Berkeley

Sather Tower is a campanile on the University of California, Berkeley campus. It is more commonly known as The Campanile due to its resemblance to... the Campanile di San Marco in Venice, and serves as UC Berkeley's most recognizable symbol. It was completed in 1914 and first opened to the public in 1917. The tower stands 307 feet tall, making it the third tallest bell and clock-tower in the world. It was designed by John Galen Howard, founder of the College of Environmental Design, and it marks a secondary axis in his original Beaux-Arts campus plan. Since then, it has been a major point of orientation in almost every campus master plan. The tower has seven floors, with an observation deck on the eighth floor. Some floors are used to store fossils. Sather Tower houses a full concert carillon, enlarged from the original 12-bell carillon installed in October 1917 to 48 bells in 1979 and the current 61 bells in 1983. The original bells all bear the inscription "Gift of Jane K. Sather 1914," acknowledging the benefactress for whom the Tower is named. Jane was wife of the Norwegian-born banker Peder Sather.
more

California Memorial Stadium is an outdoor football stadium on the campus of the University of California in Berkeley. Commonly known as Memorial... Stadium, it is the home field for the University of California Golden Bears of the Pacific-12 Conference. The venue opened in 1923 and seated 71,799 fans until the 2010 football season, making it northern California's largest football stadium in terms of seating capacity, however, the stadium's capacity is expected to drop to around 63,000 seats after the renovation has been completed in 2012 so it will no longer hold that distinction. It will still be the largest football-only stadium in Northern California because O.co Coliseum and Candlestick Park are both multi-purpose facilities. The stadium was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 27, 2006. Memorial Stadium was funded from public contributions, as a memorial to Californians who lost their lives in World War I . The chair of the architectural committee was John Galen Howard, the university's chief architect, and his influence is evident in the stadium's neoclassical motif.
more

The Doe Memorial Library is the main library of the UC Berkeley Library System on the UC Berkeley campus. The library is named after its benefactor,... Charles Franklin Doe, who was persuaded by the then President of the University of California, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, in 1904 to bequeath funds for its construction. It is located adjacent to the Bancroft Library. In 1900, Emile Benard won an architectural competition for the design of the library, and the Classical Revival style library was completed in 1911. The Doe Library houses both the Undergraduate and Gardner Stacks collections. The Gardner Collection, acquiring its namesake from the 15th President of the University of California David P. Gardner, is a four-story underground structure consisting of 52 miles of bookshelves, housing some of the University's most prized collections. The Main Stacks were constructed in 1997 with four large skylights to allow for natural lighting of the underground structure. The Gardner Main Stacks connect the Doe and Moffitt Libraries by means of an underground hallway, this is the only way to enter the Main Stacks after hours.
more

South Hall, built in 1873, is the oldest building on the University of California, Berkeley campus and the only remaining building of the original... campus. South Hall was originally the counterpart of North Hall, which no longer exists, but was located where the Bancroft Library currently stands. The first physics laboratory in the United States was hosted in South Hall in 1879. It also has been home to the College of Agriculture, a business school, and a temporary museum for the state geological survey. The University Herbarium was housed in South Hall from 1890 till 1897. It currently houses the UC Berkeley School of Information. When Wheeler Hall was planned, the entrance of South Hall was removed from the west side and added on the east side entrance. According to legend, the rooftop scene of Mary Poppins was filmed at South Hall, although this has been shown to be false. Campus tour guides often point out a small stone bear in the architecture of South Hall, above the entrance, in the third circle from the left, claiming it is the smallest bear statue on campus. The four-story building is located southwest of Sather Tower.
more

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is associated with the University of California at Berkeley. The director is Lawrence Rinder who... was appointed in 2008. The museum was founded in 1963 after a donation was made to the university from artist and teacher Hans Hofmann of forty-five paintings plus $250,000. A competition to design the building was announced in 1964, and the museum opened in 1970. The museum has featured works by Albert Bierstadt, Jonathan Borofsky, Joan Brown, Robert Colescott, Jay DeFeo, Helen Frankenthaler, Paul Gauguin, Juan Gris, Ant Farm, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Knox Martin, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Sebastião Salgado, and Arvo Györköny. It also offers the The MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art. The Pacific Film Archive was founded by Sheldon Renan and began screening films in 1966 and specializes in international films. The PFA also includes a library which includes an online database of documentation associated with the films. The museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program. The current Berkeley Art Museum building was built in 1970 and designed by Mario Ciampi.
more

Michael Chabon is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation", according to The Virginia Quarterly Review.... Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh , was published when he was 25 and catapulted him to literary celebrity. He followed it with a second novel, Wonder Boys , and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a critically acclaimed novel that John Leonard, in a 2007 review of a later novel, called Chabon's magnum opus; it received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 . His novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 to enthusiastic reviews and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of that same year. His work is characterized by complex language, the frequent use of metaphor along with recurring themes, including nostalgia, divorce, abandonment, fatherhood, and most notably issues of Jewish identity.
more

'Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt , better known as Ben Affleck, is an American actor, film director, writer, and producer. He became known with his... performances in Kevin Smith's films such as Mallrats and Chasing Amy . Affleck won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the screenplay for Good Will Hunting , which he co-wrote with Matt Damon, and has appeared in lead roles in such popular hits as Armageddon , Pearl Harbor , Changing Lanes , The Sum of All Fears , Daredevil , Hollywoodland and State of Play . Affleck is a critically acclaimed filmmaker. He directed Gone Baby Gone and The Town , playing the lead in the latter. He has worked with his younger brother, actor Casey Affleck, on several projects, including Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone. Affleck has been married to Jennifer Garner since June 2005. They have two daughters, Violet Anne, born December 2005, and Seraphina Rose Elizabeth, born January 2009, and are currently expecting their third child. He dated the actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998.
more

John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence... Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists at #40 and the list of 100 Greatest Singers at #72. The songs "Proud Mary" and "Born on the Bayou" also rank amongst the Greatest Pop songs and Guitar songs . Fogerty was born in Berkeley, California and is the younger brother of the late Tom Fogerty. He attended El Cerrito High School along with the other members of CCR and took guitar lessons from Berkeley Folk Festival creator/producer Barry Olivier. Inspired by Rock and roll pioneers, especially Little Richard and Bo Diddley, John and his brother Tom Fogerty joined Doug Clifford and Stu Cook in the late 1950s to form the band Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets in El Cerrito, California. After signing with the jazz label Fantasy in 1965, they became The Golliwogs and released a few singles that were largely ignored.
more

Rebecca Alie Romijn is an American actress and former fashion model. She is best known for her role as Mystique in the X-Men films, and for her... recurring role as Alexis Meade on the television series Ugly Betty. Romijn was born in Berkeley, California, United States. Her mother, Elizabeth , is a Community College teacher of English as a Second Language and textbook author, and her father, Jaap Romijn, is a custom furniture maker. Her father is a native of Barneveld, the Netherlands, and her mother is an American of half Dutch descent who met Romijn's father while staying in the Netherlands on a teen-age exchange program. Romijn's maternal grandfather, Dr. Henry B. Kuizenga, was a Presbyterian minister and seminary professor. When questioned about always being glamourous and beautiful on the Ellen Show, Romijn revealed that as a child in her early teens she was in fact an insecure 'drama geek', and as a result of her growth spurt she suffered from scoliosis and was constantly in pain.
more

Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin, Jr. was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. He is best known as the manager of the New York... Yankees, a position he held five different times. As Yankees manager, he led the team to consecutive American League pennants in 1976 and 1977; the Yankees were swept in the 1976 World Series by the Cincinnati Reds but triumphed over the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the 1977 World Series. He also had notable managerial tenures with several other AL squads, leading four of them to division championships. As a manager, Martin was known for turning losing teams into winners, and for arguing animatedly with umpires, including a widely parodied routine in which he kicked dust on their feet. However, he was criticized for not getting along with veteran players and owners, burning out young pitchers, and for having an addiction to alcohol. During the 1969 through 1988 period as a manager, Martin totaled 1,253 victories with a .553 winning percentage. Martin was born to Joan and Alfred Manuel Martin, Sr.
more

David Ross Brower was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club Foundation, the... John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth , the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute , North Cascades Conservation Council, and Fate of the Earth Conferences. From 1952 to 1969 he served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and served on its board three times: from 1941–1953; 1983–1988; and 1995-2000. As a younger man, he was a prominent mountaineer. Brower was born in Berkeley, California. He was married to Anne Hus Brower whom he met when they were both editors at the University of California Press in Berkeley. Most notably of Brower's children, Kenneth Brower would go on to author a number of books, most notably The Starship and the Canoe about Freeman Dyson and his son George Dyson. Brower came to the environmental movement as a result of his interest in mountaineering. In 1933, Brower spent seven weeks in the High Sierra with George Rockwood.
more

John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence... Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists at #40 and the list of 100 Greatest Singers at #72. The songs "Proud Mary" and "Born on the Bayou" also rank amongst the Greatest Pop songs and Guitar songs . Fogerty was born in Berkeley, California and is the younger brother of the late Tom Fogerty. He attended El Cerrito High School along with the other members of CCR and took guitar lessons from Berkeley Folk Festival creator/producer Barry Olivier. Inspired by Rock and roll pioneers, especially Little Richard and Bo Diddley, John and his brother Tom Fogerty joined Doug Clifford and Stu Cook in the late 1950s to form the band Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets in El Cerrito, California. After signing with the jazz label Fantasy in 1965, they became The Golliwogs and released a few singles that were largely ignored.
more

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is an American writer. She was born in Berkeley, California. She attended Berkeley schools through high school followed by... three years at San Francisco State College . In November 1969 she married Donald Simpson and divorced in February 1982. She has no children. Writing for over 35 years, Yarbro has worked in a wide variety of genres, from science fiction to westerns, from young adult adventure to historical horror. She is the author of over 70 novels and numerous short stories. She is probably best known for her series of historical horror novels about the vampire Count Saint-Germain. She also has published numerous volumes in a popular series of channeled wisdom from the entity Michael in the Messages from Michael series. Yarbro's contribution to the horror genre has been recognised in a variety of ways: she was named a Grand Master at the World Horror Convention in 2003, and in 2005 the International Horror Guild named her a "Living Legend". She has also received the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel from the Transylvanian Society of Dracula.
more

Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career.... After the band's disbanding in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of Grateful Dead family music with side project Phil Lesh and Friends, which paid homage to the Dead's music by playing their originals, common covers, and the songs of the members of his band. Phil & Friends helped keep a legitimate entity for the band's music to continue but have been on hiatus since 2008. Recently, Lesh has been performing with Furthur alongside former Dead bandmate Bob Weir. Lesh started out as a violin player. In high school he switched to trumpet . Studying under Bob Hansen, he had a keen interest in avant-garde classical music and free jazz; he also studied under the Italian modernist Luciano Berio at Mills College .
more

Rebecca Alie Romijn is an American actress and former fashion model. She is best known for her role as Mystique in the X-Men films, and for her... recurring role as Alexis Meade on the television series Ugly Betty. Romijn was born in Berkeley, California, United States. Her mother, Elizabeth , is a Community College teacher of English as a Second Language and textbook author, and her father, Jaap Romijn, is a custom furniture maker. Her father is a native of Barneveld, the Netherlands, and her mother is an American of half Dutch descent who met Romijn's father while staying in the Netherlands on a teen-age exchange program. Romijn's maternal grandfather, Dr. Henry B. Kuizenga, was a Presbyterian minister and seminary professor. When questioned about always being glamourous and beautiful on the Ellen Show, Romijn revealed that as a child in her early teens she was in fact an insecure 'drama geek', and as a result of her growth spurt she suffered from scoliosis and was constantly in pain.
more

Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin, Jr. was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. He is best known as the manager of the New York... Yankees, a position he held five different times. As Yankees manager, he led the team to consecutive American League pennants in 1976 and 1977; the Yankees were swept in the 1976 World Series by the Cincinnati Reds but triumphed over the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games in the 1977 World Series. He also had notable managerial tenures with several other AL squads, leading four of them to division championships. As a manager, Martin was known for turning losing teams into winners, and for arguing animatedly with umpires, including a widely parodied routine in which he kicked dust on their feet. However, he was criticized for not getting along with veteran players and owners, burning out young pitchers, and for having an addiction to alcohol. During the 1969 through 1988 period as a manager, Martin totaled 1,253 victories with a .553 winning percentage. Martin was born to Joan and Alfred Manuel Martin, Sr.
more

Nina Hartley is an American pornographic actress, pornographic film director, sex educator, feminist, and author. Hartley was born in Berkeley,... California to a Lutheran father and a Jewish mother whose family was from Alabama. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the youngest of four children, with an older sister and two older brothers. Her parents converted to Buddhism when she was young. After graduating from high school in 1977, she attended San Francisco State University's undergraduate nursing school and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She is a registered nurse. In 1982, during her sophomore year of nursing school, she started working as a stripper at Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater. She made her foray into the world of pornographic movies during her junior year, in 1984. Her debut performance was in the film Educating Nina, which was produced and directed by the veteran porn star Juliet Anderson , and this proved to be a massive hit.
more