Harsh weather puts dogs in danger of euthanasia

Courtesy Photo

On Death Row: These puppies’ mother has already been euthanized and they face the same fate is someone doesn’t step up to adopt them immediately.

By LOU ANTONELLI

Managing Editor

With temperatures now dropping below freezing, the fate of homeless and abandoned dogs in Clarksville now hangs in the balance.

With the city shelter and local vet clinic running out of space as they take in dogs who otherwise would die of exposure, they may face little choice but to humanely euthanize the dogs.

“The Red River County Humane Society (RRCHS) has been providing spay and neuter assistance for over 20 years, yet people would rather dump or abandon puppies and adult dogs than be responsible pet owners,” says Humane Society President Beth Vogel.

The mother of the litter shown in the photo was euthanized because her owner was too irresponsible to have her spayed, said Vogel, “so she lost her life due to a person’s selfishness.” The puppies are at the Clarksville Animal Hospital. All told, there are 12 puppies in two litters who need rescue.

Another dog, a five-year old black lab female, also needs a home immediately and is danger of being euthanized.

The Humane Society will help with the vaccinations and spaying or neutering of any of these dogs. If you can help with any of these adoptions needed immediately, call the Humane Society at 903-966-2275.

Vogel said she would like to see some changes in city law.

“The Humane Society has asked the city to pass a spay and neuter ordinance, but no one seems to think the lives of animals are important,” she said. “The city and county both should address this long-standing problem rather than remain in the Dark Ages.”

“Most towns and cities have spay and neuter ordinances,” she continued.  “Clarksville and the county need to get with modern times and follow their example.”

“Animal lives do matter,” said Vogel. “They feel pain, neglect, abuse, cold and heat just as much as humans,” she said. “The lives of animals are important.”

The Clarksville Times has a fund to help pay for adoptions in the memory of Millie Antonelli, who passed away in May. If you like some help with the cost of adopting, call Lou or Patricia at 903-427-0002.

City seeks public’s help with ongoing sewer problem

By LOU ANTONELLI

Managing Editor

If you were asked what is a common thing that clogs up waste water pipes, you would probably answer “grease”

And you wouldn’t be wrong. But as a result of changes in household habits over recent years, grease poured down the drain is no longer the most common thing jamming up sewer lines.

“Eighty percent of clogs now are caused by baby wipes,” according to City Utility Director Matt McAdoo.

Grease is an intermittent problem, less serious during warmer months, notes McAdoo. Now that the weather is turning colder, it will become more of a problem as the grease solidifies in the mains. But baby wipes have become an constant and serious problem, and McAdoo and the City of Clarksville are asking for your help.

“Please don’t flush them,” says McAdoo.

Toilet paper is not a problem because it dissolves and is biodegradable, he said. But baby wipes do not dissolve. Even when labeled that they can be flushed down the toilet, “they really can’t,” said McAdoo.

Also called wet wipes, wet towels or moist towelettes, the cleaning products are becoming a problem in sewerage lines nationwide.

Every week the city waste water treatment plant has to collect buckets of them, along with other non-biodegradable products that are flushed which shouldn’t be, said McAdoo, such as condoms, feminine hygiene products and dope bags.

He noted that every week four pumps at the waste water treatment plant will each yield up a five gallon bucket of clogged material, consisting mostly of baby wipes.

The Clarksville sewage plant only has a screen for incoming waste water, notes McAdoo, and not a mechanical device that would separate solids, called a clarifier. Right now the city can’t afford a clarifier, which would cost approximately $200,000. That’s why city employees have to haul out bucketfuls of material clogging up the pumps by hand.

Each month when McAdoo makes his report to the city council, the baby wipe problem is usually at the top of the list for problems with city utilities.

McAdoo, along with the Mayor and city council members, urges you to throw wipes in the trash where they belong and save the wear, tear and man hours needed to deal with them in the waste water system.

It's Homecoming tonight

Clarksville High School Homecoming will be held Friday, Oct. 26. The members of the Homecoming Court are, front row: KeeAutra Moore, Carolina Salinas, Asjah Griffin, Deont'e Tavie; back row: Markeath Garcia, Tyrell Hobbs, Alana Puckett, Rickerius Williams. The King will be crowned during the pep rally at 3:00 p.m. that afternoon at the Clarence L. Nix Gym.  The queen will be crowned pre-game 7:00 p.m. at the New Century Club Field.

Magnolia Brush plans new warehouse

By LOU ANTONELLI

Managing Editor

The Clarksville City Council Tuesday night granted Magnolia Brush Manufacturing a variance to the local fire code to facilitate the construction of a new warehouse.

General Manager Scott Adams asked for the variance at a new 47,000 square foot warehouse to be built at 1001 North Cedar Street.

Under current code, the new warehouse would require a sprinkler system, but he said the city’s water supply is inadequate. He asked for a variance to the sprinkler requirement.

The warehouse will be used for shipping, inventory and receiving and have a “limited number of employees,” said Adams.

He said with many doors plus one side of the building being composed of nothing but loading docks “there’s plenty of exits.”

He said he was making the request for the variance “because we want to move ahead and get the building built.”

Adams said the city attorney said location could be considered to be “grandfathered” because none of the other Magnolia warehouses have sprinklers and the new warehouse would still be less than 50 percent of the size of the entire complex.

Adams noted Magnolia has 94 employees. Council members approved the request for the variance unanimously.

“Thank you for continuing to invest in Clarksville,” said Mayor Ann Rushing. “We’re proud that you are so willing to expand.”

In other action at Tuesday’s meeting, the council:

* Approved paying Pender Water Wells of Texarkana for Well #5 repairs.

* Approved the Clarksville EDC's recommendation to reimburse $25,000.00 to the Tourism Committee for wayfinding signage fabrication and installation, and finding a public purpose is met in the promotion of the City for economic development.

* Approved a resolution proclaiming October 23-31, 2018 as Red Ribbon Week.

* Approved a resolution proclaiming November 5-9, 2018 as Municipal Court Week

* Approved an ordinance fixing Water and Sewer Rates at the same rates as the preceding year.

* Approve the Clarksville Economic Development 2018-19 Budget.

Former teacher pleads guilty of theft, will repay $33,576

By LOU ANTONELLI
Managing Editor
A former teacher in the Avery ISD, Brooke Nicole Jackson, 38, pled guilty on Tuesday to a second degree felony charge of Theft by a Public Servant.
The plea bargain follows an investigation by the Avery ISD in August of the illegal appropriation and/or expenditures of student activity funds. Jackson was suspended at that time.
The plea bargain was entered by District Attorney Val Varley with Sixth District Court Judge Wesley Tidwell at the county courthouse Tuesday. Attorney Dan Meehan was the public defender for Jackson in her court appearance.
The second degree felony carries a ten year sentence, which will be suspended for five years of supervised probation. Jackson is ordered to make restitution of $33,576 to the Avery ISD, and also do 200 hours of community service.
She was also ordered to pay $355 in court costs and a $50 Crimestoppers fee.
 Jackson was required to serve ten days in a state jail, and was given credit for time already spent in jail. Red River County Jail records indicate Jackson was booked in Oct. 1.
At the time of the original investigation in August, Avery ISD Debbie Drew said “Avery ISD expects each individual educator and employee to conduct oneself with integrity and to be a model of excellence for students.”
She continued the district wants to assure taxpayers “we are being good trustees of their money.”

Red River Charities Banquet is Saturday

By BRUCE E. WILLIAMS

Times Correspondent

Plans have been finalized for the 15th annual Red River County Charities Inc. banquet that will take place this Saturday, Oct. 13, in the Clarksville High School cafetorium starting at 6:00 p.m. Guest speaker for the occasion will be Clarksville ISD Superintendent, Kermit Ward.

A large crowd is expected to be on hand for the event that will also feature entertainment, prize drawings, and a meal featuring a choice of ribeye steak or baked chicken and loaded baked potatoes. 

Tickets are still on sale for the banquet, and can be purchased from any committee member, with the committee consisting of Hazel English, Chandra Johnson, John McPeters, Beverly Nelson, and Birda Rosser. The charge for admission is $12 for a single ticket and $20 per couple. Tickets can also be purchased on the day of the banquet at the door with the price for admission remaining the same. 

Sponsors for the event this year include the First National Bank of Tom Bean-Clarksville Branch, First Federal Community Bank, and Paris-Lamar County Health District. 

Thinking on an overcast day about The Ring-a-Ding Girl

By LOU ANTONELLI
Managing Editor
Every small town in America has its own local civic festival. If you happen to be the county seat, you get to host the county fair once a year, but at the very least everybody has some occasion to exhibit local pride.
Clarksville’s Fall Bazaar is this Saturday, if you hadn’t heard. Actually, if you haven’t heard yet, I’m kind of curious whether that rock you live under is igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic (yes, I stayed awake during my high school geology class.)
There are multiple articles in this issue about the various events and opportunities you have to entertain yourselves. In my case, I’ll be one of the seven local authors in the library. I’ll have copies of my award-nominated alternate history for sale, “Another Girl, Another Planet”.
Science fiction and fantasy is a bit of a specialized genre, so when I attend author events at occasions for the general public I don’t have high expectations for sales. It’s different when I attend literary conferences. But stop on by and say howdy!
You could probably surmise that with my literary interests, I have always been a big fan of The Twilight Zone, especially the original series which ran from 1959 to 1964. I’m not old enough to have seen the show during its initial run, but it’s been in syndication ever since.
I recently saw an episode called “The Ring-a-Ding Girl”, and it comes to mind because of the bazaar coming up. You see, the crucial plot point in the story is that a Hollywood celebrity returns to the small town she grew up in, and proceeds to mess up plans for the town’s annual Founders Day Picnic.
Bunny Blake is known at the Ring-a-Ding Girl in Hollywood because of her fondness for that kind of jewelry. As the episode starts, she and her personal assistant are packing for an airline flight across the country.
Bunny mentions that it is the day of the annual Founders Day Picnic in the small town she grew up in. Unlike the stereotypical Hollywood celebrity who has nothing good to say about the “common people” they grew up with, Bunny has only good memories about her hometown, and remembers they even took up a collection to pay for her trip to Hollywood when she kicked off her acting career.
In the next scene, her sister back homes opens the door and finds Bunny has made a surprise visit One of the skills of Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone is that it could tell an engrossing story well enough that you would forget plot inconsistencies. As you watch the episode you forget to remember that Blake was on a jet and not supposed to be going home that day.
Bunny visits a number of people she knew well when she was growing up, and everyone is happy to see her, but then she throws everyone a curve by saying she will put in a personal appearance at the local auditorium – at the same time as the Founders Day Picnic.
Everyone tells her that will quash the picnic, but she firmly – but nicely – sticks to her guns.
As the time for both the picnic and her appearance nears, a violent storm breaks out over the city. Meanwhile, the show cuts to a scene of the pilot in the jet that Bunny and her assistant are on, telling them there’s rough weather ahead. Then we see the two women. The assistant is worried, but Bunny seems unconcerned.
Back at the house, “Bunny” is talking to her sister and nephew and getting ready to go to the auditorium, there’s a commotion as emergency vehicles rush by the house. The sister and nephew rush to the window, and they don’t notice Bunny doesn’t. Instead, she softly tells them goodbye and then steps outside into the pouring rain, and with a look of resignation on her face, disappears.
A minute later a local policeman calls and tells the sister a jet crashed in the storm and onto the city park, but almost no one was killed on the ground. They had gone over to the auditorium to see Bunny.
Then he says he found Bunny’s corpse in the wreckage, despite the fact many people had seen her in the city just a short while earlier.
There’s a traditional superstition that if you are very close to your own death, you soul may leave your body early. If you see that “double” – in German it’s called a doppelganger – it’s a very bad sign, because it means your death is imminent.
By then end of the episode we realize that once on the jet Bunny Blake was doomed, and it was her doppelganger that appeared in the city and in a last gesture of kindness, arranged so that the fewest number of people would die at the picnic grounds when the jet fell out of the sky.
One of the things the Twilight Zone did so well, thanks to Rod Serling, was to accurately reflect America. Anyone who lives or grew up in a small town knows how important an event like the Founders Day Picnic would be. (If you ever want to see a touching depiction of a small town America that was already gone by 1960, see the episode “Walking Distance”.)
The Twilight Zone always had a twist in its plot. In this case, one twist is that Bunny Blake is a fairly level-headed celebrity who still has the simple touch and remembers growing up in her small town with such fondness.
The key to a successful twist ending is that there are hints along the way, and it doesn’t come completely out of nowhere. By the conclusion of the episode, as “Bunny” disappears in the rain, it all makes sense in its own way.
I’m probably the only person in Clarksville who makes a connection between the Fall Bazaar and The Twilight Zone. But then again, I’m nothing if not original.
Or as Patricia puts it, “You’re just weird.”