Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, November 24, 2018

B4

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

Mountain Views-News Saturday, November 24, 2018 

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

FAMILY MATTERS By Marc Garlett


DON’T FORGET TO 
INCLUDE YOUR DIGITAL 
ASSETS IN YOUR ESTATE 
PLAN

If you’ve created an estate plan, it likely includes 
traditional assets like finances, real estate, personal 
property, and family heirlooms. But unless your 
plan also includes your digital assets, there’s a good 
chance this online property will be lost forever 
following your death or incapacity. 

 What’s more, even if these assets are included 
in your plan, unless your executor and/or trustee 
knows the accounts exist and how to access them, 
you risk burdening your family and friends with 
the often lengthy and expensive process of locating 
and accessing them. And depending on the terms 
of service governing your online accounts, your 
heirs may not be able to inherit some types of these 
digital assets at all.

 With our lives increasingly being lived 
online, our digital assets can be quite extensive 
and extremely valuable. Given this, it’s more 
important than ever that your estate plan includes 
detailed provisions to protect and pass on such 
property in the event of your incapacity or death.
Types of digital assets

 Digital assets generally fall into two categories: 
those with financial value and those with 
sentimental value.

 Those with financial value typically include 
cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, online payment 
accounts like PayPal, domain names, websites 
and blogs generating revenue, as well as other 
works like photos, videos, music, and writing 
that generate royalties. Such assets have real 
financial worth for your heirs, not only in 
the immediate aftermath of your death or 
incapacity, but potentially for years to come. 
Digital assets with sentimental value include 
email accounts, photos, video, music, publications, 
social media accounts, apps, and websites or 
blogs with no revenue potential. While this type 
of property typically won’t be of any monetary 
value, it can offer incredible sentimental value and 
comfort for your family when you’re no longer 
around.

Owned vs licensed

Though you might not know it, you don’t actually 
own many of your digital assets at all. For example, 
you do own certain assets like cryptocurrency and 
PayPal accounts, so you can transfer ownership 
of these in a will or trust. But when you purchase 
some digital property, such as Kindle e-books and 
iTunes music files, all you really own is a license to 
use it. And in many cases, that license is for your 
personal use only and is non-transferable. 

 Whether or not you can transfer such licensed 
property depends almost entirely on the account’s 
Terms of Service Agreements (TOSA) to which 
you agreed (or more likely, simply clicked a box 
without reading) upon opening the account. 
While many TOSA restrict access to accounts only 
to the original user, some allow access by heirs or 
executors in certain situations, while others say 
nothing about transferability.

 Carefully review the TOSA of your online 
accounts to see whether you own the asset itself or 
just a license to use it. If the TOSA states the asset 
is licensed, not owned, and offers no method for 
transferring your license, you’ll likely have no way 
to pass the asset to anyone else, even if it’s included 
in your estate plan.

 To make matters more complicated, though 
you heirs may be able to access your digital assets 
if you’ve provided them with your account login 
and passwords, doing so may actually violate the 
TOSA and/or privacy laws. In order to legally 
access such accounts, your heirs will have to prove 
they have the right to access it, a process which 
up until recently was a major legal grey area. 
Fortunately, through AB-691 (the Revised 
Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets 
Act), California now authorizes a decedent’s 
personal representative or trustee to access 
and manage digital assets and electronic 
communications – as long as it’s clear in your 
estate plan that you are authorizing this power. 
Dedicated to empowering your family, building 
your wealth and defining your legacy,

 

 A local attorney and father, Marc Garlett is on a 
mission to help parents protect what they love most. 
His office is located at 55 Auburn Avenue, Sierra 
Madre, CA 91024. Schedule an appointment to 
sit down and talk about ensuring a legacy of love 
and financial security for your family by calling 
626.355.4000 or visit www.GarlettLaw.com for 
more information.


Becoming by Michelle Obama 

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring 
memoir by the former First Lady of 
the United States. In a life filled with 
meaning and accomplishment, Michelle 
Obama has emerged as one of the most 
iconic and compelling women of our 
era. As First Lady of the United States of 
America—the first African American to 
serve in that role—she helped create the 
most welcoming and inclusive White 
House in history, while also establishing 
herself as a powerful advocate for 
women and girls in the U.S. and around 
the world, dramatically changing the 
ways that families pursue healthier 
and more active lives, and standing 
with her husband as he led America 
through some of its most harrowing 
moments. Along the way, she showed 
us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool 
Karaoke, and raised two down-to-
earth daughters under an unforgiving 
media glare. In her memoir, a work 
of deep reflection and mesmerizing 
storytelling, Michelle Obama invites 
readers into her world, chronicling the 
experiences that have shaped her—
from her childhood on the South Side 
of Chicago to her years as an executive 
balancing the demands of motherhood 
and work, to her time spent at the world’s 
most famous address. With unerring 
honesty and lively wit, she describes 
her triumphs and her disappointments, 
both public and private, telling her full 
story as she has lived it—in her own 
words and on her own terms. Warm, 
wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the 
deeply personal reckoning of a woman 
of soul and substance who has steadily 
defied expectations—and whose story 
inspires us to do the same. 

The Best American Science and Nature 
Writing 2018 by Sam Kean (Editor), Tim 
Folger (Editor) 

“This is one of the most exciting times in the history 
of science,” New York Times-bestselling author 
Sam Kean proclaims in his introduction to The 
Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018. 
“Things aren’t perfect by any means. 
But there are more scientists making 
more discoveries in more places 
about more things than ever before.” 
The twenty-six pieces assembled 
here chart the full spectrum of those 
discoveries. From the outer reaches of 
space, to the mysteries of the human 
mind, to the changing culture in labs 
and universities across the nation, 
we see time and again the sometimes 
rocky, sometimes revelatory road to 
understanding, and along the way 
catch a glimpse of all that’s left to learn. 

The Alienist by Caleb Carr 

“A first-rate tale of crime and 
punishment that will keep readers 
guessing until the final pages.”—
Entertainment Weekly. When The 
Alienist was first published in 1994, it 
was a major phenomenon, spending 
six months on the New York Times 
bestseller list, receiving critical 
acclaim, and selling millions of copies. 
This modern classic continues to be 
a touchstone of historical suspense 
fiction for readers everywhere. The 
year is 1896. The city is New York 
with Theodore Roosevelt as Police 
Superintendent. Newspaper reporter 
John Schuyler Moore is summoned 
by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a 
psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the 
horribly mutilated body of an adolescent 
boy abandoned on the unfinished 
Williamsburg Bridge. From there the 
two embark on a revolutionary effort in 
criminology: creating a psychological 
profile of the perpetrator based on the 
details of his crimes. Their dangerous 
quest takes them into the tortured past 
and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again 
before their hunt is over. Fast-paced and riveting, 
infused with historical detail, The book conjures 
up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and 
mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, 
shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an 
age in which questioning society’s belief that all 
killers are born, not made, could have unexpected 
and fatal consequence.


All Things By Jeff Brown

'IONIC WIND' PLANE HAILED AS MOST 
SIGNIFICANT ADVANCE IN FLIGHT SINCE THE 
WRIGHT BROTHERS

A revolutionary Star Trek-style electric plane 
that flies silently and has no moving parts has 
completed its first test flight, in what is the 
most significant advance in flight since the 
early experiments of the Wright brother more 
than 100 years ago.The battery-powered plane, 
which was developed and tested by engineers 
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 
US, is not kept in flight by propellers or a turbine 
but by an ionic wind system.The 16ft aircraft 
is completely silent and colliding electrically 
charged air molecules provide the thrust 
needed to make it fly, opening the door to new 
generation of emissions-free passenger aircraft 
and silent drones.Aeronautical engineers around 
the world are already trying hard to find ways 
to use electric propulsion, and this technology 
will offer something else that in the future may 
allow manned and unmanned aircraft to be more 
efficient, and non-polluting.


HEALTHY LIFESTYLES


THE GATEWAY TO HAPPINESS

Want to change your 
perspective? Embrace 
gratitude. Gratitude 
changes what we have 
into enough and more. It 
IS the key to serenity and 
contentment (Santosha).

 Isn’t it always a tough 
spot to be in the place of 
wanting or yearning for 
more? Arrr... the grass always looks greener on the 
other side of the fence. Or experiencing that feeling 
of exhaustion from working so hard and still not 
having all of what you dream of --or need—in life. 
If energy wasn’t drained enough already, feeling a 
lack of abundance further depletes us of vital life 
force.

 The attitude, feeling and expression that can turn 
everything around is gratitude. Gratitude is the act 
of internal abundance and thankfulness. It’s that 
feeling that wells up inside when we realize how 
lucky we are. It empowers us to respond kindly and 
live in full faith that the universe has our back. It’s 
the attitude which beckons humility. It’s the natural 
generosity which compels each one of us to give and 
be of service to others.

 In this realization of gratitude, we take stock of all 
we do have and add up all the areas of abundance. 
Don’t forget to include the very air you breathe 
in! Along with the good things, we include all the 
challenges too. It’s in the seemingly bad where 
the greatest potential for lasting serenity comes. 
Being grateful for difficult circumstances is where 
divinity is truly present. We don’t ignore or set 
aside the feelings that come with disappointment or 
sorrow. In time, it is the experience of overcoming 
misconception or ignorance (Avidya) that brings 
gratitude. If allowed, it can transform us so we can 
experience deep happiness and contentment.

 Lastly, remember being grateful for what you 
have encourages more of a good thing. Abundance 
of opportunity, love, and good health. Cheers to this 
time of year and its opportunity for reflection.

Namaste,

Keely Totten

Yoga & Meditation Teacher, Gratitude Seeker

www.keelytotten.com


THE MISSING PAGE

Real Life Tips from LIfe's Instruction Manual


Lori A. Harris


HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2018

Gratitude is the primary force of my life and 
Thanksgiving Day is my favorite holiday. I love 
the thought of the nation joined in gratefulness, 
collectively feasting and celebrating life. I love the 
food, the company and creating memories. I am 
the creator and author of the posts on the Gratitude 
Train App which is available for free in the App Store 
and Google Play. The app invites users to consider 
a unique aspect of thankfulness and then record 
what is appreciated. On this day, I invite you to savor 
each moment. This day has never been lived before 
and will never come again. Appreciate this precious 
moment and love with your heart wide open. Today 
I am sharing a sample of a post from the app and one 
of my favorites:

We live in a highly interconnected world. We all need 
and rely on each other to function on this planet. 
This fact is most evident in each morsel of food we 
ingest. The air, rain, soil, and nutrients that enhance 
that soil feed us. Our insect friends, from bees to 
worms all work to make our meals possible. The 
lesson of change is there on our plates. We gratefully 
eat our meals knowing that we are part of the law of 
circulation, knowing the greens on our plate are a 
manifestation of many peoples' energies. 

 

May the hands that nurtured the earth be blessed. 

 

May the hands toiled the fields 
and harvested its fruits be 
blessed. 

 

May those that transported and 
facilitated the commerce that 
lead to our meal be blessed. 

May the loving hands that 
prepared our meal that graced 
the plate be blessed. 

 

May we be blessed as we savor each bite, knowing 
that the energy of many has been transmuted for our 
physical benefit be blessed. 

 

We are so grateful for the food that has helped to 
create the powerful body we inhabit. We are blessed. 

 

I invite you to record your gratitude in a journal. 
Perhaps consider the wonderful cooks in your life 
that have blessed you by preparing a delicious meal 
for you and be grateful. 

 

Lori A. Harris

Creator of the Gratitude Train App, available in the 
App Store and Google Play

GratitudeTrain.com

Gratitude, get on board!!!

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