Here in Berkeley, we are probably known for our bumper stickers as much as our politics. Well, the two tend to be related.

The other day, I spotted this newbie:

Capital Punishment
Those without the capital get the punishment

So true. Have you spotted any unique bumper stickers this campaign season?

About a month ago, I hit rock-bottom when DH was out of town and I had a stomach bug and the two kids. Man, does it suck when you have kids and get sick. What a difference from the pre-kid days when you could stay home from work and watch TV. Heh.

Anyways, I had flirted with the idea of moving back to New Hampshire to be closer to my parents and siblings there. My husband talked me out of it because he reassured me that once he was done with his book (the end of this month), he will have a saner schedule with less travel and can help me. Plus, we would lose money on our home if we were to sell it today and we do not have the money to purchase a second home. Most importantly, we love Berkeley! The warm weather, the politics, the diversity, city life and culture -- this is who we are.

As if I needed more proof to stay, I smiled at the advice Salon’s Cary Tennis recently gave to a woman who, in a worse position than me, but still was wondering the same thing: should she move back home to Wisconsin -- after years of living in her beloved Colorado -- to be closer to her mother who is dying of ovarian cancer. Her two sisters also live there. Tennis said no.

I would not move back there now. If you want to move back there, you can do so later. Instead, right now, I suggest you maintain your own household and be ready to travel on short notice and to make extended stays.

So maintain your stable home in Colorado, and visit as often as you can. Be there. But don't move there. You will be glad, over the months and possibly years ahead, that you can return to your Colorado home for respite. The near future will be hard enough as it is.

If you move back there now, not only might you feel trapped, but it also might not be the best thing for your family. They are under great stress. So if you relocate to Wisconsin in the midst of this stress and difficulty, you may find yourself struggling with your sisters over things none of you really understand, buffeted by powerful and unexplained emotions driven by deep, unacknowledged motives -- to save your mother, to reunite the family, to recapture a happier time when your father was there, to overcome guilt about leaving for Colorado. And those struggles might divert everyone from what is really going on. This is about your mother. Your mother is gravely ill and will probably die soon. That is the thing you must face.

He is right that it may be an impulsive and emotional decision and one she may regret after her mother passes away. Of course, to each her own. I may have a hard time staying away if any of my parents were gravely ill.

But I liked his perspective in why we may choose to live where we do:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has touched upon a lot of hot-button issues, but an especially fierce debate as evident in the online comment boards of the San Francisco Chronicle is how to care for the homeless.

If there is one shameful facet of Bay Area life is the amount of homeless people here. Maybe it’s the nice weather, our generous services, or both, but I get hit up for money on the street at least a few times a day. I am already trained to look at the ground when I enter Walgreens or the supermarket as the same scraggly individuals -- yes, there are more than one -- ask me for "spare change." "No thank you," I murmur as if they offered me something.

The problem is so prevalent that I am struggling to find ways to explain to my four-year-old why some people live in the street, and even worse, why mami who asks him to share won’t give them money. The other day we walked out of a bakery in Oakland and a bedraggled man with beer-smelling breath asked me for change. "No thank you," I gave him my pat answer.

Ari piped up, "Mami, what did that man ask you?"

"For money."

"Because he doesn’t have any?"

"Yes."

"So you gave him money?"

"Ari, look, it’s Gwen Stefani!" I cranked up the radio and changed the subject. I wasn’t sure how to explain that I would rather pay taxes -- an abstract concept at this age -- to give the homeless services rather than give each of them a dollar every day. That I think it is condescending to give them a dollar because they cannot live on it in the Bay Area. Also, many of the homeless have mental and drug problems, and I do not want them to use my money to buy beer and drugs.

I visited a couple dual immersion programs in the Berkeley public school system and, I admit, I am biased. I favor Ari's private dual immersion school for its familiar community, its diversity -- 55 percent of the children are biracial and 35 percent are native Spanish speakers -- the smaller class sizes and the native Spanish speaking staff.

But something came up on my tours of the public schools: they are having a hard time recruiting native Spanish speakers to the program. At one point, I asked our tour guide why the school was not 100 percent dual immersion -- versus a single track -- since there is so much demand for the program. Her answer: “Latinos won’t enroll their children.”

This is something I have heard before and it is always attributed to Latinos want their children to learn English. But, I have my own theories.

First of all, almost all these programs are executed and taught by Americans who learned Spanish in high school. On my tours, typically the non-Hispanic parents were always impressed by the amount of Spanish spoken in the classroom. But I found myself cringing at how some of the teachers were mangling the language. I recall one teacher who kept referring to a decena and I was desperately trying to understand her when I realized she meant docena -- “dozen.” I saw another teacher consult the Spanish-English dictionary as she was translating from English to Spanish, rather than thinking in Spanish. My immediate thought was why would native Spanish speakers want their children to learn from people who speak less Spanish than them?

By the way, the public school system requires teachers to pass an English test, thus eliminating many otherwise competent native Spanish speakers from their staff.

The second reason Latino children suffer under a public dual immersion program is standardized testing. It is conceivable that Ari, born to college-educated and professional parents, could fail the standardized English test in second grade. We have spoken only Spanish to him and he is in a Spanish preschool. It takes a while for native Spanish speakers to catch up in a dual immersion program -- usually around third or fourth grade.

But I cringed when I learned of a teacher at a certain dual immersion program tutoring her Latino kids to “catch up.” Ugh. I do not want my child treated as a remedial student. I taught him Spanish first because that is how my husband and I learned. I did not learn English until I was 5 and my husband did not learn English until he was 9. No special tutoring was needed for us to “catch up,” thank you very much.

While I think the public dual immersion program is good enough for someone who speaks no Spanish, I don’t think it offers a lot to native Spanish speakers, except the opportunity to teach the non-Spanish speakers, which is a great educational experience in itself. It sounds Draconian, but if I were running these programs, I would scrap all standardized testing, have native Spanish speakers teach Spanish, and let the English speakers teach in their native language. In that sense -- if you would allow me to brag for a moment -- I think Ari’s school has it right.

Mother Jones magazine had two seemingly contradictory stories about liberal yuppies snapping up housing.

In the first article -- sorry, there is no link online! -- I was surprised to learn that the displacement of African American residents in cities like New York and San Francisco was only 1.5 percent.

Then the magazine took on NIMBYism -- “not in my backyard” development like low-income housing -- in Marin County, California, one of the most liberal bastions in this country.

BILL DUANE knows most people can't afford homes like his $1 million bungalow on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. That's why the Marin County attorney volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. Until recently, that is, when the group announced plans to build two affordable duplexes just down the street from him. "Habitat usually goes into a blighted neighborhood and enhances it," Duane says. "Here, they are coming into an enhanced neighborhood and blighting it." Housing advocates say Duane exemplifies a vexing irony: People support affordable housing with their labor, money, and votes—just so long as it's nowhere near them…

Duane and I climbed into his Mercedes station wagon and drove to the project site, a hillside of chaparral and grass. He'd promised me it would be obvious that congestion was already bad. A lone Toyota Prius with a "Save Tibet" sticker silently cruised by. "Usually this whole area is packed with cars," he insisted. And if I researched the matter, he hinted, I might learn that the endangered Tiburon mariposa lily grows here (naturalists doubt it), and that an Indian burial spear discovered nearby might have belonged to the county's namesake, Chief Marin (a Marin anthropologist says Duane is "reporting things that are not there"). Duane next raised an environmental justice concern: Placing the affordable housing in the shadow of million-dollar homes fosters "a slave kind of mentality."

Of course, Marin has plenty of open space -- a major reason people move there and go hiking there. But I think environmental concerns like air quality and the disappearing of greenery is legitimate.

Now, we live in a congested area near Oakland, although houses now fetch for at least $600,000 as many families from Oakland have re-located to Berkeley for the public schools.

The city has been pushing a “transit village” in our public transit’s parking lot, in the name of more “low-income housing.” Everyone from the families in our streets, to the people who use the parking lot during the day -- every single one of those spaces are taken up! -- and even the homeless people who would like more green space (we sorely lack parks here) oppose this development.

One, we are cynical that we will really receive “low-income housing” from a private developer. Also, we are wondering where all the cars that are currently parked there plus the cars from the newest arrivals -- oh, you know those apartments will fetch for $500K a pop and bring in a slew of BMWs! -- will fit?