September 1, 2010 – 01:24 pm

According to Montgomery County police, a makeshift bomb was discovered inside the Discovery Communications Building, ABC 7 reports. It consisted of two small propane canisters similar to those used for camping. It was wrapped with piping that contained shot gun pellets. If it had gone off, it would have acted similar to a grenade, sending out shrapnel.

Police also say that suspect James J. Lee fired his gun when he entered the lobby Wednesday. An overnight sweep of the building produced a number of items that were disrupted by the bomb squad, including two backpacks and two boxes. Lee was also seen during the standoff with what appeared to be a remote with an antenna in his hand, which concerned emergency responders. Lee also had on him batteries and two ski masks.

Around 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, the tactical unit that was outside the lobby heard what they believed to be a gun shot or some type of explosive, in addition to seeing Lee waving the gun and appearing to threaten a hostage. At that point they made the decision to go in and a member of the tactical entry team shot and killed Lee.

ORIGINAL STORY, SEPT. 1:

Corrections: An original version of this story said Lee had violated a stay-away order by returning yesterday; in fact, the stay-away order had expired. Also, police did not detonate the bombs last night. They “disrupted” them with quick blasts of water.

Employees of Discovery Communications hadn’t heard much from James J. Lee in the last two years. For a brief spell in early 2008, Lee was a fixture outside the company’s Silver Spring headquarters, leading a bizarre protest aimed at forcing the television giant to alter its programming. When his week-long spectacle ended in an arrest for disorderly conduct, Lee headed to a courthouse in Montgomery County as his own lawyer and quietly slipped out of the company’s consciousness.

When the 43-year-old finally returned today around 1 p.m., Lee came with a gun in his hand, a possible explosive device strapped to his body, and a list of demands that made sense only to himself. He walked into the company’s lobby brandishing his gun, starting a four-hour standoff full of fear and negotiations, with co-workers and loved ones hanging desperately on every update from police.

Lee never moved beyond the company’s lobby. He immediately took three people hostage — two of them Discovery Channel staffers, the third a security guard. Once it became clear something was amiss, the 1,900 employees either hunkered down in their offices or headed to the building’s side exits and out into the streets.

The building went into lockdown, the Montgomery County police arrived on the scene and cordoned off the area, and Discovery managers sent out an e-mail: “URGENT: Employees Should Go Home – Don’t Return to 1DP Until Further Notice. Employees at 1DP should go home for the remainder of the day. No employee should return to 1DP for any reason.” The roughly 100 children at Discovery Kids Place, the company’s day care center, were ushered by their teachers to a nearby McDonald’s.

Discovery staffers texted and e-mailed one another in a flurry of confusion. The situation was shocking and bizarre. There are plenty of government buildings around Washington to attract angry extremists, but who could hold a potentially violent grudge against Discovery?

“It took all of us by surprise,” says one employee, who was set to work at the office that evening. (Employees were instructed not to talk the press, which explains why staffers quoted in this story requested anonymity.) The company, she says, is quite good about keeping employees abreast of any controversy or demonstrations—-like earlier this year, when some people protested against Discovery’s plans for a reality show featuring Sarah Palin. There’d been nothing of the sort in recent weeks.

But the situation made a little more sense when the press aired a loose description of the perpetrator. “When I came in to talk to one of my supervisors, we had the TV on,” says another employee who works in a separate building. “There was a crawl at the bottom of the screen saying the suspect had been identified as an Asian male. We said, ‘That’s got to be the guy who was protesting a couple of years ago.’ And an hour or so later they confirmed it.” The employee says he hadn’t seen or thought of Lee in more than two years.

Lee had launched his one-man protest in 2008 because he believed the Discovery Channel wasn’t doing enough to save Earth. In January of that year, he went on an Internet discussion board and posted his plans for a “Save the Planet” protest outside company headquarters.

“The time for pussy-footing around the subject is done,” he wrote. “It’s time to protest [Discovery] until they start changing their stupid message. They ARE glorifying the damned fishermen who are overfishing the planet and I would think that you would see that for yourself instead of defending them. These people are harmful to the planet. Them and their glorifying of civilization and it’s machinery. All they are intested [sic] in is SELLING stuff.” Judging from his postings and MySpace page, Lee also harbored a strange infatuation with Daniel Quinn, the author of the novel Ishmael, and believed the Discovery Channel’s programming encouraged too much human procreation.

“His whole stance was that Discovery needed to be more action and less talk as far as conservation and wildlife go,” says an employee who witnessed the protests. “He felt Discovery was talking about this stuff and not doing anything. And he felt that [some shows] promoted populating the planet when there’s already too many people.” The employee says Lee had also been calling and e-mailing Discovery with pitches for shows. “They were rejected, as far as I know.”

Lee spent thousands of dollars advertising his protest in local papers like Washington Post Co.’s straphanger staple Express. Unable to find mainstream environmentalists to partner with, he apparently paid homeless people to join him. The protest devolved into a mob scene when Lee started throwing money in the air as part of a contest giveaway; a man who’d won $1,000 in $1 bills was beaten at a bus stop for the money. When he was arrested, Lee had about $21,000 in a duffel bag.

He spent two weeks in jail and was examined by psychiatrists, according to a report in the Gazette at the time. In his court hearing, Lee argued that he wasn’t responsible for the assault and that his First Amendment rights had been violated. He said he’d raised the money by selling property he’d inherited in Hawaii, and records indicate that he once lived in Maui County. He was found guilty of disorderly conduct and ordered to stay at least 500 feet away from the Discovery building.

It’s unclear whether Lee had violated that order at any point during the two years it was in effect. Court documents confirm Lee’s probation ended on Aug. 18, 2010. At the time he stormed the building, his website contained a number of demands: He ordered that Discovery air programs based specifically on Quinn’s Ishmael; that the channel stop encouraging human birth through their programming; and that they find solutions to stopping immigration. Some of the elements on his website — particularly the screeds against overpopulation — were not a major part of his earlier protest platform in 2008, perhaps suggesting that his beliefs had become even more eccentric in the last two years.

Trained hostage negotiators were talking with Lee throughout the afternoon, apparently making little progress in resolving the situation. Employees at a separate building were locked down and unable to evacuate until around 4:30, when a supervisor sent out a tense email that read, “The police are going to allow pedestrians and vehicles to leave from 4:30 to 4:45 ONLY. All pedestrians should gather at the loading dock and wait for directions from the police escort. If you have a vehicle and you are on the parking lot – go to your vehicle immediately and wait for further directions. Do NOT move, just sit in your car and be ready to exit….We only have fifteen minutes to get everyone out of here…. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Police were observing Lee on the building’s closed-circuit camera system, and tactical officers had surrounded the building and could hear what Lee was saying. Around 4:48 p.m., police thought they saw Lee pointing his gun at one of the hostages. They decided to move in.

As police stormed the lobby, the hostages ran out. Lee was shot and killed. All three hostages emerged relatively unharmed, with two of the three declining to be examined by emergency responders. One of them was identified as Christopher Wood, a former marketing manager at the Washington Blade. Another was Discovery employee Jim McNulty.

In addition to bringing a handgun, Lee had apparently strapped explosives to his body and carried two boxes and two backpacks with him, according to Montgomery County police chief Tom Manger. As of 10:30 p.m., police had disrupted a device and were still working at the scene.

UPDATE SEPT. 1, 10:19 PM: Officials have confirmed the three pops heard about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday were EOD personnel disrupting the gunman’s “devices.”

UPDATE 9:47 PM:  ABC 7′s Brad Bell reports hearing three booms in the area of the Discovery Communications headquarters. The source of the booms could not immediately be confirmed, but would be consistent with explosive ordinance disposal team’s practice of ‘disrupting’ or neutralizing potentially explosive devices.

UPDATE 7:27 PM: The Washington Blade, citing multiple sources, reports one of its former staffers, Christopher Wood, was one of the hostages at the Discovery Channel.

“Christopher Wood, a former Blade marketing manager, was freed after
police shot and killed the suspect,” the Blade wrote.

UPDATE 6:44 PM:  A woman who said she was acting as a family spokesman but declined to give her name confirmed that Jim McNulty, a Discovery employee, was among the three hostages.

“The only comment I can give you would be that Jim, who was (a) hostage, was able to talk to his wife briefly and confirm that he is OK,” she said.

TBD and ABC 7 News are working on getting an interview with McNulty. Check back for updates.

UPDATE 6:06 PM: A man who wanted the Discovery Channel to discourage human beings from reproducing walked into the company’s Silver Spring headquarters on Wednesday, reportedly fired a shot, and took three people hostage, Montgomery County police and sources said.

Four hours later, the gunman — identified by law enforcement sources as James Jay Lee — was dead, shot by a police tactical officer, according to Montgomery County police Chief Tom Manger.

During the four-hour standoff, as trained negotiators spoke with Lee, Montgomery County police tactical officers moved into position around the building. They were able to watch the gunman and listen to what he was saying, Manger said.

“At one point, the suspect, it was reported that he pulled out the handgun that he came in with, and pointed it at one of the hostages,” Manger said. “It’s unconfirmed now whether he actually fired the weapon or not, but at that point, our tactical units moved in. They shot the suspect. The suspect is deceased.”

Manger added that, “The hostages were all able to safely get out of the building.”

One hostage was a security guard; the other two were Discovery employees, Manger said. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Chief Richie Bowers said all three hostages were being evaluated, but non appeared to be hurt.

Manger said the suspect had strapped what appeared to be explosive devices to his body, and also brought two boxes and two backpacks with him. Police suspected the objects may contain explosive devices, and were still working to safely remove them.

Law enforcement sources identified the gunman as James Jay Lee, 43, a frequent protester outside Discovery Channel.

“He obviously had a number of issues with Discovery,” Manger said.

David Leavy, Discovery’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, added: “We are familiar with this gentleman. He has protested here in the past.”

Leavy said: “All employees are accounted for” and “we executed our emergency evacuation plan flawlessly. We’re very thankful for that.”

UPDATE 5:39: Sources are reporting that police have killed a gunman who stormed into the Discovery Channel headquarters in downtown Silver Spring this afternoon and took three hostages. 

Police say the hostages are safe. The gunman was earlier identified as James Jay Lee, a longtime Discovery Channel protester. 

UPDATE 5:34: ABC 7 News is confirming the suspect, James Jay Lee, is dead.  

UPDATE 5:30 p.m. NBC News is reporting the suspect is dead. 

UPDATE 5:00 PM: Police shot the suspect. His condition is not known. The three hostages are safe. 

Officers shot the suspect at 4:48 p.m., Chief Tom Manger said. The gunman’s condition was not immediately known. He hasn’t been removed from the building. 

Manger said the gunman had a device or devices strapped to his body, and the “device appeared to go off,” Manger said. 

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REVIEW 4:33: Police are negotiating with a suspected gunman who police say is holding “a small number of hostages” in the Discovery Channel headquarters building in downtown Silver Spring. 

They have identified the gunman as longtime Discovery Channel protester James Jay Lee, who was arrested in 2008. 

Lee apparently opened fire in the lobby, said “Nobody is going anywhere.” 

Watch continuing coverage of the story on TBD TV. 

UPDATE 4:03: MoCo police are having a briefing, and said little except that they will have another update by 5 p.m. Police said some details “may affect how we’re treating this situation.” 

UPDATE 3:41 P.M.: The St. Michael School at 824 Wayne Avenue has been placed on lockdown, ABC 7 News has confirmed. 

MoCo POLICE UPDATE 3:20 p.m.: Montgomery County police chief Tom Manger said negotiations with the gunman are ongoing, and that there are a “small number of hostages” but an exact number had not been established. Manger said there had been no reports of injuries as of yet. 

He also declined to say whether the gunman had made any demands. 

“I’m not going to discuss the nature of our conservations with him,” Manger said. 

As for reports that the gunman may have a bomb, Manger said, “We’re going with the assumption they could be explosive devices.” 

Manger declined to identify the gunman publicly, saying police would have to meet with him face to face first. Sources have identified him as James Jay Lee. 

Capt. Paul Starks said police would have another update before 4 p.m. 

UPDATES ON SUSPECT: Lee was arrested outside the Discovery Channel headquarters on Feb. 21, 2008. The arrest was captured in a story by ABC 7 News. During his arrest, Lee listed a homeless shelter in Silver Spring as his address. A case manager at the shelter told TBD on Wednesday that they did not have a James Lee on file, but added that many people list them as an address. 

UPDATE 2:52: Justice Department correspondent for NBC News, Pete Williams, confirms names of suspect as James Jay Lee, a longtime protester of Discovery. ABC News is also confirming. Here’s an old DCist post on Lee.
 

UPDATE 2:33 p.m. This was an e-mail sent to Discovery employees 

Subject: URGENT: Employees Should Go Home – Don’t Return to 1DP Until Further Notice Employees at 1DP should go home for the remainder of the day. No employee should return to 1DP for any reason. Employees with cars at 1DP should not return to the office, but instead use an alternate mode of transportation. 

The children from Discovery Kids Place are safe and with their teachers at the McDonald’s at the intersection of Colesville and Second Aves. Parents should meet their children there and go home for the remainder of the day. 

UPDATE 2:25 All workers in building were evacuated. Many told to go home though they left personal items in the building.  

UPDATE 2:21: Police are saying there is at least one hostage. 

UPDATE 2:15 p.m. Angela Gates, a Metro spokeswoman, said the Silver Spring Metro station remains open, though the south entrance is closed. Buses that service the Silver Spring Transit Center are being detoured around closed streets, she said. Colesville Road is blocked off. 

UPDATE: 2:02 p.m.: The Discovery Channel day care has been evacuated to the nearby McDonald’s. The day care had about 100 kids. They are reported to be safe. 

UPDATE: 1:50 p.m.: According to Cpl. Dan Friz, a Montgomery County police spokesman, a tactical team is trying to get in touch with the gunman, who is being monitored on closed circuit TV. 

The “tactical team has put together a plan for dealing with this individual,” Friz told ABC 7 News. 

Friz was unable to confirm reports that multiple shots have been fired, but he said no shots had been fired by police as of 1:40 p.m. 

Police were initially dispatched to the building for the report of shots fired at about 1 p.m. Police are reporting the suspect is an Asian male. 

“Some sort of device on him that may be explosive in nature…” Friz said. 

ORIGINAL 

Montgomery County police have confirmed the Discovery Communications headquarters on Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring has been evacuated after the report of a man possibly with explosives inside the building. 

A man entered the lobby and may have fired a weapon and declared, “Nobody is going anywhere,” Montgomery County police said. 

In a phone interview on ABC 7 News and TBD TV, Discovery Communication employee Lisa Lucas said the building is in lockdown, with an unknown number of employees sheltering in offices. Police have established a cordon around the building.

She said that about 1:20 p.m., “we heard, Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.”

Police have not confirmed that multiple shots were fired.

Montgomery County police say the SWAT on scene; and the Emergency Response Team is en route.

The suspect is an Asian male, police said.

ABC 7 News has crews en route the scene.from:  http://tbd.ly/9keIs8

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Aug 14 2010   07:48 PM ET

She acted opposite Sidney Poitier, spoke out for civil rights, and had a singing voice so full of emotion and passion it reminded some of Billie Holiday. Jazz singer Abbey Lincoln died on Saturday at her Manhattan home at age 80. Lincoln, an idiosyncratic and fiercely independent performer, influenced a generation of younger vocalists, including singer Cassandra Wilson, who told The New York Times, “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” she said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

Lincoln was born as Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago in 1930. Her stage name was suggested by fellow musician Bob Russell in the ’50s as a fusion of Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln recorded her first album, “Affair…A Story of a Girl in Love” in 1956 and that same year appeared in the classic Jayne Mansfield movie comedy The Girl Can’t Help It, directed by Frank Tashlin. Lincoln also lent her voice to Max Roach’s politically incendiary 1960 album: “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite”. Shortly after the collaboration, she married Roach.

Soon after, she starred in the seminal 1964 African-American movie drama Nothing But a Man, and in 1968, she shared the screen with Poitier in the romantic comedy For Love of Ivy. In the ’80s, Lincoln took up singing full time again and her voice was a strong — if not stronger — than ever, maybe because she’d lived and now had more to say. Her 2007 album “Abbey Sings Abbey” is considered a jazz classic. As is the woman it’s named after.

story from and video at:  http://news-briefs.ew.com/2010/08/14/jazz-singer-abbey-lincoln-dies-at-80/

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Abbey Lincoln was born on August 6th, 1930 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Lincoln

August 6th, 1930

8 + 6 +1+9+3+0 = 27 = her life lesson = what she was here to learn = Initiative.  Follow through.  Original.  The first.  Innovation.  Trailblazer.  Pioneer.  Inventor.  Start.  Begin.  Usher in.  Initiate.  Debut.  Groundbreaking. 

August 13, 2010

Lance McNaught, better known as Lance Cade, died this morning of what is believed to have been heart failure after two family members believed there was something wrong with him over the past week.

He was 29.

McNaught’s wife Tanya noticed over the past week that he didn’t look healthy and seemed to be having trouble breathing and called an ambulance to rush him to the hospital on Tuesday night.  He passed out at one point but was revived in the hospital.  Lance asked to be released on Wednesday, and after he got home, left and didn’t come back.

On Thursday, his father, Harley McNaught, said Lance showed up at his work and he was not looking good.  Harley brought him to his father’s home in San Antonio and was discovered having passed away late last night.  He was scheduled to leave today for a two-week tour of All Japan Pro Wrestling.

His wife believed he had not been drinking.

McNaught was a student of Shawn Michaels, who he idolized, and had several runs with WWE since signing with the company in 2000 shortly after finishing his training and working for a promotion run by Michaels in the San Antonio area.

When he first broke in, WWE officials believed with his size and agility that he reminded them of a young Barry Windham.  He was up and down between the main roster and developmental and other than a tag team run with Trevor Murdoch, which was successful, never was really featured until 2008.

He was used in his highest profile run as the second of Chris Jericho, a spot geared to groom him for a top position.  Just before being released, he even pinned Michaels in a tag team match on television.  He was released in October 2008 after an incident on an airplane where he had a seizure, believed to have been due to use of either pain killers or muscle relaxers, and had to be taken off the plane.  He was then released.

A storyline idea involving his return was proposed in September and he was signed again.  While he was at home waiting to start on the main roster, a WWE official spoke with him in a phone call in January and was concerned about his lack of coherence in the coversation.  At that time, he asked WWE officials to send him to rehab and completed a 30-day rehab program in February.  After completing the program, the storyline idea ended up being nixed and he was released in April.

Cade had been working of late for All Japan Pro Wrestling.  He was scheduled for a tag team championship match on the company’s 8/29 show at  Tokyo Sumo Hall, teaming with another former WWE performer, Rene Dupree, against champions Akebono & Taiyo Kea.

While McNaught was initially upset about his 2008 release, saying others had done worse and not lost their jobs, he eventually came to grips with it in a Pro Wrestling Torch interview where he said he only had himself to blame. 

McNaught had two daughters and a stepson. 

from:  http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/17123/

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Lance Cade was born on March 2nd, 1981 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Cade

March 2nd

3 + 2 +2+0+1+0 = 8 = his personal year (from March 2nd, 2010 to March 1st, 2011)

8 year + 8 (August) = 16 = his personal month (from August 2nd, 2010 to September 1st, 2010) = Expect the unexpected.  Anything can happen.  Predictably unpredictable.  All of a sudden.  In a flash.  In an instant.  From out of nowhere.  Bolt out of the blue.  Shock to the system.  A real eye opener. 

Gardner is occasionally styled “Chevalier Labhran de Saint Germain”, “Presidential Attache to the European Council of Princes” and “Prior of the Celtic Churches Sacred Kindred of Saint Columbia” ^[1]. He also claims to be Jacobite Historiographer Royal of the Royal House of Stewart. He is a supporter of Michael Lafosse, in particular his claims to be descended from the House of Stuart, which Gardner claims was descended from Jesus Christ.^[2][3]

Historians have called him a conspiracy theorist^[4]; implying that his work is pseudohistory^[2], poorly researched and not scholarly, particularly The Bloodline of the Holy Grail. Evidence for this criticism comes particularly from his mistranslation of the Gnostic Gospel written by Phillip, which he uses to motivate the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and produced a child whose bloodline is the Stuart clan of Scotland.

In developing this theory in The Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Gardner depends on the alleged fact that Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene “often on the mouth” (Ch.5, p. 57 of paperback edition). In fact, reputable translations of the Gospel of Phillip, e.g. Wesley Isenberg in James M. Robinson (Editor), “The Nag Hammadi Library” (1988), declare the noun (mouth) to be undecipherable due to damage to the ancient manuscript. In any case, a kiss on the mouth between early Christian males was a sign of holy love and affection, as evidence by the Second Apocalyspe of James, in which James so kisses the priest Mareim.

from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Gardner

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August 12, 2o10

Little Feat co-founder Richie Hayward has died after a long battle with liver disease. He was 64.

Hayward played drums in the seminal band throughout its entire career. In the late 1960s, he played with original Little Feat frontman Lowell George in the band’s precursor The Factory. George and Hayward co-founded Little Feat in 1969 along with Bill Payne and Roy Estrada. They established a distinctive style of improvisational southern rock that mixed elements of blues, rock boogie and funk. Little Feat went on hiatus in 1978 and officially parted ways a year later after George died of an accidental overdose. Hayward helped reform the band in 1987 and continued to play with the group until last year when health concerns prevented him touring. Hayward lived in British Columbia until his death.

“We saw him just recently,” longtime Little Feat member Paul Barrere said in a recent Jambands.com interview. “We played up in his hometown of Comox, British Columbia. He looked surprisingly well. Thinner, but he didn’t look emaciated in any way. He gets fatigued fairly easily. He had a recent CAT scan of his liver, and they are waiting on the results of that to see if they will put him on the transplant list. His residency has been established, so I believe he is eligible for the NHS [National Health Service], which is wonderful. When he saw us, he was in great spirits. I talked to him a couple of days ago and he said he misses us already. He’s such a fighter. Richie’s amazing. If a cat has nine lives, Richie’s got 18.”

Hayward was also an accomplished sideman and played on recordings by such diverse artists as Eric Clapton, Warren Zevon, Travis Tritt, Robert Palmer, Tom Waits, Taj Mahal, Barbra Streisand, John Cale, Buddy Guy, Arlo Guthrie, Carly Simon, Bob Seger and many others. Hayward and Little Feat also collaborated with a new generation of jambands in the ’90s and ’00s, including Jimmy Herring, Bela Fleck, String Cheese Incident, Leftover Salmon and Warren Haynes. The band’s association with Phil Lesh & Friends and cover of Phish’s “Sample in a Jar” also brought an element of improvisation back into the group’s live sound. In addition, he played in the jamband all-star band Justice League with Herring, T. Lavitz and and Adam Nitty.

Many musicians, ranging from the members of Leftover Salmon to Little Feat, played benefit shows for Hayward in the past year. He had no insurance at the time his condition was diagnosed. Fab Faux guitarist Jimmy Vivino also saluted the musician from the stage with Gov’t Mule at New York’s Central Park SummerStage last night.

His last public performance was a sit in with Little Feat at the Vancouver Island MusicFest on July 11, 2010.

from:  http://www.jambands.com/news/2010/08/12/little-feat-s-richie-hayward-1946-2010

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Richie Hayward was born on February 6, 1946 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richie_Hayward

February 6th

2 + 6 +2+0+1+0 = 11 = his personal year (from February 6th, 2010 to February 5th, 2011)

11 year + 8 (August) = 19 = his personal month (from August 6th, 2010 to September 5th, 2010) = Proud of his hard earned success. 

19 year + 12 (12th of the month on Thursday August 12th, 2010) = 31 = his personal day = Drummer.

August 11, 2010

Dan Rostenkowski, who mastered the craft of brokering and compromise to become one of the nation’s most influential congressmen but whose imprisonment on fraud charges came to symbolize the excesses of power, died Wednesday at his vacation home on Benedict Lake in Wisconsin. He was 82 and also lived in Chicago, in the house where he grew up.

His death was confirmed by the office of Alderman Richard F. Mell of Chicago. Mr. Rostenkowski had been treated for prostate cancer in the 1990s.

Mr. Rostenkowski, the son of a ward heeler and congressman from Chicago, was reared by the Cook County Democratic political machine under its longtime leader, Mayor Richard J. Daley, and won a seat in the Illinois legislature almost right out of college. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1958 at the age of 30, he was its youngest member for many years.

From the start, the plainspoken Mr. Rostenkowski showed a knack for deal-making, often with his Republican colleagues, and it helped him land a coveted seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, the powerful tax-writing panel, in 1961. He served on the committee for most of his 36 years in Congress, 13 of them as its chairman, from 1981 to 1994, and was a central figure in shaping congressional tax policy.

As a young lawmaker, Mr. Rostenkowski helped write the legislation that created Medicare in 1966. As the committee’s chairman, he helped fashion laws on taxes, trade and welfare. In 1983, he brokered the deal that led to the passage of a bill that kept the Social Security system solvent.

“During that period, my daughters said there’s not going to be a Social Security system for them — that it’s going to go belly up,” he said in an interview in 1990. “Congress was concerned, and legislators made the difficult decisions and enacted a balanced compromise of tax increases and benefit reductions that saved the system from going bankrupt.”

Mr. Rostenkowski also forged compromises that led to the 1986 tax reform act, a major rewriting of the federal tax code that sharply reduced nominal tax rates and eliminated vast numbers of loopholes, special preferences and tax-avoidance schemes.

The Social Security and tax laws were both passed when power in Washington was divided between a Democratic House and the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan. Yet legislative achievements were almost a sidelight to Mr. Rostenkowski’s true passion: the cajoling, arm-twisting and posturing that are the stuff of Washington lawmaking. He was so good at the game that for a time in the 1970s he was under consideration to succeed the House speaker, Carl Albert of Oklahoma.

But his candidacy for the post was hurt by the violence in the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the post went to Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. of Massachusetts. Still, Mr. Rostenkowski had become a force in the House, gaining entry to a small circle of the most powerful figures on Capitol Hill.

Republicans came to rely on him as a bridge to the Democratic leadership, and presidents of both parties sought his support in advancing their legislative agendas. He was especially close with Presidents Reagan and Bill Clinton and the elder George Bush.

“Rostenkowski over the years has built a reputation on the Hill as likable, earnest, cautious and absolutely trustworthy,” Time magazine wrote in 1981. “Among the show horses of Congress, he is a workhorse.”

But Mr. Rostenkowski’s esteem and power on Capitol Hill eroded and then collapsed, starting in 1992, when a federal grand jury began investigating reports of wrongdoing in the House post office. Mr. Rostenkowski was pushed to the center of the scandal after investigators asserted that he had bought $22,000 in stamps from the House post office with public money and may have converted them to cash.

The federal inquiry lasted two years, during which Republicans, led by the Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich, accused Democrats of corruption and held up the accusations against Mr. Rostenkowski as symptomatic.

In 1994, Mr. Rostenkowski was formally charged with 17 counts of abusing his Congressional payroll by paying at least 14 people who did little or no official work; trading stamp vouchers for at least $50,000 in cash; misusing his office’s expense accounts to charge Congress for $40,000 in furniture and fine china and crystal; misusing personal vehicles and paying for them with $70,000 in House funds; and obstruction of justice.

Mr. Rostenkowski fought back. “I did not commit any crimes,” he told reporters. “My conscience is clear, and my 42-year record as an elected official is one I am proud to once again run on.”

Continuing his re-election campaign, he was beaten by a Republican, Michael P. Flanagan, in the watershed 1994 midterm elections in which Republicans won control of both the House and the Senate. The House post office scandal was widely viewed by political historians as a factor in that electoral triumph.

Two years later, as his federal trial approached, with a long prison sentence looming, Mr. Rostenkowski, the veteran power broker, negotiated his last important deal, pleading guilty to two counts of mail fraud. He served 15 months in federal prisons in Minnesota and Wisconsin and finished his sentence by spending two months in a halfway house and paying a $100,000 fine.

from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/us/politics/12rostenkowski.html

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Dan Rostenkowski was born on January 2nd, 1928 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rostenkowski

January 2nd, 1928

1 + 2 +1+9+2+8 = 23 = his life lesson = what he was here to learn = Athlete.  Leadership.

Aug. 10, 2010, 12:43 p.m. EDT

Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was killed in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska, NBC affiliate KTUU reported Tuesday on its website, citing a former aide and family friend. Dave Dittman told KTUU that Stevens was among the five dead in the crash Monday night.

from:  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/former-aide-says-ted-stevens-dead-in-crash-report-2010-08-10

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Rescuers held back overnight by high winds and low clouds managed on Tuesday to reach a downed plane in southwest Alaska that had been carrying former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. The Alaska Air National Guard said there were “potential fatalities” among the nine people aboard.

“We just got our Air National Guardsmen on scene, and they are now assisting the victims of the plane crash. I was told there were potential fatalities on the ground,” said Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes.

Dave Dittman, an Anchorage pollster who is a former aide and longtime family friend to Stevens, on Tuesday told KTUU-TV in Anchorage that Stevens had perished in the crash. But in a statement later, Dittman emphasized that Stevens’ death had not been confirmed.

“Dave received a call last night, and was told that Sen. Stevens had perished in a plane crash. In the meantime, he has talked with close friends of the family last night, to whom it has not been confirmed, and as recently as 8:50 a.m. Alaska time, it has still not been confirmed,” his office said in a statement.

Nine people were aboard the private plane, a De Havilland DHC-3T Otter owned by telecom company GCI, that crashed Monday night 17 miles north of Dillingham, a small fishing town on Alaska’s Bristol Bay that is now in the height of salmon fishing season. Rescuers were hampered from reaching the crash site overnight by bad weather, authorities said.

“The weather has been hampering pretty much everything going out to the scene,” said Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters.

“I can tell you that we have the best search and rescue people pretty much anywhere. They do this pretty much every day, and if we can’t get there, that means it’s bad and unsafe,” Peters said.

The National Transportation Safety Board has dispatched investigators from Anchorage and Washington, D.C. Board chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman is accompanying the team and will serve as spokesperson for the on-scene investigation, the agency said in a statement.

Several “good Samaritans,” including a doctor, had reached the site earlier and were rendering emergency aid to the victims, added McHugh Pierre, director of the information office for the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Stevens, 86, is the elder statesman of Alaska politics. The Republican served 41 years in the U.S. Senate before being convicted on corruption charges and losing his Senate seat in 2008.

O’Keefe, 54, headed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 2001 to 2005 and is chief executive of EADS North America, a subsidiary of the European aerospace company EADS. The company confirmed that O’Keefe was on board the flight but said it had no information on the condition of any of the passengers.

Stevens’ family members said they were waiting for additional information.

“The Ted Stevens family offers their prayers for all those on board and for their families. We thank the brave men and women who are working to reach the site,” said a family statement read on CNN by Stevens’ former chief of staff, Mitch Rose.

“We continue to work with the Alaska National Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Alaska state troopers. We thank everyone for their support and prayers,” the statement said.

Alaska’s two senators also said they were awaiting news from the crash scene.

“I join Alaskans and others across the country waiting for details of last night’s tragic plane crash near Dillingham. My thoughts and prayers are with those on board the plane and their families as we wait for more information.” U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat who defeated Stevens, said in a statement.

Guy Hayes, the Alaska National Guard spokesman, said of Stevens death report: “I can’t confirm it at this time.”

The House majority office of the Alaska legislature also said they had received no direct word, nor had Begich’s office.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also issued a statement of concern: “While we await further information about this tragic accident, I ask Alaskans to join me in prayer for all those aboard the aircraft and their families,” she said.

from:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alaska-crash-20100811,0,2706610.story

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Ted Stevens was born on November 18th, 1923 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_stevens

November 18th

11 + 18 +2+0+0+9 = 40 = his personal year (from November 18th, 2009 to November 17th, 2010) = Rescuers.

40 year + 7 (July) = 47 = his personal month (from July 18th, 2010 to August 17th, 2010) = Famous.  Name & fame.  Notoriety.  Name recognition.  (Inter)nationally known.  High profile.  VIP.  Well-known.  Household name.  Public life.  Limelight.  Legendary.  Notable.  Noteworthy.  Legacy.

47 month + 10 (10th of the month on Tuesday August 10th, 2010) = 57 = his personal day = Consoling.  Solace.  Condolences.  Heartbreaker.  Heartache.  Tearjerker.  Tears.  Tear drops.  Crying.  Weeping.  Sadness.  Broken hearted. 

August 9, 2010

Matthew Simmons, an international oil expert who most recently focused on developing renewable energy from the waters off Maine, died Sunday night of an apparent heart attack, his office is reporting. He was 67.

Simmons founded the Ocean Energy Institute in 2007, hosting a grand opening of its new office last month in Rockland. The  goal of the think tank and venture capital fund was to attract investment in research to make Maine a global leader in offshore wind and other ocean energy sources.

According to police reports, Simmons suffered a heart attack while in a hot tub at his home on North Haven. An autopsy is planned for today in Augusta, according to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.

Simmons was a leading energy investment banker, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, and author. He wrote the 2005 book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” which laid out an argument that the world was approaching peak oil production.

Simmons’ death came as a shock to colleagues at the Ocean Energy Institute, which is preparing a statement for release later today.

The organization plans to continue his work, according to Bob West, the institute’s managing director.

“That’s our goal, to carry his vision forward,” he said. “Matt wanted it to continue and there’s a process in place.”

Maine officials were expressing their sympathies this morning.

Gov. John E. Baldacci had met with Simmons a number of times. The Ocean Energy Institute is a part of the consortium led by the University of Maine that has received millions of dollars from the federal government to research and develop offshore wind turbines. Baldacci also recognized Simmons’ leadership during his State of the State address delivered earlier this year.

“Matt Simmons was an innovative thinker who pushed ideas that have the potential to yield a more environmentally and economically sustainable future for Maine and the world,” Baldacci said. “I visited Matt and his team last month and thanked them for their partnership with the state as we aggressively build an independent energy future for Maine.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, also has a home on North Haven.

“Matt was a neighbor and a friend and the news of his passing is profoundly sad,” she said. “Matt was a visionary, a man of ideas and an outspoken advocate for the things he believed in. He was dedicated to making Maine a leader in offshore wind energy and made significant contributions to life in the midcoast.”

from:  http://www.pressherald.com/news/Energy-expert-Simmons-dies-in-North-Haven.html

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using the number/letter grid:

1      2      3       4       5       6      7      8      9
A      B     C       D       E       F      G      H      I
J      K      L      M      N       O      P      Q      R 
S      T      U      V      W      X      Y      Z
 

Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

Actress Patricia Neal in 2008. More Photos »

Multimedia

Slide Show

Oscar Winner’s Life of Highs and Lows

Many unanswered questions still remain about what went wrong.

For now, all Gary’s parents can do is watch as they wait for searchers to find their missing son.

“We’re still hopeful and still prayerful. We’re still hopeful,” said cousin Greg Gary.  

The search for the 21-year-old resumed Saturday, just a day after Gary disappeared while boating on with friends.

A Chicago Police Department Marine Unit, along with fire department divers, used side sonar to conduct a grid search about a half mile east of Burnham Harbor.

“The boating community is unique. When one of theirs gets hurt, they step up and help any way they can,” said Sgt. Van Vranken.

As the search effort moved toward a recovery effort, authorities were still looking into what exactly happened. The two women who were on the boat were eventually rescued by three fisherman. They tell investigators the trouble began when the group decided to go swimming around 2 a.m. Friday morning, and their craft simply floated away.

No one in the group was wearing a lifejacket.

Both women say they treaded water for nearly four hours before being plucked from the lake.

The missing man’s relatives say Christopher Gary gave his life to make sure they survived.

“Christopher was helping her to hold her head up above the water for most of the time,” Greg Gary said.

The body of another boater, James Shepherd, was found several hours later. An accomplished sailor who had been sailing since the age of 8, Shepherd took the group out on his grandfather’s boat. After Shepherd’s body was recovered near the 63rd Street shoreline, the boat called “Joan’s Arc” remained docked Saturday.

Meanwhile, Christopher Gary is being remembered as an aspiring artist whom friends say was talented and generous. He was a high school graduate who planned to enroll in art school in San Francisco in the fall.

ABC7 is told the women who were rescued remained hospitalized in good condition Saturday.

from:  http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7597743&rss=rss-abcnewsLocal-wls-article-7597743

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using the number/letter grid:

1      2      3       4       5       6      7      8      9
A      B     C       D       E       F      G      H      I
J      K      L      M      N       O      P      Q      R 
S      T      U      V      W      X      Y      Z
 

August 7, 2010

Tony Judt, the author of “Postwar,” a monumental history of Europe after World War II, and a public intellectual known for his sharply polemical essays on American foreign policy, the state of Israel and the future of Europe, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 62.

The death was announced in a statement from New York University, where he had taught for many years. The cause was complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which he learned he had in September 2008. In a matter of months the disease left him paralyzed and able to breathe only with mechanical assistance, but he continued to lecture and write.

“In effect,” Mr. Judt wrote in an essay published in January in The New York Review of Books, “A.L.S. constitutes progressive imprisonment without parole.”

Mr. Judt (pronounced Jutt), who was British by birth and education but who taught at American universities for most of his career, began as a specialist in postwar French intellectual history, and for much of his life he embodied the idea of the French-style engaged intellectual.

An impassioned left-wing Zionist as a teenager, he shed his faith in agrarian socialism and Marxism early on and became, as he put it, a “universalist social democrat” with a deep suspicion of left-wing ideologues, identity politics and the emerging role of the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

His developing interest in Europe as a whole, including the states of the former Eastern Bloc, led him to take an active role in the developing Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia; it culminated in “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” (2005), a sweeping, richly detailed survey embracing countries from Britain to the Balkans that, in the words of one reviewer, has “the pace of a thriller and the scope of an encyclopedia.”

Mr. Judt was perhaps best known for his essays on politics and current affairs in journals like The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books.

“He had the unusual ability to see and convey the big picture while, at the same time, going to the heart of the matter,” said Mark Lilla, who teaches intellectual history at Columbia University. “Most academics do neither — they float in between. But Tony was able to talk about the big picture and explain why it matters now.”

Tony Robert Judt was born in the East End of London on Jan. 2, 1948, and grew up in Putney. His parents, although secular and apolitical Jews, encouraged him to join the Labor Zionist youth organization Dror as a way to meet friends. He became a fervent convert to the cause, spending several summers working on a kibbutz in Israel and serving as the organization’s national secretary from 1965 to 1967.

“I was the ideal recruit: articulate, committed and uncompromisingly ideologically conformist,” he wrote in an autobiographical sketch for The New York Review of Books in February.

After he passed the entrance examinations to King’s College, Cambridge, he volunteered as an auxiliary with the Israeli Defense Forces during the Six-Day War, acting as an interpreter for other volunteers in the newly conquered Golan Heights. There he lost faith in the Zionist mission and began to see Israel as a malign occupying power whose self-definition as a Jewish state, he later argued, made it “an anachronism.”

Mr. Judt returned to Britain disabused and highly skeptical of the radical political currents swirling around him at Cambridge, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history from King’s College in 1969. After studying for a year at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he returned to King’s College and earned a doctorate in 1972.

His dissertation, on the French socialist party’s re-emergence after World War I, was published in France as “La Reconstruction du Parti Socialiste: 1921-1926” (1976). In 1979 he followed up with “Socialism in Provence, 1871-1914: A Study in the Origins of the Modern French Left,” and in 1986 he published “Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France, 1830-1981.”

These relatively specialist works led to two interpretive studies of French postwar intellectual life: “Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956” (1994) and “The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth Century” (1998).

Casting his lot with the nonideological liberals, like Raymond Aron and Albert Camus, who dared to criticize the Soviet Union and third-world revolutionary movements, he subjected Sartre and others to a withering critique that came as a shock to many French and American intellectuals. His target, he wrote, was “the uneasy conscience and moral cowardice of an intellectual generation.”

Fluidly written, with a strong narrative drive and an insistent, polemical edge, both books established Mr. Judt as a historian whose ability to see the present in the past gave his work an unusual air of immediacy. Increasingly he inclined toward free-ranging inquiry across disciplines, pursuing a wide range of his interests reflected in the essay collection “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century” (2008).

“A historian also has to be an anthropologist, also has to be a philosopher, also has to be a moralist, also has to understand the economics of the period he is writing about,” he told the online magazine Historically Speaking in 2006. “Though they are often arbitrary, disciplinary boundaries certainly exist. Nevertheless, the historian has to learn to transcend them in order to write intelligently.”

In 1987, after teaching at Cambridge, the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford, he began teaching at N.Y.U. There, in 1995, he helped found the Remarque Institute with a bequest from Paulette Goddard, the widow of the writer Erich Maria Remarque. Under his directorship, it became an important international center for the study of Europe, past and present. His skepticism about the future of the European Union found expression in a sharply polemical, pamphlet-length book, “A Grand Illusion?: An Essay on Europe” (1996).

His first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, the dance critic Jennifer Homans, and their two sons, Daniel and Nicholas.

His views on Israel made Mr. Judt an increasingly polarizing figure. He placed himself in the midst of a bitter debate when, in 2003, he outlined a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem in The New York Review of Books, proposing that Israel accept a future as a secular, bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs enjoyed equal status.

In 2006, a scheduled talk at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan was abruptly canceled for reasons later hotly disputed, but apparently under pressure, explicit or implicit, from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.

from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/books/08judt.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Tony Judt was born on January 2nd, 1948 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Judt

January 2nd, 1948

1 + 2 +1+9+4+8 = 25 = his life lesson = what he was here to learn = Adventure.  Excitement.  Thrilling.  Movement.  Exploring.  Activist.  Advocate.  A cause.  Rooting.  Encouragement.  Free spirited.  Perky. 

August 6, 2010

A former Cocoa Beach High football standout who went on to help the Florida Gators win a national championship died Thursday morning after he reportedly jumped off a building in Bellevue, Wash., officials confirmed Friday.

John Curtis, 24, whose current residence was listed as Kent, Wash., died about 8 a.m. after leaping from the fourth-floor railing above a restaurant in Bellevue’s Lincoln Square.
“The cause of death was blunt-force injury to the head and torso,” said James Sosik, investigator at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, who confirmed the Curtis’ death. “It came to us as a suicide.”
Curtis contributed to the kickoff, kick return and punt teams as UF won its second national title in school history by beating Ohio State 41-14 in the BCS title game in Glendale, Ariz., in 2007.
“It’s tragic when a young life is lost,” Urban Meyer, the Gators’ head coach, said in a statement Friday afternoon. “I’m not sure how you describe the loss of life in words. John was a great young man who was a proud member of our Gator family. We grieve for him, his friends and his family and pray for their comfort.”
The defensive back suffered a knee injury in 2008, ending his career when he was a fifth-year senior.
“He was a good guy, well-liked team member,” Gators secondary coach Chuck Heater said Friday. “Players really liked him. He was a friendly guy with the team, and just dealing with the frustrations of the injuries, which were always hard for him to deal with and accept those things, just the disappointments of all of that. But he was a respected member of our team, that’s for sure.”

from:  http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100806/BREAKINGNEWS/100806045/1006/NEWS01/Former+Florida+Gators+player+John+Curtis++24++dies

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John Curtis was born on April 23rd, 1986 according to http://news.priceperhead.com/college-football-news/former-florida-gators-john-curtis-died-at-24-in-apparently-suicide-11157

Each letter of the name rules 9 years of life.  Ages 0 to 27 are ruled by the sum of the month of birth and the first three letters of the name.

John Curtis     April 23rd, 1986

10 (J is the 10th letter of the alphabet) + 15 (o is the 15th letter of the alphabet) + 8 (h is the 8th letter of the alphabet) + 4 (April) = 37

So from ages zero to twenty-seven he had the number 37 going on.

37 = Deeply emotional.  Emotional wreck.  Emotional rollercoaster. 

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April 23rd

4 + 23 +2+0+1+0 = 30 = his personal year (from April 23rd, 2010 to April 22nd, 2011)

30 year + 7 (July) = 37 = his personal month (from July 23rd, 2010 to August 22nd, 2010) = Deeply emotional.  Emotional wreck.  Emotional rollercoaster. 

When his number (37 (ruler of his ages 0 to 27)) came up, that’s when he got to live/experience what he was here to live/experience.  So unfortunately this was his month.

Swedish mountain climber Frederik Ericsson has been killed while on an expedition on the K2 mountain in the Himalayas, the Austrian Press Agency APA reported, citing officials in contact with the expedition.

The agency was reporting on the expedition involving Austrian climber Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner seeking to conquer the world’s second- tallest peak at 8,611 metres.

The Austrian weather service, which is in steady contact with the expedition, said the group reported that Ericsson had plunged more than 1,000 metres to his death.

Kaltenbrunner, 39, is regarded as one of the world’s best female mountain climbers but has failed several times to conquer the extremely difficult K2 on the Chinese-Pakistan border.

Otherwise she has conquered all the world’s 14 peaks of over 8,000 metres, a feat accomplished so far by just two other women.

Her group seeking this time to conquer the K2 consisted of two or three others who were now making their descent after Ericsson’s death, the APA report said.

from:  http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1575904.php/Swedish-climber-reported-killed-on-K2-peak

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Fredrik Ericsson was born on March 14th, 1975 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Ericsson

March 14th, 1975

14 +1+9+7+5 = 36 = his “secret number” = Pressing onward.  Trek.  Backpack.  Shoulders.  Carry. 

August 4, 2010

Reginald Levy, who as captain of a hijacked Belgian airliner in 1972 was hailed as a hero for enabling Israeli commandos to storm the plane and rescue all 100 passengers and crew members, died Sunday at a hospital near his home in Dover, England. He was 88.

August 3, 2010

Morrie R. Yohai, the creator of the crunchy, finger-staining orange Cheez Doodles snack, has died. He was 90. Yohai died of cancer on July 27 at his Long Island home in Kings Point, his son, Robbie, said Tuesday.

His father was always amused that people thought the cheddar cheese snack he produced at his Bronx factory was the highlight of his life, Robbie Yohai said. His father’s wide-ranging interests extended to Jewish mysticism and poetry, and the snack was only one of many things his father did, Yohai said.

But it’s Cheez Doodles that he will be remembered for.

Yohai developed the small tubular snack at his Old London Foods factory in the 1950s. The company already was selling Dipsy Doodles rippled corn chips, which were made with a machine that spit them out under pressure through a nozzle shaped like the letter W.

“He applied a similar concept for the Cheez Doodles,” adapting the machine to extrude liquefied cornmeal into a “more roundish, pinhole shape,” said Robbie Yohai.

The snack was coated with seasoning and cheddar cheese that colors hands bright orange. To make the Cheez Doodles healthier, they were baked, not fried.

In 1965, Borden approached Yohai about selling the Old London company, which also made Melba Toast, ice cream cones, cheese crackers and other products. He became senior vice president of Borden’s snack food division, acquiring Wise potato chips, Drake’s cakes, Campfire Marshmallows and other products for the company.

He left Borden after about 10 years when the company moved to Ohio, his son said. For a long time, he kept a picture of Julia Child eating a bag of Cheez Doodles with a caption that called it her favorite snack, Yohai added.

When the family vacationed in California in 2004, he said, they went to a museum that had a room-size installation by artist Sandy Skoglund called “The Cocktail Party,” a work made entirely of Cheez Doodles.

“The whole room was made of Cheez Doodles, the table, chairs, glasses, the people’s hair,” said Robbie. He said his mother was very excited and “proceeded to tell everyone in the museum that my father was the creator of the Cheez Doodles.”

In the 1970s, Yohai was the associate dean of the business school at the New York Institute of Technology on Long Island.

Yohai’s daughter, Babs Yohai, said her father began writing poetry after someone suggested he write a memoir. After taking a writing class, he produced two poetry books, one of which focused on interpreting the Torah.

He learned Hebrew so he could read the teachings of the Zohar, a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.

Yohai also supported many conservation and environmental causes through his Morrie R. Yohai Foundation, his son said.

Born in Harlem, Yohai graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and received a master’s degree from New York University. He went to work for the Grumman aircraft factory on Long Island and was a pilot during World War II.

from:  http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2010-08-03-cheez-doodle-creator-dies_N.htm

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Morrie Yohai was born on March 4th, 1920 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrie_Yohai

March 4th, 1920

3 + 4 +1+9+2+0 = 19 = his life lesson = what he was here to learn = Beaming.  Vitality.  Life force.  Achievement.  Attainment.  Accomplishment.  Hard earned success.  Enduring. 

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March 4th

3 + 4 +2+0+1+0 = 10 = his personal year (from March 4th, 2010 to March 3rd, 2011)

10 year + 7 (July) = 17 = his personal month (from July 4th, 2010 to August 3rd, 2010) = Health issues.

Aug 2, 2010 12:46PM

Tom Mankiewicz came by his screenwriting talent through genetics — his father was the great director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“All About Eve,” “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” “Cleopatra,” “Sleuth”), and his uncle, Herman, won an Oscar for co-writing “Citizen Kane.”

Tom Mankiewicz, who died Saturday from cancer at the age of 68, used his screenwriting talent to hone what we now think of as the summer blockbuster movie. (Read this fond tribute on MI6.com, a James Bond fan site.)

Among Mankiewicz’s screenplay credits were three 1970s James Bond movies — Sean Connery’s final turn as Bond, “Diamonds Are Forever,” and Roger Moore’s first two outings, “Live and Let Die” and “The Man With the Golden Gun.” Those Bond movies helped cement Bond’s penchant for dropping cool one-liners, blazing the trail for smart-alecky action heroes for decades.

He also was credited for the screenplays for “Ladyhawke” and the 1987 comedy version of “Dragnet” (which he directed).

But the work Mankiewicz did without credit went a long way into shaping the blockbuster. Warner Bros. hired him as a “creative consultant,” a full-time script fixer. Among the screenplays he helped polish were “Superman” (pictured above), “Superman II,” “Gremlins,” “WarGames” and Tim Burton’s “Batman.”

from:  http://sltrib.com/sltrib/blogs/moviecricket/50037606-66/mankiewicz-bond-tom-among.html.csp

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using the number/letter grid:

1      2      3       4       5       6      7      8      9
A      B     C       D       E       F      G      H      I
J      K      L      M      N       O      P      Q      R 
S      T      U      V      W      X      Y      Z
 

Tom Mankiewicz

2                        8

how he obtained his heart’s desire = TZ = 28 = Heroes.  Superheroes.

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Tom Mankiewicz was born on June 1st, 1942 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mankiewicz