She was forty five years old; she left a husband, four
children, two parents, a sister, and many friends. She died of cancer.
I remember the day like it was an hour ago. I was living in
Ithaca, New York then. My wife Kathy and I had just returned from spending some
days with her in the hospital. Before this day death to me was a distant thing.
Yes, I had been to funeral homes viewing my father’s parents and brothers. But
now death was real and unknown. The day was a Saturday, my father called and
everything in our family changed forever. Trying to recall the days that
followed is difficult; it was like a fuzzy dream. My father and grandparents
were in shock most of the time, fortunately I and my oldest sister had spouses
to lean on and support us. To this day I
feel so sorry for my younger two sisters, who had to bare this on their own
watching all the sorrow around them.
As life is we have all moved on, healed and experienced the
many ups and downs of life. I have
experienced more death; I have seen family, friends, and business associates
all leave us. But this memory of thirty five years ago is still upmost in my
mind. The memory of her to this very minute is strong and intact. The sadness
of her death has been replaced over time by the love and life she gave all of
us. The wonderful memories of family and not the memory of her death becomes
the gift over time she has given her husband, children, and friends.
Now when I have friends experience their parent’s death or
other family members I can offer them support in the belief that their memory
and love will last with them until they die.
Barbara Jean we love you, thank you for my life and thank
you for the memories.
FLASH -
"New pope will probably be elected by end of March-Vatican. A new pope
will probably be elected by the end of March, a Vatican spokesman said this
morning, after Pope Benedict left his aides 'incredulous' with his announcement
that he would resign because he was too weak to fulfill the duties of his
office. Benedict said he would step down on Feb. 28 and would not take part in
the conclave to elect a new pope, Father Federico Lombardi told reporters at
the Vatican. After resigning, the former pope will move to a summer residence
near Rome. After that, he will live in a former monastery within Vatican
territory."
BIRTHDAYS
THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to: Geoff
Ball …famous nephew, Jeb Bush (60), Ice-T (55), Michael Jordan (50), Rene Russo
(59), Chuck Yeager (90).
NUMBER
OF THE DAY: $45 MILLION - That's the eye-popping sum awarded in
cash and stock to Jeffries Group CEO Richard Handler, making him the top
earning public company boss on Wall Street. Haven't heard of Jeffries? You are
not alone. It's hardly a blue-chip household name like Goldman Sachs or Morgan
Stanley. The number is even more astounding when you consider Jeffries 2012
total net income: $282 million. That means Handler is pocketing nearly 16
percent of the entire company's profits.
MAYOR
WHO?
- "Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa last week shot down speculation in California and Washington about
his candidacy for an Obama Cabinet position ... Villaraigosa for months has
been the subject of buzz he would be selected to succeed Secretary Ray LaHood
at the Transportation Department or as a nominee to head the Department of
Commerce. But he said in a statement that he is focused on the last five months
of his second term as mayor."
RUNNING
FOR PRESIDENT?? -
"YOU LOOK GOOD, HILL: Her website gets a face-lift - for 2016? ...
Backers' website glams her up: Just days after becoming a private citizen,
Hillary Clinton [launched] a ... new website [HilllaryClintonOffice.com] that
boldly features her in an attention-grabbing photo. A mass e-mail sent Tuesday
by her husband Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea [from the Clinton
Foundation] ... urges recipients to 'thank Hillary for making our country and
our world, stronger, safer and better. ... Please take a moment to send Hillary
your personal note of thanks' ... The website and e-mail show that Clinton
already has given great thought to the future ... Visitors to
HillaryClinton.com, the remnant of campaigns past [Friends of Hillary], were
presented with a link directing them to the new address, ... which was
registered Thursday, 24 hours before Clinton left the State Department. ...
"The site ... contains a contact form for visitors to
fill out - allowing Clinton to add to her already robust mailing list. Clinton
aides downplayed the site's significance, insisting that it is simply a way for
fans and the media to reach Clinton now that she is out of office. The mass
e-mail was sent by her husband's nonprofit foundation to its subscribers."
$2
TRILLION MORE IN DEFICIT REDUCTION NEEDED - "A slowly
improving economy and recently enacted tax increases will help bring down the
federal deficit for the next few years, the Congressional Budget Office said
Tuesday, but it will take another $2 trillion in belt-tightening over the next
decade to begin to move the federal debt closer to historic levels. ... Douglas
Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan agency that advises Congress on budget
and economic matters, emphasized the risks of failing to stabilize the debt.
'At this level of debt relative to GDP, our country would be incurring costs
and bearing risks of a sort that we have not [had] in our history except for a
few years around the end of the second World War,' he said."
SPORTS
BLINK - "Fans bet record $98.9M in Nevada on Super Bowl: 183
sports books made $7.2 million on the football action. The San Francisco 49ers
started out as a 5-point favorite but the Baltimore Ravens won 34-31. Odds
makers say California fans drove the unprecedented handle, flooding Las Vegas
and the Lake Tahoe area with wagers on the hometown team, which hadn't been in the
Super Bowl since 1995. ... The previous record was set in 2006, when gamblers
wagered $94.5 million on the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the
Pittsburgh Steelers. Book makers said they took a beating this year on
proposition bets, including a long-shot on whether there would be a safety.
Ravens punter Sam Koch took a safety for the final score with 4 seconds left.
Casinos retained 7.3 percent of the millions wagered, slightly less than the
average hold during the past decade, which has fluctuated from lows of negative
2.8 percent to highs of 17 percent.
"The 65 points scored in New Orleans easily exceeded
the over/under of 49. ... Casinos paid out at 9-to-1 for the safety. Fans who
bet that the 49ers' final score would be on a safety cashed in at 50-to-1.
Sports books also paid out big last year when the New York Giants played the
New England Patriots and the first score of the game was a safety. ... Nevada
sports books have lost only twice on the Super Bowl in the past 20 years, most
recently in 2008, when New York beat the Patriots, costing casinos a record
$2.6 million."
"Ravens' Super Bowl Win Draws Fewest Viewers Since 2010's
Contest, CBS's Super Bowl telecast of the Baltimore Ravens' 34-31 win over the
San Francisco 49ers ... drew a smaller audience than the last two record
championship games. The four-hour contest at the Superdome in New Orleans
averaged 108.4 million viewers ... The drop ends seven years of rising
viewership for the game, annually the most-watched U.S. television event. ...
Last year's contest between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots
drew a record audience of 111.3 million. The previous year's game between the
Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers attracted 111 million."
BUSH
FAMILY HACKED - "Audacious Hack Exposes Bush Family Pix,
E-Mail: Hacker breached AOL account of ex-president's sister, other victims. Included
in the hacked material is a confidential October 2012 list of home addresses,
cell phone numbers, and e-mails for dozens of Bush family members ... The
posted photos and e-mails contain a watermark with the hacker's online alias,
'Guccifer.' Correspondence obtained by the hacker indicates that at least six
separate e-mail accounts have been compromised, including the AOL account of Dorothy
Bush Koch, daughter of George H.W. Bush and sister of George W. Bush. Other
breached accounts belong to Willard Heminway, 79, an old friend of the 41st
president who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut; CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, a
longtime Bush family friend ... Both Heminway and Nantz corresponded with Bush,
88, about playing golf and visiting the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The hacked e-mails, sent between 2009 and 2012, include correspondence between
Nantz and George W. Bush's scheduler about an October 2010 golf outing in
Dallas.
CALIFORNIA
DREAMING - "Huge storm blankets Northeast with 2 feet of snow.
More than 38 inches of snow fell in Milford in central Connecticut, and an
82-mph wind gust was recorded in nearby Westport. ... Airlines scratched more
than 5,300 flights ... Snow piled up so high in some places ... that people
couldn't open their doors to get outside. ... The wind-whipped snowstorm
mercifully arrived at the start of a weekend, which meant fewer cars on the
road and extra time for sanitation crews to clear the mess before commuters in
the New York-to-Boston region of roughly 25 million people have to go back to
work. ... A little more than 11 inches fell in New York City ... Nearly 22
inches of snow fell in Boston and up to 3 feet was expected ... About 650,000
customers in the Northeast lost power during the height of the snowstorm, most
of them in Massachusetts and Rhode Island."
"The Weather
Channel ... bestowed the snowstorm ... with the name Nemo, conjuring the image
of the adorable orange fish from the Disney/Pixar film 'Finding Nemo.' ... The
common criticism is that it is a [Weather Channel] marketing ploy. The National
Weather Service ... has advised its forecasters not to follow the channel's
lead, and a spokesman said it had never named winter storms ... (The New York
Times advises reporters not to use the names in storm coverage.) But the name
game was catching on, as evidenced by the government officials, news media
outlets and airlines that published advisories using the name. 'We're ready for
Nemo,' the Twitter account for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ... asserted ...
'Twitter needs a hashtag,' said Bryan Norcross, the Weather Channel
meteorologist who helped conceive the storm-naming system. The main rationale for
naming, he said, is to help raise awareness about the dangers of storms. ...
[T]he channel's next names are Orko, Plato and Q."
"The weather service uses names for hurricanes and
tropical storms created by the World Meteorological Organization, but not other
types of storms. ... Decades ago, storms like this would come with at most a
day or two warning. But now because of satellite technology ... and better data
and modeling, forecasters are seeing storms several days in advance ... There
are days of waiting for a storm with little news to report, sometimes leading
to exaggeration. ... The lead-up to the storm has been the atmospheric
equivalent of the week before the Oscars or Super Bowl. ... The name Nemo was
getting significant use, trending Friday on Twitter. ... CBS News' Major
Garrett mused on Twitter: 'I thought only Dairy Queen named Blizzards.”
NHL
POWER RANKINGS – a key indicator after ten games, who are the
best and worst in the National Hockey League: (1). Chicago Blackhawks, (2).
New Jersey Devils, (3). Boston Bruins, (4). Anaheim Ducks, (5). Pittsburgh
Penguins. Bottom Two: (29). Washington Capitals, (30). Columbus Blue Jackets.
COLLEGE
HOCKEY PICK OF THE WEEK – Friday February 15, 7:35 PM ET, CBSSN; a
key game in the CCHA at Steve Cady (St. Lawrence ’74) Arena in Oxford, Ohio.
#11 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (18-11-1) visit #2 Miami Redhawks (18-7-5), the
winner of this one has the upperhand the final weeks of the season. Miami 5 Notre
Dame 4. (Season to date (5-2)
THE
SWAMI’S TOP PICKS – ice - Miami 5 Irish 4, hoops (women) - La Verne
66 Occidental 59, hoops (men) – Michigan
State 71 Michigan 65. Season to date (55-28)
DRIVING
THE WEEK - Obama delivers his State of the Union Address on Tuesday
and is expected to argue for new (and recycled) spending initiatives on
infrastructure and other items to try and drive faster job growth. These are
not likely to pass the House. Obama will again seek to raise pressure on House
Republicans to relent on their refusal to consider new revenue through tax
reform as part of an alternative to the nearly $1 trillion sequester spending
cuts set to hit March 1. ...
After the SOTU, Obama goes on the traditional road trip to
sell his policies with stops in Asheville, N.C. on Wednesday, Atlanta on
Thursday and Chicago on Friday. ... Treasury Budget at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday
expected to show a deficit of $2 billion. ... Retail sales at 8:30 a.m. on
Wednesday expected to grow 0.1 percent. ... University of Michigan Consumer
Sentiment at 8:30 a.m. Friday expected to rise slightly to 74.8 from 73.8,
still a weak figure.
Wall Street is coming off an uneven week that nonetheless
saw some notable achievements: the S&P 500 chalked up its 6th straight week
of gains, something it had not done in 42 years, while the Nasdaq posted its
highest close since November 9, 2000. The Dow, however, did break a five-week
string of advances.
Next week; Mid winter movie and restaurant reviews, I hope.
Until Next Monday, Adios!
Claremont, CA
February 11, 2013
#III-43, 148
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