January 2nd headlines

 This is Knox county court house.  we are currently doing the court record books of this county. this is the old building and is very ornate.  One cannot enter the building from the front door (shown above), but have to enter the building from the newer more modern building abutting this wonderful brick structure and shown below in the next picture.

this is the modern entrance to the Knox county court.  I imagine lots of sadness and anger passes through this door way.
In a recent blog I wrote about the things that are in the Knox Co. court records and I never thought I would ever see the actual building from which these records originated.

Today in the paper there is an announcement of the birth of the first baby of the New Year.  This is always a big thing – a new baby, a new year.  When Sara was expecting to have Ethan, they had just put up a new hospital and birthing room at Cedar City and one of Sara’s girlfriends wanted to be the first person to give birth in the new hospital.  I don’t know if she got her wish, but it seemed like a difficult goal to accomplish seeing that there are many babies born in Cedar City due to the high LDS population, that it was a neck and neck race to see who would be first.  I guess you have to have some goals in life and this was one of them for Sara’s girlfriend.

There are a number of noteworthy things about this first baby of the New Year as announced in the paper today.  The mother is 16 years of age and the father is 15 years of age.  Already there is a compound problem – unmarried parents and a new baby……..add to that the parents are way under age to become parents and what does a 15 and 16 year old know about the responsibilities of parenthood?  The problems are myriad and include but are not limited to the baby becoming a pawn in squabbles over who is responsible for paying for the upkeep and care and feeding of this child as well as schooling.  Too often these little babies, that are not put up for adoption, end up being abused, some end up being killed – one man threw his 2yr old daughter into the river while she was strapped into her car seat just to show the mother that he meant business or some other equally irresponsible explanation.  Often we see cases of shaken baby syndrome because the immature father wanted the baby to stop crying so he shook it – caused trauma and in many cases death of the infant.  And the list of problems that are ahead of these young parents and the baby are just beginning to spiral out of control and unfortunately the little baby is the one who ends up suffering the most.

Baby Ayla who disappeared on Dec. 17 still has not been found and still figures in the news.  One of the workers at the Archive was telling me that in her school district, it has been discovered that the middle school students have adopted the attitude of “friends with benefits” which is the theme of a recent movie.  How many more lives are now ruined I wonder?

We went to the YMCA this morning because it is a holiday.  There were many people there and I expect that what we were seeing were the hard-core exercise fanatics.  They certainly were a different group than the ones who inhabit the place at the 4 pm  hour which is when we usually go.  There was one girl there today doing exercise with her friend whom I have observed many times before this.  She was working out with a personal trainer there on a regular basis and I notice that she is very trim.  On our way home we had to come to a stop for a man crossing the highway.  He was shuffling much like Tim Conway shuffled in the Carol Burnett Show…..but it was not Tim Conway crossing the road.  I felt sorry for him not being able to walk at a reasonable pace and wondered what illness had brought him to this point in life – other than the fact that he did look to be quite aged.