News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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I was honored this weekend to spend some time with some truly gifted men and women. I attended a training session put on by First Peoples Fund, in partnership with Northwest Native Development Fund (NNDF). The training was about how to hone your skills and market yourself in a variety of ways. This included budgeting and pricing of your art. But much more was covered, and I found some great people with greater stories. You know many of the names, but how they got to the little NNDF building on a sunny weekend in April is a novel ready to be...
Some politicians, pundits, and lobbyists launched vile attacks on the student survivors of the mass murder at a school in Parkland, Florida. That seems counterintuitive, since we usually exhibit sympathy toward innocent victims. The critics have contended that the students, who are not old enough to vote, have no right to address gun law issues. It has been suggested that the students should learn CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) instead of trying to prevent the need for CPR. It has been suggested that the students are trying to rewrite the...
This community can be counted on to step up to address a need, but we don’t always know about them. This week, the Rotary club of which I am a member is pointing one out that has gone unmet for a very long time. Those of you who have lived in the community for a long time may remember when the old community theatrical troupe, The Planet Earth Players, put on the musical “Oklahoma,” decades ago. The curtain in the high school gym was very old then, and it’s a lot older now. Embarrassingly old. But it’s never been an immediate need. Kids don...
Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, the late Elie Wiesel, once said of that horrific state-sponsored genocide that, “to forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn’t prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death.” The world-renowned author sought to prevent victims from being forgotten through writing many books on the persecution through his experience and by helping establish the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Wiesel’s words underscore the gravity of the dut...
Millions of college graduates find themselves saddled with crushing debt, and more than a third of them won’t be working in their chosen profession. Many will be working for low wages. Meanwhile, millions of high-paid jobs are available in the skilled trades – electricians, plumbers, manufacturing workers, pipefitters, mechanics, appliance repair, computer techs, medical assistants and welders. Known as blue collar jobs, they routinely pay $45,000 to $65,000 a year or more. According to Salary.com, the average heavy equipment operator in Sea...
Sometimes life just happens. That was the summary of my sit-down chat with this powerful young lady getting ready to walk the stage and get her diploma at Lake Roosevelt. Alyssa Hobrecht-Flores is ready, and if her life to this point has taught her anything, it is that she can conquer it all. Here is a little bit more of my emotion-filled conversation that covered many areas with Ms. Hobrecht-Flores. Senior years have a reputation of being stress filled and fast paced. So when I asked Alyssa...
American narcissism-exceptionalism is the most habitual exporter of terror around the globe by the cruelties out of Congress and the White house. Exports of military arms and environmental poisoning of foreign Peoples and their lands creates collateral damage by destroying those Peoples’ ways of life. Yemen, Syria, Honduras, Venezuela, Brazil, Columbia, Guatemala, the former Czechoslovakia, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Palestine, Okinawa, Philippines, Standing Rock, Alberta Tar Sands, Canada declaring Sinixt Peoples extinct — all have been targets of...
In 2016, alone, 15.4 million Americans suffered the loss of approximately $16 billion due to identity theft. One way to protect yourself from identity theft is to destroy, through shredding, unneeded paper records and files that contain your valuable personal information. “What should I shred?” According to the Washington State Attorney General’s website: “In short, destroy all sensitive information including junk mail and paperwork that includes account numbers, birth dates, passwords, PINs, signatures and Social Security Numbers.” “How do w...
The song “I Can Only Imagine,” by MercyMe, has been a family favorite since it first came out. I have vivid memories of this song and the lyrics cut me to the core every time I hear it. Such powerful words that make you put yourself inside the music and visualize yourself in the song’s summary. It causes you to imagine yourself in that very setting. This song was one of my best friend, Frank Sieker’s, favorite songs, as well. A family friend sang this song at Frank’s wedding, and there is...
President Trump campaigned on cutting taxes, streamlining regulations and improving infrastructure. He also vowed to renegotiate our trade agreements, calling the North American Free Trade Agreement “the worst deal ever made.” On his first day in office, he signed an executive order aimed at reducing regulations and controlling regulatory costs. However, revamping our vast web of federal rules is much easier said than done. It is even more difficult when state and local rules are considered. The cost of regulations is a key American com...
Two months ago, my big brother, George Davis III, was hospitalized and diagnosed with Leukemia. This was a huge shock to our family and all his friends. I always saw my big brother as invincible; you could hit him in the head with a two-by-four and it wouldn’t slow him down. Then all of the sudden, he got slowed way down by something invisible to the naked eye. I wanted to do something to help. I knew George and his wife would be in need financially, so I decided to hold a benefit dinner for him. This past Saturday, the dinner was held at T...
In 1965 I got a job in California. Five months later, some new friends asked this Idaho country boy to go hunting with them in the Sierras on one guy’s family ranch, where I had to show three of them how to load their rifles. There were some very close calls. The same gun laws that kept people safe in Idaho didn’t even come close in California. I somehow survived, and this was among friends. Forty years later I strapped on a pistol for a walk in the woods. A visiting granddaughter started yelling “Gun! Gun! Gun!” What a wake-up call! Even in...
This letter is to address several false and erroneous statements in a guest column in your paper by Jack Stevenson regarding the AR-15 rifle. The AR-15 has been called “America’s most popular rifle” and there are somewhere between 5-10 million in existence in the U.S. It is a box-magazine-fed, semi-automatic rifle. The box detachable magazine was patented in 1864; the first successful design semi-auto rifle was designed in 1895; the AR-15 was designed by ArmaLite in 1956; so nothing about the box-magazine-fed, semi-auto AR-15 rifle is new....
I recently traveled across Washington’s Fourth Congressional District to speak with farmers from each county and to hear their concerns about an upcoming Farm Bill. One of the largest concerns expressed by farmers had little to do with congressional action, however: Central Washington farmers expressed their anxiety about the impact of a potentially escalating trade war with global trading partners. President Trump recently announced new tariffs worth billions of dollars on products manufactured by China. The reasons he cited for tariffs are c...
I sat one day, about three years ago, with Keianna Vera. She told me her story up to that point. On that day, I knew that this young lady was going to go places. She told me about her roller coaster ride of a life. She said all this with a smile on her face and a little emotion in her eyes. Today that same smile was there while we talked about many things as her senior year has about a quarter left to go. “Not too shabby,” is how she answered my first question about how her senior year was goi...
By now most of us have read that plastic, that incredibly useful product that all of us use every day, is fast becoming public enemy number one. We have been using plastics for decades, and as a result, plastic is everywhere: in our fish, in our food, in our oceans, in our waste water treatment systems, and in our public spaces. We use plastics in every part of our lives, from single-use plastics, such as bags, bottles, and straws, to our babies’ toys to our nylon clothes to our paint. Plastic particles and plastic microbeads are used in our s...
One of the most urgent issues we face right now in Central Washington is the ongoing threat to dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Just this week, a 9th Circuit Court panel rejected arguments for an injunction to pause a forced spill order by an Oregon federal judge. The Oregon judge’s order requires an increase in spill for the eight lower Columbia and Snake River dams and now goes into effect as of April 3. Increasing spill comes with a $40 million price tag for ratepayers this year alone. That price is too high, and it is only a f...
How often does this happen, Aprils Fools and Easter on the same day? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is the state of the world today. I will let that sink in a bit. It is a thought provoking question and probably even insulting to some, but it might just reflect what is happening out there on the most holy of days. I ended up traveling across the state on Easter. That was after a great message from a great man on Easter morning at church. I was a chaperone for the Northwest Native Youth Conference, and this year we...
1 Years Ago Coulee Dam woman arrested with millions of dollars worth of cocaine: A Coulee Dam woman has been arrested with millions of dollars worth of cocaine in California, where she was scheduled to make a court appearance. She had 71 bricks of cocaine in the back seat of her vehicle which she was allegedly driving at 90 miles per hour on the freeway. 40 Years Ago Spillway Lighting Is Assured During Summer: The Popular spillway program at the Grand Coulee Dam is assured for the 1978 visitor season. That assurance came from the Bureau’s Regi...
Bull riding school coming up The Shane Proctor Bull Riding School will take place at the Nespelem Rodeo Arena on April 3 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 9-4 on April 4. The school is booked up, but is open to the public to watch. Concessions are available. Taco feed set for junior rodeo Also on April 3, the Nespelem Junior Rodeo Association will hold an Auction & Indian Taco Feed at the Nespelem Community Center starting at 5 p.m.; the auction starts at 6. The dinner costs $8 a plate and auction items are still being accepted. More information is av...
There are two things you need to know about newspapers. Newspapers are important to community life and democracy. Always have been. We at the National Newspaper Association think it is important for all sorts of newspapers to survive for the sake of a free society—the very large and the very small ones, the liberal ones, the conservative ones, the middle-of-the-road ones, the ones with no viewpoint but just important news, all of them. Some are our members. Many are not. We defend them anyway. America needs them like we need oxygen. The s...
Most of the 2.5 million annual Alamo visitors focus on the epic 1836 battle in which a small band of brave Texans was eventually overrun by the Mexican army. Folk heroes like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis were among the Texans killed while fighting for independence from Mexico. However, the Alamo is more than a small Spanish-style church, depicted on tourism brochures, which barely withstood a 13-day pummeling from Mexican cannons. It is a large complex built nearly a century before the siege where irrigated agriculture was...
John W. Schoen, CNBC, wrote in a June 2016 article that “the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates there are roughly 5 million to 10 million AR-15 rifles [privately] owned in the United States. . . .” The U.S. Government has purchased an estimated eight million of the military version for use by our armed forces and our allies. The AR-15 rifle uses military ammunition. It has a rapid-fire function, and it accepts large-capacity ammunition magazines. If any one of those three factors were changed, it would be a much less deadly wea...
This past week I have gotten to hang, be in meetings and just spend time with some pretty cool dawgs and cats. So I thought I might share a bit with all of you. If anyone went to Coulee Medical Center last week, you might have noticed four fresh faced youngsters hanging around. They were interns from the University of Washington. After a week of job shadowing some of our professionals in the medical field who call Coulee Country home, they spent the day at Lake Roosevelt High School. They spoke...
There may be good reasons for Electric City to consider un-acquiring territory it gained when it annexed a considerable amount of land several years ago, but the city council should think about it more than a little before doing so. Some people probably think it would be best for one of the likeliest growth spots in the area to be devoid of local leadership or direction. If members of the council are hoping that turkeys would roam free beyond the causeway, they may be right. The area didn’t develop after the Great Recession killed all p...