Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Sorted by date Results 1717 - 1741 of 1862
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...
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...
Recently, President Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to delay implementation of a new rule that further reduces industrial ozone emissions —smog — under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The announcement came on the same day new employment figures showed the economy had created no new jobs in August. With unemployment stuck above 9 percent and the economy teetering on the brink of a double-dip recession, President Obama decided the suggested benefits of the new rul...
Well. I got carried away. Miss Smarty-Pants, having so much fun and getting lots of positive feedback from her friends, has put her foot in it. You all know how it feels when you are attacked. A rush of adrenaline hits your system, causing your heart and respiration rates to increase. You may even feel a flutter in your digestive tract. It’s all a part of the “fight or flight” response. You can stand your ground and bare your teeth and take the chance of getting hurt. You c...
When Ms. Ott, your roving reporter for The Odessa Record, belittles small communities, as I feel she did in her column of September 1, 2011, perhaps she should follow her own advice. In item #13 of her “big ideas for a small town” article she admonishes us to “not be mean spirited, as it is not helpful, and we should evaluate what we say before we say it.” She infers in her article that several of our small communities are resting on our laurels. I feel that is “mean spirited” and not helpful, when you don’t know the fact...
At Rep. McMorris Rodgers’ public forum in Davenport, one of several in August, too many regulations was the major concern. A local bureaucrat expressed frustration with micromanaging from Washington DC interfering with efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services. Public officials cited examples of unfunded mandates. A small business owner (me) complained about the daunting task of trying to create just one new job without getting sideways with some obscure rule. Did you know we have federal regulations defining an a...
After reading Bernie Sanders’ column last week, one has to think that this is what one writes when he wants more taxpayers’ money to waste on social programs. He makes it sound like this is the worst country in the world, that we have nothing but poor people and that they are worse off than the rest of the world. Here are some interesting facts about the poor in the U.S., which you will never hear or read in the main-stream media. “In a new report, Heritage's Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield lay out what the U.S. gover...
The 1896 Yukon gold rush triggered a boom for Seattle as prospectors flocked to ships bound for Alaska. In 1968, ARCO found black gold — oil — on the state’s North Slope around Prudhoe Bay, triggering a boom for Tacoma’s port where equipment was loaded onto ships and barges bound for our 49th state. Today, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) is launching a campaign to bring more business to his state. Parnell, who served as Sarah Palin’s lieutenant governor, has been traveling...
