Paula Cole was one of the interesting concerts this past year at McKinney Performing Arts Center. McKinney City Council is wrapping up a process set in motion to review the future use of the McKinney Performing Arts Center (MPAC). The final public input meeting will be held this Thursday, March 18, at 5:30 p.m. in the Ruschhaupt Room at MPAC. photo by Allen Rich
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The Fannin County District Clerk’s Office is hosting a Passport Fair in Bonham, Texas on Saturday, March 27, 2010 from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. to provide passport information to U.S. citizens and to accept passport applications. The Fannin County District Clerk’s Office is joining the Department of State in celebrating Passport Day in the USA 2010, a national passport acceptance and outreach event.
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Robert Franze, as Sal, is introduced to Candace Bambay, played by Stephanie Kelly on the far right, by Mrs. Morganford, center, played by Lee Franze in the Gunter education foundation’s Death of a Doornail dinner theater, set for April 17. Tickets go on sale March 22.
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The documentary film, Fresh, which offers some new thinking about what we're eating will be shown March 27, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. in the May Room at the American Bank of Texas in Bonham. All are welcome. Please join us for this casual, invigorating event.
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In recognition today of the 259th birthday of James Madison, the principal writer of the Constitution and the fourth President of the United States, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves visited Montpelier — Madison's colonial home near Orange, Va. Groves stood in Madison's library, the very room that one of the Founding Fathers used to draft the Virginia Plan that became the Constitution.
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Saint Patrick's Day is a yearly holiday celebrated on March 17. It is named after Saint Patrick (circa AD 387–461), the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland. It began as a purely Christian holiday and became an official feast day in the early 1600s. However, it has gradually become more of a secular celebration of Ireland's culture. It is a public holiday on the island of Ireland; including Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora, especially in places such as Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and Montserrat, among others. It is believed that Saint Patrick's Day has been celebrated in Ireland since before the 1600s. It was also believed to have served as a one-day break during Lent, the forty day period of fasting. This would involve drinking alcohol; something which became a tradition. Little is known of Patrick's early life, though we know he was born in Roman Britain in the fifth century, into a wealthy Romano-British family. His father was a deacon in the Church, like his father before him. At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken captive to Ireland as a slave. It is believed he was held somewhere on the west coast of Ireland, possibly Mayo, but the exact location is unknown. According to his Confession, he was told by God in a dream to flee from captivity to the coast, where he would board a ship and return to Britain. Upon returning, he quickly joined the Church in Auxerre in Gaul and studied to be a priest. In 432, he again says that he was called back to Ireland, though as a bishop, to save the Irish, and indeed he was successful at this, focusing on converting royalty and aristocracy as well as the poor. Irish folklore tells that one of his teaching methods included using the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) to the Irish people. After nearly thirty years of teaching and spreading God's word he died on 17 March, 461 AD, and was buried at Downpatrick, so tradition says. Although there were other more successful missions to Ireland from Rome, Patrick endured as the principal champion of Irish Christianity and is held in esteem in the Irish Church. photo of Chicago River is dyed green St. Patrick's Day
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Visitors now have a new reason to visit Bonham State Park. photo courtesy Bonham State Park

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Howard Stephen Berg, “The World’s Fastest Reader” and McKinney resident, will teach many of the accelerated learning techniques he has developed over the last twenty years. The program is free of charge, and open to adults and children sixth grade and up. Students as young as eleven are using his strategies to attend local colleges and earn A’s in their course work, and adults are using it to stay on top of information at work.
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One of the most popular children’s events held in Bonham each spring is the annual Chi Lambda sponsored Breakfast with the Easter Bunny. This year’s breakfast will be held Saturday, March 27, 2010 from 9-10:30 a.m. in the Finley-Oates Elementary School Cafeteria. The Easter Egg Hunt will begin at 9:45 a.m. Three separate egg hunts will take place at that time with children divided into age groups. Children should bring their own Easter baskets with toddlers thru 3rd grade invited to participate.
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“Violent Universe” will show audiences the upheaval of a giant star that explodes its material into space, a future encounter between Earth and a large asteroid and the forces that hold the universe together and occasionally rip it apart. The show is narrated by Patrick Stewart of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the X-Men films.
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U.S. Attorney John M. Bales announced today that a 50-year-old Denton, Texas man has been sentenced to federal prison for his role in a multi-million dollar oil and gas scheme in the Eastern District of Texas.
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1912 – death of Lawrence Oates, an ill member of Robert Scott's South Pole expedition. Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates (17 March 1880 – 16 March 1912) was an English Antarctic explorer, known for the manner of his death, when he walked from a tent into a blizzard, with the words, "I am just going outside and may be some time." His death is seen as an act of self-sacrifice when, aware his ill health was compromising his three companions' chances of survival, he chose certain death. A five-man polar party of Scott, Edward A. Wilson, Henry R. Bowers, Edgar Evans and Oates walked the last 167 miles to the Pole. On January 18, 1912, 79 days after starting their journey, they finally reached the Pole only to discover a tent that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his four-man team had left behind at their Polheim camp after beating them in the race to be first to the Pole. Inside the tent was a note from Amundsen informing them that his party had reached the South Pole on 14 December 1911, beating Scott's party by 35 days. Scott's party faced extremely difficult conditions on the return journey, mainly due to the exceptionally adverse weather, poor food supply, injuries sustained from falls, and the effects of scurvy and frostbite all slowing their progress. On February 17, 1912, near the foot of the Beardmore glacier, Edgar Evans died, suspected by his companions to be the result of a blow to his head suffered during a fall into a crevasse a few days earlier. Oates' feet had become severely frostbitten and it has been suggested that his war wound had re-opened by the effects of scurvy. He was certainly weakening faster than the others. His slower progress, coupled with the unwillingness of his three remaining companions to leave him, was causing the party to fall behind schedule. Waking on the morning of March 16 and recognising the need to sacrifice himself in order to give the others a chance of survival, Scott wrote that Oates said to them, "I am just going outside and may be some time." Forgoing the pain and effort of putting his boots on, he walked out of the tent into a blizzard and -40°F temperatures to his death.
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