Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Sorted by date Results 1711 - 1735 of 1862
Some of you may have seen the ad in last week’s paper for a community Thanksgiving dinner at Old Town Hall. That’s my cell phone number on the ad. When I lived in Portland, a little over three hours from my family in Bickleton, I frequently had to work the Friday and sometimes the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I love my family, but six and a half hours in a car in one day just isn’t my idea of anything to be thankful for. Then I discovered Thanksgiving dinner at my churc...
The next time you’re on a commercial airliner, think about this: The GPS navigation unit in your car is more advanced than the technology used by air traffic controllers. The radar-based air traffic control technology used today is almost 60 years old. While it worked well with fewer, slow-moving aircraft, today’s modern jetliners can fly more than a mile and a half in the time it takes for a radar beam to sweep across the screen. Because of that, planes must be kept thr...
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I was telling everyone (and I mean everyone) that I was on a quest to be healthy by the time I’m sixty. Good thing I’m only 57. Actually, I have managed to lose 22 pounds so far. Only a few more to go. I sort of went off the rails in October. I can’t blame it on the Halloween candy, although it did play a prominent role. Once again, I got too busy. Too busy to plan meals, too busy to write down what I had eaten, too busy to exercise, just too darn...
A few months ago, I decided to let most of my magazine subscriptions lapse. I was getting about six different quilter’s magazines, which I love but seem to be unable to recycle. The hallway closet in my house is half full of back issues that I still believe I’ll get around to one of these days. When those magazines arrive, I sit down and thumb through them to see what catches my eye. Then I put them down somewhere, thinking that I’ll get back to them. Sadly, the only time...
I was thrilled today to read in the October 20 edition of The Odessa Record what my father (John Napier) had done 75 years ago. Because I was too young in 1936 to know of his ongoing work with cattle, things like this are helping me complete his history. Thank you. Joyce (Napier) Goodale Washougal...
Some interesting fact that you will never hear on the mainstream media. According to the Washington Post, the Washington D.C. area has become a great place for those that enjoy “living the dream”.... Washingtonians now enjoy the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the country, and five of the top 10 jurisdictions in America — Loudoun, Howard and Fairfax counties, and Falls Church and Fairfax City — are here, census data shows. The signs of that wealth are on display all over, from the string of luxu...
Today, the good news is cars are safer, more fuel-efficient and emit fewer greenhouse gases. The bad news is today’s automobiles burn less gas and cars in the future will be fueled by cleaner electricity and even hydrogen. So how could this be bad news? Two words: gas tax. Since President Dwight Eisenhower modeled our interstate highway system after the German autobahns, our roads have been built and maintained with federal and state gas taxes. In Washington, the 18th a...
Gosh. It’s the end of October. The presidential election isn’t until November of next year, and I’m already sick of it. And that’s not all I’m sick of. I’m really tired of what they’re calling debate. When I was in high school, I was on the debate team. I don’t know why. I hated debate. Come to think of it, I still do. But I learned a lot from the standards we were held to. I think the candidates could learn a lot, too. First, of course, we didn’t get to choose our topics...
Between the debt-ceiling kerfuffle and Hurricane Irene, you may have missed two bits of summertime news that will be important for what we drive in the coming years. First, President Barack Obama announced that the administration and automakers had reached a deal to double the fuel economy of our national fleet of cars starting in model year 2017 and reaching the goal by 2025. Right now, cars and light trucks – light trucks include what I call my “little old lady SUV” – get...
When a service member joins the military, it’s not just a job; it’s a family commitment to our country. And yet, we, as a nation, tend to focus almost exclusively on the service members who put themselves in harm’s way, while often forgetting about the family members they leave behind, who also make tremendous sacrifices on our behalf. These family members are affected in countless ways, and we have an obligation to do right by them. The challenges they face are not a myste...
I encourage your readers to send or email the following message to our representatives in Congress. “Well, October 15 has come and gone. Have you and other members of Congress put 6 million of the 25 million jobless Americans back to work yet? “Remember, you folks need to put one million jobless Americans back to work every two weeks between August 1, 2011 and November 1, 2012. “How's that going? Haven’t seen anything in the news about Congress putting millions back to work yet. Isn’t there an election in a year?" Thanks. D...
I don’t know who William River Pitt is, nor do I care. After reading his column in last week’s paper, it is quite easy to figure out who he is and how he thinks. He is pretty fast to blame everyone else for all the faults in this country, except the ones who are really responsible. I wonder, Mr. William River Pitt, if you have ever heard of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or Janet Reno or Barney Frank or Chris Dodd or Barak Obama. Do you know who they are? They are the ones that gave us the sub-prime mortgage rate. There is a b...
I went to Portland last week for a machine quilters’ exposition. For those of you who don’t know, I lived in Portland for over 20 years. I loved it. It was a city of small neighborhoods that gave the feeling of a series of communities linked together. It was easy to cross the line from one community to another and still feel as though you could be a small town girl. I haven’t lived in Portland for 10 years, and haven’t visited in several. A lot has changed. On some streets...
When I was youngster in the 1960s, I had all the shots little kids went through back in the day. And because I’m a klutz and regularly hurt myself outdoors, I’ve periodically had my tetanus immunity updated. A few years ago I underwent a series of shots for rabies after having a scary adventure with an ill coyote. Last summer I got the shingles vaccine when my assistant was suffering from a shingles outbreak. And to round it all out, tonight after work I’ll be getting the i...
In January, Washington’s minimum wage will crack the $9 mark and we will once again be No. 1 — the state with the nation’s highest minimum wage. Of course, some think that’s good news. Ensuring that people can support themselves and their families is a laudable goal. But there’s a problem: It’s called the law of unintended consequences. Sometimes, an action causes the opposite of what it was intended to do. We are perilously close to that when it comes to the minimum wag...
Before anything else, I would like to apologize for the mess outside your office. It's been three weeks since all those hippies and punk-rockers and students and union members and working mothers and single fathers and airline pilots and teachers and retail workers and military service members and foreclosure victims decided to camp out on your turf, and I'm sure it has been quite an inconvenience for you. How is a person supposed to spend their massive, virtually untaxed...
I need help. Not the kind of help most of you think I need, though. I need help. As in hired help. I know, it just doesn’t seem right. I’ve been telling myself for years that I can do everything myself, or at least that I should do everything myself. It’s time to let go of that dream. The first thing I’m going to do is hire someone to clean. Someone to come to my house and dust, clean the bathrooms, vacuum and sweep the floors, and possibly do more. Of course, they’ll...
In today’s era of $14 trillion budget deficits, $18 billion seems like chump change. But with every penny of federal spending on the chopping block, that amount is eye-catching. NASA needs that money over the next five years to build its new space launch system —a behemoth rocket that would eventually carry our astronauts to Mars. The rocket will be topped with a space capsule similar to Apollo, which carried Americans to the moon and back 40 years ago. The new rocket will be...
(Open letter to some citizens of Odessa.) I was told at the parade that since I do not speak German, we shouldn’t live in this town. I served in the military for nine years during war time for freedoms that she enjoys. My wife and I have volunteered in this town and my wife made and donated hand-crocheted blankets for Quail Court residents. We also support this town with our taxes and money spent here and yet we do not belong here? How can this town grow or prosper if some in our town openly express this attitude to s...
Just over a century ago, when William Howard Taft was president and I was a young woman, an entrepreneur named Thomas Aldwell started building a dam in the Northwest woods of the Olympic peninsula in Washington. The 108 foot-high Elwha dam became an early hydroelectric powerhouse, helping to fuel population and industrial growth related to activities as varied as forestry and ship-building. Over the following decades more hydro-dams in the West were built. Mega-dams like...
In today’s dog-eat-dog world, change is constant and accelerating. Other countries are stealing our factories and jobs and are hungry for more. That is the new reality. For example, in the 1990s, a California-based company called FormFactor developed a new and faster way to test semiconductors, the heart of today’s computers. Chipmakers needed assurance their products operate efficiently, consistently and have long-term durability. FormFactor was founded by a Ukrainian imm...
This is my favorite time of the year. It’s the time of year that is somehow linked with my memories of it finally being cool enough to wear those new school clothes. There’s something really satisfying about going out to the now-finished garden, cleaning up the beds, digging the spuds, preparing for the winter and, in so doing, the spring. There’s a sense of relief that I will have a few months off from moving sprinklers, remembering to water the flowerpots, and weeding. I lov...
When I received The Odessa Record on Saturday and got to the second page I saw a letter to the editor attacking Lise Ott on an article that she wrote on Sept. 1 that hurt someone from Harrington. I have said in the past that the first thing I read in the paper is the history, but not anymore, as I enjoy the stories that Lise writes. So I read them first. I have been racking my brain trying to remember what was said, but no luck. But I am sure if it had been something terrible I would have remembered it. We live in a small...
Do college athletes deserve to be paid? ESPN reporter Michael Wilbon used to argue against it, thinking that tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if it wasn’t enough, the idea of pay-for-play would at best be considered a logistical nightmare. “Where would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women’s field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that would...
I spent this past summer trudging through six-mile treks each weekend with two good friends. We walked along the edge of wheat fields outside of town. (My friends and I qualify as middle-aged ladies, so the walks counted as significant exercise. Sad but true.) One of the interesting things about the walks was simply observing the growth and ripening of the wheat fields by which we passed. We depend on wheat for bread, pasta, animal feed, noodles and – perhaps most i...
