For those of you who don’t know, the Wise County commissioners meet twice a month. After each one, I write a story outlining their discussions and any action they take. I’ll be the first to admit these are not the most exciting stories to read, but it is important to report what happens at the meetings because the commissioners put your tax dollars to work.

There are some details that don’t make it into the story, though. They usually don’t directly relate to the business at hand but will often make you laugh, or at least shake your head in wonder. I decided I shouldn’t be the only one having so much fun, so at least once a month, I’ll post commissioners’ outtakes.

Here’s the first edition:

Public Works director Tom Goode always puts a funny picture on the cover of his report. This was the image from the Nov. 10 meeting. Yikes!

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Precinct 3 commissioner Mikel Richardson has my favorite ringtone. It’s a turkey gobbling and at the end - you hear a gunshot.

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At a recent meeting there was discussion about the NCTCOG’s RTC and its involvement in the MPO – a mouthful of acronyms for anyone. Precinct 1 commissioner Danny White was mildly annoyed and confused by the list of letters, as we all were, but as he grew antsy Judge Bill McElhaney said, “We’ve got to give Mr. White his blood pressure medicine or his eyes will start crossing.”

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No doubt, these guys have a little fun. Check back after the Nov. 30 meeting for the “news” that didn’t make the paper.

For those of you in mailing addresses for Bridgeport, Chico, Alvord, Paradise, Boyd, Rhome or Newark, you’ve probably noticed a new insert once a month in All Around Wise for your community called “Community Focus.” It’s our newest product, one designed at highlighting the people, accomplishments and events that take place in your community. It is designed to do just what then name implies: focus on the community.

We do our best to find stories and photos for this section, but we are relying on you to submit your information and photos as well. You’ve probably seen a few of our submitted photos under the heading of “Your Life in Focus,” or maybe even on the cover of the section.

We know it will take some time for readers to get into the habit of sending in information, but we have started to receive a few submissions. Sometimes, those submissions even make us smile. I’m not sure if the photo above was sent to us to get a chuckle, but it did when we saw this little dog in the photo. We’re running another photo of the home in this week’s Boyd/Paradise edition.

You can e-mail submissions to focus@wcmessenger.com or click on the above link.

And let us know what you think of this new product.

Being a writer brings different challenges every day.

The topics we write about aren’t always interesting, and while not the most creative stories, we can usually hammer those out pretty quickly.

You hope to find those interesting stories that you can really get personally involved in. But at times, those are the hardest stories to write.

Such is my dilemma.

I have been waiting for weeks to write this story about a family of four from Rhome who share a unique hobby. Randy, Connie, Dalton and Dillon Green all race in off-road motorcycle events.

In interviewing this family for the story, I saw a shining example of what family should be. By sharing this hobby, the family spends much of their time together in practice, preparing for events, traveling and competing.

With all of the positive benefits of having this hobby, there’s also the possibility of being injured. That possibility became reality when Dalton was injured during a practice that our photographer, Joe, was attending. In that moment, Joe watched the family pull together and support each other as Dalton was treated for a head injury.

With the injury behind them, the family is back on the track, racing at full-speed. Connie and Randy stress that the hobby is strictly voluntary and that the boys can quit at any time. But this passion flows in their blood.

With so much ground to cover, how can I even get started?

Hopefully we’ll see in Sunday’s paper.

I’m finishing my first week as the new sports editor here at The Messenger. It’s been a blur with two football games, two volleyball matches and a cross country meet. But it’s been a blast. I look forward to getting out to meeting more people in the next couple of weeks. Thanks everyone for welcoming to the job so far. I hope you’ve enjoyed the first two issues that I’ve been a part of. Heads up for Sunday. Basketball practices started Wednesday for the girls basketball teams in the county. I will have a short preview Sunday. I will have advances about the Decatur cross country and volleyball teams going for district crowns next week. There will also be full coverage of the Eagles’ battle with Burkburnett.

There were lots of activities in Wise County over the weekend, and photographer Joe Duty did his best to get to a lot of them. You can check out his images here.

I headed over to Paradise Saturday morning for the Paradise Main Street Festival to see the dedication of the new Paradise Veterans Memorial Park. Other than a bit of a breeze causing a few of the flags to topple over a couple of times, the ceremony went off without a hitch. I was really impressed with the amount of people who attended the dedication and the festival. Events like these really help you gain a sense of “community” that you don’t always see as much as you used to. For some very amateurish video of the festival shot by yours truly, click here.

Joe was in Paradise, at the Wise Regional Health System Harvest Health Fair, the Decatur Chamber of Commerce auction, the 4-H Explosion and Sunday’s benefit concert.

We’ve got another big weekend coming up. Bridgeport is having its annual Coal Miner’s Heritage Festival, and there are plenty of events scheduled throughout the day. The final Cruise Night on the Decatur Square is also Saturday.

Is moving one of the most demanding things we do as humans that is self-inflicted?

I cannot think of another activity that we plan and often look forward to that is more draining physically, mentally and emotionally.

Having just completed such a move, I can speak with authority. Returning to Decatur has been wonderful, but the actual process of relocating our material goods, and ultimately our lives, takes a tremendous toll.

It requires many days of physical exhaustion as well as mental gymnastics trying to make sure you keep track of essential items and take care of the important stuff like turning utilities off and on or change all those addresses.

Since we left the comfortable confines of Wise County in 1991, we have done this to ourselves five times, the last time eight years ago when we moved across town to one of Henrietta’s neatest houses, a ‘50s ranch style with some interesting features.

Leaving it behind was a bit emotional, and now we start over with a mostly vacant lot upon which to recreate a place to call home.

Starting from scratch, we can do it like we want, but we left behind a lot of toil in establishing a peaceful yard in which to sit and watch the world go by.

We won’t miss the commute, and we relish the challenges of modern-day newspapering. And hopefully a few months down the road when last box will be unpacked it will truly feel like home again.

We here at the Messenger pride ourselves on trying to be as technically savvy as possible. We’re working as hard and as fast (as deadlines will allow…) to make WCMessenger.com even bigger and better. We’re posting to Facebook virtually every day, and our Twitter following has now grown to 176 (thanks everyone for the follows!). Flickr will (hopefully) be the new home to the photography of the great Joe Duty and everyone else here on staff, and our YouTube channel is getting lots of hits.

And now we’re working on something new that will hopefully take our flagship online product, Update, to the next level:

http://www.wcmessenger.com/update/beta/

This new format will allow for bigger photos, larger video, improved RSS feeds, social-networking integration, and… wait for it… wait for it… reader comments!

It’s still a work in progress, but if anyone gets a chance to check it out and give us your feedback on it, please contact me at webmaster@wcmessenger.com

Again, this is a pre-launch beta, so you won’t find a link to it on our homepage just yet, but it is live and active, so if you feel like it, please try reading Update this way if it suits your tastes.

Thanks everyone for reading!

Todd A. Griffith
Webmaster/Production Manager
Wise County Messenger

We received our agenda for Thursday’s school board meeting, and the issue of artificial turf installation at Eagle Stadium is set for a vote. The administration is recommending spending $1.5 million from the general fund to pay for improvements at the stadium, including the installation of artificial turf.

You’ll hear people argue both ways on this one. Many look at our current economic situation and wonder how the district has the money to spend on such an item (the district actually has about $11 million in its general fund, according to my notes from last month’s school board meeting) or that the money should be spent on other educational priorities. Others will argue that the stadium is lagging behind in the quality of the district’s other facilities, and the football stadium should be a kind of “billboard” for the school district. Artificial turf would allow the stadium to be used by other school groups (such as the soccer team). By voting for the artificial turf, the school board would signal its commitment to staying at Eagle Stadium for the next 20-25 years instead of building a new stadium.

Interesting note: the board packet includes a cost estimate from the Hellas Construction firm. You might not be familiar with the construction company, but you have heard of its latest project: the turf at the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. The company is understandably quite proud, by the looks of this Web site.

There were a few funny moments on scanner today. Here is a sample:

Deputy — “I’ve been up and down this road and I haven’t found that suspicious woman in a bikini.”
Deputy — “Did you get my traffic?”
Dispatcher — “Negative on the suspicious woman in the bikini.”

Dispatcher — “A man with a weapon is acting crazy in people’s pastures.”
Deputy — “What do you mean by acting crazy?”

I just spent the last 15 minutes unsuccessfully wrestling with a car seat base in the backseat of a car that was approximately 130 degrees.

There MUST be an easier way to install these things in a car. Seriously.

I understand the need to keep children safe - I would never want to put my little boy in danger. But, isn’t there some new invention of some sort that would prevent me from earning gray hairs at such an early age?