casino live 747 login

Twenty years in the military and commercial flights around the world couldn’t keep Muskogee native Doug Jackson from his area roots. Jackson played saxophone in high school and college and still keeps in touch with his Muskogee band mates, but excelled in math and science as well. “We’re looking to put together an all-class band reunion in 2025,” he said. Shortly after graduating from Northeastern State University, Jackson joined the Navy to become a pilot. He earned a master’s degree in military security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. He flew a helicopter for 10 years. He recalled marrying his wife in Guam. Jackson later switched to the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. “That was close to home, so I jumped all over that,” he said. Jackson said military service was the best decision he ever made. “I’d do it 1,000 times over again,” he said. “It builds so much character. Lessons I learned, the maturing I did. What’s everlasting is the friendships I made. You cannot match the camaraderie gained when you’re in the military.” He retired from the military in 2006 to get into commercial aviation. He became a pilot for Continental Airlines, which merged into United Airlines. Jackson flew many overseas trips, including Australia and Singapore. Back issues prompted Jackson to end his airline career. But he kept busy with rental property. Jackson started owning and working on rental property around Muskogee in 1987. “I accumulated houses over the course of time,” he said. “I still manage those, still work on them. I became quite adept at all aspects of home repair and remodeling.” In May 2022, the Jacksons bought the Canebrake, a former resort located on 310 acres overlooking Fort Gibson Lake east of Wagoner. The original Canebrake closed in 2016. They reopened the Canebrake later that year and still oversee it. Jackson recently installed an interactive golf simulator and opened access to and a view of the lake. “I oversee the property, from fixing dishwasher to just about everything,” he said. Job market led to career path A tight job market prompted Doug Jackson to join the Navy. “I’d never flown in my life, never seen the ocean,” he said. “And the military was certainly not something in my family history. When I told my parents I would join the Navy, they thought I was off my rocker.” He skipped bootcamp and went right into aviation officer candidate school. “It was very rigorous, unlike anything I had ever done before,” he said. “From the time you get there to the time they you get your pilot wings, its very rigorous. The physical aspects and the mental aspects of it. They break you down.” Jackson’s first assignment was doing search and rescue near Guam. He went to the Persian Gulf during times of heightened alert in 1990. “When Desert Shield broke out, I got orders to be a flight instructor in San Diego,” he said. He flew the military’s largest helicopter, the MH-53, for mine sweeping. “It weighs about 72,000 pounds and carries about 50 people,” he said. After 13 years he transferred to the Air Force around 2000. He was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, where he flew AWACS planes. Commercial aviation was natural progression Jackson said becoming a commercial pilot was “just the natural progression of things.” “It’s a really good gig, and they make a good amount of money,” he said. “The money is the biggest reward.” He went from the Boeing 737 to the 787. He called the 787 a wonderful, wonderful plane. “That’s Boeing’s most technologically advanced airplane,” he said. “It’s 20% lighter than a standard plane, tremendously fuel efficient. It’s got so many technological advances. It flies so beautifully.” Jackson made 17-hour flights to Sydney, Australia. “You’re sleeping for half of it,” he said. “But Sydney is worth the effort getting there.” Singapore, with its sophistication, was another place Jackson loved visiting. Jackson said the biggest challenge was commuting to and from his Oklahoma City home to his job in Houston. “I should have moved to Houston, but I was pretty happy in Oklahoma,” he said. Resort maintenance still a challenge Jackson reopened the Canebrake during post COVID-19 challenges. “When we first started, we had significant staffing issues,” he said. “Prices had gone sky high. And it’s still a challenge because people had not yet acclimated to the new price, and wages and food, and the prices you need to charge are a challenge.” He said it’s fortunate that Canebrake is not just a restaurant, but offers lodging and other services. “We’ve got a beautiful piece of property here, and we do a tremendous amount of special events, corporate events, weddings,” Jackson said. The resort also is taking advantage of its lakeside location. “We cleared out our lakefront view,” he said. “They’ve been by the lake all along, but you never could see it for all the trees. We wanted to capitalize on that.” Money continues to be a challenge, he said. “There’s a lot of moving parts,” he said. “We have a lot of infrastructure to maintain.” However, the challenge is its own reward. “You do get to make a difference in people’s lives,” he said. HOW DID YOU COME TO BE AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE? “I was born in Muskogee General Hospital. Lived in Muskogee my whole life til I joined the military. I had a lot of rental property, and I was living in Edmond when I was stationed at Tinker. We spent so much time here, bought a house here. So we live here in Muskogee now.” WHAT DO YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT MUSKOGEE? “I like the size of Muskogee. A lot of people say they want Muskogee to grow. I’ve been to big cities around the world. There’s a lot of down sides to big cities, mostly the traffic. Even in Edmond, traffic is horrendous. And there’s a lot to do in Muskogee, just go out and seek it, you will find it. It’s starting to turn around a little bit.” WHAT WOULD MAKE MUSKOGEE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE? “They’ve got to change the way they manage the city. They keep doing the same thing over and over, and here we are with the same result year after year. They have to change the way they think and manage the city.” WHAT PERSON IN MUSKOGEE DO YOU ADMIRE MOST? “Derryl Venters. Mrs. Venters was our science teacher. She was such an encourager and inspirational teacher. I still keep in contact with her to this day. She gave me aspirations of achieving more.” WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE THING TO HAPPEN TO YOU IN MUSKOGEE? “When I was in high school, we won the state jazz contest. I’d love to see them do that again.” WHAT DO YOU DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME? “I golf when I can, which is a lot easier now because we have three golf simulators here on our property. Remodels, repairs, home improvement. There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done. I like to play poker.” HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP MUSKOGEE IN 25 WORDS OR LESS? “I was born and raised in Muskogee. It will always be home.”

HAINES CITY, Fla. — Not long ago, Polk County’s biggest draw was citrus instead of people. Located between Tampa and Orlando, Florida’s citrus capital produces more boxes of citrus than any other county in the state and has devoted tens of thousands of acres to growing millions of trees. But last year, more people moved to the county than to any other in the United States, almost 30,000. Bulldozed citrus groves in recent years made way for housing and big box stores that could one day merge the two metropolitan areas into what has half-jokingly been dubbed, “Orlampa.” The migration — and property sprawl — reflects a significant kind of growth seen all over the country this decade: the rise of the far-flung exurbs. Outlying communities on the outer margins of metro areas — some as far away as 60 miles (97 kilometers) from a city’s center — had some of the fastest-growing populations last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those communities are primarily in the South, like Anna on the outskirts of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area; Fort Mill, South Carolina, outside Charlotte, North Carolina; Lebanon outside Nashville; and Polk County’s Haines City. For some residents, like Marisol Ortega, commuting to work can take up to an hour and a half one-way. But Ortega, who lives in Haines City about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from her job in Orlando, says it’s worth it. “I love my job. I love what I do, but then I love coming back home, and it’s more tranquil,” Ortega said. The rapid growth of far-flung exurbs is an after-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Census Bureau, as rising housing costs drove people further from cities and remote working allowed many to do their jobs from home at least part of the week. Polk County’s Hispanic population has grown from one-fifth to more than one-quarter of the overall population over the past five years, driven by Puerto Rican migration from the island after 2017’s Hurricane Maria and then from New York during the pandemic. The county has grown more diverse with the share of non-Hispanic white residents dropping from 61% to 54%, and it has also gotten more educated and wealthier, according to the Census Bureau. Despite the influx of new people, the county’s Republican leanings have remained relatively unchanged. Yeseria Suero and her family moved from New York to Polk County at the start of the decade after falling in love with the pace of life and affordability during a visit. Still, there were some cultural adjustments: restaurants closing early, barbecue and boiled peanuts everywhere, strangers chatting with her at the grocery store. Suero is now involved with the tight-knit Hispanic community and her two boys are active in sports leagues. “My kids now say, ‘Yes, ma’am,’” she said. Recent hurricanes and citrus diseases in Florida also have made it more attractive for some Polk County growers to sell their citrus groves to developers who build new residences or stores. Over the past decade, citrus-growing there declined from 81,800 acres (33,103 hectares) and almost 10 million trees in 2014 to 58,500 acres (23,674 hectares) and 8.5 million trees in 2024, according to federal agricultural statistics. “It hasn’t been a precipitous conversion of citrus land for growth,” said Matt Joyner, CEO of Florida Citrus Mutual, a grower’s group. “But certainly you see it in northern, northeastern Polk.” Anna, Texas, more than 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of downtown Dallas, is seeing the same kind of migration. It was the fourth-fastest growing city in the U.S. last year and its population has increased by a third during the 2020s to 27,500 residents. Like Polk County, Anna has gotten a little older, richer and more racially diverse. Close to 3 in 5 households have moved into their homes since 2020, according to the Census Bureau. Schuyler Crouch, 29, and his wife wanted to buy a house in a closer-in exurb like Frisco, where he grew up, so they could settle down and start a family. But prices there have skyrocketed because of population growth. In Anna, they fell in love last year with a house that was more reasonably priced. They both work in Frisco, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, and it has become their go-to for eating out or entertainment instead of downtown Dallas, even though not long ago Frisco itself was considered a far-flung outpost of the metro area. Still, Crouch said he has noticed the exurbs keep getting pushed further north as breakneck growth makes affordable housing out of reach in neighborhoods once considered on the fringes of the metro area. “The next exurb we are going to be living in is Oklahoma,” he joked.49ers’ Kyle Shanahan isn’t ready to talk about 2025 season yet

By LOLITA BALDOR and FATIMA HUSSEIN WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has chosen Keith Kellogg, a highly decorated retired three-star general, to serve as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg, who is one of the architects of a staunchly conservative policy book that lays out an “America First” national security agenda for the incoming administration, will come into the role as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year in February. Trump made the announcement on his Truth Social account, and said “He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!” Kellogg, an 80 year-old retired Army lieutenant general who has long been Trump’s top adviser on defense issues, served as national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence , was chief of staff of the National Security Council and then stepped in as an acting security adviser for Trump after Michael Flynn resigned. As special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Kellogg will have to navigate an increasingly untenable war between the two nations. The Biden administration has begun urging Ukraine to quickly increase the size of its military by drafting more troops and revamping its mobilization laws to allow for the conscription of troops as young as 18. The White House has pushed more than $56 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s February 2022 invasion and expects to send billions more to Kyiv before Biden leaves office in less than months. Trump has criticized the billions that the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine. Washington has recently stepped up weapons shipments and has forgiven billions in loans provided to Kyiv. The incoming Republican president has said he could end the war in 24 hours, comments that appear to suggest he would press Ukraine to surrender territory that Russia now occupies. As a co-chairman of the American First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security, Kellogg wrote several of the chapters in the group’s policy book. The book, like the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” is a move to lay out a Trump national security agenda and avoid the mistakes of 2016 when he entered the White House largely unprepared. Kellogg in April wrote that “bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong, America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties.” Trump’s proposed national security advisor U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) tweeted Wednesday that “Keith has dedicated his life to defending our great country and is committed to bringing the war in Ukraine to a peaceful resolution.” Kellogg was a character in multiple Trump investigations dating to his first term. He was among the administration officials who listened in on the July 2019 call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Trump prodded his Ukrainian counterpart to pursue investigations into the Bidens. The call, which Kellogg would later say did not raise any concerns on his end, was at the center of the first of two House impeachment cases against Trump, who was acquitted by the Senate both times. On Jan. 6, 2021, hours before pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Kellogg, who was then Pence’s national security adviser, listened in on a heated call in which Trump told his vice president to object or delay the certification in Congress of President Joe Biden ’s victory. He later told House investigators that he recalled Trump saying to Pence words to the effect of: “You’re not tough enough to make the call.” Baldor reported from Washington. AP writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.Deep seabed mining: Bad for biodiversity and terrible for the economyLululemon raises annual forecasts betting on robust holiday sales

DrBalcony App Redefines Balcony Inspections with Unparalleled EfficiencyBengals trying to end another 3-game skid in visit to suddenly surging Cowboys