Maple Leaf Lighting Contest

The Maple Leaf Festival Committee and the Carthage Convention and Visitor’s Bureau are accepting applications from Carthage residents for the Maple Leaf Festival Lighting Contest. As with the original campaign in 1967, Carthage residents will be encouraged to decorate yards and businesses to illuminate and celebrate the changing of the season. Prizes will be awarded and the displays will be available for public viewing during the Maple Leaf Festival, October 8-16, 2011.

"This year we are switching it up a bit and adding a day viewing category," says Wendi Douglas, Carthage CVB Director. "Carthage has been voted a beautiful city time and time again and highlighting the area in the fall seemed a unique opportunity for visiting leaf lovers."

The displays must be within Carthage city limits and available for judging and viewing October 8-10, 2011. Applications are available at the Carthage Chamber of Commerce and must be received before October 7, 2011. First, Second and Third Place winners will be chosen in day and night categories. First place winners will receive a garden plaque for year round display.

Jasper County Jail Count

? October 5, 2011

Total Including Placed out of County

NASCAR THIS WEEK

By Monte Dutton

Stars Align for Stewart

A fairly common script device applied to Tony Stewart and, for that matter, Clint Bowyer, in New Hampshire.

Role reversal.

In the race a year earlier, Bowyer won largely as a result of Stewart’s car running out of gas at the end. The fortunes reversed this time.

"It’s amazing it happened like that," Stewart said. "Clint was one of the first guys who called last year, and as happy as he was (that) he won the race, he knew how disappointing it was for us.

"You don’t want to win them that way, and you don’t want to see guys lose them that way. This is a sport where guys have a lot of respect for what happens and how it happens. Having a win get away from you that way is disappointing for anybody."

People talk about irony all the time. Most of the time, it’s coincidental, not ironic. Irony has been in place on the Sprint Cup circuit recently, however.

It wasn’t long ago that Stewart, frustrated and dejected, all but wrote himself off, questioning whether his team even belonged in the Chase. The turnaround -- and a rather pleasant need to eat his words -- occurred quickly.

"It happened in a week," Stewart said. "We went from five laps down at Bristol to running third at Atlanta the next week. No, you don’t see it coming. It’s not like we say, ‘OK, this is what happened, this is what’s wrong and this is what you have to do to fix it.’

"There have been races where we just missed it, couldn’t get happy, couldn’t get the car happy. There have been races where we’ve had a top-five, top-three or winning car and something stupid happened. ... The potential’s been there all year. You wonder when the bad luck is going to stop."

No more wondering now.

The question is whether Stewart can now avoid the erratic nature of his regular season for the remainder of the Chase. If anything can temper the optimism associated at the moment with a bid for a third championship, it’s that Stewart figured to do well in the first two races, based on his record at Chicagoland Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Stewart has proven ever since he first climbed into a stock car that he can win anywhere. The chief issue from here on out will be whether or not his No. 14 Chevy can win anywhere. Stewart can be his own worst enemy. As a general rule, however, it’s not when he’s behind the wheel.

In victory lane, an exultant Stewart spoke of how he had gotten rid of some "dead wood" at Stewart Haas Racing. When asked about it later in the media center, he turned surly and wouldn’t discuss it. Earlier, his crew chief, Darian Grubb, had said he didn’t know what the boss was talking about, and Stewart retreated a bit by saying no one had lost his or her job in the wood cleaning.

Who knows? Maybe it was a rotting stack of cedar out back.

Whatever it was, it worked.

I haven’t heard any official statistics, but I’ve gotta think that more’n half the population of the City has this cold/flu thing. Whatever it is, it seems ta spread through a family or workplace fairly easily.

Sniffles, coughin’ and generally miserable feelin’ seem ta be the standard. It seems ta last at least a week and most seem ta hang on longer. It doesn’t seem ta be confined to this area, I know of several outa state folks who have been workin’ through the same thing. ‘Course I’ve talked to some who say they never get sick, but this thing got ‘em. Those of us who haven’t been hit yet are gettin’ a little ill just figurin’ our time’s a comin’.

At the first sign, I’m gonna take my traditional steamin’ bath and load on the blankets. Sometimes it works.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Weekly Column

CLICK and CLACK

TALK CARS

I observed in a recent VW commercial that the car has a feature that automatically unlocks the doors at the time of a collision. I was always taught that locked doors make the car structurally stronger. Why would a manufacturer create this feature to unlock the doors at the time of a crash? -- Mike

TOM: Locked doors don’t make a car structurally stronger, but CLOSED doors do. And locking the doors makes them more likely to stay closed in a crash.

RAY: The federal government has set safety standards for door latches that are quite strict. So doors almost never open anymore due to the force of the crash itself.

TOM: But the one weak link is the door handle and the rods that it connects to. If your car is moving very fast at the time of a crash, the inertia can move that handle or the rods it attaches to in the door, and that can unlatch the door -- as if you’d pulled the handle.

RAY: But if a door is locked, the handle becomes inoperative. You can pull on it or push on it, but it’s detached from the rods that activate the latch, and the door won’t open.

TOM: That’s why it’s recommended that you keep your doors locked when you’re driving. And why many cars automatically lock the doors when you start driving.

RAY: VW’s crash-response system is designed to shut off the ignition switch, cut the fuel-pump relay, turn on the hazard lights and unlock the doors. And all this stuff is activated the moment the air bag and seat-belt pretensioners deploy -- which is during an accident.

TOM: It would make more sense for VW to program in a delay, so that the doors unlock a few seconds later, presumably after the vehicle has come to a complete stop. After all, first responders are fast. But they’re not that fast.