After a lot of anticipation and patience Bereans now have a chicken ordinance.  Those who live in residential zones may keep up to 6 hens in their backyards if the city’s board of adjustments grants a conditional use permit.

In and a 7-1, the Berea, Kentucky city council adopted second reading of an ordinance making the keeping of chickens, but not roosters, a conditional use in residential areas of Berea, Ky.

Although the ordinance requires that all neighboring property owners and be notified of a chicken permit application, a neighbor’s objection would necessarily be sufficient grounds for denying a permit, City Administrator Randy Stone said.

At least eight people, kids included, had been taken to a hospital following the derailment of the Spillway East lift double-chair lift at Maine’s Sugarloaf Resort during the course of a busy vacation week at the resort 120 miles north of Portland.

About five chairs fell 25 to 30 feet onto a ski trail below, officials said.  The resort said the lift, which went into service in 1975 and not long ago handed an inspection, was set for upgrades or repairs but declined to specify when. At the time of the derailment, there were an estimated 220 people on the lift, according to officials with Sugarloaf. Sugarloaf has yet to determine the cause of the incident.

“All injured guests have been treated and are being transported to area hospitals. At this point none of the injuries are believed to be life threatening,”

I came across this contest today and thought it was pretty funny as well as a good marketing ploy.  Roto-Rooter is has come up with a book of funny/spooky bathroom stories and capitalizing on the fact that two of their own employees are hosts of the popular show Ghost Hunters.

• Enter the contest

Roto-Rooter teamed up with its army of plumbers, including real-life Roto-Rooter men, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of TV’s Ghost Hunters®, to assemble a funny yet frightening vignette-style bathroom reader about plumbing horrors and unexpected things that go wrong in America’s bathrooms.

Chilling Tales from the Porcelain Seat includes strange but true tales from the general public and the plumbers who have seen it all and lived to tell about it! 100 pages of fun stories and photos to enjoy on your throne.

In a recent episode of Help! My business sucks! I heard about RyanAir’s plans to charge for using the toilets on their planes. My initial reaction was shock, but from what I’ve heard RyanAir has a track record of doing things like that. Nothing is free on their flights, not even a measly drink.

Rather than try and skimp and save at every turn, wouldn’t they be better off focusing on PLEASING the customer?! Apparently the only airline that gets what customers want (and gives it to them), is Virgin.

I ran into this in Costa Rica once.  I was traveling through several of the cities and no matter where I went I had to pay to use the restroom. Luckily I had enough cash to pay!

So the question is…

What happens if your on the plane and you don’t have any cash, or a credit card on you, and you have to go? 

The place that I called home for 4 years during my time at Berea College has been officially designated as a “Transition Town”.

Berea joins 133 other communities worldwide that have been recognized by the Transition Network founded in the United Kingdom, for their accomplishments in working to achieve a positive future for their community.

Read more:

http://sustainableberea.org

Yikes! A commercial Iridium communications satellite and a “presumably-defunct” Russian Cosmos spacecraft smashed into one another on Tuesday, more than 490 miles above northern Siberia. It’s the first ever sat-on-sat collision, SpaceFlightNow.com reports.

“The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects,” NASA’s Nicholas Johnson says. For now, the International Space Station appears to be okay. But it’s not yet clear whether that debris “poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites,” the website adds.

According to NASA, of the 6,000 satellites sent into orbit since 1957, about 3,000 remain in operation.

My college got hit pretty hard by the Ice Storm that swept through last week.  Many of the big trees made the campus of 1500 students look so beautiful were damaged or brought down by the weight of the ice.

Here is an video of the aftermath: