Reporters' Notebook

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Burlingame inventor Robert Barrows filed a patent application for the "Talking Tombstone,” a hollow headstone that allows the dead to speak using a recorded message.

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One Burlingame resident was peeved by the upcoming centennial plans. If Burlingame was founded in 1908, he wondered aloud, why wouldn’t the celebration actually be in 2008? He was dismissed by council.

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Facilities at Burlingame elementary and middle schools need a facelift, which might happen if the district goes forward with a bond measure it studied. During a conversation Tuesday about how to choose what would be fixed with the $42 million trustees joked that it didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the high school district — promising more than could be delivered.

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South San Francisco City Council hopeful Kamala Silva Wolfe is actively getting her name into the community. Last week, Wolfe organized a coffee get together at her home with neighbors to discuss the wave of burglaries in the area.

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Broadmoor resident Lois Swanson and her son, Jim Swanson, may have lost the Emmy for a KRON 4 segment he produced about her returning a library book after 68 years but she received an award anyway. The Board of Supervisors last week gave Swanson a commendation and played the segment for the audience. In the piece, Swanson is shown bringing "The History of England and Great Britain” to the Vallejo Library to "start the new year right and settle all my things.” After being informed the fine, if imposed, was $1,241.85, Swanson quickly responded "If you had told me that before I wouldn’t have come.” The library sold Swanson the book back and she returned it to the bookshelf where it’s been for all those years.

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San Mateo-based HIP Housing is celebrating its 35th anniversary in July. HIP Housing is a nonprofit that acts as a community resource to provide creative, affordable housing opportunities for a variety of people.

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Want to learn how to write racy prose, sexy sentences? Don’t know how to get it quite right? Author Vicki Hendricks will be holding a workshop on how to write sex scenes at 7 p.m., Tuesday, May 29 at M is for Mystery on Third Avenue, San Mateo.

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Erin Gruwell, the teacher who inspired 150 teens from the Long Beach area to use writing to change themselves and the world around them after the 1993 Los Angeles riots, is coming to San Mateo. Gruwell wrote "The Freedom Writers Diary,” which inspired the movie with Hilary Swank. Gruwell will be speaking at 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 1 at the Bayside Performing Arts Center, 2025 Kehoe Avenue, San Mateo.

The reporters’ notebook is a weekly collection of facts culled from the notebooks of the Daily Journal staff. It appears in the Thursday edition.