Reminder

If this had happened a month ago, the San Francisco Chronicle and city officials would have been another party skewered in Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame induction speech. The newspaper published photos Tuesday of Jordan smoking a cigar during a practice round at Harding Park, despite the city's ban on smoking on public golf courses. City officials asked the PGA Tour to remind Jordan he can't smoke while being an honorary assistant at the Presidents Cup. "It was sort of a gentle nudge reminding them that smoking is illegal and that we would appreciate their support," Recreation and Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg told the Chronicle.

I began worrying more than seven years ago, when I first brought him the violins donated by readers. Would they make my new friend, a Juilliard-trained musician who'd suffered a breakdown 35 years earlier, less safe on the streets of skid row? Would he be attacked by thieves? And that was just the beginning of the worries. As I got to know Nathaniel Anthony Ayers better, I fretted not just about whether I could protect him, but also about how to help him. Time passes; the worries never do. Uncertainty lingers constantly when you have a relationship with someone who has a severe mental illness, and watching the video this week of the Kelly Thomas beating was a reminder of how quickly things can go horribly awry.

They are the ships that fell from the sky; two immovable objects, their very presence defying reason. Residents call them acts of God. Most cannot fathom that the two ocean vessels were transported miles inland by floodwaters of the 2004 tsunami that ravaged this small city on Sumatra's northern tip. Miles apart, both have been left intact as memorials to the 170,000 residents of Aceh province who either died or disappeared in the catastrophe....

There's so much to praise in the blissful Broadway revival of "Follies," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre on the heels of its numerous Tony nominations, but let's pay homage first to the sheer sophistication of the show itself. After experiencing "Follies" again - an adult entertainment if ever there was one - I flat-out refuse to accept any more jukebox substitutes. One doesn't often talk about architecture when writing about musicals, but the most impressive thing about "Follies," beyond Stephen Sondheim's bejeweled score, is the ingenious way it is constructed.

Some of the highs and lows of watching Dodgers-Phillies Game 4: Say hey Tough opening montage for Dodger fans on TBS, accompanied by the voice of Manager Joe Torre says, "You never want to get your rear end kicked, no question about it." Thanks for the memories of the 11-0 Philadelphia win in Game 3. Say what? This is a general impression, but Chip Caray, on the play-by-play, makes every fly ball sound as if it's going to be a home run. And then, when there is a home run, it sounds as if it wasa fly ball out. An announcer's tone actually sets the tone.

Congratulations on the article covering the 30-year reunion of the California Golden Bears' NCAA basketball championship. It is nice to be reminded that college basketball in the state of California was successful before Coach John Wooden in 1964. DAVID SALTZMAN Beverly Hills

A teacher who drew on an 11-year-old boy's eyelids as a reminder to dot his I's and cross his Ts has been named in a civil rights lawsuit. "What could she have been thinking?" asked Taylor Culver, the attorney who filed the suit Thursday seeking $1 million in Alameda County Superior Court. "It would never have happened if the kid were not black."

Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell is in Texas now. Army Chaplain Henry A. Haynes is in South Carolina. Eight years ago today, they were inside the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 hit its mark. The world tends to give its fullest attention to anniversaries that end in zero or five -- not eight. There will be bagpipes and drums in New York. The president will lay a wreath at the Pentagon. Most of the nation will take a collective pause and move on. But for those like Birdwell and Haynes, directly touched by the terrorist attacks on Sept.

Mayo Genia answered the phone early Saturday and promptly flashed back to an anguishing experience of more than two decades ago. On the line was her husband. Television in Israel was reporting an explosion at the Olympics. He was checking on her. Genia turned on the television in her downtown hotel room and was immediately overcome by feelings of anger, frustration and helplessness. It was happening again. Just as she and her traveling companions had feared it would.

Daylight Saving reminder: Turn clocks back at 2 a.m. Sunday.

A new study of low-income mothers of toddlers has found that two-thirds did not correctly perceive their children's size. And most - including all of the misperceiving moms with kids who were overweight - thought their kids were too small, not too big.    The discovery, which echoes findings in older children, illustrates how perceptions about weight complicate doctors' efforts to keep kids healthy, wrote Dr. Eliana Perrin in an invited commentary...

As it always is with a Mike Brown practice, there remained plenty of issues to go over before the Lakers meet Denver in Game 2 Tuesday at Staples Center. The Lakers expect Denver to speed up the tempo. They anticipate point guard Ty Lawson will play more aggressively. The Lakers believe Andrew Bynum will face even more relentless double teams. But Coach Mike Brown didn't highlight New York Knicks forward Amare Stoudemire suffering a left-hand injury Monday after punching the glass case of a fire extinguisher apparently out of frustration over New York's 2-0 first-round deficit to Miami.

CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Pa. - Marco Rubio took the stage with Mitt Romney and delivered what the presidential candidate wanted - a jolt of energy aimed at an uninspired Republican base and a message of inclusion to Latino voters, who have drifted away from the party in droves. Monday's appearance by Rubio, a Florida senator and possible vice presidential pick who has become one of his party's most prominent Latino leaders, drew cheers and applause from the crowd. But it was also a reminder of competing imperatives facing Romney after a combative primary season in which he moved far to the right on illegal immigration, a key concern for many Latino voters.

A few hours before a wary Landon Donovan ran onto the practice field at the Home Depot Center on Thursday, a funeral took place in Bergamo, Italy. And those two events may have more in common than you think. Piermario Morosini, a 25-year-old midfielder for Livorno in Italy's Serie B, collapsed and died of cardiac arrest in the first half of his team's match last weekend. He was laid to rest Thursday, with thousands of fans packing the streets of his hometown as his coffin, draped in numerous jerseys passed.

Sometimes you can't put your finger on what you've been missing until you encounter it again. After seeing two fine revivals of plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter - "Waiting for Godot" at the Mark Taper Forum and the British production of "The Caretaker" at San Francisco's Curran Theatre, respectively - I suddenly realized how ravenous I was for language in the theater with poetic density and grit. Beckett, 20th century playwriting's No. 1 game-changer, and Pinter, his most original disciple, were writers steeped in literature.

Sundown Friday marks the beginning of Passover, the commemoration of the Jews' emancipation from enslavement in ancient Egypt. This year Passover falls on a day of enormous significance in the struggle for freedom in modern Egypt — April 6. That date is synonymous with the April 6 Youth Movement — formed in 2008 and named for the date of a planned strike to support Egyptian workers — that became the backbone of last year's Tahrir revolution that...

Earthquake: a reminder that we're just here for the ride. CLARENCE JOHNSON Riverside

I've changed my mind on the Belmont Learning Complex. Fix it. The result will be a school we need and a constant reminder of bureaucratic arrogance that we also need. ROGER WALTON North Hills

Recent weeks have brought sharply different perspectives on the state of women in America today. A new study on the status of women and girls in California, just released by Mount St. Mary's College, concludes that women here earn degrees at a higher rate than men. Nearly a third of the state's businesses are solely owned by women, and 38% of its elected representatives are women. Those are encouraging, if still developing, indicators that an equal society is under construction. And yet the same survey produces reminders of persistent inequity.

Nearly two decades ago, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' documentary "The War Room" turned the strategists behind Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign into bona-fide media stars. The film's arrival on DVD and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection in another election year is a reminder of both how much and how little things have changed. The popular image of the darkly glamorous arts of political spin owes much to these veterans of the Clinton war room (George Clooney screened the film for his "Ides of March" cast)