THE DNA OF RELATIONSHIPS

LIFE IS RELATIONSHIPS;THE REST IS JUST DETAILS.
YOU ARE MADE FOR THREE KINDS OF RELATIONSHIPS:WITH OTHERS WITH YOURSELF, AND WITH GOD.OUR RELATIONSHIPS IS NOT ONLY IMPORTANT, BUT EACH IS INTRICATELY INTERRELATED.IF ONE RELATIONSHIP IS OUT OF BALANCE, THE OTHERS WILL BE AFFECTED.

Wisconsin Wife, 80, Lands Plane for Dying Pilot Husband

A frail 80-year-old Wisconsin woman spent a harrowing 90 minutes learning how to handle a Cessna plane and then land it after her husband, who had been piloting the plane, collapsed while at the controls.

Helen Collins successfully landed the plane as it was running out of gas and an engine sputtering.

She is expected to be released from the hospital today with minor injuries after her bumpy landing Monday night at Sturgeon Bay. Despite the miracle landing, Helen Collins' husband John, 81, did not survive.

Her son, Richard Collins, recounted the ordeal today, punctuated with tears of grief for his father and chuckles of relief for his mom.

"I can't even tell her how to run a computer, let alone land a plane," Richard Collins, 55, told ABCNews.com. "It was a very trying time. I thought I was going to lose them both."

John and Helen Collins were flying from Florida to Wisconsin on Monday. John had not been feeling well on Thursday and the couple's son James Collins, also a pilot, wanted to meet them in Rome, Ga., where they were stopping, to fly the rest of the way.

"He wasn't right. You could tell something was wrong. He said he had a sore neck," Richard Collins told ABCNews.com today. But John Collins said he would fly himself.

"He had called me on the phone and asked me where I was," Richard Collins said. "I said I was at the airport waiting for him and he said he'd be there in 20 minutes. The next thing I knew, I saw the plane fly over the airport."

About six miles from Sturgeon Bay, Wis., something had gone wrong.

Helen Collins had called 911 to say that "her husband, the pilot of the aircraft, was having some sort of medical emergency and was unresponsive in the aircraft," according to a Door County Sheriff's Office report.

She was going to have to land the plane.

Collins said his mother had flown in the past, even flying solo, but she had never flown the two-engine Cessna and she had not piloted in about 30 years.

Richard Collins worked with the Cherryland Airport to send out the family's other plane with a pilot to shadow his mother and help her land. Another pilot was communicating with her from the ground.

"Robert [Vuksanovic, the pilot in the second plane] got in the air and was flying just off Helen's wing and was consulting her via radio," according to the report. "The two aircrafts did several fly-by type maneuvers as practice runs."

"The sheriff said she was amazingly calm and alert and level-headed," Richard Collins said of his mother who he described as "about as frail as frail can be" after having undergone two open-heart surgeries in the past several years.

Collins recalled his mother saying to everyone instructing her, "Don't you guys have faith in me? I can do this." But moments before landing, she said, "I don't think I can do this."

After circling for an hour-and-a-half, she was able to land the plane.

Keith Kasbohm, director of Cherryland Airport near Sturgeon Bay, told the Associated Press, "She was on her last attempt to get lined up with the runway. She reported one engine was sputtering on that last attempt to land. We were all watching and knew she had to do it."

"She bounced pretty hard," Richard Collins said. "When she bounced, the plane tilted forward and the landing gear broke."

Both Helen and John Collins were taken to the hospital where John Collins was pronounced dead. His son believes he had a heart attack. His mother has a crushed vertebra, but is expected to go home today.

When Richard Collins spoke to his mother, she described what had happened in the plane.

"She said that Dad became unconscious and took off his seatbelt to breathe better," Richard Collins said. His father lay down in the plane and his mother saw him "turning gray."

"She felt his hand and she knew," Richard Collins said as his voice cracked. "Everybody is so proud of her."

John Collins was the president and CEO of the family business, C&S Manufacturing, in Sturgeon Bay and had 50 employees. He began flying planes in the 1980s and frequently volunteered his services for Angel Flight, a group that helps transport patients in need to the hospitals they need to get to.

"My dad is the kind of guy that will help anybody. He's very generous and never turned anybody away," Richard Collins said. "He was like a father to anybody he knew. You couldn't find a better person. He's a better person than me. He's been a pillar in the community, my mom too."

Last week, the family spent time in Florida, relaxing by the ocean and eating out together.

Richard Collins remembered a conversation he heard his parents having in Florida last week while he was in his room going to bed.

"He says, 'Helen, I'm really lucky to have you.' And she said, 'No, I'm lucky to have you.' He said, 'No, I'm luckier to have you,'" Collins said through laughter and tears. "They were very tight."

'DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES' STAR CLAIMS UNFAIR DISMISSAL

A former "desperate housewives" actress took her ex-employer to court, claiming unfair dismissal from the hit tv series about lust and scandal in wisteria lane.

Nicolette Sheridan claims she was fired for complaining that the show's creator, marc cherry, slapped her on the head during rehearsals for a scene in September 2008.

The 48-year-old actress featured in five seasons of the abc series, before her character Edie Britt was written out of it a few months after the slapping incident -- she claims in retaliation for her complaint.

Cherry's lawyer claim he had already decided to drop her character in may 2008, four months before the incident -- but Sheridan says she was assured in 2007 that her character would continue for the duration of the show.

"we know Edie’s character is one we definitely won't be killing off," cherry said, according to Sheridan, the first witness to take the stand in the trial Thursday.

Sheridan filed a lawsuit in April 2010, alleging battery and wrongful terminal of employment against cherry and touchstone television productions, which makes the show.

The actress told the Los Angeles superior court that she wanted a funny line to remain in the script, but cherry resisted because it included part of a Beatles song, for which the studio would have to pay royalties.

While discussing the line, cherry shouted: "what is it that you want?," said Sheridan, who at times struggled to maintain her composure.

When she tried to respond, "Mr. Cherry stepped toward me and he took his right hand and he hit me upside the head," she said, her voice breaking. "it was a nice wallop."

Defense attorney Adam Levin said cherry simply tapped Sheridan on the head, trying to give her directions for the next scene. But Sheridan denied this, and re-enacted the scene with her lawyer Patrick Maloney in court.

"I was stunned, I could not believe he just hit me in the head. I could tell he was stunned," she said. "i told him, 'you just hit me in the head, that is not ok'."

"it was shocking, it was humiliating, it was demeaning. It was unfathomable that i had just been hit by my boss,"

She retired to her trailer, and after some time cherry came to apologize, she said, quoting him as telling her: "I am on bended knee begging your forgiveness."

Several of her former cast mates, including Eva Longoria, Marcia Cross, James Denton and Felicity Huffman, are expected to appear as witnesses to defend cherry at the trial.

"desperate housewives," about lust, gossip, and foul play in a pampered American suburb, is to take its final bow at the end of its current eighth season.

The show, watched by 12 million people last season less than half the first season peak, helped turn around abc's flagging fortunes and boosted the international market for us series with complex plots and one-hour episodes.

Maryland gay marriage bill signed into law

Two Mothers of openly gay sons greet Gov. O'Malley. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signed the state's gay marriage bill into law Thursday evening, capping off a month of big state-level wins for the gay rights movement around the country.
"We're in a much more pro-active place," Michael Cole-Schwartz of the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest LGBT advocacy and lobbying outfit, tells Yahoo News. "We've been able to achieve marriage equality in more places, and at the same time we've seen the public support go up and up."
In February, legislators in Maryland, Washington and New Jersey voted to allow gay couples to marry, though Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the New Jersey bill. The wins follow June's New York same-sex marriage law, the first such bill to pass a Republican-controlled chamber.
The win in New York was partly due to a different gay marriage strategy: identifying vulnerable lawmakers who are anti-gay marriage and then supporting their opponents in small-fry state races. Denver-area philanthropist Tim Gill used the Gill Action Fund to pump nearly $800,000 into a group called "Fight Back New York" to defeat four lawmakers who voted against gay marriage in 2009 and were shown to be the most vulnerable in polling. It worked. In October, the four Republican New York senators who broke with their party to vote for gay marriage in June were rewarded with a $1 million fundraiser, attended by Gill and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
But, gay marriage opponents have a plan to counter these victories, which may put the movement back on the defensive. Efforts are already underway to reverse the same-sex marriage laws in Maryland and Washington through a November ballot referendum. In Minnesota and North Carolina, the Human Rights Campaign and other groups are busy fending off gay marriage ballot bans, set for November and May, respectively.
Republican strategists pushed the idea of putting gay marriage on state ballots in 2004 and 2006, to stoke voter enthusiasm among the party's base. So far, voters in all 31 states have rejected gay marriage when it was put up to a vote. Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Washington and Iowa--which have all legalized gay marriage--did so through the legislature or the courts.
"These are not real victories," anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown says. "In fact, these are going to lead to even more defeats for same-sex marriage [through ballot initiatives]." But in both Maryland and Washington, recent polls show about half of voters support same-sex marriage, suggesting a ballot vote could be very close. Gradually rising support for gay marriage means ballot initiatives might no longer be the secret weapon of the anti-gay marriage camp.
Same-sex marriage supporters in Maine are willing to test out that theory. They're trying to get same-sex marriage on the November ballot, becoming the first pro-gay marriage group to seek a ballot initiative on the issue. "The track record has not been good for the question," says Dave Farmer, communications coordinator at the Dirigo Family Political Action Committee, which is funding the Maine ballot campaign. "I believe the number is 0 in 31." Farmer says the group's polling shows that about 53 percent of voters would vote for the ballot measure to let same-sex couples marry. In 2009, Maine voters vetoed the legislature's gay marriage bill, dealing a crushing blow to gay rights advocates in the state.
In Maine, gay marriage advocates also don't have much to lose. Gay marriage is already not allowed in Maine, and both houses of the legislature flipped to majority Republican in 2010, when the state also voted in a Republican governor who opposes same-sex marriage.
Gay rights supporters have slammed ballot initiatives in the past as placing a basic right up to popular vote. But Farmer says it's not the means that matter. "The bottom line is same-sex couples want to get married for the same reasons other couples do. Whether the means of making that possible are through a legislative, representative process or through a direct initiative, the goal is the same."

Valentine Greetings

Valentines Day

Valentine’s Day is not only for love birds; you can also wish your family and close friends on this day so, send valentines greetings to everyone important in your life. show your love ones you care and not only on val's day but always!

COURT TO RULE ON CALIFORNIA GAY MARRIAGE BAN

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court is set to rule on Tuesday whether California's ban on gay marriage is constitutional in a case that is likely to lead to a showdown on the issue in the U.S. Supreme Court.

California joined the vast majority of U.S. states in outlawing same-sex marriage in 2008, when voters passed the ban known as Proposition 8.

The socially conservative vote by a state more known for hippies and Hollywood was seen as a watershed by both sides of the so-called culture wars, and two gay couples responded by filing the legal challenge currently making its way through the federal courts.

A federal judge in San Francisco struck down Proposition 8 in 2010, and gay marriage opponents appealed that ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Regardless of how the 9th Circuit decides on Tuesday, opponents and supporters of same-sex marriage both have said they are ready to appeal the decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The three-judge 9th Circuit panel plans to release its decision at about 10 a.m. (1 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday. Even if the 9th circuit finds that gay marriage is legal in California, judges likely will put their ruling on hold pending further appeal.

The losing side could ask a larger 9th Circuit panel to hear the matter, or decide to appeal directly to the Supreme Court.

About 40 of the 50 U.S. states had outlawed gay marriage before aCalifornia state court ruled in 2008 that a ban was unconstitutional, leading to a summer of gay marriages. But California voters that November by decided to change the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and woman.

It provoked some gay rights activists to take a matter that had been waged on a state-by-state basis to federal court, essentially staking the entire agenda on one case. Republican Ted Olson and Democrat David Boies - attorneys who represented George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively, in the legal case that decided the 2000 presidential election - joined forces to take on Proposition 8 in court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen as a more conservative body than the lower courts that have been considering the case. Should the high court eventually decide to hear the case, much may depend on Anthony Kennedy, a Republican-appointed justice who has written important pro-gay rights decisions but has not explicitly endorsed gay marriage.

Six states - New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa - allow gay marriage, as does Washington, D.C.

In addition, New Jersey and Washington state are considering legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, and gay rights activists in Maine say they plan to bring the issue to voters in a referendum in that state.