The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

Solutions to serious problems should not require contortions of logic that look like the loser in that old game of Twister. You know the one: where players try to reach different spots on a large surface on the floor with different parts of their...

I had my heroes, just like every kid. Mine really got started by getting to know the owner of one of the three active taverns in Palouse in the late 1930s. His name was Pop Brantner. I never did learn his first name. The unlikely friendship began...

A couple weeks ago, I told you about my moment of reflection during Natural Helpers. Well, Sunday night I found myself reflecting again, and this time things got personal. Sometimes it is hard to write this column without giving you a deep look into...

Yet another takeaway? As a disabled fisherman, I, along with many other disabled, aged friends, have fished Geezer Beach for many years. We fish this area exclusively four to five times per week from January to June. Due to our disabilities and very...

I would love to see the cinema start showing movies again. I know a lot of people were disappointed when it closed, and with so little to do around the area it would be a big win to see it reopened. I hope the town keeps supporting Kimberly...

When the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced proposed possible changes to the way it manages a local fishing beach, it used in an official document the popular name given it by the folks who use it, a name first made popular in the writings of a...

I would like to congratulate the Grand Coulee City Council for their support for the Republic, Washington police chief’s stance on the Initiative 1639 gun law. I would also like to thank Councilmember Tom Poplawski for his succinct comments on the...

I was asked where Electric City sewer goes. And if we do this, how much more will w/s/g go up after we just got a hike in this? And our zip codes would change; how many people would have to be notified and have to get a mail person to deliver our...

My wife and I appreciated the stewardship article written by Roger Lucas. We’ve traveled extensively throughout the USA with a special focus on small towns, and we have yet to find a place as amazing as our area. Long before the vehicle and...

The subject of consolidation has come up many times over the years, and the benefits seem to always outweigh the negatives. Sometimes it comes down to the personal feelings of the sitting councils and what they are willing to look at in their own...

This is about stewardship. I have always been impressed with the organizations and individuals who understand the need to preserve historic buildings in this area. The Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union immediately comes to mind. The way the CU has...

Patriotism has been on a lot of people’s minds lately. French President Emanuel Macron recently criticized President Trump and other world leaders for their “us versus them” view of patriotism. “By putting our own interests first,” he...

A few years after Rod Hartman had retired as the 10-year mayor of Coulee Dam in 1996, he tried to impress upon me the absolute necessity of merging the local towns. I agreed, and always have, that it would probably make sense to do so, even if it...

In Grand Coulee and throughout eastern Washington, physicians are the backbone of our communities. For the past 45 years, UW School of Medicine faculty and clinical partners have taught and mentored our students as a way of “paying it forward,...

The Care and Share Food Bank has received over one ton of donations from our small communities with big HEARTS In the last two weeks. The high school homecoming drive, Boy Scouts, Coulee Medical Center, plus other smaller drives did a great job of ad...

The recovery of the gray wolf is a success story for the Endangered Species Act, and the best available science should determine whether species remain listed. I am proud that the House voted last week to approve of legislation I co-introduced with...

The special Veteran’s section in last Wednesday’s Star newspaper was another reminder of the debt we owe to our servicemen and women. They serve to protect the freedoms we so often take for granted. Locally, the “Isle of Flags” program at...

November 11 of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I. Over the course of that conflict, 116,516 American military personnel lost their lives. The deadliest battle in U.S. history was at Argonne Forest, from...

A lot has been in the news recently about freedom, civil rights and equality. I tend to stay away from a lot of those volatile topics just because words can be bent or misused and turn a civil conversation into a riotous movement. But there are some...

I had a friend at the age of 10 who swore to me that she was a boy. We were just kids playing in sand and gravel of a pit behind my home outside Missoula, Montana. Her statement didn’t really make any sense to me. She looked like a girl to me, alth... Full story

As we near Thanksgiving, I hope the Raider Nation will join me in being thankful for the vision and passion Rob Williams had for starting the Lake Roosevelt youth football program 11 or so years ago. Many of the players on this year’s team had the... Full story