Bessie Mae

from the L. A. Times

She's 97 years old and homeless.

It's a lonely life -- days spent living in a vehicle, passing the time away in public parks, parking lots and shopping centers around the Westside.

It's a miserable life, she said. Still, she is glad to at least have that.

Bessie sits by the side of the road and seeks handouts. She holds a cardboard sign in her lap: "I am 97 years old. Homeless. Broke. Need help please."

This has attracted attention -- both wanted and unwanted.

Randall Zook, a Culver City TV advertising producer, pulled over on a recent day when he saw her holding the sign in front of a Costco on Washington Boulevard.

"This little lady hit me deeply. I said I have to do something. I just can't pass by her," Zook said. "I went over and talked to her and was moved by her dignity. She wasn't begging. She just asked, 'Do you have a home for me?"

Zook didn't, but he gave her "more money than I've ever given anyone."

For everyone who gives, there are many others who just drive by or simply stare.

"It makes me feel like I'm a bum," Bessie said.

"I don't mind living at the mercy of the public because some of the public is good -- they're nice to me. But there are some that are nasty. Some of them laugh at me and my sign."

"They say they don't think I'm 97 years old."

Reaching slowly into a pocket, she pulls out a laminated California state identification card that shows her date of birth: March 2, 1912.

Bessie was born in the Bay Area city of Richmond six weeks before the Titanic sank.

Now, at this time of her life, Bessie spends the night hunched over and wrapped in blankets.

She wakes at 7 in the morning when the sun shines through the trees that shade the neighborhood near the Venice Public Library.

She washes up in an Albertson's restroom in the back of the store and spends the rest of the day around Venice Beach.

Once a week she gets a free shower at a drop-in center.

And sometimes, she gets free hot meals served from a food truck.

Love Survives The Iron Curtain

Paraphrased
VANESSA GERA,
AP

MIESZKOWICE, Poland (Oct. 3) - For five decades, she kept his picture in her wallet — a black-and-white snapshot of a handsome young Polish man with brooding eyes.

The German woman and Polish man fell in love at the end of World War II but were torn apart when Germans were expelled from Poland. But their love never died.

When they first met, the once privileged daughter of a factory owner had become a stick figure weighing just 75 pounds. Her family was having to beg for bread and milk. One day, she knocked on Mackiewicz's door. His family was kind to her.

When Mackiewicz, then 25, first saw her his first emotion was enormous pity.

Their love for one another grew over time, but it was their decision to marry that ended their relationship.

When they went to the town hall seeking permission to wed, the authorities discovered her father was a German capitalist. They ordered the Profe family to leave town.

As they said their goodbyes in front of her father's factory, they exchanged photographs.

He kept hers for several years until he married another woman in 1960 giving the photo to his father for safekeeping.

She kept his in her wallet — and never forgot him.

She never married.

She devoted her energies to a new family factory in Germany and worked with handicapped children in Berlin.

On Nov. 10, 1989, after hearing the Berlin Wall started coming down, Profe knew that she could now 'go home' and look for her lost love.

She eventually found a cousin of Mackiewiczh who said he lived in a town in northern Poland where he had been running a repair shop for farm equipment.

She wrote to him. He wrote back. And they agreed to meet.

In 1995 they were reunited in the parking lot of a Polish train station — and immediately reconnected across the decades.

By then he was 75, and she was 70.

They flung their arms around each other's necks and it was if those 50 years just melted away.

Today they are married, sharing a tidy, white home they built for themselves in the town where they first met.

"Love will last until the end of your life, if that love is real," Mackiewicz said during an interview at their home.

Sitting at a table in a dining nook, Mackiewicz, now 89, broke into tears recalling his pity for the girl from an enemy country that had killed millions of his compatriots, who had knocked on his door asking for food.

Profe, 83, who had stepped away to get coffee, rushed over and caressed his cheek.

Their love speaks in other small gestures: they hold hands as they walk through their yard, she places her hand softly on his knee during a drive to her family's old factory.

Like many husbands, he has trouble remembering their wedding anniversary. But he insists it's not important anyway.

What matters to him is the day in 1947 when he sought permission at town hall to marry her.

And what he remembers is this:

"Even though they said no, Elvira told me, 'it doesn't matter because I will never stop loving you."

The Good Wife Update

From a Posted Comment concerning John and Elizabeth Edwards...

*Amen...She finally grew a backbone! Good for her!!

Elizabeth Edwards is threatening to divorce her husband, John, after learning of allegations he had committed adultery with more than one woman, the National Enquirer is reporting.

According to the Enquirer, the allegations are in a book proposal by former Edwards aide Andrew Young in which he says he falsely claimed to have fathered Rielle Hunter's 19-month-old daughter, Frances.

Edwards had an affair with Hunter during the 2008 presidential campaign. According to The New York Times and other reports quoting sources, Edwards is considering declaring he's the little girl's father, which he has previously denied.

"Elizabeth was read portions of Young's book proposal, and she flipped out," a source told the Enquirer. "What really pushed her over the edge is Young's allegation that John had other affairs with women on the campaign trail.

Elizabeth basically told John that if she found out that was true, she'd have to divorce him because then he'd be a ' serial cheater.'"

The Enquirer has another source that says John Edwards is denying the allegations, telling his wife, "Young's book is a pack of lies."

The paper reports that Elizabeth Edwards' divorce threats include taking half of their joint $53 million worth and going public with political secrets in open divorce court.

Elizabeth knows every dirty little secret in her husband's political past. She's been his confidant for years, and she's always kept quiet.

But now she's prepared to reveal all his secrets in open court," a source told the Enquirer.

Emily Miller
Politics Daily

"A man is judged by the things he does and all the lies catch up with you sooner or later."