why their marriage survived and thrived for so long

Earlier this week, when it became apparent Marcel Desjardins would become the first general manager of Ottawa’s expansion Canadian Football League franchise, a website ran a story with a photo — identifying Hamilton owner Bob Young as Desjardins before it was eventually corrected. While Desjardins once worked for the Tiger-Cats and, like Young, wears glasses, there’s virtually no physical similarities between them.

“I did see it. I cringed, on multiple levels,” Desjardins said, without malice, his stab at humour. “You know me. It’s not about being front and centre.”

Were Desjardins to walk down Bank St. in this city, directly in front of Frank Clair Stadium, currently being refurbished but soon to be the home of the latest incarnation of Ottawa professional football, it’s doubtful anyone would recognize him. As the Alouettes’ assistant general manager for nine seasons, including the last four since his return from Hamilton, there likely hasn’t been a CFL figure more unknown and nondescript. But that has gone with the territory of being in the shadow of the garrulous Jim Popp who, thankfully for us media wretches, never met a camera, tape-recorder or notepad he didn’t embrace.

If Desjardins was the antithesis of Popp, it’s likely why their marriage survived and thrived for so long. Desjardins was quite content being the supporting actor — a role that increased, along with his responsibility, two years ago, when Popp moved back to North Carolina. If Desjardins was the student, he had no better teacher than Popp.

Desjardins, 46, has been given the responsibility of building this Ottawa franchise, still without a name but scheduled to begin play in 2014. It will be refreshing for him to put his stamp on a team, starting from scratch on the ground floor. And it will be in stark contrast to his 15 turbulent months as Ticats’ GM, from August 2006 until the end of the next season, fired by president Scott Mitchell, who inherited him following his hiring.

“I wasn’t sure I’d get another shot, but it didn’t consume me,” Desjardins said. “I was in a good situation in Montreal. I was comfortable in what I was doing. I didn’t need this. But I wasn’t going to sit and let them come to me. I reached out so they would know I was out there.

“I enjoyed doing my job. There were times that were frustrating,” he admitted. “It sounds hokey, but I don’t need to be front and centre. We all want to be recognized. In this environment, it’ll come from our success — not from being front and centre, like people in this league want to do.”

With a four-year contract, Desjardins has time on his side, both to prove himself and put the building blocks in place. There will be time to hire personnel and scout CFL players, some of whom Ottawa will have opportunities to select next December, when it participates in a three-round expansion draft.

Jeff Hunt, the president of the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, made it clear Desjardins eventually became the leading candidate. Hunt was thorough and detailed in the process, talking to CFL GMs and executives. If Desjardins was nothing more than a name to Hunt when his investigation began, it quickly became clear to him, over time, Desjardins was the man best- and most-qualified. Desjardins won three Grey Cups with Montreal.

“We were looking for a proven winner coming from a proven and winning organization,” said Hunt, one of the team’s owners. “There was one name we kept hearing, over and over again. The decision became obvious and easy. Marcel Desjardins was our man. When you’re a part of an organization like that, it gets in your DNA. When Jim Popp tells me anything about football, I’m listening.”

While being left short-staffed, yet again, and in the process of finding a new head coach for the Als, Popp said he has no doubts Desjardins will succeed. Popp said he and Hunt talked various times, at length, over a six-week period.

“He’s the best-qualified guy in the league. Absolutely,” Popp said. “Nobody else has had the training in all those areas. He did an outstanding job in Hamilton. Forget about the won-loss record. He went into a very difficult situation, asked to do a specific job. He did it, and had very good drafts. They had cap problems. He had to clean it up.

whose eye-catching Prabal Gurung black

She might have lost out on the best actress award for her role in The Impossible, but Naomi Watts was the big winner on the red carpet at the 2013 Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles yesterday.

Complemented by her vintage hair style, the British-born, Australian- raised star shone in a delicate hand-embroidered silver Marchesa gown, which she paired with Christian Louboutin shoes and a silver Salvatore Ferragamo clutch.

Other winners on the red carpet were Marion Cotillard, who wowed in a Dior Haute Couture number with an ivory silk top and dark blue skirt; and Mad Men star January Jones, whose eye-catching Prabal Gurung black matte wrap gown with draped white organza was anything but boring, especially when paired with her pompadour-mullet hairstyle, reminiscent of David Bowie from his Aladdin Sane days.

Julianne Moore was a winner on and off stage. Moore took home yet another accolade for her role as Sarah Palin in the TV movie Game Change and looked every inch the star in her low-cut white Chanel Haute Couture gown covered in navy flower appliques.

Despite being struck by a bout of pneumonia, best actress winner Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) went for old Hollywood glamour in a navy mermaid-cut Christian Dior gown, while Les Miserables star Amanda Seyfried showed off her curves in a form-fitting navy Zac Posen gown.

Nicole Kidman also had a case of the blues in her lacy midnight-blue Vivienne Westwood couture gown, where she did her best Angelina Jolie impression through the gown’s thigh-high split.

Best TV drama actress winner Claire Danes (Homeland) also opted for black, sporting a unique black one-sleeve Givenchy gown which she complemented with dark berry lips.

While nearly every star got it right on the red carpet, Rose Byrne wasn’t so lucky.

The Australian actress was the event’s worst dressed in a floral ruffle- detail Valentino gown, which looked more like a recycled 1970s curtain than a red-carpet awards gown.

Away from the red carpet it was Ben Affleck’s night, as his Iran hostage thriller Argo won the event’s top award for best ensemble in a motion picture, adding to the movie’s Producers Guild Award on Saturday night and, two weeks ago, a Golden Globe drama award for best film.

Argo is now laying down a major challenge to Lincoln at this year’s Oscars even though Affleck missed out on a best director nomination.

 A pizzeria owner found an entry door window broken and cash stolen when he opened up for the day at 7 a.m. Monday, according to Niagara County sheriff’s deputies.

The owners of Rocky’s Pizza Too, Gregory Surniak and his wife Cheri, told deputies that a window in the front door of the Academy Street restaurant was smashed and that loose change from the cash register and a box of about $60 to $100 worth of rolled change from under the register were missing.

Total loss included about $100 worth of change and a front door window valued at $400.

A single suspect, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, light colored jacket and dark shoes, who appeared to have knowledge of the restaurant was identified on surveillance video, according to deputies.

who has had a tough draw

Roger Federer does not do breakfast here at the Australian Open. The world No 2, who has played his last four matches at night, has not been getting to bed before 3am and then sleeps through the morning.

"In some ways I'd rather have the day session because that creates a normal rhythm and a normal life," Federer said. "Going to bed at three in the morning and getting up at noon is not what you're supposed to be doing. But I'm happy to do it."

Federer, who meets Andy Murray in the semi-finals today, has a remarkable fitness record and usually recovers well after matches. However, it remains to be seen how much his five-set quarter-final against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga on Wednesday night, which lasted three hours and 34 minutes, took out of him.

Darren Cahill, the highly respected former coach of Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt who is working here as a broadcaster for ESPN, said: "I think physically that five-set match with Tsonga was reasonably taxing. While it wasn't that long a match it was the same sort of style of match that Roger plays. There are five-set matches you can play for four hours and physically you feel OK. There are five-set matches that last three and a half hours and you feel like you've hit the wall.

"That was one of those matches because Tsonga's so explosive in his movement Roger couldn't settle into any type of pattern and he had to do a ton of running as well. How he feels physically will maybe determine how aggressively he comes out at the start, but I think you'll see someone that's going to take the game to Andy."

Murray has won all his matches here in straight sets. Federer, who has had a tough draw, admitted he would rather have been in Murray's shoes, though he said there were positives to take out of his win over Tsonga.

"I toughed it out," Federer said. "That also gives you confidence when you have to go through those matches. The physical stamina was there, the focus was there until the very end, so it does give you a lot of confidence moving forward. I didn't play any lead-up tournaments, so that's exactly maybe what I needed for the semis. Then again, I may be totally wrong. Time will tell."

Cahill, who worked with Murray when he was between coaches and introduced him to Ivan Lendl, has been impressed by the Scot's "great progress" over the last 12 months, though he believes that Federer also played his part in making him a more aggressive and more effective player.

"I can remember four or five years ago that Roger was saying Andy's counter-punching style wasn't going to get him over that hurdle," Cahill said. "The fact that he's playing more aggressively is taking what Roger said on board –and to me he's a better player now than he was four or five years ago."

Asked what he expected from today's semi-final, Cahill said: "Those couple of big wins Andy had at the US Open and the Olympics will serve him really well in those particular moments. Again playing Roger is a completely different thing and you can't put your finger on what is eventually going to help him get over that hurdle in a Slam. I think he's 0-3 against him in majors. It's a factor, but I'm not sure how big a factor.

"I think the Olympics went some way to erasing that, but in the end Roger is incredibly difficult to beat in majors and until you do it there's always going to be that small element of doubt in your mind. But it looks like Andy has prepared as well as he can, he's playing exceptionally well, and if he's going to do it, it's probably as good a time as any."

How to Look Fashionable and Professional

Ridge Meadows RCMP have released a photo of a man wanted in connection to an attempted abduction and assault in Maple Ridge on January 19th.

Due to the amount of media coverage received when they first released the information on Monday, Ridge Meadows RCMP said several women contacted them with valuable information. This led them to obtain a photo of the suspect and a piece of his jewelry.

The suspect allegedly attacked a 17-year-old girl. He approached her and asked if she could help him get his car started. Once he gained her trust, he produced a gun and made the victim drive him to a secluded location, where he allegedly physically attacked and beat her. The victim managed to escape to a nearby home, and the suspect drove off in the victim’s car. The victim received non-life threatening injuries in the attack. She was taken to hospital for medical treatment.

Several women contacted the RCMP describing similar circumstances, of a man who approached women near the Westgate Mall, saying he needed assistance, said Inspector Dave Fleugel with the Ridge Meadows RCMP.

This information helped provide police with enough information to advance the investigation.

"Our investigators allege this man brutally attacked a 17-year-old girl on Saturday January 19, 2013 at approximately 8:00pm," said Fleugel. "We are also releasing photos of the jewelry the suspect was wearing that evening. The victim managed to rip these items off her attacker during the struggle, and police have since located and seized these items."

The suspect is described as a man with a dark complexion, in his 20’s, 5 foot 9 to 11 inches tall, weighing 180 to 200 pounds (medium build), with a few days of facial stubble. He was wearing a white t-shirt, black puffy jacket with a fur trimmed hood, dark blue jeans, white and black shoes and is possibly associated to a small blue car.

"These types of incidents - an apparent assault and abduction by a stranger - are extremely concerning to police, but fortunately are very rare," added Fleugel. "Ridge Meadows RCMP is fully committed to the safety of our citizens. The quicker we can identify this man the better. Police investigators are working this file around the clock."

Whether it's your first internship or your last, that butterfly-in-your-stomach, nervous feeling never seems to disappear upon choosing an outfit for that first big day.

Trying to choose something that will appropriately catch the eyes of curious new colleagues certainly be nerve-wracking. But, on top of that, what happens when complicating factors like weather and the length of your daily commute are also thrown into the mix?

Despite harsh weather conditions and the long hours it can sometimes take to get to an internship, we all know that in the end the experience is completely worth it. But in order to be a fantastic intern, looking the part is just as important as your continuous hours of hard work!

Interns want to send the message to potential future employers that they're always excited to be there. A professional, chic outlook on the job is a must for every day spent in the office. No intern wants to send the message halfway through their internship that they're no longer motivated to dress the part. Your outfit and presentation is an everyday reflection of you and it's always important to keep the following stylistic choices in mind.

victory and banned for two years after failing

Hundreds of cyclists and rollerbladers will take to the streets of Tel Aviv on Monday night demanding that all Knesset candidates commit to allocating at least 1 percent of the Transportation Ministry budget to maintaining cycling paths, the organization Israel for Bikes said on Sunday.

In the past four years, bills encouraging the use of bikes and increasing the safety of their riders have been repeatedly blocked in the Knesset, despite the fact that their creators have hailed from the government’s major parties, according to Israel for Bikes.

Likewise, new bicycle parking regulations that the Interior Minister approved last year also ended up frozen. The Transportation Ministry budget dedicated thus far to bicycle infrastructure development has been minimal, amounting to less than 1% of the ministry’s expenses, the organization said.

“Despite the existing understanding of various government ministries that there is a need to encourage cycling on a daily basis, as part of a healthy lifestyle and for quality of life, environment and increased accessibility for the public, and despite the supposed commitment to act to increase the safety of cyclists, the investment is still negligible,” said Alik Mintz, founder of Tel Aviv Rollers.

Aside from Tel Aviv, where the municipality spends about NIS 30 million annually on bike infrastructure and has about 120 kilometers of paths, the country is not reaching its cycling potential, the group argued. In second place as far as bike paths are concerned is Herzliya, with only 17 kilometers.

Israel for Bikes is therefore calling upon Knesset candidates to support a bill immediately following their election to encourage cycling – including bike path construction, parking space installation, workplace showers and economic incentives to push people to cycle.

The bill, launched by Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, passed in its first reading in 2008 and received additional support from Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, five other ministers and 65 other Knesset members, the organization said.

Israel for Bikes also asked that the forthcoming Knesset members quickly approve a second bill that would increase the safety of cyclists, requiring drivers to maintain a distance of 1.5 meters from cyclists and granting riders priority over open doors of parked cars, the group added.

“We invite the general public and cyclists to vote with their two feet [Monday] evening and show decision-makers that there is great support for cycling infrastructure development,” said Yotam Avizohar, CEO of Israel for Bikes.

Avizohar encouraged Israelis “to exercise their right and civic duty and take advantage of this day of rest, not only through leisure and shopping but also by walking – or riding – to vote.”

The Spaniard, Tour de France winner in 2007 and 2009 before being stripped of his 2010 victory and banned for two years after failing a dope test, believes the American's mea culpa can close the door on cycling's depressing recent history.

"It's true that his admissions damaged the image of cycling but I see good things coming from this. Perhaps it'll allow us to close the door once and for all on this chapter and concentrate on the future," Contador told marca.

"We have to forget about the previous decade and look forward to what tomorrow holds."

Contador returned to action last August and won the Tour of Spain.

He will kick off his 2013 season at the Tour of San Luis in Argentina tomorrow with his Saxo-Tinkoff team.

Contador said that nothing in Armstrong's confessions, aired over two days in a lengthy interview with US TV host Oprah Winfrey, surprised him.

"It's something that's been talked about for a long time already and it needed to be got out of the way. The revelations came as no surprise to anyone."

The 30-year-old Contador lost his 2010 Tour de France and 2011 Giro d'Italia titles after testing positive for traces of clenbuterol in 2010, which he insists came from a contaminated steak.

Meanwhile, Spain's Miguel Indurain, a five-time Tour de France champion, also said that Armstrong's admission that he doped his way to seven Tour triumphs had done serious damage to the sport.

"It's bad for everyone - riders, organisers, teams - especially at a time when we are trying to correct the mistakes and look ahead," said Indurain.

Indurain also believes that the scandal shows that current drug testing procedures in cycling are not effective as they should be.

something that may seem frivolous to some?

“So why bother to have a second inauguration?” a young colleague asks. “It’s too expensive. It’s alienating to the losing team. It’s always cold. You already know the man. We’ve already done it once. Why can’t he just get sworn in quietly like he’s going to do on Sunday and then give a State of the Union speech later?”

As we approach the second Barack Obama inauguration, those questions are being asked around the city. The young man makes some good points. Why do we bother?

We bother because the second inauguration is as important as the first. Certainly it would be hard to top President Obama’s first inauguration. He was the first black president ever to be elected. That will never happen again. But he’s also the first black president to be reelected. On some level, the state of the economy, the fact that we are in a war, the rancor of this past campaign and his detractors on both sides, this is huge.

More important, though, this is America’s chance to show the world what democracy looks like.

“The assumption is that the only purpose is to welcome a new president,” historian Michael Beschloss says. “But there are very few unifying moments in America, and this is one of the most important. We get a glimpse of the president’s priorities, not only in the words he says, but the people he’s chosen to participate. You get a lot of information you wouldn’t otherwise get.”

There is a sense that Washington is a bit jaded by inaugurations. We see them every four years and come to regard them with a nonchalance that isn’t felt in the rest of the country. We see traffic jams and tourists and bad weather and the same old parades and the endless inaugural balls. We talk, inauguration after inauguration, about how horrible the balls are, how freezing cold and impossible to get to. How there’s no place to check your coat and no place to get a drink. How your clothes and shoes get destroyed in the crush and that it is wise to wear combat boots instead of evening shoes. And then, how you get a five-minute glimpse of the president and first lady before they are rushed to the next ball by their handlers. And forget parking.

These things are all true. But those who come from out of town don’t see it that way. They are thrilled to be part of a community of democracy that brings us together once every four years.

“It’s a classic Washington bit of solipsism to think it’s all rigmarole,” says historian Jon Meacham, author of “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.” “But that rigmarole means a lot to the high school band from out of town. Washington becomes the people’s city. It’s a real grass-roots core. It’s a civic ritual. It’s not really about Washington or even about the president. It’s once in a lifetime for people who come to Washington for it, more than for people in Washington.”

It was George H.W. Bush, who, Meacham reminds us, said at his inauguration, “we meet on democracy’s front porch.”

What about the money, though? In these troubled times, should so much be spent on something that may seem frivolous to some? The inaugural committee changed course and allowed corporations to buy packages of $1 million. The Washington package includes two tickets to a benefactors’ reception, an invitation to a Finance Committee “Road Ahead” meeting, two tickets to the children’s concert, two tickets to the co-chairs’ reception and four tickets to a candlelight reception, two reserved bleacher sets for the inaugural parade and four tickets to the inaugural ball.

Those massive sales are built on the manufacturing

Rory McIlroy won’t play for Ireland in the 2016 Olympics – and he won’t play for Britain. Even if he appears under either of those flags, he will be playing for Team Nike. His emblem from now on will be, not the red hand of Ulster or the union flag or the green, white and orange, but the Swoosh.

And who can blame him? There’s the money, of course, and very nice it is too. But even if you leave aside the small matter of $200 million, there’s the relief. If you’re young and Irish and golden and supremely gifted and preternaturally self-assured, why would you not want to escape from Ireland into Nikeland?

Another Irish, golden, supremely gifted and preternaturally self-assured young man, James Joyce, said a century ago that “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”.

Rory has awoken from the nightmare of history, not just into an Aladdin’s cave of riches, but into the plush temperature-controlled chamber of a new kind of global identity, one that has been airbrushed, sanitised and defanged.

Who wouldn’t prefer that to the bitter, nihilistic identity parade being staged nightly on the streets of east Belfast or the psychotic savagery of paleorepublican zealotry? These dead-end spasms reek only of failure and death.

If this is what “identity” means, why would anyone with a choice want to be so identified? And yet, how much of a choice is this for people who are not global superstars? A corporate brand supposedly represents freedom, aspiration, individuality, but behind the brand lies a construct no more individualistic than the old identities.

Northern Ireland has 692,000 people at work; Nike employs 1.08 million (most of them, of course, Asian women who are invisible to those of us who consume the products they make). Nike’s annual sales of $18 billion are more than half of Northern Ireland’s entire annual output.

Nikeland has its own flag, its own policies (corporate mission statements) and its own national interests.

Those massive sales are built on the manufacturing of a substitute identity, a sense of belonging to take the place of all the things that people used to be attached to: countries, nations, classes, tribes, unions, churches.

Mega-marketing infuses this new identity with a sense of rational purpose (“If you have a body you are an athlete”) but it is no more rational than the flag protests in Belfast. It is entirely based on superstition. Nike’s calculation in paying Rory so much money is that millions of people will think: if I wear what Rory wears and use the clubs he uses, I’ll be able to play golf a bit like him.

Like all these endorsement deals, it relies on a return to the pre-modern belief in sympathetic magic.

It is not even true that Nikeland’s identity is at least peaceful. Nikeland has riots, just like east Belfast. In the London riots of 2011, Footlocker and JD Sports were primary targets.

In the run-up to Christmas 2011, police were called to shopping malls in Indiana, Florida, Texas and Virginia after hysterical crowds broke down doors to get at the new Air Jordan 11 Retro Concord shoes. In Atlanta, police had to rescue two toddlers locked in a car by their mother who had abandoned them while she tried to get her hands on a pair.

In February, violent disorder marked the launch of the exclusive Nike Foamposite Galaxy basketball shoes (a mere $220 a pair) with glow-in-the dark soles and pink and purple swirls.

According to ABC news, “an angry mob raged into the early morning after a Footlocker at the Florida Mall in Orlando cancelled the midnight, first-come first- serve release of 200 pairs of the shoe due to ‘safety concerns’. Police clad in riot gear and sporting batons and tear gas lined up around the store, hoping to disperse the angry mob of sneaker aficionados.”

An angry mob of sneaker aficionados or an angry mob of loyalist flag worshippers? Sneakerheads or Chuckyheads? These are extremes, of course, but extremes that define the options for those in search of an identity in the 21st century.

On the one side, there is an increasingly sour and nihilistic brand of ethnic and/or sectarian belonging, one that may seem anachronistic in the context of Northern Ireland but that is actually on the rise across Europe. On the other, there is the loving embrace of a bland, corporatised, airless, ahistoric branding in which what you wear is who you are.

There are, of course, other possibilities for collective identity: a sense of democratic power, an idea of mutual interdependence, an attachment to trusted public institutions, nation states that act as effective buffers between their citizens and a feral, anarchic brand of capitalism. But these are the very things that are under relentless attack in the European response to the current crisis.

The social democracies that built relatively stable public identities after the catastrophes of fascism and war are being dismantled, along with their collective ideals of equality and mutual responsibility. Nike can step in to sell us Union Jack and Tricolour Retro Concord limited- edition shoes, but it won’t fill the gap for long.

where several young trampers were staying

The death of a tramper who drowned after breaking his neck while trying to cross a swollen creek in Mt Richmond Forest Park has highlighted the dangers of river crossings, particularly while tramping alone, coroner Carla na Nagara says.

The inquest into the death of 23-year-old Sharny Aaron Abbott in December 2011 found that he drowned, but the pathologist found that a fractured neck and spinal cord injury were likely to have happened as he was swept downstream, resulting in paralysis of a quadriplegic type that meant Mr Abbott would not have been able to make any effort to surface.

"As such, the pathologist considered the injury significantly contributed to the fatal drowning," Ms na Nagara said in her findings, released this week.

Mr Abbott's body was found near the edge of the Roding River on December 6, 2011, about seven kilometres downstream from where he is believed to have lost his footing while crossing the Hacket Creek.

The Richmond man had left on a solo tramp in the park on Friday, December 2. He expected to be gone for several days, and left his mother a detailed plan of where he thought he would go. He was carrying a 25- to 30-kilogram pack, which the coroner noted was heavier than most trampers would carry.

Mr Abbott, described as an experienced tramper, left the Hacket car park and walked to Starveall Hut, where he spent the night. He was in touch with his mother and girlfriend that night, indicating he had suffered cramp in his legs, his running shoes had been rubbing his heels and his pack had been rubbing his lower back.

The coroner said Mr Abbott left the next morning for Slaty Hut, but phoned his mother that afternoon to say he was turning back due to failing weather. He was expected back home on the Sunday night.

He returned to Starveall Hut, where several young trampers were staying. They spent the evening talking with him.

Mr Abbott's lack of proper tramping footwear, and an indication that he would not hesitate to cross rivers because he was determined to get home, contributed to the group's view that he lacked experience, Ms na Nagara said.

It had rained on and off throughout the Saturday, and the rain was then "extremely heavy" overnight.

Ms na Nagara said the other trampers left the hut just before 1pm on the Sunday. Mr Abbott was still there, but was packed and ready to leave.

After he had not returned home by Monday evening, his mother contacted the police. A search was launched the next morning and, following media reports, one of the group of trampers contacted the police and told them of the route Mr Abbott had planned to take.

 Ms na Nagara said a member of the Search and Rescue team with expertise in tracking followed evidence of where Mr Abbott had been to the Hacket Creek where it met the first river crossing. The creek had to be crossed at a 90-degree angle, which involved fighting the current. It was flowing at waist height, but it was clear that in the days prior it had been up to half a metre higher.

There were no signs indicating Mr Abbott had made it to the other side of the creek, at that point at least, Ms na Nagara said.

Items belonging to Mr Abbott were found in the bed of the Roding River later that afternoon. His body was found that evening in a willow tree near the edge of the Roding River, below the Hacket car park.

Mecklenburg District Attorney Andrew Murray

LaRossa was stabbed repeatedly in the back last April. His estranged wife, Carole LaRossa, was charged with first-degree murder – a crime punishable by life in prison or death.

Now, the family of the slain officer is attacking Mecklenburg prosecutors for offering a deal that would allow Carole LaRossa, 48, to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter – a crime that carries a punishment range of three to 17 years in prison.

“We are desperately trying to draw attention to this injustice,” Lauren Cox, the victim’s niece, wrote in an email to the Observer. “My uncle’s family and friends feel … that we have been let down by the state of North Carolina. Their legal system has failed us.”

Cox said prosecutors informed her family on Friday about the voluntary manslaughter plea offer.

Mecklenburg District Attorney Andrew Murray told the Observer Tuesday that he and his prosecutors are ethically prohibited from discussing pending cases.

“It’s an ongoing case,” Murray said. “I can’t say a thing about it. I can’t talk about a pending case.”

James LaRossa, 51, was stabbed to death at his Rea Road apartment in south Charlotte. A prosecutor said during a court hearing in May that the former police officer was stabbed 19 times by his estranged wife.

Defense attorney David Rudolf said there was a history of domestic violence between the couple – Carole LaRossa also had stab wounds when police arrived, though her injuries were not life-threatening.

Carole LaRossa was out of jail on $250,000 bond at the time of the hearing.

In August 2010, Carole LaRossa made a domestic violence complaint against her husband in Union County. The complaint was voluntarily dismissed, records show, and she was granted a temporary restraining order against him.

Carole LaRossa’s attorneys could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Cox on Tuesday described her family as “outraged, devastated and heartbroken” by the prosecutors’ decision to offer the plea bargain.

“We believe in justice and the law,” she told the Observer. “We put our faith in the DA’s office and the police department. We felt they would do what’s right. This is a slap in the face.”

In her email to the Observer, Cox wrote that James LaRossa’s family had spent the weekend “reaching out” to congressmen, senators, the governor and the mayor of Charlotte to tell them about the case.

“We have stayed silent and sat back respectfully and allowed them to work on this case since April 10, 2012,” she wrote. “We will no longer sit back quietly while they lazily try to dismiss a murder case so that they don’t have to do real prosecution work.”

“Do you think if the tables were turned and Carole had been the one stabbed to death in her home that night, that my uncle would have gotten out on bond? That my uncle would have been allowed to keep custody of their minor daughter? Probably not.”

Cox pointed out that her uncle was disabled.

“He was forced to retire from the NYPD after a spine injury that caused him to suffer through multiple back and neck surgeries,” she wrote. “He had steel rods put in his spine, but suffered physically every single day of his life. The man had difficulties tying his shoes – how could he have the physical strength to defend himself in a knife attack.”

We posted a note stating sunflower seeds

Among the pitfalls in composing a column like this is the fact that it won't see ink for six days after I've written it. Will we have fallen over the dreaded fiscal cliff or still be dangling above the brink? Either way, we'll be carrying a bucket in our boat as we row toward the shore.

Santa found us; that's the good news. The bad news is we don't have a chimney. But he found an opening and made our Christmas joyful. Our daughter and son-in-law were with us Christmas Day, and our hearts were filled with the spirit of the season.

We kept the bird feeder full of seeds for our feathered friends and furry squirrels that stop by now and then for a bite to eat. Oddly, since the cold weather has set in, the dining crowd has dwindled. We changed to a different brand of fodder that contains fewer sunflower seeds, and we think that may be the problem. It looked good in the bag, but the birds disagree and the squirrels have disappeared. We posted a note stating sunflower seeds would be forthcoming.

Among the coolest things Santa left with my name on it was a handcrafted wind chime made by stout hands holding a hammer in the state of Maine. Well, I'm not real sure about the hammer but this wind chime is made of hefty iron that sings forth with hearty tones of a soothing nature.

This new wind chime will join in with a crew of two others we have had for several years. We bought them in the 1990s while living in Bandon-by-the-Sea on the southern coast of Oregon. Now we can make music when the wind blows using chimes from both sides of our nation. So far our neighbors haven't chimed in with any notes of discontent.

Their good nature may be enhanced because these iron chimes have a deep resonance that adds a chorus of cheerful notes during stormy weather. The Oregon chimes are made of naked iron that rusts over with character that only age can inspire. The new chime from Maine is coated with colorful enamel, which will set it apart from the others in appearance only.

The size of a chime determines the depth of its tone. We've been enjoying one deeper baritone voice along with a smaller midrange chime, both from Oregon. This new voice from Maine will fill in between those two for a gentle addition to our sound of music on stormy days.

My mother used to say that big feet were the mark of wisdom. I think she brought that idiom from Iowa when she and her twin sister came to sunny California. She nodded with approval when I came home from the army wearing size 11 boots.

After Fran and I were married my feet blossomed to size 12. Thinking that would do me for the duration, I kept buying size 12 footwear. In need of new hiking boots, I went to the Red Wing store for size 12. The boot man declined; I begged. He insisted I was size 13. Alas, he was right; so was Mom; I'm older and wiser now, or so I thought.

My hiking boots look big as boats; size 12 shoes squeeze slightly but appear less overwhelming. Alas, my Sunday shoes were killing me; I was wallowing in vanity. Wife and daughter got together. My dear old shoes were gathered up and gifted to smaller-footed folks. Santa brought me a new pair of shoes and slippers, honed to size 13. Now my feet sing joyously, like iron chimes in the wind.

This vision of Eden hovers over the rest of the novel

Ayana Mathis is the rare first-time author who is guaranteed thousands of readers, thanks to Oprah Winfrey, who selected "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. Winfrey compared Mathis' first novel to the work of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, whose work was selected four times for Oprah's original book club, beginning in 1996 with "Song of Solomon," a third novel published when she was a relative unknown. For better or worse, Mathis has huge shoes to fill.

"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" opens in 1925, when Mathis' matriarch, Hattie Shepherd - mother of 11 and grandmother of one, her "12 tribes," in a biblical reference to the patriarch Jacob - is 16, and newly wed. She and her husband, August, are refugees from the Jim Crow South, two teenagers caught up in the historic 20th century migration of African Americans to the North. In an exuberant mood, young Hattie names their newborn twins Philadelphia and Jubilee - "names of promise and of hope, reaching forward names, not looking back ones."

Hattie has what turns out to be a brief interlude of contentment in the small house on Wayne Street in Philadelphia that August rents for his new family. "It rained every morning, but the afternoons were bright and the grass in Hattie and August's tiny square of lawn was green as the first day of the world," Mathis writes. "The three of them, Hattie and her twins, dozed in the shade on the porch." This vision of Eden hovers over the rest of the novel as a bitter reminder of Hattie's blighted dreams.

In visceral, heart-wrenching scenes, Mathis describes Hattie's days-long struggle to save the twins from pneumonia. "Hattie's babies burned brightly: their fevers spiked, their legs wheeled, their cheeks went red as suns." As she fights to save her babies, Hattie recalls seeing her father collapsed in the corner of his smithy back in Georgia, murdered by two white men, and fleeing through the woods two days later with her mother and two sisters to board a train to Philadelphia. Her mother dies, her sisters head back south, and Hattie is left an orphan, a stranger, unaccustomed to the "crackling cold."

When the furnace fails, she heads desperately to a neighbor's, where the twins die.

After this moving opening, Mathis flashes forward, revealing in chapters dated from 1948 to 1980 how Hattie's grief at the loss of her firstborn twins distorts her maternal love and afflicts her nine surviving children with a range of plagues, from crippling self-doubt to dramatic self-destruction.

In the first of these self-contained chapters, we meet her son Floyd, a musician traveling through the South in 1948, troubled by sexual confusion and shame. Hattie's son Six is tormented by scars from burns inflicted when he fell into a tub of scalding water as a boy. Six has bouts of violence balanced by fits of Bible-spouting eloquence. The story of Hattie's daughter Bell begins as she lies dying of tuberculosis in a run-down ghetto apartment in 1975, fantasizing about her mother's soup. "Hattie had kept them all alive with sheer will and collard greens and some old southern remedies. Mean as the dickens, though."

And on it goes. Ruthie is the child of another man, born after Hattie has put up with 25 years of August's womanizing. Franklin follows his father's pattern, losing the woman he loves. Alice's marriage to a doctor is haunted by childhood abuse shared with her brother Billups. Hattie is forced by economic necessity to give her last baby, Ella, born in 1956, away to her childless sister Pearl, back in Georgia.

By 1980, her daughter Cassie is succumbing to madness, with banshee voices insisting that her mother is trying to poison her. Hattie faces yet another challenge in Cassie's daughter, the new generation. It's no surprise that the last chapter features a sermon about the trials of Job. And that somehow Hattie finds the grit to go on.

Mathis has been forthright about her influences. Marilynne Robinson was her mentor at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop (and like Robinson, she knows how to shape a scene to hit the emotional jugular). Morrison's "Beloved," she says, was her "manual." With its historic sweep and focus on an African American mother faced with brutal choices, "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" bears some resemblance to "Beloved."

But Mathis has little of Morrison's mystical bent. Her structure is more akin to short stories in a linked collection than fully integrated chapters in a novel. And her plainspoken prose conveys intimacy more readily than mythic resonance.

"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" is an exceptional first novel. Some of Mathis' characters are more fully rendered than others, some of her plotting is melodramatic, and she leaves us with a trail of unanswered questions. But she brings considerable empathic gifts to the detailed realistic snapshots in Hattie's family album, and to the sense of displacement that has contributed to generations of troubles and travails. Her challenge will be to stay true to her talents until after the Oprah hubbub dies down.