Today's Feature

City Council Meets Tonight.

The City Council will meet this evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall.

Items on the agenda include an ordinance accepting the Final Re-Plat of the Carthage Center Development located on the east side of Grand Avenue and North of George Phelps Boulevard. This item was brought before Council by the Planning, Zoning and Historic Commission.

Another item brought by the Zoning Commission is an ordinance accepting the final plat of Chapel Estates Phase II which is located South of Highway HH and East of Chapel Road.

An ordinance in its second reading will authorize the Mayor to execute an Administrative Services Agreement with Marshall & Isley Trust Company N.A. as designated trustee for administrative services regarding the Police and Fire Pension Plan.

Also scheduled for the meeting is the discussion of the memorandum of understanding for the expansion of the Carthage Public Library. This item is brought to Council by the Budget/Ways and Means Committee.

Had an art teacher in high school that also taught English. Typical of small schools, teachers often had a variety of classes that were not directly related. His family had run a small town newspaper and he was my first real introduction to puttin’ ink on paper.

He still had the old equipment that actually set type that ya had to read backward to proof.

He also inherited a workin’ grain mill that was run by a water wheel. He provided interestin’ classes and some intriguing field trips.

In the classroom he pretty much expected the kids to get down to business, but as he often said, "If you aren’t going to do anything, at least do it quietly."

For some reason, people who don’t do anything raise the most ruckus.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Smoking Not Only Cause of Emphysema

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: My father died of emphysema when he was in his 40s. He did smoke cigarettes. My cousin has just called me to say his father — my dad’s brother — is hospitalized with emphysema. He never smoked. My cousin says doctors think my uncle has a genetic type of emphysema, and all his children are being checked for it. My cousin thinks I should be checked too. What is this? — J.D.

ANSWER: There is a kind of emphysema that comes from an inherited deficiency of an enzyme called alpha-1 antitrypsin. To have serious problems due to this deficiency, a person has to inherit a gene from both mother and father.

It works like this. There’s a daily clean-up going on in the lungs. Enzymes are busy sweeping up debris that collects in the millions of lung air sacs. The clean-up has to stop at a certain point or it becomes destructive, breaking down air sacs and their supporting tissues. What stops the process is the alpha-1 antitrypsin enzyme. Without enough of it, air sacs are destroyed. That’s emphysema.

Your uncle and your father, one of whom is not a smoker and one of whom developed emphysema at a young age, could be victims of an alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. It makes good sense to test other family members. If a child has only one parent with the gene, that child is not likely to come down with emphysema, but that child should never light up a cigarette.

The deficient enzyme can be given to people with this illness.