Month: November 2011

Google, Christian Science Monitor, Mark Twain Boyhood Home celebrate Twain’s birthday

Posted by mpoletti – November 30, 2011

Hannibal’s favorite son was born 176 years ago today. In his honor, Google’s always-creative “doodle” pays homage today to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

A Google "doodle" in honor of Mark Twain's 176th birthday.

Click on the doodle on google.com to see a selection of Twain-related search results, including this interesting piece from the Christian Science Monitor about why Samuel Clemens’ pen name would have gotten him the boot from Facebook.

Hannibal’s Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum celebrated Twain’s 175th birthday with a gala premiere party for the museum’s “Mark Twain: Words and Music” album, so it seems fitting that according to a Facebook post from Executive Director Cindy Lovell, the museum is celebrating today by awaiting word of Grammy Award nominations, which will be announced tonight. The album has been entered in multiple Grammy categories.

VIDEO: Festive flash mob takes Quincy Mall by storm for Salvation Army

Posted by mpoletti – November 26, 2011

How do you raise awareness for your organization’s Christmas fundraising campaign? Well, you could put up a billboard or take out a newspaper ad.

Or you could gather a bunch of people to sing Christmas carols in the mall.

The Salvation Army took the second route Saturday with a flash mob at the Quincy Mall. Several dozen Quincyans converged on the mall’s Fountain Court during a busy morning of holiday shopping to sing “Angels We Have Heard on High” and collect funds for the social service nonprofit’s Christmas campaign.

Below, watch a video of the flash mob unfolding.

VIDEO: CASA volunteers take their oath

Posted by mpoletti – November 22, 2011

Monday was a big day for the newest volunteers in Douglass Community Services’ Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program, as they were sworn in by Judge Rachel Bringer to begin their service to foster children in the 10th Judicial Circuit. Watch them take their oath in this video.

Hannibal star of ‘Real Housewives of Orange County’
gets reality check, new home

Posted by mpoletti – November 16, 2011

Alexis Bellino, Hannibal native and "Real Housewives of Orange County" star

The reality TV personalities on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Orange County” got a healthy dose of, well, reality this past season. Many of the wealthy matriarchs on the original “Real Housewives” show, which finished its sixth season in June, discovered they weren’t immune to the financial and real estate woes that plague many American families who don’t routinely have camera crews in their kitchens.

Among them was Hannibal native Alexis Bellino, who joined the cast of characters about two years ago. Alexis is best known on the show for her outspoken love of Jesus and her line of what she characterizes as sexy mom wear.

Last year, John E. Miller writes on the website Business Insider, the family faced foreclosure after evidently falling behind on payments on their palatial home in Newport Beach, Calif. According to Miller, Bellino claims that the family hastily sold the $3 million home, and the foreclosure never went through.

After that harsh reality check, the Bellinos apparently have a new home that sounds … well … a little closer to the Real Housewives’ version of reality.

Miller writes that Bellino and her husband, Jim, have moved with their three young children into a more than 7,000-square-foot home in Dana Point, Calif. The house has five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, an ocean view and an open floor plan perfect for the parties the Real Housewives love. Their new turf, Dana Point, is another glamorous seaside enclave in Orange County. (A friend of mine from college grew up there; his childhood friends included a star of MTV’s “Laguna Beach.”)

The new home’s cost? Good question, Miller writes. He speculates, in light of the short sale on their Newport Beach home, that the home is a long-term rental that the family has not yet purchased.

Regardless of the circumstances, kudos to Bellino and her family on their new home. We hometown folks can see it on Bravo next spring, when Season 7 of “Real Housewives of Orange County” is expected to premiere.

Click here to read Deborah Gertz Husar’s story about Bellino when she joined the cast in 2009.

Language of proposed Hannibal Smoke-Free Air Act

Posted by mpoletti – November 14, 2011

Below is a document with the proposed ballot measure language for the Hannibal Smoke-Free Air Act, which the Hannibal City Council on Tuesday will debate placing on April’s municipal ballot.

The document, which was part of the media packet for this week’s City Council meeting, will open as a PDF, so you’ll need a free program like Adobe Reader to open it.

Hannibal Smoke-Free Air Act

If voters approve the ballot measure, it would go into effect 60 days after its passage, meaning smoking in indoor public places would be illegal in Hannibal beginning in the first part of June 2012.

VIDEO: Pink Ladies Volleyball Club in action at practice

Posted by mpoletti – November 12, 2011

The Pink Ladies Volleyball Club in Hannibal plays competitive, fair volleyball in the Gateway Region Volleyball league. Its 13-, 16- and 17-year-old players and their coaches also strive to render community service, especially in the area of breast cancer awareness.

We dropped in on one of their twice-weekly practices in the Holy Family School gym.

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Missouri Writers Guild seeking veterans’ stories

Posted by mpoletti – November 10, 2011

Are you a veteran with a story to tell?

If so … First of all, thank you. Second, the Missouri Writers Guild is looking for you. The statewide guild for wielders of the written word is launching its Missouri Warrior Writers Project for soldiers and their families.

Through workshops and publication opportunities, the project seeks to give a voice to the experience of veterans and those who love them. That includes teaching veterans how to express themselves in writing, but also teaching military couples how to journal their feelings during deployment and even helping children of deployed soldiers record their thoughts.

The workshops, which have been held in rounds since August, are based primarily at the Veterans Affairs hospital at Jefferson Barracks in suburban St. Louis. The project’s most ambitious work is something soldiers statewide can participate in easily.

The Warrior Writers Project is looking to publish an anthology of Iraq and Afghanistan war stories, to be titled “Holding Each Elephant’s Tail: Voices from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.” The guild says on its website that it is looking for stories of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ wartime experiences and transition back to civilian life, as well as reflections from those who have never been deployed. Prose and poetry pieces will be accepted; length restrictions apply. A $250 prize will be awarded to the top submissions in fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.

The guild is aiming for a release date of Armed Forces Day (May 19, 2012), so submissions must be in by Dec. 30.

To see a previous Missouri Writers guild anthology, check out their website for information on “Storm Country: The Anthology,” the proceeds from which went toward furnishing rebuilt libraries in the Joplin School District.

Hannibal’s revised ward map

Posted by mpoletti – November 2, 2011

Hannibal’s post-census ward redistricting has been accompanied by hardly the sturm und drang (it’s about the only German I know) that has surrounded Missouri’s and Illinois’ congressional redistricting. City Manager Jeff LaGarce presented a new map at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the council liked it, and LaGarce will bring it back Nov. 15 as an ordinance to be adopted. If all continues to go smoothly, it will receive a final vote Dec. 6, one week before the county deadline for updated wards in the April 2012 municipal election. (City Clerk Angel Vance said the affected voters will receive ample notice of their ward change.)

The ward boundary changes affect fewer than 500 of Hannibal’s more than 17,000 residents. See the two maps below, with specific geographic shifts marked in black; keep reading after the photos for numerical data.

(Note: These are photographs of Vance’s copies of the maps, which were in short supply at City Hall earlier this week.)

The number shifts are as follows:

• 298 residents moved from Ward 6 to Ward 3

• 133 residents moved from Ward 1 to Ward 2

• 118 residents moved from Ward 6 to Ward 5

• 53 residents moved from Ward 3 to Ward 5

These changes are designed to balance out inequity in the wards’ population counts. The average size of a ward in Hannibal should be 2,986; a 5 percent variance in size would give it 2,837 residents on the low side or 3,135 residents on the high side. Wards 2 and 5 were outliers on the low side, at 2,836 and 2,727, while Ward 6 was very much on the high side with 3,501 residents. (That appears to reflect population growth to the west.)

If all continues to go smoothly, the new boundaries should be in place before the year is out.

VIDEO: A spooktacular night at Hannibal’s community Halloween party

Posted by mpoletti – November 1, 2011

The Hannibal Police Department held its 31st annual Halloween party Monday night, a free night of tricks, treats, games, costume contests and haunted houses at Admiral Coontz Armory. The party drew a large crowd of little ghosts and goblins and their families, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. Hats off to the Police Department for putting on another great event.

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