| And the amnesty award goes to J.Lo
Since we here at the People Column are only too happy to slag on Jennifer Lopez for any number of reasons (bad movies, mediocre records, entourages so large they get their own ZIP code), we should be fair and give the woman props when she earns it. And she has. Lopez will receive an award for her work as producer and star of a film examining the ongoing murders of hundreds of women in a Mexican border town, officials with Amnesty International said Friday. Lopez will receive the "Artists for Amnesty" award Feb. 14 at the Berlin Film Festival from Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta. The film "Bordertown" will make its debut Feb. 15 at the festival. In "Bordertown," Lopez plays an investigative journalist reporting on the serial killings of women in the border city of Juarez, Mexico.
Salt and sugar, begone
Editor's note: This is the final week of our writer's experiment with giving up sugar, dairy, meat, wheat and salt. How can I sum up a week without sugar, dairy, meat, fish, eggs, gluten and salt? Rice. That's what I ate. Lots of plain rice. The horror. I'd started the carnival of renunciation a month earlier by abandoning sugar. Dairy fell from my cupboard the next week, followed by meat, seafood and eggs, then gluten, and finally the dreaded salt. How would I handle so many dietary abandonments? What would I miss the most? As the list of what I could eat grew smaller, would my moods change? Would I lose weight? Could I even make it to the finish line? By week five, I was limping. Maimed. And the banishment of salt from my diet was salt in the wound.
County food stamp cases lag behind state growth
While the number of food stamp caseloads statewide has increased 41 percent in the past five years, Athens County has seen slightly more than half that growth. In that time, food stamp caseloads in the county increased 26 percent, an average 5 percent increase from year to year. According to the 2006 poverty report released by the Athens County Job and Family Services, an average of 7,477 people, making up 3,630 households, received monthly food stamp benefits in Athens County during the 2005-06 fiscal year, ending June 30. Statewide, an average 1.1 million individuals representing about 500,000 families participated in the monthly food stamp program. Tracy Galway, community relations coordinator for Athens County Job and Family Services, said she considered the five-year increase on par with the growth of the program, adding that the number of food stamp recipients usually varies from month to month.
East LB Retail Growing
In the course of the past 10 to 15 years, the face of East Long Beach has changed considerably. In that time, the Long Beach Towne Center replaced the Naval Hospital and a large center anchored by Lowes and a Dennys replaced the Los Altos Drive-In Theater; the Vons Center on Ximeno Ave. and the Los Altos Center on Bellflower Blvd. were vastly upgraded and Farmers and Merchants Bank on Bellflower Blvd. built both a new branch and an additional office building, which will finally attract tenants once the current Petco store is removed. A few other centers have been either finished or expanded. Bixby Land Company, located in Newport Beach, has developed two properties. According to Vice President Greg Gilroy, the unofficially named Jetson Center at Los Coyotes Diagonal and Stearns has one tenant and 3,100 square feet for one or two new tenants.
Action: FDL Siberian Husky team to compete in Iditarod
To mushers, including Don Smidt, and dog owner, Denise Cwiok, of Howl'n Winds Siberians, the Iditarod cannot be compared to any other competitive event in the world.
Smidt is already in Alaska preparing for this years race which will put to test the dogs of Howl'n Winds Siberians, located near Van Dyne.
At Howl'n Winds Siberians, we've been participating in mid- and long-distance sledding since 1997, participating in races from 10-300 miles, explained Cwiok. Don has set his sites on the ultimate race.
The Iditarod is a race of over 1,150 miles of the roughest, most beautiful terrain Mother Nature has to offer. The course is through country of jagged mountain ranges, frozen river, dense forest, desolate tundra and miles of wind-swept coast.
Add to that temperatures far below zero, winds that can cause a complete loss of visibility, the hazards of overflow, long hours of darkness and treacherous climbs and side hills and you have the Iditarod.
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