FLAGSTAFF – While stores and even cities are putting up Christmas decorations, at least one group has not forgotten that there is a holiday in-between. The Federated Community Church of Flagstaff at 400 W Aspen Ave has put up a banner reminding what the holiday is really all about.
The banner uses a quote from Psalm 107, Verse 1
O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
FREDONIA – Christmas tree-cutting tags for the North Kaibab Ranger District of the Kaibab National Forest will go on sale Nov. 20, and trees may cut as soon as a tag has been purchased.
Tags cost $15 with a limit of one tree per household, and can be purchased at the North Kaibab Ranger District office in Fredonia or by mail. Christmas tree tags will not be sold at the Kaibab Plateau Visitor Center this year.
The North Kaibab Ranger District office is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The office will also be open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the following select weekend days: Nov. 29, Dec. 6, and Dec. 13. Cash, check or credit card will be accepted.
Mail requests for Christmas tree tags should include the customer’s name, $15 and a self-addressed stamped envelope. Please do not mail cash. Address mail requests to: Christmas Tree Coordinator, North Kaibab Ranger District, P.O. Box 248 / 430 South Main Street, Fredonia, Arizona 86022. Expect at least 7 days to receive a permit by mail.
Customers will receive a map that shows what areas are authorized for cutting. Tree species available include: Blue and Engelmann spruce, Douglas fir, Subalpine and White fir, Pinyon and Ponderosa pine, and Utah and Rocky Mountain juniper.
Please be advised that the Arizona Department of Transportation typically closes the winter gate on Highway 67 at Jacob Lake in early December; however, the exact date has not been announced. For the most current information about highway closures and restrictions statewide, visit ADOT’s Travel Information Site at az511.gov, follow us on Twitter (@ArizonaDOT) or call 5-1-1. Visitors can access cutting areas via forest roads, and are urged to monitor weather conditions as most roads on the district are not paved.
For more information, please contact the North Kaibab Ranger District at (928) 643-7395.
2012 Mountain Village Holiday tree.
The tags will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis until they are gone. Tags are $15 per tree. No refunds will be made, even if weather conditions prevent access to cutting areas. Tags for the North Kaibab Ranger District will be available starting Nov. 20, while tags for the Williams and Tusayan districts will be available starting Nov. 21. Customers will be provided a map that shows the designated cutting areas along with additional Christmas tree cutting instructions. The number of available tags and contact information for each ranger district is as follows:
| No. of Permits Available | Location | Contact Information | Hours |
| 800 | North Kaibab Ranger District | 430 S. Main St., Fredonia, AZ 86022 (928) 643-7395 |
8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.
The office will also be open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the following select weekend days: Nov. 29, Dec. 6 and Dec. 13. |
| 500 | Tusayan Ranger District | 176 Lincoln Log Loop, Tusayan, AZ 86023 (928) 638-2443 |
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.
The Tusayan office will be open for limited hours on Nov. 17, Nov. 19, Nov. 21, Nov. 24 and Nov. 25 from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Tusayan office will be closed entirely on Nov. 18 and Nov. 20. |
| 200 | Williams Ranger District | 742 S. Clover Rd., Williams, AZ 86046 (928) 635-5600 |
8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. Note: The Williams Ranger District office will also have 100 tags available for the Tusayan Ranger District. |
WILLIAMS – The trees are starting to look bare as the beautiful fall colors are starting to give way to the coming winter. The long range forecast shows a possibility of snow on Sunday. The city is stringing lights. The Pumpkin Patch train ended and the Grand Canyon Railway Haunted Train has given way to Christmas lights in preparation for Mountain Village Holiday. The annual Mountain Village Holiday begins Thanksgiving weekend and runs through the new year.
The Grand Canyon Railway is also preparing the Polar Express which starts November 7 and runs through the new year.
The City of Williams has sent applications for the annual lighting contest and they may also be picked up at the City Hall on First Street.
Mountain Village Holiday kicks off with the annual lighting of the Christmas tree on Second Street and a Parade of Lights. During this period the Young Life camp hosts a Thanksgiving dinner and the Kiwanis Club hosts a community dinner.
There is still plenty of Halloween, of course. The scarecrows still adorn Route 66. Bearizona ends their Howly Growly Owly Festival tomorrow. Their new cave display of small creatures of the west—such as mice, scorpions and Ringtail Cats—will remain.
The First Baptist and Family Harvest Churches, across from Safeway on Grant, will hold safe activities for the kids.
Of course trick-or-treating of the houses and businesses on Route 66 will still be available.
Just after Halloween, the weather forecast shows a chance of rain on Saturday with a low of 37. Sunday there is a 30% chance of snow with accumulations of less than a half-inch. A high of 47 is possible during the day dropping to 23-degrees overnight. Fair weather returns Monday with highs around 50-degrees during the day dropping to the mid-20s at night.
The Chief of Naval Operations has stated that the Navy Birthday is one of the two Navy-wide dates to be celebrated annually. This page provides historical information on the birth and early years of the Navy, including bibliographies, lists of the ships, and information on the first officers of the Continental Navy, as well as texts of original documents relating to Congress and the Continental Navy, 1775-1783.
The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which the Continental Congress established on 13 October 1775, by authorizing the procurement, fitting out, manning, and dispatch of two armed vessels to cruise in search of munitions ships supplying the British Army in America. The legislation also established a Naval Committee to supervise the work. All together, the Continental Navy numbered some fifty ships over the course of the war, with approximately twenty warships active at its maximum strength.
On Friday, October 13, 1775, meeting in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress voted to fit out two sailing vessels, armed with ten carriage guns, as well as swivel guns, and manned by crews of eighty, and to send them out on a cruise of three months to intercept transports carrying munitions and stores to the British army in America. This was the original legislation out of which the Continental Navy grew and as such constitutes the birth certificate of the navy.
To understand the momentous significance of the decision to send two armed vessels to sea under the authority of the Continental Congress, we need to review the strategic situation in which it was made and to consider the political struggle that lay behind it.
Americans first took up arms in the spring of 1775, not to sever their relationship with the king, but to defend their rights within the British Empire. By the autumn of 1775, the British North American colonies from Maine to Georgia were in open rebellion. Royal governments had been thrust out of many colonial capitals and revolutionary governments put in their places. The Continental Congress had assumed some of the responsibilities of a central government for the colonies, created a Continental Army, issued paper money for the support of the troops, and formed a committee to negotiate with foreign countries. Continental forces captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain and launched an invasion of Canada.
In October 1775 the British held superiority at sea, from which they threatened to stop up the colonies’ trade and to wreak destruction on seaside settlements. In response, a few of the states had commissioned small fleets of their own for defense of local waters. Congress had not yet authorized privateering. Some in Congress worried about pushing the armed struggle too far, hoping that reconciliation with the mother country was still possible.
Yet, a small coterie of men in Congress had been advocating a Continental Navy from the outset of armed hostilities. Foremost among these men was John Adams, of Massachusetts. For months, he and a few others had been agitating in Congress for the establishment of an American fleet. They argued that a fleet would defend the seacoast towns, protect vital trade, retaliate against British raiders, and make it possible to seek out among neutral nations of the world the arms and stores that would make resistance possible.
Still, the establishment of a navy seemed too bold a move for some of the timid men in Congress.
USS Yorktown (Ret.) in October 1987.
The holiday season is upon us. Already Christmas decorations are being sold across Northern Arizona alongside monster costumes and candy for Halloween. In between lays the most maligned holiday of the season, Thanksgiving. Candy and new iPhones are apparently more important than being thankful for what you have.
“If the day should ever arrive, (which God forbid!), when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states shall have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so far as that of the counties of England–on that day the progressive political career of the American people will have come to an end, and the hopes that have been built upon it for the future happiness and prosperity of mankind will be wrecked forever.” – John Fiske, historian, quoted in “Our Changing Constitution” by Charles W. Pierson, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922.
September 17 is designated each year as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day by 36 United States Code §106 (PDF). This day is meant to commemorate the signing of the Constitution. It is also meant to recognize those who, by coming of age or NATURALIZATION (in contrast to amnesty) have become citizens of these States united.
This is not to be confused with Bill of Rights day, which is December 15, nor the ratification of the Constitution. This is the day the Constitution was signed by the representatives at the Constitutional Convention. It was not ratified until 1789 and not by all thirteen colonies. The Bill of Rights would not be added until two-years after that.
According to the law cited,
The civil and educational authorities of States, counties, cities, and towns are urged to make plans for the proper observance of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day and for the complete instruction of citizens in their responsibilities and opportunities as citizens of the United States and of the State and locality in which they reside.
Across the country schools will, no doubt, be having students color pictures of the Constitution brown without reading at it. No sense having a discussion on the condition of the colonies at the time (sometimes called history) or the words of the founding fathers.
So it will be up to you to actually study the Constitution on your own. Here are some recommendations.
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While July 4, 1776, gets all the glory for being the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, just 12 words in a newspaper owned by Benjamin Franklin announced the historic move that came first in the form of a vote on July 2.
“Philadelphia, July 3: Yesterday the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies free and independent states.”
That’s all it said in the Philadelphia Gazette.
There were so few characters in this message that Deseret News described it as “America’s 238-year-old tweet,” a nod to Twitter’s 140-character limit.
According to Deseret News, only 1,000 copies of the newspaper were printed holding the text that declared independence from Great Britain. It was buried under pages of classified ads looking for runaway slaves. One such copy turned up at an auction catalog last month and was snapped up by collector Brent Ashworth, who last year displayed some of his other rare items at Glenn Beck’s “Man in the Moon” event held over the Independence Day holiday.
“I was shocked,” Ashworth told Deseret of the copy. “It’s a very rare paper. … It’s a great piece.”
Read more at The Blaze
