Barb Petsel, a licensed professional counselor and registered nurse, will be the featured speaker at the August 30 bereavement luncheon hosted by the Visiting Nurse Association. Petsel will speak on “A Compass for Journeying Through Grief.” The luncheon is from noon to 1 p.m. at the Church of the Incarnation on 3966 McKinney Ave. in Dallas. There is no cost to attend the luncheon, but reservations are requested and can be made through Aug. ...

SMU’s official university photographer and the Office of Public Affairs received international awards for accomplishments in image photography and media relations during the 2012 Circle of Excellence Awards competition of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. SMU photographer Hillsman S. Jackson (pictured above, right) won the international Gold award in the Photographer of the Year category for images featured in the SMU cente...

A group of 20 SMU students, faculty and staff are in Rwanda from Aug. 3–13 to witness the deep emotional, physical and environmental scars of genocide while contributing to the African country’s recovery efforts. After Rwanda’s 1994 civil war, in which as many as a million people were killed in 100 days, “History lives on,” said Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program, the trip’s sponsor. “The ethnic tensions that led to m...

Of all the West Nile cases reported in 2012 since July, Dallas has experienced the worst of them. As of July 19, 53 mosquito pools tested positive for the virus in Dallas County, and as of Tuesday, Aug. 7, there have been 123 known human infections, eight of which resulted in death. West Nile virus is a disease spread by infected mosquitoes, which contract it from the blood of infected birds. It is not contagious and can only be obtained by th...

The State Fair of Texas has nothing on Fuel City, where there’s a fair every day. And it would be unfair to call the business a three-ring circus when it clearly has five or six rings, and we mean that in a good way. While it started out as a traditional Gulf service station and truck stop in 1999, Fuel City has become its own theme park. Oh, the gas is still available, and, according to owner John Benda, it’s at the lowest prices anywhere in ...