Nov 21, 2024

Today is National Rural Health Day, something that's appropriate to acknowledge in Alabama in these days of dwindling rural hospital and emergency care.

Also not lost on us is that the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health made this day the third Thursday of November knowing good and well many of us are gonna spend the fourth Thursday deep-frying a turkey.

The report follows. Thanks for rading,

Ike

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A lawsuit has now been filed regarding last year's arrests of Escambia County school board members, school employees at two journalists, reports AL.com's John Sharp.

The lawsuit claims that Escambia County DA Stephen Billy, Sheriff Heath Jackson and four deputies violated the constitutional rights of the four plaintiffs. They argue the arrests were in retaliation for the ousting of Superintendent Michele McClung. It accuses the defendants of being “malicious, abusive, and retaliatory.”

The plaintiffs' attorney Jared McClain accused the local sheriff and DA of “going after anyone who they thought was possibly standing in the way of Michele McClung.”

Note that a lawsuit offers one side of a story. Charges against the plaintiffs were over whether they disclosed grand-jury secrets. The lawsuit claims that a subpoena in question obviously came from Billy, the DA, and not a grand jury.

A couple months after Billy recused himself from the criminal case, the state AG's office dropped the charges.

There is opposition to turning the historic S.S. United States into a big artificial reef, reports AL.com's Heather Gann.

Not that the desires of New York concrete businessman John Quadrozzi Jr. are a consideration at this point. Okaloosa County, Fla., has bought the ship, and it's expected to first spend time at porch in Mobile Bay to be prepared for its final deployment about 20 miles off the Florida Panhandle.

But Quadrozzi and a backer are trying to stop the boat from being hauled south. It's still docked in Philadelphia as weather concerns have backed up its departure date.

The alternate plans include creating an environmentally focused, sustainable floating ecosystem with residences and commercial and industrial spaces.

For the record, Okaloosa County officials, who bought the boat, say they haven't heard from Quadrozzi. So the plans remain: Mobile Bay, then the Gulf bottom for what they say will be the world's largest artificial reef.

Yesterday most of us felt the air about us get a little chillier and drier behind a cold front, reports AL.com's Leigh Morgan. Depending when you're listening to this, it might already be about as warm as it'll get until Saturday or Sunday.

Tonight and tomorrow night it'll be downright bone-chilling by some standards, with Mobile expecting lows in the low 40s and central and northern Alabama looking at low- to mid-30s.

That's bring in the pets, plants and kids weather. Anyone north of Tuscaloosa might not see 60 degrees again until Sunday.

In 1933, NASA astronaut and Air Force Col. Henry Hartsfield of Birmingham.

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