Charles Durning, king of character actors, dies at 89

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Charles Durning grew up in poverty, lost five of his nine siblings to disease, barely lived through D-Day and was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.

His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel to the pope to Dustin Hoffman's would-be suitor in “Tootsie.”

Durning, who died Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theater in Buffalo, N.Y. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as heard the audience laughing.


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He told The Associated Press in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. “They're going to carry me out, if I go,” he said.

Durning's longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, told The Associated Press that he died of natural causes in his home in the borough of Manhattan.

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982's “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film's show-stopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career. Indeed, he had met his first wife, Carol, when both worked at a dance studio.

The year after “Best Little Whorehouse,” Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks' “To Be or Not to Be.” He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975's “Dog Day Afternoon.”

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald in the TV film “The Kennedys of Massachusetts” and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Durning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play “That Championship Season” in 1972.

He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy “The Sting.”

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in “Tootsie;” the infamous seller of frog legs in “The Muppet Movie;” and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's “Dick Tracy.” He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope in the TV film “I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII.”

“I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director,” Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Other films included “The Front Page,” “The Hindenburg,” “Breakheart Pass,” “North Dallas Forty,” “Starting Over,” “Tough Guys,” “Home for the Holidays,” “Spy Hard” and `O Brother Where Art Thou?”

Durning also did well in television as a featured performer as well as a guest star. He appeared in the short-lived series “The Cop and the Kid” (1975), “Eye to Eye” (1985) and “First Monday” (2002) as well as the four-season “Evening Shade” in the 1990s.

“If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy,” he acknowledged during a 1997 interview. “I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, `Any calls for me?“’

Durning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, N.Y., a town near West Point. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.

The younger Durning himself would barely survive World War II.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.

“Too many bad memories,” he told an interviewer in 1997. “I don't want you to see me crying.”

Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

A high school counselor told him he had no talent for art, languages or math and should learn office skills. But after seeing “King Kong” and some of James Cagney's films, Durning knew what he wanted to do.

Leaving home at 16, he worked in a munitions factory, on a slag heap and in a barbed-wire factory.

Durning and his first wife had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio.

He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine. The family planned to have a private family service and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.






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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Merry Radio Christmas

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Former South African president Mandela “much better”: Zuma

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Former South African president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela is looking much better after more than two weeks in hospital, President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.


Zuma, who visited Mandela on Christmas Day, said in a statement that doctors were happy with the progress the elder statesman was making.






“We found him in good spirits. He was happy to have visitors on this special day and is looking much better. The doctors are happy with the progress that he is making,” said Zuma.


The 94-year-old Nobel Peace laureate has been in hospital in Pretoria for more than two weeks after being admitted for routine tests and then undergoing surgery to remove gallstones.


Zuma, who has just been re-elected as president of the ruling African National Congress party, last week described Mandela’s condition as serious. Periodic statements from the presidency continue to stress that the veteran politician is responding to treatment.


No date has been given for his release from hospital. Mandela, who is internationally admired for his struggle against minority white rule, retired from public life in 2004 after serving one term as South Africa‘s first black president.


(Reporting by Sherilee Lakmidas; Editing by Andrew Osborn)


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News Analysis: Getting Polio Campaigns Back on Track

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How in the world did something as innocuous as the sugary pink polio vaccine turn into a flash point between Islamic militants and Western “crusaders,” flaring into a confrontation so ugly that teenage girls — whose only “offense” is that they are protecting children — are gunned down in the streets?




Nine vaccine workers were killed in Pakistan last week in a terrorist campaign that brought the work of 225,000 vaccinators to a standstill. Suspicion fell immediately on factions of the Pakistani Taliban that have threatened vaccinators in the past, accusing them of being American spies.


Polio eradication officials have promised to regroup and try again. But first they must persuade the killers to stop shooting workers and even guarantee safe passage.


That has been done before, notably in Afghanistan in 2007, when Mullah Muhammad Omar, spiritual head of the Afghan Taliban, signed a letter of protection for vaccination teams. But in Pakistan, the killers may be breakaway groups following no one’s rules.


Vaccination efforts are also under threat in other Muslim regions, although not this violently yet.


In Nigeria, another polio-endemic country, the new Islamic militant group Boko Haram has publicly opposed it, although the only killings that the news media have linked to polio were those of two police officers escorting vaccine workers. Boko Haram has killed police officers on other missions, unrelated to polio vaccinations.


In Mali, extremists took over half of the country in May, declaring an Islamic state. Vaccination is not an issue yet, but Mali had polio cases as recently as mid-2011, and the virus sometimes circulates undetected.


Resistance to polio vaccine springs from a combination of fear, often in marginalized ethnic groups, and brutal historical facts that make that fear seem justified. Unless it is countered, and quickly, the backlash threatens the effort to eradicate polio in the three countries where it remains endemic: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.


In 1988, long before donors began delivering mosquito nets, measles shots, AIDS pills, condoms, deworming drugs and other Western medical goods to the world’s most remote villages, Rotary International dedicated itself to wiping out polio, and trained teams to deliver the vaccine.


But remote villages are often ruled by chiefs or warlords who are suspicious not only of Western modernity, but of their own governments.


The Nigerian government is currently dominated by Christian Yorubas. More than a decade ago, when word came from the capital that all children must swallow pink drops to protect them against paralysis, Muslim Hausas in the far-off north could be forgiven for reacting the way the fundamentalist Americans of the John Birch Society did in the 1960s when the government in far-off Washington decreed that, for the sake of children’s teeth, all drinking water should have fluoride.


The northerners already had grievances. In 1996, the drug company Pfizer tested its new antibiotic, Trovan, during a meningitis outbreak there. Eleven children died. Although Pfizer still says it was not to blame, the trial had irregularities, and last year the company began making payments to victims.


Other rumors also spring from real events.


In Pakistan, resistance to vaccination, low over all, is concentrated in Pashtun territory along the Afghan border and in Pashtun slums in large cities. Pashtuns are the dominant tribe in Afghanistan but a minority in Pakistan among Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis and other ethnic groups. Many are Afghan refugees and are often poor and dismissed as medieval and lawless.


Pakistan’s government is friendly with the United States while the Pashtuns’ territory in border areas has been heavily hit by American Taliban-hunting drones, which sometimes kill whole families.


So, when the Central Intelligence Agency admitted sponsoring a hepatitis vaccination campaign as a ruse to get into a compound in Pakistan to confirm that Osama bin Laden was there, and the White House said it had contemplated wiping out the residence with a drone missile, it was not far-fetched for Taliban leaders to assume that other vaccinators worked for the drone pilots.


Even in friendly areas, the vaccine teams have protocols that look plenty suspicious. If a stranger knocked on a door in Brooklyn, asked how many children under age 5 were at home, offered to medicate them, and then scribbled in chalk on the door how many had accepted and how many refused — well, a parent might worry.


In modern medical surveys — though not necessarily on polio campaigns — teams carry GPS devices so they can find houses again. Drones use GPS coordinates.


The warlords of Waziristan made the connection specific, barring all vaccination there until Predator drones disappeared from the skies.


Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian who is chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization, expressed his frustration at the time, saying, “They know we don’t have any control over drone strikes.”


The campaign went on elsewhere in Pakistan — until last week.


The fight against polio has been hampered by rumors that the vaccine contains pork or the virus that causes AIDS, or is a plot to sterilize Muslim girls. Even the craziest-sounding rumors have roots in reality.


The AIDS rumor is a direct descendant of Edward Hooper’s 1999 book, “The River,” which posited the theory — since discredited — that H.I.V. emerged when an early polio vaccine supposedly grown in chimpanzee kidney cells contaminated with the simian immunodeficiency virus was tested in the Belgian Congo.


The sterilization claim was allegedly first made on a Nigerian radio station by a Muslim doctor upset that he had been passed over for a government job. The “proof” was supposed to be lab tests showing it contained estrogen, a birth control hormone.


The vaccine virus is grown in a broth of live cells; fetal calf cells are typical. They may be treated with a minute amount of a digestive enzyme, trypsin — one source of which is pig pancreas, which could account for the pork rumor.


In theory, a polio eradicator explained, if a good enough lab tested the vaccine used at the time the rumor started, it might have detected estrogen from the calf’s mother, but it would have been far less estrogen than is in mother’s milk, which is not accused of sterilizing anyone. The trypsin is supposed to be washed out.


In any case, polio vaccine is now bought only from Muslim countries like Indonesia, and Muslim scholars have ruled it halal — the Islamic equivalent of kosher.


Reviving the campaign will mean quelling many rumors. It may also require adding other medical “inducements,” like deworming medicine, mosquito nets or vitamin A, whose immediate benefits are usually more obvious.


But changing mind-sets will be a crucial step, said Dr. Aylward, who likened the shootings of the girls to those of the schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn.


More police involvement — what he called a “bunkerized approach” — would not solve either America’s problem or Pakistan’s, he argued. Instead, average citizens in both countries needed to rise up, reject the twisted thinking of the killers and “generate an understanding in the community that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.”


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Baker's giant thermometer, long on the blink, is taking heat

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BAKER — The temperature hit 114 degrees in July, but most folks passing by the "World's Tallest Thermometer" in this Mojave Desert pit stop never knew it.


Once a shimmering beacon of light to Las Vegas-bound drivers heading up Interstate 15 with fat wallets and paper-thin dreams, Baker's 13-story thermometer marks California's last-stop oasis of bathrooms and burger joints before the Nevada state line.


Now it's an eyesore. The pinkish roadside oddity has been on the blink for years. The string of ovals that lighted up in 10-degree increments, the top one also giving the exact temperature, are black and lifeless. The gift shop below is padlocked, its shelves stripped bare.





"It's totally disappointing,'' said Brad Roach, 27, of Los Alamos, N.M., who pulled off the highway on an L.A.-to-Vegas road trip with friends to get a closer look. "It's kind of like the biggest ball of twine," he said, referring to another storied American roadside attraction. "If you're diving by, you have to stop and see it. But there's nothing here.''


The thermometer's demise now serves as a billboard for a town on the brink. A chain link fence surrounds Baker's prized Starbucks — which closed its doors four years ago. Two of the town's three motels are shut. The Royal Hawaiian, which in the best of times aspired to two stars, peeks sadly out onto Baker Boulevard with smashed windows and graffiti-splattered walls.


Part of the blame belongs to the merciless Mojave Desert, where bleached 2-by-4s and cinder blocks are all that remains of gas stations, diners and other ventures that turned to dust along the highways. Part of the decline can be blamed on the recession, which depleted the conga line of vehicles heading to and from Las Vegas that sustains life in this tiny town of 735 on the edge of Death Valley.


Tough times are nothing new in this desert town, born more than century ago as a railroad station serving the borax mines in Death Valley. It was wiped off the map by floods in the '30s and saw its rails pulled up and shipped overseas during World War II. There still isn't a single stoplight in town.


Still, its people persevere. "There's always been work in Baker, but now, instead of one job, people are working two or three,'' said Ronda Tremblay, superintendent of the Baker Valley United School District, which has fewer than 190 students.


Baker has no bank or supermarket, no drugstore or health clinic — those are an hour's drive away, in Barstow.


But some hold out hope for the town and, not surprisingly in these parts, it could come from an unusual place: a spaceship.


The owner of Alien Fresh Jerky, one of the more popular stops on Baker's main drag, has plans to build a three-story, disc-shaped "UFO Hotel." Still in the permitting process, it would tower over the tiny markets, gas stations and restaurants on Baker's main drag. Plans call for a gift shop, cafe and 30-plus rooms. Outside, there would be a pool in the shape of an alien's noggin for guests to take a dip in on hot summer days.


"Forty percent of Americans believe in UFOs. Those are my customers," Luis Ramallo said. "No one has ever seen anything like it.''


A wacky dream? Perhaps. But Ramallo, an electrician who emigrated from Argentina in 1988, has parlayed on those before with great success. His beef jerky store started as a tiny, roadside stand outside of Nevada's Area 51, the top secret U.S. Air Force base that has morphed into the Bethlehem of UFO theology. After Ramallo's oddball enterprise became a hit, he relocated to Baker.


Now his store, on good days, has a line snaking out the door, Ramallo said. He expects even more business once the spaceship hotel opens, which he hopes will be in the next year or two.


"This will be the new big attraction in Baker,'' Ramallo said. "I don't want them to fix the thermometer. I want them to tear it down. It's gone from good to bad to ugly.''


The 134-foot-high thermometer was the brainchild of local businessman Willis Herron, who plunked down $700,000 to build the giant monolith in 1991 next to his Bun Boy Restaurant. The thermometer's 4,900 bulbs glowed so bright that Herron, who lived across the street, had to close his window shades at night.


"For 25 years I've had this dream of putting up the world's tallest thermometer, because people pulling off the freeway in the heat of summer are always making remarks like: 'Whew! It's hotter 'n hell. How hot is it anyway?'" Herron, who died years ago, told the Times in 1991.


The tower's height commemorated the 134-degree record temperature set in nearby Death Valley in 1913.


Shortly after it was finished, the thermometer snapped in two after being buffeted by 70-mph winds. Two years later, the rebuilt thermometer again twisted and swayed as gusts whipped through the valley, popping out light bulbs. The problem was solved when a work crew poured concrete inside the steel tower, anchoring it against the harsh desert wind.


Herron sold the Bun Boy and the giant thermometer to business partner Larry Dabour, owner of the Mad Greek restaurant, another Baker institution. It changed hands again in 2005 when Dabour "liberated" himself from the thermometer, Bun Boy and some other enterprises he owned.





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Army Goes Goth With 'Super-Black' Materials

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Get ready to break out the eyeliner and the candelabras, because the Army is going goth.


In its latest round of solicitations for small businesses, the Army is asking for proposals for super-black material. That is, material so black that it absorbs 99 percent of all light. But it isn’t really black paint, exactly. The plan is to use either an “antireflective coating or surface treatment process for metals” to absorb stray light “in the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared regions.” This, the Army hopes, will boost the quality of high-resolution cameras, while also cooling down sensitive electronics. Or to put it another way: The Army needs the color black to reflect its icy-cold heart.


Another curious thing is that the program is being run out of the Army’s Program Executive Office Ammunition at the Picatinny Arsenal, a main center for the Pentagon’s experiments in all sorts of weapons: from rifles and tank cannons to directed-energy weapons. But the purpose of the solicitation isn’t much more specific than described. “Simply put, it’s too early yet to speculate on where the technology(s) will go,” Frank Misurelli, an Army spokesman at Picatinny said in a statement provided to Danger Room. ”Possibly in a few months, after an contract has been awarded, more information may become available.”


But for whatever the Army wants to fade to black, it seems that regular black isn’t good enough. This is because most black paint will absorb only around 90-95 percent of light, with the other 5-10 percent reflected back outwards. For a high-resolution camera, that stray light can bounce back into the lens and interfere with the quality of an image. It’s even a problem for NASA’s ultra-deep-space sensors. In the extreme coldness of space, black paint turns a silver-y color, which increases heat and can interfere with infrared-detecting instruments.



But wait, doesn’t black get really hot when hit with light, like wearing black clothes during the summer? The answer is: sorta. Black is really good at absorbing heat, but is also really good at radiating heat away. This is why cooling fins, radiators and engines for cars and trucks are often painted black. In 2011, NASA developed a carbon-nanotube coating that absorbed between 98-99.5 percent of light, depending on the wavelength. Nor do the coating’s thin layers of nanotubes change color in extreme cold. They absorb more light, and help radiate heat away from instruments, keeping them cold.


The Army could go another route. A second option uncovered by Britain’s National Physical Laboratory involves immersing an object in a solution of nickel and sodium for several hours, which blackens the color, and then taking it out and dunking it in nitric acid for a few seconds. According to New Scientist, this creates an alloy pock-marked with tiny microscopic craters that prevent light from bouncing away.


Finally, the Army also hopes to expand the materials to “optical glass surfaces” — camera lenses, in other words — while testing to see whether “it will be able to survive in a military environment.” The material should also come in “multiple surface colors” and be able to “selectively exhibit earth color instead of broadband absorption.” And another hope is to use the materials to absorb water to cool down equipment. See, it’s tough out there being goth, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it in comfort.


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Bethenny Frankel and husband of 2 years separating

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bethenny Frankel and husband Jason Hoppy are separating.


The 42-year-old TV personality, chef, author and entrepreneur told The Associated Press Sunday that the split brings her “great sadness.”






“This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family,” Frankel said. “We have love and respect for one another and will continue to amicably co-parent our daughter who is and will always remain our first priority. This is an immensely painful and heartbreaking time for us.”


Frankel and Hoppy were married in 2010 and have a daughter, Bryn, who was born that same year. The couple’s courtship and marriage were documented in two reality series, “Bethenny Getting Married?” and “Bethenny Ever After…” Frankel gained fame as a star of “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Since her stint on the Bravo show, she has written four books, released a fitness video and founded her Skinnygirl line of cocktails, shapewear and nutritional supplements.


She launched a talk show, “Bethenny,” over the summer that is set to air nationally on Fox stations in 2013.


___


AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .


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The New Old Age Blog: Fudging the Facts, for Peace of Mind

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Lou, my beloved grandfather, lived almost 101 years and obsessively worried every single day of his adult life — probably because his adult life began before it should have. As a child in Russia, he watched helplessly as his mother and sister were killed during a vicious pogrom in their village.

Lou (I called him Zadie) made his way to America, and immediately began imagining the worst about his fate, and his family’s fate, in his new country. I believe Zadie lived as long as he did because he was afraid of what would happen to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren if he wasn’t here to protect them.

When I was a third-year medical student in New York City, he called from Denver very early one morning, waking me and my roommates. He had been listening to his transistor radio on one of his many sleepless nights of worry, and had heard that a Staten Island Ferry boat had crashed, injuring numerous passengers.

There were more than seven million people in the city, and Zadie called at 4 a.m. to make sure I wasn’t one of those injured. It was from him we learned the importance of telling white lies and omitting certain truths with our elderly parents and grandparents.

Before accusing me of infantilizing and patronizing my older family members, hear me out. Anxiety disorders can be debilitating for the elderly. A comprehensive review of the subject found 10 to14 percent of those 65 and older meet the criteria for these diagnoses, a significantly higher figure than for the more widely recognized depression syndromes in the same demographic.

Indeed, depression and anxiety disorders often occur together. Anxiety disorders are underdiagnosed in the elderly, largely because the symptoms are often assumed to be just another manifestation of aging. Additionally, the clinical assessment of the elderly for anxiety is more complicated than for younger patients because the signs may differ from those classically described in the diagnostic manuals.

A large national study showed an increased incidence of general anxiety disorder beginning after age 55, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness notes that, like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder tends to worsen in old age. Factors contributing to the prevalence and severity of anxiety disorders in the elderly include a host of concomitant medical problems that interact with anxiety in a complicated way.

From the review article cited earlier:

The co-morbidity between medical illness and anxiety disorders poses difficulties for…diagnosis and detection of anxiety. Researchers have suggested that older adults may be more likely to attribute physical symptoms related to anxiety to medical issues… In turn, many physical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, hyperthyroidism, and pulmonary and vestibular difficulties, can mimic the symptoms of anxiety…making it difficult to establish the underlying cause…

Furthermore, the symptoms that result from medical illnesses may produce fearful bodily sensations that may result in the subsequent development of anxiety disorders.

As an example, more than 40 percent of patients with Parkinson’s disease meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder. Dementia is also associated with anxiety in a bidirectional way — anxiety can accelerate cognitive decline, which in turn can increase symptoms of anxiety. Added to this morass are the side effects, which can include anxiety, of many medications taken by older patients.

The elderly clearly are an at-risk population for anxiety disorders. Which brings us back to white lies. Zadie’s well-earned anxieties, obsessions and worries accelerated greatly as he got older, and we realized they could largely be prevented if we simply didn’t share the complete truth with him all the time. This became known in our family as the Zadie Filter.

When we took our children to the mountains, we told him we were headed to Colorado Springs; he’d been to Colorado Springs many times and knew it was a flat highway drive from Denver. No high mountain passes or narrow roads without guardrails.

When he begged my sons to become doctors so they would serve behind the front lines in the event they were drafted (this was long after the military draft ended, which was still not reassuring enough for Zadie), they so promised. When our daughter started driving, Zadie warned her it wasn’t safe for a girl to drive alone in case she had car trouble; she promised she would always have company in the car.

Zadie died when his great-grandchildren were still teenagers, and so he never had to know that the boys didn’t go into medicine and that his great-granddaughter drives alone.

My mother, Zadie’s daughter, inherited his anxieties, and as she has entered her mid-80s her symptoms have also markedly increased. On the other side of the family, my mother-in-law’s issues with anxiety began with her Parkinson’s disease and have worsened as her neurological condition has progressed.

With our mothers, we also rely on the Zadie Filter. Our white lies and omissions reduce their worries — which is not to say we can protect them from all triggers (they still read the newspaper and watch the nightly news), but even a bit of relief for them is relief for us as well.

Our parents live for the most part on fixed incomes, so when we’re able to cover some of their expenses without their knowing, we do so, and they worry a little less about their bills. All it takes is a little white lie: “The apartment manager waived your heating bill this month because you’ve been such a good long-term tenant,” or, “Of course I used your credit card when I paid for your medicines.”

My mother accidentally found out that our son broke his finger (playing flag football during finals week!) when a well-intentioned friend asked her how her grandson was doing after his injury. She was upset we hadn’t told her — but only for a few moments, until we explained that it had happened a week before, that he was all splinted up and was in no pain. All of which was 100 percent true, and she didn’t lose a minute of sleep worrying about it.

Last week, after pressing our law student son (he of the broken finger) about a school transcript issue I’ve been worried about for him, he assured me it had been taken care of. Our daughter in grad school goes into bars only when she’s with a large group of friends, and our college son is the designated driver for all of his fraternity functions.

And so it begins.

Dr. Harley A. Rotbart is professor and vice chairman of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the author of “No Regrets Parenting.”

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Gun Makers Based in Connecticut Form a Potent Lobby

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Gun owners packed a hearing room in the Connecticut capital, vowing to oppose a bill that would require new markers on guns so that they are easier to trace.




One after another, they testified that the technology, called microstamping, was flawed and would increase the cost of guns.


But the witness who commanded the most attention in Hartford that day in 2009 was a representative of one of Connecticut’s major employers: the Colt Manufacturing Company, the gun maker.


The Colt executive, Carlton S. Chen, said the company would seriously consider leaving the state if the bill became law. “You would think that the Connecticut government would be in support of our industry,” Mr. Chen said.


Soon, Connecticut lawmakers shelved the bill; they have declined to take it up since. Now, in the aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, the lawmakers are formulating new gun-control measures, saying the state must serve as a national model.


But the failed effort to enact the microstamping measure shows how difficult the climate has been for gun control in state capitals. The firearm companies have played an important role in defeating these measures by repeatedly warning that they will close factories and move jobs if new state regulations are approved.


The companies have issued such threats in several states, especially in the Northeast, where gun control is more popular. But their views have particular resonance in Connecticut, a cradle of the American gun industry.


Like manufacturing in Connecticut over all, the state’s gun industry is not as robust as it once was. Still, Connecticut remains the seventh-largest producer of firearms in the country, according to federal data.


Colt, based in Connecticut since the 1800s, employs roughly 900 people in the state. Two other major gun companies, Sturm, Ruger & Company and Mossberg & Sons, are also based in the state. In all, the industry employs about 2,000 people in Connecticut, company officials said.


Gun-control advocates have long viewed Hartford, the capital, as hospitable terrain, because Connecticut is a relatively liberal state and already has more gun restrictions than most. Democrats control both houses of the legislature.


Yet lawmakers in Hartford did more than shelve the microstamping bill in 2009. They also declined to push a bill last year that would have banned high-capacity ammunition magazines — the very accessory used by Adam Lanza to kill 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.


In several states, the gun companies have enlisted unions that represent gun workers, mindful that Democratic lawmakers who might otherwise back gun control also have close ties to labor.


In Connecticut, the United Automobile Workers, which represents Colt workers, has testified against restrictions. The union’s arguments were bolstered last year when Marlin Firearms, a leading manufacturer of rifles, closed a factory in Connecticut that employed more than 200 people. Marlin cited economic pressures, not gun regulation, for the decision, but representatives of the gun industry have said the combination of the two factors could spur others to move.


State law significantly restricts the ability of corporations to make political donations in Connecticut. Employees of Connecticut gun companies have contributed several thousand dollars in total in recent years to state candidates, mostly Republicans, according to an analysis of state records.


Financially, the gun companies and their employees in Connecticut have exerted influence by donating to national groups, especially the National Rifle Association, which have in turn helped Connecticut gun rights groups, according to interviews and financial records.


But it appears that in Hartford, the companies are relying largely on economic arguments.


Their strategy has been led by the industry’s trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which happens to have its national headquarters in Newtown, a few miles from the site of the shootings.


When Connecticut lawmakers held a hearing in 2011 on the measure to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, the director of government regulations for the foundation, Jake McGuigan, opened his testimony with some statistics.


Mr. McGuigan told lawmakers that the state’s gun companies contributed $1.3 billion to the Connecticut economy, through their own operations and those of their suppliers.


“Each year, they get courted by other firearm-friendly states, like Idaho, Virginia, North Carolina,” Mr. McGuigan said. He later added, “It’s not an idle threat.”


The federation and Colt have declined to comment on gun-control legislation since the school killings.


“Our hearts go out to our fellow Connecticut residents who have suffered such unimaginable loss,” Colt said in a statement. “We do not believe it is appropriate to make further public statements at this very emotional time.”


Gun-control advocates in Hartford said the gun companies’ strategy was shrewd because it allowed Democratic lawmakers to oppose new regulations while proclaiming that they had not bowed to the National Rifle Association.


Michael Moss and Griff Palmer contributed reporting.



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Richard Adams dies at 65; gay marriage pioneer

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Thirty-seven years ago, Richard Adams made history when he and his partner of four years, Anthony Sullivan, became one of the first gay couples in the country to be granted a marriage license. It happened in Boulder, Colo., where a liberal county clerk issued licenses to six same-sex couples in the spring of 1975.


Adams had hoped to use his marriage to secure permanent residency in the United States for Sullivan, an Australian who had been in the country on a limited visa and was facing deportation.


But Colorado's attorney general declared the Boulder marriages invalid. Several months later, Adams and Sullivan received a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service that denied Sullivan's petition for resident status in terms that left no doubt about the reason:





"You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots," the notification read.


Adams, who later filed the first federal lawsuit demanding recognition of same-sex marriages, died Monday at his home in Hollywood after a brief illness, said his attorney, Lavi Soloway. He was 65.


Soloway described Adams and Sullivan as "pioneers who stood up and fought for something nobody at that time conceived of as a right, the right of gay couples to be married.


"Attitudes at the time were not supportive, to put it mildly," Soloway said. "They went on the Donahue show and people in the audience said some pretty nasty things. But they withstood it all because they felt it was important to speak out."


Born in Manila on March 9, 1947, Adams immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 12. He grew up in Long Prairie, Minn., studied liberal arts at the University of Minnesota and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1968.


By 1971 he was working in Los Angeles, where he met Sullivan and fell in love.


Four years later, the two men heard about Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex: She had decided to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after the Boulder district attorney's office advised her that nothing in state law explicitly prohibited it.


On April 21, 1975, they obtained their license and exchanged marriage vows at the First Unitarian Church of Denver.


The Boulder marriages attracted national media attention, including an article in the New York Times that called Colorado "a mini-Nevada for homosexual couples." Rorex received obscene phone calls, as well as a visit from a cowboy who protested by demanding to marry his horse. (Rorex said she turned him down because the 8-year-old mare was underage.)


After their marriage, Adams and Sullivan filed a petition with the INS seeking permanent residency for Sullivan as the spouse of a U.S. citizen. In November 1975, they received the immigration agency's derogatory letter and lodged a formal protest. Officials reissued the denial notice without the word "faggots."


They took the agency to court in 1979, challenging the constitutionality of the denial. A federal district judge in Los Angeles upheld the INS decision, and Adams and Sullivan lost subsequent appeals.


In a second lawsuit, the couple argued that Sullivan's deportation after an eight-year relationship with Adams would constitute an "extreme hardship." In 1985 a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the hardship argument and opened the way for Sullivan to be sent back to Australia.


Because Australia had already turned down Adams' request for residency in that country, the couple decided the only way they could stay together was to leave the U.S. In 1985, they flew to Britain and drifted through Europe for the next year.


"It was the most difficult period because I had to leave my family as well as give up my job of 18 1/2 years. It was almost like death," Adams said in "Limited Partnership," a documentary scheduled for release next year.


The pair ended their self-imposed exile after a year and came home. They lived quietly in Los Angeles to avoid drawing the attention of immigration officials, but in recent years began to appear at rallies supporting same-sex marriage, Soloway said.


They were encouraged by new guidelines issued by the Obama administration this fall instructing immigration officials to stop deporting foreigners in long-standing same-sex relationships with U.S. citizens.


Although the policy change came more than three decades after Adams and Sullivan raised the issue, it gave Adams "a sense of vindication," Soloway said.


The day before he died, Sullivan told him that the most important victory was that they were able to remain a couple.


"Richard looked at me," Sullivan told Soloway, "and said, 'Yeah, you're right. We've won.'"


Adams, who was an administrator for a law firm until his retirement in 2010, is survived by Sullivan; his mother, Elenita; sisters Stella, Kathy, Julie and Tammie; and a brother, Tony.


elaine.woo@latimes.com





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