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For about a week now a wildfire has been raging in the wonderful Boundary Waters area of Minnesota up near the Ontario border.
Canoe liveries, cabins, campsites and forest areas have been scorched.
NASA’s satellite observatory has a Natural Hazards page that captures a bird’s eye view of such calamities on Earth.
Do aliens’ Earth probes record the same view?
I’ve been exposed to the education system in Monroe County for just a short time, but I know one thing- the area could benefit from a program similar to the Kalamazoo Promise.
Do you think this area could benefit?
Here are a couple of links about the success of the Promise:
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=75224
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070514/NEWS05/705140368/1001
In searching for information on lost dogs and pets in general, I was checking out different lost pet Web sites. In order to use the sites in the story I’m working on, I wanted to check them out first to see if they are helpful, free, easy to use, etc.
In doing so, I came across one that lists an “additional” line of detail for each pet. Some of the descriptions, well, I’ll let them speak for themselves.
Additional:
“big feet, droopy eyes and bad teeth”;
“sings the andy griffiths theme song, u of m fight song, says hello, what up, prettybird, says and plays peek-a-boo”;
“Talks exceptionally well. Amswers to the name of Elvis”;
“Well-trained, gets along with other animals”;
“Coax with meat or cheese.”;
“Recently been neutered, has/had cone collar, large size testicle due to complications with surgery.”;
“he was wearing a silver chain collar, he has a spot on his eye that looks like eyeliner, muscular, 4 years old, may bite so dont touch”;
“we think its a male. his name is sunny. he is very loud and likes to dance”;
“very friendly and often crying for attention wandered off and is greatly missed. name is Parker but hardly responds to it. responds to food.”;
and my favorite – “Scared of the world”
I wonder what our pets would say about us.
“Oh, okay. Well, do you have ferrets?”
One of my coworkers just asked this of a person on the telephone. I like to think the conversation was about hedge funds or rescue efforts – something that would have absolutely nothing to do with ferrets.
An Evening News employee who works in another department happened to be in the newsroom Tuesday afternoon when the propane fire in Bedford Township was taking place. After watching the activity as the news staff was taking phone calls, updating the Internet and sorting through photographs, she had a really good question: Are media people allowed anywhere close to a scene like that?
It depends on the circumstances, I told her. Sometimes the emergency crews wave everybody away. Sometimes they’ll let the media stand by in a location where they can see what’s going on, but not get in the way of the rescue workers.
I forgot to tell her there also are times when reporters are sent on a wild goose chase – it’s pretty chaotic at a scene like that and accurate details aren’t always easy to pin down.
That’s one of the reasons “team coverage” is so helpful in a major news incident. No matter where you go or who you talk to, you’ll get just the perspective that is available at that time and location. But when editors, reporters and photographers team up, a detailed and accurate story is much easier to assemble.
The gas prices are predicted to rise higher than that little yodeling hiker person on the Price is Right game. Check out the SEMCOG calculator to see how much you spend on your commute monthly and yearly and see how much you could save if you were to pool with others.
Click here.
I’m working on an advance for the play: Steve Martin’s Adaptation of The Underpants. *Pun alert* As a result, I’ve been the butt of bad jokes all day.
Earlier when trying to coordinate a photo, many people walking by interjected, “what, you need a picture of underpants?” and “What do you need to organize it for, I thought photo flew by the seat of their pants?” so on and so forth. (I didn’t say these were high quality).
As I’m ready to leave a coworker just told me to have fun checking out my underpants. That horn, the whant whant that they use ever so much on Sabado Gigante, just sounded somewhere in the background.
So, look for some underpants in Thursday’s A & E section.
I know, I know. It’s not really kosher to promote your own blog site, but does it count if it’s written by somebody else? Ah, screw convention. Isn’t that what the wild web of the west is all about?
I strongly recommend you to visit the MEN Naturespeak blog. I find it to be utterly fantastic – if you like that sort of thing. Think Annie Dillard meets Rick Bass meets that scientific writer guy whose name I can never remember. It also smells faintly of Edward Abbey I should mention. Faintly. Since he’s one of my all time favorites, I don’t toss that around lightly.
In the words of Mr. Abbey: never apologize, never explain. So, just listen to what I say and go visit http://www.blogsmonroe.com/nature/ and love it.
I spoke with a woman earlier tonight whose dog went missing two weeks ago. Apparently the Dachshund escaped through a little trench dug under the fence by the other dog in the yard. A witness reportedly spotted the little dog in the road and watched while a blue van stopped, slid the door open and nabbed the little gal. The witness initially thought, ‘oh, what nice people to stop and help the dog’ – but when she saw the flyer for the missing dog a day or two later, realized it never made it home.
The woman whose dog is missing is sure that it was a dog-napping. From the eye-witness account, it sounds like it. Within the same week, another pet owner reported a blue van stopping in their driveway, apparently trying to coerce their little dog inside. A woman was in the yard chasing the dog. When the owners went out and said what the heck are you doing? she responded that she was part of an animal rescue and was attempting to rescue the dog. When the owner responded that the dog did not need rescuing the woman reportedly jumped back into the van and the driver sped off.
Something seems fishy. I haven’t had a chance to investigate this just yet, but was wondering if anyone else had seen or heard anything like this happening. Has this ever happened before in Monroe or nearby counties? The targets – if it’s fair to call them that – have all been little dogs.
Though I grew up in Dundee, I didn’t have the rural upbringing that would have had me in the seat of a farm tractor.
Covering a story last weekend, I did see how hard it is, though.
I attended a training session on Saturday where a couple of older farmers were teaching 13, 14, and 15 year olds how to drive tractors. The kids had to weave a small John Deere with a manure spreader through a narrow course of metal posts. The future farmers had to maneuver the rig through the course with less than six inches of leeway to steer through.
I’ve been licensed to drive a car for 10 years now and I don’t think I could have done that.
Thankfully, I left feeling better after seeing the kids knock a couple of metal stakes down. At least I know my driving isn’t so bad after all.
Last night my teen-age daughter and I went to the Monroe County Community College / Community Band concert at the La-Z-Boy Center. It was the first time we had a chance to see the college band perform, and both of us were very impressed with the musical talents in the ensemble. The auditorium was standing-room-only, there were standing ovations for the soloists, … and it was a wonderful performance!
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