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Michael Aushenker

Michael Aushenker

Waking Up With Giselle

Even a casual viewer of KTLA\’s \”Morning News\” knows this much about co-anchor Giselle Fernandez: she\’s informed, attractive and very proud of her Latina and Jewish culture.\n\nSince she joined the breezy, ratings-leading Channel 5 newscast in October to replace founding co-anchor Barbara Beck, Fernandez — who helms the 7 and 8 a.m. editions with Carlos Amezcua — has felt at home on the multiethnic program. She has found a place on television where her ethnic beauty and her dual heritage are actually an asset.

Bentley’s Drive

You might call her the first lady of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Barbara Factor Bentley, a Cedars-Sinai board member for more than 15 years, was the first woman to sit on the board of directors\’ executive committee.

A ‘Thank You’for Life

There\’s a pretty good reason why the breast cancer center at the John Wayne Cancer Institute at St. John\’s Hospital in Santa Monica is named after Joyce Eisenberg-Keefer.\n\n\”The John Wayne Cancer Institute kept my husband alive for 10 years,\” said Eisenberg-Keefer, who established the Joyce Eisenberg-Keefer Breast Center and has given a total of $3 million toward the facility. \”That\’s why I got involved. What I do is a \’thank you\’ for life.\”

The Circuit

The Circuit, information on events around los angeles.\n

A Bittersweet Day

\nThey appear on a postcard with the romantic look of a turn-of-the-century Victorian family, although their names are anything but Victorian. Hyman, Manya, Slava, Nathan, Clara and Berra (later Ben) Chernoy all posed for the picture around 1905, looking young and fair and without any realization that their journey from Russia to America would have such lifesaving consequences for the next generation. But they left one strange legacy, an inscription on the back of the postcard which read \”When I will die, when I will be no more, when my bones in the earth will crumble, you will remember me. When all people forget me, you will remember me.\”

Eulogies:Lew Wasserman

Lew Wasserman, philanthropist, former chairman and chief executive of Music Corporation of America (MCA) and one of the last old-time movie moguls, died June 3 from complications of a stroke. He was 89.\n\nWasserman was born March 22, 1913, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Russian immigrant parents, Isaac and Minnie, proprietors of a struggling restaurant. In 1936, the same year that Carl Laemmle lost control of Universal Studios, a 22-year-old Wasserman, with only a high school education, began at the bottom at MCA\’s Cleveland office, a talent agency with a celebrity roster that included Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra. Wasserman worked his way up the corporate ladder and, a decade later, on Dec. 16, 1946, became MCA\’s president.

‘Marriage’ Material

Somewhere in the middle of the Israeli import "Late Marriage," a 12-minute sex scene unfolds between the main characters.

Quotable and Charitable

\”I collect various thoughts, proverbs and sayings that I find mostly in magazines,\” said Stanley Black, who turns 70 in October. \”My father started to collect them, and I have continued with them.\”

A Tough Transition

As intense mediation continues over the Jewish Community Centers (JCC) crisis, the first effects of the centers\’ collapse are becoming apparent.

A Children’s Book That’s Infectious

\”Barn Sneeze,\” which chronicles the journey of a sneeze that affects poultry and porcine alike, is sure to prove contagious among tots as well. The book benefits from Winnick\’s loose pastel-and-charcoal illustrations, which echo her all-time favorite work of children\’s literature \”Charlotte\’s Web.\”\n\nWinnick, the wife of philanthropist and Global Crossing CEO Gary Winnick, has been writing and drawing children\’s books since her single days. She studied under revered illustrator Milton Glaser at the School of Visual Arts. Over the years, she has actively kept in touch with her inner writer by refreshing her skills through UCLA Extension classes. As creative people know, the ability to express one\’s soul, not formal technical ability, is what separates artist from artisan.

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