What happened to the red recycling tubs?

      Editor: Dave Uphoff
The City of Minonk instituted a recycling program 12 years ago after local opposition successfully fought off an attempt by USA Waste to put a landfill in Section 6 north of Minonk . The recycling program required residents to place recycled materials such as glass, paper, etc. in a red tub. The garbage collector collected the recycled tubs and took the material to a recycling center instead of the landfill. Most people embraced the recycling program because they were grateful not to have a landfill on the borders of the city and also because they realized it was the proper thing to do. We as a nation had become wasteful and were burying ourselves with the amount of garbage and litter we created.

Now the advent of a race track coming to Section Six north of Minonk has diminished the possibility that there might some day be a landfill on that land. In conjunction with this possibility it seems that many people in Minonk seemed to have reduced their participation in the recycling program. People have told me that there are far fewer red tubs placed out for recycling now. I hope people realize that recycling is not something you do to keep a landfill away from a community. It is something you do to help protect the environment. I hope those of you who have discontinued recycling reconsider your decision. Minonk is one of the first communities in the area to institute recycling. It is something we as a community should be proud of. Get those red tubs out on the curb again and do the right thing. Conservation of our environment is every citizens duty.

Technical problems on web page

Many of you have complained of not being able to pull up the births web page. I do not have an answer to the problem. It is especially frustrating for me because I cannot duplicate the problem. Everything works fine on all 3 computers that I use. I will continue to research the problem and try to come up with an answer as soon as possible. Technicians at my server said that there is no problem at their end. If you have difficulty pulling up the birth page, please send me the name of your internet provider so that I can compile more information for solving the problem.

Changes have been made to this web site periodically in order to improve the quality and the content. Web pages in general are improving and becoming more sophisticated. To be able to enjoy these improvements and advancements it is becoming more important for viewers to keep their computers updated with the latest operating system and computers. Those using Windows 98 may encounter problems while browsing the internet. In addition, if you wish to update to a more current operating system such as Windows XP or Windows 2000 you may need to purchase a more powerful computer.

Web pages are providing much more content which can mean slower response times. Many problems associated with the internet are due to slow internet connections. High speed internet connections are becoming more affordable. Verizon now provides DSL connections for the internet which will result in speeds about 5 times faster than a telephone connection as is a wireless dish connnection through Maxiis Internet. A Mediacom cable connection is about 10 times faster than a telephone connection. I recommend those still using a telephone connection for the internet to check into high speed internet access to not only improve your download times but also to eliminate many web page errors.

Finally, I noticed on some computers that the MinonkTalk screen is split up and looks really bad. The reason for this is that the MinonkTalk homepage takes up 850 bytes of width. This means that those computer screens set to a width of 800 bytes may truncate the picture. I recommend computers user to set their screen resolution to 1024 X 768 in order to display web pages more accurately. To do this

- Right click on your desktop screen where there are no icons.
- Click on the Settings tab in the upper right of the new window.
- Set your cursor on the slide arrow under Screen Resolution and hold down the left mouse button and move the arrow to the right until it reads 1024 X 768.
- Click the OK button.

After doing this, the screen will make a momentary adjustment and you should notice that more information will now display on your screen in a slightly smaller format.

Pantagraph changes

Last week the Bloomington Pantagraph announced a change in their opinion page by dropping 3 columnists who I consider at the top of their field. Andy Rooney and Garrison Keiler are excellent writers and are a little left of center on their views. I will miss their humor and their frank opinions. David Broder is probably the most even handed and astute columnist around and was also dropped by the Pantagraph. I find that really surprising because Broder actually started his career with the Pantagraph many years ago and has gone on to be acclaimed as one of the top writers in the country. It is also noteworthy that the Pantagraph replaced the 3 columnists with Ann Coulter who is a little bit to the right of Atilla the Hun.

Whether the changes instituted by the Pantagraph were economy measures remains to be seen. It is no secret, however, that newspapers are losing much of their readership to the internet. It is too bad if newspapers have to dumb down their reporting in order to survive. That action alone will accelerate their decline. Yesterday the Pantagraph announced that they will be putting their letters to the editor on their web site. Perhaps they see the writing on the wall and are preparing to make the newspaper into a complete news web site. I would not be surprised to see all newspapers eventually dropping home delivery of newspapers and having a web site in which you have to subscribe in order to read the web pages. What are we going to do with all those trees that we won't have to cut down for paper?
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October 24, 2005