SRA PRESIDENT'S COMMENTS

March is the annual celebration of the 2007 retirees, honoring them for their years of service to USC and officially welcoming them into our Retiree Community.  The date is March 20.  The place is Town and Gown.  SRA members will receive their invitations shortly.  RSVPs a MUST.  Louise Ball is working hard with a few helpers to make this a Golden Event.

Dick Martin <dickmar@msn.com> is organizing a theatre party for April 13.  It will be a matinee performance of Carousel by our talented Trojan students of the Theatre School.  Interested SRA members should let Dick know.  We will only have 50 tickets, so get on the list early to insure a seat.

We are making progress in initiating our Trojan ENCORE program.  I will be coordinating this opportunity for our retirees to come back to campus to work, for pay, on short term, part time positions.  If you might be interested, let me know, so I can send you information as we move ahead.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL!!

Carole Gustin
<cgustin@usc.edu>


TIPPING FOR LOUSY SERVICE

Q.  Is it okay to leave a restaurant server a stingy tip for bad service?

A.  Yes, indeed, if the service is really the server's fault—rudeness, botched orders, a bored manner.  But don't penalize server for things beyond his or her control, such as short-handed kitchen, not enough servers, or bad food.  And always bring poor service and other problems to the attention of the maitre d'.
("Money and Ethics," Knight Kiplinger, Kiplinger's Personal Finance 3/2008)


WEB SITES THAT MAY FILL A NEED

IRS Tax tips." You can receive free emails during tax season and then periodically throughout the year: <http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/>.  Then click on "e-News Subscriptions."

One-stop job search.  Free access to nationwide listings from newspapers, professional associations, major job boards, and other sources:<http://www.indeed.com/>.

Medicare assistance.  Free personal counseling from the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) and Senior Health Insurance Information Program: <http://www.shiptalk.org>.  Click on "Find a Counselor."

There is a free retirement service whose "mission is to disseminate inexpensive retirement planning tools that accommodate the particular situations of each user and provide a conservative response."  It is managed by Henry K. "Bud" Hebeler, who earned three degrees at MIT and spent his working career as an engineer and ultimately as President of Boeing: <http://www.analyzenow.com>.

U.S. News & World Report (12/17/07) listed three sites that let shoppers browse coupons online for thousands of retailers at once "not something that can be done at the mall or paging through a pile of newspaper inserts": <http://ecoupons.com>, <http://www.dealtaker.com>, and <http://www.retailmenot.com>.

And last, but not least, you've probably noticed that we are having elections (except hermits, of course).  The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania is a nonpartisan group that evaluates the accuracy of political speeches, ads, and press releases.  Members of the Public Policy Center have appeared from time to time on PBS's Bill Moyer's Journal.  If you want to determine if certain political utterances are true or false, go to <http://www.factcheck.org>.


HOPING THAT THIS IS NOT YOUR HOSPITAL

A sweet grandmother telephoned the [name withheld] hospital.

She timidly asked, "Is it possible to speak to someone who can tell me how a patient is doing?"

The operator said, "I'll be glad to help, dear.  What's the name and room number?"

The grandmother in her weak, tremulous voice said, "Norma Findlay, Room 302."

The operator replied, "Let me place you on hold while I check with her nurse."

After a few minutes, the operator returned to the phone and said, "Oh, I have good news.  Her nurse just told me that Norma is doing very well.  Her blood pressure is fine; her blood work just came back as normal; and her physician, Dr. Cohen, has scheduled her to be discharged on Tuesday."

The grandmother said, "Thank you.  That's wonderful!  I was so worried!  God bless you for the good news."

The operator replied, "You're more than welcome.  Is Norma your daughter?"

The grandmother said, "No, I'm Norma Findlay in 302.  No one has told me anything, not a single thing, from the moment I was admitted."


MISSING PERSON

A wife went to the police station with her next door neighbor to report that her husband was missing.  The policeman asked for a description.  She said, "He's 35 years old, 6 foot 4, has dark eyes, dark wavy hair, an athletic build, weighs 185 pounds, is soft-spoken, and is good to the children."

The next-door neighbor protested, "Your husband is 5 foot 4 inches, chubby, bald, has a big mouth, and is mean to your children."

The wife replied, "Yes, but who wants HIM back?"


DO THEY STILL MAKE LIONEL TRAINS?

A few days after this past Christmas, a mother was working in the kitchen listening to her son playing with his new electric train set in the living room.

She heard the train stop and her son saying "All of you sons of *****es who want to get off, get the hell off now, because this is the last stop.  And all of you sons of *****es that are getting on, get your asses in the train cause were leaving."

The mother immediately went in and told her son, "We don't use that kind of language in this house.  Now I want you to go into your room for two hours.  When you come out, you can play with your train, but I want you to use nice language."

Two hours later, the son comes out of his bedroom and resumes playing with his train.  Soon the train stopped and the mother heard the son say, "All passengers who are disembarking the train, please remember to take all of your belongings with you.  We thank you for riding with us today and hope your ride was a pleasant one.  We hope you will ride with us again soon.  For those of you who are just boarding the train, we ask that you stow all of your hand luggage under the seat.  Remember there is no smoking except on the club car.  We hope you have a pleasant and relaxing journey with us today."

"And for those of you who are pissed off with the two hour delay," he continued, "please see the ***** in the kitchen."


THESAURUS (A Poem)

It could be the name of a prehistoric beast that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary, or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.

It means treasury, but it is just a place where words congregate with their relatives, a big park where hundreds of family reunions are always being held, house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs, all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos; hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes, inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire and brother close to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.
And every group has its odd cousin, the one who traveled the farthest to be here: astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.
Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.
I rarely open it, because I know there is no such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous around people who always assemble with their own kind, forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors while others huddle alone in the dark streets.

I would rather see words out on their own, away from their families and the warehouse of Roget, wandering the world where they sometimes fall in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever next to each other on the same line inside a poem, a small chapel where weddings like these, between perfect strangers, can take place.

Billy Collins


C L A S S I F I E D  A D S
(Listed in order of receipt)

WANTED.  Light-weight, easily portable wheel chair.
Betty 714-974-2535, <eredmon@usc.edu>

WANTED.  Junky vacant land (CA, NV, or AZ) at liquidation prices for my living trust.
My son has finally expressed an interest in this sort of thing.
Mike at 818-240-7391 or <MNosanov@aol.com>

FREE.  Printer cartridges for a HP Photosmart 7400 printer.
HP #56 unused in sealed package.
HP#s 56, 57 (2 of them), 58 used
Lynn Williams <lynnwill@usc.edu>

[To have your free ad appear in the next issue, please send to <len@winesland.net> before the first of the month.]


_______________________________________

PLEASE NOTE: If you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter, have him or her send an e-mail to Len Wines at <len@winesland.net> asking to be added to the list.  After you are on the list, you will remain on it until you unsubscribe.  To do that, simply send an e-mail to Len at <len@winesland.net> with the word UNSUBSCRIBE SRA in the Subject.

*The content of this E-mail Newsletter is for the information of the members of the USC SRA.  It is not a University of Southern California official publication.  There is no intent to promote any particular product or point of view.  Personal decisions regarding health, finance, exercise, or other matters should be made after consulting with the reader’s own professional advisors.