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Every year about this time I get an e-mail from Don Duke, who has come out of hibernation, and wants me to put in a plug for the Athletes in Action baseball team members who will need a place to stay this summer.

The newest member of the Alaska NBC Baseball League, Athletes in Action, will be in town for their eighth season, sharing home field with the Alaska Goldpanners from June 22 through July 31. AIA is a Christian baseball team made of college baseball players from around the country.

“Host families are once again needed to house these young men,” Duke said. “The local area church families housed the majority of these players the last seven years, and that is what we are trying to accomplish again.”

Fifteen host families are needed to share their homes from June 22 to July 14 and July 24 to August 1. The team will be in Anchorage July 14 to 24.

Hosting is relatively easy. The players need a place to sleep and a few meals. Besides getting to know these great young men, there is a bonus, Duke said. Families are given free season passes and lasting memories of adopted summer sons.

For more information, contact Don Duke at 488-9779 or email dduke2@att.net. For information on the program, check out www.aiabaseball.org.

By the way, Duke’s son, Donny, has been part of the AIA action for several years and will play in New York this summer.

Garage sale

Star of the North Charter School will host a fundraiser garage sale Saturday, May 17, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. in the school parking lot. The school is located just down Badger Road from the Hurst Road intersection. Donated items can be dropped off after 8 a.m. Proceeds will go toward student activities.

Bingo tonight

Santa’s Seniors will host dinner and Bingo tonight at the Senior Center. Dinner (barbecue pork, beans and coleslaw) starts at 5:30, and bingo follows at 6:30. For information, call Alma at 488-4663.

Meet the politicians

Sen. Gene Therriault and Rep. John Coghill will be meeting with constituents today from 10 a.m. to noon at NP City Hall.

 NPFD open house

The North Pole Fire Department will host its annual open house Saturday, May 17 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. It’s a great opportunity to tour the city fire station, get some information, enjoy some free food and take a ride in a fire truck. If you have kids or grandkids, they would love it. Heck, I would love it!

Gun dog club

Interior Alaska Gun Dog Club will take part in the Kids Day event at Fish and Game on Saturday, May 17 and will have dogs on hand for events and to greet attendees.

On May 18, the club will host its annual Bob Dunn Memorial Picnic Test at the Chena Lakes Flood Control Project. The retriever hunt test will be a shared event with the Fairbanks Retriever Club.   Cost to enter a dog is $20. Registration is at 8 a.m., and testing begins at 9 a.m. A potluck will take place around noon.

The fight against leukemia

Deb Grantham is training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for the Nike Women’s Marathon (26.2 miles) in San Francisco in October and would really like some help with reaching her fundraising goal.

She has made a commitment to raise awareness and money (her goal is an ambitious $5,500) for extremely important research, which has already improved survival rates for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia. In her words, she is doing this “to help those who cannot walk or run themselves.”

Grantham, who is a neonatal ICU nurse at FMH, lives in North Pole with her family. Check out her Web site at pages.teamintraining.org/wa/nikesf09/dgrantham. Donations can be made there or by mailing them to P.O. Box 56436, North Pole, 99705. Contact her at 488-0544.

Janet Baird

Funeral services are this afternoon at 2 for longtime North Pole resident Janet Baird, who was 81. Janet and her husband, Darrell, were among the first residents in the area, settling on property on Badger Road in 1953 where they developed a chicken farm.

Most of us will always think of Janet in terms of the Tanana Valley Fair, which she was a part of for at least 20 years. However, she was involved in many more things, including serving on the school board, and was involved in the building of Ryan Junior High, working on political campaigns and being greatly involved in the Fairbanks Arts Association.

An activist and writer, she most recently traveled to churches around the state presenting an exhibit against domestic violence.

Every time we lose another one of North Pole’s original settlers, we lose a bit of history, and that is very sad. But most of them, like Janet Baird, leave a lasting legacy that will continue forever.

A chair that cares

A group of people in Delta are doing a unique fundraiser. They’re auctioning off chairs. But these aren’t ordinary chairs — they’re beautiful, unique wooden chairs that have been painted and decorated. One is very elegant, and another is totally Alaskan with moose and bears painted on the seat. The one I particularly liked is painted bright colors and has a massive bouquet of silk flowers on the seat. In the summer, the flowers lift off, revealing a place for planting flowers.

The chair auction is part of the American Cancer Society Relay For Life of Delta, which will start at noon today at the Delta High School track.

By the way, Delta is a small town with a huge heart. This year, they have 29 teams signed up with 520 walkers. Last year they raised $70,000 at their Relay For Life. Pretty impressive considering they have no major sponsor and local residents raise this amount of money themselves.

Donations for the Delta relay event can be done online at deltajunctionrelay.org.  About last week

Those of you who had difficulty following the story last week about Sandra Giddings, who is the great-great-great granddaughter of Davy Crockett, will be happy to know that I am not losing it.

I wrote the story in a unique style I’ve used before when I’ve had two disparate subjects in one item. The last time I did this was when I wrote about my daughter’s wedding years ago. I kept memories about her childhood in italics while keeping the part about meeting Rick and the wedding in regular font.

Similarly, I did this with Davy Crockett — keeping the information about his life in italics and the graphs about Sandra attending the ceremony at the Alamo in regular font.

But, alas, the News-Miner’s news system took things into its own hands and removed the italics. The result was quite interesting in places. For instance, I was particularly fond of the following two paragraphs:

“For 13 days the 187 men withstood Santa Ana and the Mexican army. Alongside the brave Americans on the ground lay over 2,000 Mexicans who died at their hands.

“Later that day, Giddings and the others joined the Daughters of the Republic of Texas inside the Alamo ... ”  I should have figured it was a machine. They always think they’re smarter than humans.

From the joke archives

Dear Lord: So far today, I am doing all right. I have not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or self-indulgent. I have not whined, complained, cursed or eaten any chocolate. I have charged nothing on my credit card.

But I will be getting out of bed in a minute and I think that I will really need your help then.