Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, April 14, 2018

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

Mountain Views-News Saturday, April 14, 2018 

FAMILY MATTERS By Marc Garlett

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown


The Woman’s Hour: The Great 
Fight to Win the Vote by 
Elaine Weiss 

The nail-biting climax of one of 
the greatest political battles in 
American history: the ratification 
of the constitutional amendment 
that granted women the right 
to vote.Nashville, August 1920. 
Thirty-five states have ratified the 
Nineteenth Amendment, twelve 
have rejected or refused to vote, 
and one last state is needed. It all 
comes down to Tennessee, the 
moment of truth for the suffragists, 
after a seven-decade crusade. The 
opposing forces include politicians 
with careers at stake, liquor 
companies, railroad magnates, and 
a lot of racists who don’t want black 
women voting. And then there are 
the “Antis”--women who oppose 
their own enfranchisement, 
fearing suffrage will bring about 
the moral collapse of the nation. 
They all converge in a boiling 
hot summer for a vicious face-off 
replete with dirty tricks, betrayals 
and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel’s, 
and the Bible. Following a handful 
of remarkable women who led their 
respective forces into battle, along 
with appearances by Woodrow 
Wilson, Warren Harding, 
Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor 
Roosevelt, The Woman’s Hour 
is an inspiring story of activists 
winning their own freedom in one 
of the last campaigns forged in the 
shadow of the Civil War, and the 
beginning of the great twentieth-
century battles for civil rights.

The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983 - 
1992 by Tina Brown

Named one of the best books of 2017 
by Time, People, Amazon.com, The 
Guardian, Paste Magazine, The 
Economist, Entertainment Weekly, 
& Vogue.Tina Brown kept delicious 
daily diaries throughout her eight 
spectacular years as editor-in-chief 
of Vanity Fair. Today they provide 
an incendiary portrait of the flash 
and dash and power brokering of the 
Excessive Eighties in New York and 
Hollywood.The book is the story of 
an Englishwoman barely out of her 
twenties who arrives in New York 
City with a dream. Summoned from London in 
hopes that she can save Condé Nast’s troubled new 
flagship Vanity Fair, Brown is immediately plunged 
into the maelstrom of the competitive New York 
media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the 
court of the planet’s slickest, most glamour-focused 
magazine company. She survives the politics, the 
intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple 
stratagem: succeeding. In the 
face of rampant skepticism, she 
triumphantly reinvents a failing 
magazine.Here are the inside 
stories of Vanity Fair scoops 
and covers that sold millions.
the Reagan kiss, the meltdown 
of Princess Diana’s marriage to 
Prince Charles, the sensational 
Annie Leibovitz cover of a 
gloriously pregnant, naked Demi 
Moore. In the diary’s cinematic 
pages, the drama, the comedy, 
and the struggle of running 
an “it” magazine come to life. 
Brown’s book is also a woman’s 
journey, of making a home in 
a new country and of the deep 
bonds with her husband, their 
prematurely born son, and their 
daughter.Astute, open-hearted, 
often riotously funny, the book 
is a compulsively fascinating and 
intimate chronicle of a woman’s 
life in a glittering era.

A Gentleman in Moscow: A 
Novel by Amor Towles 

“The book is like a salve. I think 
the world feels disordered right 
now. The count’s refinement 
and genteel nature are exactly 
what we’re longing for.” —Ann 
Patchett“How delightful that 
in an era as crude as ours this 
finely composed novel stretches 
out with old-World elegance.” 
—The Washington Post.He can’t 
leave his hotel. You won’t want 
to.From the New York Times 
bestselling author of Rules of 
Civility—a transporting novel 
about a man who is ordered to 
spend the rest of his life inside 
a luxury hotel.In 1922, Count 
Alexander Rostov is deemed 
an unrepentant aristocrat by 
a Bolshevik tribunal, and is 
sentenced to house arrest in the 
Metropol, a grand hotel across 
the street from the Kremlin. 
Rostov, an indomitable man 
of erudition and wit, has never 
worked a day in his life, and must 
now live in an attic room while 
some of the most tumultuous 
decades in Russian history are 
unfolding outside the hotel’s 
doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced 
circumstances provide him entry into a much 
larger world of emotional discovery.Brimming 
with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and 
one beautifully rendered scene after another, this 
singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s 
endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what 
it means to be a man of purpose. The book reviews 
are from Amazon.com

NOT MARRIED? YOU’RE 
NOT ALONE - BUT YOU 
STILL NEED A PLAN. 

Estate Planning for People Living Together, 
Bachelors, and Bachelorettes

Approximately half of America’s population over 
the age of 16 is unmarried. While much of the 
discussion involving estate planning focuses on 
married couples, this topic is just as important 
for a single person. In fact, many times it is even 
more important that a single person have a well-
coordinated estate plan. This is because the default 
laws governing estates often work poorly for people 
without a spouse and may not adequately provide 
for a significant other or unmarried partner. 
Having a cohesive and well-drafted estate plan will 
ensure that you protect and provide for those you 
truly care about upon your death.

Evolving Estate Planning

 It is important to understand that your estate 
plan can change over time. You may eventually 
experience life changes like getting married, 
having children, or buying your first home that will 
necessitate changes to your estate plan. Although 
life is constantly changing, it is best to get in the 
driver’s seat early when it comes to estate planning.

 If you die without a will -- referred to as intestate 
-- all of your possessions will be distributed 
according to the default laws of your state. While 
most state laws have a married person’s assets go 
to their surviving spouse and children, the same is 
not true for unmarried individuals. Generally, state 
law provides that a single person’s assets are passed 
on to their next of kin. This includes children, 
parents, and siblings. Noticeably absent for many 
unmarried people are provisions providing for a 
long-term boyfriend or girlfriend. And, if there are 
no surviving close relatives, the assets will likely 
go to the state. To avoid the state dictating what 
happens to your assets, it is vital that you have a 
properly drafted estate plan put together.

As an Unmarried Person, How You Own Things 
Is Very Important

 There is an increasing number of couples that 
are not getting married, and other individuals 
who are deciding to remain single. For this group, 
estate planning is important because taxes and 
other financial benefits tend to favor those who 
have tied the knot. It also brings up the need to be 
very careful about how assets are titled.

 How your assets are titled and how the 
beneficiary designations are prepared will impact 
how your assets will be distributed upon your 
passing. The most common ways to hold title to 
property is tenants in common (TIC) and joint 
tenants with rights of survivorship (JTWROS). 
Property that is held as TIC means that each owner 
owns an interest in the property. At the death of 
one owner, that interest is transferred according 
to his or her estate plan, or intestate succession if 
there is no estate planning. This is not an ideal way 
for unmarried couples to own property because 
at the death of one of them, the other person will 
end up as joint owner with the deceased’s next of 
kin. JTWROS is one option for unmarried couples 
because when one owner dies, the property 
automatically transfers to the surviving owner. 
There are several other planning strategies that 
can be beneficial for unmarried individuals -- 
involving tax benefits, retirement plans, wills and 
trusts, and healthcare powers of attorney -- if the 
right estate plan is carefully crafted.

Speak to an Estate Planning Attorney

 If you do not have an estate plan yet, you 
should contact a knowledgeable estate planning 
attorney today. Whether you are married, single, 
or cohabiting with a partner, the right professional 
can help you craft a comprehensive estate plan that 
is tailored to your personal situation and assists 
you in protecting those you care for the most. Give 
us a call today if you have any questions.

 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 
626.587.3058 or visit www.GarlettLaw.com for 
more information.


BUSINESS TODAY

The latest on Business News, Trends and 
Techniques


By La Quetta M. Shamblee, MBA

All Things By Jeff Brown

PENNYWISE, POUND FOOLISH

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING 

BY LISA CAIRNS

Saving money while making money should be 
the goal of every business. However, business 
owners and managers should be able to 
distinguish between decisions and processes that 
are “pennywise, yet dollar foolish.” Translation? 
Be sure that you’re not spending ten dollars to 
save only one. Very often, companies engage in 
processes that require more time and more staff 
than necessary to complete certain tasks.

 One example is a project I worked on that had 
operations in several Southern CA counties. The 
company that hired me and other consultants was 
very frugal with their choice of equipment and 
tools they provided for us. When it came to our 
actual work, the same company didn’t have a clue, 
or didn’t seem to care that each consultant was 
“reinventing the wheel” that was readily available. 
A simple process of convening or poling the group 
of consultants would have provided the company 
with an arsenal of recommendations and expertise 
to streamline many of their inefficient processes.

 One example was the barrage of questions to the 
project manager from each consultant about the 
same type of scenario encountered with a client. 
This required the project manager to respond to 
the same types of questions multiple times, as 
opposed to establishing a simple communications 
tool or formal feedback look that would have 
made it easier, quicker and more cost effective 
for the pool of consultants to have their questions 
answered.

 A Q &A section on a webpage or prepared in 
a single document could have easily be prepared 
and updated on a daily or weekly basis to create 
a centralized point of communication that would 
have allowed all of the consultants to access the 
information. If the business lacked the staffing to 
update the webpage on an ongoing basis, a simple 
text document could have been created, updated 
and distributed on a daily or weekly basis.

 Years ago I worked in the development 
department for a school for the developmentally 
disabled through two annual fundraising seasons. 
The director of development had a reputation for 
his cost-cutting strategies. The first year I was 
there, he insisted that his two-person development 
staff take on the responsibility of preparing bulk 
mail for three separate mailings of 4,000 to 6,000 
fundraising solicitations during the year. He 
considered $500-700 plus the cost of postage to 
be an excessive amount to pay a company that 
specialized in processing bulk mailings.

 He was filled with glee as he shared that one 
of the attorneys on the organization’s board of 
directors had offered to have his secretary print 
the mailing labels from our database. This was 
another feather in his “cost-savings” hat. Turns 
out that no one informed the secretary that the 
labels should have been sorted by zipcode prior 
to printing – she printed all 6,500 of them in 
alphabetical order by last name. After we placed 
labels onto each of the envelopes, we spend the 
next two weeks sorting the envelopes by zipcode. 
Then we commenced to painstakingly match 
each envelope with the letter that was personally 
addressed to the potential donor. Quite a task to 
flip through stacks of envelopes now sorted by 
zipcode ranges to locate the exact addressee to 
match. In the end, our organization spent at least 
$2,300 for the staff time that we spent as a result of 
this “cost-saving” approach, plus postage. It seems 
in this instance, the willingness to spend money 
would have saved even more.

Forget about becoming nice, likeable, special, 
better than, free from, enlightened---give these 
ideas back. Freedom isn’t about becoming 
something, it’s about losing everything. It’s about 
giving everything back to the source which is 
actually who you are, it’s about surrendering to 
yourself. And “yourself” is absolute mystery; 
complete not knowing. Yourself---your true self-
--is here, is free, is radically alive and present and 
creating spontaneously. Do you dare to make 
“this” your altar, make “what is” your god---what’s 
actually happening? Or do you have to repetitively 
escape to thinking and imagining a future, 
praying for salvation in some distant place that is 
always just slightly out of your grip? Freedom---
what you long for, what you need, love---is here. 
Right here, in the middle of life, in the centre of 
all things. This is the heart of being. This is your 
god, your safety, your freedom, and your love. 
Everything you ever want and ever need is here. 
BUT the catch is: are you really prepared to give 
everything back to the playful, radically exotic, 
Mystery? YES!!!!Lisa Cairns can be found on 
Youtube.com and lisacairns.com


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