Siblings

Speaking of local school board members as I was in the previous post,... Back in the days when my former brother-in-law served on the school board, one of his fellow members (a close friend he'd grown up with) nearly lost two of his children in very frightening incidents. In Oct. of 2001, this man's teen aged daughter was shot in the stomach and nearly died. She first said an intruder shot her and later claimed she'd tried to kill herself, but as noted in the San Antonio Express-News article on the incident, her explanations weren't consistent with the facts. Then in July of 2004, this girl's brother somehow fell off a high cliff in Australia wearing only a shirt and socks and somehow managed to survive a night of subfreezing temperatures while perched on the side of the drop; this incident also was never explained properly.

Another set of local siblings did not survive. On 1/21/03, a local woman, 48, died. On 3/27/03, her 45-year-old brother died. Her obituary mentioned another brother of hers who had died earlier; there were no surviving siblings. In 2003, I asked p.i. Ed Hodges about these deaths, and he eventually told me someone who worked for him had learned that all three siblings committed suicide. I've never been able to get anyone else around here to discuss these deaths at all. I was especially concerned about trying to find out what happened to them because their mother is related to my former father-in-law.

Fair Game

The library of our local high school is currently being expanded by knocking down an outside wall and building farther outward into a grassy area. This much-needed expansion was supposed to include two new computer labs, one on each side of the expansion, that were fully equipped.

Recently, however, my youngest was told by a very reliable source at school that 1.3 million dollars have already been spent on this project and that the planned computer labs have had to be scrapped as a result. This seems outrageous in light of the amount of work being done. Local taxpayers should immediately demand a full accounting of the project from the school board.

Are our young people, our most precious resource, really to be the latest victims? Apparently everyone and everything are considered fair game. (Now consider carefully who is on the local school board and who is currently running for it.)