Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6:30 Eastern. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or every now and again. With the auto-publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometimes the diarist du jour shows up much later, that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments.
Welcome to Casual Friday where we wake you up with the overlooked news stories of the week. The offbeat, strange and sometimes downright weird news items that mainstream media tends to ignore, all wrapped up with a few funnies, all designed to get your face in smiling shape for the weekend.
Nostalgic Warden Has Seen 3 Generatons of Family Come Through PrisonDWI suspect tried to drive off in Power Wheels truck
Police in Arkansas said a woman charged with driving while intoxicated allegedly struck a trailer home with her car and attempted to drive off in a toy truck.
The 29 year old woman was driving her Grand Am at a high rate of speed when she struck a panel on a trailer. The woman, who was naked from the waist down, grabbed the trailer owner's daughter and tried to drive off in a child's Power Wheels battery-powered toy truck belonging to the son of the victim. The victim, who knew the woman, forced her to leave the toy truck and then walked her to her mother's home.
Police said a portable breathalyzer test was administered and Craft, who officers said was having trouble standing, gave a reading of .217 blood alcohol content, nearly three times the legal limit for driving.
Craft was charged with driving while intoxicated, public intoxication, refusal to submit, disorderly conduct, leaving the scene of an accident with property damage and driving while license canceled, suspended or revoked. She was jailed in lieu of $2,067 surety bond.
Man gets high school diploma at age 106
Fred Butler was honored Monday at Beverly High School with a special ceremony attended by family and teenage members of the class of 2013 at the school's library, and was presented with an honorary high school diploma, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday.
"I want to thank everybody who is responsible for this," Butler said. "I never expected to get anything like that. I really appreciate it."
Butler had to drop out of school in the eighth grade to help support his mother and five siblings. He always regretted not having his diploma and faithfully encouraged other family members to do well in school.
Urban growth traps goat in Texas city - Skittish critter calls Girl Scout property home
As cities expand and sprawl they take away the homes of local wildlife who are forced to move along lest they become trapped. In Austin, Texas one feral goat has seemingly dug in his heels and claims the local Girl Scout headquarters his own.
“We have a lot of meeting rooms and they face out (to the front windows),” said Scout Marketing and Communications Director Lolis Garcia-Baab. “So we've had several instances where we're in a meeting.
“In fact, we had some very important guests from our corporate headquarters the other day and we were having a meeting. They were facing the window and one of them shouted, 'Oh, my God! There's something alive out there!
The goat does not seem aggressive at all and in fact runs away when being approached by humans. Several attempts have been made by animal control and the goat obviously does not want to be caught.
One problem is that he's seemingly marking his territory and he seems to be lonely:
Billy goats are kind of smelly,” Garcia-Baab said, “and he has kind of marked his territory. So our custodial staff has had to clean up after him, if you know what I mean.
“It's a good thing he's a vegetarian because his pellets don't smell, but his urine definitely smells. He does leave his markings.”
Nobody seems to mind that, though. In fact, people are really quite drawn to the goat.
“I think he's a little lonely,” said Garcia-Baab, “because he looks in the rearview mirrors or the little side mirrors of the car and kind of stares at himself quite a bit.”
Nostalgic Warden Has Seen 3 Generatons of Family Come Through Prison
Luger, who started as a guard at the penitentiary in 1970 and eventually rose to its top post, said he could reflect back on the decades by simply recalling the perennially incarcerated Mowatt boys, who over the years have served sentences for crimes as varied as manslaughter, methamphetamine production and distribution, pimping, armed robbery, and rape.
“I’ll never forget when the first Mowatt walked through these gates 42 years ago,” said Luger, referring to family patriarch and hardened felon Charles Mowatt, whose nephews, sons, and grandsons have since followed him through the institution. “It was the same year I proposed to my wife! If I’m not mistaken, that was the time Charlie was in for aggravated assault after smashing up his girlfriend with a tire iron.”