Grants

As a self-described member of the nouveaux riches, Peter Norton says that he and his wife, Eileen, are "climbing a learning curve" to find out how well-to-do people conduct their affairs. By conventional standards the couple haven't learned much. Money isn't the problem. The Nortons became multimillionaires a few years ago when Peter, a computer guru, propelled a $30,000 investment in software packages and books into a spectacularly successful business. Last year, he sold his company, Peter Norton Computing Inc., and he hopes never to be gainfully employed again.

A Disposition to Be Rich How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States Geoffrey C. Ward Alfred A. Knopf: 415 pp., $28.95. In 1863, the young Ferdinand Ward was alone with his mother in their parsonage in Geneseo, N.Y., his minister father and older brother both off to war and his older sister visiting relatives out of town. Diphtheria swept through the village, killing friends and neighbors, and each mail delivery carried the risk of disaster - would it include a notice that one of the Ward men had been killed?

Using Father's Day to drive home his message about improving men's health, President Clinton on Saturday released the first portion of almost $60 million in prostate cancer research grants. Clinton said the largest-ever federal research awards for finding better treatments for the disease will pay for "new studies to determine the cause of prostate cancer [and] develop new methods of prevention and detection.

The Kings are headed to the Stanley Cup finals. It's a foregone conclusion, up 3-0 in the Western Conference finals. It is nearly impossible for the Phoenix Coyotes to come back at this point. The Kings, though, remain wary. They don't have to stray from their dressing room to find a couple of guys who did the near impossible. Forwards Jeff Carter and Mike Richards helped the Philadelphia Flyers rally from a 3-0 deficit to eliminate the Boston Bruins in the 2010 Eastern Conference semifinals.

What's to like about taxes? Most people view them at best as a necessary evil to help pay for robust government services - a public benefit. But cigarette taxes are an anomaly. In their case, the tax itself is a public benefit. Proposition 29, which would place a $1 levy on each pack of cigarettes sold in California, would serve the common good by making cigarettes more expensive. Economists have demonstrated conclusively that taxes on cigarettes are an effective tool for reducing smoking rates, which not only benefits the health of current and potential smokers but clears the air for people who would otherwise be exposed to secondhand smoke.

Calling it crucial to U.S. global competitiveness, President Obama pledged Monday to fight the dropout rate among U.S. high school students and to improve low-performing schools through new investments in "turnaround" programs. Obama proposed $900 million more next year in grants for school systems that commit to improving their struggling schools -- much of it likely bound for districts in large cities, such as Chicago and Los Angeles. Obama directed $3 billion of last year's stimulus package to improve school performance.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced $77.2 million in grants Wednesday, including $5 million for California. More than half the total -- $48.8 million - covers the NEA's annual operating grants to state and regional arts agencies. The California Arts Council receives $1.1 million, the largest amount for a state. The grantmaking round included $28.4 million in competitive grants in two categories: $24.8 million for Art Works, which covers arts education, engaging audiences and using the arts as a tool for community improvement, and $3.6 million for Arts in Media, projects involving broadcasting, digital creativity and the Internet.

A Los Angeles artist who specializes in incorporating found objects into his pieces and a USC law professor whose own battle with schizophrenia has informed her advocacy for those suffering from mental illness are among the 24 winners of this year's "genius" grants from the MacArthur Foundation. Mark Bradford, Elyn Saks and 22 other winners will each receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend any way they please. For Bradford, 47, the MacArthur award is the third major prize he has received in the last three years.

In a high-stakes competition, Tennessee and Delaware were awarded $600 million Monday, the only states to win grants in the first phase of "Race to the Top," the Obama administration's $4.35-billion education initiative, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. Duncan said both states showed that they had overwhelming support for their overhaul plans from all stakeholders -- including teachers' unions, parents, and local and state school officials. Such support weighed heavily in the decision.

The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in voter-registration fraud cases. The 83-7 vote came as ACORN , which stands for the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is receiving bad publicity related to surreptitious videos. Two conservative activists posed as a prostitute and her pimp, then released a hidden-camera video in which ACORN employees in Baltimore advised the couple on house-buying and how to account for the woman's income on tax forms.

The Obama administration threatened California on Thursday with rescinding $3.3 billion in federal grants to start construction of a bullet train if the Legislature does not act by June to appropriate the state's share of funding. In a series of meetings with key lawmakers in Sacramento, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that the recent proposal by state Senate leaders to delay a $2.7-billion decision on the high-speed rail project until August is not acceptable. "We need the Legislature to make the strongest commitment possible," LaHood said in an interview.

Question: My son has severe allergies, including an allergy to cat fur. To keep him safe, I moved my family to a community that was advertised as pet free. Then, six months after moving here, I noticed a cat on my next door neighbor's balcony. When I asked the manager if the cat lived in the next unit, she said the community management had no choice because the cat was a companion animal necessary to mitigate that resident's disability. That may be great for my neighbor, but what about my son, who is in danger of needing emergency medical care if he has an allergy attack?

Charles Higham, a poet, critic and prolific celebrity biographer who found political and sexual intrigue in the lives of Hollywood icons such as Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich and, most controversially, Errol Flynn, died April 21 at his Los Angeles home. He was 81. The cause was apparently a heart attack, according to Todd McCarthy, a close friend. Higham was the author of two dozen biographies, many of which were so salacious that a book critic reviewing "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life" in 1993 quipped that the writer had "reached the point where most of his subjects have slept with one another.

ELDON, Iowa - Beth Howard sits at her kitchen table on a Sunday morning and pulls back the curtain to peer at a group of rosy-cheeked youths taking pictures on her front lawn. They pair off to stand side by side in the pose familiar to millions - the dour farmer with a pitchfork, the unsmiling woman beside him in front of the white house. No one notices the woman in flannel pajamas sitting inside. "People seldom know that people live here, much less that there's someone watching them from the other side of the curtain," says Howard, who rents the house made famous in Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic.

Memorial held for Helm Busloads of friends and fans of Levon Helm traveled to his home Thursday to say goodbye to the influential singer and drummer for the Band, who died of cancer last week. The public memorial was held at the Woodstock, N.Y., barn where Helm held his Saturday night Midnight Ramble concerts in New York's Hudson Valley. His closed casket, on the second floor of the barn, was surrounded by flowers and flanked by his drum kit and a piano. Hundreds of people filed silently past the coffin, set against a backdrop of a family photo slide show.

Invoking his right against self-incrimination, the former finance director of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum declined to testify before a grand jury about alleged corruption at the stadium, then answered questions after a judge granted him limited immunity, transcripts of the proceedings show. Ronald Lederkramer, once the Coliseum's No. 2 executive, left the Coliseum late last year after The Times reported that he used his personal credit card to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars in stadium equipment to pocket valuable reward points.

The city of Los Angeles lost out on more than $125 million in federal stimulus money because of a lack of oversight across the various departments pursuing the funds, City Controller Wendy Greuel said Monday. In an audit of the city's application processes for competitive grants from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Greuel found that the lack of a centralized body to oversee the city's scattered departments led to a series of oversights that reduced the city's share of the billions in funding awarded across the country.

Winners of United States Artists grants usually pump the money directly into their work. But no strings are attached to the $50,000 awards, so some artists use part of their newfound wealth to travel, pay off mortgages, buy life insurance, get new glasses or have their teeth fixed. Others become philanthropists, pitching in on colleagues' projects. That's the beauty of the grants, says Mark Bradford, a maker of massive, abstract collages who was tapped in the first round, in 2006, and has become actively engaged with United States Artists as a board member.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced $77.2 million in grants Wednesday, including $5 million for California. More than half the total -- $48.8 million - covers the NEA's annual operating grants to state and regional arts agencies. The California Arts Council receives $1.1 million, the largest amount for a state. The grantmaking round included $28.4 million in competitive grants in two categories: $24.8 million for Art Works, which covers arts education, engaging audiences and using the arts as a tool for community improvement, and $3.6 million for Arts in Media, projects involving broadcasting, digital creativity and the Internet.

They are the unsung heroes for countless high school athletes. They show up to games day or night. They offer unconditional support in good and bad times. When mom or dad is angry, they are the ones called upon to be arbitrators of common sense. Yes, grandparents make invaluable contributions, so let me tell the story of shotputter Naomi Grant of Fullerton Troy. When Grant was 5 months old, her mother, Vida Owens, died after suffering an infection. Her grandparents, David and Claudette Owens, took over as parents.