Stories from Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Linebacker coach Russ Schlager goes over offensive reads with inside linebackers Greg Younger (left) and Austin Huffman. Younger and Huffman will fill the shoes of standout linebacker Nate Gleason and two-time Class B All-Stater Chris Schleeman.

Former Danbury resident and former Red Willow County Commissioner Ken McCoy will celebrate his 90th birthday Aug. 13. Cards of congratulation will reach him at 1102 Third St., Box 18, Alma, NE 68920.

Red Willow County's noxious weed control director will send out 10-day notices to two landowners with musk thistle growing on their land. "I've got a list," Bill Elliott told county commissioners during their meeting Monday morning. The notices allow landowners to take steps to control the weeds within 10 days or the county will spray and bill the landowner for time and weed killer...

One commissioner admitted he was ... "a Scrooge" ... Another apologized for "being so picky." But as Red Willow County Commission Chairman Earl McNutt reminded elected officials and department heads Monday morning, "the bottom line is" that commissioners need to slash $400,000 from budgets proposed for 2009-10, take that amount out of the county's inheritance "savings account" fund, or raise taxes...

The McCook Public Schools board of education Monday evening approved a trip to the Kansas City American Royal livestock judging competition by a team of McCook High School ag students. If the MHS team is selected as Nebraska's representative from among the top five teams in the state, ag instructor Josh Schieber and chaperones will accompany team members Samantha Yonkers, Will Miller, Katelyn Fritsche and Amanda Shields to the judging competition Nov. 1...

Criminal minds are always quick to adapt to the new opportunities new technologies offer, but crime-fighters are keeping up as well. One of the latest is the emergency center in Waterloo, Iowa, which began accepting text messages sent to 911 last week...

I sure hope someone there has thought of the sure-fire fund-raising system of placing a coin-fed pigeon feeder in the immediate vicinity of that new statue. Dannebrog P.S. Linda and I often wonder why, since McCook so often has the record high temperature for the state for the day, McCool Junction doesn't have the record low. Another of those great mysteries of life, I guess!...

Though the U.S. is the undisputed leader in emergency health care (our technology rocks) amongst the top 10 industrialized nations we finish last in almost every other way of measuring health care. The bulk of the reasons for this can be attributed to our higher percentage of population living under the poverty level (12.5 percent) and therefore, a higher number of persons that do not have any form of health insurance (46 million- and growing 14,000 persons a day)...

Our farm neighbor Wayne had a German shepherd for a pet. Wayne also kept a pack of greyhounds for hunting coyotes. Well the German shepherd could whip any of the coyote hounds one on one. However, greyhounds are pack animals and every time the shepherd would forget and attack one of the hounds the whole pack would fight him. ...