Friends

My college room mate, Maureen, was down from Seattle this week, visiting her sister. We've known each other for so long and it is always years between visits. I've always thought that we just leave off where we were before and it's like we've never been apart. But that isn't true. So many things have gone on in our separate lives that is silly to think that. Maureen's husband, Jim, died a few years ago. Since then she has had to sell their business, their old house and move to a new home.

She has gone through a lot of changes on the surface of her life, but I did find that she is just the same person. So, I guess it's like we've never been apart. Which is a good thing, because I will be visiting with her for a many days in June. She is at the fulcrum of my move East. Eric and I will be traveling north to Vancouver and then Karen and I will be traveling east from Seattle. Maureen and I will either get to recount all that has happened in the past few years, or enjoy each other's company now. I bet it will be the latter.

Clif and I went to visit our stock broker on Friday. You won't believe all the stuff that will happen in December when I finally cut all ties to The Times. Forms to fill out, checks flying through the mail. Winnie has helped many former Times employees through this transition. I keep doing stupid things with my money, but she keeps this ship upright. She even knew about a bit of money that I would be getting that I'd completely forgotten about. So there is The Times' pension, which she will never see because it is an annuity. Then we had an ESOP at one point. She'll get that to invest. Once upon a time, I think before 401K's, we had PSI, Past Service Insentive. Who knew? Who remembers this stuff? That money will go to Winnie. And finally is our new Zellishous Cash Balance plan. I can't believe I have money in that.

His folks decided that they would no longer put anything into our 401K's, no matching at all. Instead, they would put money into the Cash Balance Plan. This is all on paper stuff, I'm sure. No real money leaves their pockets. I guess I got some last year as I was leaving. Zell bought the tribune company the day I left. Pretty coincidental, if you ask me. I don't think I could stand all their shinannagans.

I wonder what my old pal, H.L. Mencken, would say about all that. He was a pretty pro-business guy. Not much for the common man. I'd enjoyed the other Mencken book, so I decided to learn more by reading Disturber of the Peace by William Manchester. That was pretty dumb. The woman who wrote the other book used this book as a reference. And I do mean used. I knew all the stories. Nothing new was revealed. Boy, that was really stupid. What I should have read was something that Mencken wrote. He did a 3 part autobiography, but I bet she used those as references, too. Manchester probably did as well. I guess my Mencken days are over. One interesting note is that The Baltimore Sun still uses a type face called Mencken. Per told me that. Our friend, Manny, has to recreate the typeface so it can be put into the consolidated news editing system. Cool.

I LOVE the Internet

I was catching up on my favorite blogs this morning when Adrian walked in and said this guy said, on the blog that he likes to read, that something was as slow as dinosaurs mating. Dammit, I can't hear anything without wanting to know more. How did dinosaurs mate? Adrian, didn't that book we read when you were ten say that dinosaurs were like birds?

Um, yes.

Hum, how do birds mate? I've always been a little unclear on that. So I tapped into Google search "how do birds mate?" And I got the answer. In seconds. I also got this really funny description:

• Well first the male invites the female out for dinner and a movie. Upon arrival to the females house the male surprises the female with flowers and a bottle of good wine. At dinner (drive thru at a fast food resteraunt) the male gives the song bird a couple of shells to play a romantic tune. He then invites the female to dance. The male gets close enuf to rub itself against the female ruffling her feathers. The female senses the action by the male and reciprocates the advances. At the movie (drive in theater of coarse) the male puts its wing around the female grabbing her breast. She is in high heavens (so is he). after a romantic movie the 2 lovebirds retreat back to his neighbors house through a hole he made in the crown molding of the owners expensive mansion he and his wife built about 2 or 3 years ago. While the family tries to sleep the 2 lovebirds nesstle into the attic of the poor souls house and make woopie for hours on end. This is how birds mate

I made that font size really small because last time I pasted in someone else's words, it confused a reader. No, I did not write that. Then I copied all these images by asking Google for bird pictures, etc. No wonder people in India can do our jobs. I didn't even have to leave my chair to get information, humor, and still photography. What more could a lazy girl ask for?

Prisoners and Villans

" We're all prisoners of birth, deary. Some of us are just lucky and win the uterian lottery." OK, I just made up that quote. The first sentence is sort of from this book, only the person who said it would never have used the word deary. The second sentence comes from Warren Buffet who feels that everyone born in the US has won the uterian lottery. After all, our little zygot selves could have been planted in any womb anywhere else in the world and probably wouldn't have had this opportunity for an easy life.

Let me first of all say that I liked this book, A Prisoner of Birth. It is a take-off on Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, a book I happen to love. I realized when I started listening to the book that the part of the Count that I like so much is the revenge part. It was a little tough going through the criminal conviction part of the story in the beginning. Archer's chapters are short and it was easy to skip past some of that, even on Audible. The revenge part was good. I skipped over parts of that, too, to find out how it ended, but I went back and listened to it all. Very clever. Not my skipping, but the book was clever.

And that's what the protagonist is, very clever. Even though he was raised in the wrong part of London and was poorly educated, he was always bright. So I will say that the way we are lucky in our births is when we have the ability to overcome a less than desireable start. We're also lucky if we have landed is good circumstances and are able not to mess it up. All these things are possible, no matter where or how you are born.

And then there are those people who are born damaged or who are damaged somewhere along the way. They don't all end up as merciless dictators, but some do. The Greatest Battle is about the German's attempt to capture Moscow in WWII. That's what the book cover says it's about. It's really about two sick, demented men who hold entire countries in their sway, who can affect the course of battle and destroy thousands of people's lives without a thought. Usually you will find that one antagonist is more worthy than the other. Not here. Nagorski does a great job of telling us about these two men, Stalin and Hitler. Ugly, despicable men. And as you are reading, you think about other books you've read; about the conference at Yalta where Stalin manipulated Truman against Churchill.

I guess even psychopaths can be charming at times. Hitler certainly was. He had my good friend Mencken fooled for a very long time. The best thing about the book is that it strips away the charm and tells about the stupidity of these guys. I think my only complaint is that the battle ended abruptly. Karen would say it was because I had fallen asleep while listening after a long day at the Festival of Books. I really think that I was just very comfortable. The battle was ending by that time. Winter had come. OMG, those poor Germans were sent out without anti-freeze, warm clothes or much food. Poor Nazi soldiers. Not an easy concept.

A Festival of Books

Except for Thanksgiving, this is my favorite weekend of the year. The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and Festival of Books (FOB ) take place on the last weekend in April. I've been going to the FOB since its inception 13 years ago. I've been helping at the Book Prizes for about 10 years. Karen has joined me at both for the past 4 years. This weekend has everything - books, authors, music and family. This year it also had unbearable heat. Okay KJ, let's both say it together, "But it's hooooooooot!" Fortunately, Karen and I mapped out our day so we mitigated the 90 degrees of it all.

We helped at the Book Prizes. This means we go to the hotel that we're staying at, check names off a clipboard while we get authors on board a bus to go to the pre-event dinner. I'm currently reading Faust in Copenhagen, so when I checked off Gino Segre's name, I was all over him about how much I love his book. It was true, which makes it better. He totally brings these great physicists to life. Besides, he's a charming man.

Another charming man was the master of ceremonies at the Awards ceremony, Gay Talese, former New York Times reporter and hero to all young journalists. This is him at the Festival the next day. Remember how hot I said it was. Look at him. Dapper despite it all. He is tall and elegant and moves with a slow grace. Yet, he also looks like he could start tap dancing at any moment. Karen and I met him a couple of years ago just by chance. He sat with us for a while. I'm hooked.

The Awards were great for meeting authors. One of the highlights is the reception after the awards. They serve the most interesting food there. I had none of it this year because the patio was just too packed with people. Horrible. I found the only chair in the room, the one at the table for authors to come by and find out how to get to the shuttle to the hotel. Pretty cool, because I had the answer to that. Karen scored some interesting green stuff from one of the food tables. She is so imperturbable.

The next day we went back to UCLA for the FOB. We saw John's band, Murphy's Flaw, play bluegrass. Karen and I were late because we went to an author's panel on Urban Renewal. It was a cute title for a disparate group of authors who use different cities as characters in their writing. Always enjoyable to listen to what they have to say about their books. I may be interested in getting Scott Simon's new book, Windy City, because of the panel. We got to hear about 3 songs by the Flaw and say hi to Tom and John. It was way too hot to stick around and we had to get up hill to see our next panel, so Karen and I begged our leave. It actually looked like John needed help carrying his banjos, not that that had any influence on our hasty adieu.

Our next panel was a bunch of scientists. Segre was there to talk about the book I already have. The guy who wrote the prize winner, I am a Strange Loop, was there. Not impressive, despite the prize. This is not a book I would look for. Karen had a nice discussion with him on the way over to the FOB that day, so it was like seeing a nice guy who becomes loopy when talking about his book. Dava Sobal was there. She wrote Galileo's Daughter a couple of years ago. I've already read that one. It was interesting, but we had to fly across campus for our last panel, so we left early. I don't fly, so we had to leave really early, after they had all talked a bit about their books.

Our final panel was with Michael Connelly (on the left) interviewing Joseph Wambaugh. Karen and I really like Connelly's books. He is very reserved when you meet him and when he is on a panel. Wambaugh didn't want to be there, but he was because he has a new book to sell. I don't think I want to read it. I really want to read Connelly's next book which is about Harry Bosch meeting the lawyer from The Lincoln Lawyer. Now that should be very good. I was tempted for a second to get Wambaugh's previous book, but it isn't on Audible and I'm not interested enough to spend my "physical reading" (reading real books) time to this trashy stuff. Obviously, I will listen to trash. :)

We had dinner at our hotel, Angeleno, overlooking the westside of LA. It was gorgeous. This restaurant has horrible service and questionable food, but my companion was great so it was a good evening. We won't be able to go to the FOB next year so this was a swan song. Maybe when I move back to Berkeley we can make a girls weekend of it. Maybe.