Last week’s newspapers had a great article about the Rio Grande County Board of County Commissioners airport update. Thank you, Lyndsie Ferrell!

Miss Trixie and I had a little adventure this past week as we had to go to Amarillo, Texas, due to a family illness. Her father, who goes by the name Shot, had to have open heart surgery while passing through the Texas panhandle and made a detour into no man's land to get it.

Everyone knows Congress is broken. For decades, the swamp in Washington D.C. has embraced corrupt and incestuous policymaking at the expense of hard-working Americans. From passing $1.8 trillion, 4,155-page long spending bills just before Christmas — to secret backroom deals negotiated by lobbyists and special interests — to passing $500 billion suspension bills without a single Member even having to cast a vote — these broken processes are not what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they established our Constitutional Republic.

Every week it seems that Ol’ Dutch and Miss Trixie get into some kind of shenanigans of one type or another. I am not sure if it's due to the fact that we go out of our way to maybe find such hijinks or others come looking for us and involve us in their schemes.

SAN LUIS VALLEY — Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, HPAI for short, has now been detected in the SLV according to a recent article by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), and more wild bird mortalities have been reported since the announcement.

Christmas came and went in a flash and all I can say is WOW! Miss Trixie in her usual manner made a huge splash with presents for the grandkids and I doubt that we will be able to do better than that in any following gift-giving. For those of you that know her it's not a surprise but if you do not, let's just say the best decision you will ever make is to invite her to any potluck or other event where she can share her bounty. You will not be sorry.

The Ursid meteor shower runs from Dec. 17 to 26, and peaks on the night of Dec. 22. It's a ‘Welcome to Winter Meteor Shower’ with the longest night of the year on the 21st as winter begins. This will be a good shower with the New Moon on Dec. 23. We just need good weather.

Winter has certainly arrived across our Nation. This week Colorful Colorado and the West is getting some much-needed snow on our mountains, which means there will be rain events further east and south. All much appreciated after last summer's drought.

Wayne Lee Wedel, 71, passed away at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Nov. 22, 2022. He was born in Dodge City, Kan., on Feb. 18, 1951, to Lacy and Viola Wedel. He grew up in Kansas where he learned to be a farmer, just like his father. He found that farming was where his heart was.

Hopefully by this time you have all either eaten the big bird and its Thanksgiving leftovers or thrown it out fearing food poisoning. At which point you probably gave it to the dog to throw up all over the rug later in the day. At least it's gone for another year, and we can move on to fresh food at least until Christmas when another round of “don't waste food” runs rampant through our houses.

In Greek mythology Andromeda was the Princess of Ethiopia, daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus.

The two stars that I seem to mention the most are Arcturus and Spica. Since I wrote about Spica last month, I thought it was time to tell you about Arcturus. You know the drill: find the Big Dipper and follow the arc of its handle to Arcturus.

By the time most of you read this you will have already found yourself elbow deep inside a cavernous turkey carcass trying to stuff it with old bread. At least that is how it used to be before people found out you could make dressing in a casserole dish much easier.

I know some of you readers out there who are probably too young to remember the days before Al Gore invented the Internet or even the time he claimed to have done so. But believe it or not, prior to the www-everything, U.S. Mail was the primary carrier of outrageous claims and promises to your mailbox.

This is the year of the comet, so far, we’ve had Lemmon and Pan STARRS. Soon you’ll be able to see ISON, but for now you’ll have to settle for our “old faithful” comet Encke. It’s “old faithful” because it has the shortest orbit of any known periodic comet and appears every 3.3 years. Periodic means that it orbits the Sun in a reliable pattern like a planet.

The holiday season is almost upon us, reminding us of the needs of all the food banks in the San Luis Valley. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, our local food banks all experience increased demand as families strive to provide their families with holiday fare.

By the time you read this, the votes should have all been counted and tallied and we can, at least, watch a little bit of television without a political ad being blasted into our homes.

The new moon was on the 25th, we still have beautiful dark skies for viewing. The Milky Way is beginning to move from the South to the Southwest as Earth's solar orbit changes into the autumn position. The other end still appears in the NE. Don't forget to look for the Taurid fireballs in the eastern evening sky.

This past weekend found Miss Trixie and Ol’ Dutch traversing the plains of North Texas and through Oklahoma’s Arbuckle Mountains in a journey back in time. For it was home to Kansas for me and the 70th anniversary of the founding of my home church.

Algol is one of the stars in the constellation Persius that sits below Cassiopeia. Its Arabic name means head of the ghoul, or head of the demon. Beta Persei is the official name, but Algol is more common because of what it means.