Gardnerville fourth-graders surprise DAWG

Jim Joseph of Douglas Animal Welfare Group called me to say the group received a check for $376 from the Gardnerville Elementary School Parent Teacher Student Organization.

"It's wonderful," Jim said. "It's a large donation and the fact that little kids decided to do it makes it all that more meaningful. It was a great surprise from our point of view."

Jim sent me a copy of the letter he received from organization president Val Sonnemann. The money is from the proceeds of the school's sixth annual charity basket raffle.

According to the letter, Linda Nalder's fourth-grade class chose to support the welfare group for their theme basket.

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Johnson Lane resident Laurie Layton sent me a photo she took in May when her fence developed a beard of bees.

She said her neighbors keep bees and a queen decided it was time to move on.

"A queen ran away from home with her following and ended up on my fence," she said. "My neighbor came in the hazmat suit and brushed the bees into a cardboard box. She left the box there for a couple of hours and by 7 p.m. the bees had followed the queen into the box and my neighbor came back and put a lid on the box."

Laurie has lived in the Valley for 18 years, but she is pretty much a native of the Sierra's East Slope. She moved to Bridgeport when she was 3 years old. She came to Minden and worked for Jerry Gregory at Valley Bank and then the Bank of America.

Now she is over at Business Bank of Nevada.

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Sally Wiley brought in an e-mail she received from a soldier in Iraq who'd received care packages from the Blue Star Moms and Scarselli Elementary School.

Erik Thompsen, who wrote Wiley on behalf of his battalion, said the materials were appreciated.

"I would like to thank you for the box of care packages for the company," Thompsen wrote. "They are gratefully appreciated and we know that they are packed with love. This is a large boost to the morale and comfort of the soldiers serving here in Iraq. Rest assured, sometime in the next 12 months, I am going to try and come out your way and personally thank your group and the students and faculty of Scarselli Elementary School."

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Minden-Tahoe Airport and airport manager Jim Braswell appears in the May/June edition of Federal Aviation Administration Aviation News.

The story and photos are taken by H. Dean Chamberlain, the publication's editor.

Jim looks pretty happy in the photo.

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I had two people contact me about political information. Absentee ballots became available this week and there are a lot of folks running for state office.

The R-C's primary election publication will run Aug. 3, the first edition after early voting starts.

In the meantime, I'm preparing a list of candidates that says where they're from, what they do and their Web site, or a link to a R-C news story on them. The list will also appear on recordcourier.com, so people can look it up.

We'll also be publishing stories about candidates in local races, starting with the four seeking Assembly District 39 Republican nomination. Hopefully that will help.

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The Minden Centennial is the first event covered by video for The Record-Courier's Web site. The video runs about 5 minutes and features Mike Fischer's Chatauqua of H.F. Dangberg Sr. The video is our first experiment with multi-media.

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I'm taking the middle two weeks of July off, but my friends here in the newsroom will be watching my e-mails and letters. I'll be back July 24.

n Kurt Hildebrand is editor of The Record-Courier. Reach him at khildebrand@recordcourier.com or 782-5121, ext. 215