End of the break- back to school on Monday; March 3- City Elections

We are into 2009 and school is still out for a few more days of "winter recess" (aka "Christmas Vacation") to January 12th for Lincoln any other LAUSD schools on a "traditional" track, while the 3-track and 4-track schools were back in session on this past Monday.

CHECKING THE NEWS - A name from the past.

There was a bit of sadness in reading the L.A. TIMES news of the passing of an original "Mouseketeer" from the original Mickey Mouse Club t.v. show. "Cheryl Holdridge dies at 64; popular Mouseketeer," http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-me-cheryl-holdridge9-2009jan09,0,5009695.story

It's something to think about for us, the folks of accumulated years, with a memory of the times when those shows were new. Back then, we had only the regular channels, and no cable or satellite, plus the added feature of black and white television that relieved us of the duty to adjust any colors in the picture. The Times story was fairly informative and brought out information on what happened to Cheryl and a few other Mouseketeeers.

NEWS- Dog helps fight crime.

There was another story in the California section of the L.A. TIMES this week that was just a brief item about a dog that alerted his owner to a burglary that led to an arrest, "Retired Marine credits smuggled dog from Iraq with alerting him to thieves" http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/san-diego-_-a-r.html?cid=144718212#comments

The special part of this story is that the 4-year-old dog, named "Lava," was the subject of book, "From Baghdad, With Love," written by his owner, Jay Kopelman, who was an officer, a Lt. Colonel, in the U.S. Marines in Baghdad and found the dog while he and his men were in Baghdad during the first week of the battle for Fallujah. The book is separated into sections that tell different parts of the work to get Lava out of Iraq, since dogs were not allowed as pets for the military and such situations were handled by killing them.

I borrowed this book from the L.A. Public Library last year and it turned out to be particularly compelling reading. The book describes all the work done to get the dog out and all the assortment of people in different roles who helped get it done, including instances of the major disappointments along the way to get Lava safe.

The news story shows that the dog is doing fine now, a long way from where he slept in a boot. There's a brief item about the story told by the book on a blog that shows more pictures from puppyhood, as well as a recap of the book, with blogger comments about the book, too: http://litterascripta.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/from-baghdad-with-love/

Go ahead and check out this book and see how close things came to not having a happy ending. It was very good reading.

[If you were wondering why a big gap in the posts here this week, well, I put a few items together on other blogs concerning the L.A. City elections coming on March 3 and did not get around to do much for your reading until now.]

HOW ABOUT THAT MAYOR, TONY VILLARAIGOSA and his crew? More coming tomorrow.