Digging Dinosaurs 2009

I obviously have no way to enforce this, but I respectfully suggest that you read last year's posts one and two and three. Okay? Okay. Thanks.

My lovely and gracious wife Liz worked hard again this year for her second-graders' open house. Once more, the theme was dinosaurs!

Parts of the Texas Dinosaur map are recycled from last year.



The cool pterodactyls belong to Ms. Cates, the teacher in room 17 next door.

Meat or vegetables? This chart lists the dinosaurs' diets, so you know which ones to run from.

Liz's dinosaur door. Through the window you can see ...

... the volcano! Notice the pterodactyl that got barbecued in midflight.

Essays line the hall.

My dinosaur would look like this ...

How can I think outside the box when they won't let me out?

Ha! My pebbles don't stink!

These dinos are looking a bit thin ...


Jurassic Park is a popular theme.

I'll guard these jelly beans with my life!

There's a glass candle holder under this volcano.


The hanging pterodactyl is a distinctive feature of this girl's display.


Dinosour World. When we open our mouths, you can see all the way to our toes. Or worse.


This boy chose to do a very good drawing.

The Hulk wrangles a dino. I like it.

This board includes some of our Dallas pictures.

As I said last year, thank God open house is over!

Gaa!
Not a dinosaur, this is Baby! Baby was the neighbors' cat, but I coaxed him/her and two sibling cats over with superior food. (It's not the same as stealing!) The siblings soon died, but Baby remains, along with our other cats.

Police Brutality in Baton Rouge!

This actually happened to someone we know.

Brian Townsend is a most excellent teacher and coach in Kermit. Two years ago he was brutally attacked by a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was responding to a noise complaint. Now the officer has plead guilty to excessive force.

You can look at the
Baton Rouge news coverage here and here and here. You can also view a video of the attack at Brian's MySpace page, but be advised it's not for the squeamish -- or the underage!

This case is reportedly the first civil rights conviction in Louisiana in the past ten years. Sentencing is to follow in two or three months. I will do my best to provide further updates!

He Coulda Won a Grammy ...

On Friday March 13th, we went to Dallas to see King Tut. Well, his treasures anyway.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the artifacts, but Floyd's Ancient Wonders Blog was evidently able to sneak a camera in.

The piece above was on the head of Tutankhamun when they found him.

Tutankhamun's name in heiroglyphics.

There's a cool story about the scarab in the above picture. It was carved from obsidian glass which may have been formed by a meteorite. (Watch out for the auto-start music!)

The tour ended with a sign that said this exhibit had hopefully honored Tutankhamun's memory and given him the eternal life which he had so eagerly sought.

Not 50 feet away from the aforementioned sign, the gift shop had this tacky Tut tissue box for sale. What kind of afterlife is this?
But then these stuffed camels were kinda cute.

We met up with our great niece and her fiance, both of whom blog also. It was good to see them again.

The next day, we went to the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science to see dinosaur bones found in the Big Bend area of Texas.

Robert digging for plaster casts of dinosaur bones.

We almost visited Rick Atchley's church on Sunday, but my tired family was ready to come home, so that's what we did.

The Notrees Wind Farm Nears Completion

(Notrees is a tiny, almost-ghost town 21 miles east of Kermit, and it does have trees. It also boasts a big honkin' wind farm. This article is used without permission from The Odessa American. The photo, also without permission, comes from The Winkler Post.)

BY BEN ADAMS

Drivers on Kermit Highway near Notrees might need to concentrate on keeping their eyes on the road.

Duke Energy now has 95 wind turbines up and nearly ready to enter commercial operation.

"All the turbines have been erected at this point. There's still some substation work that remains and site restoration, but we're expecting completion of all the onsite work in June 2009," Duke Energy spokesman Greg Efthimiou said.

Phase 1A of the Notrees wind power project went online in February during a test phase. The 55 1.65-megawatt Vestas wind turbines in Winkler County began spinning and pushing electrons on the state's power grid. A commercial operation date will be declared later this month, Efthimiou said. Construction of phase 1A began in June 2008.

Phase 1B, which began in October 2008 and has 11 of its 40 1.5-megawatt GE turbines in Ector County, has a commercial operation date scheduled for April.

The farms have a peak capacity of 150 megawatts. One megawatt provides enough power for about 800 to 1,000 homes.

Efthimiou said the turbines will provide up to 15 percent of the power needs of all Wal-mart and Sam's Club locations in Texas as well as their respective warehouses.

The project has provided an economic boost to the area, said Gary Vest, economic development director for the Odessa Chamber of Commerce. Each tower required between 100 and 150 workers to build.

"Sometimes they work around the clock," Vest said.

The base of each tower requires 400 cubic yards of concrete as well as lots of electrical work. Vest said local contractors such as Sun Electric, Dixie Electric and Saulsbury Industries helped to build the towers.

"That has a tremendous impact to our local economy when that's going on," Vest said. "It's hard to put an exact number on it."

Texas leads the country in wind power production, and companies like Duke are helping keep it that way.

"We've got a pretty large wind power presence in Texas for obvious reasons, it's a free and abundant resource," Efthimiou said.

(OTHER VOICES: Here's another blogger's view of the Notrees wind turbines.)

Yet Another Kermit

This one is behind the metal shop at Kermit High School. I didn't know of its existence until Liz asked me why I hadn't blogged it.

For Her Son and Jesus ...

(The Huffmans used to minister in Kermit before they moved to Lubbock and opened an excellent bookstore. I hope all three of my readers will shop there. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal published this touching story about them in their Sunday February 15th edition. I am excerpting it without permission as always.)

Melody Huffman, 51, keeps memories alive.

She dresses up as Aunt Lydia (as in Lydia from Thyatira, from the book of Acts) in a modest purple robe (like the kind Lydia might have sold) inside her Christian book store, The Bible Barn. She tells stories about giants and whales and fiery furnaces. On Feb. 7, five little kids - some she knew, some she didn't - marched around the store and blew kazoos and sucked on Dum Dums and the walls of Jericho came down.

"What do you think the name of this city is?" she asks her audience. "Do you think it's called Lubbock?"

Noooo.

"Do you think it's called Dallas?"

Noooo.

"No, not Dallas. It's ... called ... Jerrrrrichooo. Can you say that? One, two, three: Jerrrricchooo."
Monty, Huffman's husband, watches and smiles.

"She's been a Bible class teacher all her life," says Monty, 52, a minister at Central Lubbock Church of Christ, where the two attend. "She's probably been teaching Bible class since she was a pre-teenager. She's had 40 years of experience. It's something on her heart, and a way to use her gifts for something good."

The couple opened The Bible Barn in September 2007. Aunt Lydia was born two months later.

"I just love kids and just wanted to have something where they could come," Melody says of her alter ego and the weekly story time she calls Matthew's Korner, named in honor of her son. "I thought it would be something to help bring people in, something different. It's little. It's been slow. Sometimes kids are here; sometimes they're not, you know. But I'm always ready."

Ready or not

On Aug. 9, 1991, she wasn't ready. Parents never are, even when they know God holds the future and they'll all meet again one day. But little Matthew, 7 years, 1 month, and 1 day old when he died, was as ready as anyone's ever been.

The whole family was in Brazil. Melody and Monty were missionaries. The boys, Matthew and Micah, chased lizards and climbed trees. On Saturday night, Aug. 3, Matthew got sick. He was vomiting. He had headaches. The doctors said it was the Brazilian mumps. It wasn't.

"I was in the backseat as we were driving 30 miles to the hospital," Melody says with tears in her eyes. "And Matthew kept reaching out. He had spinal meningitis. He'd already gone blind and lost his ability to walk, and he just kept reaching his hand.

"I'd hold it and he'd tell me, 'No, I don't want it.' And, just in desperation I said, 'Well whatever you want, I'll get it. Just tell me.' And he just said, 'I'm trying to reach Jesus' hand,' and his hand closed in the air and ... that was it."

Telling stories

Christian author Max Lucado, a former missionary to Brazil himself and pastor of Oak Hills Church of Christ in San Antonio where relatives of the Huffmans attended, wrote about their ordeal in his 1993 book "And the Angels Were Silent."

"Max wrote about that and what his last words were," Melody said. " 'I'm reaching for Jesus.' "

It's still hard to talk about. Some days she can't. But each Saturday she'll sit down in front of photos of Matthew, framed and hung on the wall in his "Korner," and tell other people's children all the stories she used to tell him.

Five-year-old Andy Woods even kind of looks like him.

"What's that?" he asks, sucker in his mouth, pointing to a book just before things get going on Saturday.

"That is a book about The Story Keepers," Melody says. "They keep the story of Jesus alive."
(OTHER VOICES: Matthew Morine has a great post about the future of the largest churches of Christ. Check it out.)

Artoo-Detoo - Imperial, Texas

48 miles south of Kermit,

on the campus of the Buena Vista Independent School District.

Metal shop project?