Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 3047 - 3071 of 3750
Ages and ages ago — like, 1993 — people would purchase a PC, plug it in and then stare in wonder at all the error messages. There wasn’t much else to do with the things if you weren’t part of the “information economy,” though people gave it their best shot. “Look!” Mom would cry. “I’m typing my recipe cards into the computer!” “Wow,” the children would say. “Mom is so smart.” (Unless they were teenagers, in which case they would say, “Mom is such a dork.”) “From now on,” Mom promised, “these recipes will be permanently stored in the computer u...
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” In 1993, Washington employers modified the slogan to, “It’s the economy, don’t kill it,” and emblazoned it across a huge banner draped from AWB’s building near the state’s Capitol Campus, where it could be seen by elected officials driving by. But lawmakers didn’t get the message 19 years ago; they left employers holding the bag for new taxes and fees as well as added costs for unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation. Hopefully, those lawmakers learned their...
SOME YEARS ago, friends of mine who live here in Washington but have a vacation condominium in Mexico, invited my husband and me to make use of their condo. Thanks, I said, but no thanks. I wouldn’t go to Mexico if somebody was going to give me a condo. I consider it one of the most dangerous places on earth. I’ve read too many stories in the newspapers, I said, of American tourists and travelers waylaid and murdered by thugs or even the Mexican police. No way, no how. I thought about that this Christmas when a story in my local paper, the Kit...
It’s a good time to look back on 2011 — much better than it would have been last January, anyway. 2011 was remarkable because it was the first year in the last decade where Britney Spears was not one of the top 10 searches on Yahoo. She fell to 13th, which probably is why California radio preacher Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21st. If people have so much ennui they can’t be bothered to check in to see who Britney is marrying, surely it is a sign of the end of times. Actually, the world almost did end on May 21st, but a...
For years, energy experts warned us that regulations and policies that reduce the supply of affordable conventional energy would result in higher prices for American families. Now it is clear the warnings were well-founded. The USA Today recently reported that electricity bills have skyrocketed. The newspaper reports that American families paid, on average, a record $1,419 a year for electricity in 2010. Demand for electricity remains high even as energy supplies shrink. In addition, prices are rising due to the cost of meeting excessive EPA...
NOT A WHOLE lot of good things happened to qualify for my usual list of favorite newspaper stories of the year but here’s No. I by Phil Ferolito which ran in the Yakima Herald-Republic in September. It’ll warm your heart. Noya Deats’ routine walk along the Roza Canal in Moxee turned disastrous when her two dogs, Fawn and Nia, decided to take a swim. Despite signs warning folks to stay out of the canal, she said, she’s let her dogs off their leashes before without any problems. But this time, once in the water, neither dog could get out because...
Years ago, Gary Larson created a particularly memorable Far Side cartoon. It shows a child’s slide. At the bottom of the slide two tiny spiders look over the web they had spun across it. One spider says to the other, “If this works, we’ll eat like kings.” It is a picture right out of the Whitman County Courthouse. County commissioners Greg Partch and Pat O’Neill have spun their web to capture the hotly debated Hawkins shopping center development at the state line outside Moscow. One difference from the cartoon is that Partch and O’Neill have no...
W. BRUCE CAMERON My cell phone has a special app that allows me to eject Alec Baldwin from an airplane. I can look up a recipe for bananas flambe or find the nearest fire extinguisher to put the bananas flamb-out. It's a "smart phone," so intelligent that I recently caught it looking for an app to replace me. We don't get along very well, my phone and I (it has sent me a list of therapists in case I want to try couples counseling). Basically, the reason I don't like my cell phone is that I hate it. We often have conversations like this: Me:...
Really? The commissioners are actually promising another $6 million for a project they should never have gotten involved in to begin with? Are they really that stupid? Were they not paying attention to the fiasco Spokane was faced with when going into an agreement on the Riverpark Square development? If a developer wants to put in a mall, great. Let them do it on their own dollar. They’re the ones who will make the money. Whitman County would be lucky to break even in 50 years. Susan Heise, Farmington...
Washington is one of only 10 states that effectively prohibit low-income parents from choosing where their children go to school.The battle lines over alternatives such as charter public schools or school vouchers have been sharply drawn in our state. Supporters say the issue is choice; that education is the key to a child’s future and parents, particularly low-income parents‚ should be able to send their children to the best possible schools. Opponents argue that alternatives to traditional public schools drain crucial revenue and leave beh...
4 was the year of earthquakes. There were real temblors, of course, but also economic and political quakes. The aftershocks are not over. As for the real ones, a 7.4 quake struck Chile on January 2. In March, a devastating 9.0 quake slammed Japan which caused a tsunami that overwhelmed the country’s northwest coast. Nearly 20,000 were killed in the combined disasters. The tsunami damaged nuclear reactors in Fukushima Prefecture causing the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. A 5.8 magnitude quake damaged the National Cathedral and the W...
I DON’T put a Christmas tree up any more so I didn’t have to worry this year about hearing a cat throw up under it. I’m also down to only one cat, Pimp (formally, The Scarlet Pimpemel, for her talent in disappearing at the arrival of strangers). When I had lots of cats, I even made it a point when we re-rugged the living room to pick a pattern we thought would be barf proof, both in color and texture. You have to think like that when you have eight cats and two dogs My tree in those days was usually 12 feet wide at the bottom and took a week...
How to Find and Research Doctors Who Accept Medicare Dear Savvy Senior, What resources are available to help seniors locate and research Medicare doctors? My husband and I are approaching age 65 and need to find a new internist or primary care doctor who accepts Medicare. Our current doctor is not enrolled with Medicare and will not continue seeing us as Medicare patients. Looking For Care Dear Looking, Depending on where you live, finding a new primary care doctor or specialist that accepts Medicare patients can be challenging. Because of low...
Do You Know Christmas? Did you know that over 1.9 billion Christmas cards are sent each year? Yep, that’s the most of any holiday - not even Valentine ’s Day comes close. And the Bah- Humbug thing to me is that the vast majority of the cards are just plain wrong. Especially when it comes to their portrayal of the Reason for the Season! Now… my heart is not an empty hole, in fact I really don’t have an ounce of Grinchy-ness in me. But I am concerned about the blatant and misleading perception that the covers of Nativity Christmas cards have cr...
There is a brighter side to Christmas this year, despite the weak economy and lawmakers bickering over how to patch the $2 billion hole in the state’s budget. The good news comes from Boeing. Boeing and its machinists recently ratified a new four-year contract which averts a strike through 2016. Even though the plum in the pudding was the accompanying announcement that Boeing would produce its new 737 MAX at its Renton plant, the agreement has much broader significance. Early ratification of a labor agreement is hugely important to Boeing, i...
WHEN I READ and saw the news stories about the Dec. 7 death of Harry Morgan, best known in his longtime acting career as Col. Sherman T. Potter in the TV show “M*A*S*H,” I searched through them for any mention of his connection to Washington State. I found none, although I remembered that years ago, I had read in my local newspaper, the Bremerton Sun, that he was in trouble with the police for abusing his wife. I remembered that Port Orchard was mentioned in the story although not why. He did not, and I checked into it, reside there at the tim...
Over a hundred years ago, a young girl named Virginia wanted to know if Santa really existed. Her friends were telling her not to believe. So, she wrote to her newspaper to get the truth. This is the famous reply from the editor, Francis Church. Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been afflicted by skepticism in a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s are little. In this gre...
The Light In the World “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it - the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:5, 9). As I sit and write I can gaze out the living room window and see house after house lit up with Christmas lights. The star on the top of the hill in Endicott welcomes me home as I round that last corner by Repp Road. There are Christmas Parades held in the darkness, but illuminated by light that comes to a climatic end with fireworks providing bursts of bri...
Dear Savvy Senior, Is there an easy way to figure out how much savings a person needs to retire? I’m 52 years old - about 10 years from when I would like to retire - and I want to see where I stand. Planning Ahead Dear Planning How much money you need to retire comfortably is a great question that all working adults should ask themselves. Unfortunately, far too few ever bother thinking about it. But calculating an approximate number of how much you’ll need to have saved for retirement is actually pretty easy and doesn’t take long to do. Here’s...
The reason we love the classic Christmas specials so much isn’t just that we watched them as kids. It ‘s also that the kids in them are kids. They do stuff. They make stuff. They go outside and chop themselves a tree or deliver medicine for the pharmacist or even lick a flagpole, instead of sitting in the back seat watching “SpongeBob Square Pants” as Mom drives them to basketball practice. Obviously these fictional characters are just that—fictional—but yes, Virginia, there were kids who made their own fun. I swear it! But when’s the...
Colfax For a “lift your spirits” experience, take time to visit Hill Ray Plaza, during the holidays. Come see for your self how beautiful the decorations are. They serve as a great backdrop for the many social events catered at Hill Ray. We have held the custodial position for 14 years at Hill Ray Plaza. This year the ladies council under the leadership of Virginia Sanders have outdone themselves. Our hats are off to the ladies! Russ and Penny Gay,...
A special session in Olympia was called to balance the state budget. The legislature was tasked with cutting about $1.4 billion. The session will end this week, but the goal will not be met. Only $480 million will be trimmed. The measure for these cuts was overwhelmingly passed in the House. As of this writing, it still needs to be passed in the Senate. Then, if approved, it will go to the governor for signing. This special session was intended to solve the state’s financial crisis, but the real work is still ahead. Optimists say the budget w...
ITEM - Herman Cain has suspended his campaign for president following revelation of a 13 year friendship with a woman his wife wasn’t even aware he knew. COMMENT - His sudden dip in the polls was not so much the result of a belief he engaged in inappropriate behavior with women other than his wife but the fact that he was revealing as his campaign progressed that he didn’t know diddley squat about foreign affairs which are in the president’s bailiwick. ITEM - Critics pointed out that President Obama’s Thanksgiving message to Americans had no...
W. Bruce Cameron My body believes a famine is imminent and has begun stocking up on provisions. These supplies are being stored around my waistline. I’ve tried explaining to my stomach that this is entirely unnecessary: I’ve never once, not even when I was in college and more broke than the EU, done any actual starving. In fact, in college I sometimes took in so many calories (in the form of fermented beverages) that my stomach occasionally sent them back. Why are we saving them now? It’s because it is the holidays. You see, most people gain...
Thoughts given to Joseph Every Christmas season, after contemplating the miracle of the incarnation, we often think of Mary, and rightfully so! For it was through her that the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, came into the world. But little thought is given to Joseph, the man whom God called to be the earthly “father” in the life of our Lord in His early years! In Matthew 1:18-25, we learn a great deal about Joseph. First, we learn about Joseph’s DILEMMA. Matthew 1:18 says, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother...
