News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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For many people, the railroad running through the northern part of Lincoln County along Highway 2 is just part of the landscape. But for the communities it serves, it is something they experience every single day. The sound of locomotive horns late at night. Grain cars banging together during loading. Waiting at crossings while another train moves wheat toward market. For towns along the route, the railroad has long been part of everyday life. Not to be confused with one of the major transcontinental rail lines that run through the southern...
1 The vast majority of humanity are good people. 2 Social structure requires organizing process. 3 Representation is not equivalent to misrepresentation. 4 Minority rule cannot be majority rule. 5 Humans make mistakes. 6 A majority is as likely to be wrong as a minority. 7 Knowledge can be leveraged to understanding, producing technology and value. 8 Humans of understanding are less likely to make mistakes as ignorant humans. Understand that a government is a human tool of decision process used for organizing a social environment, and that a co...
My favorite sport is Track & Field. So, I loved watching our Raiders compete at the recent Washington State Championships. Our coaches will miss the Seniors and these kids were super excited about their Senior trip. Head Coach Lori and Assistant Coach Ashley could not coach all 18 events without the help of their 3 volunteer coaches – Christy, Chance and Alfredo. Much appreciated! Once back home, I checked the Star newspaper and wanted to truly thank Scott Hunter for kindly printing my thoughts. I apologize for a grammar mistake, but Scott know...
June 4, 1989, the Chinese government ordered its military to open fire on unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The protesters had marched to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, a pro-reform leader within the Chinese government. Pro-reform and pro-democracy demonstrations continued and grew in numbers across China. Martial law was enacted on May 20, 1989. On June 4th, the People’s Army, fully equipped, opened fire on the protesters while sending personnel carriers into Tiananmen Square where protesters were still sleeping in tents. ...
I’ve known the past three owners of The Star newspaper. My father was an owner of small- town newspapers. The business is extremely hard with few thank-you’s. Scott Hunter, the current owner for some time now, is also my neighbor. I have a great deal of respect for him. This will never change – he is a good dude! He publishes a quality product even though his business is understaffed. It’s rare, but occasionally he’ll squeeze in time to write an editorial. Every once in a while, others will disagree with his opinions and really lay on the wo...
The day the fed rent-a-cops showed up at Gerhke Windmill Park and insisted that displaying a banner on Federal Government property, is a crime, and that they can confiscate my property (the banner), if I refused to remove it.... A family, not more than 30 yards away had placed a banner on that same property, attached to a structure... The Public often holds events in that public space and we place banners, signs etc, and the federal nazi goon squad never shows up and confiscates that display. In fact at Colorama weekend celebration, just days...
May 30, 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington D.C. Following the assassination of President Lincoln and the eventual end of the Civil War, Congress incorporated the Lincoln Monument Association following the Civil War in 1867. The association was to devise a plan to build a memorial to honor the assassinated President. Some decades later, a group of planners, sculptures, artists, financiers, politicians and park officials were gathered to design and build the memorial. Ground was broken for the foundation of Lincoln Memorial...
It’s hard enough to understand the difficulties the local school district finds itself in without making an argument that resorts to deliberately cherry-picking facts to color the origins of the problems in much darker hues than a clear picture would provide. For example, citing a chart that peaked with an anomalous high enrollment of 311 students higher than the current count gives a distinctly worse impression than a more accurate average of the seven prior years, which would tell you the district is down about 130-150 students from that aver...
All school districts face significant employee costs, increased insurance rates and inflation along with other major challenges. Many school districts get the same funding sources as the Grand Coulee Dam School District, but they are thriving. Why? It is due to advanced planning, foresight, knowledgeable leadership and gradually taking care of these issues over time before a crisis can develop. Our local elected School Board members, who have boasted they are good stewards, and their current superintendent have destroyed our local school...
May 26, 1940, The Dunkirk Evacuation was initiated by the British. Called Operation Dynamo, it was an attempt to save the British Expeditionary Force in France from total defeat by the advancing German Army. Great Britain assembled nearly 1,000 naval and civilian vessels of all kinds, aided by the Royal Air Force and favorable weather. The evacuation was mostly successful with about 340,000 British, French and Allied troops being moved out of France. France considered Dunkirk a betrayal. The alternative was likely the capture of the entire...
(These were to be made at the meeting, but I was not told the date changed) For nearly a week now, I have felt as if I was living in a parallel universe. That feeling, like you cannot believe what is happening around you! Like you woke up to a changed world. The two words that best describe my feelings last weekend are shock and hurt. Now I stand so humbled before you. I realize that what I was feeling last weekend is only a small sampling of what many of the staff, inside these walls, have felt. I am sorry it took my own pain, to begin to see...
When I led the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden, the hardest part of my job was reassembling the agency after the first Trump administration had scattered its headquarters from our nation’s capital. The move crippled the agency — as intended. That experience led me to understand that the current Trump administration’s unpopular plan to move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters will be every bit as destructive. It will hurt forests, wildlife and communities that rely upon our public lands and waters. In 2020, almost 90% of the B...
The great contradiction in Donald Trump’s two terms — at least as far as covering and understanding the man are concerned — is that he is, on the one hand, the most media-accessible president in history, yet he has proved to be the most difficult for journalists to interview. This was demonstrated again the other evening as Trump toured his renovation project at the Washington Mall. ABC’s Rachel Scott asked a perfectly reasonable question: “Mr. President, you are here against the backdrop of the war in Iran. Why focus on all these projects as w...
May 18, 1927, the Bath Consolidated School of Bath, Michigan, a small town of 300, was ripped apart by a bomb. School had just started, students, teachers and staff were going about their day. The explosion caused half the structure to collapsed, killing and injuring many. The aftermath of the bombing left 43 dead - included students, 4 staff members and one bystander. The person behind the bombing was Mr. Kehoe, a school board member and treasurer. He been arguing with board members over the cost of ongoing taxes for the consolidated school....
My second-grade teacher, Sister Mary, would be shocked that I turned out to be a writer. Please allow me to explain. In recent years, many schools within the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have barred teachers from marking student papers in red. Their thinking is that correcting young students with red pens is too confrontational and upsetting for the children. Many teachers prefer to grade in more soothing colors, such as green, blue, pink and yellow. Red ink surely wasn’t banned at St. Germaine Catholic School in the ...
I sympathize with former FBI director James Comey – up to a point. It’s detestable, if not laughable, that the MAGA regime has twice indicted the former FBI director just to sate Trump’s revenge fantasies. Last week’s indictment – claiming he threatened Trump’s life because he posted a photo of seashells that spelled the numbers “86 47” – is further proof his Justice Department bootlickers are clueless as well as mendacious. Because, according to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment protects “political hyperbole” and “language in the poli...
May 10, 1869, Officials, workers and dignitaries of the Union and Central Pacific railways held a ceremony on Promontory Summit, in Utah Territory – about 35 miles form Promontory Point. The event was to drive in a Golden Spike, celebrating the joining of rails and the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. The topographical studies that were undertaken by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads was one of the first to occur in the Mid and Western United States. Today, traveling east-west on Interstate 80 closely follows m...
The forces shaping decisions about the Grand Coulee Dam School District are stubbornly calling for what one might reasonably conclude are exactly the wrong decisions. Last fall, when the process of laying out a “modified education plan” — the term in education for layoffs — members of the public were calling for the district to stem its financial losses by increasing the amount of money coming in, rather than cutting expenses. In public education, that means bringing in more students — through increased offerings, not fewer. The district... Full story
By any honest measure, veterans have long been unintended pioneers in the advancement of medicine. The unique realities of war and military service have forced innovation that later benefits civilians for generations. Modern triage systems emerged from battlefields where medical personnel had to decide, in seconds, who could be saved. Medevac transportation by helicopter increased survival rates in conflicts like Vietnam and later became a staple of civilian emergency medicine. Advances in trauma surgery, prosthetics, rehabilitation medicine...
Survivalism and self-sufficiency are exploding across America. According to TruePrepper, a preparedness research group, nearly 23 million Americans now call themselves preppers — many fleeing big-city metros for rural areas where they can be self-reliant if calamity strikes. I offer some insight into this trend. A decade ago, I left the Washington, D.C., metro area and returned to my small ranch on the edge of the countryside just outside Pittsburgh — a place I’ll call Maybury. The people in metro Washington sure are different from the good...
May 5, 1830, John B. Stetson was born in Orange, New Jersey. He spent his early years working in his fathers hat-making shop where he learned the trade. Stetson then moved on, setting up his own hat making business in Philadelphia. It was there that Stetson became ill with tuberculosis. The popular treatment then was to send tuberculosis patients west, to drier climates. He followed the advice, and moved west to Colorado. Stetson learned that the hats worn by men in the west provided little protection from the elements. He designed a hat...
It’s no secret that this managing editor turned Army girl has found herself in a bit of an unexpected chapter – boots on the ground in Washington, D.C. And let me tell you, this concrete jungle is a far cry from the rolling wheat fields of Eastern Washington, let alone the dusty, wide-open cowboy country I call home. I like to joke that I told people I was heading to Washington and somehow boarded the wrong plane. Next thing I knew, I was living out a real-life “Home Alone 2” moment, full Kevin McCallister energy, just with less room service...
I was surprised that they were charging $90 a ticket. I had never paid that much for a concert. My doctor, Dr. Jim, got tickets for different events and then I would pay him for my wife’s and my tickets. We had gone to a number of plays and a couple of concerts with Dr. Jim. He bought three tickets and gave us he two closest to the stage. We had almost the best tickets in the house, slightly elevated and only about 30 feet from the stage. Pavarotti was performing in the round. That is, he had people all around him. If at first I thought the p...
Farmers across rural America are facing an affordability crisis. As a third-generation farmer in the Yakima Valley, I know firsthand the challenges facing farm country and the importance of passing the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026, otherwise known as the farm bill. This legislation is an investment in our producers, our families and the rural economy across Washington’s Fourth District. This Congress, I have worked as a member of both the House Agriculture Committee and the Agriculture Subcommittee on Appropriations to help ensu...
The 40+ billion dollars already spent on the Iran war, endorsed by our own Republican US Representative Michael Baumgartner, has only made our world’s democracies much more vulnerable. Instead, that money should have been spent on Ukraine’s war effort against Russia that’s made our world’s democracies much less vulnerable. Norm Luther...