Motorcycle Deaths on the Rise in Texas
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Take One! It’s FREE! The May 6, 2014 Our 20th Year of Publishing Weekly (979) 849-5407 . mybulletinnewspaper.com Bulletin © 2014 LAKE JACKSON • CLUTE • RICHWOOD • FREEPORT • OYSTER CREEK • ANGLETON • DANBURY • ALVIN • WEST COLUMBIA • BRAZORIA • SWEENY Motorcycle My moving deaths on the thoughts of traffic jams rise in Texas By John Toth TxDOT launches Editor and Publisher I’m again helping a family ‘look twice’ safety member move. Yes, the old man gets called on routinely by the awareness program young ones during such times. This time, though, it’s different. AUSTIN — In an effort to reverse I’m stuck in traffic in Houston on a a 5-percent year-over-year increase Friday afternoon in the middle of in motorcycle crash fatalities, the rush hour. I am Texas Department of Transportation tightly grasping is launching its month-long “Share the the steering Road: Look Twice for Motorcycles” wheel. Anyone campaign. The campaign started May can tell that I 1 and coincides with national Motor- am out of my cycle Safety Awareness Month. element. “Drivers who hit motorcyclists I don’t drive often say they never saw them,” said ROUNDABOUT in rush hour John Barton, TxDOT deputy execu- that often, tive director. “Our roads in Texas are even avoiding times when school crowded, so we all have to stay alert lets out. and be on the lookout for motorcy- It’s bumper-to-bumper as long as clists. For those driving cars and Security experts are troubled by teen’s wheel well trip the eye can see. I’ll never get out of trucks, we urge you to check your mir- By Joseph Serna, Kate Mather and here, I’m thinking out-loud. We are rors, leaving extra room and use turn James Rainey stuck forever. At least until the jam signals in order to prevent crashes Los Angeles Times (MCT) clears up, and then we’re on our and save lives.” The dark of night still draped way. But it seems like forever. In Texas last year, crashes killed Mineta San Jose International Airport This one is mild compared to the 494 motorcyclists. That is up from 470 when a 15-year-old boy from nearby ones I have been in in Europe. They motorcycle-related deaths in 2012. Santa Clara, Calif., wandered onto know how to put on a mega traffic Because 4,339 motorcycle crashes in a secure airport ramp and toward a jam just about any time. Texas last year involved at least one Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767. The whole time I was stuck there, other vehicle, TxDOT is asking drivers Then he disappeared. I could not help but agonize about to look twice, leave plenty of space The slight teenager, first seen how much of that precious $10-per- and use signals before making lane on a security camera video, would gallon gas I was pumping through changes. About one-third of these not appear again until later Sunday the tailpipe without making an inch deadly crashes happen at intersec- morning, when airline workers of progress. tions where cars and motorcycles spotted him 2,350 miles to the west, Now, I am sitting in the middle meet. (Continued on Page 6) walking on the tarmac at Kahului of Loop 610. I could put the car in Airport on the island of Maui. park. It wouldn’t make any differ- Woman who started Mother’s In the interim, authorities say, ence. the boy survived a perilous, 51⁄2 I do recall that is exactly what I Day wound up regretting it -hour odyssey — enduring frigid did at times when evacuating from See Page 2 temperatures, oxygen deprivation Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and I Lake Jackson offers free and a compartment unfit for human didn’t even go into Houston. habitation — as he traveled over the That was the mother of traffic concerts each Friday night Pacific Ocean in the jet’s wheel well. jams, created when everybody was See Page 8 The incident prompted authorities told to evacuate at the same time, Dogs that nibble on owners’ to question both how the teen so and authorities closed down the pot are not in for a treat easily gained access to the jumbo usual routes and directed all the jet and how he survived with so little (Continued on Page 8) See Page 12 (Continued on Page 13) Page 2 THE BULLETIN May 6, 2014 (979) 849-5407 www.mybulletinnewspaper.com Hallmark celebrates 100th year of Mother’s Day, started by a woman who grew to despise it By Tim Engle dent Wilson — and you have a new “A printed card means nothing during the “Great War.” for writing “The Battle Hymn of the The Kansas City Star (MCT) exhibit. Two, in fact: one here in except that you are too lazy to write The notion of a Mother’s Day was Republic.”) KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s hard Kansas City, Mo., at the Hallmark to the woman who has done more for initially a “fairly radical idea,” Phillips Anna Jarvis’ mother, Ann Maria to imagine how anyone could get Visitors Center, and one in Staunton, you than anyone in the world,” Jarvis says, part of the broader movement Reeves Jarvis, was an activist who riled up by a Hallmark card showing Va., at the Woodrow Wilson Presi- reportedly said. “And candy! You take toward women’s rights and equality offered medical care to soldiers of a serene mom clutching roses, but dential Library & Museum. (Wilson a box to Mother — and then eat most in the 1860s and ‘70s. Julia Ward both sides during the war, primarily in that’s only if you don’t know the story was a Staunton native and, coin- of it yourself. A petty sentiment.” Howe’s 1870 poem “A Mother’s Day West Virginia. She organized Moth- of Anna Jarvis. cidentally, Jarvis graduated from a She’s said to have called florists Proclamation,” coming just after the ers’ Day work clubs, aid organizations She’s the person most credited college there.) and the makers of greeting cards and carnage of the Civil War, was really a that tried to lower infant mortality, with turning the second Sunday of Give Hallmark credit for including candy “charlatans, bandits, pirates” call for peace. (You may know Howe among other public health projects. May into Mother’s Day, which this in its display a thank-you letter from and even … termites. year celebrates a milestone: 100 Jarvis to Wilson, because Jarvis was She had a way with words, that years. no fan of card makers. In her view, Anna Jarvis. But another person who helped the holiday she crusaded for — a day To learn about her, we turned launch the national holiday, with the she’d hoped would be reverential and to Andrew Phillips, curator at the stroke of a pen on a proclamation, contemplative — was ruined by com- museum in Virginia, who was in was the U.S. president in 1914, mercialization as early as the 1920s. Kansas City earlier this month to Woodrow Wilson. By some accounts, she spent the drop off Wilson family artifacts for Take all of that — Mother’s Day, rest of her life trying to take back, the exhibit here. He also visited the SO FAMILY GATHERINGS ARE SURE TO BE TENSE: A 50-year-old vintage Hallmark cards and Presi- actually rescind, Mother’s Day. National World War I Museum at woman, who didn’t like the lady her brother was about to marry, called the Liberty Memorial — Wilson, as you Registry Office in Plymouth, England, pretended that she was the bride- may know, was America’s president to-be, and cancelled the wedding. She then told her brother, who had her arrested. Drivers: $2500 sign on TAG, YOU’RE IT! A 66-year-old woman drunkenly called the police in bonus for experienced Grand Traverse, Co., while she was playing games with her family, asked if they could guess where she was, and told them to come and find her. They O/O & CO CDL –A OTR did. w/ good home time Call UH, I JUST THOUGHT I’D HAVE A SNACK, OFFICER: Police pulled for an immediate interview over a car with its headlights off in Iowa City, and detected a strong smell 855-252-1634. of marijuana when the driver rolled down the window. He then tried to eat his stash of weed so it couldn’t be used as evidence against him. The cops made him open his mouth, and saw the remnants. FORGET SOMETHING, BUB? A man, who stole a sound system from a home in Haddon Township, N.J., was arrested when he returned 30 minutes later to steal the remote. LET’S START THE INVESTIGATION WITH THEM: After a woman lost her cell phone to a pickpocket at a street fair in Brooklyn, X-rated selfies of a couple, now in possession of the phone, started appearing on the woman’s online account to which the device is linked. The man and woman appar- ently did not know that they were posting pictures of themselves making kissy faces, then videotaping themselves getting much more serious. Police now have the photos. SHE EXPECTED TO GET AWAY WITH THIS: A woman pawned her car at a hock shop in West Palm Beach for $5,500, and the next day reported the vehicle stolen, collecting another $12,300 from the insurance company. ABOUT US Unfortunately for her, the pawn shop decided to sell the car a year later because she hadn’t come back to claim it, and found – to their surprise John and Sharon Toth, -- that it was listed as stolen.