Kindness

As Gulf Coast residents suffer from their loss of beaches and bays, residents of Newport can enjoy their water and sand for exactly the same reason – oil. For 30 years the city of Newport Beach has been operating its own oil wells on Banning Ranch. All of the revenue from crude and natural gas goes straight to the city's coffers, into a fund for beach and bay maintenance. And it's not a small amount – in 2009 the city sold $1.8 million worth of black gold. That's a serious chunk at a time when the city was facing a $12 million budget deficit.

Winifred Mary Weber, born in Los Angeles, passed away June 3 at the age of 86 in Carlsbad. A long-time resident of Newport Beach, she is survived by her son Douglas Weber and her granddaughter Marina Weber of San Diego, and Santa Fe, N.M., and her daughter Cynthia Zack of Marietta, Ga. Winnie was a life-long racing and cruising sailor and an avid golfer. She belonged to Balboa Yacht Club, Santa Ana Country Club and Shadowridge Country Club. Her steadfast character and loving kindness will be missed by all who knew her. Contributions or donations in her name may be made to the charity of your choice.

South Coast Plaza plans to become the first shopping center in the nation to provide electric vehicle charging stations. The shopping destination teamed up with Campbell, Calif.-based Coulomb Technologies to provide so-called ChargePoint stations for its customers. “We’re incredibly excited,” said Beverly Morgan, South Coast Plaza spokeswoman. “We’ve been demonstrating environmental leadership, I think, for quite some time, and it’s so exciting to us to be the first shopping center in the U.S. to offer this Coulomb Technologies network to our customers.

Sometimes there is no explanation for the things that happen to us ? for those events that cause us to pause for a moment and realize that we have just participated in something very special. A few weeks ago, my wife, Cay, celebrated our anniversary by giving me the gift of a future weekend in the Phoenix area to watch the Anaheim Angels (sorry, but I cannot bring myself to write ?Los Angeles Angels?) and the Chicago Cubs play in a spring training game in Tempe, Ariz. Cay had been in touch with Karol Nesdale, a former colleague of mine, to see if she and her husband, Mike, would be in Phoenix, as Karol and Mike have made the March trip for a few years.

As a religious leader in the community, what kind of New Year’s resolutions would you encourage your congregants to observe in 2010? And how would you persuade them to stick to those resolutions? I believe the new year is a time to get back to basics. We would do well to remember that everything should begin with God’s inspiration and continue with his saving help. I am encouraging people to examine their prayer lives and to strongly consider spending at least some time in prayer each day, at least at the beginning of the day and right before retiring for the evening.

UC Irvine student and Estancia High School tutor and mentor Jasmine Fang has been honored for her many selfless acts of kindness with the prestigious XIV Dalai Lama Endowed Scholarship. The award was created in 2004 to honor students with a record of honesty, integrity, fairness and service to others who propose projects promoting ethics, peace, compassionate leadership, and local and global responsibility. Fang, a business economics major, will be given a $7,500 scholarship along with $2,500 to support her proposed project, Kindness Month, at UCI. The project will feature activities demonstrating kindness, including designing cards for incarcerated mothers and instruction in making pressed-flower bookmarks.

Actor Taylor Trensch’s introduction to musical theater was inauspicious, to say the least. When he was 6, Trensch saw a notice for auditions for a production of “The Wizard of Oz.” He tried out, and was cast as a Munchkin. “That was my theatrical debut,” Trensch said. “I peed my pants during curtain call.” Since that initiation, he has taken on one of the most squealed-about roles on Broadway. Trensch, 20, is one of the new stars of “Spring Awakening,” a musical that took the Great White Way by storm when it debuted in late 2006.

The name Dave Mohs is attached to a lot of volleyball events. There is the Dave Mohs Girls’ Volleyball Championships, the Dave Mohs Boys’ Championships and the Dave Mohs boys’ and girls’ high school All-Star match. Edison High even named its gym after Dave Mohs. Who was Dave Mohs? He must be someone special to have so many people respect him so much. Dave was a basketball and volleyball coach at Edison. While he won a lot of games as a coach, he is remembered by so many of us because of what he was as a leader, a professional and a class act. A former basketball player at Beverly Hills High and Redlands University in the early ’60’s, Dave started his coaching career as an assistant to the legendary Elmer Coombs at Huntington Beach High in 1965.

UC Irvine will collaborate with other medical centers in the University of California system on a decades-long, statewide study into breast cancer, UCI officials announced Tuesday. UC San Francisco will spearhead the new Athena Breast Health Network, which will screen an initial 150,000 women for breast cancer and then monitor their health for decades. “In terms of depth and breadth, from detection to survivorship, this will be the largest study of its kind,” Hoda Anton-Culver, UCI’s project lead, who is also an epidemiology professor and department chairwoman, said in a news release.