Charles Manson is now 77 years old and is coming up for parole once again. This is one person who deserves to never walk among the general population again and I do believe that if he was released that a riot would break out like we have never seen the likes of before anywhere. But no one ever knows what a parole board will decide on these days, we can only pray.

Contribution by Stevie Kirby

My mom lives so far out in the country that she doesn’t have access to too many things. The closest grocery store is about 50 miles away from her house. I don’t know how she does it, but she loves it out there. I could never be that far away from convenience! The utility company doesn’t even offer internet connections out there, so she had to get wild blue satellite internet to keep in touch. I will never understand why after so many years of living in Chicago mom felt like she needed to move to the country. She raised my sisters and I to be city girls through and through, and then all of a sudden she was sick of the lifestyle. I’m supportive of her decisions as long as they make her happy. She comes to see us pretty often anyways, so the way I see it, she gets the best of both worlds. She has her peaceful country life, and then she can come and see her children and grandchildren in Chicago whenever she wants to get back to the faster pace.

Living out in a rural area, the importance of visable street signs becomes more important than someone living in an urban area might realize. After all, when one is travelling in the city, road signs are only one city block away from where you are. In the country, the “blocks” can be several miles long. So if one of the street signs at an intersection is missing, a traveler that is not used to the area can easily get lost. One of the things that really bothers me about street signs is that often times the sign at an intersection will only name one of the roads. There have been many times that I have been at the mercy of rural street signs and ended up going hours out of my way because the signs were inadequate.

Even more important, are the traffic signs such as the yield, stop, one-way, and caution signs. There is one intersection near where I live that some jokester keeps stealing a stop sign AND the sign that identifies the name of the roads. Although I know that I am supposed to stop, and the names of the roads there, it is a difficult intersection that could end in disaster, with bodily injury or death. I wish that the jokester would leave the signs alone!

March means a lot of things to me, such as the new day to set your clocks forward for Daylight Savings Time, the first day of Spring, March 20, and my brother’s birthday today. I always call my brother on his birthday to check on him and wish him a happy birthday.

Today when I called, he was all excited about some tickets to a basketball game. For a lot of people, I guess the month of March only means, March Madness as the college teams all fight for their rankings at the end of their season.

There has been a lot of talk and buzz about fighting bullying. So many kids are falling victim to bullies at school. We can all do our part by speaking out against bullying and helping our kids realize that they are special and not victims.