made the remarks about the recently-announced endeavor at an afternoon meeting held on the UC Berkeley campus.  The plan,…

Relief efforts continue after disasters in the Pacific

It’s been just over a week since Typhoon Ketsana hit Luzon, in the northern part of the Philippines, before storming through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  Amelia Desesto, 45, a masters student at Berkeley’s Franciscan School of Theology, has spent hours this week watching Filipino news on television, and checking for updates on the latest death counts, injuries, and cleanup efforts. She said that even her young nieces and nephews are reacting to the news. “They feel devastated with what they…

The Mermaids take the waters at annual cancer swim

The Women’s Cancer Resource Center, an Oakland-based support center for women with cancer, held its fourteenth annual Swim a Mile for Women with Cancer event on October 3rd and 4th at the Mills College pool in East Oakland. Swimmers of various skill sets – from those who walked their laps in the shallow end to those who wore their brightly colored swim caps and Speedos in the deep end – grouped in threes or fours to share lanes and swim…