Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Sorted by date Results 1618 - 1642 of 1893
Energy is the lifeblood of modern economies and there’s no more amazingly useful form of energy than electricity. That’s why I was initially startled to read the recent news that the last of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants has been shut down, a turn of events that makes Japan the first major economy of this century to run without operating any such reactors. The news impressed me because prior to the mega-quake and tsunami of 2011, Japan powered 30 percent of its elect...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 5/18/12: It’s certainly been quite a week in the wheat markets as Chicago futures rallied nearly a dollar per bushel since Tuesday. New-crop soft white prices benefited much more than old crop but both enjoyed nice gains, although not nearly what futures were able to do. Basically the pressure of speculative liquidation from the past two weeks finally lifted, and then concerns over world weather for new-crop wheat started to pop up. Dry weather developing i...
5/11/12: Not much need for grain news today. All one really needs to know is that commodities have fallen out of favor with investors and other speculative traders over the past few weeks, and money is fleeing the trading pits/servers. JP Morgan reported yesterday that they were facing a $2 billion dollar trading loss on credit default swaps, and there are rumors now that the loss could be as high as $5 billion. Another large commodity fund closed out their positions yesterday, as the fund had lost 13% of its value to date...
We humans go to some trouble so that we can choose which among our domestic animals gets to breed the next generation, thereby over time shaping various lines of animals ranging from types of sheep to varieties of chickens. Perhaps nowhere is the impact of selective breeding more clear to many of us than with the domestic dog. From ancient breeds like the greyhound and the Dalmatian to more recently derived types like the cocker spaniel, the diversity of dog breeds is a...
I have SO MANY QUESTIONS! Here are just a few: 1) What happens to the “data” when it is broken out simply by school buildings, especially those whole buildings that happen to be located in high-poverty areas? In other words, what is the gain in identifying the “subgroups,” when it is highly likely that those whole schools full of children did poorly on these tests? 2) Of the students who did not show high achievement, did they not only not have something to eat on the day of the test – what about their nutrition for the p...
I was listening to a radio piece about bird watching the other day. The reporter was talking about how all the newest gadgetry had changed what used to be a fairly humble pastime into a competitive high-tech sport. I’ve always imagined real bird watchers as bespectacled, mild-mannered people with extremely powerful binoculars slung around their necks and field guides in their hands. Or pockets. But, apparently, the species has evolved. Cell phones, GPS positioning, h...
Obama's hyperbole: When Obama (5-3-2012, The Record) said that another 2,000 members of "Our American Family" have been killed in just over two months, he must have talking about some other family than mine. The majority of youth deaths by gun are within the gang, drug-dealer and assault statistics provided by the FBI and the Bureau of ATF&E public records. I for one feel no loss for these young people who chose their own lifestyle outside the law. Obama's lifelong record as being rabidly anti-gun should make a reasonable...
This past winter, students from Eastern Washington University assisted the Lincoln County Economic Development Council (EDC) with a countywide strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) survey. The students analyzed the survey results, reported their findings and pointed out a couple of holes in our survey coverage (one being a shortage of input from our youth). The EDC went back out and gathered the missing data. A second team of students, this time from Gonzaga University, agreed to incorporate the new survey...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 5/2/12: Big washout today in the grain markets, yet there didn’t seem to be any terrible news item that caused it. Soybeans closed down 18 cents, which was probably overdue after the run they’ve been on lately and that seemed to allow everything else to get hammered, too. Wheat was off the most, as there certainly isn’t the tight supply situation as there is in corn and beans, and the winter wheat tour is roaming through Kansas and finding excellent yield p...
During my lifetime I have watched the sale of adult beverages go from being controlled by selling it only at state controlled outlets and lounges that closed at 12:00 p.m. They were not open on Sundays! Beer had 3.2% alcohol content and wine was closely monitored. Also, alcohol was not sold on election days during voting hours. There were still remnants of illegal moonshine stills that people had used for home use and to make some money. These were left over from the time when Women’s Temperance groups had forced our c...
Just when I thought “Big Brother” wouldn’t interfere anymore with parental rights and Christian Values, Federal Law makes a “morning after” pill available from a vending machine. For two years, students at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania have purchased “morning after” pills by putting $25 into a vending machine. The same machine offers condoms and pregnancy tests. You are supposed to be 17 or older to access the machine. It is legal; but is it right to make the pill so readily available? This is part of a trend that...
I have dreams, you know. Not dreams of the future or what I would like to accomplish. Night-time dreams. When I was a kid, we were frequently entertained at the breakfast table by my father’s descriptions of the previous night’s dreams. They were always colorful, detailed and fantastic. Well, I seem to have inherited my father’s dreams. The other night I dreamed I was visiting the family farm in the company of my older sister. We discovered a stray cat in the front yard,...
I’ve been reading again. I can imagine some of you thinking, “Oh, no!” But that won’t stop me. A little background on my reading may be in order. My mother was an elementary school teacher who believed that the ability to read was the key to everything. Success, happiness, everything. And her children learned to read. The books I favored as a child featured animals and heroic children. Sometimes children and heroic animals. I would lose myself in the stories, and frequen...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 4/24/12: Grain futures started well but couldn’t hold their gains in wheat and corn which both closed in the red in Chicago. Soybeans rallied and traded at the highest levels since 2008 on further production cuts in Argentina. Wheat and corn may have gotten caught in the downdraft coming from the cattle market, as futures in that market were limit down on news of a case of mad cow in California. The affected cow was a dairy cow and did not enter the food c...
I am alive today. It feels great, and everything looks far different to me than just a few weeks ago. Elisabeth and I attended the Medical Cannabis Cup in Denver, Colo. I had a great time, (met) nice people, (had a) nice visit. As much as I love Odessa, it was nice to get out of town for a short vacation. Our vacation, however, got extended suddenly. Sunday night following the event, I had a full cardiac arrest and a myocardial infarction. I am alive, happily, for one reason and one reason alone – CPR. My beautiful and wonder...
You have certainly done business on them, and you may well have lived within their boundaries. Whether you recognize it or not, and whether you are reading this in the desert West or the soggier regions of the country, floodplains are a part of the landscape around you – and they can be highly dangerous places to be. A floodplain is the flat part of the Earth beside and around a river. It’s also the place we like to build houses and schools and stores because it’s easie...
This opinion piece by President Obama appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on March 13, 2011, following the shooting of Arizona Congressional representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others at a political rally. It’s been more than two months since the tragedy in Tucson stunned the nation. It was a moment when we came together as one people to mourn and to pray for those we lost. And in the attack’s turbulent wake, Americans by and large rightly refrained from finger-pointing, assigning blame or playing politics with other peo...
The Ice Age is my favorite bit of Earth history, a time when mammoths, giant beavers and saber tooth tigers roamed the world. I was so impressed by the Ice Age when I was a child, reading about it in the school library, that I recognized the book I had studied decades later when I stumbled across it as an adult. Being devoted to books, I happily bought a copy and perused it immediately. Image my pleasure, then, about the recent news that an Ice Age flowering plant some 32,000...
If President Obama is elected to a second term there is a good possibility that he will get to appoint at least three more U.S. Supreme Court Justices. We already have two anti-gun justices, Sotomayor and Kagen. If this were to happen we would have an anti-gun majority for a long time! I am very concerned about this because we have a growing number of animal rights groups and they are getting a lot of support from people who are celebrities. Those of us who purchase hunting licenses are declining in number! In 1960, 7.8% of...
A few weeks ago, I was able to attend a basketball tournament held here in Spokane to watch my grandson play. I was amazed with these young boys. I can truthfully say these boys played better than any of this age that I have seen. They moved fast, shot well and played hard.... right to the end. They never gave up. Even more important was the sportsmanship I saw. They came in second, which is something to be proud of. I never heard one complaint or saw any anger toward other players, the referees or their coach. The support th...
Recently, the EPA proposed new air quality regulations for power plants that activists say will finally kill King Coal. The rule would require all new power plants to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by almost 44 percent. While natural gas plants can meet the standard, coal-fired plants cannot without expensive carbon-capture and storage technology that is not commercially available. While EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stresses the standards will apply only to new power...
I love the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and watch it whenever I find it on the TV. As long as my husband is out of the house. One wedding and one funeral were on my schedule this past weekend, and it got me thinking, about families, friends, life . . . you know, the whole ball of wax. My youngest niece got married Friday. It’s a good thing. I think. She’s only nineteen, which seems impossibly young to me. She’s also, how do you say it nicely . . . pregnant. I have been...
Dear friends, I am writing you today about a challenge ahead of farming communities throughout Eastern Washington. The challenge is real, and it affects more than those involved in advocacy groups and organizations. Our challenge is apathy and ignorance. Not just apathy within our own communities and governments, but apathy outside our circles. As farmers, we have been silent about the obstacles we’ve overcome and the importance of our work. I used to think it was “someone else’s job” to tell the story of farm life and agr...
We all know that person. Sometimes we are that person. He or she is the one who always sees things in the black and white of an old photograph negative. And usually they see the dark side. They are the person I frequently try to avoid, as encounters tend to be unpleasant. I always come away from conversations with this person feeling as though I’m not good enough. And it tends to be the kind of not good enough that doesn’t inspire me to be better. It tends to be the kind of...
When environmental organizations pushed Washington voters to approve their renewable energy Initiative 937, they touted biomass energy — incinerated wood waste — as one of their preferred alternatives to fossil fuel. They reasoned that biomass energy plants would help clear forests of flammable wood debris from dead and diseased timber, put idled loggers and millworkers back to work and produce cleaner, more affordable energy. But since voters narrowly approved the ini...
