Nobility

BEIJING - One man is completing his ascent to the pinnacle of power. The other is in the midst of a searing public humiliation. Xi Jinping, China's new Communist Party secretary, will add the title of president at the end of the annual gathering of the National People's Congress, which opens Tuesday. The corruption trial of his purged rival, Bo Xilai, is expected shortly after. Even as their fates have diverged sharply, the stories of their famous and powerful families have dominated Chinese political chatter for the last year.

BEIJING - One man is completing his ascent to the pinnacle of power. The other is in the midst of a searing public humiliation. Xi Jinping, China's new Communist Party secretary, will add the title of president at the end of the annual gathering of the National People's Congress, which opens Tuesday. The corruption trial of his purged rival, Bo Xilai, is expected shortly after. Even as their fates have diverged sharply, the stories of their famous and powerful families have dominated Chinese political chatter for the last year.

The thoughts that I read in the story on nurse Frances Slanger ("Noble Words From Another War," by Bob Welch, Oct. 17) were so unusual, it felt as if I were reading a foreign language. It seems as if we're so afraid of being accused of hypocrisy that nobility is not even a goal. Yet we embrace the "sordid, selfish, shameful business that makes up most of our petty lives." Yes, I have to deal with ugly, repugnant business from time to time, but I'm grateful for the reminder that doing so also can be a privilege.

Adding to a banner day for women in U.S. motor racing, Courtney Force won drag racing's funny car event Sunday at the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona. Hours after Danica Patrick made history by capturing the pole position for NASCAR's Daytona 500, Force powered her Ford funny car past Ron Capps of Carlsbad in the final round of eliminations at Auto Club Raceway. Force, the 24-year-old daughter of legendary funny car driver John Force of Yorba Linda, prevailed with a run of 4.025 seconds at 317.12 mph down the 1,000-foot drag strip.

The discrepancy between what theater critic Laurie Winer expressed about my play, "To Take Arms," and what the majority of the audience, both black and white, is expressing, amazes me (" 'To Take Arms' Struggles to Find Real-Life Drama," Feb. 11). But I understand Winer's confusion. She thought the play was about oppression, about the humanity of the slaves vs. the inhumanity of the slave owners, because that is what plays set in the antebellum South with slaves in them are usually about.

I guess that I can live with two Dukes in 1989: one in Sacramento and one in the White House. However, in 1990, we've got to reduce the American nobility by 50%. JAMES A. GLYNN Bakersfield

Count Joseph Kinsky stands tall beside the weathered gables of his family's Georgian-style castle. Forty years under communism, including a jail term and labor in the uranium mines, did little to diminish his noble demeanor. The castle, on the other hand, is a wreck. Seized by the government when Communists took control in 1948, the 27-room chateau was used for pig breeding, then left to rot.

Your July 17 edition of "Nonfiction in Brief" contained a review of Maynard Solomon's "Beethoven Essays" by Sonja Bolle. In it, the following statement was made: ". . . and his pretentions to nobility (the 'Von' was not his by birthright)." Beethoven's name was not Von Beethoven but Ludwig van Beethoven and certainly his birthright! The family was of Dutch origin and retained their Dutch name after settling in Germany. The Dutch "van" has nothing to do with nobility--it merely means "from."

Now is the time for the "lucky" people of Los Angeles to practice a little noblesse oblige . This old-fashioned term means the obligations of the nobility. In these days the nobility are the wealthy. My suggestion is that almost everyone whose income is $100,000 a year or more, of which there are a great number in Los Angeles, should contribute at least $1,000 to a fund to help those who lost everything in rebuilding. The fund could be managed by a coalition of leaders from various ethnic groups.

The British nobility, or peerage, consists of five ranks created by the Crown. They are, in descending order, duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron, or, in the case of women, duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess and baroness. One of the privileges of nobility is sitting in the House of Lords. Peerages are for the most part hereditary, passing from father to eldest son, although provision has been made in special cases for the title to pass to a daughter if the male line should fail.

At long last, Kings. The game of small-town Canada has just been heisted by Hollywood. A group of bearded beach bums has just stolen sports' most chilling trophy and stuck it where the sun shines. The most popular puck around here is no longer Wolfgang. Our hottest skaters are no longer in bikinis. Heaven has frozen over. The Kings are 2012 Stanley Cup champions. Photos: Kings vs. Devils, Game 6 The first title in franchise history was earned on a monumental Monday in which a team's skittishness became greatness while a city's icy stare melted into tearful slush.

WE SAID goodbye to the best dog ever the other day. Of all things, his heart went. Then so did ours. "Well, he's not whimpering," the vet said as Lucky lay struggling to breathe on the stainless-steel exam table. "He never whimpered," I said, "his whole life." And that's where I sort of lost it. He never whimpered, Lucky. Not when toddlers pulled his ears or French-kissed him without permission. Or sang "London Bridge Is Falling Down" over and over and over. Plus an encore.

Lord Peter the Cheater was trying to talk himself out of a prison term stemming from a stolen 350-year-old oil painting when last we heard from him. The Long Beach man had been exposed as a smooth-talking con artist who set Great Britain on its ear by romancing a string of women while pretending to be a member of the English aristocracy.

He could be addressed one day as "My Lord." But retired grocery store worker William Jennings Capell would prefer to be known as just plain Bill. A lifelong resident of this farming town 45 miles north of Sacramento, Capell always knew he had noble blood. What he didn't know was that he might one day assume the title of England's Earl of Essex. Then last month a British newspaper reporter called to inform Capell that the 10th Earl of Essex had died and the 11th had inherited the title.

When Italian director Gianni Amelio set out to cast the role of a disabled teenage boy in his haunting drama "The Keys to the House," he knew exactly where to scout for likely candidates. "Swimming is kind of a therapy with this kind of illness," says the veteran director through a translator. "I knew I would find a boy like that in a swimming pool. So I went to a swimming pool near Cinecitta [studios], and on the first day, I met Andrea. It was kind of a sign of destiny."

The thoughts that I read in the story on nurse Frances Slanger ("Noble Words From Another War," by Bob Welch, Oct. 17) were so unusual, it felt as if I were reading a foreign language. It seems as if we're so afraid of being accused of hypocrisy that nobility is not even a goal. Yet we embrace the "sordid, selfish, shameful business that makes up most of our petty lives." Yes, I have to deal with ugly, repugnant business from time to time, but I'm grateful for the reminder that doing so also can be a privilege.

Regarding Sharon Biggers' reaction to Tom Hanks' Oscar speech ("Reactions to the Oscars," Saturday Letters, March 26): While Hanks' comments might arguably have approached being "overwrought," they were more than tempered by the honesty of his emotions. But "oppressive" in their political correctness? C'mon. No one is asking you, Ms. Biggers, to feel responsible for or guilty about those who are combatting AIDS and HIV, nor must you see any of us as possessing a certain "nobility" for doing so. Still, you have responsibilities that you must face, the very least of which is to recognize that, since none of us lives in a vacuum, AIDS is everyone's concern.

In their letters published April 23, two writers take issue with Pamela Warrick's article explaining how her family observed both Passover and Easter, arguing that such a dual observance trivialized both religions. That of course, is one way of looking at it, but let me suggest that there is another one as well. It is best expressed perhaps by a quotation from Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), a man who by both his writings and his nobility of character contributed as much as any single individual to Jewish emancipation.

This is how the week ended for Annika Sorenstam: As she walked past the packed grandstand on her way to the 18th green Sunday afternoon at Mission Hills, the fans cheered and rose to their feet ... even though her ball had rolled off the back of the green and into the water. Thus, Sorenstam became one of the few players ever saluted with a standing ovation for drowning her golf ball on the last hole of a major championship.

His face looked like someone had used a steel chisel on a wall of anthracite a thousand feet beneath Pennsylvania. It was cracks, rips, cuts, lumps, bumps and raw, worn, workingman's fatigue. Yet you did not look away. You could not look away. Charles Bronson, who died last weekend at the reported age of 81, always projected the charisma of ambiguity: Was he an ugly handsome man or a handsome ugly man? You were never sure, so further study was obligatory.