River Hills Traveler
Get into spring!

Here’s a summary of stories in the March issue of River Hills Traveler:

Crappie can be found on Clearwater in March — Bob Todd
Bob and Roy Halbert follow clouds of shad along the old Black River channel in Clearwater Lake to catch all the crappie they cared to clean.
Choke tube wins friends, sales for SE Missouri hunters — Steve Felgenhauer
Machinists and hunters Stuart Ruehling and Mike Ponder developed a choke tube to fill in slow times at their Frohna shop. Their product, marketed under the name, Indian Creek Shooting Systems, shows up consistently in shooting championships, and has led to friendships with big name hunters such as Walter Parrott.
Change tactics or else… — Bill Cooper
Turkey numbers are down from historic highs and it takes more effort these days to bag a wise old Ozarks gobbler. Bill offers five field-tested tactics to improve your turkey hunting success.
Teamwork key to safety at whitewater event — Becky Allgier Tinsley
Becky grew up on the hog farm next to Millstream Gardens, where the Missouri Whitewater Championships are held each March, but she didn’t see behind the scenes of the races until she covered them as a writer and photographer. Tinsley interview race officials to learn how safety is emphasized in an inherently dangerous activity.

To learn more about Joplin’s Project 2010, click here to visit their Facebook Fan Page.

   In your quest for a greener, more efficient lifestyle, may I suggest you consider shower shaving.

 A flexible, tubular arm lets you position the Shower Tek mirror as needed and directs a flow of hot water through the enclosure to eliminate fog. A handy rack keeps razors off the shower floor, even pink ones.   I became an inadvertent adherent some months back while the sink in my basement bathing area was out of commission. It was either shave in the shower or trek up two flights of stairs to the family bathroom where there’s tough competition for face time with the mirror over the vanity sink. (Life with a wife and two lovely girls is rewarding but it does drive a man to the basement to shave and shower. What is with those 27 plastic bottles in the upstairs shower? What is wrong with ordinary bar soap? Herbal oatmeal body wash!)

    I digress. We were talking about shower shaving. The basement sink was sinko, so I took my brush, shaving mug and round mirror with the flexible neck into the shower stall. Once the regular shampoo and shower were done, I wet the brush, stirred up a lather in the mug, applied it to my face and scraped off whiskers, peering into a fogged up, 4-inch diameter mirror perched dangerously on a narrow shelf. The results were rough, but a new habit was born.

    The transition was not as silky smooth as a man’s skin in a Gillette commercial. Sometimes there was blood on the floor. I did some fancy dancing when the mirror fell from its shelf toward my toes. Several times I showered, dressed and sat down to breakfast with the uncomfortable feeling of having forgotten something. Only when I rubbed my stubbly chin to ponder, did I remember what.

Shower shaving is something you want to do while you are there. There is no efficiency in getting back in the shower a second time only to shave.

People from the Ozarks and around the world want to help the people of Haiti. Many people from the Ozarks, especially religious groups, have been assisting Haitians for many years. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

To understand the magnitude of the tragedy in Haiti, a brief geography lesson can be helpful.

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Haiti occupies the west end of the island of Hispaniola, which is immediately east of Cuba and west of Puerto Rico. The east end of Hispaniola is occupied by the Dominican Republic.

The population of Haiti is about 10 million, which is roughly equal to the combined population of Arkansas and Missouri. About one third of the population (equivalent to the population of the St. Louis metro area) resides in Port-au-Prince, which is near the epicenter of the earthquake.

It was shot and produced over the course of 8 weeks in collaboration with WIN’s Nancy McMurrary. The piece’s genesis lay with my girlfriend, Caitlin, an elected member of WIN’s executive committee. As an enthusiastic supporter of her boyfriends’ professional aspirations as well as a committed member of the chronically cash-strapped WIN, Caitlin introduced me to, and greased, WIN’s levers of power.

The sun hasn’t quite crested the flat horizon, but agricultural pilot Dennie Stokes is already strapped into the cockpit preparing for a marathon workday that will keep him and his turbine-powered Thrush swooping over the Mississippi delta until well beyond sunset.

The wettest spring in memory has saturated rice, soybean, and wheat fields that stretch for miles in every direction from Stokes’ home airstrip in rural eastern Arkansas. The farmers that are his neighbors, customers, and lifelong friends depend on Stokes and his company to sow and fertilize their crops and protect them from weeds, insects, and disease.

“Agricultural aviation is absolutely essential to the farm economy in this region,” said Stokes…

Click here to read the whole story on their website.

This is Traveler’s first foray into video production. We hope you like it. The video was shot at our office in Valley Park, Mo., using hand puppets owned by our assistant editor, Jo Schaper. Jo and yours truly were running the puppets, while Jo’s brother, Bill Schaper, operated the camera.

My son, Jackson Styron, who has a degree in film production from Webster University and does freelance video work in Washington, D.C., edited our rough takes and added subtitles and music, using Final Cut Pro software.

The video is posted on YouTube with tags such as “Missouri outdoors” that will help our audience find it. It is also posted on Traveler’s Facebook page, my personal Facebook page, Traveler’s own website and on Styron Observer. The idea is to get it out there on all the channels we have available. It can also be played on a computer at trade shows or run on local cable television.

At a gathering on Thanksgiving evening, in Granny and Granddad’s garage cum guest house, kids and grandkids helped celebrate the wedding anniversary—60 years for Pat and Vern.  Some fine raconteuring highlighted the event, but nobody did it better than the musical tribute—rock-n-roll style—that some of the grandkids (and one great grand daughter) brought to the event.  

The kids were really fired up their performance, and were ready to strut their stuff for my video cam.  My iMovie edit doesn’t do them justice.  But Styrons and friends will still enjoy.  Take a look.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c-wAiTxTkc