The Tuesday Letter
Agricultural Experiment Station & Cooperative Extension Service
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
(Vol. 18 No. 4)
IN THIS ISSUE...
WORD FROM THE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR - EXTENSION AND APPLIED RESEARCH
Okay... I am going to divert this lead article from its usual administrative update to instead giving some facts/trivia about Thanksgiving. Did you know:
1) In 2011, Thanksgiving Day falls on Thursday, November 24. (I hope you all knew this!)
2) The first Thanksgiving took place in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts in 1621.
3) Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the classic nursery rhyme “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” is credited with mounting a campaign that convinced President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to declare the last Thursday in November to be a national holiday of Thanksgiving.
4) In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared Thanksgiving to take place a week earlier, on November 23, in order to give an extra week of shopping between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This turned out to be very controversial, such that Congress passed a law in 1941 to establish Thanksgiving to be celebrated as a national holiday on the 4th Thursday in November.
5) Macy’s Christmas Parade in New York City began on Thanksgiving Day in 1924 and was later renamed to be the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In that same year, America's Thanksgiving Parade was begun in Detroit.
6) The Detroit Lions, in order to gain more notoriety in the Detroit area over the Detroit Tigers baseball team, arranged for the first NFL football game to be played on Thanksgiving Day in 1934. They also arranged with NBC radio for a live national broadcast of that game. That first game was played against the Chicago Bears.
7) In a survey conducted by the National Turkey Federation, an estimated 88% of Americans said they ate turkey for Thanksgiving. In 2007, that was estimated to be 46 million turkeys consumed on that day, which was nearly 20% of all turkey consumed by Americans in that year!
I trust these are all facts, as I pulled from various reputable sources on the internet!
Travel safely,
especially with night travel and deer in the headlights. Take a
moment and spread the thanks to others in your workplace, home, and
community during this special holiday time. We all have far more for
which we are blessed and for which to be thankful. Those thoughts should
overshadow any doubts. And, blessings to you for a wonderful Thanksgiving! --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
FEDERAL FY2012 AGRICULTURE BUDGET PASSES
We've recently received word that the President signed the Agriculture budget for FY2012 which includes the federal funding for the Agricultural Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension Services. I am pleased to say that much of that budget remained flat. Our major funding lines of Hatch, Smith-Lever Sections 3(b) and 3(c), and Agriculture and Food Research Initiative all remained effectively level. We did experience some special funding lines that were reduced, including small reductions in Farm Safety & Youth Farm Safety Education programs, eXtension, Children, Youth and Families at Risk, Renewable Resources Extension Act, Rural Health and Safety Education, and Grants to Youth Organizations. More significantly, in the integrated portfolio of the budget, funding was eliminated for Food Safety and International Science and Education Grants. Additionally, Water Quality was reduced by half, while Regional Pest Management Centers received an increase of $1.006M.
Overall, we are very pleased with where Congress settled in conference committee. This budget is as favorable as we could hope. Logic of some of the reductions and eliminations of certain budget lines will be pursued for future understanding. If you have further questions, please let me know. --Daryl Buchholz dbuchhol@ksu.edu
TWENTY-TWO COMPLETE 2011 KSRE GRANT WRITERS COURSE
Congratulations to the twenty-two Research and Extension
professionals and partners who recently completed the "KSRE Grant
Writers" classes for 2011. This year’s learners join thirty-two
participants from previous KSRE Grant Writers classes in building their
capacity to develop and manage grants.
The 2011 KSRE Grant Writers are Brandi Nelson, Vickie Bobbitt, Gary Cramer,
Diann Gerstner, Stephanie McKennon, Holly Dickman, Anna Muir, Evelyn Neier,
Robert Atchison, Pam Howe, Peggy Boyd, Pam McKnight, Jennifer Smith, Heather
McPeek, Rhonda Gordon, Amy Jordan, Rhonda Roux, Beth Hecht, Lindsey Friesen,
Tonya Bobbitt, Mark Seeley, Ann Religa.
Dates for the 2012 installment of “KSRE Grant Writers” will
be announced at the beginning of the new year. For more information, contact Elaine Johannes,
ejohanne@ksu.edu, or ask one of the KSRE
Grant Writers what they have learned and how they'll use that knowledge for
grant development. --Elaine Johannes
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