Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 954 - 978 of 3749
In 1961, President John F Kennedy proclaimed that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. That promise came to pass. The Eagle, NASA’s lunar lander, touched down on the moon’s surface on July 20, 1969, fifty years ago, in a place called the Sea of Tranquility. This was the Apollo 11 mission, crewed by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin. The entire mission from earth to moon and back lasted eight days, three hours and 19 minutes. It was a remarkable feat. The mission faced computer overload and the nec...
Let's give the highest praise possible to President Donald Trump: He didn't mortify his country on Independence Day. Other than his Revolutionary War airport thingy, he stuck to the script and gave a vanilla salute to the nation, which tries to overlook that most of its founders were slaveholders. He also choreographed a display of military might, a few flyovers and some tanks scattered around for good measure. Thanks to his staff's frantic efforts, he even drew a good crowd. But it's time to engage in any pundit's favorite pastime, which is...
The women of the U.S. national soccer team are famous for being extraordinary athletes, repeat world champions -- and plaintiffs. The team's lawsuit alleging pay discrimination against the U.S. Soccer Federation has done much to define its identity. A nearly perfect run through the World Cup has been widely interpreted as vindication of the merits of its case, so much so that fans chanted "equal pay" after the U.S. victory in the final over the Netherlands and booed the head of FIFA, the sponsor of the World Cup, during the trophy ceremony....
#!*! If Public Works really wants a response to its survey, try sending a first class letter without threats and blame for the postage cost....
Slavery Wayne Olson, of Moscow, wants to rewrite history. He wants us to believe that the Civil War was all about states' rights, and not about the enslavement of Africans. (Letter, Lewiston Tribune, July 9, 2019). Granted: There were competing understandings of liberty and rights; Northern industry was subsidized by tariffs on Southern harvests -- a kingly style of favoritism. New western states could not be slave states, so Congress would increasingly vote against the slave states' interests, an existential threat to slavery. Nevertheless, th...
Shortly, after Apollo 11 landed on the moon and astronaut Neil Armstrong took his famous first steps on the dusty lunar surface, some comedian in our army unit at Ft. Knox, KY, posted a sign in our barracks: “Sorry, Drill Sgt., No Green Cheese!” Our basic training drill instructor was already “highly agitated” because President Richard Nixon ordered a “training holiday” so we could watch live television coverage of landing. On July 20, 1969, our unit was supposed to take what was called “Mil...
Ross Perot died this week. He was 89. Perot is best known for his independent run for president in 1992. He garnered 19 percent of the popular vote. He, it has been claimed, cost incumbent George H.W. Bush his reelection and put Bill Clinton in office. Perot ran again in 1996 after forming the Reform Party, but his second campaign was not as successful as his first. Perot, a billionaire, was quirky and sharp-tongued. He railed against the nation’s growing budget deficits and the country’s trade imbalance. His first run was a phenomenal shi...
President Donald Trump's itinerary at the G-20 summit in Japan included a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government is accused of using dirty tricks to interfere in the U.S. election to sway things Trump's way. As Trump was leaving the White House, reporters asked if he would bring the subject up and warn Putin and his people not to meddle in the 2020 campaign. Then it happened: "What I say to him," Trump shot back, "is none of your business." With all due respect, Mr. President -- which I'll admit is very, very little --...
My television viewing is normally limited to the news, Mariner’s baseball and Gonzaga basketball. Shut in by bad weather a few weeks ago, I found myself temporarily out of library books, so I was daydreaming while a drama series played on my TV. I’m not really sure what series it was, but an embedded story caught my attention. It seems that one of the characters rescued a dog and had no place to keep it. Her landlord did not allow pets and she couldn’t take it to work. A co-worker came to her rescue with a vest proclaiming the new pet a servi...
We live in an era of public ugliness, of architects who deliberately make their forms unsightly and inhuman, and of public art installations that are invariably ridiculous. The most obvious exception is the ballpark, which has gotten more beautiful rather than less is a great example of renewal through a return to tradition. Paul Goldberger, a former architecture writer for The New York Times, traces this journey in his wonderful new book "Ballpark." He rightly calls the ballpark "one of the greatest of all American building types" and argues...
YYYYY Endicott fireworks were amazing, and it was outstanding that they had it set to music! #!*! Pothole at Zips, someone's going to break an axel. #!*! Retail clerks who call customers “dear,” “honey,” “sweetie,” etc. YYYYY Beautiful flags at Endicott Cemetery, very beautiful, awesome....
What happens in China, doesn’t always stay in China. In fact, when it comes to tough new garbage and recycling restrictions, they may migrate elsewhere sooner than you might think. For example, Shanghai is one of the world’s largest cities with 26.9 million people. It is suffocating under mountains of trash its residents generate daily. It lacks an effective recycling and disposal system. “Instead, it has trash pickers to sift through the waste, plucking out whatever can be reused,” The Economi...
“Failure to complete survey by July 31st may result in termination of water services.” This short message was printed on a bright orange slip of paper which was included with a letter and survey mailed by the City of Colfax to residents. The warning prompted a strong and almost immediate response. Some residents were incensed that the city could cut off their water service even though their water bill was current. A few thought this was an example of overreach by government. Some claimed the threat of stopping city water service was ill...
He actually said it! While talking to reporters on his way to Camp David, he used the phrase "Make Iran Great Again"! Does this mean that President Donald Trump has ordered that Iran will join America in the Greatness Club? "MIGA" as opposed to "MAGA"? Of course, Trump insists that since he's taken over, he's already accomplished that for America. Could it be he's branching out and that it's Iran's turn? Will there be new baseball caps with the slogan embroidered in Farsi? What will we do about the fact that Iranians call the United States...
The worry was that the Trump administration was ginning up fake intelligence about Iran blowing up oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz to justify a war against Iran. Then the next week President Donald Trump said the Iranian attacks weren't a big deal. The episode is another indication of the underlying modesty -- not a very Trumpian word -- of the administration. Subtract Trump's taste for nonstop controversy and rhetorical brinkmanship and you're left with an incrementalist center-right government that has pursued an expansionary fiscal...
#!*! Promised new trees on Main Street? YYYY New renovation at DSHS. Send your pet peeves and okeydokes to Whitman County Gazette P.O Box 770, Colfax, WA 99111 or drop them off at the Gazette office at N. 211 Main, Colfax...
When my parents graduated from high school in 1936, a college education was too expensive for the son of a copper miner and the daughter of a plumber. Eighty years ago, our country was in the middle of the Great Depression and teens took odd jobs to help put food on the table and pay the family bills. In those days no bank would lend money to college students. Following World War II, there was new hope for veterans. The GI bill paid for veterans to complete their college or trade school...
Deployments to Vietnam from Fairchild normally included an overnight stop in Pearl Harbor. Some of our crew had been there before and suggested we go out to the USS Arizona. We went to the pier and rode to the site in a small open boat operated by two US Navy sailors. There was nothing to see except the tops of the gun turrets, but it was our chance as American fighting men to pay homage to those who had gone before us. I made the pilgrimage each time I deployed to or from Southeast Asia. The now familiar, iconic monument had just been...
What segment of voters will decide the next presidential election? The same people who always do – the mainstream. Two decisions in the last two weeks may underline this. Joe Biden's announcement to change his longtime support for the Hyde amendment was a step out of the mainstream, if you will, while Donald Trump's calling off a planned military strike against Iran was a foot kept firmly in it. These two moves, plus recent history of Republicans may portend the future. Why would Biden drop his...
Let's not get too excited over the plans of the protesters to bring over the hilarious "Baby Trump" balloon from London and put it aloft during the president's Independence Day speech at the Lincoln Memorial. First of all, shouldn't we remember the nation from whom we declared independence? Duh! July Fourth celebrates the self-evident truth that 243 years ago the founders declared they were cutting the cord with England. So why would we import anything from there for use on the Fourth? Besides, do you know the chances that our customs people wo...
The more the climate debate changes, the more it stays the same. Polls show that the public is worried about climate change, but that doesn't mean it is ready to bear any burden or pay any price to combat it. If President Donald Trump claws his way to victory again in Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest, his path will likely go through abortion and climate change, two issues on which the Democrats are most confident in their righteousness and willing to embrace radical policies that appeal to their own voters much more than anyone else. Joe Bide...
