Longview Independent School District will recognize academically-talented seventh graders at the upcoming May School Board meeting for their exceptional scores on the ACT or SAT.

The Duke University Talent Identification Program identifies students in sixteen states in the Southeast, Midwest and Southwest who have scored in the 95th percentile on a grade-
level achievement test.

As part of the program, these academically talented students take above-level college-entrance exams to learn more about drugs no prescription their abilities. Longview ISD had fifty-nine scholars identified who were eligible to take the college entrance tests. Nine students from Foster MS and three students from Judson MS qualified for state recognition.

The State Recognition Ceremonies will honor seventh graders who have earned scores equal to or better than half generic for cialis of the college-bound seniors who took the tests. These students are: Hannah Brown, Rocio Cadenas, Callie Fruia, Alexandra Hyatt, Amethyst Kelly, Carson Owens, Simone Macklin, John Monsour, Garret Mullikin, Dante Wheeler, Charlotte Williams, and Taylor Witt.

The Tyler Independent School District Foundation wasted no time in going above and beyond the call of duty in its annual, 2009-2010 fund drive. Only three weeks after the drive’s goal was not met, an additional $24,000 came in and increased the total collected to $354,000 in a drive whose goal was $350, 000. By the original deadline there had been $330,000 collected. The Foundation is made up of 35 community notables who search out sources to help the TISD in ways not generally financed by tax dollars. TISD Foundation Executive Director Larry Goddard made it clear that is was better late than never.
“Of course we were disappointed that cialis doses we did not reach our goal, but were grateful for the generous total of gifts we received,” he said.
The success goes back to a simple phone call.
“A donor who has participated in our golf tournament in the past called unexpectedly and is presenting us with a scholarship endowment,” Goddard said. “He was as excited as I was.”
The donor’s identity will be revealed at a later date. The fund will finance high school graduates to attend vocational or technical training courses.
“We have a huge need for assistance for our students who have chosen technical/vocational paths rather than a four-year degree,” said Goddard. “This is our second scholarship for these students, and we are proud to be able to find donors who understand the need for skilled workers in a variety of fields including auto mechanics, HVAC, building trades and other vocations.”
The Foundation uses these funds for such events as Convocation, Teacher of the Year and the Retirement Luncheon. The Foundation’s biggest happening, “A Night of Shining Stars,” honors the top 20 students from Robert E. Lee and John Tyler high schools as well as the teachers who were these students’ main inspiration. The event will be Monday, May 10, 7:00 p.m. at Caldwell Auditorium.
“This year many of our graduates selected their elementary teachers as well as their high school guidance counselors,” said Goddard.
A final fundraiser for the 2009-2010 academic year, the Gil Hitt Memorial Golf Tournament, named for a Tyler businesman who died during his term as TISD school board of trustees president, will take place Monday, June 14 at Hollytree Country Club. For further information call (903) 266-9805.

Longview Regional Medical Center (LRMC) used National Volunteer Week (April 18-24) to honor people who find fulfillment in helping those who are less fortunate. Local volunteers were recently recognized at a Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon at Pinecrest County Club
National Volunteer Week recognizes the unselfish nature of people who give their time and effort for the betterment of others in need and for worthwhile causes. Many of these unpaid helpers also figure out the most imaginative and effective means to better their communities. By this week of recognition the nation can see how well Americans can overcome challenges and accomplish goals. LRMC encourages locals to donate themselves to positive social change through their combined ability and strength.
“We want medications without a prescription to thank our volunteers as well as encourage others to become involved in volunteer activities,” said LRMC Chief Executive Officer Jim Kendrick.
LRMC Circle cialis cheap and Volunteer Manager Melinda Whitehurst encouraged hospital employees to evaluate the volunteers. She is clear on the value of this grading.
“If you have a volunteer in your department you would like to recognize at the luncheon, please send the request via e-mail to me,” she said. “I would like to read about the values of service they provide. Thank you for helping me show our appreciation for their many hours of dedicated service!”
National Volunteer Week gives individuals and organizations who selflessly work to help others a chance to be recognized for their otherwise unpaid efforts, as they so richly deserve. This also helps locally to promote volunteer activity at LRMC and other local venues needing assistance.
For more information on LRMC’s volunteer program visit Melinda.whitehurst@longviewregional.com or call her at (903) 232-3776.

Sonya Perez has been working at Gorman McCracken Volkswagen, Mazda car dealership in Longview for cheap online pharmacy 7 years. She graduated from Kilgore high school. On her job, she works in accounts receivables and payables.

“I like coming to work because everyone here at the dealership is kind,” said Perez. “Also, I like working for Mr. Arnett the owner because he is a nice guy.”
According to Perez, she likes her co-workers and employer because cialis 5 they take care of business. She is inviting everyone to the upcoming Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Maude Cobb Convention Center, Saturday, May 1st. Best of all, she wants you to come by the dealership since they have the best cars and deals in East Texas. For more information on Gorman McCracken Volkswagen/Mazda cars call 903.753-8657 or visit www.longviewVW.com; www.barnettautogroup.com or better yet go in person, to: 800 Highway 31 East in Longview, Texas.

In Longview, Texas and several other cities, Hispanic and Mexican descent peoples will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo festival with storytelling, parades, food, and dancing to the beat of salsa and mariachi music. Cinco de Mayo is Spanish for the Fifth of May. On this day in 1862 Mexican peasants won a battle against French invaders in cialis tablets La Puebla, Mexico. Many people mistake Cinco de Mayo for Mexican Independence Day, but that happened on September 16, 1810 — more than 50 years earlier.

This Hispanic celebration began in Denver in 1987 as a small neighborhood street festival. By 1996 the weekend event had become so large — attracting a half-million festival-goers — that it moved to its new home in Denver’s Civic Center Park.
According to Arturo Zapata, president of Paisanos of East Texas, this year is very special because people are responding to the Fiesta. “People are coming to us and we feel that with our theme, Bringing Hope and Unity into our community, is a good goal. “ We are helping to bring things back. Helping our community even in a small way will go along way.

One of our goals is to send student to college. Last year we gave scholarship nearing $5,000 to Kilgore College. We want to continue to do so. The scholarships money is for all Hispanics from East Texas. We would like to give out more online drugs without a prescription and hopefully we are able to increase the funds.

“We also donate our time and funds to various charities including the Women Shelter, Special Olympics, Martha’s Kitchen and many others .The diversity of entertainment this year is top notch. There are praise dancers, local clean rappers including local high school rappers.
Some local unique business will be there also. Edible Art will build her artistic cake from the scratch and Brad Pellett with Off Road Trucks will also have a tug of war and participants tug of war. Bring your friends and family for this tug of fi tug of war. The winner will be awarded a price.
Keeping it local, east Texas local bands are the only ones who will be playing at this Fiesta.

Thinning is one of the most difficult tasks most home gardeners have to face. They often plant radishes, and every seed seems to come up twice. Then, when the radishes don’t form normal size roots, they wonder what happened. It is important to thin radishes to one inch apart within a week of germination if you expect to have good size roots, and it is also important to thin developing fruit, like peaches, plums, apples, etc., as soon as possible. Fruit could probably best be thinned at blooming, but since there’s no real practical way to do that yet, at least with stone fruits like peaches and plums, it just about has to be a hand thing. Developing fruit should really be removed when it is less than the size of a dime, and spaced so that the peaches, for example, are 6 to 8 inches apart. If you leave too much fruit on the trees, you may damage them, and you are bound to have smaller fruit. It takes 191 peaches that are 1-3/4 inches in diameter to make a half-bushel, but it takes only 79 peaches are 2-1/2 inches in diameter to make the same half-bushel.

The earlier you can thin the better, so start as soon as you can — even if get cialis online the tree hasn’t completely finished blooming. If you only have a few trees in the back yard, it’s easy enough to remove them by hand — just give them a little twist, and off they come. Commercial growers go a step further and tie an 18- purchase prescription drugs to 24-inch length of rope or rubber hose on the end of a broom handle, and knock the fruit off with this device. There is usually some natural drop of fruit later on in the year, whether you have thinned or not, but even with this, it is important to do the preliminary hand thinning.
It is also important to begin spraying fruit trees if you haven’t already. As soon as three-quarters of the blooms have dropped off, begin to put on cover sprays of an approved insecticide plus an approved fungicide. Regular applications of these pesticides early in the season will guarantee that you will have high quality fruit, free of the fungus brown rot and plum curculio. These unfortunately are common when fruit trees aren’t sprayed. As long as you follow label recommendations, you will find that the end product is still very safe to eat.

Additional information on peach production including the Homeowners Fruit and Nut Spray schedule is available on the Texas Agri-Life Extension Service- Gregg County web site at http://gregg-tx.tamu.edu/

Dennis Smith can be contacted at the Gregg County Extension Office by e-mail at dg-smith@tamu.edu or telephone at: 903-236-8429.

Extension programs serve people of all ages regardless of socioeconomic level, race, color, sex, religion, disability, or national origin.

As we look at the Parables and Miracles of Jesus recorded by Matthew, I’m including the colorful metaphors Jesus used to teach people about relating to God.
I’m calling this “The Parable of Stones and Snakes,” because Jesus paints the preposterous picture of a son asking his father for bread and a fish, and instead his father gives him a stone and a snake.
You’ve probably heard the question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Somebody sent me some humorous answers to that question given by famous people.
“The problem we have here is that this chicken won’t realize that he must first deal with the problem on ‘THIS’ side of the road before it goes after the problem on the ‘OTHER SIDE’ of the road.” — Dr. Phil
“Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road; but why it crossed I’ve not been told.” — Dr. Seuss
“Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together–in peace.” — John Lennon
“Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?”— Albert Einstein
“I invented the chicken!” — Al Gore
“Did I miss one?”— order drugs without prescription Colonel Sanders
“I did not cross the road with THAT chicken.” — Bill Clinton
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” really isn’t an important question. But there is a question. I’ve been asked hundreds of times since I’ve been a pastor, “Why aren’t my prayers being answered?” If you stood before Jesus and asked Him that question I think His answer might be, “Because you stop praying too soon.” We’re going to learn from Jesus’ words recorded in Matthew 7:7-12 that there is great power in persistent praying.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
I’ve always been fascinated by prayer and I’m still a student in God’s school of prayer. I’ve accumulated hundreds of great quotes about prayer and these are some of my favorites.
“You can do more than pray AFTER you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray UNTIL you have prayed.” — A.J. Gordon
“Satan laughs at our toiling, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.” — Watchman Nee
“Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.” — Martin Luther
“Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” — Corrie ten Boom
Jesus was a great teacher and a wonderful healer, but we never read that His disciples ever said, “Lord, teach us to heal, or teach us how to teach.” But we read that they asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” There was something about the prayer life of Jesus that caused his disciples to want to pray the way He prayed. Let’s learn three lessons Jesus teaches us about prayer:
Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” The New Testament was written in the Koine Greek language, which has many more nuances than English. The tense Jesus used for “Ask, seek, and knock” is called the present imperative which literally means: “Ask—and keep on asking; Seek—and keep on seeking; Knock and keep on banging on heaven’s door.”
The reason more prayers don’t seem to be answered is that people stop praying. A little boy named Bobby asked his dad if he could pray for God to give him a puppy. His mom was expecting a new baby, so his dad said, “Not now, son, but why don’t you pray and ask God for a little baby brother? That’s a prayer that God will answer in a couple of months.” Bobby prayed for a couple of weeks, but nothing happened so he stopped praying. A couple of months later Bobby’s mom went into the hospital. Bobby came to visit his mother after she had delivered and his dad pulled the cover back to reveal not one baby brother but two—twins. The daddy said to Bobby, “Son, aren’t you glad that you prayed and asked God for a baby brother?” Bobby said, “Sure, dad, but aren’t you glad I stopped praying when I did!”
I can honestly remember my first experience with prayer as a child. I went to first grade Sunday School and my teacher taught us that if we asked God for something He would give it to us. That got my attention, because it sounded like a good deal. At this time my family was living in Dothan, Alabama, which is located just a few miles from Fort Rucker where the army trains all their helicopter pilots. So every day dozens flew over our house. Whenever I heard one I would run outside and wave my arms for them to land and take me for a ride. My favorite television show was “Whirlybirds,” which was a show about policemen who used a
helicopter to catch criminals.
More than anything else I wanted to fly in a helicopter, so after I heard that Sunday School lesson, I decided I would see if prayer really worked. One night I got on my knees and said, “Okay, God, my teacher told me I could ask you for something and you’d give it to me. I want a real helicopter to land behind my house in the empty field, and I want to get in fly it over our neighborhood. My buy cheap cialis online teacher had said to be specific in my prayers, so I even described what kind of helicopter I wanted it to be. “God, make it one of the small ones with the glass bubble that carries two people.” I can tell you with all honesty that I got into bed that night with simple childlike faith fully expecting God to answer my prayer. The next morning, I got up and dressed to go on a helicopter ride, because I totally expected there to be a helicopter in the field behind my house. I ran out my back door and looked at the vacant field. Would you believe that earlier that morning an army helicopter had made an emergency landing and was sitting in that field?

I didn’t say there was one there, I just asked you if you would believe it: Don’t. At first I remember thinking, “This prayer thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” But as I grew older God used that first prayer experience to teach me lessons about how to pray.

Dr. Dorothy Height was a lantern and role model for millions of women and a long-haul social change agent, blessed with uncommon commitment and talent. Her fingerprints are quietly embedded in many of the transforming events of the last seven decades as African Americans, women, and children pushed open and walked through previously closed doors of opportunity.
My organization, Children’s Defense Fund, was blessed to have her serve on our board for over 30 years. When she passed away on April 20 at 98, we all lost a treasure, a wise counselor, and a rock we could always lean against for support in tough times.
Even as a young girl, Height’s speaking skills stood out. She attended New York University with the help of a $1,000 scholarship from a national oratorical contest sponsored by the Elks (after being turned away by Barnard, which had already reached its quota of two “Negro” students for the year). On November 7, 1937, when she was the 25-year-old assistant director of the Harlem YWCA, she had the honor of escorting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to a National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) meeting. There she online prescriptions met the organization’s founder and president, the legendary Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune was immediately impressed with Height. She became her close friend and mentor, and in 1957, two years after Mrs. Bethune’s death, Height became NCNW’s president–a position she held until 1998, when she became its chair and president emerita.
During the civil rights movement, while so many women were playing vital roles that weren’t featured in the spotlight, Height was always up front with a seat at the table. She was often the only woman in the room with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest of the “Big Six” group of male leaders as they planned many key strategies, and she was sitting on the stage–she should have been a speaker–at the historic March on Washington. She led the NCNW membership as active participants in the movement and reminded us that women were its backbone–unseen but strong.
Her organization developed a range of model national programs focused on the needs of African-American women and families, such as employment, child care, housing, hunger, health care, and youth development.
Height began the NCNW’s wonderful Black Family Reunion Celebrations 25 years ago, emphasizing the traditional values and strengths of black families at a time when too many people focused on the black family’s “breakdown.” Dr. Height always understood how African Americans’ needs connect to a larger global mission as well. She participated in conferences and leadership training sessions and on official delegations around the world, and from the White House to the United Nations, her expertise on civil rights, women’s rights, and human rights was always in demand. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first woman head of state, is just one of the many people who acknowledges owing a debt to Height’s leadership.
Through it all, Height’s intellect and strength remained as sharp as her signature sense of style. A musical based on her life was named “If This Hat Could Talk,” and anyone who knew Height and her trademark gorgeous hats understands just how that title was chosen. When Height was awarded her Congressional Gold Medal, then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton began her tribute by saying she had known Height for more than 30 years, since they first began working together on the Children’s Defense Fund’s board–and “just as in cialis overnight shipping those long ago days, today once again, Dr. Height is the best-dressed woman in the entire room.”
We all needed Dorothy Height’s example of steadfastly doing what she had to do. Now we must do what we have to do to save all of our children.

When Jaime Escalante died, we lost a pioneering teacher who changed people’s ideas of what children are capable of learning. Many people know about Escalante’s work from the popular movie “Stand and Deliver,” which depicted his success teaching Advanced Placement (AP) calculus classes to students at East Los Angeles’s Garfield High School. The Bolivian-born teacher died at 79 of cancer on March 30.
Today, the beliefs that all children can learn and every child deserves a quality education have become familiar language in goals set by the Department of Education and school boards across the country. But when Escalante genuinely believed this about the children he was teaching in the late 1970s and early 1980s, people thought he was naïve and crazy.
The students at Garfield High were exactly the kind of children other education and policy experts predicted would be left behind. They were largely from poor Mexican-American families, and the majority of their parents had not finished grade school.
When Escalante arrived at Garfield, the school was known for low test scores and a high dropout rate. Most people looked at the students’ backgrounds, their school, and their environment and simply didn’t have high expectations for them. But Escalante always did. As a result, he showed impoverished children who had been “taught” they could do nothing that they could accomplish great things. He showed the world that with a good teacher, poor and minority children can accomplish wonders.
Escalante’s expectations seemed especially farfetched at first. The class he taught, AP calculus, buy antibiotics online was an elite college preparatory course considered by many to be the most difficult class high schools take. Even many affluent public schools still didn’t offer it, and the public and private schools that did often required students to take entrance exams or satisfy other prerequisites to prove they could handle it. Escalante’s idea that he could offer it at Garfield and make it available to any willing student flew in the face of most conventional wisdom about testing, tracking, and predicting student success in a challenging course.
His students’ stellar performance on national standardized AP tests proved his own judgment correct. His formula for student success was simple: You need a good teacher committed to working hard to educate and students committed to working hard to learn. He demonstrated that student commitment and ability could be developed through the encouragement and reinforcement students received from the committed teacher.
Escalante’s demonstration of the power a single teacher can have to motivate students to extraordinary success changed the way many educators viewed student ability. Many of Escalante’s classroom techniques became implemented in other schools, like encouraging the class to tackle the material together like a team taking on an opponent, and putting in extra time so students could keep working after school and on weekends when necessary. Today, many of the most successful charter schools and other urban classrooms across the country embrace Escalante’s approach. His commitment to opening up the most challenging classes to more children also revolutionized placement policies in many schools. Escalante understood that success in AP calculus wasn’t the only goal. It was a gateway to college admissions and other future aspirations.
There’s cialis tablets 5mg still so much work to be done to lift the ceiling many insecure adults place on children’s aspirations. The most recent data show white students are more than twice as likely as Latinos to be enrolled in AP science or AP math, and about three times as likely as black or American Indian students to be enrolled in AP science or AP math. The Obama administration is making the expansion of these classes a priority, especially for low-income students. This is a key part of Escalante’s legacy.
But his most enduring lesson is that all children can learn and excel–as long as they have the right teacher. And we must all speak up to get the right teachers in the classroom for all our children.
–
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund. www.childrensd

Anderson Cooper is talking to coal-mining families and politicians in West Virginia again. Ever since that explosion ripped through an underground mine in Montcoal, it seems people all across America are discussing the dangers of mining.
If you watched the news during the recent disaster, you may have heard television anchors and reporters speaking about an “exceptional” tragedy, a once-in-40-years catastrophe that took the lives of 29 coal miners in southern West Virginia. Yet if we look at this tragedy from a global perspective, the tragedy in Montcoal looks, unfortunately, all too typical.
Since the Sago, West Virginia disaster over three years ago, I’ve been tracking deaths in the global mining sector on my blog, Coal Mountain. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t have to add more names and stories to this death roll. Mine collapse kills 16 in northwest Tanzania. Six bodies found in Xinjiang mine collapse. Worker dies in Australian nickel mine. And these are just a few of the headlines from the days since the Montcoal disaster.
What happened earlier this month happens almost every day somewhere in the world: Miners are killed at work. And why do they die–or for whom? Miners from Utah to sub-Saharan Africa to China’s Shanxi province die, in part, for us. As consumers who walk the aisles at WalMarts, 24 hour cialis dollar stores, and suburban shopping malls, we fuel the extraction of coal and other minerals every time we purchase items that are intimately connected to miners around the world.
Every time you purchase something made in China, your item more than likely was made not only in a factory with its own horrific labor conditions, but a factory powered by electricity produced from coal. And each year in China, several thousand miners are killed as they extract that “black gold” from deep inside the earth.
Similar stories can be told about objects in almost buy antibiotics every room in your house. To extract precious minerals like diamonds and gold in South Africa, for example, miners risk their lives every day–including 76 miners whose bodies were found in an abandoned Harmony Goldmining Co. mineshaft in Free State last year. And tin? From the precarious and brief lives of Indonesian “tin divers,” to the five child miners killed in a collapse in southeast Congo earlier this year, tin extraction is likewise written in blood.
One of the many lessons we must learn from the 29 miners who lost their lives in Montcoal, West Virginia is that our patterns of energy use, as well as how we shop, are intimately tied to those who risk their lives each and every day deep beneath the Earth’s surface. As we begin to discuss the changing economy and our spending habits in the post-boom period, it’s also time to think more about where the products that clutter our bedrooms and basements and boardrooms come from. And who is risking and losing their lives so that we can have them.