News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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As with most breakup letters, this one may come as a shock, but I wanted you to hear it from me first. Small towns being what they are, I began to get worried that you would hear it from someone else before you heard it from me. So I wanted to set the record straight and tell you that although we’ve had our good times, its time for me to move on. In short, I’m leaving you. As cliché as it sounds — and I’m sure you’ve heard others spout this well-used platitude — it’s not you, it’s me. Fortu...
I recently heard a term in passing that immediately piqued my interest. At first I thought it was a made-up psychological disorder or simply a catchy term to describe a growing problem. But after doing a little research, I found that Nature Deficit Disorder is, in fact, a very real condition that can affect our children’s health and future. The term was coined in the 2005 book “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv and encompasses the growing disconnection the current generation of child...
This year, my daughter celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in her preschool. I find this holiday to be fun and festive and in fact would have been surprised had they not marked it in some way. It would never occur to me not to celebrate such a day, even though I am not Irish. As we prepare for Easter, a mere two weeks after St. Patrick’s Day this year, I find there is a strange correlation in the way we celebrate these two seemingly unconnected holidays. I know many families that celebrate Easter in...
This Christmas, with some trepidation, I received my first smartphone. I was very excited about the larger screen size (so I could more easily view pictures) and the ability to connect to the internet when I needed to. But it wouldn’t be stretching the truth to say I was a bit reluctant to be connected to the virtual world at all times. For one thing, the very idea of choosing the right app for the right moment is overwhelming. Without the help of more technologically savvy friends and f...
Growing up in Los Angeles, Academy Award night was a citywide celebration. By the time my brother and I would tumble inside, ready for our afternoon snack, the glamorous stars were already pulling up in their shiny limousines to strut down the red carpet. My mom would prepare special dishes and drinks, and family and friends would crowd around the TV together. Mostly we would gossip about the stars’ choice of wardrobe, but we would also root for our favorite movies and argue the merits of e...
One day about a year ago, my daughter and I were in a pool at a hotel. While swimming, I overheard a mother tell her son not to put his head under the hot tub. “It’s bad for you, sweetie,” she told him. I chuckled, remembering hearing something similar when I was a child. But now that I’m a grown up, I disregard such a statement as myth. It may be slightly gross to put your head under the water in a shared hot tub, but truly bad for you? The mother’s casual insistence made me wonder. How much of...
With the holidays in the past, it seems that the darkest, coldest days of the year are upon us. But any student will tell you that with the advent of the second semester of school, it is just a quick downhill slide toward summer. For high school students, especially those who are just about to graduate, there might be a level of anxiety that comes along with this rapid approach to the end of school. What will you do after school? Some of you, undoubtedly, will be looking for work to fill those l...
Someone once told me that the first five years of a child’s life are remarkable in their ability for rapid change. Every few months bring about a new life stage that changes how a child sees his or her world and interacts with it. As my daughter moves through these stages, I have had to change with her. And change, as always, is challenging. My daughter is now almost 4, and for some time we have been moving out of the moment-by-moment living that is the life of a toddler. At that stage, I f...
It’s a typical practice around the new year to examine the year we are leaving behind. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to examine any personal gains or losses, or to assess a resolution made at this time last year. Sometimes, it’s interesting to wonder what, if anything, from this year was truly memorable. Did anything happen that will live in your mind, or the mind of the country, for years to come? Earlier this year, I wrote a column about the coincidental fact that both the Oreo cookie and the G...
This year, in the midst of a typically festive holiday season, is what many have considered to be a very auspicious date. December 21, 2012 does not simply signify the winter solstice, but also a very important calendar day in the ancient culture of the Mayans. I’m referring, of course, to what many in popular media have referred to as Doomsday, the Apocalypse, or simply, the End of the World. A chuckle or two at this thought is not completely out of line. Imagining the end of the world o...
After having been in Grand Coulee for almost two years now, one of the biggest changes that I am still trying to adapt to is an unexpected one. It’s not the distance to the nearest big box store or mall, nor is it the weather or the size of the community. Somewhat surprisingly, it’s the fact that I cannot put out my recycling with the trash. For much of my youth, many might have labeled me an environmentalist. When I was in high school I organized a grass roots campaign, if it could even be cal...
As we’ve settled into the school year, our house, like houses across America, has settled into a routine. Certain days call for certain activities, and many hours of each day fall into expected patterns. One of the first things that my daughter will ask in the mornings is, “Mommy, what are we doing today?” She’s always happiest when it is a day that she knows what to expect. Children take their cues on what to expect from their lives from their parents. But it is not just our job to demonst...
My 3-year-old daughter recently declared that she had a favorite song. The use of the term “favorite” made me sit up and listen. Although she had been displaying preferences since birth, this was her first declaration of a “favorite” anything. I find the idea fun, even if I have to listen to the “Wheels on the Bus” every time I get in the car. As I watch my daughter jump head first into defining what she likes and dislikes into favorites and aversions, I know that she is, at the core, defin...
Like many children who grew up in the suburbs of America, I had a typical, and rather uninvolved, relationship with the food I ate. I was an athlete and had healthy parents, so tried to be thoughtful, but I spent very little time wondering where the food we bought in the grocery store came from and what, if anything other than satisfying my hunger, my food was doing to my body When I moved to a small college town in Oregon for graduate school, I got in the habit of going down to the farmer’s mar...
A couple of weeks ago, a rather notorious mother in New York, Lenore Skenazy, started an after-school program for children. This is the same mother who, a few years ago, let her then 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway on his own, with nothing but a map and fare money. Her new after-school program is an eight-week course costing $350 per child. All that is on the schedule? Free play in a playground in Central Park with the promise of absolutely no adult supervision. In fact, Skenazy...
There is, perhaps, nothing so steady, predictable, and at times frightening in life as the continuity of the calendar. No matter what is happening in your life or the world, tomorrow will bring a new day. And every year, it will bring with it another birthday. Around this time every year, without fail, I celebrate a birthday. A worthy cause for celebration, birthdays are an important ritual. It is a yearly acknowledgment to yourself and the people in your life that this day is a good one, a day...
Every year as the calendar flips over into September, I feel a little thrill of anticipation. As an adult, I attribute this to the approaching autumn, my favorite season. But deep down I know that this feeling is a relic of my childhood, a remembrance of what September always brought: the first day of school. Like many children, I adored the first day of school. I remember looking forward to the coming school year with such eagerness. An entire year stretched out before me with a trove of exciti...
When America’s frontier was officially declared closed in 1890, the country scrambled for a new identity. For hundreds of years, we had been a nation with seemingly limitless borders. The stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific felt endless and the people of our nation proudly embraced the idea of their pioneering character. But when the frontier closed, the nation stumbled to find a new backbone. Expansionism was over and the world wars that brought our modern nation into global dominance w...
When the Olympics came to Atlanta, I was an impressionable 15-year-old involved in two different high school sports. The day after Muhammad Ali famously lit the torch, my family and I were sweltering in the Atlanta heat, working a concession booth at the aquatic center. It was thrilling for me as a young teenager to be at the very center of such an electric venue. The atmosphere of any athletic event has some electricity to it, but the energy in an Olympic stadium sent sparks through the entire...
One of the things I’ve always loved about American homes is the prominence of the kitchen. Far more than other cultures, where kitchens are small and tucked away out of sight, American architects embraced the idea that the heart of the home is in the kitchen. I love homes that bring the living space into the cooking space. The action is there, it’s where people tend to congregate, and it allows us to be together at a time of the day when, with a different layout, families might disperse. In ear...
Next week is the summer solstice, denoting the longest day of the year and the official start of summer. For some cultures this is a day of marked celebration. In our own country it seems that many years this day can be passed by with a casual nod from the local weatherman mentioning the peak of daylight hours for the year. When I was in my 20s, I spent a summer working as an environmental researcher in Sweden. Before that time, celebrating the summer solstice was not something on my mental...
If I had a penny for how many times I’ve used the phrase “Use your words,” over the last two years, I’d be, as they say, rich. My house at this time is like an intensive English-language boot camp. My three-year-old daughter is at that stage all children pass through where her emotions far outpace her command of the English language. Although perhaps this is a stage not restricted to childhood. As adults, putting emotions, wishes, fears, and angers into the right words is sometimes equally...
As the days have lengthened, the sun has once again become our constant companion. And although I am still shocked every day at just how early that sun makes its appearance, I am warmed, literally and figuratively, by its presence. With the sun have come warmer days, bright, fragrant blossoms and the promise of those long-remembered days at the lake. Colorama has rung in the unofficial start of the Grand Coulee summer, and Memorial Day is almost upon us, signaling that the rest of the country...
A while ago, I wrote a column about how heartwarming it is to see children using their imagination in a world where most of their toys involve some sort of technology. When I think of the changes technology brings, I tend to focus on children because their world will undoubtedly be very different from the one that I grew up with. But lately I have been thinking about adults and my own feelings towards technology. What will the future bring for those of us who have come to expect the world in...
On a playground recently I watched a little boy pick up an acorn and impressively chuck it clear across the swing set. He was a little kid, but his throw had major-league heft. A couple of the dads chuckled. “Hey,” said one, “nice arm. He’ll probably be a baseball player.” In my observation, this kind of statement was not an isolated comment. I’ve heard parents everywhere attribute some current action or personality trait to some fantastic arc for their child’s future. My niece is tall, so she...
