Feed the children!

Crothersville students have been doing the ISTEP this week. At our house, not much has changed as far as any habits we do. As always, Patrick has his supper, nightly shower and in bed between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. In the mornings, it's up by 7:00 a.m. sometimes another shower and breakfast then off to school by 7:45 a.m.

Sadly, some kids are so lucky. They don't receive a hot meal, hot shower or bath, 8-10 hours of sleep at night, or breakfast each morning. A group that was recently formed, called Academic Improvement, thought it would be a great idea to feed the ISTEP students breakfast on a morning before their test.

Approximately 250 kids and teachers are doing the testing each day. With the strong winds from hurricane Ike, school was cancelled last week, so the ISTEP had to be put off for a few days. Luckily with the power outages, we hadn't purchased the food yet. We decided once school got back in session this week, Tuesday would be the day we'd cook breakfast for the students testing.

Thanks to Chrystal who went shopping on Monday night and purchased the food from donations we received from our local VFW Post #1083, Scottsburg Jay-C and Mark Combs from Jay-C in Seymour.

At 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Zabrina, Chrystal, Shanna, Drew and myself were in the Home Economics room at school, boiling water for the gravy, scrambling eggs in the electric skillets, warming the sausage and biscuits in the ovens, then placing the cooked food in the warmers, waiting on the kids to show up. When it was all done, we had 3 warmers full of biscuits, 1 1/2 warmers full of peppered gravy, 2 warmers full of sausage, 2 1/2 warmers of scrambled eggs, and 16 gallons of white milk, chocolate milk, and orange juice.

After the morning announcements or first group of kids made their way to the Home Ec. room and were served by the Freshman National Honor Society volunteers who had came to the room to help me serve the food. There was about 12 different groups that made their way to the breakfast over the next two hours. It sure makes you feel good to hear the kids thank you for the breakfast and hear all the other comments about how good the food tasted, or how happy they were for the amount of food they received. Denise helped serve the scrambled eggs, her favorite job, and made sure to tell all her fellow students, "Good luck with your ISTEP test today!"

I'm not sure when the results come back to the school from the fall ISTEP testing, or if we'll just read about the scores in the newspaper. But, I'm excited about the results, and hope what we did will help the scores increase from previous years.

Guess we'll find out later...

Wine or Whine

This is Tuesday evening. Just 2 days from when the electicity in our burg went off. By the reaction of a few, you would think they have been without electric for weeks! At the Town Hall we have had numerous calls of residents asking if we knew when their electric would be on again.

In a humorous call, some lady asked as I answered the phone, "Is my electricity on yet? I'm at work and wonder if my electricity is on at my house!" Now how do you respond to that? How the heck would I know if her power had been restored? I didn't have a front door key, so I had no idea. (Yes, this woman is a blonde!)

Below is a picture of the tree that fell across South Preston Street:





The resident is waiting for Duke Energy to show up and remove the down power lines from the tree before they can begin cutting and removing the tree.

After talking with a very nice lady from Duke Energy on Monday evening she told me she had no idea when the power would be restored. She said it could be as early as Wednesday or as late as Saturday. By now, the ones that are still without power have lost their freezer items, unless they have made other arrangements. Some residents are on oxygen and need the power for their pumps or they are without water due to their pump not working. The Duke lady suggested those residents make other arrangements to spend time with family members or other relatives or go to a hotel.

I think some residents just like find ways to complain no matter what and won't be happy with anything that happens.

Today, during lunch, I seen 2 Duke Energy workers in a local restaurant talking with the owner about her electric being out at her home. The workers informed her there were 2 other teams of workers on their way to our burg and would be in Town the rest of the afternoon. By the time I got back to work and shared the information with the customers who were still calling in asking questions about the power being turned back on, it started being repeated the Duke workers were sitting down at the local eatery, taking a break, while the community was without power! Grrr...isn't it funny how a good deed can quickly change with someone not repeating the truth? Guess some people just like to keep this stirred up.

Escaping the weather ... again

Lately, when it has came to the weather, it seems we have been pushing our luck. Some of my neighbors in our small community were a little unlucky after the winds from hurricane Ike made it's way through southern Indiana.

Marvin and DeEtta Chasteen:



Our electricity was out for several hours on Sunday. I seen several lines down throughout Town and several taken down from the fallen tree branches. The only stoplight in Town was out. It's sad people don't know how to drive when the stoplight isn't working. There were several looking at Jollie Gibson Jr's place as they passed on 31:



Brian and Holly Sweany, who are good friends of mine, who live on County Road 1000 East, also had some damage to their fence around their pool:



It seems almost everyone substained some sort of broken limbs, no electric, or some sort of damage during this recent storm that passed through our small burg.

Others close to us haven't been so lucky. We should, as always, count our blessings.