Since her junior high school days in 1955, Bobbie Farberow participated in one Chanukah tradition that has stayed exactly the same: a party with five of her closest girlfriends’Helen Katz, Gloria Crane, Anne Geffner, Maureen Bordan and Tova Weltman. On Tuesday, the six women met once again to celebrate the holiday. Farberow, owner of Mort’s Deli, explained why the party is late this year and has been since their children grew up. “Many of us don’t have children who live in Los Angeles, so we travel to see them over the holiday; the friends get together afterwards.” Their custom started when all were eighth and ninth graders at John Burrows Junior High School. The six girls lived in Fairfax-area apartment duplexes in close proximity to each other. “We walked places together and stayed at each other’s houses,” Farberow said. “On my first date with Mort, my friends were all at my house when he picked me up. He took one look at the five of them and said, ‘Maybe we should stay home.'” The six did everything together. “We even smoked our first cigarettes together,” Farberow reminisces. “All of us were together the summer we turned 16’and all met our husbands during that summer.” The friends and families were so close that when Helen decided to marry her boyfriend Sid, she brought him to meet Farberow’s father, Al Cordish, and get his approval. As each woman married, they were not only in the others’ weddings, but they shared bridesmaid dresses: Gloria even wore Bobbie’s wedding dress. After marriage all went to different colleges and down different career paths. Bobbie went to L.A. City College and then graduated with the first graduating class with a degree in education from San Fernando College, which became Cal State Northridge. The Education department even gave Bobbie and Mort their wedding shower. Until recently retiring, Gloria, who lives in Beverlywood, was the Regional Director of the Jewish Federation. Ann, who lives in Century City, was a preschool director and has written two children’s books. Maureen was a teacher and lived in the Highlands until she recently retired with her husband to Carmel. Katz lives in Los Feliz and Tova is a travel agent who lives in Bel Air. All still remain close friends. “When we were younger, none of us could afford to go out to dinner,” Farberow said. “We went to each others’ houses. “We all struggled and that’s the way it was,” she says. “I stayed home with my kids, so we didn’t have a lot of furniture the first seven or eight years. Mort and I decided that since he was away so much, one of us should stay with our children.” The friends were supportive of each other. When Mort opened his butcher shop all of their friends came to buy meat from him. The friends talked to each other often. There was one unwritten rule in their relationship. “We have never ever said a bad word about anyone else’s husband,” Farberow said. “It was off-limits.” Their 11 children grew up thinking of each other as cousins. “When they were little,” Farberow said, “They’d ask how they were related.” Through the years, the six women have given baby and wedding showers for the children and 16 grandchildren. “We recently had a baby shower for Gloria’s youngest child,” Farberow said. The six friends rotate who gives the showers. “We never compared who had the best houses or cars,” Farberow said. “Our friendship went deeper than that and still does.” The six women shared similar values, the commitment towards working through problems and hard work. It seems as if it’s a different age now. Recently one of the friends told Farberow, “The rest of the world is crazy, except for us.” When the friends started turning 60 they celebrated each of the six birthdays exactly the same way. They all went away together for the weekend to Santa Barbara without their spouses or children. On one of the getaways, they had brunch at the house of Gail Moss, another high school friend and the editor of Architectural Digest. They celebrated their 65th birthdays by going out to dinner, the other five planning the sixth’s party. When they first started the Chanukkah tradition it was only the six women. Once they had children they brought them to the party as well. It’s only been in the past few years that they’ve started including husbands. Except for Ann, who is divorced, and Bobbie, who is widowed, all are still married to the men they met when they were 16. “We all bring a $10 gift to the party and do an exchange,” Farberow said. “We also celebrate Passover together, but it’s usually after the holiday. I thought at this stage in my life, I’d have nothing but time for my friends.” It’s an amazing story of six friends who have stayed together longer than most people stay married. Even Farberow admits, “I don’t know what made the magic.” For an outsider, it becomes clear the magic clearly comes from women who share similar values and who served as an extended family for each other, helping to raise each other’s children and supporting each other during good times and bad.

“There is no functioning management that I can identify,” said Community Council chairman Kurt Toppel last Thursday night as he described his ongoing frustrations dealing with the U.S. Postal Service here and in downtown Los Angeles. In his opening remarks at the council’s meeting in the library, which was covered by Fox News 11 and Channel 13, Toppel addressed postal delivery woes in Pacific Palisades’and beyond. “For over three months now, we have tried unsuccessfully to have post office management address our council, and thus our community, to respond to specific problems. These problems started last summer with the closure of the Marina del Rey processing facility, which served some 12 postal areas. Since that time we have had three different postmasters or managers in charge, the latest of whom started Monday (January 9).” After detailing delivery complaints that are by now familiar to most Palisades households’delivery well past 5 p.m., late arrival of time-sensitive mail such as credit card statements, letters delivered to the wrong address’Toppel argued that it is “grossly unfair to try to shift responsibility for problems to the ‘worker bees’ who do an amazing job considering the lack of management and significant delays caused by outdated and ill-maintained equipment.” Noting that he had communicated with Congressman Henry Waxman’s L.A. office, Toppel said: “I have been told that so many complaints about postal services have been received, that Waxman has started an official inquiry into the matter in Washington.” Barbara Cohen, an officer of the Pacific Palisades Residents Association, described the frustrating experience her organization had last November when 10,000 newsletters announcing the group’s annual meeting were inexplicably delayed in the postal service system’ “even though we paid to have them pre-addressed and sorted by carrier route. They finally arrived in the mail less than a week before the meeting, or not at all. “We contacted Waxman’s office on December 1 and they were going to investigate. We are awaiting the results of that investigation.” In other Community Council action, members approved version one of three proposed versions regarding establishment of Guiding Principles for Planning and Zoning Variances, Variations and Exceptions, as related to land-use, structures and vegetation. The vote was taken, following a broad discussion, in order to create a consistent basis for future council action. The approved version reads: “The PPCC maintains that planning and zoning regulations, building codes, rules, restrictions, and ordinances have been established for the good of the community. They should be applied, upheld and enforced by the Zoning Administrator, Building and Safety, and other governing bodies with jurisdiction over the approval, execution and enforcement processes. PPCC’s position shall be to oppose in principle any request for variances, variations, or exceptions from established building codes, rules, restrictions, and ordinances and any other legal measures which govern land use, structures and vegetation. On a case-by-case basis the PPCC may support such requests if the proposed project positively affects health and safety, or is in the best interest of the neighborhood or the community in general. PPCC may take a formal position on an individual issue pertaining to variances, variations, or exceptions when requested to do so. PPCC expects governing bodies to notify all affected parties of any proposed developments or requests for variances from codes and regulations as well as proposed, approved or pending changes to such regulations.” Said Toppel in a statement following the meeting, “The adoption of the Guiding Principles not only benefits this community, but interest has been voiced by other Community Councils in Council District 11 to use them in a uniform manner for the district in general.”

If you can’t find a particular book at the Palisades Branch Library, you might want to tell the new senior librarian, Janet Gast. She’ll write it down on her list of books, audiocassettes, CDs, videos and DVDs that need to be ordered for the growing collection. She’s been adding science, history and literature books to the collection since she started on September 7. “Science” includes animals, technology and home improvement. “There are gaps in this collection and we’re trying to fill them,” says Gast, who ordered 150 books this month and has been spending “a few thousand dollars every month” on collection development. “We’re buying a lot more classics and college preparatory books.” She says some patrons might be interested to know that the library is beefing up its classics section with novels by Agatha Christie, Jane Austen and William Faulkner, among others. She also ordered “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which the library didn’t own. “We buy the ‘best of breed”the best there is to offer in [an individual] category,” says Gast, who describes the Palisades as “a very literary area, a high reading area.” “The community is very well-mannered, well-educated and docile”‘”not as aggressive” as the patrons who used the West Valley Regional branch in Reseda, where she formerly worked as adult librarian. Gast lives in Tarzana, and her long commute to get here is the one downside to her job. A native of West Los Angeles, she has worked as a librarian with the L.A. Public Library for more than 30 years at about 10 different branches, and substituted at more. “This is not the busiest library,” she says of the Palisades Branch, but adds that “we’re open extended hours’until 8 p.m.” The library is open until 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and until 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday. According to Gast, children make up about half the circulation and they check out books for school assignments, as well as CDs and DVDs for entertainment. Patrons can check out best-sellers for 25 cents a day through the library’s “Project Bestsellers” program. The active Friends of the Palisades Branch Library group donates $50,000 to $70,000 a year to help the library fund the purchase of books, audiobooks, music on CD, video recordings and DVDs, as well as children’s programs and refreshments, library furniture and maintenance. The group raises money through periodic used book sales in the parking lot. They also sponsor authors’ programs, says Gast, who has a lot of experience working with Friends groups. She also brings her friendly attitude and sweet spirit to the Palisades library. “Come on in!” she tells an employee waiting politely at the door of her office, which is located at the front of the library, overlooking the parking lot on Alma Real. “She is warm and approachable and loves input from patrons on what they would like to see on the shelves,” wrote Alice Inglis, president of the Pacific Palisades Library Association, in the fall Biblio-File newsletter. Part of the reason Gast chose to pursue a career as a librarian was because, as a child, “we had family friends who were librarians and they seemed happy.” She attended University High School and then went on to UCLA, where she majored in literature and minored in science before going to the library school in 1971. “I was one of the last ones to graduate in [UCLA’s] one-year program.” She started cataloging books at a library in Kern County and then joined the El Sereno library as a young adult librarian. That’s when the fun began. “I decided to do a fashion show program for the community,” says Gast, who went around to the local dress shops in search of outfits to model. While working at a branch library in the East Valley, she helped start the “Book Blitz,” a program in which librarians in the region would get together and go to one school a month to talk about books and services. About 10 years ago, she and a librarian at the Central Library in downtown L.A. put SAT and AP (Advanced Placement test) study guides into the system. “They didn’t have college directories either,” she says of libraries at the time. Certainly, times have changed. Being a librarian used to be about “classics and books,” she says. Now, “it’s technology”‘books on tape and DVDs. “I don’t think people read as much. I don’t think they can write as well either.” But she shrugs off the changes, saying “It’s okay.” A mother of three grown children, Gast says “I kind of know what young people like.” She’s noticed that children check out more books at once these days, whereas when she was growing up, she’d check out one or two at a time. Her mother started taking her to the West L.A. Regional Branch at Santa Monica and Federal when she was in first grade, around the time when she was learning to read. “I remember my mother putting in [postal] reserves. They were 2 cents, then 25 cents; now they’re free.” According to Gast, one of the underused sections at the Palisades Branch might be the general nonfiction section’history, social sciences and philosophy. She is a nonfiction reader herself. “I read the newspaper,” she says. “I read the L.A. Times every morning. I can’t leave the house without reading it. I like to be informed.” One of her favorite sections is business, because she believes it affects what goes in the other sections. Gast encourages people to check out the databases on the Los Angeles Public Library Web site, www.lapl.org. The categories range from health to history, geography and genealogy to U.S. government documents. “We’re like a little Yahoo!” But nothing beats making a personal trip to the library. “Come visit me,” Gast says.