Walnut Hill Man Called As Pastor Of Brooks Memorial Baptist Church
April 9, 2008
Brooks Memorial Baptist Church in Atmore has called Rev. James Boyd of Walnut Hill as their new pastor, and he is ready to go to work for the Lord.
“I am extremely excited to be called as the Brooks pastor,” Boyd said. “I have a vision and a plan for Brooks, and I am ready to go to work.”
Boyd, 64, retired about a year ago after serving as pastor at Walnut Hill Baptist Church.
“I was retired, sitting in that barber shop in Walnut Hill getting my hair cut when my cellphone rang, and it was the chairman of the deacons at Brooks asking if I would preach that Sunday,” he said. After preaching that Sunday, heerved for 10 months as the interim pastor at Brooks Memorial prior to be called as their pastor this past Sunday.
He said he was looking forward from the very beginning to serving the Lord at Brooks. He said he was glad the moment had arrived when he and his wife Ellen were standing outside the sanctuary last Sunday morning, waiting for the church to vote on their new pastor.
“When the doors opened after the vote, it was one of the most humbling experiences of my life,” he said. “They whole church just clapped for us.”
The vote? 106-0.
“I’m ready now; that vision takes me to the community and to the mission field, and with things in the church,” he said Tuesday as had lunch with 43 others at a Senior’s Luncheon at the church. “It’s about worship. Worship is not something we do. It is not something that you just do; it is something you have and experience each and every time.”
That mission field work Boyd mentioned in already underway at Brooks Memorial. Six church members just returned last week from Reynosa, Mexico, after helping to build three homes in the slums, just across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas.
Those missionaries will give their testimony at 6:00 this Sunday evening at the church, including a slideshow of pictures from the Mexican mission trip.
“There are just so many ways to spread the gospel,” Boyd said. “God is not nearly concerned about the technique as he is about the spreading of the gospel.”
As Brooks Memorial moves forward, Boyd said he is looking forward to working on growth in the church’s children and youth programs, and the church plans to hire a youth director in the not so distant future. And he said is looking forward to the church’s “Outrigger Island” Vacation Bible School to be held in June.
A special Commitment Ceremony where Boyd will be officially installed as the Brooks Memorial pastor will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, April 20, with a fellowship luncheon to follow.
The Boyds currently reside on their “Dream Acres Farm” in Walnut Hill.
Sunday School is at 9:30 every Sunday at Brooks Memorial Baptist Church on McRae Street, followed by morning worship at 10:30. Sunday evening services are at 6:00, and Wednesday evening services are at 6:30.
Boyd will preach a Spring Revival at the First Baptist Church of Century Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26 at 6:30 and Sunday morning, April 27 at 11:00.
Pictured above: Rev. James and Ellen Boyd of Walnut Hill at Brooks Memorial Baptist Church in Atmore Tuesday afternoon. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Cyber Safety Tips For Parents
April 9, 2008
This week NorthEscambia.com is running a series on Cyber Safety. Today, we take a look at some tips for parents.
- Prepare your children for the online world just as you would for the real world.
- Establish guidelines and rules.
- Know who communicates with your children
- Learn about the Internet.
- Familiarize yourself with the programs your children are using.
- Consider using Internet filters or blocks.
- Place the family’s computer in a common room where supervision and guidelines are met.
- Limiting your children’s computer time is not enough to safeguard them on the Internet.
- Talking about the benefits and dangers on the Internet and making sure your children are making smart decisions while online is also important.
- Explain to your children that Instant Messenger (IM) is only for chatting with school and family friends who they know by face and are approved by you.
- Make sure they can put a face to every screen name on their IM “buddy list.
- Reinforce that people are not always who they say they are when online.
- Make sure your children know how dangerous it is to give out personal information such as their name, mailing address or E-mail address.
- Stress the fact that it is not safe to get together with someone they first “meet” online.
For more tips, visit http://www.safeflorida.net/safesurf
To read our installment in this Cyber Safety series from Monday, click here. To read our blog on the subject, click here. To read yesterday’s story about the Attorney General’s Office CyberCrime unit visit to Northview High School, click here.
Many Century Departments Over Budget; Council Concerned About Spending
April 8, 2008
“We’ve already shot this budget to hell and back,” is how Century Town Councilman Henry Hawkins described the current condition of the town’s budget. “If we ain’t careful, we are going to be flat broke.”
Century Town Council members spent nearly 40 minutes at their regular meeting Monday night questioning bills and budget items presented to them by Town Clerk Dorothy Sims.
Hawkins pointed out that the town’s water and sewer department was nearly $3,000 over budget for employee bonuses.
“You mean they paid over what is in the budget,” Council Member Anne Brooks said. “They paid more than was budgeted?”
Sims said that in the past the council would amend the budget after too much was spent to reflect the overage, all after the fact. “We don’t just do them (budget admendments) everytime we go over,” she told the council.
“I think we need to amend before we spend,” Brooks said.
“When you look at this, we are overspent in every department,” Hawkins said. “You don’t do that and then amend the budget…than a red flag needs to be raised. Then we amend the budget, or we don’t do it.”
The town had budgeted $9,350 for capital outlay, or improvements, to town parks. As of the end of January, the department had spent almost $30,000. Some of that money will be repaid by grants, Mayor Freddie McCall told the council.
$2,500 was budgeted for office supplies. The town had spent $3,600. $1,500 was budgeted for street department equipment maintenance. As of the end of January, $3,865 had been spent. The water and sewer department is $4,200 over budget for plant and pump maintenance. The water and sewer department is $2,500 over budget in their miscellaneous category.
“It’s just that so many of the accounts are over,” Brooks said. “It looks like we did not do a good job budgeting.”
Each month, the council receives a bill list of the bills to be paid. It is just that: a list of bills and amounts. But Hawkins said he wants the council to start seeing the actual bills.
“I think it would be fair to us (the council), if we got a copy of all of the bills,” Hawkins told Sims.
“You want a copy of every bill…can you not come in and look at them,” Sims responded.
“I called and left messages for you twice today to see the bill list,” Brooks said.
“I didn’t know that,” Sims said.
After 38 minutes of discussion, a motion by Council Member Nadine McCaw to pay the town’s bills passed 4-0, with Council Member Sharon Scott absent.
Pictured above: Century Town Clerk Dorothy Sims holds an accordion file full of the town’s bills for the month at Monday night’s Century Town Council meeting.
Northview Students Learn Cybersafety From AG’s Office
April 8, 2008
Kathy Pacheco from the Florida Attorney General’s Cybercrime Office painted a chilling picture for students at Northview High School Monday morning. A young girl meets someone she believes to be a young man online. They chat; she begins to trust him. She has personal problems that he seems to understand. He has the right answer for all her problems.
They being to chat online five, six hours per day. She hurries home to chat with him; he gets angry if she’s not online. She wants to make him happy. He admits that he was a little dishonest about his age. Maybe he’s in his twenties, not a teen. She does not care; she likes him. After a little more time goes by, he admits his real age…56. But she’s OK with that, because she really loves him; after all, he understands all her problems at home. In fact, she mentions that maybe she just might run away from home.
LMIRL.
Those five letters appear on her screen. Attorney General Bill McCollum has called those the five most dangerous letters in the alphabet. LMIRL — Let’s Meet In Real Life.
The girl in our story runs away with the 56 year old man. They are finally caught in Reno. He goes to jail for 25 years. She get a letter from him, threatening to kill her when he gets out. That’s not the part of the letter she notices. She’s more concerned that he did not tell her how much he cares for her in the letter.
It’s real life, a real story, Pacheco tells the Northview students. A sexual predators on the Internet is like a lion stalking his prey, she said, adding that you never really know who you are talking to on the other end of an online chat.
Pacheco showed them a drawing of of a man that was extremely ugly, to the point of being comical. “Would you chat with him?” The juniors and seniors laugh.
“What about her,” she asks, showing a picture of an attractive young lady that several guys described as “hot”. Many admit that they would.
“But what if this she was really a he?” Pacheco asked, drawing lots of comments from the students.
“That would suck,” one student says.
That was the case, she told them, of Paul Parker in Bay County. Parker, 42, enticed young boys over the internet by pretending to be a teenage girl or boy and persuaded them to perform sexual acts via webcam. Parker would then record these acts and make pornographic videos from them. He also placed additional child pornography videos on the internet, where they were discovered by an undercover CyberCrime investigator who was able to trace them back to Parker.
He would threaten to send the videos to the victim’s friends if the did not further comply with his requests. He bribed a young boy to meet him at a hotel. He’s now serving 14 years in prison.
“That’s it? God that’s awful,” a student says.
Pacheco then showed the students a MySpace page belonging to a user named “Danny”. Danny’s page looks fairly normal, other than he has just a handful of MySpace friends. A few students admit that they might chat with Danny, or add him if he made a friend request on MySpace.
Danny actually created the page while a serving time in an Arizona prison.
Pacheco also told students that dangers exist everywhere there is person to person contact on the Internet, not just on MySpace. Places like Facebook and gaming websites can also lure predators because there are minors online there.
Students played a game of “Pick the Perp” where they were shown four pictures at a time. Some where convicted sexual offenders, others were Cybercrime Unit officers. They were generally unsuccessful in picking the sexual predator over the officer, allowing Pacheco to make the point that it’s not possible to tell who is good and who is bad by the way they look.
One of the “Pick the Perp” pictures was of a seemingly innocent looking hardware salesman. He thought he had arranged an in person meeting with a teen, but he had actually arranged to meet an investigator. He was arrested when he showed up at the arranged meeting site. He had duct tape, rope and a machete in his possession at the time of his arrest.
The Northview students also learned that when something is posted online, it may never go away…even if the student deletes it.
“Do you really want the rest of the world to know your business?” Pacheco asked the students.
She said collegess will often do an Internet search before admitting a student, and employers will often do the same before hiring someone. Those are cases, she said, where something posted now can come back to haunt students in the future.
She encouraged the students to send a friend request to the Cybercrime Unit’s MySpace (pictured above) at http://www.myspace.com/florida_cpcu. When added, it will place a Cybercrime badge in the student’s MySpace. That will potential frighten away predators, she said.
- For more information about cyber safety, visit http://www.safeflorida.net/safesurf or http://www.myspace.com/florida_cpcu
- Those who receive unwanted photos, messages or solicitations on the Internet are advised to call: (800) The-Lost or visit www.cybertipline.com
To read our installment in this Cyber Safety series from Monday, click here. To read our blog on the subject, click here.
Century Care Center Residents Make Special Memories
April 8, 2008
Residents at the Century Care Center made memories at a special ceremony Saturday afternoon.
The residents and their families worked together to create memory boxes, under the supervision of Janet Lee (picture right in the above photo) from Covenant Hospice.
“In spite of the rainy weather, we had a pretty good turn out,” Activities Director Mae Hildreth said. “The residents, families and staff enjoyed it.”
Scroll down for more submitted photos.
Homeless Woman Will Have To Leave Century Park; Town Will Put Up Signs To Forbid Overnight Camping
April 8, 2008
The Century Town Council voted to place “No Overnight Camping” signs at the town’s Wayside Park located next to the Country Bumpkin on North Century Boulevard.
The woman, who Mayor Freddie McCall described as “sweet” and “apparently a Christian lady”, has been sleeping in her car in the park for some time. But council members said they were concerned about her living in her car in the park.
McCall said he had tried to get her to go to a homeless shelter in Pensacola, but she refused. McCall said she had been staying in a Flomaton Park until they ran her out of town.
“She had somebody working on her car right there in the park,” Town Clerk Dorothy Sims said.
In other business, the council approved the lone bid on replacing a sign at the town’s industrial park. The sign was destroyed back in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan roared through the area.
The eight by ten foot sign will cost the town $7,905 from Markham and Sons, but most of that money will come from insurance proceeds the town received back in 2004.
The council was scheduled to hear a presentation from Dale Long of Fabre Engineering according to the agenda, but he was not present. McCall said Long was to inform the council that the state had approved a water pressure tank system at near the Century Correction Institute. The total bill on the project will be $18,695, but the council took no action on moving forward. McCall said a decision did not have to be made on the project right away.
Working 120 Feet Above Bratt
April 7, 2008
Eric Strehl had a tall job in Bratt Friday afternoon. Strehl, who works for Moody’s Electric in Bay Minette, was on top of the water tower at North Highway 99 and Water Tank Road doing electrical work.
He was doing maintenance on the tank’s probe system. That probe is part of the overall control system for the tank, according to his coworkers who were having lunch on the ground while he worked 120 feet above them.
The tank is part of the Bratt-Davisville Water System.
Pictured above: Erci Strehl works 120 feet above Bratt under cloudy skies Friday afternoon. Pictured below (scroll down to see both photos): Strehl doing electrical work on the tank’s control system and another shot of Strehl on the tank. NorthEscambia.com exclusive photos.
MySpace, Your Online Danger; We Take An In-Depth Look At Local MySpace Pages
April 7, 2008
Students at Northview High School are scheduled to attend a CyberSafety presentation from the Florida Attorney General’s office today. NorthEscambia.com will begin a multi-part series about Internet safety today, and we will continue those articles each day this week.
We encourage you to read this entire article, and to read the blog linked at the end of this article. If you only read part of this story, you will not fully understand the intended message. This article and this series is written for both parents and students. For that reason, we will sometimes stop and explain something that parents unfamiliar with MySpace might not understand.
The statistics are frightening. As many as one in five Florida youth will be solicited for sex online. That’s one in five. Florida ranks fourth in the nation in the volume of child pornography. Florida ranks fifth in the nation for identity theft.
But numbers are just numbers. The numbers say that a problem exists. But that is surely in the rest of the Florida. Not here in North Escambia, right? Maybe not. If you are a parent, and you don’t know was “a/s/l” or “LMIRL” means, you better keep reading.
NorthEscambia.com decided to take a look at what Northview High School students were posting on their MySpace pages. MySpace is a social networking site for teens and adults alike. People post items about themselves along with snapshots and sometimes videos. It is probably safe to assume that almost every Northview student has a MySpace page. There are other social networking sites, but MySpace is the most popular. MySpace can be a safe and normal part of everyday life in 2008, especially for teens.
Here is how we conducted our look at Northview High MySpace pages: We used the search feature of myspace.com to search for Northview High School. Then we narrowed our search to “current students”, both male and female, ages 16 to 17. MySpace does not allow searches for users younger than 16, and nobody under 14 is suppose to have a MySpace page. That search returned over 200 MySpace pages; that is over 200 people. We picked about the first 100 and allowed ourselves up to three minutes on the profile of a MySpace user’s page in order to see what personal information we could find.
We want to make it very clear that everything we did can easily be done by anyone visiting MySpace (or even by people searching Google or Yahoo). It is what millions of ordinary users do everyday on the site. We did not send a “friend request” to anyone, nor did we contact any MySpace user by email, phone or any other means. The information on a MySpace page is provided by the user and may or may not be true.
We found that most Northview student profiles were set to private. Private means that unless a user allows you to see their page, you don’t see anything but a single photo and just a little basic information. Internet safety experts generally recommend that MySpace profiles be set to private. For a teen, a private profile is a good thing.
But we found a few that were downright frightening. We want to stress that these were not typical of the average Northview MySpace pages we viewed. We’ll take a look at those first.
We easily find a 16 year old that says he will graduate in the Northview class of 2009. His profile lists that he lives in Turkey and he’s a Pacific Islander, both obviously not true from his photographs. That’s considered a good thing on a public profile…not revealing actual facts about yourself. But it gets worse.
We are not telling you his profile name because, like a scene from every parent’s cyber safety nightmare, he lists his complete phone number. It’s a 256 number. We, of course, do not know if this is really his phone number because we did not call it. Perhaps it is a fake number, a randomly chosen number or a number of a friend listed as a practical joke. But it is a local phone number that might be easily used to contact him, or perhaps even locate his exact street address with a simple search.
It gets a bit worse from this same page. His friend says in a comment “You just call me. 221-XXXX’. Her MySpace profile is private, but there is what appears to be her cell phone number on his page.
But it gets even worse. Another female friend with the screen name “I love you (His Name)” writes “hey babe. miss you already. call me. 516-XXXX”. There is her photo and her cellphone number. But her profile is not private. We have her cellphone number. In less than a minute on her page, we learn her name. She says she is 17 from Century. She recently moved to Florida. Two friends from her former town list their phone numbers on her page.
Then there’s the 17 year old male “from the 587” (that would be Molino). His page lists his full name. His AOL Instant Messenger screen name. His cell phone number. A friend write in his comments that he just quit McDonald’s and went to work for Whataburger in Century. Right next to his picture, he details that he will be leaving for work at 9:20 on a particular date.
Another Northview student writes in large, bold print on his MySpace page: “my name is XXXX XXXX XXXXX, i go to northview high school, i am 15, my b-day is march XX, i play baseball, and football, i wear #XX in baseball, #XX in football, that is about it but if you want to know more write me some messageor call 850-380-XXXX.”
Another Northview student’s page says she is 16. She works at Whataburger. She loves photography, and she’s pretty good at it. She’s a sophomore in FBLA that will be going to Orlando in April, the weekend of the 19th. We know her real name from her blogs, learn her political opinions and her thoughts about school. She has a friend who works at Whataburger from 5 to 10. We know her friend’s name, and of course know what she looks like from her photo.
There’s another that says he is a 16 year old from Walnut Hill, a sophomore that plays football (he includes his jersey number and the position he plays too), drives a white mustang, and we know his girlfriend’s name. His profile also clearly lists his first and last name.
There is a 16 year old girl that attends Northview. Her MySpace page includes hundreds of pictures, including pictures of her in a bikini (but nothing that most would consider offensive or overly revealing) and pictures of her kissing her boyfriend. She lists her full name, including her middle name. There are details of the date and time some friends will be meeting family members at the interstate and where they will be going.
Language is another issue on a few of the pages we viewed. A few might include a word or two that some would possibly consider offensive. But then there was this MySpace page pictured left.
The first black box covers a name. The rest of them are words that are very offensive. And, in addition to obscuring his face for privacy, we had to add the black boxes over his hands. His profile is set to private. But this page and those words will potentially forever be available on the internet. Available to potential employers, available to anyone that googles him.
So what’s the big deal? Let’s go back to those numbers we mentioned at the beginning. As many as one in five Florida youth, both male and female, will be solicited for sex online. When a MySpace profile lists some of the information we wrote about above, it become super easy to contact a teen. When a sexual predator has a name, a phone number, a cell phone number, knows a student’s school, knows where they work, knows what they look like, knows…we believe you should have the idea.
A simple message could appear in a student’s MySpace inbox:
a/s/l
That’s “age, sex, location”. It could appear to the student that the message is coming from, just for example, a 16 year old girl that attends Tate High School. But that person may actually be a 45 year old man in Mobile. Anyone can pretend to by anyone else online.
A MySpace profile typically includes information about a person like their hobbies, favorite music, favorite movies and more. The predator can use that information to become “friends” through the Internet with the student. And that can lead to five of the most dangerous letters on the Internet:
LMIRL
That’s “Let’s Meet In Real Life”. That’s the beginning of how many, many of the one in five youth in Florida get solicited for sex.
Tomorrow, NorthEscambia.com will take a look at information from the Florida Attorney General’s office about online safety.
Now, back to the Northview student MySpace pages. We did find that most were private. Without being the student’s online “friend”, we could not see those pages. But we did find some that were not private that were not frightening like those above.
We found one 15 year old female student’s page to be pretty much what you would find in high school yearbook. Happy pictures of her, her friends and her high school activities. Writings about teen life:
“im sadly single :[ i love god. my favorite show is CHARMED…i live each day trying notto make any regrets. well thats it so peace out girl scout,” she writes in her profile.
Another female Northview student writes about problems with her “backstabbing” friends. Then she writes “Life is short so don’t let those backstabbing friends ruin it! You were made to have fun, with or without them! Jesus knows something better is coming for you but it may take a little while! It’s a challenge he gave each and every one of us and he expects us to win it! He makes times hard and he makes times easy. He has planned your life already but if you dont win the challenge then it will take a long time to see what the better plans are! You need to realize that you can’t just call somebody a friend! You have to watch very carefully when you are deciding! Just take a moment to think about this and eveyrthing you have and how much strounger you are now than you were then.”
There were several other pages that were generally “clean” with the kind of ordinary conversation and information that most parents would find agreeable.
Make sure you join NorthEscambia.com for the next part of our Internet safety series tomorrow as we take a look at the Attorney General’s Office CyberSafety program that took place Monday morning at Northview. In the meantime click here to read our blog on the subject for more insight into this story.
We invite your comments on this story; email news@northescambia.com or use our online contact form.
In the MySpace screen grabs on this page, we have blurred pictures. Each item in this pictured was freely and openly available to anyone on MySpace as of late Sunday night. The black boxes cover profile names, phone numbers and profanity.
Blog: Our Take On Northview Students And MySpace
April 7, 2008
Sunday afternoon, I was reviewing my calendar for the week. On Monday morning, I was scheduled to attend one of two CyberSafety presentations from the Florida Attorney General’s Office at Northview High School. I googled for information about the attorney general’s CyberSafety program. I read a line that made me stop; it slammed me like the proverbial ton of bricks.
As many as one in five Florida youth will be solicited for sex online.
While we live in wonderful little communities in North Escambia, the MySpace pages and other online activities of our youth extend to the world. So while the potential here is perhaps not as great as some places in Florida, the potential for the unthinkable is real.
If you have not read our story about Northview student MySpace pages, stop reading here and click here to read the article first. If you have read the article, read on…
Why did we single out Northview High School? Simple. MySpace restricts users to age 14 or older, and students that age would be in high school. The only high school in the NorthEscambia.com coverage area is Northview. Our findings are not a Northview problem; in fact, I would venture to guess what we found would have been MUCH worse at any other public high school in this county. I want to stress that the bad examples we pointed out in our story were not typical of most Northview MySpace pages.
How popular is MySpace among Northview teens? I would venture to guess there are not very many without a MySpace. Almost every Northview teen MySpace page we viewed on Sunday had been updated within the last 48 hours. Many of the students were listed as “online” while we were viewing their pages.
I want to make a point to the parents (I’ll get to students below). I am in no way whatsoever saying you should run to your child and say “delete your MySpace”. I’m not going to tell you how to raise your child, but I feel strongly that’s not the answer. That would be like saying “some kids drink and drive, so you are never to drive a car again”. You can’t ignore it to make it go away. MySpace and online social networking is just as much a part of life now as hanging out at the burger place and cruising parking lots was when you were in high school. Repeat after me: Having a MySpace in itself is NOT evil. Doing the wrong thing with it is evil, but there’s nothing wrong with having a MySpace page.
I want to stress that most of the Northview student MySpace pages we found were not accessible to the public. Unless your student lets someone in, they don’t see what’s there. Many of the ones we found that were open to the public were not a problem. In fact, some were inspiring, and few were downright spiritual…discussing Jesus or youth meetings at church. I’d be downright proud as a parent of many them to know they had the freedom online to do and say what they want, but they chose the right things to do and say.
I personally know several of the Northview students who’s MySpace pages I saw. Or I know their parents. And knowing everything I know about them, there was nothing on their pages that would have clued anyone into anything they should not know.
Should you look for your child’s MySpace page? If it is a publicly accessible page, yes. If the rest of the world can see it, you should join in. If it is a private page? That’s where I’m not getting in your business. But I will say this…many Northview students have their parents in their “friends”, because they are just that — friends. But if not, should you demand to see it? Honestly, you as a parent will have to decide. I will explain to you that are not familiar with MySpace, that reading your child’s private MySpace would be very much like listening to each and every one of their phone conversations. Is that something you would do? It becomes a level of trust between you and your child.
And I know that many, many Northview students read NorthEscambia.com. Many copy NorthEscambia.com photos and videos for their MySpace pages. We appreciate all of you, and we are glad you like the site. I hope U and NorthEscambia.com can be like BFF. NALOPKT I think MySpace is KEWL and I wish it was around B4 I got out of school. I understand P911, PIR and POS. I know you are saying OMG and LOL, but that is TMI 4 ME.
But here’s the 411 (oops, sorry moms and dads, here’s the deal)…when your MySpace page has your name, your phone number and lots of ways to figure out were you are going to be when, along with your “I am a QT” pix (I mean picture), that IMHO is DUMB. k?
Let’s just be 100 percent honest and adult about this here…that’s like walking around a mall full of pervs (moms, dads: those are sexual predators) with sign around your neck with your name, address, phone number and a map to your house. Oh…you might as well pass out keys to your house and gas money at the same time. And don’t think it is just the girls that have to be careful…the same things happen to guys.
Be KEWL about it, and MySpace is well, KEWL.
Usually the biggest problem is a generation gap. Many parents just don’t get MySpace, or text messaging or any of that Internet stuff. Their kid might as well be speaking Russian.
And, dear students, IMHO, there are a few of you that just don’t get it. Like those in the news story that posted their phone numbers. Or just never thought about saying “I’ll meet you at Whataburger at 3:00 Tuesday afternoon”. There are just some sick people in this world. They know who you are, what you look like and where you will be. That’s creepy. And many more of you don’t realize that the moment you post something on the Internet, there is NO WAY to delete it forever. It’s stored on computers in all sorts of places, and it might come back to bite you one day. Everything on your MySpace might be seen by a college admissions rep. By the guy who is going to hire you for your dream job. By your future husband or wife. Or your kids might google you one day and find all that stuff, even if you delete it today.
Again, MySpace is not evil if you do the right, and the smart, thing with it.
I know I’ve gotten your attention. Probably made a few people mad. If your MySpace is featured in the news story, you might want to edit that thing like right now. If you are a parent and you are lost, this week is the week you will learn something. It’s not about parents controlling their kids. It’s not about spying or getting into their business. It’s about understanding.
We’ve brought up some issues and said some words that you may not have expected to find. But I’d rather all of us talk about this now as a community than for you to read the story I have to write when a youth in North Escambia becomes a victim. The words I’ll have to write then won’t be nearly as nice. I don’t want to go there.
Join us again tomorrow as we look at this issue some more. And let us know what you think by email at news@northescambia.com or use our online contact form.
Walnut Hill VFD Assists With Sunday Morning Atmore House Fire
April 6, 2008
The Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department was called to assist with a house fire in Atmore early Sunday morning. Walnut Hill VFD’s water tanker and several firemen responded to the house fire near the Atmore Airport just after 6:00 Sunday morning.
Damage to the home was contained to attic. There were no injuries.
For more information on the fire, visit AtmoreNews.com.
Pictured above: The Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department assisted with this Atmore house fire Sunday morning. Photo courtesy AtmoreNews.com