Stories from Wednesday, November 22, 2006

GOTHENBURG -- The McCook Junior High School eighth grade girls basketball A and B teams were swept by Gothenburg Tuesday at Gothenburg. The Bison A team lost to the Swedes 20-8 and the B team lost 24-8. Morgan Schaeffer and Kasha Messersmith each scored 3 points for the Bison. Amanda Einspahr and Jaci Saalfeld each scored 1...

"Wind witches" collect in a road ditch and catch on a fence -- squirming in the wind and dancing in the sunlight -- west of Culbertson, and climb a guy wire south of the Trenton dam. The first-known "Russian thistle" in America hitchhiked to South Dakota in 1877 in a load of flax seed imported by Ukrainian farmers. ...

Good news for travelers along U.S. Highway 6 and 34 between Cambridge and Holbrook - the highway will be opened up to two-lane traffic sometime this week. But work isn't completely done, said Kurt Vosburg of the Nebraska Department of Roads. A top layer of asphalt will be put on hold until spring, he said, along with culvert work and guard rails, with construction stopping for the year by the first week of December...

Academically, students at McCook Public Schools are doing a very good job of meeting educational standards mandated by the federal government through a program called "No Child Left Behind." However, participation numbers by one small subgroup of McCook students fall short of federal "Adequate Yearly Progress" -- AYP -- goals, placing the McCook school on a watch list of schools falling behind "No Child Left Behind" standards...

With heightened awareness of patient safety in the national news, Community Hospital is proud of its low medication error rates, but continues to work to reduce the error rate further, according to Jim Ulrich, Community Hospital President and CEO. Of the 13,248 medications administered to patients during July, August and September, the hospital's error rate for the first quarter was far less than 1 percent, Ulrich said. ...

This year is the 385th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving celebration, when the religious separatist Pilgrims held a three-day feast in 1621 to celebrate a bountiful harvest a year after they arrived in America. It became a national holiday with President Abraham Lincoln's proclamation in 1863 as the last Thursday of November. ...

A little of this and that Some of us won't. A recent study indicates that in 2005 there were some 35.1 million people in the United States who did not "always have access to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle." (Associated Press) The official term for this condition is "Hunger Insecure."...

July 9, 1932 - Nov. 20, 2006 CURTIS --Margaret Maxine Danbom, 74, died Monday, (Nov. 20, 2006) at her home in Curtis.  She was born July 19, 1932, in Keystone to Charles and Addie (Cowman) Embrey. She graduated from Maywood High School, and grew up on the family farm near Wellfleet...

Jan. 25, 1912 - Nov. 20, 2006 Evelyn Effie Ploussard 94, died Monday (Nov. 20, 2006). She was born in Red Willow County Jan. 25, 1912, to William and Lizzie (Munby) Witt. She attended country school though the eighth grade. On Aug. 12, 1933, she married Frank J. Ploussard at a judge's house in Oberlin. They lived on the same farm that she was born until 1952, when they moved to McCook. ...