Five tips for writing a will

More than half of all Americans who own property die without a will, according to National Caregivers Library. To avoid leaving behind headaches for your heirs, here are some key steps in creating a will:

1. Decide who you want to leave your assets to. While family members are the most common choices, you can name others, including charities. Choose alternate recipients in case your primary beneficiary dies before you do.
2. If you name multiple beneficiaries, decide if you want to divide your assets evenly or give specific gifts to particular recipients.
3. Select an executor. This person, responsible for carrying out the terms of your will, should be honest, responsible and organized.
4. If you have minor children, choose a guardian in case both you and your spouse die at the same time. Be sure to ask the would-be guardians if they’re willing to take on this responsibility.
5. If your situation is uncomplicated, consider handwriting your will. A handwritten will does not have to be witnessed or notarized, according to the California Bar Association. Another option is California’s “fill-in-the-blanks” statutory will. If your needs are more complex, consider using an estate planning lawyer. 

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New York Times headline misses the point on diversity bake sale

The New York Times' Inaccurate Headline of the Week is "A 'Diversity Bake Sale' Backfires on Campus" from its September 27 issue.

The story is about a Republican student group at the University of California at Berkeley who planned to hold a bake sale where prices would vary depending on the buyer's race or gender. For example, white students would pay $2 for a pastry, while Asians would pay $1.50, Latinos $1, and blacks 75 cents. Women of all races would receive a 25-cent discount.

The point of the satirical event was to protest a proposed California law that would allow public universities to consider race, ethnicity and gender in college admissions.

The bake sale idea sparked some angry reactions, as well as support, and prompted debate over the proposed law.

So how, as the headline said, did the bake sale "backfire"?  Well, it didn't. The idea was to draw attention to the proposed law by showing how ludicrous it is to treat people differently based on the color of their skin or their genitalia. By that measure, the bake sale idea was spectacular success even before it took place. It prompted articles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. I live in California and wasn't even aware of the proposed law until I read articles about the "bake sale."

In the article, the student body president is quoted as saying that the bake sale has prompted complaints on campus. “Many feel the differential pricing is offensive and that it makes them feel unwelcome,” Vishalli Loomba said. Exactly! Treating people differently based on race or gender should bother you. That's the whole point.


You can read the story here.  The story is fine, just not the headline.

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Watching Chivas USA: All the wrong noise

I attended my first Chivas USA game last night at Home Depot Center and, even though I'm a big soccer fan, it will likely be a long time before I go back. The problem was noise -- more to the point, the wrong kind of noise.

Let me emphasize that I generally love noise at a live sporting event. I like games where the fans are shouting, screaming, and stomping their feet in response to the action. To be among thousands of people screaming "DE-fense!," or leaping to their feet simultaneously after a spectacular play is an exciting, shared experience.

But the noise at Home Deport Center was nothing like that. At each end, a group of fans played drums, banged sticks, sang and chanted nonstop throughout the game. A brass band played constantly at one corner. Throughout the stadium, people continually blew on vuvuzelas, those plastic horns that should be classified by the U.N. as sadistic torture devices.

In all, the stadium was filled from start to finish with a random nonstop din, completely disconnected to what was going on in the game. Not only was the constant noise annoying, it seemed to smother the type of shared cheering that makes sporting events fun. Even when some fans made an attempt to start the Wave it petered out pitifully -- no doubt in part because adjacent fans couldn't hear it coming.

It was like going to a park where a variety of groups are holding separate picnics, and everyone's blasting their boomboxes. Meanwhile, on an adjacent field, some guys are playing soccer. A few people occasionally glance at the game, but no one's really watching the game together.

For a much better soccer watching experience, I suggest watching the Seattle Sounders at their home field. I've seen two games there. At those games, there were various chants and music beforehand, but after kickoff all that stopped and the fans focused on the game. You could tell that everyone was watching the game closely, because even relatively minor plays brought outbursts of cheers (or groans).  It is that typed of shared experience that will bring me back to a stadium again and again.

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Book review: "License to Pawn"

If you like the History Channel show “Pawn Stars,” you’ll love this book. “License to Pawn” offers a fun and enlightening behind-the-scenes look at the show and its stars – Rick Harrison, Big Hoss, Old Man and Chumlee.

The book has dozens of great stories and anecdotes about characters who make their home at Las Vegas’ World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. One I liked was Big Hoss’ story of the woman who asked to borrow a pair of pliers, then returned to the shop with a bloody mouth and some gold teeth to pawn. The shop’s unusual method of dealing with shoplifters – take away their driver’s license, so they’ll be forced to go to the DMV – is memorable. And Rick’s story of trying to steal his dad’s motorhome as a 14-year-old was worth a laugh, and says a lot about his upbringing. 

Even without the TV show, this would be an interesting book that shows how a pawn shop operates. I suspect there are a lot of people like me who have never, or rarely, been in a pawn shop and had only a vague idea of how the business works. And you might even learn a thing or two about collectibles.

The book is entirely first-person, mostly by Rick Harrison, but there are separate chapters by Big Hoss, Old Man and Chumlee. The hidden star in the book is ghostwriter Tim Keown, who doesn’t even get credit on the cover, but I have no doubt wrote much of the text. Chumlee, for instance, admits in his chapter that, “I don’t spell very good at all. I don’t know where periods and commas go.” No doubt, Keown polished up that chapter and many others.

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Book review: "The Wolf" by Richard Guilliott and Peter Hohnen

War stories are supposed to feature brave, honorable heroes facing off with vile, despicable villains. Reality, of course, is never so clear cut. Exhibit A: "The Wolf," an eye-opening account of a little-known chapter of World War I.

Authors Richard Guilliott and Peter Hohnen adroitly tell the story of the German "commerce raider" ship Wolf that prowled the world's oceans for 15 months in 1916-18, capturing and sinking 14 ships and laying mines responsible for sinking another 16 ships.

For all the damage it caused, this is hardly a story of good and evil. The German crew are shown to be humans - some are lying and cruel, others kind and gentlemanly. The hundreds of prisoners who were brought aboard after their ships are captured also show divisions, some stoically resisting their captors while others choose to cooperate. Still others engage in petty feuds.

The Wolf eventually came to imprison over 400 men, women and children from 25 different nations. In the tense and uncertain stewpot of the ship, conflicts simmered and tempers sometimes flared but there also moments of compassion. Many of the crew and prisoners intermixed and found mutual respect.

In fact, the reader can't help but have some grudging respect for the Wolf's success at sea. Guilliot and Hohnen paint a picture of a stern but efficient captain, Karl Nerger, who often outwits his counterparts. When one freighter is captured, a German officer greets the ship's captain with, "You are late - we expected you two days ago. Now where can I find your five hundred tons of Westport coal?"

The harshest assessments of the authors are reserved for the Australian and British governments, which demonstrated a remarkable head-in-the-sand incompetence during the Wolf's tour. The Australians, for example, persisted in the face of great contrary evidence in contending that the disappearance of ships near its coastline was the work of saboteurs on the ships or in the shipyards. As a result, few ship captains were warned that a pirate ship was prowling the ocean.

I didn't find this a fast read, but I don't mean that negatively. Rather, Guilliatt and Hohnen fill each page with so many interesting details that you can't skim ahead. They have dozens of good side stories, many of them looking at the anti-German paranoia and censorship that arose in Britain and Australia during the war. They tell, for example, the sad story of Carl Newman, an Australian fisherman of German descent, whom the authorities imprison for allegedly aiding the enemy based only on rumors and hearsay.

Early on, I felt like the book was hampered by the lack of a single central character. But I soon forgot about that as I got engrossed in the story. This is a bit like one of those multi-star Robert Altman movies where a lot of different stories and characters are interwoven.  In the end, it works.

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Book review: "Finding Everett Ruess" by David Roberts

When I say that David Roberts has written perhaps THE definitive book about Everett Ruess, your reaction is likely to be either:

1. "Wow, I gotta read that!"
or
2. "Who's Everett Ruess?"

Therein lies the difficulty in writing about Everett Ruess -- most people have never heard of him, but those who have seem fascinated by his story. And it's tough to write a book for both groups.

Everett Ruess was a young man who wandered remote areas of the American Southwest starting in 1930, at age 16, until his baffling disappearance at age 20 in 1934. Ruess' favorite area for exploring was the mesas and canyons of the "Four Corners" region of northern Arizona and southern Utah. It was in one of these isolated canyons that Ruess was last seen.

"At the time of his disappearance, Ruess was unknown in the larger world," writes Roberts in his new book, "Finding Everett Ruess." "Seventy-seven years later, he is the object of an intense and romantic cult that has no parallel in the long annals of the American Southwest."

Ruess made no great discoveries during his travels -- his journeys were not about the destination, but the experience. He left behind writing that rhapsodizes the joy of untethered exploration and the beauty of raw nature.

Just before his disappearance, he wrote to his brother: "As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of the wilderness, rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the street car and the star sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities."

There is something about the idea of cutting loose from society that enthralls many. Ruess' life and writings have been compared to John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, as well as to Chris McCandless, the subject of the book and movie, "Into the Wild." No doubt there is a vicarious thrill in reading about Ruess; many of us wish that we could have such independence to explore.

Roberts thoroughly and meticulous documents Ruess life, travels and disappearance, and further delves into the many theories about his disappearance. For those heavy-duty Ruess fans, "Finding Everett Ruess" is a must-read.

But for those new to the Ruess story, this book makes a poor introduction. Roberts is so thorough he seems to leave nothing out -- the book is filled with dry reports of minutiae such as radio programs Ruess listened to and supplies he purchased. It's just too much. It's like having to read "The Baseball Encyclopedia" when all you want is to learn about Babe Ruth.

Further, since we know at the outset that Ruess vanished and his disappearance has never been solved, there's really no suspense.

To me, the best part of the book was the last fifth, when Roberts describes his personal involvement in an attempt to solve the mystery of Ruess' disappearance. This part takes some twists you don't expect.

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Book review: "I Survived: The Shark Attacks of 1916"

This is a nicely done book that combines tales of shark attacks with the anxieties a 10-year-old boy trying to make friends in a new town. I read it with my 8-year-old son and while it didn't quite make the you-can't-put-it-down category, it did prove fairly engaging for both of us.

Author Lauren Tarshis' book is tilted more toward boys than girls. Boys seem to have a natural affinity to anything related to sharks, while the parallel story of young Chet Roscow trying to make friends will probably ring familiar to them. This would be a good book for when your child starts reading novels on his or her own.

The story is mostly fictional, but it's tied to the true 1916 shark attacks that killed four people in New Jersey. There's a nice section at the end that explains the facts behind the story.

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