I like a cup of coffee in the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes in the evening. In fact, I plan to brew a pot when I get home from the office tonight. If there is coffee in front of me, I’ll probably drink it. I even like gas station coffee.

Well, fellow java chuggers, there’s good news. According to researchers in the United States and Spain:

“Drinking two or three cups of coffee a day did not increase risk of death in either men or women and in fact both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee were linked with a slightly reduced risk of death from heart disease. “

The study was funded by the US National Institutes of Health and published in the 17 June issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

But we’re not out of the woods yet. The study suggests more investigation into the results.

And to be fair, I found out about the report from the Barstow Community Hospital monthly newsletter.

On Friday, Rosa at the Desert Discovery Center invited me to judge the entries for the city’s recycled art competition. Quite an honor considering my extensive background in art — one required course in college — and recycling — three years working for the recycling program in college.

I judged the pieces on use of recycled materials, portrayal of theme (it was something patriotic) and creativity, and I guess I was pretty harsh. I glanced over at few fellow judges sheets and saw that my scores for all the pieces were a few points lower than the rest of the judges.

Still, the best pieces got the highest scores, just not as high, but I guess I was fair, which I have to be because I am journalist.

The theme this year was being patriotic through recycling, which appeared to mean to many kids — the military. There were some great reconstructions of tanks, helicopters and jets all from recycled materials. Considering the new study of Fort Carson’s CO2 “bootprint” opposed to a footprint and a commitment to reduce emmisions in the next year, the Army may want to take notice.

But strange how so many young people immediately equate patriotism with the military. I shared my observations with some of the other judges, and we wondered if it was a phenomenon unique to Barstow, with its many soldiers, many veterans and many jobs at Fort Irwin or the MCLB, or if across the country the word patriotism now means tanks, jets and helicopters.

Beyond all that thinking, the projects were a great display of one of the legs of the recycling triangle, reuse.

And if reusing household items is your thing, I recommend checking out the magazine ReadyMade. The magazine can show you how to make almost anything, from a cork doorstop to a couch from what you would normally throw away.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

Google helped me realize just how much of my work has been focused on the Barstow Unified School District’s budget. When you do a Google search and it lists a bunch of Web sites, the number of times you’ve visited a site appears next to the URL.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that number next to the site of the Barstow Unified School District was around seven or so. I thought it strange. I cover education and have only been to this site a handful of times.

No more! As of Wednesday morning, the morning after the board approved the BUSD budget, I have visited the district site 52 times, and I suspect that number will increase.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

I don’t want the average unleaded gas price to hit $5. I drive a car, too, after all. But ever since the story ran, I have been driving by the 76 station on East Main Street daily, staring at the sign that has stubbornly remained at $4.99 a gallon ever since I predicted it would hit that fateful $5 mark.  In fact, I don’t think a single gas station in town has raised its prices since the gas-prices story ran. It’s as if every station in town decided to get together and make sure the paper would be wrong on this one.

On the other hand, I’m not really sorry to be wrong on this one.

At the end of it all, we wrote about six different graduations and watched nearly 1,000 students walk across stages, take next steps in life and hug family members. We met people off to college, joining the military, sticking around in town and looking for any way to get out of Barstow.

But at the end of it all, after the six ceremonies, the diplomas and the hugs (I think Desert Dispatch staffers even got a few during the course of our coverage), we wrote about the class of 2008.

Graduation coverage is not easy. Chances are any good idea a reporter comes up with when assigned a graduation story is old news, played out and on the verge of becoming cliché. People have been graduating for centuries, and while that does not diminish the accomplishments of each individual graduate each year, it does make the desire for fresh graduation coverage more difficult to satisfy.

Before the first graduation this year, the staff at the Desert Dispatch talked about how to cover them. We considered writing in depth stories about the characters in each class, the hardships they will face stepping into a real world of $5 a gallon gas and a sinking economy, and the memories they will take with them. We considered not covering them at all or maybe just taking a photo and letting our readers write their own stories of graduation this year as they looked through the paper.

Finally we decided to cover the each class a whole. We focused on themes and tried to talk to as many members of the class as possible. We covered the speeches, a mainstay of graduation, but discarded the congratulations and thanks-yous in favor of advice and prospects for the future.

Yes, we missed some of the great individual stories from the pool of graduates, but I think we gained a good perspective. We learned that more Barstow High graduates are going onto college than usual. We learned the more Central High graduates graduated than usual. We learned that each Silver Valley graduate, whether from the high school or the alternative education programs, has got a unique story behind them and all you have to do is ask and be amazed. And we learned, from the Barstow adult graduation and the Barstow Community College graduation, that it is never too late.

So at the end of it all, I think we covered graduation for what it is: the accomplishments of nearly 1,000 people around Barstow.

Congratulations class of 2008 and best of luck.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

For a look back at photos from this year’s 2008 graduations, visit the Desert Dispatch’s graduation and prom gallery. Have a photo of your own, sign up and share it with the community.

Still, it is a good story, and I wanted to share it with you, dear readers, in some form, because I love a good narrative.

A man calls his wife on Sunday evening and tells her that he was minding his own business, eating lunch and smoking a cigarette in his car somewhere in Barstow when a mysterious assailant tied him up and put him in the trunk of his own car.

The driver says he blacked out and woke up somewhere out in the desert, in the trunk of his car, looking up at an unknown person wearing black gloves, who apologized before shutting the door on him.

He says that he somehow managed to get his phone out of his pocket and dial the wife’s number with his tongue. Having managed this tricky feat, he then freed his hands and escaped by pulling the emergency cord inside of the trunk.

According to the account as reported in the sheriff’s logs, the mysterious assailant left the car keys in the ignition, enabling the victim to drive himself away from the scene. Although the supposed motive for the abduction was unclear, the man said his attacker stole eight cigarettes.

But so was my dad. On Tuesday when many people were live-blogging about the California election or Obama’s historical delegate victory, my dad, from some where between a hospital waiting room and the house back in Ada, kept the family updated on our grandpa’s heart surgery one email at a time.

A classic entry:

Grandpa Hoort update 1:30 p.m.

Nurses just came out to tell us everything is going as planned. Mitral valve has been repaired. Aortic valve replaced. Getting ready to repair the tricuspid valve.

Here’s link to basic heart valve anatomy
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4598

I’ll be back when I have more info.

Dave

The whole family, cousins, aunts, uncles, got these updates throughout the day and still get occasional email blasts with more information about how our grandpa is doing.

The Internet, although filled with rants, raves and nitpicks, does have the ability to unite people across the country, as it did on Tuesday, whether you were waiting for election results or how grandpa was recovering.

And for the record, as of Sunday, he was up, taking 50 foot walks and doing well.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

On Monday I came in after deadline expecting a quick meeting to discuss what I would be doing for the summer. The first thing that city editor Aaron Aupperlee said to me was, “Hi, so do you want to tour an abandoned halfway house or attend a meeting of the Barstow origami club?”
So much for a quick meeting, they put me to work right away.
Tuesday was an election day and possibly the longest day of my life. I spent the morning going from one polling place to the next, asking the same question, “How many people have voted so far?”
The answer was usually the same, “not very many.”
I spent 10 minutes in the parking lot of the community center, just waiting for a recent voter to interview. Nobody came.
That afternoon, as I was writing my story on low voter turnout, I got a very strange news tip. An anonymous caller told me that someone had told him that a woman in Mojave claimed to have a relative with the SARS disease. I then spent the next hour on the phone with just about every health official in Kern County.

To my knowledge and theirs, there has been no such case in that county or any surrounding areas. They did, however, ask me quite a few times for the name of my source. I hope I didn’t cause a health scare.
That evening it was back to the polls, where I almost had the police called on me. As far as I knew I had to stand a legal distance of 25 feet from the polling place in order to ask people who they just voted for. According to one poll worker I was campaigning, and I had to stand 100 feet away, which would have been out of the parking lot and up the street. He said that if I didn’t leave immediately he was going to call the police. Without getting into exit polling vs. campaigning, lets just say I had all the information I needed anyway so I left quietly.
On Wednesday I went out to Fort Irwin to watch training exercises at the Madina Wasl village. I was born and raised in Barstow, and until this week I had no idea that there were Iraqi villages out in the Mojave Desert (albeit simulated ones).
I was just there to tag along and take notes while Aaron and photographer Aileen Humphreys got a story about Barstow contractors who play the part of Iraqi villagers in training scenarios. We missed most of the action by a few hours, but it was still a fun experience for me to see everything that goes on out there.
I’ll be here in the news room until late August, when I have to return to CSU Stanislaus for my second year of college. I just hope the next few months will be as entertaining as the past week has been.
Andee Goodwin | intern

I love voting. And even though there wasn’t much on the ballot — don’t tell that to any of the candidates for First District Supervisor or the Assembly — I still walked up to the polling station in Lenwood smiling and ready to participate in democracy.

Even though I have only been voting for six years, my memories of going to the polls stretch back to when I was a child. I used to go with my dad to vote every election to the Ada Fire Station. Ada is a small town in Michigan about half the size of Barstow. The ladies working the polls knew my dad and came to know me.

When I turned 18, I went back to the fire station, still with my dad, but this time to vote on my own. The ladies, a bit older than the last time I had gone with my dad to vote, were just as excited to see me.

There is no replacement for voting at polling stations. Many people around Barstow vote by mail or absentee. I’m a fan of showing up and voting in booths.

I’ve already voted in two elections in Lenwood and feel like the people who work the St. Philip Neri Church station already know me. It might help that my name is in the paper most days, but it is nice to be greeted by “hellos” and “how are yous.”

When I voted in the 2004 election, I was studying in Germany and voted absentee. I sat on a bench inside the Erlangen post office and filled out my ballot. Sealed the envelop, dropped in the mail and felt like my vote was not going to count. No “hellos,” no “how are yous,” and no sticker.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

It looks like the film may have gotten a boost from the people who came to see its premiere last month. Audiences voted it “Best Feature Film” at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Now, it’s on to the Breckenridge Film Festival in Colorado, where it has already gotten at least one favorable review.

Abby Sewell | reporter