walk the villages

United Memorial Medical Center issued the following news briefs:

United Memorial Medical Center will offer free blood pressure screenings on Wednesday, July 9th from 10 am to 12 noon at the Batavia Senior Center, 2 Bank Street, Batavia. For additional information on this and other community outreach programs, contact the Healthy Living Department at (585) 344-5331.

United Memorial Medical Center is a proud sponsor of Walk the Villages, a free event initiated by Senator Mary Lou Rath to encourage residents to walk in 6 local communities. Batavia’s community walk is scheduled for Thursday, July 6th at 6pm. It will begin at the Batavia City Centre where United Memorial will offer free health screenings and giveaways. Participants will have the opportunity to go on a guided walk downtown where they will learn about the history of some of Batavia’s businesses and landmarks. For more information on Walk the Villages visit our  website at www.ummc.org.

United Memorial Medical Center will host an informational presentation on Bariatric Surgery on July 16th at Richmond Memorial Library, 19 Ross Street, Batavia. The program is free and will begin at 6:30 pm. Anthony DiBenedetto, MD Chief of Surgery for Rochester General Hospital, will lead the discussion on surgical options for significant weight loss. Seating is limited. Reservations may be made by calling the Healthy Living Department at (585) 344-5331.

So what's the bigger local story: That Federer-Nadal make a good tennis match, that CC Sabathia was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, or that Tyler Pratt threw a no hitter to lead Batavia over LeRoy in the 11-12 Division of the District 3 youth baseball tournament?

Federer-Nadal dominate the sports page of today's Daily News (it's a wire story that was all over the Internet hours before the DN presses ran), and Sabathia gets a good 8 inches of copy with picture (and I bet if you follow baseball, you already knew all about the trade last night), while Pratt's heroic efforts gets two paragraphs.

If Tyler or his family reads this, or any of you know him ... The Batavian would be happy to post anything you have on the game (or you can post it yourself) ... pictures, video, a first-person account. Let us know ...

Batavia's next game is Friday at 6 p.m. against Oakfield, which beat Wayland 10-7.  If you're going, take a video camera and post a few shots to YouTube. We'll repost it here.

Before we move off the sports page, we learn that tabloids love A-Rod (hold the presses for that one), and the Muckdogs lost in Vermont to the Lake Monsters 3-2 when Blake Stouffer hit a walk-off home run.

On the front page of today's Daily News, Joanne Beck covers Walk The Villages. The 45-minute walk begins downtown Saturday at 6 p.m. It's a chance to get some exercise, meet some neighbors and learn a little bit about local history, culture and architecture.  Oh, and there might be a couple of ghosts encountered along the way.

The other front-page story of note, Scott DeSmit follows up on the parachuting death of Joseph Schickler.  Officials are looking at the rigging of his chute.  An autopsy revealed that Schickler had some heart problems, but it cannot be determined if that was a contributing factor to the accident.

And in the final item to include in our round up today, on A-5 eleven area girls who are competing for Fair Queen are profiled.

The are Katie Fales, Batavia High; Anastashia Spikes, Batavia; Elysia Summers, Corfu; Desiree King, Elba; Lauren Mullen, Byron-Bergen; Taylor Patterson, Pembroke; Damainique Bruce, Batavia; April Meier, Pembroke; and, Alyssa Hilderbrandt of Pavillion Central School.

As always, you can pick up a copy of today's Daily News at a local news stand (such as Main Street Coffee), or, better yet, subscribe on the DN web site at BataviaNews.com.