STORY:
A Mellow New Year's Eve in Berkeley

"We thought, how can we uniquely do something that would say Berkeley?" Mayor Shirley Dean told the San Francisco Chronicle. Berkeley civic planners decided not to host any large public parties on New Year's Eve because of possible computer Y2K related concerns.

Berkeley residents will be encouraged to ring peace bells from their homes at midnight. The city's "A Call for Peace" celebration plan calls for Commemorative brass bells to be sold at $25 each, and schoolchildren making peace bells in their classrooms.

The plan also calls for the city to purchase a stainless steel time capsule to hold 16 cubic feet of Berkeley memorabilia or paraphernalia depending on what era you come from. Planners are inviting anyone to submit written messages to future generations on acid-free paper for $5 each. The capsule would be sealed up for 200 years at an "I survived Y2K" ceremony to be held in January.

In a unique move to get rid of confiscated guns, the city would like to melt the guns down to form a statue in a "swords-to-plowshares" kind of idea. City leaders also hope to commission the writing of an official Berkeley song, poem and symphony that will be performed at the Y2K ceremony.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

DATE: 9/14/99

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