News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 701 - 725 of 3419
During World War II, Americans put up with rationed gas and car tires, rationed coal and fuel oil, rationed silk and nylon, rationed meat and dairy products, rationed jams and jellies, even rationed coffee. Would today’s Americans – some of whom freaked out, during the worst of the pandemic, when they couldn’t get their hair done – be willing to endure even a minuscule fraction of the sacrifices that our forebears weathered 80 years ago? I’ll answer my own question with a question: Can you imagine what would happen if coffee were rationed,...
This has to be the most ridiculous decision I’ve ever heard a board make. You as a group just had two levies fail. You are supposed to be looking at what you have to cut from the budget. But instead, you decide to pay the man who will be cutting the budget, 69% of his pay for 50% of the work. On top of that, you’ll bring in someone new and pay him/her 92% pay for 50% of the work. How can you even be considering this? I’m sorry Mr. Turner has health issues, but if he wants to retire then he can leave. This school district shouldn’t be providi...
It’s not often that we see an athlete at the top of his (her) game walk away from a multi-million dollar payday to go home and fight for his (her) country. However, that is exactly what world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk did after Russia invaded Ukraine. Usyk postponed his championship rematch with Britain’s Anthony Joshua and returned to war-torn Ukraine. He enlisted in the homeland defense force; however, he’s not alone. Fellow boxers Vasiliy Lomachenko and Klitschko brothers, Wladimir and Vitali, did the same. “They are pro...
Five years ago, a sports injury forced me to wear a light brace on my knee. Within a few months the joint was fine, yet to this day I continue to wear a brace on both knees when on the field. I feel there is prophylactic value, but also a sense of comfort and security. Perhaps that helps explain why, as mask mandates are being relaxed, I find myself in a minority that welcomes being masked — at least in certain situations. In other countries, principally in Asia, masks were worn routinely in public before COVID came along. Often it was to a...
I recently had one of those annual medical examinations. While waiting for the doctor, I was required to provide answers on a questionnaire. “Have you ever had this or that medical issue?” Finally, the questionnaire posed a set of state-of-mind questions ending with, “Are you happy with your life?” I answered, yes, I am happy with my life. The doctor looked at the questionnaire and remarked, “We don’t see many people like you.” My satisfaction with my life is not because of great achievements; I am in the ordinary category. It is because I am...
We’ve all seen the flash of lightning and heard the aftermath of the lightning bolt — the loud clap of thunder. There are three basic elements needed to form lightning. An unstable atmosphere, moisture, and some type of atmospheric action to get the air moving. Most lightning activity we see occurs during our summer months here in the Coulee. Yet, there have been some occurrences of lightning during the winter too. According to NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, lightning is one of the o...
Washington’s Board of Natural Resources is considering banning timber harvesting on state lands. That is extremely unwise. Instead, the Board must ensure its healthy forest policies incorporate ALL management tools, including planting, thinning and logging. The Board, established in 1957, sets policies to manage Washington’s 5.6 million acres granted by Congress in 1889. More than 3 million acres were designated as trust lands, of which 2.1 million acres are forests, to support various public institutions. Banning timber harvesting robs cri...
As a lad I had my heroes, and as time went on, I changed how I picked them. Golfer Ben Hogan was one of the early ones. He was severely injured in a car wreck. There was a question if he would walk again, and certainly he would never play tour golf again. About a year later, not only was he playing golf again, but winning. Joe Louis was another early hero. I listened to many of his fights along with my dad and mom, who tuned in to all his fights. Along with most boys, I saw Babe Ruth as a hero. He was out of baseball before I was old enough to...
Bills in the Legislature are proposing mandating nursing ratios and restricting how health care facilities can contract for on-call professionals, both of which provide the kind of flexibility without which rural, critical care hospitals may not function well at all. Two local doctors wrote to the legislature on the bill currently up for a committee hearing tomorrow (Thursday) in the Senate. The Star was asked to publish their thoughts too, and a third letter, by a nurse who gets into the details of day-to-day needs for flexibility will also... Full story
My name is Andrew Castrodale and I’ve been a practicing physician in Grand Coulee Washington for 24 years. Coulee Medical Center (CMC) is a 25 bed Critical Access Hospital in North Central Washington next to the 1.4 million-acre Colville Indian Reservation. Higher level of care is approximately 100 miles away making Family Medicine truly “full spectrum”. I grew up on the reservation and came home to practice 24 years ago after undergraduate and medical school training at the University of Washington followed by a Family medicine resid... Full story
I am a lifelong Washingtonian and practice full-spectrum family medicine, including surgical obstetrics and hospital care at a Critical Access Hospital in Northern Grant County. Coulee Medical Center provides crucial access to healthcare services in an area of very high need, and passage of HB 1868 could have disastrous consequences for a small yet crucial rural hospital that is already straining under the demands of the pandemic. I work as a hospitalist seven days each month and am the Acute Care Director, and I have personally witnessed and... Full story
My name is Beth Goetz. I am a Registered Nurse in rural eastern Washington at a 25 bed Critical Access Hospital (CAH) located in Grand Coulee, Washington. Coulee Medical Center is my second home, and my second family. Both of my biological children were born at CMC, delivered by my coworkers. Awkward at times yes, but that’s who I trusted. I knew that both them and I were in the best hands we could have been, and that made up for the few awkward moments. Both of them have been in the emergency department, undergone surgical procedures, and r... Full story
I’ve mentioned before that cows are not my favorite animal. When I was just in my teens I lived on a farm. My Dad had some work horses and a cow. Had to handle the cow but not milk her. I couldn’t then, nor now, get a cow to give milk. I would take her down the road and stake her out so she could get fresh, green grass. That’s when I learned that cows have a mind of their own. Flash forwards a number of years to when I met my wife and would drive to southern Idaho to visit her. I would get off work at 5 on Friday and then drive the 500 miles...
Europeans have invaded Russia twice. Napoleon invaded Russia with a force of close to half a million troops. He advanced to Moscow, but the Russian government had relocated. The brutal Russian winter arrived, and Napoleon’s army froze, starved, and died of disease as they retreated from the country. Germany, under Hitler, invaded Russia at the outset of World War Two. The Germans sent their best armed forces to the Eastern Front to fight the Russians. Seventy percent of Germany’s casualties were sustained fighting the Russians. During the war...
Good ideas have a way of changing into something else in a committee, and that’s precisely how we tend to govern in America, especially in Washington state in the last two years. Last year the Legislature passed a law widely condemned by law enforcement agencies who warned of unintended consequences. A proposed fix, still controversial, is currently under debate. See that story on page 1. This year, the Leg is considering a similarly well-intended but possibly disastrous effort, one that seeks to address a very real problem with a n... Full story
As you may have heard, the Washington State Redistricting Commission approved maps to rebalance our 49 statewide legislative districts and 10 federal congressional districts in November. This is a process conducted every 10 years in our state based on the federal Census data for population. The process was challenging in 2021, in part because the commission received data later than usual and because of the significant population growth shown in western Washington. Despite approving the plans late, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that...
When our youngest daughter was about 10, we bought her a horse. A real old cowboy lived about four blocks from us, and I got acquainted with him. His name was Homer. He lived in a small house on the edge of Bothell and had a two- to three-acre pasture that on occasion was home to a horse or two. While visiting with him one day, he suggested that I ought to buy Kim a horse. He said he would rent the pasture to me real cheap. I explained that I didn’t know anything about horses, only that they had four legs and a mane. He said he would help me p...
If you ask almost any farmer in Central Washington these days what their most pervasive problem is, I can guarantee they’ll say labor. Producers across Washington and the country are keenly aware that there simply isn’t enough interest among domestic workers to fill these essential roles. As the breadbasket for the world, the labor crisis creates a threat to our food security and our national security. That is why I have been championing agricultural labor reform since coming to Congress. In 2019 my legislation, the Farm Workforce Mod...
Living in Central Washington means you’re pretty much as far as you can get from the southern border while remaining in the land of the free, so it’s easy to think President Biden’s open-border policies don’t affect us. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. President Biden’s open-border policies have allowed fentanyl to flow across the southern border and into our communities. In FY21, there was a 134% increase in the amount of fentanyl found by Customs and Border Protection. The 11,201 pounds of fentanyl that were seized by o...
The recent eruption of the Tonga volcano was captured by various geostationary satellites showing us the size and scale of that eruption. The eruption plume was about 162 miles in diameter before upper winds disrupted it. The Tonga volcano, officially called the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano, is mostly under water. It is about 12.5 miles wide and is 6,000 feet high. The volcano is 40 miles north of capital of Tonga (175˚23’W, 20˚33’S). This volcano’s recent past activity was in 2009 and...
I have had a lot of odd jobs, spread out over the years. I don’t think I was in my teens yet when I took my first official job. I set pins in the Palouse bowling alley. I got 5 cents a line, not something I could get rich doing. A line of bowling took about 30 minutes, so you can see it wasn’t a great deal.This was before they got the racks you put the pins in. There were black circles painted and you were supposed to put the pins right on the painted circles. First you had to clear the down pins and then jump up on the retaining wall so the...
Last year, Gov. Jay Inslee attempted an end run around the legislature by banning natural gas in new homes and commercial buildings via the state’s building codes. It was a bad idea. Now, some fellow Democrats who control the Legislature are working on legislation trying to do the same — also a bad idea. Inslee’s proposed regulations forbid the use of fossil fuels for heating and hot water in new structures. Prohibiting natural gas is expensive for home and building owners, many of whom installed energy-efficient natural gas heat pumps and t...
Setting aside the likelihood that the Grand Coulee Dam School District is not perfect, critics who argue that the fix is voting against its local funding are way off the mark. When the Legislature changed the formula for basic education funding, getting dollares for this district became even more complicated than it already was, restricting funds in different buckets dedicated to specific uses, even more so than they usually are. But administrators here, like others across the state, have had to figure it out. This year, the district is... Full story
Palouse Pottery Company, founded in 1904, produced a ton of crock pots during the short time it was in operation. Currently, I am looking for my fourth Palouse Pottery piece so I can give it away. I don’t remember when or where I got my first piece, a gallon crock. Since I am from Palouse, I decided to try to find pieces of Palouse Pottery for each of our four children. I gave my first piece away, and while visiting Palouse a couple of years ago found my second piece. This one was a 10-gallon crock, and I bought it at a secondhand store on P...
There has been much debate on whether you should support the upcoming school levy continuance. While many facts have been presented, some have been unclearly represented, and our children are the ones who will suffer. Please remember the facts and consider the whole picture as you make your decision. First of all, please remember the fact that the levy that is up for vote is not a new levy. It is to continue the levy that pays for the maintenance and education operations that already exist. Voting no takes away money from the normal day-to-day...