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Dear Annie: Mocktails today, martinis tomorrow?

Dear Annie: My granddaughter allows her son to order mocktails — drinks that sound like the adult version but don’t have liquor in them. Even though they are virgin drinks, I’m afraid this will lead him to drinking real alcohol at a young age. What do you think? — Concerned About the Message Dear Concerned: Your worry comes from a loving place. To you, these mocktails feel like “training wheels” for real drinks, making alcohol seem glamorous before your great-grandson is old enough to understand it. Still, a Shirley Temple with a cherry in it is not the same as handing ...

Antique games can command significant interest

Tennis, anyone? How about table tennis? The tabletop version of the sport is believed to have begun in Victorian England as a parlor game played by the upper class. Early equipment was improvised; instead of a net, players are said to have lined up a row of books across a table and hit a golf ...

A nation of suspects

Some of the recent legal challenges to the use of surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security upon Americans have resulted in the revelation of truly terrifying behavior by the government, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. We now know that the federal government spies on innocent Americans without suspicion and without warrants. The spying seems to fall into several categories. The National Security Agency, which is in the Department of Defense, employs about 60,000 domestic spies. These are the folks who want us to believe that they go through the ...

One ballot measure extends California’s taxing power. Another limits it. Stay tuned.

Californians will face two competing tax measures this November. The first is the Billionaire Tax Act, a onetime, 5% levy on the accumulated net worth of the state’s richest residents. Lesser known is the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act, which would draw constitutional lines around what Sacramento can and cannot tax, prohibiting new levies on retirement accounts, personal savings and individually owned assets and banning retroactive taxation. Everyone with even just a little bit of money set aside — not just the California billionaires targeted by the wealth tax — ...

Dear Annie: Left out of the family picture

Dear Annie: My stepson of 15 years, “Toby,” is getting married. I’ve always had a great relationship with him and his bride-to-be, and I’ve treated her like she was already family. Here’s my dilemma: Toby got angry with me because my sister, who worked at his and my husband’s company, decided to quit and move on. He blamed the whole ordeal on me, even though I had nothing to do with her decision. My husband — his father — even told him that directly. Recently, the bride sent out the wedding and rehearsal itineraries. She excluded me from everything and also wrote ...

At the age of 57, heart attacks are no longer considered ‘rare’

DEAR DR. ROACH: I’m always saddened when a young person dies of an old person’s calling. I read about an actor dying of a heart attack at age 57. Apparently, he was athletic and in otherwise good health. Why do healthy young people suffer from unexpected heart attacks? — A.C.G. ANSWER: A heart attack is very rare under the age of 30 — in the order of about 2 men per 100,000 per year. But this number continues to increase throughout lifetime. (Women also get heart disease but at a lower rate than men do at any given age. Roughly speaking, a woman’s risk for a heart attack is ...