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The 45th out of 46 federally charged defendants in Operation Garlic Press – the 16-month, 39-agency undercover investigation led by Gilroy Police that spanned March 2010 to October 2011 – was sentenced Thursday in federal court, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.

Recently, I started reading What I Talk about When I Talk about Running by Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist. The book is about how running informs Murakami's writing and how writing informs his running. If you are a runner or a writer, or both, you will enjoy the insights that he provides, which are part running thoughts, part writing thoughts, and part philosophical musings on both. But at one point near the beginning of the book, he mentions that people often ask him what he thinks about as he runs. He says, "I don't have a clue." Of course, he says, if it's cold outside, he is thinking about that, or if he's sad, he might think about sadness, or if he's happy, he might think about happiness. But, overall, he says, "I don't think much of anything worth mentioning."He just runs in a void; more precisely, he runs "to acquire a void." This sounds to me as if he uses running as a form of meditation, a moving meditation where he tries to stay in the moment and not really think at all.

DEAR ABBY: My 23-year-old daughter is out of control and has been since she was 16. She has a 2-year-old daughter, but she lives her life on the edge. She spends her days on the Internet meeting strange men and going out with them in private places. On the weekends, she drops her daughter here and takes off.

Leta Rae Pereira is a local author residing in Hollister. She and her husband Joe re-located to this area in 2005. She is the mother of a daughter and son, and the grandmother of three grandsons and two granddaughters. She has served as a peer counselor at Hollister Pregnancy Center since 2008, and is involved in the activities of her church home, Hollister Christian Fellowship. These are all rolls she has cherished. Yet, there is one other she never anticipated. She had never imagined that writing poetry was going to become a part of her life's story. Even so, it happened...suddenly!

Next year’s El Toro Bowl may have some added drama.

Following more than a decade long tradition, students at St. Mary School in Gilroy collected canned food items and donations this month for St. Joseph’s Family Center’s Holiday Collection.