Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Sorted by date Results 1800 - 1824 of 1893
This summer has been filled with acrimony about the federal budget, with red versus blue politicians squaring off to hurl criticisms at each other. For a lot of us, turning on the news has felt like an exercise in masochism. Imagine my pleasure, then, at going to a recent meeting where Americans from quite different walks of life were gathered to learn together about something we all need – a nutritious food supply. On a recent and beautiful summer morn’ without even a bre...
Our little town is a wonderful place to live. That said, it could be better. Last week we listened in astonishment to the scanner in our office as a domestic assault grew into an assault on a police officer. We’ve all read about the recent rash of burglaries. We’ve seen and heard about drug use among our young residents, and a couple of weeks ago a pregnant young woman was so drunk she was face down in the street. What to do? Yesterday in a casual conversation, a friend and I...
Doesn’t it seem that all you hear from the President and the Democrats is “tax increase, tax increase,” and “tax the rich, tax the rich.” Well, according to the IRS there are 8,274 people who make over $10 million a year. That is a total of $240 billion dollars. Another 227,000 people earn a million or more a year. If you take all their money, it wouldn’t be enough to run the current government for a period of 20 days. Any tax increase passed by this administration will do nothing for the deficit. Doubling federal inc...
Since I am a newcomer I am now publicly resigning from the Chairmanship for the Arts and Crafts at Old Town Hall. You need to get a local person born in Odessa, WA. I don’t want to help you all. Mrs. Skidmore do you want to take over this leadership and find locals born in Odessa willing to help? Karen Brooks Odessa...
Americans live in an idealistic world where, no matter what happens, we’ll still be able to go home at night and switch on the lights or pull into a filling station and gas up the family SUV. Most folks — including many elected officials — don’t connect the dots. They somehow believe there are no consequences to killing a small biomass project in Vancouver, stopping a wind farm development because it spoils their view, taking a coal-fired plant off line, or opposing a natural...
My older sister read some of my columns on The Record’s website yesterday. We were at my father’s house celebrating his 87th birthday, along with my brother-in-law’s 61st and my niece’s 19th. It was a nice gathering, with few of the little family fissures that seem to be part of our lives these days. Well, forever, if you must know. I have noticed that we’re a much less contentious lot than we were when my mother was alive, but that observation requires more study. At any ra...
For ages, this community has been founded on and raised around a few simple principles: Help your neighbor! If your neighbor has a hard time with something, lend them a hand. It doesn’t matter if they’re overwhelmed because of household chores, money troubles, or a death in their family, we help out however we can. This is a principle that the local grocery store used to believe in, too. Now, many families will be hit harder this winter because the “local” store (if it can still be called that) is not going to be deliver...
I have really enjoyed Lise Ott's articles in The Odessa Record - she has been a great addition to your staff - good job Lise! Also have enjoyed Arley Bischoff's poems. Want him to know that what he has done to fix up the old cemetery's was much appreciated. Thanks, Arley, for all your hard work. Helen Pierce Odessa...
It is nothing new. For most of our history, it has been common to say and practice that children are to be seen and not heard, to speak only when spoken to. Then we went through a period when it was popular to not stifle our children with so many rules and boundaries, instead, letting them blossom and be creative, expressing themselves in their own way. It appears that the no-boundaries type of parenting may have resulted in a generation of children who have pushed those who...
Lost in the news over the economic crisis in Europe and the debt ceiling debate in the United States was the unceremonious end of NASA’s space shuttle program. When Atlantis touched down in Florida just before dawn on July 21, there were no marching bands or boastful speeches, and the small crowds at the Kennedy and Johnson space centers were composed mainly of NASA workers and their families. In fact, the ending of the shuttle program barely merited a mention on the n...
Out of sight, out of mind. (At my age, alas, I no longer live within the confines of that dictum. I can forget, misplace and overlook things that are smack in front of my face. But I digress.) What many folks can’t see they can indeed overlook. And all too many Americans have never seen what happens to the water that flows down the kitchen sink and out of the house. But with each load of laundry or flush of the toilet, we create wastewater that gets mingled together and h...
I have an unhealthy relationship with cheese. It all began years ago when my mother handed me a slice of Velveeta (probably to get me to shut up.) It was love at first taste, even though the thought makes me feel a little ill today. Since then, my attraction to cheese has narrowed itself to one and one alone: The Tillamook Cheddar Baby Loaf. I can hear it calling me as soon as I walk in the door of the grocery. A magnetic force seems to pull me toward the dairy section. Skim...
I read with interest your article on water diversion to Crab Creek proposed in 1931, and felt the need to offer a correction and expansion on the Big Bend Water Resource group’s efforts. The plan to reuse polished water from Spokane’s waste treatment did not die because Lake Creek filled up (and dried out again.) It died because, in my opinion, the City of Spokane had no interest in the project. The City of Spokane has no interest in the project because the Department of Ecology permits them to release their waste water int...
Desperate times too often result in bad choices. Translated, that means when taxes don’t match state spending, governors and lawmakers rob dedicated accounts. Dedicated accounts were established to tax people or employers for a specific purpose and only use that money to fund that program. In essence, they promise not to siphon it off to balance the general fund budget. However, robbing Peter to pay Paul has become common practice in Olympia. For example, in 2009, W...
I’ve been thinking about my “bucket list” lately. Of course, I don’t actually have a written list, just a sort of idea in my head of the things I’d like to do before I kick it. The bucket, that is. The first item on the list is to go to the Grand Canyon. Don’t know exactly what I’ll do when I get there, but I need to GET THERE. I tried to get there years and years ago, when my older brother and sister and I decided we’d all like to go. We piled our camping gear into my br...
The federal government recently announced it wants to spy on your doctor. The government planned to pay “mystery patients” to call doctors and find out whether they are willing to accept the prices set by Medicaid and Medicare. The public was outraged, naturally, and within 72 hours government officials temporarily suspended the calls. Federal officials sending fake patients to spy on doctors is not only unethical, it is one more disturbing indicator of why government pri...
Imagine coming home from work, tossing your keys on the hall table and flipping on the light switch. Nothing happens. You sigh, remembering that this is the night your neighborhood is scheduled for a rolling brownout. Even with electricity at 25 cents a kilowatt hour, there’s not enough power on the grid to supply the homes, hospitals, factories and office buildings in your state. New laws limit the amount of electricity you can use, and homes are equipped with utility s...
These are the good times. I was driving through the country last Saturday, looking at deer happily chowing down in wheat fields. Everyplace is a drive-through if you’re a herbivore at this time of year. It’s a simple historical fact that wheat farming has been central to American agriculture since the country was young. And today wheat grown in the U.S. supplies American consumers and millions of other people around the world with largequantities of economical nutrition. Eve...
It’s really hard to let things go when you’re a control freak. I have a hard time with poor grammar. I struggle with disorganized organizations. I want the rows of vegetables in my garden to be straight and at least sort of the same distance apart. On the other hand, my flower gardens are jungles, with no rhyme nor reason to the placement of plants. I see it, I like it, I buy it and occasionally I manage to plant it before it expires. It appears that what I really want is to...
Recently the president said that there are no more spending cuts to be made to lower the deficit. Let me help you, Mr. President, to find a few that could be cut or should never have been there. Do you know how much money federal employees cost taxpayers each year upgrading their flights to business class? 146 million dollars. The United States government has spent $3 billion doing what to America’s beaches? The government has spent $3 billion to re-sand our nation’s beaches. Advocates claim this prevents erosion and kee...
My dad used to say, “Public officials should never borrow money, except in an emergency, like a war.” As the mayor of a small town in Montana, he put that principle into practice. Buying a new dump truck was not an emergency. If the city didn’t have the money to buy it, the answer was no. Even if state or federal funds were available to make the down payment, if the city couldn’t come up with the rest of the money, the answer was still no. Most vendors feel the same way whe...
Now that I have six months under my belt, I thought I would give you an update about my new job and some of the things going on around Lincoln County. Right after the first of the year the Board made a decision for the county to self-insure for medical insurance. This decision was made based on several factors. The pool that the county was previously in was experiencing drastic premium increases due in large part to excessive claims by some of its members. The general thought...
I am given to making sweeping general statements about myself, which upon examination turn out to be less than true. For example, I frequently tell others that I am not a “people person.” While it’s true that I usually prefer the company of animals to that of people, I hardly think I can be classified as a misanthrope. I’m not comfortable in crowds. I don’t go to concerts. I prefer to wait to see a movie until I don’t have to sit next to strangers. I actually like it when we c...
As of this Friday the 15th of July our little hometown market will no longer be known as Denny’s after 7:00 p.m. For me, it’s heartfelt that the smallness and fun of it all will be over. I really enjoyed singing at the end of my shift and at the check stand, to sing along with the customers that I so much have grown to love and get to know. I especially thank them for their kindness. Hearing the stories of past times, of husbands, wives, farm life and the like will be cherished by yours truly. The $30 meat boxes to the sal...
Joseph and Mary Zicha are my grandparents, Joe Zicha my uncle. Many years ago I became very saddened that their cemetery was just a mess of weeds. It was Arley Bischoff that took it upon himself to turn that chaos into a place of beauty. Oh, how hard he worked and for so many years kept it that way and still sees to it that someone keeps it mowed. Thank you for publishing his wonderful poems and giving him credit for his talents. I’m so grateful. Margaret Wraspir Chapple Ogden, Utah...
