Here’s some today’s local news:
According to the New Mexico Department of Health, over the last seven years, the state has witnesses a steady increase in the number of children who are not vaccinated. A release state that “Since 2012 in New Mexico, there has been a 60% increase in the rate of people exempting from recommended vaccinations. In 2018, 4,441 school aged children had an exemption for vaccination filed with the Department of Health, an increase from 4,346 children in 2017. Measles, like many communicable diseases, is highly contagious and can overwhelm a person’s immune system, resulting in sickness and, in some cases, death. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.” The NMDOH recommends that all children without medical exceptions receive two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The first dose of vaccine is usually given between 12 and 15 months of age and the second dose is recommended at 4 through 6 years of age.
The Deming Police Department has donated a box of 25 pet microchips to the Deming Animal Guardians. The Deming Animal Clinic, High Desert Veterinary Care and Southwest Veterinary Clinic inserted the microchips for free. The donation was made during the Valentine’s Day week to “show Deming pets some love.” The Deming Animal Guardians is an all-volunteer 501(c)3 non- profit organization that focuses on indigent pet owners in Luna County by by making spay/neuter surgeries more affordable through discount coupons and mobile veterinary van.
The Snell Middle School “Youth Business Club” raised funds to donated a full-sized steel sundial to the school. The club earned the funds by running a small café in the school library. Members of the club learn how to run a business and study various business models. Custom Steelworks of Silver City worked with the student input to create and design the sundial. Each year the students of the Youth Business Club choose a community project to support with the funds earned from the library café.
This Sunday, March 10th, the people of New Mexico will be setting their clocks one hour forward. “Daylight Saving Time” is the practice of setting the clocks forward one hour from standard time during the summer months, and back again in the fall to make better use of natural daylight. Today, about 40% of countries worldwide use it to make better use of daylight and to conserve energy. Although modern “Daylight Saving Time” has only been used for about 100 years, ancient civilizations are known to have engaged in comparable practices thousands of years ago. For example, the Roman water clocks used different scales for different months of the year to adjust the daily schedules to the solar time. Daylight Saving Time is now used in over 70 countries worldwide and affects over 1 billion people every year.
