Highlights and lowlights from the week’s news

HIT » What good news to hear about Orland High football player Angel Bravo heading to the Tiki Bowl in Orlando next week.

Glenn County and Butte County have such an arsenal of skilled athletes that it’s amazing to see what they’ve accomplished.

Fingers crossed that Chico native and Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers gets football’s most valuable player award.

There are so many talented football players in the National Football League: Geoff Swaim of the Tennessee Titans; Aldrick Rosas of the Jacksonville Jaguars; Rigoberto Sanchez of the Indianapolis Colts; not to mention retired San Francisco 49er and local businessman Jeff Stover, and Chico High graduate Mike Sherrard, who starred at UCLA and for several NFL teams.

Rodgers, Swaim and Sanchez all attended Butte College under Craig Rigsbee. Rigsbee coached Rodgers in football and was serving as the athletic director when Swaim and Sanchez were Roadrunners.

There have been thousands of athletes who were coached or influenced by Rigsbee.

Rigsbee, who spent 37 years at Butte College, announced his Jan. 4 retirement recently, but we know he’ll be stopped and thanked regularly for his work with young athletes for years.

While coaching the football team, the Roadrunners collected 136 wins and 10 conference titles, making him the most successful football coach in the program’s history.

Like all teachers, you know Rigsbee looked out for more than physical talent. His students were his world, and he theirs. Enjoy your time off, Coach, and thank you. We’ll miss you.

MISS » Most residents were probably still asleep when the earthquake hit near Willows on Sunday.

Even at a small magnitude — 3.8 — it was felt throughout Butte and Glenn counties, but luckily did no damage. It’s safe to say it was a wake up call in more ways than one.

It reminds us once again there are many reasons to be prepared for emergencies, with food, water, batteries and other necessities.

What may be surprising is that after fire season, after power outages, after summer heat and winter flooding that we’re likely not ready for the next emergency.

Let’s use the start of the new year to trigger that preparedness. Around here, being ready for wildfires — our biggest threat — makes us ready for anything, including the earthquakes that will come.

Check out www.ready.gov for tips.

HIT » It was a sight that literally stopped traffic. Five turkeys ambling down the street.

A north Chico neighborhood is home to the small flock that pecks its way along lawns and driveways, out into the street, and seems fearless of humans or cars.

It has to be a good omen that the flock, which looks like parents and offspring, not only made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas, but appears to regularly cross Cohasset Road.

Kudos need to go to neighbors and drivers who have yet — fingers crossed — to hit one although there are plenty of Chico drivers speeding on Cohasset.

MISS » Leave it to the government to screw up something so basic as deciding who needs help, and who doesn’t.

The second round of the socalled “stimulus checks” have been a great example. On one hand, you have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell objecting to increasing the $600 payment to $2,000 because, in his words, it amounts to “socialism for rich people.”

Rich people? Under the formula, single tax filers earning more than $87,000 a year are not eligible. You get $600 if you earn up to $75,000, and $5 less than that for every $100 you make over $75,000, meaning at $87,000, you get nothing.

McConnell thinks people who earn that much money are “rich?”

Meanwhile, through an inexcusable oversight, “adult-age dependents,” a category that includes most college students, don’t qualify for a single cent. And neither do children who are 17. If you’re 16 and under, you get the full $600; but if you’re 17, you get nothing.

Maybe McConnell thinks all of the nation’s 17-year-olds are rich too.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of “socialism” going on in Washington for people who really are rich thanks to colossal tax breaks. And don’t get us started on the billions of dollars sent overseas.

It’s enough to drive people crazy, especially if they try to look at it logically — which, of course, too many people in Washington never do.