Singer buys land in Kauai for farmCall her the Divine Miss Tree Farmer.
Bette Midler has bought 1,400 acres of sugar cane land on Kauai's east shore and eventually plans to turn the property into a timber farm.
That's according to Roberta Haas, co-owner of Hanalei North Shore Properties Ltd., which represented the Divine Miss M in the $4.5 million deal.
"She's very ecology-minded," Haas said. "She didn't buy it for development."
Midler, 54, grew up on Oahu but has shown a special affinity with the sleepy, Garden Island of Kauai since reaching stardom.
LaLanne pushing fitness still at 85
Feeling the weight of your New Year's resolutions? Jack LaLanne understands.
"You know where most people with New Year's resolutions get their exercise?" the fitness guru asked Friday in Knoxville, Tenn. "Breaking their New Year's resolutions. That is their exercise."
At 85, LaLanne is fit and trim and just as excited about exercise as when he first began showing television audiences in the 1950s how to get in shape. He says the key is setting realistic goals and sticking with them.
Boater weds after solo Atlantic trip
Tori Murden, the first woman and first American to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, has taken the plunge.
Murden, 36, married Charles "Mac" McClure, 56, in a small, private ceremony Friday at St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Louisville. Unlike her 81-day trans-Atlantic crossing, the marriage wasn't a drawn-out affair.
"It was a quick, simple wedding," Murden said in a phone interview during her reception.
She won her place in record books on Dec. 3 when she landed on the French island of Guadeloupe in her specially designed rowboat.
Late author's son calls dad deadbeat
The only surviving child of Patrick O'Brian, the celebrated author of naval sagas who died last week at age 85, says his father abandoned him and his disabled sister as young children and he hadn't spoken to him for 36 years.
"When a man walks out on everybody, leaving a 2-year-old daughter severely disabled, a small boy and his mother with no financial support, what sort of respect can you have for him?" Richard Russ was quoted as saying in Saturday's London's Daily Telegraph.
Russ, now in his 60s, reverted to his father's original surname when he was 27. At the same time he decided never to speak to his father again.