Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 3283 - 3307 of 3750
+++ The positive thoughts shared by Hubers Freight. #!*! The doggie daycare in the county’s IT department is violating county code. +++ The Thrifty Grandmothers for all of the wonderful causes they support in our community. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 Colfax, Wa 99111 Pet Peeves and Okeydokes should be short. One sentence is often enough. They also cannot be personal. Please sign longer submissions so they can be run as letters to the editor.... Full story
Surveillance cameras are everywhere. They have become a symbol of this new world. Nearly any crime story shows some victim or suspect tracking through a store, an airport or a back alley. Videos of missing persons and convenience store robberies are daily fare. Even roads and highways are spotted with cameras. Cameras on traffic signals catch a motorists running a red light. And, of course, it is unlikely that any large retail store is without its own surveillance system scanning every aisle and every space in the parking lot. Those little...
A recent study determined that marriages are happiest when the wife is thinner and better looking than the husband, which is why I am doing my best to be as fat and ugly as possible. Wife: Why are you having a second chocolate sundae? Me: Because I want you to be happy. I guess what happens in relationships is that men look at their pretty wives and think to themselves, “Hey, I must still have it together, my wife is hot!” And then women look at their husbands and think, “What a slob!” And for some reason, this leads to marital bliss. But if th... Full story
In Olympia, some lawmakers want to speed up the closure of the TransAlta coal-fired electricity plant near Centralia. They want to toss out the negotiated settlement Gov. Gregoire put in place to gradually replace coal with natural gas over the next decade. It’s part of an anti-coal hysteria that ignores key facts that affect our economy, families, factories, hospitals and schools. First, activists ignore the fact that, even if we reach our energy conservation and renewable energy goals for 2035, we’ll still need to generate the same per... Full story
WELL, BACK to Olympia and what our lawmakers are up to. Gov. Christine Gregoire wants to be able to name a secretary of education operating out of her cabinet rather than let the voters elect the state superintendent of public instruction. She says people already think she’s responsible for the schools. Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Belfair, obliged her by introducing a bill to just do that. She certainly isn’t the first governor to want to take the reins on education. Everyone I knew which was from Rosellini onward had his or her own education adv...
#!*! Garbage burners in Thornton. #!*! Ignorant people who do not know the facts. The WIAA had NO decision in the tournament not being in Endicott. It was voted on by the schools in the league/district to move from there. ++++ To Mrs. D: All the hard work you put in at the Grandmothers Shop. #!*! My nice donations never show up in the Granny’s shop. #!*! Where does it go? So much in the alley, nothing in the store. #!*! Donation proof gate behind the Grandmothers Shop. +++ The ease of donating to Goodwill. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes t...
Thousands of Wisconsin public employees descended on the state capital to rally against the governor’s various austerity proposals and to stop his effort to end collective bargaining for state workers. Many of the protesters were teachers. Reportedly, so many of them went to the rallies that some Wisconsin school districts had to close for a day or two. While there, some state employees openly obtained false notes from doctors claiming they missed work because they were sick. By getting these excuses, they were able to collect their pay w... Full story
Want to know my secret for having written this newspaper column for 612 weeks in a row? Well, so do I. I never thought of myself as having any particular method or system for writing (and neither has my editor). I decided this week to make a detailed record of my process, so that we’ll all know how I have done it, all these years. Step one: My column is due by noon Tuesday. Like any professional, I want to make sure I give myself plenty of time to write, so at 11:30 I send an e-mail to my editor telling her that due to unique and e...
Tipping point Public Education in Washington State is at the tipping point! Unprecedented retroactive state budget cuts coupled with additional unfunded mandates continue to damage our ability to maintain, let alone continue to improve, the quality of K-12 education. Like families across the state, school districts are being told to do more with less in this economy. So, like families, school districts have become more resourceful and responsible than ever before. All those involved in our schools have worked hard to insulate our classrooms...
Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. That’s particularly true in these tough economic times, as “business and usual” no longer works. As governors and state lawmakers across our nation deal with record budget deficits, tourism promotion is being slashed. Many in the travel industry realize that if colorful travel brochures and television commercials are to continue, they will have to be privately funded. For example, in Texas, tourism is the second largest industry, employing 525,000 people and bringing in $55 billion per year....
ONCE TV NEWS anchor Anderson Cooper got beat up in Iraq, I noticed the other TV big shots moved their base of operations to places like Jordan and Afghanistan. I don’t blame them. Here in America, we think anybody representing the media is a protected species, presumed to be on the scene for the news, not to exhibit any bias. But that was in the old days, before the people rioting in the streets had access to the news 24 hours a day. Now that they do, the ones out to dump Mubarak don’t like reading or hearing that the U.S. is a longtime all... Full story
#!*! The WIAA dictatorship is alive and well. Sorry Endicott. #!*! Leaving the state (and taxpayer) to clean up the annual dirt slides caused by farmers planting way too close to the edge of ditches. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 Colfax, Wa 99111 Pet Peeves and Okeydokes should be short. One sentence is often enough. Please sign longer submissions so they can be run as letters to the editor....
The deer in Colfax are a public nuisance. Many residents dodge them on city streets and try to protect their yards and gardens from them. More serious, they are at home and unafraid. The deer generally ignore vehicles and people. They have attitude. One young buck reportedly kicked at a truck which disturbed its saunter up Fairview Street. That is attitude. The influx of deer is relatively new. Long-time residents say they had to leave the area years ago to go deer hunting. Now, if it were legal, all one needs to do is go into the back yard to... Full story
Blu Cru not banished As the President of the Colfax High School ASB I would like to correct a “pet peeve” that was published in the Whitman County Gazette on February 3, 2011. It stated “The blu-cru and cheerleaders being banished to the end of the gym.” We were not banished; we as leaders in the ASB made the decision to move to the end of the gym. Each year Mrs. Landers, the director of ASB, challenges her officers to find a way to make CHS a better place to be for our students. My vice-president, Damon Buck, and I came up with the idea fo...
I’m not the sort of person to avoid a five-star restaurant if someone else is paying for it. Otherwise, I would argue that happiness doesn’t come from buying a meal that costs a day’s wage — happiness comes from buying a meal that comes in a paper bag (why else would they call it a Happy Meal?). From time to time, though, I can think of a good reason why I should eat someplace where the main attraction is not that you can order without leaving your car. My wife is the good reason. She says she wants to go someplace where she can wear her new... Full story
#!*! The people who are feeding the deer inside city limits. What is wrong with you? Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 Colfax, Wa 99111... Full story
Washington lawmakers are still faced with a $5 billion bukdget shortfall. They are scrambling to cut that amount from state spending. Increasing efficiency, taking on unions, revising retirement programs, cutting the multiple layers of state management and sizing down the bureaucracies are tough but logical places for savings. The legislature is looking instead for easier ways to balance the budget or, more correctly, ways to use the budget crisis to justify self-serving changes. As a result, some long held beliefs are being cast aside and...
In his state of the union address, President Obama stated he wants 80 percent of our electricity to come from “clean sources” by 2035. That is a tall order. Credit Suisse estimates it will take $750 billion in capital expenditures to supply just 20 percent of our nation’s power demand from renewable sources. Needless to say, coming anywhere near the president’s goal will require us to rethink our energy policy. First, it is important to recognize that the demand for electricity is expected to grow 30 percent by 2035. So, the preside... Full story
OUR LEGISLATORS seem to be having a ball in Olympia. One wants to allow the sale of marijuana to people 21 and over in state liquor stores. Another wants to require proof of residency in applying for a driver’s license to smoke out the illegal aliens. There are three different proposals amending the Constitution to allow the Washington Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials to cut those salaries when desired, something they can’t do now. There’s a bill that would make teacher effectiveness the main determining factor during layoffs inste...
Include TAC I urge Whitman County residents to request the inclusion of a Technical Advisory Committee in the requirements of the Conditional Use Permit for wind power energy generation companies doing business in Whitman County. Certainly in the permitting process for wind power generation, any process that insures the public’s ability to comment and suggest, but not to rule, is positive. Only the inclusion of a TAC does that. This committee creates a working partnership and diverts frustration and anger that can result in lawsuits. For t... Full story
I was only 15 years old when my father finally told me the truth about Santa Claus. “Son,” he said, “Santa’s sleigh causes a warp in the space-time continuum, which is why he can visit every child’s house in a single night.” Later, of course, I found out that he was wrong, that it wasn’t the sleigh at all, it was the tiny black hole created by Rudolph’s glowing nose. But was this a deliberate deceit, or was my father merely stating what was then the generally accepted theory? I suspect the former. Parenting is difficult under any circumstances,...
You see a lot in the news these days about public employee pension costs pushing cities and states to the brink of bankruptcy. Private sector employers confronted the same crisis years ago and are still struggling with it today. Eager to avoid costly strikes, companies agreed to long-term pension benefits they couldn’t afford, hoping to find a way to fund them later. The focus on employee benefits intensified in the 1970s when President Nixon implemented wage and price controls. Employers couldn’t increase wages, so union leaders’ focus turned...
IT’S HARD to concentrate on everyday things after you’ve learned that someone in your family has cancer. In my case, it’s my baby brother, not really a baby considering our ages, but he is No. 9 among the ten children in the family. I am No. 2. No jokes please. There are only seven of us left. No. 1 brother died of a sudden heart attack in his 40s. He led a fast life as a salesman of some kind of airplane apparatus and spent many a night entertaining clients at late dinners. We’re sure that’s what killed him. No.5, a sister, also was young at... Full story
#!*! Colfax City Council’s continued “No response,” “No action” on the deer population problem. +++ The world famous crab feed. #!*! The blu-cru and cheerleaders being banished to the end of the gym. #!*! The bad pot holes on 195 from here to Pullman. #!*! The people yelling about the gate behind the Grandma’s shop. Send your one-sentence Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 Colfax, Wa 99111...
Jerry Jones, editor of the Gazette, was recently awarded the Silver Helmet Award. It was given by the Washington State Football Coaches Association for his continued, dedicated service to rural county high school football coverage. It is a fitting recognition. Jerry has covered Whitman County high school sports since 1965. He can be seen on the sidelines, looking for the photos that describe the game, show the action and, as important, give as many kids as possible a chance for a published picture. This award is for his coverage of football....
