Today's Feature

First Reading for License Proposal.

The Carthage City Council will meet this evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall. Items on the agenda include the first reading of an ordinance that would create a two-tiered license fee system for dogs and cats in Carthage.

The two-tiered fee system is brought to the council via the Public Safety Committee. Committee member Bill Welch proposed the idea of increasing the cost of licensing cats and dogs to $5 if the animals are not spayed or neutered. For animals that are spayed or neutered the license would be free. The Safety Committee at its previous meeting approved unanimously a motion to have a council bill drafted for the item.

The item had been approved earlier by the Budget/Ways and Means Committee as being a "revenue neutral" change for the City.

Other items on the agenda include the second reading of the ordinance amending the Carthage code book as regards new paving of streets and alleys. This item is brought by the Public Works Committee. Public Works Director Chad Wampler says that the specifications in the current code are outdated. Street Commissioner Tom Shelley agreed that the current code is not sufficient for modern traffic loads.

The new system would allow for different thicknesses of base rock and asphalt based on a number of variables, including soil type and right-of-way widths. The current code uses a blanket specification for all projects of 6 inches of base rock and 2 inches of hot asphalt.

Stench Report:

Monday,
9/11/06

No Stench Detected on Carthage Square

There were only seven minutes on the average 50 ft. roll of film, so it took some real figurin’ to time your shots to make sure you got ever’thing.

My dad became an expert at not actually takin’ a movie, but rather extended still shots. He could pack more different shots into that seven minutes... those watchin’ the movies would feel like they just got off a roller coaster when it was over. Not to mention that sometimes it would be three or four months ‘tween the time the first shot was taken and the last.

One thing about it though, we never had to sit through long boring shots. When the action stopped, so did the camera.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

A Different Kind of Angina

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I have had, on at least five occasions, chest pains that made me think I was having a heart attack. All my tests have been normal, including a stress test. A heart doctor decided to catheterize me, and he discovered I was having heart artery spasms, which caused the pain. I carry nitroglycerin with me. Could I still have a heart attack? -- T.D.

ANSWER: You have an unusual kind of angina -- chest pain that comes about when heart muscle doesn’t get enough blood. Your angina goes by the name of Prinzmetal’s angina or variant angina. Regular angina arises when a person is active, bustling around. Prinzmetal’s angina occurs when people are at rest, just sitting.

In your angina, heart muscle is deprived of blood due to a sudden constriction of a heart artery. That kinks the artery, so blood flow to the heart temporarily stops. Pain arises during the phase of artery constriction and goes away when the artery dilates.

Prinzmetal’s angina is often hard to confirm. To prove the diagnosis, a heart doctor often must catheterize the heart arteries. A catheter is a pliable tube that is threaded into the heart arteries from an artery in the groin. If Prinzmetal’s angina is suspected, the doctor gives the patient a drug called ergonovine, which causes the artery to constrict, something that doesn’t happen to normal arteries.

The most dangerous time for a person with Prinzmetal’s angina is the first six months of symptoms. After six months, the frequency of chest pains starts to diminish. The threat of a heart attack is not great.

Nitrate drugs, like nitroglycerin, are standard treatment. So are drugs called calcium channel blockers.