| Marseille Merveilleux
At last! After the longest gestation period in modern rugby history, the All Blacks are about six days away from delivering a bundle of joy for expectant mid-wife Graham Henry. All the months of rest and reconditioning, Tri-Nations triumphs and selection shocks are over, Henry's battalion has arrived at the World Cup. Marseille - the All Blacks' training base for the next 12 days and venue for the Sunday (NZT) Pool C opener against the Italians - turned on a traditionally sunny welcome. Lock me up in the Saint-Jean cooler and throw away the clef, but it was 28-degC for those of you still suffering at the start of a southern hemisphere spring. The All Blacks haven't won the World Cup for 20 long years, so they arrived in the Provencal capital with some baggage.
Bucks Briefs for Aug 11
COUNCIL ROCK The Council Rock school board is asking county court for permission to sell most of the Melsky tract to Toll Brothers Inc. and the rest to a Newtown Township landowner. Toll has agreed to sell 200 acres of the nearby Dolington Tract for $7 million to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as long as it is able to buy part of the Melsky property from Council Rock. The VA plans to build a national veterans cemetery on the Dolington site off Washington Crossing Road. Toll wants to build 90 homes on the Melsky property that straddles the Upper Makefield-Newtown Township border. In June, the school board entered into an agreement to sell 94 acres of the tract off Stoopville Road to Toll for $7 million and the other 40 acres to landowner Leo Holt for $900,000.
Ridin' the boom in Rifle
RIFLE, Colo. -- Keith Lambert is the perfect guide to this western Colorado city: he's lived in the same house for 26 years, taught school here and, as mayor, has to keep up with the changes wrought by one of the biggest energy booms in state history.But even he's stumped by a newly excavated swath down a hillside. Stopping his SUV, he looked down at the front-end loaders and said: "I don't know what this is. It's possible it's some home development site approved in this area."Lambert can be forgiven for not knowing about every freshly turned mound of earth in his town. Rifle, a community of 8,100 on the Colorado River with deep agricultural roots, has become an epicenter of the region's natural gas drilling boom.Hotel rooms are booked for weeks by pipeline and gas-field crews. Traffic backs up nearby Interstate 70 and clogs Rifle's main street, Railroad Avenue.
Local spa to offer free haircuts in exchange for food bank donations
On Sunday Romeo & Juliet Salon Spa will sponsor a food drive to help keep area families from going hungry. To encourage participation in the food drive, salon and spa owner Julie Katz and her team of hairdressers plan to provide area school age children (kindergarten through 12th grade) with complimentary back-to-school haircuts in exchange for a donation of four or more items for the Frisco Family Services Center and Little Elm food pantries."The food drive will be a great way to gather food for families in need and a rewarding way for us to thank those who participate," Katz said. "We wanted to do something to pay back the community who has been so wonderful to us."Romeo & Juliet Salon Spa, which opened in December, is committed to supporting the community and insuring that no one goes hungry.
Changing Courses
TAMPA - It was the new school, the northern school, the rural one on a horse pasture and muddy roads. Chamberlain didn't look like Hillsborough County's established high schools, the stately buildings of Hillsborough, Plant and the original Jefferson. Chamberlain opened 51 years ago with a "maximum efficiency" design: single-story classroom wings that stretched like fingers from the office hub and the auditorium. Little has changed, in many ways. Chamberlain's early graduates still cheer the Chiefs and say they get chills when they sing the alma mater they helped write with band director Robert C. Price. But beyond the trophy cases, the 50 years of class gifts and the black-and-white photographs is a new wood-paneled classroom with a curvy bar, recessed lighting and restaurant booths where Chamberlain is overhauling how it teaches teens.
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