Got to be careful about some things

I was talking with a young mother this week about her son's upcoming first trick-or-treat excursion. She said she was thinking about dressing the lad up as a hunter because he likes his daddy's hunting garb. She was going to outfit him in camo and let him carry a toy rifle along with his trick-or-treat bag.

I told her I thought that was a bad idea in today's socio-political climate. Although we're in the Ozarks, Rolla is not a typical Ozarks town full of outdoorsmen. There are way too many folks who grew up in town and have never handled a shotgun, rifle or pistol; they look down on those of us who like shooting and hunting as Ozarks inbreds. When in Rolla, it's best not to call attention to the fact that you're bringing your children up to be hunters. To do so is to invite a so-called do-gooder to report you to the authorities as a neglectful or abusive parent. After all, in their philosophy, any parent who encourages his/her child not to be afraid of firearms is a bad parent.

The young mother I was talking decided to dress her child up as something else, either a ghost or Bob the Builder.

GateHouse bringing its quality of journalism to more towns

GateHouse Media Inc., a newspaper chain headquartered in Fairport, N.Y., will bring its style of community journalism to more towns and small cities in the heartland. The company recently signed an agreement to buy several daily and non-daily publications from Morris Publishing Group for $115 million.

Will GateHouse be able to afford Christmas bonuses for its employees this year?

The Joplin Globe reports GateHouse is buying the Pittsburg, Kan., paper and others.

The Daily Telegram in Adrian, Mich., a GateHouse paper, also has a story about the sale. This story includes the names of additional papers being purchased by GH. Reports the Telegram:

The transaction is expected to close before the end of November and is subject to regulatory approval. The publications to be acquired are located in South Dakota, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

“This is an excellent acquisition opportunity for GateHouse,” Mike Reed, chief executive officer of GateHouse, said in a written statement. “These are strong local media franchises in small markets, many of which are near existing GateHouse properties and offer compelling synergy opportunities.”

The daily newspapers involved in the deal are the Dodge City (Kan.) Daily Globe; The Newton (Kan.) Kansan; The Morning Sun in Pittsburg, Kan.; the Hillsdale (Mich.) Daily News; The Holland (Mich.) Sentinel; the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post; The Examiner in Independence, Mo.; The Grand Island (Neb.) Independent; the York (Neb.) News-Times; The Daily Ardmoreite in Oklahoma; The Shawnee (Okla.) News-Star; the Yankton (S.D.) Daily Press & Dakotan; The Oak Ridger in Tennessee; and the News Chief in Winter Haven, Fla.

What does Mike Reed mean by "compelling synergy opportunities"? Any ideas?

Grandma's wisdom

My Grandma Howe once told me during a discussion of current events while I was visiting her and Grandpa during my university years, "It's a wicked, wicked world, Ralph, and it's going to get worse." She was a good Baptist woman who believed in such old-fashioned things as: 1.) men and women are sinners in need of redemption through the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 2.) if we're saved then we ought to live like it and be ready for the Second Coming any day because 3.) the return of King Jesus is certain and soon.

Living the Christian life is difficult in a world that celebrates sin, and it's getting even tougher. Up in Portland, Maine, well, you can read the full story by clicking here, but a couple of grafs ought to suffice to get the point across:

PORTLAND, Maine - After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.
King Middle School will become the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available, including birth control pills and patches. Condoms have been available at King's health center since 2000.

So they've been making condoms available to 11-year-old boys since 2000 and now they're handing out birth-control pills to 11-year-old girls. Grandma Howe was absolutely right.

Baffled, befuddled and slack-jawed

As a Southern white man, I'm baffled, befuddled and slack-jawed by this news item.
Surely and undoubtedly somebody is going to say George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity is to blame.

I can relate to these women's complaints, though. Not only am I Southern and white and a man, but I'm also fat and I speak with a marked hill accent. I think being a fat, Southern, hill-talking white man has made life more difficult for me. I think we need to start a dialogue about this problem.

Poet laureate for Missouri

According to a report posted yesterday afternoon on the KC Star website, Missouri will soon have a state poet laureate. Notes the Star:

The poet laureate will “help promote the arts in Missouri by making appearances at public libraries and schools across the state,” said an announcement posted Tuesday on Blunt’s gov.missouri.gov Web site. He or she would present an original poem about the state at an event commemorating the new position.
“It creates a buzz and an excitement about the art form that otherwise would not exist,” said Robert Stewart, editor of New Letters magazine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “Most of the state poet laureates I’ve been aware of have been excellent poets. (Having such a post) elevates the awareness of people in the community toward poetry.”

Attention, fellow conservatives: This will be an unpaid position so don't fret about the state wasting money on rhymes and verse. No doubt there will be some travel, meal and lodging expense involved, so you can gripe about that.

Presumably, Gov. Blunt will insist on appointing an English-speaking poet. That will give the liberals who abhor the idea of English as the official language something to gripe about.

I'm one conservative, though, who thinks a state poet laureate is a great idea. Anything to get people, especially kids, interested in language great.

So everyone will be happy with this appointment by Gov. Blunt. The conservatives will be happy to gripe about the expense. The liberals will be happy to gripe about the English language. We poetry lovers will just be happy that attention is drawn to language and word play.

Any comments?

Does anyone care to comment on these rumors?

GateHouse Media criticized--again

Over in Illinois, some folks do not like GateHouse Media, which owns newspapers throughout the land, including many small dailies and weeklies in Missouri.

Here's what the Peoria Pundit had to say about some cutbacks at the Peoria Journal Star:

So this means more beats won’t be covered (or will be covered poorly as workloads increase). It probably means earlier deadlines because fewer people will need more time to get their jobs done.

There's no evidence of this slash-and-burn management style at the Missouri newspapers owned by GateHouse. In fact, the opposite seems to be true here. The Rolla paper's news staff has more reporters this year than it did back in--what year was it?--2000-2001, I think. For several months, the combined news and sports staff consisted of 1.) Bill E. Morrison and 2.) me. Those were harrowing days.

I've "bookmarked" a "blog" to have a little "fun"

This has nothing to do with the "Ozarks," at least not directly, but I've bookmarked The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks because it strikes so close to "home."

The blogger collects signs where people have used quotation marks unnecessarily and annoyingly.

Go take a look. It will make you feel "superior." Isn't that a "wonderful" feeling?

Fall color in the Ozarks; what about spring color?

It's time we all got worked up over fall color in the Ozarks and throughout Missouri.

Depending on what the trees and vines have had to endure throughout the summer, colors in the fall can be vibrant and fiery or dull, going from green straight to brown. Most of us hope for great color.

Here's a web page from the Missouri Department of Conservation with fall color reports from various regions of the state.

Here's a story from the Springfield newspaper about color in that section of the Ozarks.

OK, now I've said this several times in the print version of The Ozarks Chronicle, on TheOzarksChronicle.com and in this blog, but here I go again: We love our fall color, but why, oh why, can't the state, county and city transportation departments get together to promote spring wildflower growth along our state's highways, roads and streets?

Instead, most of these agencies can't wait to get out the mowers and the herbicide in the spring. Wildflowers add beauty to our state, just as the fall colors do.

I know conservatives don't like to indicate an interest in nature for fear of being tagged as environmentalist whackies, but I'm one conservative who cares about wildflowers and native plants.

If you're the kind of conservative who can't love flowers for the sake of loving flowers, look at the flowers for their monetary value. Is it possible that having wildflowers flourishing along the highways and roads could attract tourists to Missouri?

GateHouse Media gobbles up another paper

GateHouse Media, which owns the newspapers in Rolla, St. James, Waynesville-St. Robert and Camdenton, as well as many others throughout Missouri, has bought another.

The purchase of the Aurora Advertiser occured Sept. 1, according to an article in the Tulsa World today.

Most of the article is about the Sumner family's purchase of the Sapulpa, Okla., newspaper, but the end of the story notes the following:

On Sept. 1, GateHouse Media Inc. bought the Aurora Advertiser in Missouri where he had been working.
"This brings the whole family back together and that's very important to my mother, and now all the grandkids will live in Sapulpa or Okmulgee," Darren Sumner said.

I worked for the Advertiser from 1977-1984. At the time I started, publisher Robert Lowry was proud that his paper was one of the few in Missouri that was still independent. All the others had been purchased by chains. A couple of years later, Mr. Lowry's age and health forced him to sell to a "family" of newspapers out of Alabama. That group later sold to an independent publisher, Leon Fredrick, who operated it for a couple of years or more and then sold it. I worked for Leon for about a year before moving to Rolla. I'm not sure if he sold it a chain or an independent.

Well, all the papers are owned by chains now. Gatehouse owns the Neosho paper and the Carthage paper down in Southwest Missouri and maybe some others. I've lost track, and almost lost interest.

Chronicling the changing Ozarks

My, oh my, how the Ozarks have changed over the decades. It doesn't seem all that long ago when I graduated from Republic High School, but I never dreamed that I would someday own a computer and be able to put message on it for all the world to read. Heck, we didn't even have pocket calculators in those days.

You hardly ever see a log cabin nowadays. The photo on the left was taken in 1940 and I found it on the Library of Congress web site. As you see, it's the home of a hardworking Ozarks family and two of the daughters are in the picture. There are some log homes in the hills these days, but they are a lot different from what was built in the early settlement days of the Ozarks. Log homes nowadays are insulated and energy-efficient. They're also usually elegant and lived in by wealthy city folks looking for a rustic experience.

On the right is another log house. I don't know if it's an old log house or not. It's in Rolla and as I recall it used to have siding on it. The owner tore away the siding and revealed this log structure. It has been used for various businesses. Up until recently it was a hair and piercing salon. Now, it's the home for a check-cashing firm.

Oops, that was regrettable

Ten months ago, two women gave birth to girls at a Czech hospital. Now, authorities are investigating what hospital authorities say was an "oops!" moment.

Yahoo News reports:

The girls — somehow swapped at birth — wound up with the wrong families.
As police looked into the case at the clinic in the town of Trebic, 100 miles southeast of Prague, the infants' parents were meeting in a secret location to discuss how best to return the babies to their rightful homes, officials said Wednesday.
Police spokeswoman Marcela Lavicka said the investigation was in its early stages and that it was not yet clear when investigators would begin questioning the hospital's staff.
The hospital said in a statement Wednesday that it was cooperating with police and that it was about to wrap up its own internal investigation into what it called a "regrettable case."

Read the full story on Yahoo News for more information.

Maybe those Ozarkers who want to use midwives to give birth at home have a point.

Moonshiners and snake handlers

As I've said before in this blog, I get my "news" from The History Channel, which I usually enjoy watching. Last week, though, they had a program titled "Hillbilly" about the people of Appalachia. What a damnable show that was. Naturally, the producers focused on moonshiners and snake-handlers. The only redeeming quality for the program was that it noted the coal miners are hard workers who have a dangerous job.

Other than that, the history "report" gave the idea that the people of Appalachia spend their weekdays making moonshine, their Saturday nights drinking moonshine and their Sundays handling serpents. It was very unbalanced.

The Ozarks Chronicle attempts to show the positive side of rural life in the Ozarks, so we have stories about farmers and ranchers, artists and musicians, good businesses and green-thumb gardening practices. If The History Channel came to the Ozarks, they'd focus on the meth trade and the two moonshiners who got caught in Howell County. I didn't even know people still made moonshine, what with liquor so abundant.

Speaking of The History Channel, I may have to get my news from elsewhere, because that channel is getting depressing. They've got a show called Mega Disasters that predicts the world is going to end soon with global warming, or a worldwide ice age or a comet or asteroid hitting the planet or some such nonsense. All of the media are trying to whip us into a frenzy. The networks are always talking about the glaciers melting, The Weather Channel is warning that the oceans are rising and now The History Channel is warning that we're going to blow up, freeze and/or melt.

Well, I guess the best thing to do is pray about our future, which we can do anytime and anywhere, without the need to handle a snake.

Botanical gardens in the Ozarks

If you love to visit the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, you might be interested in the new Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville, Ark.

The new garden had a grand opening Sunday. Here's a story from a broadcast news site and you can also visit the garden's own website here.

There's a campaign to build a botanical garden in Springfield, Mo., too, and you can read about it on this website. Be sure to follow the links to learn more.

Wouldn't it be nice to have such a facility here in Rolla, halfway between Springfield and St. Louis?