The Gratitude Campaign





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I've got a new calendar blog where I'm listing Sacramento Area Charity Events. Do you have any events you'd like me to add?

He Always Remembered Your Birthday

"Friends noted that he seldom overlooked a birthday. A typical telephone call would go like this: "Hey, this is B. T. I'm at the airport in Chicago. Happy Birthday. Gotta run."

B. T. Collins, Brash Maverick Lawmaker, Dies

March 20, 1993|JERRY GILLAM and CARL INGRAM | TIMES STAFF WRITERS

SACRAMENTO — Assemblyman B. T. Collins, a rough-hewn political maverick who made his mark with blunt talk and direct action while serving in appointed positions under Republican and Democratic governors, died late Friday at Mercy General Hospital after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 52. The Republican legislator from suburban Carmichael, who lost an arm and a leg to a grenade during combat in Vietnam and had a history of heart problems, collapsed at a local hotel shortly before a civic luncheon to be addressed by Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Although doctors said he was clinically dead when he arrived in an ambulance, Collins was rushed to two successive hospitals and placed on life-support systems in a desperate effort to save him. He never regained consciousness from the time he collapsed until his death more than eight hours later, a spokeswoman for Mercy hospital said. The legislator had undergone heart surgery to clear blocked arteries in December, his second such operation in five years. Collins, a bachelor, was best known as Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.'s irreverent Republican chief of staff in the early 1980s. At the time, Collins was a heavy drinker and a chain-smoker, an abrasive and profane former GI who publicly criticized his boss, praised Ronald Reagan and tangled regularly with button-down bureaucrats. A diabetic as well as a heart patient, Collins quit drinking and smoking several years ago. Born Brien Thomas Collins, the bearish, blue-eyed Irishman was known to friends and critics alike as "B.T." He was raised in White Plains, N.Y. In a 1981 interview with The Times, Collins, then newly appointed by Brown as his second in command, displayed the kind of candor that became his hallmark, even on the subject of his boss. He said his first task should be to "get that guy to washing his hair. It's disgusting, all . . . grease. Not even dandruff could get through." He said he intended to help Brown "be the kind of governor he should have been for eight years. I'm gonna tell him the goddamned truth: 'Governor, people don't like you.' " After making those remarks, Collins offered his resignation to Brown, who turned it down. "He's the thinker, and I'm the loud-mouth drinker," Collins said later. In an unusual publicity stunt during the Mediterranean fruit fly emergency in the early 1980s, Collins gulped down a tumbler of diluted malathion to demonstrate that the controversial insecticide represented no threat to public health. In 1967, as a young Army Special Forces officer, Collins lost his right arm and leg to a grenade during combat in the Vietnam War. He was hospitalized for 18 months. He later earned a law degree from the University of Santa Clara. Collins worked as an attorney briefly in 1975 but said law practice was a bore and joined Brown. Collins first showed that he would be no ordinary bureaucrat in 1979 when Brown appointed him director of the California Conservation Corps, a neglected and ineffective organization that former Gov. Reagan had created and neglected. Using Army know-how, Collins shook the CCC inside-out, reforming it in the style of a military boot camp. He recruited unemployed, inner-city youths for low-paying jobs fighting fires and floods. Successfully scratching out a budget from a skeptical Legislature, Collins transformed the CCC into one of state government's most effective and highly regarded agencies. After the election of George Deukmejian as governor in 1982, Collins became a vice president of the investment firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. In 1989, re-entering public service under a Republican boss, he was appointed deputy to then-state Treasurer Thomas Hayes and served until Hayes was defeated by Kathleen Brown in 1990. Early in 1991, Gov. Pete Wilson appointed Collins director of the California Youth Authority, where he immediately touched off controversy by demanding that the young prisoners, many of them Spanish-speaking, write their complaints to him in proper English. "I hope the ACLU sues me for depriving these people of their right to be ignorant," he said. Wilson called on Collins several months later to run for a vacant Assembly seat in a suburban Sacramento district. Collins fought an uphill battle and narrowly won. "It was not something he necessarily wanted to do, and I urged him to do it," Wilson said later. Collins said he ran "for the same reason I went to Vietnam in 1965: I don't want to grow old saying I wish I had." Friends noted that he seldom overlooked a birthday. A typical telephone call would go like this: "Hey, this is B. T. I'm at the airport in Chicago. Happy Birthday. Gotta run." day. Gotta run." http://articles.latimes.com/1993-03-20/news/mn-13159_1_b-t-collins
Full B.T. Collins Tribute

• Of Better Men - Geoff Metcalf
• The Courage of Sam Bird - by B.T. Collins - Reader's Digest
• The California Viet Nam Veterans Memorial
• Joseph Galloway's Speech at the Wall
• My Friend in Need - by B.T. Collins - The Wall Street Journal
• Burying Tradition: More People Opt for "Fun" Funerals - The Wall Street Journal
• B.T. Collins Captain Hook Scholarship - Santa Clara University
• B.T. Collins: A Simple Truth by Assemblyman Jim Nielsen
• He Always Remembered Your Birthday
• If B.T. Were Here, He'd Call Me a Candy-Assed Marine and Tell Me To Pull Myself Together

USC vs. Penn State

I've got Rose Bowl Tickets for Sale if you're interested.

When was the last time USC was in the Rose Bowl?

Fabulous Food Bloggers

For a couple years I've been following the restaurant reviews of a great food blogger who use to work for Sunset Magazine. I've wished I could get her to do some recommendations for my Things You Should Do website, but there's no contact info on her site.

Now she's moved back to New England and has had some very poor customer service from Dependable Auto Service. Businesses really should know in this day of the internet, they need to improve their customer relations.

Recommended Bloggers

Have you seen my list of Recommended Bloggers at Things You Should Do -- mainly travel, fashion & food blogs. ;^D

Do You Squidoo?

Have you checked out any of the lenses at Squidoo.com? They're designed to be a stand alone mini website on a specific topic. I've got a bunch of them.

Halloween Happenings
Great Golf
Best Mexican Restaurants
Best Italian Restaurants
Best Tapas Restaurants Best French Restaurants
Best Steak Restaurants
Best Sushi Restaurants
Best Thai Restaurants
City Guides

My grandmother married my grandfather in San Francisco in 1906. Maybe they were strolling down Market Street in this film shot in 1905. Stranger things have happened

Madonna is Boring

Live Earth London's Glacial Pacing
Mixing Music and a Serious Message Gives Concert a Clunky Rhythm

By Glenda Cooper
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 8, 2007; D04



LONDON, July 7 -- "If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down!" Thus Madonna revealed her plan to combat global warming. Clad in a black satin leotard, she gyrated with dancers and simulated sex with an amplifier and a guitar. Along with the Foo Fighters, the 48-year-old Queen of Pop transformed a Live Earth concert that at times had seemed earnest and slow.

Security was tight Saturday at the Wembley Stadium event, which fell on the second anniversary of the deadly terrorist attacks on London's mass transit system and only a week after a plot to set off car bombs in the capital failed. The weather -- which in recent weeks has driven thousands from their homes because of flooding -- stayed fair for the afternoon.

The interspersing of musical numbers with lectures on climate change gave much of the show a staccato feel. The Black Eyed Peas were the first band to really get the crowd dancing; other early big draws were Metallica, Keane, Duran Duran and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as the crowd awaited the appearance of the headliner, Madonna.

It's an inconvenient truth, but mixing rock with recycling is awkward. In a TV interview earlier this week, Matt Bellamy of the band Muse mocked the event as "private jets for climate change."

John Buckley of Carbon Footprint, an organization that helps companies reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, said Saturday that Live Earth will produce about 74,500 tons of the gas.

"We would have to plant 100,000 trees to offset the effect of Live Earth," he said, speaking by telephone. But, he added, "if you can reach 2 billion people and raise awareness, that's pretty fantastic."

Certainly, on the way into the show, some of the 65,000 people who'd spent $110 on a ticket appeared unaware of the seven-point pledge that Al Gore, the event's chief impresario, had asked all spectators to make. Asked about it, they offered blank looks and said they were there for Madonna (whose annual carbon footprint, according to Buckley, is 1,018 tons -- about 92 times the 11 tons an average person uses per year).

"I'm not even sure who Gore is," said Georgie Simpson, 35, from Ipswich, in eastern England. "I saw Gore on TV," added Sue Bourner, 38, a health service manager from Hampshire. "But frankly, I think it's cheeky of Americans to come over here and lecture us. They are the worst polluters."

The organizers were determined that the crowd not go away ignorant, however. Big banners asking people to "answer the call" surrounded the stage. And a series of public information films featuring celebrities such as Penelope Cruz urged people to turn thermostats down and carpool while, in between, montages of happy animals were contrasted with pollution-belching power stations.

Occasionally there was a surreal experience of, for example, listening to the reunited, veteran rock group Genesis sing "Turn It On Again" while the video images appeared to suggest it was time to Turn It Off. And singer-songwriters Damien Rice and David Gray promised everyone to make a difference -- before singing that anthem to predestination, "Que Sera Sera."

Will the event make a difference after the last burger in biodegradable packaging is eaten and the stage made of recycled oil drums is packed away? Steve Howard, CEO of the Climate Group, a partner in Live Earth, said that it would.

"I think that this will be very inspiring and show people that you can put on concerts and tours in a much greener way," he said. "I understand concerns about Madonna's carbon footprint. But nobody's perfect, and at least we are now having an interesting debate about it, which will change behavior."

Lining up at the stalls selling $40 organic cotton T-shirts proclaiming "Green Is the New Black," Andrea Covic, 26, was also optimistic. "I've come because I'm sympathetic to the message," she said. "Of course I want to see the Beastie Boys. But I do think this is a good way of getting people and the media to take climate change seriously."

But Andrew Turner, 29, who had come to see his favorite band, the Foo Fighters, was not convinced. "I already recycle and wash my clothes at 30 degrees [centigrade, about 86 degrees Fahrenheit] and turn off lights and computers," he said. "So I have a suspicion that those who are coming today are those already interested in the message. I don't know how many more it will convince."

77 Maiden Lane - San Francisco, California

My hair looks so fab! I got it colored yesterday by Christopher Braun who has just returned to San Francisco after working at a top spot in NYC. The color is perfect. And Angela gave me an extremely cute hairdo.

This would be an excellent entry into the Fabulous Places contest. The Things You Should Do website has the best spas and salons all over the world and lots of cool places to go. And the grand prize winner in the contest will win an iphone. But since I'm one of the judges, I can't enter. This is just a sample of how to do it for those of you who are itching to get an iphone.