Evelyn Brown

Some of you may have remembered that Valentine's Day will soon be upon us. This is an ideal time to express your love to those you are closest to. Gift giving is appropriate. If you are not close to anyone at this time, Valentine's Day is an ideal excuse to become so. Gift giving could help. If, however, you do not feel comfortable with the idea of gift giving, then you should know that the greeting card industry was created especially for people like you, cheapskate.

Some of you may have remembered that Valentine's Day will soon be upon us. This is an ideal time to express your love to those you are closest to. Gift giving is appropriate. If you are not close to anyone at this time, Valentine's Day is an ideal excuse to become so. Gift giving could help. If, however, you do not feel comfortable with the idea of gift giving, then you should know that the greeting card industry was created especially for people like you, cheapskate.

Gloria Elaine Rapp of Port Hueneme, a mother, homemaker and bowler, died Wednesday of natural causes at St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. She was 68. Rapp was born May 28, 1928, in Dayton, Ohio, and moved to Ventura County in 1945. Traveling around Mexico with her husband, Arthur, was one of Rapp's favorite pastimes, as was crocheting. An avid bowler, Rapp placed third in a statewide competition in 1970 in San Diego.

Tired of meaningless sex, empty liaisons and tawdry affairs? Leaving today's headlines aside, you can put the romance back in your life with personalized romance novels. You know the story: Girl meets boy, girl hates boy--no wait! Now she thinks she loves him. Swan Publishing's personalized novels build on that formula, except this time the hero and the heroine have names and traits chosen by the customer. Imagine . . .

"HER HANDS reached up and tugged at the collar of (his name here) 's shirt, pulling his hesitant lips closer to her own. They swayed together in tempo with the tide of the ocean. In the intimate darkness, they were going to steal a moment of ecstasy that the tropical sunshine would have denied. . . ."

I celebrated my 100th birthday this year. My 45,000-plus employees grow and harvest trees; manufacture, distribute and sell forest products, including logs, wood chips, building products, pulp, paper and packaging products; and engage in real estate construction and development. I'm a leading recycler of office wastepaper, newspaper and corrugated boxes and the world's largest private owner of merchantable softwood timber.

From sending campaign workers into the streets to fighting City Hall, politics is how things get done in the predominantly black, poor-to-middle-class community known as South-Central Los Angeles. That is not well understood by strangers to South-Central, whose views are formed by television and newspaper coverage of cops, drive-by shootings, gangs and crack. Those outside South-Central L.A. don't see the forces within the community that are working through politics for its preservation.

As firefighters sped to the wrong address, three toddlers and their mother were killed early Monday when flames raced through their small stucco house in Southwest Los Angeles. Four of the family's other children survived the 2 a.m. blaze because of the quick thinking of 13-year-old Syreeta Middleton, who managed to release the stubborn security bars from a bedroom window and pull three of her younger sisters to safety.

Pam Marshall was sitting on twin ice packs and explaining to reporters where she had come from. "From out of nowhere," was the going description. Marshall had just won the women's 100 meters Friday at the USA/Mobil outdoor track and field championships--and both Olympian Alice Brown and world record-holder Evelyn Ashford were trying to figure out which speed zone Marshall had just blasted out of.

At age 29, Evelyn Brown of Placentia was your average mother of two with a degree in math and a job as chief financial officer of a family-owned business in Anaheim, which sold steam fittings and equipment to such big businesses as Southern California Edison Co. and the Navy. That's all behind her now.

More than two years after Claremont police shot a young African American man to death during a traffic stop and sent a wave of controversy rolling through the quiet town, the city this week released a traffic study that according to the new chief shows officers do not conduct racial profiling.