A week of sad departures and happy arrivals

Rumor has it that Father Jerry Hanley will be seeking another job soon to pay for the lobster dinner he's treating Carolyn to tonight (it's payback time for her directing the St. Teresa's Christmas pageant last year). So when you give at church this week, feel free to put a couple of extra bucks into the "food for the poor" basket ... he'll need it.

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Linda and Tom Johnson are so thrilled with their daughter and son-in-law's contribution to the family ... twin girls, Austin and Avery ... that they're moving to south Reno to be nearer to them. The girls are bouncy, beautiful babies, so congratulations to their parents and the proud grandmomma and poppa.

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With gas prices going through the roof, we thought the following story from Connie Lord was a propos (if you're prim and proper, quit reading now): "A man went into a Quik Trip gas station the other day and asked for five dollars worth of gas. The clerk farted and gave him a receipt." Probably a true story.

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Carson Sertoma will be putting on their annual Charity Golf Tournament on June 16 at Eagle Valley East. It has a 9 a.m. shotgun start, and the $85 entry fee includes a cart, lunch and lots of prizes. To register, call Frank Taylor (885-7579), John Peshik (882-2603), or Rick Ghiglieri (883-9678). This is a benefit for Carson children with speech and hearing difficulties, cancer and diabetes. Go have fun and help a good cause.

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WNCC Musical Theater Company lost a wonderful and talented lady to breast cancer this week. Cindy McIntosh was only 58 years old, too soon to die of that terrible disease. In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal last year that featured her son Andy (a football player for the Wolfpack), she said she had not heeded the warnings and had waited too long before recognizing the problem.

Please, please, ladies, if you haven't had a mammogram or have something suspicious going on, run, don't walk, to your doctor and check it out. We will miss her lovely voice and her smiling face, but not nearly as much as her family will. M will remember what a delight she was when they were "nuns" in "The Sound of Music," and every time they'd see each other, she would stop and talk about fun things. Our hearts go out to her family, her church and WNCC colleagues.

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Carolyn's younger sister, Nancy Gourley (who lived through walking on coals to join the older sister's "club"), will be a year older this week; and Joseph Spencer deserves congratulations on his graduation from WNCC last week. Hooray for both.

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Danielle Conway is still ferociously fighting her battle with cancer, and just came home from the hospital again. Many thanks to the Pinkerton Academy for giving the proceeds of their recital's raffle to her to help defray her expenses. A very nice thing to do.

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We were chastised last week (so what else is new?) about our "ignorance of current events," since we had railed about "George W. Bush's private war," and were told that many Democrats had signed on as well. No kidding? And the information they voted on was furnished by the triumvirate of "you know who."

So, let's have a little re-cap of History 101: In 1999 (repeat, 1999), then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush announced he would be a candidate for president on the Republican ticket, and, at that time, remarked, "Saddam Hussein threatened my daddy ... I'm not going to let him get away with that." Right then (1999, remember?), we KNEW we were going back to war with Iraq if he was elected (and he was).

Come Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida turned our planes into killing machines and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people. And although it was obvious to us that we should go into Afghanistan to eradicate Osama bin Ladin and his ilk, we used it as an excuse and plunged our military into an egregious war with a petty (repeat, petty) despot who, while a bastard, was NOT a threat to us, nor an ally of OBL.

Had any of the Democrats or Republicans then in office taken the time to read the signs "outside the beltway," instead of relying on "those in the know," they might have made a better decision. To add fat to the fire, after our invasion of Iraq, the most damning sign of all was, if SH had "weapons of mass destruction," why didn't he use them? We stand our ground.

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Ken Fraser ends this week with this story: "An Alabama preacher said to his congregation, 'Someone here has spread a rumor that I belong to the Ku Klux Klan. This is a dreadful lie, and I want the party who did this to stand and ask forgiveness before God and these people.' No one moved. The preacher continued, 'Don't you have the nerve to face me and admit this falsehood? Remember, you will be forgiven. Please stand and confess.' Again, all was quiet. Then, slowly, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde rose from the third pew. Her head was bowed and her voice quivered as she spoke, 'Reverend, there has been a terrible misunderstanding. I never said you were a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I simply told a friend that you were a wizard between the sheets.' The congregation roared as the preacher fainted." Ah-men.

• Carolyn Tate and Maizie Harris Jesse are longtime Carson City residents. Write to them at editor@nevadaappeal.com.