That’s a Perfectly Cupid Explanation

Registered nurse Carla Niessink and her colleagues noticed an unusual number of births one night at Kaiser Hospital in Bellflower. “We said, ‘Where are all these babies coming from?’ ” she recalled. “We wondered, ‘What happened nine months ago?’ ” They did the calculations and found the approximate start of the gestation cycle was . . .

Valentine’s Day.

Niessink said she mentioned Valentine’s Day to one new dad who had remarked about the overflow of babies that night. “He thought about it for a moment,” she said. “Then he smiled and said, ‘Oh, yeah.’ ”

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PROVOCATIVE SIGN: It’s winter vacation time and so this column is making its annual reminder to skiers to--well, let a snapshot taken by Richard Gilbert in Big Bear get the point across (see photo at right).

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WHICH REMINDS ME: As 5-year-old Ethan Faneuff of Long Beach took part in an annual holiday lighting ritual in his house, he exclaimed: “Look, Mom, the Christmas tree’s back on line!”

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DO YOUR HOMEWORK: I missed the motivational speech of Donald Trump at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim the other night.

But I hope he made this point: If you want to become a multimillionaire, be sure to have a multimillionaire father, as he did in developer Frederick Trump.

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053 and by e-mail at [email protected].