News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Dear Grand Coulee Chamber of Commerce and Community Members, We at Pyro Spectaculars want to sincerely and profusely apologize for the significant delay in Saturday night’s fireworks display. We let you down, and we are truly sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience this caused. Shortly after the scheduled start, our crew encountered an unexpected technical glitch that required a full re-synchronization of all firing modules across the dam. Given the immense size of the dam and the wide spread of the show, what is normally a quick fix b...
Imagine being told you have to leave your home, perhaps forever. You only have a couple of hours to pack, and you can only take what fits in your car. Calista Christiansen, a seventh-grader from the Columbia River Gorge community of Lyle, didn’t have to imagine. That’s what happened to her, her family and her neighbors last summer when the Burdoin Fire burned through the community, destroying 14 homes and threatening more than 250 others, including her own. Christiansen spoke about the experience during the 2026 National Civics Bee state com...
For more than sixty years, the Kennedy name was political gold. It conjured youth, glamour, idealism, sacrifice, and possibility. It was Camelot. Today, the spell appears broken. A recent headline summed up the mood: “JFK’s grandson just lost. Good riddance to Camelot.” Whether that’s too harsh is open to debate, but there’s no question the once strong Kennedy mystique isn’t what it once was. It’s hard to communicate to young people the feeling of that era. What made the legend? There was John F. Kennedy, war hero, senator and the first Gre...
July 10, 1979, four armed men entered the caves at Carlsbad Caverns National Park near Carlsbad, New Mexico, and fired their weapons sporadically. They took a park employee hostage. A total of 105 visitors were trapped in the cave. The captors demanded $1 million in ransom and passage to Brazil. They also asked for an opportunity to talk with a newspaper reporter to gain national publicity. Special FBI Agent Ronald M. Hoatson arrived at the park and assumed command of the situation. Hoatson established a rapport with one of the captors. Within...
C. S. Lewis wrote and gave a sermon titled, Learning in Wartime. He presented his sermon at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford, England, in the fall of 1939. World War 2 was underway. Here’s a little piece from that sermon. “…we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and we need something to set against the present …” Our nation has reached its 250th year of our common history. Congratulations my fellow Am...
Spreading spurious gossip is never appropriate in a civilized society, but it’s especially egregious when attempting to make a moral point or dispute an opinion. I have never met Hunter Biden, and I likely never will, but I admire that he has done the hard work of getting and staying clean and sober, especially while in the harsh political spotlight. Part of his process has been acknowledging the hurt he caused his family and friends, asking for their forgiveness, and making amends. To question his motives is the sort of gutter mentality t...
July 3, 1988, Iran Air flight 655 was destroyed while flying over the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz. The Airbus A300 was shot down by surface to air missiles fired from the US Navy USS Vincennes. The airliner was identified as an enemy jet fighter. The aircraft was an International Flight heading to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, having departed Bandar Abbas, Iran. Iran and Iraq were at war and had been attacking each other’s oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Several nations had war ships in the region to safeguard the safe transit of o...
If you have traveled a lot, or are just beginning to take a trip. Most things may seem odd, particularly if it’s a foreign trip. Language may be a problem. I usually purchased a foreign dictionary so I could look up key words. In Japan, I discovered that my guide knew very little English, but he also had a dictionary, so we got by okay. I had been invited to have dinner with a Japanese family who gave me instructions to take while on the subway. I was worried that I would miss my stop. A Japanese man sitting next to me assured me that he w...
1:60 hydraulic model of Grand Coulee Dam. This view, taken immediately downstream from the left powerhouse, shows the spillway section with the equivalent of 250,000 second feet of water passing over the drum gates. – Aug. 24, 1943...
Currently, I live with a view of the Muckleshoot Casino and see its fireworks displays advertising their “Boom City” and heralding their upcoming end-of-June fireworks. With Independence Day and the freedoms it celebrates just around the corner, I can’t help reflecting on the many challenges we have faced as a nation and continue to face, and the role of our newspapers in that ongoing transformation. Washington state saw its first expression of the constitutionally enshrined Freedom of the Press 37 years before the state’s creation. When th...
I read the opinion piece in The Star “America loves a comeback: Meet Hunter Biden”. After I read that, I instantly thought of two words: “Preposterous Balderdash”. There is just no way that Hunter Biden can redeem himself. He cannot turn back time when he was holed-up in a White House bedroom doing unspeakable things, while his aging father technically held the Office of the Presidency of the United States while others (perhaps Hunter himself and/ or Jill Biden commandeered an unconstitutional piece of technology called an “Auto-P...
An inevitable press briefing a few days from now: (Trump is hydraulically lowered into his seat.) “Mr. President, are you planning to drain the Reflecting Pool and start over? There are reports – ” “Quiet, Piggy! I know you’ve been down there stealing patriotic paint chips. Maybe we oughta cuff you. And gimme a smile for a change. You’re a terrible reporter by the way, like the rest of the Fake News, which keeps saying very terroristically that my beautiful pool restoration is a ‘met-a-phor’ for something about me. That’s a big word, a lotta...
June 26, 1911, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson was born in Port Arthur, Texas. It is said Mildred acquired the name Babe after baseball legend Babe Ruth. She played every sport offered for girls during her school years. Her athletic records show her great versatility in many areas. Didrikson set four world records at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. She won gold and silver medals in track and field events. In 1935 she began to play golf. In 1938, she competed in the Los Angeles Open, a PGA tournament. She shot 81 and 84 and missed the cut. She con...
Cambodia is enjoying the fruits of an increasing tourist trade. In the 1970s the country was in the midst of a terrific civil war with Pol Pot leading a communist ground offensive, determined to take over the country. There was physical evidence of thousands of Cambodians killed and it was referred to as a killing field. The rebels tried to destroy Ankgor Wat. I was in Cambodia less than a year after the war was over and spent two days at the temple site. I could see the destruction of statues and other areas of the temple. I was able to get...
For years, Hunter Biden was less a person than a political symbol. Republicans turned him into a one-man crime wave, Democrats often treated him as a liability to be ignored, and much of the media covered him as a walking scandal. Now, in one of the strangest political plot twists, he's becoming a major social media star, attracting nearly one million followers on X by doing something radical: talking honestly about his own failures. He's hailed for candidly discussing his recovery, for his self...
During World War II, the Hanford Site played a pivotal role in propelling the United States to win the nuclear arms race, which put an end to combat in the Pacific Theater. Decades later, as a result of that work, the federal government is still working on the largest environmental cleanup site on the planet, holding up its end of the Tri-Party Agreement to remediate the land. One of my top priorities in Congress has been ensuring that Hanford has the necessary resources available to complete cleanup progress while ensuring taxpayer dollars...
In Washington, this year we will again deal with water shortages because of insufficient mountain snowpack while escaping the historic droughts plaguing other parts of the world. The Columbia River water system has not flowed at normal levels in recent years, which is problematic for our agriculture, hydropower generation, barging, local water supplies, fish and wildlife. However, 20 years ago we faced the same severe drought that is afflicting the world’s major river drainages, including the Colorado River. That water scarcity forced f...
When a lad, I used to take Greyhound bus rides with my mom. She often took the bus to visit a friend and I got to go along. She could drive but chose to take the bus on longer trips. Later in life, I was on another bus — in Cambodia — and this was a different kind of bus ride. I was there to visit Angkor Wat, one of the most famous of religious ruins. I flew there from Japan and planned to stay a couple of days, then fly off to Phnom Pehn, the capital. I decided to stay an extra day and take the bus to the capital. The bus was an old and bru...
The near legendary elementary school teacher sighed. “I’ve been teaching more than 23 years and I love the kids,” he said. “But it’s getting harder and harder and I think I’m going to hang it up at the end of this year.” What’s getting harder? “There’s so little support at home when the kids act up. There’s so much stress in the classroom. There are some nights when I can’t get to sleep. I love what I do but I think it’s time. I have to take care of myself.” This teacher isn’t alone. There is a teacher shortage and it isn’t just a number pr...
June 10, 1942, the small Czechoslovakia village of Lidice was completely destroyed and most all its inhabitants killed. There was a growing anti-Fascist movement in Czechoslovakia. On May 27, 1942, SS Obergruppenfuher Reinhard Heydrich’s vehicle was attacked by anti-Fascists, wounding him. He succumbed to his wounds within a week. The German military moved into Lidice around midnight, June 10. The 503 citizens of the village were gathered. 173 men and boys were shot and killed at a nearby farm. Women and children were taken to the village s...
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...