News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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If I ever had to pick someone worthy of the title, it would be my eldest son, Paul. Paul completed 35 years as manager of the Seven Lakes Water District over a year ago. To celebrate, Paul bought a sleeping trailer and with his pickup headed for Alaska. He wanted to give himself a present. He spent three months wandering throughout Alaska, on his own. I talked to him almost daily by phone. He gave himself some sort of gift. He was alone, as he has been on most of his outings. Here are a few of his outings, not necessarily in order. Paul cut...
While my family was in South Korea recently for our youngest and quietest daughter’s senior trip, from which she brought home the country’s entire inventory of cosmetic products, I noticed several things that Korea does better than we do here in the U.S., namely toilet technology, public transportation hygiene, and professional baseball diversions (i.e., cheerleaders). But there were also a few things that I missed about America (other than chips and salsa) while I was expanding my cultural, culinary, and K-Pop horizons in South Korea. Fir...
Some of our nation’s thinkers are coming around to the conclusion that maybe our inclination to keep things fair for all individuals all the time has been accidentally making things worse in a number of ways for all of us, with some serious consequences. But one idea could suggest a way to solutions. Take our housing shortage, for instance. Any diehard capitalist will cite the principal that if you discourage supply, demand will rise, along with prices, as supply goes down. That pretty much describes the current housing market, the paucity o... Full story
As I exited a convenience store the other day, in a red town in upstate New York, a tabloid newspaper headline caught my eye. It blared that “DON” (no last name needed) was threatening to slap new tariffs on Canada as punishment for its wildfire smoke. A trio of local dudes – working stiffs, judging by the tools on their belts – paused with their coffees to read the headline. They vocally guffawed. “Now he’s blaming Canada!” said one. “What a moron!” said another. That’s where we are right now. The guy is a laughingstock. Trump’s latest denu...
Millions of people across America and Canada are choking from wildfire smoke. Unfortunately, it has become an annual occurrence. Currently, thick smoke from hundreds of active Canadian wildfires has triggered widespread air quality alerts across at least 20 northern states. Wildfires are a natural part of forests – of which Canada (and U.S.) have vast swathes. Those massive infernos have worsened in recent years. For example, in Canada in 2023 fires razed 37 million acres– an area larger than England – while the 2025 blazes burned 20.5 million...
This might be worth contemplating, or not, but for the first time in at least 30 years, we heard no fireworks in Coulee Dam other than the official show off the dam. Police actually wrote a report to say that they had no fireworks reports. Local firefighters did not have to respond to fire emergencies in local towns. The closest local report came from Steamboat Rock State Park. Fire, and firefighting, are not as simple things to figure out as one might assume, with as many possible scenarios as the infinite mix of factors such as wind...
Now, I’ve lived here just a little over half my life, 41 years to be exact. Most of the other years were spent in what could be called a real company town. Yes, they controlled the jobs, business, the media (newspaper, radio station), churches, schools, and etc. Things aren’t perfect here, but it’s sure a lot better than where I came from. Kind of refreshing to hear more than one side of the stories. Thanks for providing many sides. Yours truly, Robert F. Piekarsk...
If you are planning an international trip, here are three things you need to take along: money, money and money. Ask your bank to research the money exchange rate for the countries you plan to visit. They will stall around, but assure them someone in their banking system does this on a regular basis for their clients. If they give you negatives, you are with the wrong bank. Now the work begins. Go to the travel experts whose books will give you a lot of information. Start reading and taking notes. This is work, but also fun. Your library is a...
Donald Trump’s address in Warsaw on July 6, 2025, was his best as President. His prepared remarks carried the right tone and hit the mark. For once, he stuck to the script. It was a message the Polish people were waiting to hear from America. It was a message Americans need to remember as “progressive Democrats” embrace socialism and communism and threaten to abolish our system which has worked for 250 years. Trump called on the U.S. and its Western allies to confront common threats, declaring, “Our values will prevail, our people will thrive...
July 17, 1913, hundreds had gathered to attend the Potlatch Days Festival in Seattle. All was celebratory until that evening. Around 9 pm, a fistfight broke out among military personnel and civilians. A day later, July 18th, a full-blown riot broke out. It happened at Pioneer Square where Annie Miller, a suffragist was speaking to a small group. This was close to the offices of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. The IWW was considered by some to be a radical and an anarchist organization. The Seattle Daily...
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...