The Good Life March 2012

YES, YOU CAN GET LUCKY Y EVENTS CALENDAR

March 2012

LET’S

SKATE

Kicking up dust on 8 wheels

WENATCHEE VALLEY’S

NUMBER ONE MAGAZINE

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OPENING SHOT ®

Year 6, Number 3 March 2012 The Good Life is published by NCW Good Life, LLC, dba The Good Life 10 First Street, Suite 108 Wenatchee, WA 98801 PHONE: (509) 888-6527 EMAIL: editor@ncwgoodlife.com

sales@ncwgoodlife.com ONLINE: www.ncwgoodlife.com FACEBOOK: facebook.com/pages/ The-Good-Life

A LAKE OF BOYHOOD MEMORIES W

enatchee resident Kip Burke sent along his photo of Lake Wenatchee taken in the first half of February.

“The lake holds a special place in my heart,” wrote Kip. “My grandfather bought wa-

terfront property on the south shore back in the early 1920s, and that is where I learned to swim, water ski, play with imaginary friends like Davy Crockett, Dan’al Boone, Jim Bowie and fall in love with the beauty of the outdoors.

“Since my mother’s passing some years back, the property was sold but being able to enjoy the lake from the state park, or just being in the national forest which surrounds the lake is a true gift and blessing.”

Editor/Publisher, Mike Cassidy Contributors, Kip Burke, John and Poppy Kelly, Lance Stegemann, Vera Zachow, Dr. Dave Weber, Andy Dappen, Ron Griffith, Terry Sloan, Donna Cassidy, Bonnie Orr, Alex Saliby, Jim Brown, June Darling, Dan McConnell, Susan Lagsdin and Rod Molzahn Advertising sales, John Hunter, Lianne Taylor and Donna Cassidy Bookkeeping and circulation, Donna Cassidy Proofing, Joyce Pittsinger Ad design, Rick Conant

On the cover

Terry Sloan gives her best roller derby look for a photo taken by John and Poppy Kelly of JP Portrait Studio.

See page 12 for Terry’s story about the eight-wheel sport she has grown passionate for.

For more roller derby photos, visit JP Portrait Studio’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/jpportraitstudio.

TO SUBSCRIBE: For $25, ($30 out of state address) you can have 12 issues of The Good Life mailed to you or a friend. Send payment to: The Good Life 10 First Street, Suite 108 Wenatchee, WA 98801 Phone 888-6527 Online: www.ncwgoodlife.com To subscribe/renew by email, send credit card info to: donna@ncwgoodlife.com BUY A COPY of The Good Life at Hastings, Caffé Mela (Wenatchee and East Wenatchee), East Wenatchee Walgreens, the Wenatchee Food Pavilion, Mike’s Meats, Martin’s Market Place (Cashmere) and A Book for All Seasons (Leavenworth) ADVERTISING: For information about advertising in The Good Life, contact advertising at (509) 8886527, or sales@ncwgoodlife.com WRITE FOR THE GOOD LIFE: We welcome articles about people from Chelan and Douglas counties.

Send your idea to Mike Cassidy at editor@ncwgoodlife.com

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Contents

editor’s notes

MIKE CASSIDY

Doing good in a troubled world I read the news and some-

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carver finds art and sometimes humor in wood Features

6 cora’s diaries

Voices of early pioneers Cora and Lewis Titchenal speak again through their diaries reprinted in a new book

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A hike to dusty lake

When it’s time to stretch the legs, try this early spring hike

9 RUNNING THE OWYHEE

Andy Dappen gets his long delayed wish to raft the wicked Owyhee — and it’s one furious ride through the rapids

12 MAD FOR ROLLER DERBY

Terry Sloan loved to skate as a kid — now she’s kicking up dust on a roller derby team

14 inside a sex prison

times can’t believe what I see — and I’m not talking about politics or celebrity hijinks.

People’s ability to hurt themselves, and each other and loved ones apparently knows no limit.

That’s why I enjoy the journalism we do at The Good Life where, among other things, we give ink to people working on the other side of the scale… working to do good in a sometimes dismal world.

This month, Dr. David Weber writes how he and his wife, Dr. Susan Weber, did a volunteer stint at the largest prostitution slum in the world in the Indian city of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay).

I asked Dr. Dave — who retired from the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center last year — why, because often a person who retires wants to hang up the stethoscope forever, sort of to speak.

He replied: “After nine years as

chairman of the board at WVMC and not practicing radiology, I am very happy to put some of my years of training and experience back to work. It is very rewarding and I really enjoy it.

“I think physicians have a unique opportunity to help people. Good health is such a basic ingredient for an active, happy life.

“The medical care that was provided (in India) was basic, but, as a radiologist, I had a unique opportunity to provide one element of specialty care (ultrasound) that is really helpful in sorting out complex symptoms.

“When patients learn that there is an American doctor at the clinic doing ultrasound, everyone comes in wanting an ultrasound, even for sore throats and headaches.”

Be good to people and enjoy The Good Life.

— Mike

Providing medical care for women trapped inside one of the largest — and poorest — red light districts in the world

Lianne Taylor joins The Good Life

18 why ethiopia?

Lianne Taylor has joined The Good Life as account executive.

Previously, she was with The Wenatchee Business Journal in advertising sales and earlier worked in ad sales for an online coupon company and the Wenatchee World.

“We are delighted to find someone of Lianne’s experience and deft touch to work with local businesses to grow their businesses through advertising,” said Mike Cassidy, editor and publisher of The Good Life.

“I believe 2012 is looking brighter,” he added. “An improving economy and our natural

Writer Ron Griffith had 8 good reasons to visit the second poorest nation on earth

20 QUITE A FAMILY HOME

Luxurious and spacious home was built with family in mind — lots and lots of family Columns & Departments 17 June Darling: You can make your own good luck 24 Bonnie Orr: A green cake and other cooking failures 25 Alex Saliby: Don’t fall for this old wine hype 26 The traveling doctor: Why we make that bad smell 27-31 Events, The Art Life & a Dan McConnell cartoon 32 History: Flood swept away people and homes 34 Fun Stuff: 5 activities to check out

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optimism are rubbing together to heat up local economic prospects.”

Lianne joins John Hunter and Donna Cassidy in sales at The Good Life.

Lianne Taylor The local monthly magazine will celebrate its fifth anniversary this spring and experienced a better than 25 percent growth in paid subscriptions in 2011.

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guest column // vera zachow

Diaries of pioneer couple a peek into everyday life When Cora Johnson was

14 years old, she left her childhood home in Bates County, Missouri on April 15, 1880 to join her older sister, Alice Hays, in Washington Territory after both her parents had passed away.

She came in a covered wagon with her older brother, his wife and their three children and two other brothers.

She says of that trip, “The personal (Johnson) property had all been sold at public sale and our home was rented. You cannot imagine, nor can I describe, the feeling I had when the time came for us to leave our lovely home, and I was homesick many times…

“When we reached the Bernt River there were no bridges and the water was too high to ford, so we had to make camp until the men could build rafts out of logs and take the wagons off and float them over one at a time, then swim the horses over…

“I drove the team a good share of the way and we were just 100 days on the road and camped out every night.”

Lewis Titchenal traveled west from Bates County, Missouri April 1, 1882, with his father,

mother, three brothers and two sisters. Eight months after leaving Missouri they landed in Colfax.

On June 8, 1883 Lewis and his father located two homesteads on Badger Mountain about nine miles from the present town of Waterville.

Lewis and Cora were married Nov. 2, 1887 in Spokane Falls. In his diary Lewis writes “X – My fatal day. I helped Cora do some trading and fixed for my wedding & at half past eight the fatal knot was tyed & I was a happy boy.”

I compiled their diaries, letters, a newspaper article and photographs together into the book The Diaries of Betty Cora Johnson 1885-1886-1887-1898 and the Diary of Lewis Hamilton Titchenal-1887 And Other Historical Documents so that Cora and Lewis could tell their story, in their own words, giving us a feel for the things that made up their everyday lives.

This is not just their story but the story of the development of the state of Washington, the apple industry and their connection to the building of the Stevens Pass highway as a farm to market road.

It was exciting to me when I

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Vera Zachow and the book she produced: Exciting to read about the daily lives of her great-grandparents.

A book signing will be held at Hasting Saturday, March 3, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

was typing the contents of the diaries for Nov. 3, 1887, knowing I had the photo taken that day after Cora and Lewis were married to share with the reader.

I was delighted when Cora wrote in her diary on Aug. 16, 1886 that she had received a silver thimble for her birthday.

My mother had given me that thimble when I was a clothing and textiles major at Washington State University in the ’60s.

Washington State history has always been interesting to me because my grandfather was born on Badger Mountain, about nine miles south of the present day town of Waterville, just before Washington Territory became a state.

When I was attending Wenatchee High School, my grandpa Titchenal gave me a valentine card with the date 1884 woven into the design. It is an elaborate drawing of a bird with a poem written just for his mother, Cora.

When I asked him if the poem was written by his father, Lewis, he said he thought it was written by someone else. This made

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me want to know more about Cora’s life in Spokane County in the 1880s. Who was this other man who gave her a valentine before she married my greatgrandfather?

That’s a mystery I never found an answer for, but wanting to know more about the everyday lives of my ancestors encouraged me to create this book. To me, I didn’t want to hoard the information of my family but to share it with everyone in the family and make it available to anyone with an interest in the pioneers and the early history of our local apple industry.

After I was done, I sent a book to my uncle, who just turned 80, and is one of only two uncles left of the original seven.

I asked him, “What do you think of the book?” He paused, and then said: “I just love it!”

That’s the reward I receive from writing this book. I would encourage others to tell their family’s story, too.

Vera Hansen Zachow now lives in Omak. She can be reached at 422-2456 or by email at zachow7@msn.com.

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snapshots

change of scenery: An early season hike to Dusty Lake

By Lance Stegemann

P

icking my way through a maze of wild buckwheat and bunch grass, I find an obscure path leading down through a patch of cottonwood trees and coulees in the Quincy Wildlife Recreation Area.

I’ve been told this is the place to come when a change of scenery and an early season hike is long overdue.

It’s early spring and the air is thick with the distinct smell of sage.

It’s about a mile and a half to Dusty Lake from where I’ve parked my vehicle, and the hike so far proves to be an easy descent.

Working my way down the trail, I find there are numerous hidden ponds, streams and waterways. It’s literally an oasis with islands of lush vegetation and cool desert springs.

I spot a few mallards and mergansers puttering along the reeds and cattails. Cascading waterfalls empty into dark pools of water and disappear beneath the surface in a cloud of frothing bubbles.

Basalt rock formations encompass the horizon and finally I get my first view of Dusty Lake. The trail meanders through a small boulder field until it reaches the sharp banks along the murky shoreline. The lake contrasts sharply with the vertical columns of basalt cliffs.

The desert is a mysterious place with its towering mesas, deeply carved gorges and dark canyon walls.

Dusty Lake appears vacant

The clear, clean water in the lower body of water above belies its name of Dusty Lake.

Lush growth springs up at the bottom of a basalt cliff.

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upon first arrival, but the silence is only momentary, and I’m soon greeted by a chorus of croaking amphibians and the deep throaty call of a red-winged blackbird.

Shallow waves slap the shore, and I can see white caps in the choppy water farther out. I envision what it must have been like so many years ago, before the massive ice fields, rock and floods scoured sediment from these exposed volcanic walls.

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I can hear the wind whistle through the crags above me and voices from some distant hikers echo through the canyon.

Finding a dry patch of dead grass to comfortably recline on, I finish what’s left of my halfeaten sandwich. The view before me is a mix of pale blue sage and rust colored plateaus.

The sun feels warm on this particular spring day, but I know the warmer temperatures are only a prelude for hotter days to come. Wildflowers like yellow bells, bluebells, buttercups and spring beauties are already in bloom, but only briefly do they make their showy display, before succumbing to the scorching heat of summer.

Dusty Lake is a quiet reprieve from the arid desert landscape, but among those who will seek the refuge of its calming waters are a few selective anglers who come to try their luck in the early months of the opening

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snapshots

It’s exceptionally quiet and the solitude of this basalt monolith amplifies the enormity of the desert that surrounds me. }}} Continued from previous page fishing season.

With a reputation for holding some sizeable rainbow trout along with a few large browns, I decide to try my hand at landing one of its illusive inhabitants.

With a few unproductive casts, I halfheartedly work my way around some reeds and cattails to a spot where I feel some fish should be holding.

By mid afternoon, with each cast producing little more than an algae covered chironomid, I feel my time is better spent catching a short siesta before setting out to explore a few more of the less traveled hiking trails.

After dozing away the warmer part of the afternoon, I decide to continue my hike around the lake. The deep shadows veiled by massive rock ledges seem to give way to a façade of mysterious caverns.

As I stumble over a makeshift path of jagged boulders and loose rock outcroppings, I

Arrowleaf balsamroot offers a bright face of spring.

can see the movement of small objects darting in and out of the crags above me. At first glance, it appears as though the rock itself might be moving.

Digging through the clutter in my pack, I find a pair of binoculars and take a closer look. On further inspection, I can see a colony of small dark iridescent birds with white underbellies soaring around a pocket of mud formed nesting holes.

These acrobatic birds are the cliff swallows that dwell among the rock pillars in search of insects and a safe place to raise their young.

Leaning against a large outstretched boulder I keep a watchful eye for any sign of the desert’s venomous inhabitants.

Rattlesnakes are not an uncommon sight as temperatures begin to climb in early spring.

I’ve found that more often

than not, I’ve heard the all too familiar buzzing sound of a snake’s vibrating tail before actually locating its source. Even though most rattlesnakes show little sign of aggression, the element of surprise can prove hazardous.

One of the canyons I’ve chosen to hike up has a path that leads through a thicket of dense brush and vegetation toward a vista that I hope will present a decent observation point.

The climb proves to be a bit of a challenge, and I don’t escape this unchartered territory without acquiring a few scratches on the way up. Small coveys of quail await my approach and take flight as I scramble up the steep slope.

It takes me a good 30 minutes to make my way to the top, but the effort is well worth the climb. When I finally reach my

destination, I can see the outlying area that surrounds Dusty Lake and the many canyons, gorges and waterways below.

There’s a bluish haze that conceals the distant horizon, but I can still make out some of the more interesting geologic formations. It’s exceptionally quiet from where I sit, and the solitude of this basalt monolith amplifies the enormity of the desert that surrounds me.

After spending most of the afternoon traversing the basalt boulder fields and trekking through the sagebrush, I decide it’s time to call it a day.

As I slowly saunter up the narrow corridor toward the trailhead above, the sun slowly sinks from behind a fading crimson sky.

My thoughts reflect on the day’s hike and the pleasure I get from exploring an area with such distinctive natural features.

Here, there are plenty of places for the inquisitive outsider to investigate and even the rocks have a unique story to tell.

Time moves at a slower pace in the desert, but that’s one of the many attractions this area has to offer. I can’t think of a better way to escape the winter blues, and at the same time, get a long awaited taste of early spring.

As I approach my vehicle, the coolness of night sets in, and I can faintly hear the far-off wail of a lone coyote somewhere out in the darkness.

I think to myself, it’s certainly a good day to be exactly where I am.

Driving directions from Wenatchee: Take WA-28 east for 25.5 miles, turn right on Rd U NW/ White trail Rd 4.0 miles, turn right on Road 9-NW. Continue 5.9 miles to parking area.

Discover Pass required.

Lance Stegemann is a resident of East Wenatchee. He enjoys the outdoors with his girlfriend Barb Wilson and their two Australian Shepherd dogs.

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Running the Owyhee Some might call it hell, others might remark on its beauty, but a raft trip down this erratic river is one furious ride

By Andy Dappen

T

he three-corner area where the state lines of Oregon, Idaho and Nevada collide is a remote, desert plateau characterized by

sage and rabbit brush.

In 1865, Major G. Kimball, who patrolled the area for the army, wrote, “I was brought up and educated to believe there is a Hell where all had to suffer for their sins. I now think… the country over which I have just passed must have been the place where it was located.”

Many who see this landscape are apt to agree with Kimball’s assessment.

Yet hidden within this vast, desolate plateau are spectacular gorges where the rivers drain-

March 2012 | The Good Life

ing the surrounding mountains have cut deep, cliff-lined canyons through the region’s volcanic bedrock.

The Owyhee is one such river and its thousand-foot-high, rust-colored walls are accented by streaks of fluorescent-green lichens. Trapped within these walls, the Owyhee’s frothing whitewater cuts the canyon deeper day by day.

The beauty of this canyon, the solitude it affords, and the excitement of its rapids make it a coveted whitewater trip that’s

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LEFT: Raft sets up for a drop leading into tumultuous rapid.

ABOVE: Peaceful pools follow the difficult drops on the Owyhee – hence the categorization of this being a “pool and drop” stretch of river.

quite removed from the vision of Hell Kimball described 150 years ago.

Though now coveted, running the Owyhee is no easy matter.

First, it requires a modicum of skill to safely navigate its furious waters. Even more difficult is to contend with the variability of the river’s flow. The spring runoff is quick and erratic and, on successive weeks, the river can vacillate between frighteningly high and scrappingly low flows.

On two occasions, my at-

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We drop over what is almost a four-foot waterfall, slam into roiling waves of water, and punch a few recirculating pillows of water... }}} Continued from previous page tempts to float the river have fallen apart days before departure when we’ve concluded the river was too low for the time we had allocated.

But during a recent April, my luck changes when, on my third attempt to float the river, I make a snap decision to join the Payette River Company, one of the outfitters with permits to guide commercial groups.

We arrive at Three Forks, where the north, south and main stems of the river all converge, with the river running at 2,000 cubic feet per second, a good level for this stretch.

As the late afternoon light illuminates the pipe-like cliffs of the gorge, we ready the gear.

Then we sit at river’s edge near a fire talking into the evening.

The sky bleeds color; then it bleeds heat into the vacuum of space. One by one, we trickle away from the fire to tents pitched under a cupola of stars.

Thinking about what lies downstream, most of us sleep a bit fitfully.

RIVER DAY 1

We awaken to heavy frost coating the meadow bunchgrasses where we sleep. To run the Owyhee means arriving in early season when some of us are still likely to be spending our weekends skiing solid white water rather than submersing ourselves in liquid whitewater.

We dress in sleeveless wet suits covered over with nylon

splash jackets and nylon rain pants. It’s a combination that will keep us 90 percent dry and 90 percent warm — if we stay in the boat. Fall into the frigid water and we’ll be cold but functional enough to get ourselves ashore.

All of which means that boating at 4,000 feet, down 45-degree water, through Class IV rapids, during the fourth month of the year must be accompanied by a willingness to shiver.

My boat on this trip is a paddle raft powered by five clients and one guide who orchestrates our efforts. Ted Tuma, our conductor, does this with surprisingly few commands: 1) all forward 2) all back, 3) back right (which means the right side paddles back while the left side paddles forward) 4) back left, and 5) stop.

That’s all there is to it. Ted drills us for half an hour as we float away from the put-in before he’s comfortable that we’re ready for The Ledge, a serious rapid we will encounter within our first hour of travel.

On a scale where class VI represents a major waterfall and where the popular rapids on the Wenatchee River (between Peshastin and Cashmere) are class III, The Ledge is IV+.

We pull over above this rapid and scout it to determine the safest line through its danger zones. Then, with Ted issuing terse commands from his playbook of five, we enter the rapid.

We drop over what is almost a four-foot waterfall, slam into roiling waves of water, and punch a few recirculating pillows of water before emerging right-side-up at the bottom of the rapid. All the cargo rafts loaded with our gear come through the maelstrom drenched but unscathed.

This day on the river is short and after several hours of paddling and several more Class III rapids flanked by sheer cliffs, we pull over to camp. We inhabit a sun-soaked bench above the river covered with juniper trees

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Rafters use lines to get empty rafts past Widow Maker, a Class V+ rapid, while scrambling along the shore to get aboard rafts in quieter waters.

and situated at the mouth of Loveland Creek.

Those of us with energy to burn hike up this boulderstrewn creek, scramble a short headwall, and find ourselves looking out over an 8,000-square-mile plateau forming the catch basin for which this river is the only sewage pipe.

RIVER DAY 2

Yesterday got our feet wet but today the river is in our face.

We hit several soaking wave trains before Halfmile, which is, surprisingly, a half-mile-long stretch of water that is both boiling and freezing.

We hit the initial plunge into the rapid a little off line and take in a boat load of water. The raft is a self-bailer and the water that rushed in over the tubes leaks out through the floor.

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Should we enter that liquid frenzy, the little island on which we float is likely to be put on a rotisserie.

The boat, however, is unwieldy while it sheds the excess water and we paddle with a trace of panic to move sideways of what we know is coming — a hole at the bottom of the rapid where a wall of crashing water tumbles over and over on itself as if trapped in the roller of a cement truck.

Should we enter that liquid frenzy, the little island on which we float is likely to be put on a rotisserie. Our panic proves to be ill-founded — we slip to the

side of the maw with several leisurely seconds to spare.

Immediately after Halfmile comes a hose of lesser rapids like Raft Flip (Class III), Subtle Hole (Class III), Bomb Shelter Drop (Class IV) and Shark’s Tooth (Class III).

All of these keep us wellsoaked. That’s a good thing because the upstream breeze with its 50-degree air, and the 45-degree water sloshing around in our wetsuits, has us in serious danger of overheating.

After lunch, a few more drops help with digestion before we pull over on the right side of the river to view the meanest rapid of all, a nasty Class V+ stretch of anger, appropriately named Widow Maker.

Here a jumble of hut-sized boulders is attacked by an enraged river that is smashing into, washing over, and churning around these impediments.

We bring the rafts to shore near the top of the rapid and

then coax them, empty of people, over spillways along the edge of the river.

One rafter who is along as a client but also rowing his own raft is Warwick Phillips, an Australian chef living in Sun Valley.

Panic consumes him when he realizes he has missed the eddy at the top of the rapid where the rest of have exited and has committed himself to shooting Widow Maker.

His best hope of survival lies in the fact that he isn’t married.

The very stable platform of his cataraft is also crucial. He spins sideways off one of the spillways that threads two boulders and washes into a massive recirculating hole sideways.

Most rafts would flip here, but the square footprint of Warwick’s rig lets him spin around in the whirlpool for several seconds before he is spit out, right-side-up.

The boat pinballs off several more boulders and, after seeing his life flash before him, Warwick becomes an accidental survivor of the rapid.

White knuckled and shaking with adrenaline, he follows the Australian tradition of giving thanks by cracking a beer. He seems oblivious to the irony that giving too much thanks upstream is, likely, what fed him to the Widow Maker in the first place.

Below Widow Maker, we enter a beautiful bronze canyon with neck-crimping walls bolting skyward right out of the water.

Partway through this vertical landscape, the unlikely horizontal oasis of a sand beach creates a chink in the armor at river’s right edge. We pull over and erect nylon hotels on the cushioned sands of an otherwise hard world.

Soon a driftwood fire is blazing and we’re enjoying a sunset we can’t see but which paints the walls imprisoning us in gold.

The rumble of rapids reverberating off the walls melds into a wild, yet strangely comforting, white noise.

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RIVER DAY 3

The big whitewater is behind us.

Our final day on the river features a number of Class II and Class III drops, but this day is about aesthetics rather than adrenaline.

Initially we float through high-walled canyons of volcanic origin. Sometimes the walls are chocolate columns of basalt, sometimes a volcanic breccia of peanut brittle consistency. For a while, the valley floor is carpeted by wall-to-wall water.

Halfway through the day’s 17-mile float, we squirt out of the slot canyon. The landscape broadens, allowing for long, panoramic views. Cattle ranches with green alfalfa fields start to parallel the river, boisterous bands of birds occupy the khaki reeds choking the river’s edge, and vultures and raptors ride the thermals radiating upward from the desert floor into a lazuline sky.

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By early afternoon we approach a bridge spanning the river and pull over into a campground with the unlikely name of Rome. This is lonely country and there is but one road here, but apparently all roads do lead to Rome.

As we disassemble our gear, another party prepares to launch and float the more popular 65 miles of the Lower Owyhee from Rome to Leslie Gulch.

It’s odd how out-of-synch different people can be. One man’s end is another’s beginning. And, as we’ve discovered, with Major G. Kimball, Hell to some is happiness to others.

Andy Dappen is the content editor of www.WenatcheeOutdoors.org. An online-version of the story on the WenatcheeOutdoors website lists the river’s difficulty, recommended flow levels, online gauges for checking the river level, other trip options on the Owyhee, permit information, and more. The direct link to that story is: www.justgetout.net/ Wenatchee/21469.

Getting your skate on ‘Over the past 10 months, I’ve challenged my body in ways I never thought possible’

By Terry Sloan

I had no idea what I was getting into.

I just knew that as a kid, I loved to roller skate. Every weekend we junior high schoolers would be cool, hanging out in the roller rink. Junior high was a long time ago. My 60th birthday was Feb. 5.

About a year ago, when some friends began raving about Roller Derby on Facebook, I thought, “I might be good at that, and I certainly need the exercise.” Little did I know.

The founders of Apple City Roller Derby, Barb Andre and Craig Anderson, had a dream of starting the first women’s flat track roller derby league in the Wenatchee area.

However, when the first meetings and workouts began we had no facility for skating. So times were scheduled to drive to the skating rink in Soap Lake on Sundays and that’s where we began to just skate.

It took me a long time to remember how to cross over and skate backward. It took a few falls to remember how to balance myself on

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A skater for the Jawbreakers (in white) tries to break to the front of the pack in a mid-February roller derby bout against the Hydro Elektras. Roller derby can be non-stop falling and getting back up, requiring a great deal of strength, stamina and an ability to think quickly while speeding on skates. To keep up on the roller derby activities, visit www.applecityrollerderby.com. Photo by JP Portrait Studio

eight wheels.

We began working on speed as we were timed going around the track. I think I was the slowest. (My husband, Mike, and I have seven children, now grown, between us.

When he sent a picture of me in my derby gear to my youngest daughter, she joked, “I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed!”)

Each of us had to pay our USA Roller Sports dues, we had to pay league dues, we had to provide proof of insurance and we had to purchase our gear. Gear includes helmet, wrist, elbow, knee pads and of course, skates.

Anyone willing to fulfill these obligations would be deemed serious enough to participate.

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Arrangements were first made to skate in a basement under the South Wenatchee Avenue business Encouraging Words. It was a cement floor, with posts in the middle of the room.

But we were all excited to get started.

When we skated, we kicked up so much cement dust that you couldn’t see from one end of the room to the other.

Soon it was decided that we needed a better facility and we moved to the Armory on Fifth Street. Then we moved again to a warehouse at the Port of Chelan and finally to our current location in Cashmere near the Tree Top buildings.

But we’ll skate anywhere. When the weather is nice, parking lots, tennis courts and the river front park are favorite places

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for skating.

Over the past 10 months, I’ve challenged my body in ways I never thought possible.

We’re obligated to participate in eight practices a month. By participate, I don’t mean just watch. You must have skates and gear on and do the best you can to your ability. Safety is crucial though, and each of us gets to decide what we’re ready to do and what we’re still working on.

Practices are held every day of the week. From Fresh Meat Practices (that’s our newbies) to the Jaw Breakers, to the Black Label Barbies someone is practicing every day.

In order to be “bout ready” you must pass certain tests. I have to admit, I haven’t yet passed them all. But I’m close.

Skaters must skate 25 laps in five minutes. My last time was five minutes 17 seconds. I think I’ll be able to cut off those 17 seconds soon.

You must be able to run on your toe stops, perform t-stops, tomahawk stops, snow plow stops, small falls, one knee falls, and 180 turns on your knee.

You must be able to get up quickly when you fall. Skaters must demonstrate skating around the track without lifting skates (called “sticky skates”) and remaining in “skater stance” with your knees bent in a squatting position.

Skaters must get used to skating very close to each other in a pack and keep up the pace with other skaters. We also have to take a written test.

Derby can be a pretty rough sport.

The teams on the track consist of five players each. Each team has a jammer, who scores the points by getting through the pack and making rotations around the track.

The other four players are blockers. The blockers on each team are trying to keep the opposing jammer from getting through the pack and at the same time trying to make a way for their own jammer to get

Terry Sloan, left, and Arpeggio Romiti: Born to roller derby. Photo by JP Portrait Studio

finding a new ‘me’ in skating Growing up I was always the kid who hated to do anything physically active.

I disliked sports, sweat, team playing, and my least favorite class in school was P.E. When I first heard of roller derby I thought, sounds fun but there was no way I could participate.

When my mother, Nah T. (Cherise Hassett) of the Black Label Barbies, joined Apple City Roller Derby, it didn’t take her much convincing to get me to join in.

My first day on skates, I fell in love. through to start scoring points.

Derby is a game that requires both offense and defense played at the same time. Consequently, blockers from both teams are knocking each other off the track.

Some bouts are non-stop falling and getting back up. Once you’ve fallen, you always have to re-enter behind the person who knocked you out.

If blocking occurs above the shoulders or below the knees or if elbows are used a penalty is given. Four minor penalties equals one major penalty and requires one minute seated in March 2012 | The Good Life

I have finally found something athletic that I really enjoy and am willing to push myself. I pushed myself to the point of breaking my leg while skating the banked track in Seattle.

However, after a four-month break, I was back at it. Where so many others have quit after breaking a bone, I stayed.

The support and love from my teammates gave me the strength to persevere.

Roller derby has become more than a sport to me, it’s a passion.

— Arpeggio Romiti, 20, aka Necro Paigia, the youngest member of the Hydro Elektras the penalty box.

Because derby requires a great deal of strength, stamina, and an ability to think quickly while speeding around the track, it is for these reasons that some of us are still not quite ready to get in there and really mix it up.

In addition to the physical challenges, we commit to volunteer work and duties in maintaining the league, like cleaning the facility or working on advertising and making public appearances.

In August we sponsored an out of town teams’ bout in the Town Toyota Center to over www.ncwgoodlife.com

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2,000 people.

Also last August, the 75 skaters still with Apple City Roller Derby were divided into three teams.

I’m a Hydro Elektra. We wanted a name that reflected our community and showed power.

Our logo shows a skater in derby gear, with water cascading hair holding a lightning bolt.

My team had its first intramural bout against the Black Label Barbies in January. We didn’t win, but we had a great time.

Since I’m not yet “bout” ready, they let me bench coach. Bench coaches act as support, getting skaters things they need, helping them remember when it their turn to be on the floor, and watching for injury or skaters who are getting tired.

I wasn’t sure I’d still be skating after 10 months of practices but I’m still standing.

I am both moved and motivated by this organization that empowers women.

We come from different professions and backgrounds. Roller Derby has provided a place just for us. We celebrate each other’s successes and encourage each other when we fail. We give each other a reason to keep on trying.

All too often, as women, we take care of our children, our partners, our parents and our jobs before we address our own needs.

When I’m skating, I don’t think of my obligations or worries, I only think of NOT FALLING and getting stronger.

I leave my workouts pleasantly tired, often sore, but with a clearer head that’s ready for the next day’s responsibilities.

I may never be “bout” ready, but I think I’ll keep skating as long as my body with let me.

There’s nothing else like it.

Terry Sloan has been a teacher for the Eastmont School District for 25 years, serving as Teacher’s Association president for six years. She has also directed, performed and participated in Mission Creek Players productions since 1985.

Kamathipura, a sex

prison without walls

‘If there were such a thing as extreme culture shock this certainly would qualify, as this was the most filthy and evil place we had ever been’

By Dr. David Weber, Sr.

I

ndia!

It never before had crossed our minds that we would be traveling there and it certainly wasn’t on our list of things to do.

So how did it happen? It’s something akin to the saying that “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans,” and it happened after we saw a mission trip to India offered by the Christian Medical Dental Association.

The nature of the trip piqued our interest, but India?

My wife, Susan, and I began researching to learn more about India with its 1.2 billion people and it sounded intriguing. We realized this wasn’t just any mission trip but one to Mumbai and the Kamathipura red light district.

Kamathipura is one of the largest brothel areas in the world and the epicenter of sex slavery in India.

The intent of this trip was very different from our previous The Bombay Teen Challenge office in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), mission trips to Guatemala and where roughly half of the 23.5 million population lives in poverty.

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Mexico as we would be setting up our clinic on the street in the heart of Kamathipura and providing care to the commercial sex workers (the preferred term rather than prostitutes), their children, and even some of the pimps and madams.

Many of the women are HIV positive and suffering with other diseases such as drug resistant tuberculosis. Frankly it sounded risky. However, we made the decision and committed to the trip.

Mumbai is a city of about 23.5 million people roughly half of which live in poverty. The population density at 25,000 people per square kilometer is extreme.

The poor are everywhere all trying to make a few rupees so they can survive. We saw whole families living on sidewalks.

They often have nothing more than a dilapidated mat and, if lucky, a blanket with which to cover up.

The streets are a crazy mix of taxis, rickshaws, trucks, ox carts, camels, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, and of course, cows. These sacred animals roam freely and traffic diverts around them.

We arrived in India on Oct.

10, and after a sleepless night (there’s a 12-and-a-half hour time difference) we left for Kamathipura and got our first look at what would be our workplace for the next two weeks.

Appropriately, our clinic was a large red tent in the middle of a street. The temperature was 95 degrees with humidity to match.

And then there was the smell.

It was a kind of foul stench that we had never experienced before, a combination of human excrement, decaying mounds of garbage rotting in the heat and open sewers. The sewers ran down the gutters and rats foraged boldly through the garbage.

A commercial sex worker in Kamathipura.

If there were such a thing as extreme culture shock this cerSusan is a family practitioner tainly would qualify, as this was and provided care for patients the most filthy and evil place we with general medical problems. had ever been.

I brought a portable ultraProstitution is illegal in India sound unit and my role was but we were told that the police to help sort out the many aband authorities are bribed and dominal and pelvic symptoms ignore such activities. We were of which all patients seemed to also told that police frequent the complain. Their illnesses weren’t brothels so there is not much surprising considering they had hope for enforcement of the no control over their lives. laws.

We were told that many sufAs evidence, there was a police fer from post traumatic stress station on the corner in Kamadisorder. thipura and the officers there It’s important to understand paid no attention to the obvious brothels and to feed, house and how these women and girls in activities going on nearby. educate orphans and street kids. Kamathipura differ from our Our mission trip was in Our team of 13 provided medi- usual perception of prostitutes. conjunction with an in-country cal and dental care. Most imNone of these women or girls Christian organization called portantly, we offered the gospel are there by choice as all are Bombay Teen Challenge. (http:// message to the women and con- victims of human trafficking. bombayteenchallenge.org/) nected them with Bombay Teen They have been sold, kidnapped, Their mission for 22 years has Challenge and a way out of the or falsely promised a good job in been to rescue women from the brothels. the city.

None of these women or girls are there by choice ... They have been sold, kidnapped, or falsely promised a good job in the city.

A homemade pie every month!

That’s just one of many auction items to bid on at the annual

WVMCC Awards Gala and Silent Auction A benefit for the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center

Saturday, March 24, 6-9 p.m.

Entertainment, award presentations, food & beverages, and auction of one-of-a-kind items and experiences Tickets at 888-6240 or store.wvmcc.org March 2012 | AT HOME WITH The Good Life

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human trafficking is worldwide

India is not unique in regards to human trafficking, which is a worldwide activity and second only to the drug trade in scope and money.

In America it’s estimated that there may be as many as 450,000 teenagers being trafficked.

I would urge you to learn more about human trafficking and support the organizations that are working diligently to put a stop to it, visit these resources: www.notforsalecampaign. org/ www.stopenslavement.org/ UISG%20HT%20toolkit.pdf http://love146.org/ www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking — Dr. David Weber

Girls as young as 10 years end up in the brothels they have no means of escaping on their own.

They are frightened, without economic means, afraid of authorities and may not speak the national Hindi language.

They are broken by torture, rape and intimidation. There are no precautions for safe sex or pregnancy prevention so there are many pregnancies (and thus many abortions) and a high incidence of HIV (70 percent).

}}} Continued on next page

“I never saw the light of day for three years.” }}} Continued from previous page There are about 30,000 sex workers in this 13-block area.

On the busiest days there may be as many as 200,000 clients in Kamathipura.

The stories of these women and girls are heart breaking.

A translator for Bombay Teen Challenge had been sold by her stepbrother in Nepal and sent to Kamathipura where she was locked away and brought out only for sex.

In her words, “I never saw the light of day for three years.”

A young man we worked with was abandoned by his father at age 5. When asked why his father had done that he said, “He just didn’t like me,” an example of the “throw away kids” of India.

It’s a very different view of the value of human life. Unfortunately every woman, girl, or rescued child has a story similar to this.

We planned our trip so we could also see other areas of India. After Mumbai we toured for two weeks and saw the diversity, colorful culture, and wonderful people of India.

We found the people to be warm and hospitable. We were welcomed as fair-skinned oddities everywhere we went.

In the rural villages we were treated like rock stars with parades of kids following us wanting to talk with us, have their pictures taken, and speak what little English they knew.

And, maybe best of all we saw Royal Bengal Tigers in the wild up close and personal while on elephantback. It was a very special opportunity.

But, here is one more story to show the dilemma of the poor in India.

A mother came to Bombay

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| The Good Life

The Bombay Teen Challenge tent where patients were seen and treated. (Appropriately it’s red in one of the world’s largest red light district.)

ABOVE LEFT: Dr. Susan Weber with her translator, who was rescued as a young girl. RIGHT: Dr. Dave Weber, in his work scrubs.

Teen Challenge and said she wanted to sell her daughter into the brothels.

When asked why, she replied, “Because it’s the last thing I have to sell to feed the rest of my family.”

This kind of situation is incomprehensible to us. I believe

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| March 2012

the dilemma of the world’s poor is something we all need to understand and work to change.

Dr. Weber is a physician who retired from the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center in 2011 where he had served for 36 years as a radiologist and most recently as the CEO and chairman of the board.

>>

column moving up to the good life

june darling

Yes, you can make your own luck S

ome people have all the luck. They feel very fortunate.

Their lives are pretty grand.

Derrick knows he’s a lucky guy. And he’s right.

Several years ago, Derrick was perplexed by a technical problem with his computer which he had been struggling with for over an hour. He decided to take a walk. He enjoyed exploring so he chose a route he’d never been on before.

As luck would have it, an attractive young lady was juggling outside her house. He began to chat with her. Something felt really right about her. He asked her for a date. Derrick felt that this could be the girl of his dreams.

When Derrick returned to his computer issue, within 15 minutes he realized what the problem was and took steps to remedy the situation.

Bad luck follows some other people around. Their lives are just one unfortunate thing after another.

If something bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen to Sondra. She’s sure of it. And she’s right.

Yesterday Sondra had an important meeting with a prospective, new client. It was the first big customer who had come her way in the last six months.

Unfortunately her car ran out of gas before she got to work. By the time she got to work, her client had left for another appointment. Just her bad luck. The story of her life.

Luck is a big deal.

Luckily for us, luck has been under serious investigation for the last 20 years. Here’s what’s been discovered.

Luck is real and it really has made a big difference in many

lives.

According to researchers, lucky people often encounter chance opportunities, often make good decisions, often have their dreams come true and have an ability to turn bad fortune into good.

Luck is also quite misunderstood in several ways according to researchers who have conducted rather extensive experiments.

First of all feeling lucky won’t make one bit of difference in winning the lottery. Luck has nothing to do with superstition, leprechauns, 4-leaf clovers, rainbows and charms.

What luck actually does affect in a significant way is real life, health, work and relationships.

Good fortune, as it turns out, is not totally out of our control, but is undergirded by certain concepts, thoughts, and actions.

Best of all luck can be learned.

Researchers, like Dr. Richard Wiseman, who founded The Luck School, have changed lives using these discoveries. They have turned unlucky people into lucky people and lucky people into even luckier people using four essential principles. Wiseman urges everyone to use them to improve their luck.

Maximize your chance opportunities. Be out in the world.

Meet and talk with many new and different people. Be more March 2012 | The Good Life

relaxed rather than uptight about your problems and goals.

Derrick didn’t become stuck and anxious over his problem.

Instead he got outside, took a new path, and saw a new opportunity quite unrelated to his problem. He immediately made the most of it. When he returned he had a fresh perspective on his problem.

When I’ve talked to people who consider themselves lucky, all of them believe significant opportunities have come their way because they just happened to be out and about. They struck up a conversation with someone who helped them obtain a goal such as selling their house or buying a business. A huge number of them met their spouses by chance encounters.

Be aware of your gut feelings and check them out. Do what you can to investigate them further. Move ahead or move back as seems right.

Derrick noticed his feelings.

He proceeded to check them out by asking the attractive young lady for a date. He will have an opportunity to get to know the young lady more to see if she is really the girl of his dreams.

Expect good fortune. Good fortune is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who expect it are on the lookout for it. People who expect good luck are willing to work harder and persevere to reach their goals.

Derrick believes it’s possible he’s found his soulmate. This belief will help him work through problems that may come up later in the courtship. Researchers have found that people who believe they are lucky persist much longer in reaching their goals.

Turn bad luck into good by remembering that ill fortune may work out for the best. Don’t www.ncwgoodlife.com

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dwell on ill fortune; distract yourself. Take active steps to prevent more bad luck in the future.

“How fortunate for me that me that my computer went haywire,” Derrick remembers thinking.

Psychologists who have talked with other lucky people hear them reflect positively on even more traumatic events than computer glitches. One man said, “Yes, I’d think I was really lucky if I were shot in the leg by a bank robber. After all, I could be shot in the head!”

Sondra can change her future luck (and so can we). Using these principles, she can become more extroverted, less anxious and pessimistic, more resilient and more open to new experiences.

Sondra can spend more time meditatively so that she’s more aware of her gut feelings and more intentional around checking them out. She can even make sure her car is always filled with gas using the four good luck principles.

Good fortune is real, it’s big, and it’s learnable. If you’re ready to commit to practicing some new behaviors and thoughts, you may just find that pot o’ gold.

How might you move up to The Good Life by being willing to practice the four principles that can improve your luck?

June Darling, Ph.D., is an executive coach who consults with businesses and individuals to achieve goals and increase happiness. She can be reached at drjunedarling@aol.com, or drjunedarling.blogspot.com or at her twitter address: twitter.com/ drjunedarling. Her website is www. summitgroupresources.com.

Why Ethiopia?

8 reasons to visit the world’s second poorest nation

By Ron Griffith

When I told my friends I was going to

Ethiopia for two weeks in early December, they said I was crazy.

They pointed out I was 70 years old, overweight and certain to get malaria and or yellow fever. I would be going to the second poorest country in the world. They also challenged me to give them just ONE good reason for going.

I had to admit, I couldn’t give them just one good reason. I gave them eight equally important reasons to go.

Eight is the number of Ethiopian female orphans living in a small orphanage operated by New Hope Outreach Ministries International (NHOMI) near Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.

NHOMI is a small non-denominational Christian ministry run by Dr. John Shane from his home in Spanaway, near Tacoma.

He has two teams in Russia working with about 10,000 Russian orphans, one team in the Ukraine working with about 4,000 orphans and a widow’s center in Sri Lanka.

He added this small orphanage in Ethiopia about three years ago.

I traveled with Dr. Shane on his yearly visit to Russia and the Ukraine in May of 2009. I kept in touch by helping support his organization and reading his newsletters. I had the time and money, so I decided to join him, as an observer, on the trip to Ethiopia in December.

We first flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, and then on to Bahir Dar, a regional capital in northwest Ethiopia, to meet with the designer and the builder of the first stage of the new orphanage to house 40 orphans. The money is available to build, and the paperwork is working its way through the government process.

The only remaining question is where to build.

The government considers most of the

18

Dirt roads and burros near the old market area of Bahir Dar, one of the towns in Ethiopia considered for a new orphanage.

land theirs. The people living on it are considered “squatters” and will be moved off in the name of development. The government will give land grants to organizations or companies wanting to develop a project in their area.

The local government in the village presently housing the orphanage will give us a plot of land to build on. The village is about an hour out of Bahir Dar over a very rough road. We also believe the officials in Bahir Dar will give us a building site.

We brought two large suitcases full of material for the orphans and two older refurbished laptop computers. There were only two other computers in the entire village of about 5,000, both of which were in the mayor’s office. It was fascinating to watch these young women explore the computer for the first time.

We gave each child a 100 Birr note or about $6 each. This was more money than they ever had in their lives.

The orphanage is located inside a small compound built much like the old West fort.

High rock walls provided the outside wall. A small cow-dung plastered home formed one corner of the central courtyard. Small sleeping and storage rooms line the other two sides of the small courtyard.

On the fourth side, our orphanage is separated from its neighbor by a five-foot high woven grass mat partition. The rock | The Good Life

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wall encompasses both units, thus providing security to both.

Most of the cooking is done outside on an open fire. Inside there is a blue tarp over a ground floor. The 30-by-30-foot home is divided into two rooms, a kitchen-storage area and living room. Residents have to carry their water but they do have electricity and satellite TV. Our guide, Melaku Meseret, was an Ethiopian minister who will be responsible for the building and operation of the orphanage. He speaks good English, as do many in Ethiopia, although I had a hard time understanding him because of pronunciation.

Several times we had young men come up to us to practice their English. Several asked for my email address. Two have emailed me.

One uses good written English and the other one doesn’t.

There are two Ethiopias: big cities and the poorer countryside.

I visited three major cities, Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar and Gonder. I was amazed at the number of big new apartment complexes, hotels and office buildings, both completed and under construction that were scattered throughout the three cities.

Universities in both Gonder and Bahir Dar are building major additions. The Chinese financed this construction.

I also visited the rural areas. The main roads were two lanes and paved. The rest

| March 2012

were rough dirt roads. You would see small rock or cow dung plastered homes strung along the road. Cow dung is mixed with sand and earth to create the exterior walls.

There was an abundance of rock everywhere I looked.

There were numerous small herds of cattle tended by everyone from the very young to the very old. The fields were being plowed with wooden plows pulled by oxen. Harvesting was done by hand.

Many people wore shoes or sandals, but there were also many who went barefoot in this hot, rocky landscape.

I saw very little American influence. The only American vehicle I saw was an older Ford Ranger. There was a Kodak store, several Western Union offices, along with the UPS and DHL Delivery Services.

There were only two American companies with a major presence in Ethiopia, Pepsi and Coke. They were everywhere.

The one image I’ll always remember was an older man sleeping totally nude in the afternoon on the edge of a busy sidewalk in downtown Bahir Dar. He was lying on the bare

sidewalk with nothing to cover himself. Everyone just totally ignored him.

We can’t solve the many problems facing Ethiopia as it develops. What Dr. Shane, through

Ron Griffith squeezes out of a tuk tuk. Despite what it looks like, the little three-wheel taxis were relatively easy to get in and out of, said Ron.

NHOMI, can do is offer hope to a few orphans.

These eight young orphan girls now have hope for a prosperous and happy future. With-

out hope, there is no future.

To find out more about NHOMI visit the web page at www.newhopeoutreach.org.

Dr. Alan Smith & Dr. Inku Hwang, Gastroenterology

The eight reasons for the trip, plus their house mother smile for their visitors.

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Home

for the family

With room for kids, grandkids and friends to roam

A sweeping entrance welcomes visitors.

Story by Susan Lagsdin Photos by Donna Cassidy

T

Granite countertops curve around the kitchen, which has dark and pale cabinetry and plenty of work space.

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| March 2012

he Volkmans never meant to own merely a showplace.

Their reason for moving to the four-acre Sunnyslope location after 30 years in Chelan was to be near family in the Wenatchee area: nine adult children, a few siblings adopted along the way and 12 grandchildren.

“They’re all in three grades,” Paul Volkman explained, “Age seven to two-and-a-half.” He chuckled at the prospect of corralling that many grand-teenagers in a few years.

And he retold the tale of their very first week in the home.

Their daughter’s wedding, a blissful event to honor the couple and also signal the “grand opening” of the Volkmans’ new house, was scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 31, 2008, just as construction was complete. The furniture had arrived the week before, but the truck full of sod for the lawn arrived on Friday afternoon. “Everybody was

LEFT: Deeply coved and with an elaborate chandelier, the formal dining area seats eight, and several smaller tables can be set up nearby for holiday dinners.

BELOW: The sitting room, just beyond the foyer, serves as hub for the private and public wings.

working in the dark all night, with all the lights on, and we got it done on time!” Paul smiles at the perfect save.

Extended family and friends (and friends’ families) find the sprawling custom-designed house a welcoming haven — there’s always a place to park on the wide circular entrance drive, always room at the long dining table or wrap-around breakfast bar, always a spare bed available.

The big house (5,800 square feet of livig space) constructed

A partially covered back deck creates room for all season campfires and barbecues.

by Helton Builders, was awarded “Best of Show” on the 2008 HBA Tour of Homes. Belying its bulk, it actually has only three main floor bedrooms (a master and two guest suites) but an upstairs bonus room doubles as bunkroom when needed. A full-size RV parked at the home can also be called into service.

“We can sleep six there,” Debbie Volkman said, “So even on holidays, when everybody’s at home, there’s plenty of room.”

}}} Continued on next page

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Paul (an avid Husky fan) and Debbie share a few stories in their kitchen. She denies he’s the head chef, but admits he is known as “Breakfast Poppa.”

Home for the family }}} Continued from previous page (The motor home is camouflaged in a below-grade structure with what appear from the

street to be conservatory windows.)

Above that space is the threecar garage, which opens up into

both a laundry room and a fullsize pantry. In the back — with

NCW Home Professionals

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| March 2012

a full south view of the Columbia River, Badger Mountain and Wenatchee — the soccer-field/ lawn is one terrace down from the patio, and black hurricane perimeter fencing keeps two German Shepherds within calling distance.

Closer in, accessed by sliders and partially covered for allweather “campfires” and BBQ’s, a wide curved patio surrounds the swimming pool. “We have strict rules,” Debbie said, “When the cover is off, no child is ever out here without an adult.”

A separate pool house for changing and showering doubles as storage for outdoor furniture in the off-season.

Paul remembers coming home from work at his pharmacy at Lake Chelan Clinic one summer afternoon, “I went in back and there were 26 people in the pool.

Everything was fine — I knew most of them!”

Built to maximize sunny views, the home is elongated and angled to create two courtyards, front and back. A pillared entryway and tall double doors lead into a central foyer and

The master suite features relaxing “down time” furniture and an ornate four-poster bed. Windows and a patio door fill the room with light.

sitting room with 14-foot coved ceilings.

Dining, kitchen, family room and guest rooms stretch to the right, and a luxurious “owners’ wing” with office, exercise room and oversized master suite is to the left. It’s positioned for privacy, but, “Sometimes we just use those ‘blow up’ mattresses and keep a few grandchildren in with us when the house is full,” Debbie said.

Debbie is matter-of-fact about her role in the creation of this family retreat. “Oh, yes, I really designed the whole thing.

I sketched out every room and worked with Ryan (Kelso, of Complete Design) the whole time.”

With no formal background, she took charge of all the artistic decisions, creating a modernized French Provincial look in every room.

Her color palette is myriad

Subtle color variations and ornamentation tie the master bath in with the rest of the home. Debbie’s goal was a unifying theme in soft variations of brown.

versions of brown. Pale porcelain 18-inch tiles, with hydronic (radiant) heat underneath, faux stucco antique textured walls, yards of granite countertop and earth-toned carpeting complement the custom-built wood fixtures.

That cinnamon or vanilla cabinetry found throughout the house is two-toned with chocolate trim, and a repeated visual motif, fleur de leis scrollwork and leaf pattern, is affixed to almost every mantle, column or pediment.

One very freeing design choice involves the tall Palladian windows in the main rooms. They are unencumbered by window treatments, showing off their own clean architectural lines as well as framing, without distraction, the spectacular views.

Debbie changes the tone of the house with accessories and florals four times a year, on schedule. Lavish Christmas decorations give way to bouquets of spring flowers in Easter colors, summer is all about fresh bright tones, and autumn brings back the deep golds that blend so well with the fixtures and furnishings.

This is a huge home — Paul and Debbie are quite aware of its drive-by presence and its interior opulence, but they are even more appreciative of its true function. It is indeed at all times a family home — warm, welcoming, comfortable, and useful.

A stepstool is in easy reach of a bathroom sink and little toothbrushes for this week’s visiting grandkids. The toddlers’ pastel trikes are parked askew in the foyer. There’s evidence of snack crumbs, and stacks of picture books on the family room couch, with grandpa Paul as reader.

Just what the Volkmans intended.

NCW Home Professionals

March 2012 |

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column GARDEN OF DELIGHTS

bonnie orr

My green cake & other cooking failures C

ooks often recall memorable dishes and families regale one another with remembrances of particular dinners or traditional meals.

My friend, Flo B. Free, and I giggle every March 17 as we recall The Green Cake. It was a disaster.

In fact, I have created many, time-consuming, labor-intensive disasters that have become “I will never make this again” dishes.

So what are my most memorable, consequently, unique cooking adventures?

As a honeymooner, camping in Zion National Park on the Virgin River, (Yes, really), I prepared my first meal for my groom. I had packed the silver candlesticks and the linen napkins for this inaugural dinner.

When camping, the sun always falls earlier than you had anticipated, and the tent always takes longer to put up, so by the time I started the fried chicken dinner it was dead dark. The fire was, as always, not as hot as it should have been — so we dined at 9:30 p.m. by candlelight on medium-rare chicken. I never again made chicken over a campfire.

A few years later, it was my turn to make the after church service treats, and because it was the first Sunday of Advent, I made something special.

All Saturday evening, I carefully baked broomstick cookies. These are a lacy, almost a confection, mostly brown sugar and butter, melted in the oven and then while still very warm taken from the cookie sheet and rolled around a broom stick to form a cone.

The lacy cookie hardens into a

Would you like to eat a green cake? Would you, could you if it took three days to create?

sugary shell that snaps sweetly when you bite into it.

I was so proud of the pyramid of treats arranged on a lovely tray. I left the kitchen at 11:30 p.m. having finished the cookies and the next week’s batch of bread.

In the morning, my pyramid was a horrible pulsating mound as thousands of sugar ants carried away bits of my pride and my creation.

To add insult to injury, the Louisiana humidity had melted the individual sugary cones into one single damp clump! I took bread, butter and jam for social hour treats.

To celebrate my Scottish heritage, I decided to have Robert Burns Night at the end of one January.

I bought a lamb in the fall and instructed the butcher to save everything for me because I was going to make a haggis. A haggis is a sheep’s stomach stuffed with all the bits of sheep body

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we often discard — remember nothing is wasted in Scotland.

It took about four hours to cut up and clean all the odd meats and to prepare the stuffing. To the variety of meaty parts, the cook adds a bit of oatmeal and whisky and then ties up the stomach and boils it for three hours, on three successive days.

I cannot tell you how awful the house smelled — It was tripe tripled!

I had eaten haggis in Scotland and liked it, but my smelly ball held no attraction for me.

I made sure that the dinner guests had all made a number of whisky toasts before I brought out the main attraction.

It actually was very tasty — I just have never forgotten the smell.

Then I made marshmallows.

Another three-day experience, this one involved very hot sugar syrup, gelatin and egg whites that set up so rapidly that I could not extract the beaters

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from the mixing bowl and had to soak them overnight to reclaim my mixer.

Then cutting them and inhaling enough powdered sugar to induce white-lung disease add a new danger to this activity. And all I wanted was to make some something for a friend who loved Som’mores.

Don’t try this at home because after three days’ labor, the marshmallows taste just exactly like the ones you buy in the cello pack for 99 cents.

Oh yes, The Green Cake.

About 15 years ago, I received a cookbook featuring meals that Claude Monet ate and recorded in a journal. The recipes are authentic late 19th century cooking.

Lacking synthetic green dye #16, green food was colored with green food. So this threeday cake experience began with cooking spinach to create green water for the moisture in the cake.

The second day, the cake was filled with pistachio cream made with 2 ½ cups of butter, and the third day the cake was covered with a green (from spinach juice) fondant.

This work of art looked just like the picture in the book, and it was beautiful — and absolutely tasteless we discovered after we sawed through the fondant covering.

I could go on and write about the candied corn and the Earl Grey Tea Cake, but I am laughing so hard at my failures that my tears are blurring the computer screen.

Bonnie Orr — the dirt diva — gardens and cooks in East Wenatchee.

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column ALEX ON WINE

ALEX SALIBY

Does it matter where a wine comes from?

Prior to the 18th Century, it

was seldom that people made what we would call good wine.

There were times when nature and people’s efforts combined to create better wines, but it was the exception rather than the rule.

Skills changed in the 18th Century, and by the 19th Century, science began to play a major role in the winemaking efforts as grape growers and winemakers developed a better understanding of what went into the making of good wine.

But wine buyers remained ignorant.

From the mid 19th Century and well into the 20th Century, wine drinkers/consumers were victims of the marketing efforts of the wine merchants.

“No where else on earth,” the buyers were told by the British and French wine merchants, “could growers equal the vintage quality of the grapes grown in the Bordeaux and the Burgundy wine regions.”

This, we were told, was because of the terroir of the French wine regions. The conclusion we were all expected to reach was simple: the French wines were the best the world had to offer because they were made from grapes grown from the only place in the world capable of producing wines of this quality.

In France, the word terroir was a term applied to wine, coffee and tea to denote the special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bestowed upon particular produce. The idea behind the word was to convey the point that agricultural sites in the same region share similar soil, weather conditions and

farming techniques, all of which contribute to the unique qualities of the crop.

Enter the Judgments of Paris, May, 1976. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant who sold only French wines in his shop, organized the tasting event to silence the upstarts from California who claimed they made quality wines. At the tasting, a panel of French judges in a blind test rated the California wines superior to the French.

The nine French judges complained about the results, but they all took solace in their opinion that the French wines needed time in the cellar to develop, where as the California wines were good when young but would fade quickly.

That point too was shattered 30 years later May 2006, when the same panel reconvened to judge the same wines. Again, the California wines took top honors; they aged better than the French wines.

My goal here is not to belittle the French, for they make excellent wines in Bordeaux and Burgundy. I’m more interested in belittling the idea of terroir as a holy element of winemaking.

The fact is that vinifera grapes can be grown in a great many places around the world, and

March 2012 | The Good Life

from those grapes premium quality wines can be made that will stand as equal to any wines made anywhere else in the world.

So, what does all that mean when one talks of terroir or the region where wines are grown?

In my judgment, what this all means is that when it comes to the quality of wine in the bottle: n How the grapes were grown is of equal importance to where they were grown. n How the grapes were handled, and what the winemaker did with them is of paramount importance in producing an end product of true world class distinction.

Where do wines from Washington state fit into the picture?

I’m delighted to remind you of a series of blind tests in March of 2003 in San Francisco, Miami and New York where a bevy of red wines from Washington was judged against the best California and French Bordeaux wines.

In all three events, a Washington state wine took top honors.

The top finishers at the San Francisco event results were: 1. Gordon Brothers 1998 Tradition, Columbia Valley $40 retail.

2. DeLille Cellars 1998 Chaleur Estate, Yakima Valley

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$45 retail.

While at the bottom of the list were: 7. Chateau Cos d’Estournel 1996, St. Estephe $128 retail.

8. Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1996, Pauillac $278 retail.

The next time someone in a wine store says to you, “It’s a great wine: the grapes are from Pauillac, or Napa Valley, or Walla Walla,” don’t buy into that hype.

Find out, first, which house grew the grapes and which house fashioned the wines.

While wonderful wines can come from all those places, some pricey, mediocre wines can come from those same terroirs.

I like knowing that wonderful world class wines, often less expensive than the highly touted ones, are produced from many and varied wine growing regions around the world.

I especially like knowing that many of them are produced right here in Washington, and in our own NCW region.

Alex Saliby is a wine lover who spends far too much time reading about the grapes, the process of making wine and the wines themselves.

He can be contacted at alex39@msn. com.

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column THE TRAVELing DOCTOR

jim brown, m.d.

What’s that smell? A barking spider?

The Urban Dictionary says

that a “barking spider” is what farts are blamed on when there is no dog available.

I first saw this term used many years ago while reading a James Joyce novel.

The English word “fart” is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary. In 1607 members of the English parliament wrote a poem entitled “The Parliament Fart” as a protest against the conservative House of Lords and King James 1.

In 1755, Samuel Johnson’s dictionary included the word “fart.” In the early 20th century the term “fart” was considered a vulgar word in most English speaking cultures.

Writers Thomas Wolfe and Earnest Hemingway used the term in their writings. In the hippie movement in the 1970s the word became a noun to describe a detestable person.

The term “brain fart” is now used as a synonym for a “senior” moment” or a momentary lapse of forgetfulness.

Americans seem to be more interested in and humored by the passage of intestinal gas than those in most other cultures. Passing gas in public elicits laughter, frowns or wrinkled

up noses when the foul smell wafts into the air. This is especially true when they are unleashed in places like churches, classrooms, offices and libraries.

At an early age children find that “tooting” is a sort of funny act their body is doing. Universally children think tooting is very funny which their parents usually reinforce. One child said it was his “poop” talking.

One wonders about our fixation on this normal physiologic function that on average everyone experiences 22 times a day.

Flatulence is the means by which our body rids itself of unwanted intestinal gases and of our intestines’ unwanted pressure.

I still remember well, when in 1970, Dr. Michael Levitt, a Minnesota gastroenterologist, published a paper in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine titled “Studies On a Flatulent Patient.”

Dr. Levitt had a patient who complained bitterly of excessive foul flatulence and wanted an explanation for why he had such a miserable condition.

Dr. Levitt devised an experiment where he sent the patient home with test tubes instructing him to “capture” the gas and immediately cork the test tube.

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Americans seem to be more interested in and humored by the passage of intestinal gas than those in most other cultures.

The patient also recorded what he ate daily.

Dr. Levitt studied the gases produced by this man and continued his research on many more patients.

Dr. Levitt’s article was his first of 274 subsequent articles published in the medical literature about flatulence. He became known as “Doctor Fart” and was a popular speaker at various medical conventions. His talks were often the humorous highlights of these meetings.

He is still considered the world’s leading authority on flatulence. It is said that only in America could someone base his career on intestinal gas.

As Dr. Levitt said, “Farts have been good to me. I have done very well, thank you.” But he can’t leave his work in his laboratory because wherever he goes, wives complaining about their husband’s excessive farting approach him for answers.

What is the reason we pass gas anyway? The average man passes about one-half cup of gas and women one-third cup of gas with each fart.

Some people do have more flatulence than others. The reason for many is that they eat a lot more carbohydrates daily.

Undigested carbohydrate is processed in the colon by bac-

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teria, and the result is increased intestinal gas. Some people absorb these gases more efficiently than others, and they have less flatus.

Some people who are lactose intolerant do not digest this carbohydrate and have more intestinal gas and bloating until they avoid lactose altogether.

The single most gas producing food is baked beans. This “musical fruit” is made up of carbohydrates that are not well absorbed. Bacteria break down the residue in the colon and enzymes is fermented producing gas that has nowhere to go but out. Trying to hold back this gas can cause discomfort and is not recommended.

Besides baked beans, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are well known gas producers, as are grains and fiber. In fact, many of the most healthful foods are also the ones producing the most gas.

Other causes of flatulence are drinking large quantities of carbonated soda, drinking through a straw, eating too fast and eating “fast foods.”

Chewing gum, especially diet gum or eating diet candy that contains certain non-absorbed sweeteners will increase intestinal gas. Lack of exercise is a factor since exercise helps the absorption of gases from the colon.

“Silent but deadly” farts actually smell no worse than noisy ones; however it is harder to identify the offender. They are especially annoying when passed in enclosed spaces such as an airplane cabin.

Flatus is made up of a variety of gases including nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydro-

... remedies sold for intestinal gas are not particularly helpful. gen and methane. All these gases are odorless, and the smell is a result of sulfur mixing in with the flatus.

As many students discover from their own flatus experience, methane is combustible and produces a blue flame when lit.

Could methane gas possibly be one answer in helping our countries energy independence?

That is actually happening now in Skagit County, in northwest Washington.

“Farm Power” is a fairly new company that is producing electricity with its aerobic digesters that harvest methane gas from dairy cattle manure. They then burn the methane gas to create electricity for sale while sending the processed manure back to the partner farms as organic fertilizer free of pathogens and odor.

They also are reducing green house gases by thousands of tons a year. Just think of the possibilities this offers.

The various over-the-counter remedies sold for intestinal gas are not particularly helpful.

For people with unusually foul flatulence, especially those working in enclosed offices at desks, there is a device called the “Tooter Trapper” developed by a man who was banned from an office job because of his foul flatus. This is a cushion filled with charcoal that absorbs the gas.

I know that for most “normal” people a discussion about intestinal gas might not be particularly interesting, but to gastroenterologists it is a fun subject, made more “scientific” thanks to the research of Dr. Michael Levitt.

The Art Life

// SKETCHES OF LOCAL ARTISTS

Melissa Carlson: “The only really hard part about theater is when the show is over.”

directing is a new stage in melissa carlson’s life W

hen Melissa Carlson, as a first-time director, met with the cast of Harvey last fall, her confidence came from months of line-by-line preparation with script and staging.

It was also inspired by years of acting with Music Theater of Wenatchee directors who had taught her, by osmosis, the tricks of the trade.

“The biggest lessons they instilled in me were to have a clear vision, let everyone involved know exactly what you expect of them, and make very good use of the actors’ time.”

Her organizing skills streamlined the rehearsals, and her on-stage experience helped with the more technical directing duties. She’s savvy about preparing actors: “When I was Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I created a really meticulous back story for her character, and I tried the same thing with this cast.

Jim Brown, M.D., is a semi-retired gastroenterologist who has practiced for It really worked, even with a 38 years in the Wenatchee area. He is comedy.” a former CEO of the Wenatchee Valley Her other directorial chalMedical Center.

March 2012 | The Good Life

lenge was blocking, planning precise movements during every scene. “I’d been on that threesided Playhouse stage so much that I was really aware of how to position actors. It’s tricky — at every second, each person in the audience needs to see someone’s face.”

The show did very well.

She said, “It was a daunting task at first, but I’m amazed at how much fun I had. It was a completely different type of satisfaction.” Melissa continued, “The only really hard part about theater — acting or directing — is when the show is over. It’s sad to see it end.”

Melissa, 37, grew up in the Wenatchee Youth Theater, a now-gone phenomenon that guided area school kids to produce, direct, build, create costumes, sing, dance and act at a young (and fearless) age.

As an adult, she took on longer and stronger roles, and found that the more time she devoted to theater, the more she needed the camaraderie, the sense of accomplishment, and, yes — performers, be honest — the warmth of the spotlight and the adrenalin rush of applause.

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hit, she had a jobless period to reconsider what mattered in her life. It turned out that included even more long dedicated hours at Riverside Playhouse.

Melissa returned to Wenatchee in 2009, with a new “day job” and a renewed appreciation for her theatrical roots.

She said, “I was in the light booth of Drowsy Chaperon, and I became teary-eyed... at that moment I realized I had really come home.”

Running lights, producing (“That’s everything about a show that doesn’t happen directly on stage,” she explained) and finally directing have all stretched her talents, and she’s eager to see how much more she can learn and do in the theater.

She’ll work on Xanadu, the Apple Blossom show, then another in September, and maybe someday she’ll restart a youth program, or write a script of her own.

For Melissa, directing Harvey was a crucial step in a new direction.

She said, “This year-long process has taught me so much — not just about theater, but about myself and what I can do if I only try!”

— by Susan Lagsdin

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WHAT TO DO

We want to know of fun and interesting local events. Send info to: donna@ncwgoodlife.com

Mission: Improv, 3/1, 7 p.m. & every Thursday. Free open workshop, theater games for novice and experienced players. Fun and casual. Riverside Playhouse. Info: www.mtow.org.

WV Chamber Banquet, 3/1, 5:30 p.m. Dinner at 6:30 p.m. Entertainment, lavish table decorations and prizes, raffle, silent auction and no-host bar. Wenatchee Convention Center. Cost: $42 for members, $55 for non-members. Info: Diane

662-2116.

Special Olympics Winter Games, 3/2 – 4. Alpine skiing and snowboarding will take place at Mission Ridge. Basketball, figure and speed skating at the Town Toyota Center. Cross country skiing in Leavenworth.

Gallery 4 South, 3/2, 5 – 8 p.m.

Yury Volkov, a Russian impressionist, will be highlighted. Enjoy the art, conversation and hors d’oeuvres. Cost: free. Yury’s show runs through March.

Wenatchee First Fridays, 3/2, 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. Walk downtown for

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art, music, dining and entertainment. Downtown Wenatchee.

2 Rivers Art Gallery, 3/2, 5 – 8 p.m. Two Rivers Gallery celebrates its third anniversary by featuring all of its emerging and professional artists. Live music by guitarist Kirk Lewellen. Introducing the wines of White Heron Cellars. Complimentary refreshments. 102 N Columbia, Wenatchee. Cost: free.

Honoring Teachers, 3/2, 5 p.m.

Photographs and artifacts from the museum will be on display in honor of our area’s teachers and all they do for the community and its children. Refreshments. The reception

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is part of Wenatchee First Fridays; maps to other venues are available in the museum lobby. Cost: free.

Foodways and Byways: the Story of Food in NC Washington, 3/2, 7 p.m. In the half-hour video, people of Latino, Tribal and European decent share stories of past and present food harvest, processing and distribution practices that work. Through a tapestry of music, video and photographs viewers hear from old-timers what worked and from young people why it matters. First-hand interviews show how growing, harvesting and sharing food strengthens community and family bonds. Video will be

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WHAT TO DO

We want to know of fun and interesting local events. Send info to: donna@ncwgoodlife.com

followed by Q&A discussion. The Barn at Barn Beach Reserve, Leavenworth. Info: barnbeachreserve. org.

A Kaleidoscope of American Music, 3/2, 7:30 p.m. The Columbia Chorale performs at the First Presbyterian Church, 1400 S Miller.

Cost: $15 adults, $8 students 18 and under.

Wenatchee Valley Symphony Orchestra, 3/3, 7 p.m. Concert III: Piano pieces. Performing Arts Center. Cost: $20 adults main floor, students $10, $25 balcony. Info: pacwen.org.

Book Signing, 3/3, 1 – 3 p.m. Hastings. The Diaries of Betty Cora Johnson 1885 - 1886 – 1887 – 1898 and the Diary of Lewis Hamilton Titchenal – 1887 And Other Historical Documents by Vera Zachow.

Underground Blues Jam, 3/5, 7:30 - 10 p.m. Open blues jam every first Monday of the month. 10 Below, 29 N. Columbia side B. Info: Joe Guimond 664-4077.

MozArt Group, 3/6, 7:30 p.m. The music of Mozart . . . funny? You’ll think so after experiencing the MozART Group. This quartet of classically trained, well-educated instrumentalists perform classical music in a very funny way. Performing Arts Center. Cost: $43 adults, $39 seniors, $37 students 16 and under. Info: pacwen.org.

Home and Garden Show, 3/9-11.

Town Toyota Center. Cost: free.

MUSIC FOR THE HEART AND SOUL, 3/9, 7 p.m. Proceeds from the concert will benefit Mobile Meals of Wenatchee, a United Way nonprofit organization that provides hot meals to clients that qualify to remain in their homes. Entertainment by The Old Time Fiddlers, The Wenatchee Apollo Club, Wenatchee Appleaires Choral Society, Leavenworth Village Voices, Columbia Chorale, Common Bond, Eastmont Chamber Choir, and Mariachi Huenachi. First United Methodist Church, 941 Washington Street, Wenatchee. Cost: $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Info: 665-6254 or mobilemealsofwenatchee.org Polar Plunge, 3/10, 11 a.m. Take a dip in the icy waters of the Columbia at Walla Walla Point Park and help raise funds and win prizes.

Proceeds help Special Olympics

Washington. Info: wenatcheeplunge2012.kintera.org.

Family ArtVentures: Shadow Puppets, 3/10, 10 a.m. – noon.

Shadow puppets inspired by artists from Russia, China and Indonesia are the focus of this workshop.

Mark Wavra will help students create shadow puppets to resemble the traditional rod-operated puppet form made from translucent punched and painted leather and decorated wood. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Cost: $5. Info: wvmcc.org.

Auction for the Animals, 3/10, 5:30 p.m. Wenatchee Valley Humane Society dinner buffet, silent auction and live auction. Proceeds for a new shelter for the animals.

Red Lion Hotel. Cost: $35. Info: wenatcheehumane.org.

Empty Bowls, 3/10, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Paint your own ceramic bowl, then once your bowl is fired pick it up 4/14 for a soup and bread supper at the Wenatchee Community Center. Proceeds benefit the Wenatchee Food Distribution Center. Wenatchee Public Library. Cost: $15 per bowl. Info: Annie 662-6156.

Chelan Valley Mobilepack Event, 3/16-17, 5 p.m. The Lake Chelan Valley is working with Feed My Starving Children to pack 100,000 balanced meals for undernourished children in other countries. Chelan Fruit Cooperative, 8 Howser Rd. Info: fundraising.fmsc.org/faf/home/default. asp?ievent=1008282 The History of Fish and Fishing in NCW, 3/16, 7 p.m. Dennis Dauble, a longtime Northwest resident and expert in regional fish and waterways, will give a talk on the history of fish and fishing in North Central Washington and Columbia Basin. He will be on hand to sign his book, Fishes of the Columbia Basin.

The Barn at Barn Beach Reserve, Leavenworth. Cost: free.

High School Regional Art Show, 3/17, 1 – 3 p.m. The exhibit consists of the best work from students throughout NCW. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center.

St. Patrick’s Parade 4 Dogs and Kids, 3/17, downtown Chelan.

Dress up your kids and your dogs and join in the parade.

St. Patrick’s Parade, 3/17, 7ish.

The shortest parade in the world.

One block long at the corner of Orondo and Mission Streets, downtown Wenatchee.

EANT, 3/17, 7 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center of Wenatchee.

Tickets are $18 per person or $15 for students or seniors, and can be purchased at the PAC box office, online at www.pacwen.org, or by phone at 663-2787.

Bergman & Borge Comedy Cabaret, 3/17, 7:30 p.m. Master musicians Stuart Williams, Sara Comer, Dave Cahn and Sherry Nevins return for three days of fantastic fiddle and guitar workshops, with jamming, band labs, barn dances, calling classes, and winter fun. Space available - great for families and musicians of all ages. Icicle Creek Center for the Arts, 7409 Icicle Rd, Leavenworth.

Info: icicle.org.

Mad about Merlot, 3/19, 4 p.m.

Taste some of Wenatchee Wine Country Merlots at The Grape, 2 D St, Quincy. Cost: $2. Info: Wenatchee.org.

Environmental Film: Bag It, 3/20, 7 p.m. Filmmaker Jeb Berrier embarks on a global tour to unravel the complexities of our plastic world while making a pledge to stop using plastic bags.

This 80-minute documentary ad-

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March 27, 2012

12:00 - 1:30 (Doors open at 11:30) Wenatchee Convention Center

HONORING Entrepreneur of the Year Future Technology Leaders Tech Savvy Business of the Year

GWATA members $25; non-members $30 Register online at www.gwata.org or call 509-661-9000

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>>

WHAT TO DO

We want to know of fun and interesting local events. Send info to: donna@ncwgoodlife.com

}}} Continued from previous page dresses the questions of: What is plastic made of? Is it recyclable?

Does it decompose when it ends up in the landfill? Does plastic have negative health effects? What are our alternatives? Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Info: wvmcc.org.

Sensational Syrah Night, 3/21, 5 p.m. Wenatchee Wine Country will have some Syrahs at Tastebuds, 5th and Mission, Wenatchee.

Reservations recommended: 8882783. Cost: $9.

Wine 101 and Wine and Food Pairing, 3/22, 6 p.m. Join wine expert Barb Robertson of the Wine Bin/Mission Street Bistro as she explains about the characteristics and sample six different wine varietals made by Wenatchee Wine Country wine makers. Cost: $15. Barb will explain how the tannins and acids of wines complements the food served and visa versa. Different wines will be served with small plates of food from the Ivy Wild

Inn. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Cost: $35, or $45 for both. Info: wenatcheewines. com or 669-5808.

Film Festival, 3/23 – 25. Five award-winning international documentary films of hope, inspiration, challenge and change. All proceeds go to support local non-profit organizations. Icicle Creek Center for the Arts. Info: icicle.org.

Red Blend Tasting Night, 3/23, 4 p.m. Try several red blend wines from Wenatchee Wine Country at the Wine Thief, 1604 N Wenatchee Ave. Cost: $5.

In the Mood to Dance Gala, 3/24, 6 p.m. Featuring the Wenatchee Big Band. Wenatchee Golf and Country Club.

Kite Festival, 3/24, noon – 5 p.m.

Over 150 free kites for kids, food vendors, kite paraphernalia and a kite-fighting team on hand to demonstrate their skills. Prizes for best kites awarded. Kiwanis Park right in the city of Entiat along Highway 97A. Info: Alan Moen 784-5101.

March Madness Wine Walk, 3/24, 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. The merchants in downtown Wenatchee will

host local wineries for you to sip, shop and celebrate spring. $20 for 15 tastes of wine and a souvenir glass. The fun starts at Davis Furniture, 125 S. Wenatchee Ave. Purchase tickets at the event. Info: Wenatchee.org.

WVMCC Awards Gala and Silent Auction, 3/24, 6 p.m.

Support the museum by bidding on auction items including art, elegant dinners, experiences and outings, family genealogy, event tickets and many other functional and fabulous items you just can’t do without.

The gala features live music, hors d’oeuvres, regional wines and other beverages. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Info: wvmcc.org The Art of Music, 3/25, auction 3 p.m., music 4 p.m. A musical extravaganza, art exhibit and silent auction, featuring Wenatchee Big Band, Wenatchee High School Chamber Singers and Mariachi Huenachi, and featuring special guests Dr. Randy Wagner, professor of voice and director of choral activities at Eastern Washington University, and Scott Miller, director of voice studies at Whitworth University. Performing Arts Center of Wenatchee. Tickets: $25 per person at the box office, online at www. pacwen.org or by calling 663-ARTS (2787).

Innovator Awards Luncheon, 3/27, noon – 1:30 p.m. This networking and learning opportunity will culminate with the presentation of GWATA’s Innovator of the Year awards: Tech Savvy Business of the Year, Entrepreneur of the

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Year, and Future Technology Leaders, recognizing area entrepreneurs for their outstanding contribution to advancement of technology in North Central Washington.

Wenatchee Convention Center.

Info: gwata.org.

Zorro, 3/29, 6:30 p.m. Children’s musical with exciting costumes, dance and heroic themes of patriotism, leadership, family and courage. Performing Arts Center.

Cost: $20 adults, $15 seniors, $17 students, $13 under 16. Info: pacwen.org.

Naomi Niskala in Concert, 3/31, 7:30 p.m. A program of Brahms, Mendelsohn and Ravel. A critically acclaimed artist whose performances take her across the world, Niskala is a soloist, chamber musician, competition winner and broadcast artist whose performances have been presented on BBC Radio and NPR. Canyon Wren Hall, Leavenworth. Cost: $8-$20.

Info: icicle.org.

Japanese Spring Tea, 3/31, 11 a.m.

A Japanese Tea Ceremony presented by the Urasenke Foundation of Seattle. Attendees will participate in a traditional tea ceremony while enjoying a frothy bowl of whipped powdered green tea and a seasonal Kyoto-style sweet. A discussion of the purpose, cultural context, and contemporary relevance of this influential 400-year-old art form will be supplemented by a Q & A session at the conclusion of the ceremony. Reservations required, 888-6240. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Info: wvmcc.org.

The Art Life

// SKETCHES OF LOCAL ARTISTS

Carving away the wood to find the art inside M

aybe an obvious question for lifelong wood carver Michael Keller is: “So, what’s so good about wood?”

A pause. Then he answers: “I love wood... the way it feels. It usually smells good. And, I can work it,” He smiled, mimicked hefting. “Unlike stone.”

And the demanding process of carving? “I see what’s in it. Then I just go get it.”

Mike does bear the scars of his affection. “It’s not so bad working with mallet tools, but some times when you’re holding a piece tight, those little knives ...”

He shows a recent thumb gouge.

“We’ve all got ’em. Every carver I know.”

Michael lives on a high ridge above Lake Chelan in a home he and his wife designed and built 10 years ago, after his strategic retreat from a long career of regulatory compliance in the securities industry. (Yes, as serious as it sounds, and as far from his art as can be.)

He is a professional, an awardwinning wood sculptor — think four-digit art pieces — who doesn’t mind, in fact revels in, “whittling,” teaching kids and gathering weekly with friends to talk tools and trade tips.

His big downstairs workshop, White Eagle Studios, is a sensual delight: a subtle aroma of shavings, sunlight glancing off snow into big windows, myriad collections of intricate tools and carefully numbered stacks of Wisconsin bass wood, Montana red cedar, mahogany and a little chunk of a dark, long buried tree from New Zealand.

Barrels of ornately carved walking sticks front shelves

Wood carver Michael Keller cuts a wide niche, but his personal themes involve Native Americans and eagles.

BELOW: An early work, this burl with two sculpted portraits won multiple awards for Michael.

where humorous foot-tall caricatures rest next to massive, spiritually evocative sculptures. The workshop floor is spotless, the tidy workspaces with clamps and storage niches juxtaposed to custommade cabinetry displaying meticulously calibrated knives and chisels. Even jampacked with tools of the trade, his studio is a serene place to work.

Making art and marketing art — some with fourdigit prices — aren’t always congruent, but Mike’s realistic about the commercial aspect. “My personal themes are Native Americans and eagles — that’s what I really care about most. But these particular pieces (he offers a feather-light handsized seashell) have a lot of appeal.”

He has also discovered that his March 2012 | The Good Life

small bronzed carvings, cast in multiples up to 100, often leave the sales booth before the major works. His website and blog link him with woodworkers of the world, and he’s eager to share his expertise.

But the best part of all the networking and promotion? It doesn’t matter as much as the www.ncwgoodlife.com

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art.

Michael loves cutting into wood, always has, since his artist grandmother taught him to whittle. (No chip-chipping away for him: “I believe in long, clean cuts.

And a distinct follow through.”) He wields his tools with a surgeon’s skill and an artist’s passion.

He excused a slight tremor in his hand with, “Oh, it’s something I‘ve had a long time. But as soon as the blade hits the wood, it’s gone!”

Michael is respectful of that part of his art that seems almost magical. He said, “Sometimes I’ll finish a piece and think: ‘When did I do that?’

‘Where did that come from?’ It’s like an energy or spirit helping me along.”

To see more of his work, visit: www.WhiteEagleStudios.com.

— by Susan Lagsdin

>>

column those were the days

rod molzahn

Fast flood swept away people and houses The Wenatchee Daily

World called it, “a tragedy, a catastrophe,” and “the worst disaster that has ever befallen this community.”

It was Saturday afternoon, Sept. 5, 1925. Rain began to fall about 3 p.m. over the Squilchuck watershed. A ferocious thunderstorm developed and quickly turned every small stream and dry gulch into a rolling torrent racing to Squilchuck Creek carrying dislodged boulders and uprooted trees.

In the upper creek the Workers look through debris — including ties and rails —in the Appleyard following water rose with alarming the cloudbust and flood of Sept. 5, 1925. Photo from Wenatchee Valley Museum & speed, picking up more trees, debris and boulders as Cultural Center #88-108-1747 large as a ton or more. began to rival the storm’s thunwith piles of orchard prunings, At the first narrow spot der. old wire and trash. They were on the creek, already choked by New dams formed at sucswallowed up and added to the previous debris, a dam formed. ceeding narrow and obstructed roiling mass that now reached a Water rose behind it until the places on the creek, and as each height of 10 to 15 feet. pressure was so great the dam dam failed, it released an even In 1925 the last few hundred broke, releasing a wall of mud, bigger floodwall. yards of Squilchuck Creek water and debris that tore downWhen it reached the area near passed through a narrow and stream lifting out new rocks and the mouth of Pitcher Canyon steep channel crossed by a trees in its path. the creek banks were littered bridge for the Malaga Road.

The roar of the rushing flood

Ahhh...

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| March 2012

A little after 4 p.m., the final dam formed at the upper end of the channel, slowing, for a short time, the raging onslaught of boulders, tree stumps, mud and other debris.

When the dam broke, a flood wall of 20 to 30 feet in height swept down on the people and buildings below.

An auto tourist camp along the banks of the creek was first.

Ten cars were carried away towards the Columbia. Below the camp five houses stood in the flood’s path. All were destroyed.

No one was home at the Currence or Miles homes but the Smythe home was crushed with Mrs. Smythe inside.

The Groff home was next. Mrs. Groff and 11-year-old Harold escaped with serious injuries but the other four Groff children were tumbled downstream with their shattered house.

The brown wall of water overtopped and threatened the bridge and, filled with its load of building remains and boulders, slammed into the Springwater Hotel on the west side of the Malaga Road destroying immediately the first floor and washing it away.

The upper two floors were carried 60 feet across the road and into the Terminal Hotel. Fifteen railroad men standing on the porch of the Terminal Hotel ran for their lives as the floodwall and the Springwater Hotel came at them.

Mr. A. J. Ayers, one of the men on the porch, recalled, “We noticed the creek beginning to rise but owing to the thunder, we did not hear the flood coming until it was nearly upon us. Then we ran from the porch of the hotel

Marketplace

In those 10 minutes of peak flood, destruction and death spread across the Appleyard and the community of South Wenatchee. toward the hillside. The wall of water looked like a mountain.”

That mountain of water rushed and spread across the Great Northern Terminal Rail Yard, upsetting some cars and burying others above their axles in mud. It left debris piles 30 feet deep over the tracks before pouring into the Columbia River.

W.J. McKay said, “The water was at its height for a period of only 10 minutes, and 15 minutes after the flood struck one could walk across on the (Malaga Road) bridge.”

In those 10 minutes of peak flood, destruction and death spread across the Appleyard and the community of South Wenatchee.

The debris piles held the remains of houses, the metal of twisted autos and 16 bodies.

Among the dead were eight children ages one to 11 including four of the five Groff children.

Eight-year-old Mary was found first, then Florence, four, and George, one, were uncovered clasped arm in arm together.

Six-year-old Alice was discovered deeper in the wreckage.

Mrs. Dominick McDonald, her two daughters and their housekeeper, Ellen Butts, were overtaken in their car as they sat in front of the terminal Hotel.

Six-year-old Bernice McDonald was dug out the next day, saved by twisted metal, a house door and the protecting arms of the dead housekeeper.

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After the 1925 cloudburst that hit South Wenatchee, floodwaters pushed the Springwater Hotel, seen at the right, across the street and into New Terminal Hotel. Photo from Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center #88-108-414

Others also survived, none more remarkable then fourmonth-old Louis Palmer. He was plucked out by his arm from the flood by a Great Northern employee, Miss L.M. Lovegrave, only moments before he would have been carried into the Columbia.

For three days, a big black dog, muddy and limping, searched the wreckage and looked into the faces of survivors and rescuers. “He’s hunting for Mrs. Smythe,” one said. “He belonged to her.”

The body of Mrs. Letha Smythe was not found until Tuesday. It was the last one recovered.

Historian, actor and teacher Rod Molzahn can be reached at shake. speak@frontier.com. His third history CD, Legends & Legacies Vol. III - Stories of Wenatchee and North Central Washington, is now available at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center and at other locations throughout the area.

March 2012 | The Good Life

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>>

FUN STUFF // check out these activities

5 reasons to venture out “I

t’s the wandering dog that finds the bone,” or so goes an old proverb.

And what it means is if you don’t get out and look in unexpected places, you may go hungry tonight. And if not exactly hungry, in the sense of having an empty stomach, at least hungry in the sense of mental stagnation... to be more blunt, try something new or you risk becoming bored and boring.

OK, enough preaching.

Here are some ideas to check out this coming month that could be dog piles of fun.

Music for the heart and soul Several local

groups — each one that could headline a concert by itself — are coming together in one night for a benefit for Mobile Meals

of Wenatchee, a United Way non-profit organization that provides hot meals to clients that qualify to remain in their homes. The entertainment will be by The Old Time Fiddlers, The Wenatchee Apollo Club, Wenatchee Appleaires Choral Society, Leavenworth Village Voices, Columbia Chorale, Common Bond, Eastmont Chamber Choir, and Mariachi Huenachi. 7 p.m. Friday, March 9. First United Methodist Church, 941 Washington Street, Wenatchee. Cost: $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Info: 665-6254 or mobilemealsofwenatchee.org

Polar plunge

You say you missed the Jan. 1 jump into very cold river water to celebrate the New Year? You say the warm

weather of spring is coming too fast? You say you’re ready to leap into something new?

Take a dip in the icy waters of the Columbia at Walla Walla Point Park and help raise funds and win prizes.

11 a.m. Saturday, March 10. Proceeds help Special Olympics Washington.

Info: wenatcheeplunge2012. kintera.org.

EMTs will be within easy call.

Auction for the animals Wenatchee

Valley Humane Society will offer a dinner buffet, silent auction and live auction Saturday, March 10, at 5:30.

Proceeds for a new shelter for the animals. Red Lion Hotel.

Cost: $35. Info: wenatcheehumane.org.

St. Paddy be proud “The world’s

shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade” — as promoters claim every year — will be Saturday, March 17, starting around 7ish at the corner of Orondo and Mission streets in downtown Wenatchee.

We can tell you from perThe Special Olympics of Wenatchee Polar Bear Plunge brings an eclectic group of local residents to sonal experience that there dip in the Columbia River’s icy water. Photo by Matt is a bit of standing around if Radford of Mad Rooster Photography and Marketyou’re early, but if you’re late, ing

Japanese Tea Ceremony & Kimono Demonstration Saturday, March 31 10 a.m.-noon

Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center

Tickets 888-6240 or store.wvmcc.org

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| The Good Life

www.ncwgoodlife.com

| March 2012

well the parade will have passed you by.

Kite festival

Every year in the spring, it’s windy around here.

What can you do about it?

The good folks in Entiat have decided to harness the free wind power for a kite festival on Saturday, March 24, from noon to 5 p.m.

Over 150 free kites for kids, food vendors, kite paraphernalia and a kite-fighting team on hand to demonstrate their skills.

Prizes for best kites awarded.

Kiwanis Park right in the city of Entiat along Highway 97A. Info: Alan Moen 784-5101.

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Visit www.chelanpud.org to learn more and to locate a participating retailer.

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