Editorial: Campaign to save tortoise has ranked humans equal to ravens While it is noble that great measures have been taken to protect the tortoise, one has to wonder how the animal has been graded to be of higher value than a human life. Because environmental activists say the burrowing tortoise is threatened by cattle, people and mines - millions of dollars are spent to save the turtles at the expense of ranchers and highway drivers. There are nearly 4 million acres of California desert which has been set aside as critical habitat for the desert tortoise. Some in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would like to allow cattle and off-road vehicles to share this land in the California Desert Conservation Area. A federal judge last August ruled against the idea saying it was not enough to consider the survival of the desert tortoise....
National eyes on Colton's plight Having city officials, such as Councilman John Mitchell, call a tiny fly's decade-long grip on Colton development "absolutely ridiculous" is nothing new. Having that sentiment echoed across the country is. As officials unveil efforts to gain development rights on the endangered Delhi Sand flower-loving fly's habitat -- including lobbying federal Fish and Wildlife supervisors next month in Washington, D.C. -- their struggles have caught a new wave of national attention as theater of the absurd. According to city officials, magicians and comedians Penn & Teller have taken an interest in Colton's decade-long plight to build on the habitat, and recently called to feature it in an upcoming episode of their Showtime series focusing on the extreme....
Column - The Endangered Species Act: Thirty years of Endangering People and Animals is Enough Animals and humans have suffered the menace of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for three long decades. During this span, over 1,300 species have been listed as threatened or endangered under the Act’s guidelines. According the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the ESA is responsible for recovering a mere ten of them. That amounts to a pitiful recovery rate of less than one percent. When you take into account credible studies that show these ten recoveries had little or nothing to do with the ESA, the “success” rate plummets to zero. Saving zero of over 1,300 species is hard work and sacrifice under the Endangered Species Act. After all, you don’t achieve a zero percent success rate without breaking a few eggs. When the Northern Spotted Owl was listed under the ESA in 1990, tens of thousands of Americans in the Pacific Northwest lost their jobs and their livelihoods. Billions of dollars were sapped from the regional economy. Private property was taken from landowners. Such is the toil and hardship associated with saving an owl that, as it turns out, isn’t endangered and never needed saving....
Charges filed against man who had eagle feathers An Ogden medicine man is facing four federal misdemeanor charges for possessing bald eagle, red-tailed hawk and horned owl feathers without a permit, as well as unlawfully importing a jaguar skull. Weber County deputies found the feathers and skull in Nicholas Walter Stark's home in July 2000, while they were conducting a search for peyote, according to the government's statement of probable cause. Stark told authorities he is one-quarter Iroquois, but did not have a tribal card. On Oct. 14, 2004, Stark called a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent and inquired about the return of his property. During the conversation, he told the agent he used the feathers during his ceremonies and work as a shaman, and that he was not a registered tribe member. On Friday, prosecutors filed the charges in U.S. District Court....
Montana rancher legally kills wolf attacking cattle A rancher in southwestern Montana recently shot and killed a wolf while it was chasing livestock, becoming the first person to do so legally under new federal rules, a state wolf specialist said. The rules allow killing of a wolf attacking or chasing livestock. "It worked just the way it was supposed to," said Liz Bradley, Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks wolf management specialist for southwest Montana. The shooting occurred this past weekend on a ranch between Wisdom and Wise River, in Montana's Big Hole Valley. Bradley said the rancher, who asked not to be named, saw a pair of wolves chasing his cattle through a pasture near his house and shot one of them. He reported the incident immediately, she said. Under the rules implemented in late 2004, the burden of proof remains with the person shooting the wolf. People killing a wolf are required to report the incident within 24 hours....
FWS expert: Elk proposal may not work A state plan for addressing chronic wasting disease if it turns up on Wyoming's elk feedgrounds is a good first step but doesn't go far enough, says a disease expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The plan acknowledges that while infection rates among free-ranging elk is around 3 percent, it can exceed 50 percent in captive elk. The implication is that feedground elk, which are artificially concentrated like captive animals, could also have higher disease rates. Tom Roffe, the agency's chief of wildlife health, praises the Wyoming Game and Fish Department for acknowledging that the 23 state elk feedgrounds could help spread chronic wasting disease. But he said the proposals would come too little, too late to protect elk....
Bush Gives Top Wildlife Protection Job to Trophy Hunter The Bush administration has named a trophy-hunting advocate to serve as acting director of the department charged with protecting the nation’s wildlife. US Department of the Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced Wednesday that Matthew J. Hogan, who formerly served as deputy director of the agency, will temporarily head the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the wake of the current director’s resignation....
Sale of Assateague ponies could salvage ecosystem National Park Service officials say they may have to reduce the size of the herd of ponies on Assateague Island because of damage the wild animals cause to grass and dunes on the barrier island. For the past decade, the National Park Service has been injecting contraceptives into the mares in the herd of 160 on the Assateague Island National Seashore to control the population. Now, they say they may have to move some of the ponies off the island. "The horses are hurting the ecosystem," said Carl Zimmerman, a resource management specialist at the park. "The plants on the island haven't evolved for large grazing animals, and the damage is pretty apparent. We can't wait a long period of time to deal with this problem."....
Towns teetering on economic brink welcome back jobs In the spectacular red rock canyons cut by the Dolores River and West Creek, this little town of perhaps 150 people welcomes the return of uranium mining. So do people in Nucla and Naturita, which, with Gateway, were home to a thriving mining industry during the Cold War- driven uranium boom of the 1950s and 1960s. The three communities have struggled ever since. With the Gateway Dynamite Shoot and former Nucla Prairie Dog Shoot the only big local attractions, the news of a resurgent uranium market is being met with near-universal enthusiasm....
Utah trying all angles to bar PFS Rep. Rob Bishop is fond of saying he still has some arrows left in his quiver when it comes to keeping spent nuclear fuel out of Tooele County. But the collective quiver of the Utah congressional delegation is running out of arrows. Even members of the delegation — while putting on brave faces and talking tough — are starting to quiver nervously at the very real prospect that Private Fuel Storage's proposed facility on Goshute tribal lands in Skull Valley could actually happen. "We are willing to try almost anything at this point" to stop PFS, says Bishop, R-Utah, "but our options are limited. We are kind of flailing around right now." With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission set to rule soon on a license, Bishop will reintroduce legislation to declare Bureau of Land Management lands around the PFS site as wilderness, thereby blocking the construction of a rail spur needed to transport the waste to the site....
Predictions Vary for Refuge as Drilling Plan Develops With Congress apparently poised to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, the nation is on the verge of a major experiment. The results, in terms of oil production and the effects on the landscape and wildlife, like the local herd of 120,000 caribou, are largely unknown. President Bush has portrayed the area as central to increasing domestic oil production. Yet one crucial question is whether there is enough oil scattered underneath the coastal plain section of the 19-million-acre refuge to be commercially viable. Oil industry experts said in interviews that they believe that the gambles of those companies who bid for leases to explore and drill for oil would probably pay off. But in recent years some of the multinational companies that were actively pressing for opportunities to drill in the refuge have been less visible in their support. Once companies decide to drill, it is unclear how extensive the network of drill pads and connecting roads, pipelines and shelters and supply vehicles will be, and how they will change the landscape and the habitat of the animals that move through the area....
Enviros plan water monitoring A conservation group will begin its own monitoring this summer of waterways in the Bighorn National Forest in an effort to get a "big picture" of water health after high fecal coliform levels were found in one stream. Jonathan Ratner, director of the Wyoming office of the Western Watersheds Project in Pinedale, said his group wants to add to U.S. Forest Service monitoring to paint a "broad picture" of water conditions throughout the forest. The group will monitor streams the agency is not monitoring. The project was spawned when, two years ago, a fisherman took some water samples on the North Tongue River on the Bighorn, because he was "disgusted with the conditions," Ratner said. The stream is in a cattle grazing allotment, where as many as 700 head of cattle can graze. The sample showed a large number of E. coli colonies, Ratner said....
Judge orders temporary halt to logging plan in Lolo National Forest U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy temporarily stopped a 245-acre logging operation in the Lolo National Forest this week because of concerns about soils, old-growth forests and endangered lynx. Two environmental groups are challenging the U.S. Forest Service's designation of the Camp Salvage timber sale on the Plains/Thompson Falls Ranger District as a "categorical exclusion" - a designation that exempts the project from National Environmental Policy Act requirements. Categorically excluded timber sales can move forward without environmental assessments or environmental impact statements. The Ecology Center and Alliance for the Wild Rockies, both Missoula groups, filed suit in federal court, asking that the designation be removed. Molloy responded by halting all logging in the area until he can determine whether the categorical exclusion was appropriate....
Logging Visits Rather Than Trees For generations, the people of Shasta County made their livings by taking from the land, logging and mining. Today they are trying to exploit nature in a different way — through preserving and sharing its beauty. Shasta and seven other Northern California counties are increasingly advertising themselves as vacation destinations for nature lovers, and they are seeking to capitalize on their striking terrains, hundreds of miles of rugged forest trails and abundant angler- and boat-friendly waterways. "We had built an economy on taking things out and taking things away," said Bob Warren, tourism officer at Redding's Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Now the mind-set is that things need to stay."....
Editorial: Environmental Impasse IN 1970, THE Clean Air Act was supported by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, including President Richard M. Nixon and Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.). When the act was amended under George H.W. Bush in 1990, a bipartisan Congress not only supported the changes but paid close attention, decreeing precise emission allowances and timetables. The bipartisan consensus has since crumbled, and the legislative process has ground to a halt. In an unpublished paper, Richard Lazarus of Georgetown University points out that increasing partisanship has meant that although dozens of environmental laws passed in the 1970s and 1980s, there have been no amendments to the Clean Air Act since 1990, or to the Clean Water Act since 1987. Congress has not reauthorized the tax that funds toxic waste cleanup, and it has made no significant reforms to laws on mining, grazing or endangered species protection on federal lands since 1992. These days only riders attached to appropriations bills can pass, or oddities such as the new budget resolution that may legalize drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge....
Column: We can't afford junk science In the past we used our natural resources freely. We took great pride in our ability to convert resources into products with a direct benefit to the public. We turned trees into houses, coal and iron into automobiles. Today we hear that we must stop using our economic resources. Scale back. Harvest fewer trees. Drill fewer oil wells. Use less fertilizer. Build no new power plants. Encourage the government to buy back land it once offered to its people, even though the government already owns one-third of our land base. Clearly the future of this nation depends on the proper and wise use of all our resources. But how do we distinguish between the proper use, the misuse or the failure to use our resources?....
Woodsy retreats -- private homes on public land Like all simple real estate dreams, the waking reality was a little more complicated -- both logistically and politically. These affordable vacation homes were all cabins in the U.S. Forest Service Recreational Residence Program. Created in the 1920s to encourage city dwellers to enjoy the recently established national forests by going out and constructing a vacation home on specified plots, the program grew through the 1960s to 19,000 cabins before it ended. There are now about 15,000 Forest Service cabins nationwide, with nearly half in California. While some cabins have been traded on the open market, many are still owned by the children and grandchildren of the individuals that built them. And though they are bought and sold on the MLS, these cabins are not real estate at all. The buyer doesn't buy the land, which remains part of the national forest, but pays for the "structures" (the house and any outbuildings) and the transfer of the special-use permit (like a lease for the land) with the Forest Service, which is renewed every 20 years....
Mountain lodge leveled by blast A fiery explosion leveled a popular mountain lodge Saturday in a remote area of the Gunnison National Forest. At least 16 people were hospitalized, many with serious injuries, and three children were believed to be missing late Saturday after the midafternoon blast and blaze at the Electric Mountain Lodge, north of Paonia. Delta County Sheriff Fred McKee would not confirm whether there were fatalities. The coroner, dispatched to the scene, could not be reached for comment....
Malibu dwellers draw property lines in sand Just off the Pacific Coast Highway, where the Santa Monica Mountains tower over the ocean, some of Hollywood's biggest stars have settled into a slice of heaven. Steven Spielberg. Danny DeVito. Goldie Hawn. Over the years, they have all joined the lucky few who call Broad Beach home. Their front yards open onto a mile-long, sandy stretch of Pacific coastline. They spent millions to get here, and they'd like to be left alone. Alan Latteri didn't spend a dime, and nobody's heard of him. But he figures he has as much right to the sand, surf and sun as any movie mogul. The California Coastal Commission agrees. So do the residents of Broad Beach, as long as Latteri and others stay off their property. The question is: Where does the front yard end and the public beach begin? So far, the answer is a crazy quilt of property lines, easements and No Trespassing signs that confuse all but the experts....
Environmentalists get creative in bid to stop developer Environmentalists are considering an unusual and often controversial approach to preserving 23 acres in Annandale Canyon which are slated for development. Several groups have begun talking about creating a benefit assessment district in West Pasadena, which would allow neighbors to buy the land from the developer. The payments would show up in the form of higher property tax bills. "If the owner accepted this, in a sense we'd be purchasing it as a mortgage,' said Tim Wendler, who sits on the advisory board of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. A few board members have floated the idea of getting a grant to fund an appraisal of the property, which would be the first step toward creating a benefit district. Neighbors in a designated area would have to vote through the mail to assess themselves extra property tax. All that would be required for passage is a simple majority of the returned ballots....
Eco-terrorists target Gold Country development Most Bay Area residents know Auburn -- a quaint gold rush town in the Sierra foothills -- as a pit stop on the way to Lake Tahoe. Brick buildings from the 1850s dot the streets, and old-timers still gather for coffee at the marble counter of the 109-year-old Auburn Drug Co. But in the past three months, Auburn has become known for something else -- "eco-terrorism." The Earth Liberation Front -- the underground environmental network that has used sabotage, arson and vandalism to attack everything from logging equipment to genetically engineered crops and SUVs -- has hit the foothills town and fast-growing nearby communities. And this time, the radical group's target is sprawl....
Taxpayers lost out in land swaps On at least three occasions, land broker Scott Gragson traded property to McCarran International Airport and then reacquired it nearly two years later for less than he originally sold it for, a Review-Journal investigation shows. That means the properties depreciated hundreds of thousands of dollars even as the Las Vegas Valley ranked among the nation's hottest real estate markets. Asked how that could occur, airport officials said the dirt lots lost value while owned by taxpayers because the county placed deed restrictions on them prohibiting certain types of development....
Churches go green; Environmentalists join with faithful to save rain forest flora, fauna With a sprinkling of holy water, a priest blessed thousands of palm seedlings in a ceremony in Bogota's main park, sealing an unusual Palm Sunday pact between the Roman Catholic Church and environmentalists to save a critically endangered parrot. Thousands of miles away, 22 churches in the United States are for the first time using environmentally sustainable palm from Guatemala and Mexico for their Palm Sunday services this year. This convergence of religion and ecology is taking root across scattered areas of the globe amid heightened environmental awareness among some church leaders....
Getting right with the environment Thanks to the Rev. Leroy Hedman, the parishioners at Georgetown Gospel Chapel in Seattle, Wash., take their baptismal waters cold. The preacher has unplugged the electricity-guzzling heater in the immersion baptism tank behind his pulpit. He has also installed energy-saving fluorescent lights throughout the church and has placed water barrels beneath its gutter pipes -- using runoff to irrigate the congregation's all-organic gardens. Such "creation care" should be at the heart of evangelical life, Hedman says, along with condemning abortion, protecting family and loving Jesus. He uses the term "creation care" because, he says, it does not annoy conservative Christians for whom the word "environmentalism" connotes liberals, secularists and Democrats. "It's amazing to me that evangelicals haven't gone quicker for the green," Hedman said. "But as creation care spreads, evangelicals will demand different behavior from politicians. The Republicans should not take us for granted."....
Greener Ways to the Great Beyond A typical, no-frills funeral and burial in the United States costs from $6,000 to $10,000, uses formaldehyde in embalming, nondegradable steel caskets and concrete vaults placed shoulder to shoulder in established cemeteries. Burial in a green or natural cemetery, on the other hand, can cost half as much, and embalming, metal caskets and concrete burial vaults are prohibited. Instead, biodegradable caskets, usually made of wood or cardboard, or burial shrouds of natural fibers are used. Green cemetery graves are placed randomly throughout a woodland or meadow, and marked only in natural ways, with the planting of a tree or shrub, or the placement of a flat indigenous stone, which may or may not be engraved. Burial locations are mapped with a GIS (geographic information system), so future generations can locate an ancestor's final resting place. There are more than 200 green cemeteries in Great Britain, and the idea is beginning to catch on here in North America....
Column: Common sense on global warming When a controversial issue in science is politicized and seems to become a fad, does an ordinary person have the tools to judge whether it is likely to be good science, or junk science carried along by scare headlines and politically-correct institutional group think? Well, the ordinary person has some advantages that academic scientists often lack — such as common sense, a disinterested objectivity, and freedom from peer pressure or political agenda. He does not need to worry about rejection of his doctoral thesis or denial of tenure if he says something heretical to establishment science. The ordinary person is not trained in the currently prevailing paradigms of institutional science, and he is able to see things that the intensely specialized graduate studies and tightly focused paradigms of the academic world tend to filter out. With that in mind, let's take a look at global warming....
Column: Envirocrats and Their Wall of Fear The coining of a new word in the English language - envirocrat - has become necessary since a vociferous minority has falsely captured the moral high ground of the environmental consciousness of the American people. Americans, by culture and heritage, love the flora and fauna that surround their daily lives. Intelligent corrections to environmental threats have been addressed and resolved. An example is the catalytic converter. New exhaust standards introduced in 1994 have reduced pollutants from automobiles up to 97.5 percent in hydrocarbons alone and carbon monoxide by 96 percent. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimated in one 20-year period the U.S. government and private industry spent close to one trillion dollars on pollution control and continues to spend at a cost of hundreds of billions per year. But is this ever enough in the eyes of the envirocrat?....
Coming Soon: Tularosa Basin National Desalination Facility On Alamogordo’s LaVelle Road a facility designed to create hope for the future is being built. Nate Gentry, who is on the Council on Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has authorized and funded the Tularosa Basin National Desalination Research Facility through the energy and appropriations bill. “The Alamogordo facility is where the Bureau of Reclamation can test water desalination technologies,” Gentry said. “Alamogordo overlies the Tularosa Basin which has large quantities brackish water. The ultimate objective is to drive down the cost (of desalination) by looking at energy costs and brine disposal costs.” Funding for the completion of the facility is not yet in place, Gentry said. The facility will be the first inland facility of its kind focused on inland brackish water in the United States, said Mike Hightower of Sandia Laboratories during a September 2004 tour of the layout of the future facility....
Democrats take aim at Western sportsmen vote It's a new sort of hunting season in Western states, and the guys carrying rifles are the ones being targeted. The Democratic Party is taking aim at the hearts and minds of sportsmen, hoping it can help them overcome their tough showing in rural areas during last year's election. In Colorado and elsewhere, Democrats are talking about rural development, casting environmental protection in small-town terms, and making a case that they, too, care about preserving traditional ways of life. That's where hunters come in. As Democratic consultant David Sirota puts it, the party is trying to "turn hunters green" on land and water protection while also standing up for hunting and fishing rights....
Smitten Bigfooters keep making tracks into the Blue Mountains You'll see them leaving town in mud-spattered four-wheel-drives and loaded down with cameras, binoculars and bags of white plaster for casting footprints. In the Blue Mountains that straddle the Oregon-Washington border, they're part of a rite of spring: Bigfooters, as they call themselves, on the chase of the elusive hairy hominid. Dar Addington's life changed forever about 15 years ago after coming upon just one set of substantial tracks near the Mill Creek Watershed boundary. "I was hooked. I swallowed the big, pink shrimp," she joked, likening her obsession to a fish grabbing an angler's bait. "People who haven't seen the tracks just don't get it."Since 1966, when a Walla Walla cyclist named Pete Luther found a series of 19-inch-long footprints along Tiger Creek Canyon Road east of Walla Walla, the Blues have been a recognized hot spot for Bigfoot hunters....
Cowboy Day resolution introduced Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., has introduced a resolution declaring a "National Day of the Cowboy" and says it has bipartisan support. If approved, cowboys would be recognized this July 23 and on July 22, 2006. "Our country looks to cowboys as role models because we admire their esteemed and enduring code of conduct. They have integrity and courage in the face of danger," Thomas said on the Senate floor. "Cowboys respect others, defend those who cannot defend themselves, and hold their families dear. They are good stewards of the land and all its creatures, possess a strong work ethic, and are loyal to their country....
Roper comes up with a nice surprise Tie-down roper Scott Kormos has been knocking on the door for quite some time. On Saturday, the 24-year-old cowboy finally kicked it in, winning the tie-down championship at RodeoHouston, the biggest achievement of his four-year professional career. Although, Kormos qualified for his first Wrangler National Finals Rodeo last year, he did it mostly by winning smaller rodeos during the year. He'd only won one tour event (San Angelo last year) until Sunday at Reliant Stadium. The Teague, Texas, cowboy showed he belonged with the elite of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association crowd, beating a field that included a large number of multiple NFR qualifiers and world champions....
Russell Art Auction sets record A Charlie Russell watercolor, "Antelope Hunt No. 1," sold for $170,000 Saturday night, leading the 2005 Russell Art Auction to record sales of just under $2 million over both nights. The record was $1.54 million, set last year. "Whoohoo!" crowed auction chairwoman Deb Sivumaki. "I've only been speechless three times in my life: the night my husband proposed to me, yesterday when the auction pin sold for more than $10,000, and tonight." Artwork sold for $1,207,050 Saturday night, smashing last year's second-night record of $930,800. Friday night's total also set a record: $738,000 worth of art was sold, led by $90,000 for another big Russell watercolor, "Plains Indian on Horseback." By comparison, that single night topped the two-night total of $616,500 sold in 1996. Together, the two nights totaled $1,945,050. The first time the auction crossed the $1 million threshold was in 1998. Other Russells sold were Lot 239, a water color, "Cowboy on a Horse," for $57,500; Lot 232, a pen and ink, for $20,000; Lot 233, a sculpture titled "Medicine Man" for $12,500; Lot 179, a pair of sculptures, for $2,250; Lot 271, a silver cast, "Indian Chief," for $8,000; a pair of bronzes for $3,000....
Pan de campo official state bread? Villains have been made of carbohydrates in recent years, but one lawmaker’s proposal might prove that bread is not dead. State Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, has introduced a bill that would make pan de campo the official state bread of Texas. The flatbread, sometimes called cowboy bread, is traditionally cooked in a Dutch oven or over a campfire. It is thicker than a tortilla but thinner than a biscuit, and was commonly eaten around the campfires and chuckwagons on cattle drives. "It was the staff of life for the vaqueros," Guillen said. Guillen said the bread has historical significance because it was eaten by cowboys who worked the vast ranches that defined early Texas, which would later give way to the economy we know today. But the bread is not a staple for cowboys all over the state, said Jim Calhoun, a lifelong Texas cowboy and rancher whose great-grandfather, T.B. Saunders, founded the Fort Worth Stockyards. A cowboy moving north from South Texas finds pan de campo until he hits about 30 miles north of San Antonio, where it is replaced with biscuits or other bread, Calhoun said....
Town sells chance to rule over testicle festival Conconully anoints the King and Queen of the Ball, royalty-for-a-day who reign over the Cowboy Caviar Fete. And now the chamber of commerce in this north-central Washington town of about 200 (pronounced kahn-kah-NELL-ee) is auctioning off the chance to preside over this festival, which celebrates a delicacy of the prairie cowboy -- bull testicles. Winning bonus: The king and queen can sample the goods, if they desire. The royal couple will present the "Balls to the Wall" award to the restaurant with the best offering, and a $100 prize to the winner of the "Cow-raoke" singing contest. They'll assume the title from rancher Rod Haeberle and his girlfriend, Toni Wilson, the reigning king and queen....
Western worship Members of the Cowboy Church of Ellis County enjoy a slice of 1950s Americana, a time when baptisms were held in a horse trough and services closed by singing Happy Trails. "We operate on the principle of removing barriers," pastor Gary Morgan of Waxahachie said. "We're not going to ask for money, ask you to dress up, or even give you a call. Just come when you're comfortable." The church on U.S. 287 in Waxahachie, southeast of Mansfield, is interdenominational but has a partnership with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. There's an outdoor rodeo arena on-site. During the week, outreach activities include barrel racing, bull riding and calf roping. The church also offers a program for young children called Lord's Buckaroos twice a month....
On the Edge of Common Sense: Being on first-name basis with ER not good It has not been a good year when the nurses in the emergency room call you by your first name, as in, "Roll on in here, Lee. What did ya do this time?" Judy was talking to her grown daughter on the phone Sunday morning. "Yep, I've finally talked your father into going to the hospital. He's in the bedroom now tryin' to get his shirt on over the bad shoulder. Just a minute, I can't hear ya over his groanin'. Let me just close the bedroom door." It began slowly and built up until Lee finally said, "I can't sleep on my left side 'cause of my bad arm, my right side 'cause of my bad leg, or my back 'cause of my bad back."....

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