Monday Open Lines


Today’s Profile America is missing from their distribution, so here’s Saturday’s and Sundays:

Many places in the U.S. are well known for their mosquitoes, but only in Clute, Texas, is a whole festival devoted to them. It’s the 32nd annual Great Texas Mosquito Festival, which winds up a three-day run this weekend. The arts and crafts, entertainment and food are expected to have drawn some 17,000 visitors — human, that is — plus an unknown number of winged guests. Watching over the festival is a 26-foot inflatable mosquito named “Willie Man-Chew.” For many people, though, mosquitoes are no laughing matter. Around the world, 655,000 people die of malaria each year. In the U.S., there are about 1,400 cases of the disease reported annually, mostly contracted overseas. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

While the international Olympic Games certainly gather more attention, within the logging community in the U.S., all eyes are focused on today’s windup of the Lumberjack World Championships in the town of Hayward, Wisconsin. The world’s best lumberjacks are facing off in events such as log rolling, tree climbing, chopping, and cutting with hand and chain saws. Those skills are used every day in the timber-based manufacturing industries, which employ 716,000 workers. Products include veneer, plywood, millwork, and engineered wood product, as well as wood containers and pallets. Profile America is produced by the U.S. Census Bureau: Measuring America–People, Places, and Our Economy.


Discuss and more on the Open Lines!