While the F.I. Goodburn Post No. 517 American Legion had planned their usual Memorial Day Service at the Marcus-Amherst and Trinity Lutheran Cemeteries on Monday, May 30, had a speaker, and the usual tributes to those who had served their country ready_this year, this was not going to happen! Rain had fallen during the night and a severe thunderstorm was predicted about the time of the 9:30 celebration as well as a tornado watch until 6 p.m. This year’s service was cancelled.
I went back in my files and found that in 1917, the weather had sent the speaking part of the Memorial Day to the basement of the Catholic Church. They met at the school campus, marched down to the public square on Main Street, and at 1 p.m., marched to the cemetery where they had a program and decorated service people’s graves and then marched back to the Catholic Church where another program was that included the speaker of the day. (I wonder how many would do all this “marching” today!?) I also found that at this time they did have a sidewalk to walk on to the Cemetery. Two years earlier, people had decided a sidewalk was necessary.
June 3, 1915—”A Sidewalk to the Cemetery”. L.E. Toner and Theodore Treinen circulated a petition last week for subscriptions to build a cement sidewalk on the west side of Ash street commencing at the corner of the Wm. Willey residence and extending south across the Mrs. M. McLeever acreage property to the cemetery. Signers to the petition were numerous and they will be able to get the $300, the cost of the building the walk, which will be 750 feet long and four feet wide. The amounts of the subscriptions ranged from $10 to $1. The work on this good improvement will begin soon. Ash Street will be opened up and extended to the cemetery.
This fall, one tradition will end at Husker (Nebraska) football games. The red balloons NU fans normally release after the home team’s first score at Memorial Stadium will not fly this year because of a helium shortage, as well a environmental concerns. Because of helium shortage in 2012, the tradition was stopped. That year at the season’s opener against Southern Mississippi, there were about 2,000 to 2,500 balloons, about half the normal amount released. Then there were no more releasing balloons. This trend started in the 1940’s, so it has been around for a long time. But eventually it did return only this year will be ended again.
Just when we think we have heard of impossible diseases, another one comes up_monkeypox. It is a smallpox-like disease from Africa that has made rare appearances outside of the continent. Health officials around the world are keeping watch for more cases because, for the first time, the disease appears to be spreading among people, especially young men, who didn’t travel to Africa.
Monkeypox is a virus that originates in wild animals like rodents and primates, and occasionally jumps to people. The illness was first identified by scientists in 1958 when there were two outbreaks of a “pox-like” disease in research monkeys_thus the name monkeypox. The first known human infection was in 1970 in a 9 year-old boy in a remote part of Congo.
Monkeypox belongs to the same virus family as smallpox but causes milder symptoms. Patients experience fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body. Incubation period is from five days to three weeks. It can be fatal for up to one in 10 people and is thought to be more severe in children. People exposed to the virus are often given one of several smallpox vaccines and anti-viral drugs are also being developed.
In 2003, there were 47 people in six U.S. states the had confirmed or probable cases. They caught the virus from pet prairie dogs that had been housed near imported small mammals from Ghana.
Now, it’s the first time monkeypox appears to be spreading among people who didn’t travel to Africa. Most of the cases involve men who have had sex with men. Monkeypox has not previously been documented to have spread through sex, but it can be transmitted through close contact with infected people, their body fluids and their clothing or bedsheets. Fifteen countries on four continents have reported confirmed cases of monkeypox in humans from 1970 to 2021. What more can we expect to hit us after our bout with COVID-19?
Did you read about the woman at Rock Rapids that was arrested and booked into the Lyon county Jail on charges of assault on a peace officer with a dangerous weapon, interference with official acts and contributing to the delinquency of a minor? She was arrested after authorities say she ran over a sheriff’s deputy’s foot while driving away to avoid talking to him about a car accident.
The Sheriff’s deputy responded to a single-vehicle rollover at approximately 6:06 p.m. The deputy pulled up to the scene to talk to the driver, who was standing on the side of the highway and told him that one of the minor passengers had pulled the emergency brake, causing him to roll the vehicle.
Meanwhile, a woman, M. Davis was pulling away from the scene with three passengers all under age 18. The deputy followed her in his vehicle and noticed a brake light was not working, stopped her to identify and talk to the children who had been in the rollover.
Davis told the deputy she was taking the children to the hospital, but had passed by it already. The deputy told her to turn around and go back and he would meet her there. She took the three into the hospital, and returned to her car with two. She told the two boys, who were not her children, not to talk to the deputy. Then she drove over the front of the deputy’s foot while jumping the curb and leaving the parking lot, driving recklessly and at a high rate of speed.
The deputy and a back-up officer followed her to her home where she got out and ran with the two boys into her house. The deputy and other officer followed her inside the house and chased her around a table before catching her. She continued to resist arrest while being handcuffed. (Sounds a little “fishy” as to why she would take the three children from the car that had rolled over, and saying she didn’t know them, to a hospital and later two of them to her home. Was the “dangerous weapon” the car tire that ran over the deputy’s foot?!)
Remember in your thoughts and prayers those who have lost loved ones to death and now have had their lives changed, have health problems with some being terminal, are struggling to make ends meet even though they are working, and be of help to those who are still distanced from their friends/family to build a bridge instead of a wall.
I will close with this quote from Bob Hope (1903-2003): “Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.’”