News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Last Friday I received a phone call from Wir Smith, the adopted son of the late Dr. Pat Smith. I knew of Wir and his older brother Det from my trips to Vietnam in the period between 1968-1970. I had read about Dr. Smith in an article in the Seattle Times. She graduated from the UW School of Medicine and responded to a challenge to go to Vietnam and open a hospital in the Central Highlands. That was in the 1950s. It was not known at the time that in a few years there would be a war in the area. The article told of a group in the Seattle area tha...
Our oldest son Paul is on Yellowstone Lake on a two-week canoe venture. It is his seventh canoe trip on the lake that lies within Yellowstone National Park. He is alone in a part of the country where there are grizzly bear, moose, elk and deer. At night, while in his tent, he hears wolves howling. He judges these kinds of trips on the benefit, rather than the difficulty. And it defines such trips as being dropped in behind the Brooks Range in Alaska, where there are no roads, only the trails cut in the permafrost by migrating caribou. He was...
My wife Dorothy has suffered from dementia for the past several years. We have been able to care for her in our home for these past years until recently all the family agreed that the level of care she needed could no longer be provided by me in the home. It is fortunate that our two grandchildren, Ashley Landeros and Travis Irwin, live here and handled all the details, paperwork, and other needs during this time, always mindful of my feelings and the concurrence of family members who live elsewhere. We sought a place for this care and were...
Karen is married to our son Nathan, and they live in Portland. An injury while riding her bicycle interrupted her play. She worked for Nike at the time and rode her bicycle, rain or shine, to the Nike campus where she worked. She rode about six miles a day and then hauled her bike aboard the transit for the rest of the way. She got clipped by a car one day and injured the fingers on her hand. The injury interrupted her violin playing, so I enjoyed knowing that her fingers had improved to the point where she could play again. A few years ago,...
Taxpayers, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Educators here are going to try again to get our levies passed. You wonder what it takes to convince people that educating young people costs money, and too long this district has operated by scraping the bottom of the barrel for its finances. We ask teachers to come to our communities and prepare our youth for their future endeavors. Then we give all kind of excuses why we don’t want to fund the process. The old excuse that “taxes are too high, or I don’t have any kids in school” d...
A highway sign “beware, rocks” would have been better stating “be aware of rocks.” Those of us who have lived here for a bit are fully aware that we live in a rocky environment that has historical significance. My fascination with rocks could stem from the fact that my mother gathered a rock from every place she visited. The rock pile was in our mud room off the back porch. I think she could have told you where every rock came from. I never get tired of driving our lake canyon picking out unique rocks and rock formations. There are a number...
Grand Coulee Dam isn’t what it used to be. I first saw Grand Coulee Dam in 1948. The dam was just 6 years old. Construction started in 1933 and was completed in 1942. Several seniors along with me had taken a couple days off from school with the excuse that we were going to Spokane to visit the “Freedom Train” that was touring the country. It contained, for everyone to see, several of the country’s original documents. We had arranged to be away so we could visit the train with the understanding that we would write a report about it. We had no i...
Somewhere between Honolulu and Tokyo flying at 35,000 feet I became only the third member of the International Tap Dancers Federation. I was enroute to Vietnam and had the lucky or unlucky seat next to a guy by the name of Tom Chapman. After a brief exchange I told him I was on my way to Vietnam, and that followed with his telling me how wrong the war was. This was Feb. 7, 1969. Then he told me his plan to end all wars. That’s where the ITDF came in. He further explained that I could join for only a dollar, which I gave to him. Tom then went o...
It’s been a long tradition in some homes to take your shoes off when entering. This was a common practice in earlier days when it was so easy to track in because everything around was dirty or muddy. Now most homes have cement sidewalks and grassy areas where this is not so much a problem. We had a mud room at the back-door area when I was young, and it was the practice to take your shoes off before entering. We lived on a farm at the time, and it was easy to track in dirt from the field. Entering without taking your shoes off would be r...
During our lives we experience a number of acts of kindness that help make life more pleasant or easier. With the coronavirus here, we all have an opportunity to perform meaningful acts of kindness by observing a few procedures to both protect ourselves and others at the same time. In an effort to stem the advance of the virus, we are asked to observe social distancing, wear face masks when around other people, and to practice cleanliness by washing our hands thoroughly. Some people just don’t get it. Theirs is a rush to expose or be e...
A short item in the Sunset Magazine caught my eye just as we were planning a quick early summer vacation. lt featured a bed and breakfast in Lamoille, Nevada, only a few miles from where Dorothy and I were married in Elko. Over the years we have traveled Nevada from all directions and knew of its beauty. A quick call and we had reservations. When we arrived there we became aware that you can’t always trust what you read. They were cleaning the place, and it was a mess. They explained that they had winter guests for skiing and hadn’t cleaned up...
I never saw one that I didn’t hate. I hated the taste and texture and when possible I scraped them off my plate. These so-called vegetables were frequent dishes my mother prepared while I was growing up during the “Great Depression.” I always thought we had these dishes because we were poor, only learning later it was for another reason. While it was true that we were probably poor, the family never acted like we were. Actually, the reason we had these vegetables was more practical: They would keep in the cellar during the winter. We lived...
I just read a story that some 1,400 communities lost their newspapers in the last year. That’s to say nothing of papers publishing less frequently. These communities will feel the loss. People get their news now from a lot of sources like cable news and social media sources. The Star newspaper has been lucky so far in that a steady stream of readers choose to come by the office each Wednesday so they don’t have to wait for delivery. That’s a prime example of a good readership base. Newspapers use revenue from display, classified ads and circu...
Tillmanville? You won’t find it on a map. But if you are looking for it on a map try Elmer City. Elmer City could just as well have been named Tillmanville. The Tillman family has, and continues to be, a leading factor in this tiny village. Through the years, members of the family have held positions in town government and do so today. Mayor Jesse Tillman is currently getting his feet wet running town government. Former town clerk was Renae Tillman. And currently, the public works director is (you guessed it) another Tillman, this one ...
Electric City will soon have a new city clerk. Peggy Nevsimal is leaving her post as executive director of the local chamber of commerce to accept another community challenge. It was a wise move by the council there. Peggy has been head of the chamber for eight years, moving it from a largely information center to a festival-centered organization. Peggy brings with her a knowledge of the community. She knows most everyone, and most know her. She is a great people person whose influence will be felt in Electric City. While the two tasks are...
Deny! Deny! Deny! When it comes to climate change, that seems to be our current national policy. This administration has systematically turned aside most climate policy tasks set by president Obama. The climate change problem will never be solved from the top down. It is going to take a movement from the bottom up. A 17-year-old girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, has been nominated for the 2020 Nobel Peace prize for her work in trying to get world leaders to focus more on climate change problems. The U.S. has pulled out of the international...
The Chinese New Year kicked off Saturday, Jan. 25. It’s the year of the rat, which I could suggest was named for a number of people I could name! The lunar year is divided into 13 categories, all named for an animal. While traveling to the Far East once, I was caught up in the Chinese New Year by chance. I had landed in Taipei, Taiwan from Osaka, Japan, on my way to Saigon. I had a booking at the Grand Hotel, referred by Mary Yang Meeds, wife of Rep. Lloyd Meeds at the time. Lloyd represented Washington’s 2nd District. The Grand Hotel was owned...
My earliest and most vivid memories take me back to when I was 6 years old. That was the year I started the first grade, and also when I started to get store-bought haircuts. My father, who could do most anything, cut my hair until he took construction jobs away from home. It was about midway through the Great Depression, and jobs were opening up. I went to Ray Sheets’ barber shop on Main Street in Palouse. Sheets was a favorite of all the kids because he always had treats for us. And he had some other things going for him. His teeth were cappe...
We live in a day when the caliber of our elected officials is in question. And for good reason as it becomes apparent that they continually lie to us, often when the truth would serve them better. I like a bumper sticker I saw recently that states, “The truth is out there.” There is one politician that stands apart from others: former President Jimmy Carter. While he didn’t have a distinguished one-term presidency, he is a distinguished person and continues to be so to this present day. There were a couple of things that marred his presi...
There are a lot of reasons why people seek public office. Probably the best reason is when people feel the community has been good to them and they want to give something back. It usually, but not always, comes after families are raised, and there’s more time for public service. This reason probably produces the most effective elected officials. Another reason is that someone encourages someone to run because if they get a friend in office then they can work the system. This seems to be the standard reason today. You see it being played out e...
Every once in awhile a person should visit his or her roots. I did so a couple of weeks ago, returning to Palouse, Idaho, where I was born and raised. It was the annual Palouse Days celebration, which occurs on the second weekend of September. It provides an opportunity to see old friends, and to visit familiar surroundings. What is it with Palouse you ask? Well, I still consider it home. It doesn’t provide me the opportunity to see old classmates. Most of them are gone now. We graduated a class of 24 back in 1948. I only know of three, i...
Try taking a three-week vacation to Houston with four of your children in your car. Actually, I can’t say enough what a positive experience it was. I had determined where we would be each night and made reservations so the overnight stay wouldn’t be a problem. I made sure that there was something to do at the end of each day’s trip and made sure that every motel had a swimming pool. A variety of tourist attractions included, in part, the Morman Temple in Salt Lake City; Bryce National Park; the Grand Canyon; Tombstone, Arizona; Carlsbad Caver...
Where would anyone be without the support staff? My wife and I spent two summers as part of the support staff for firefighters. We worked for Okay Cascade, a firm out of Bothell, that supplied food, laundry and shower services for firefighters. We worked mainly in Washington, but had a 20-day stint on a fire in eastern Oregon. We spent most of our work time in food services and prepared food for sometimes hundreds of firefighters and their support staffs. Probably the largest number was in the Oregon fire where we fed some 1,500 fire fighters...
Sometimes new friends can result in strange gifts. I was in Vietnam just after the Tet offensive in 1968, partially to pry about the war and to visit parents of students I had met at the University of Washington. I had visited one set of parents two days earlier, only to have them come to the hotel I was staying in to ask me to come to their house that evening. They said they had someone they wanted me to meet. I went to their house and met a medical doctor who had been held captive by the Viet Cong for four years. He was finally able to...
The next time you tee up your ball at Banks Lake Golf Course, take a second and say a word of thanks to the three Port District commissioners who made it possible. The three, Jim Keene, Gary Haag and Leonard Sanders, deserve some kind of award for how they see the Port District’s obligation to serve the public. Commission President Jim Keene said it nicely when he stated: “The golf course is an important part of our community.” The commissioners have run the course for the past several years, the last two profitably. The Port District poure...
