Good Life September 2011

A H t

WENATCHEE VALLEY’S #1 MAGAZINE

om e

Fr for esh id the eas ho me IN

SIDE

September 2011

Cover price: $3

THE don’t wait PROJECT ®

Overcoming sadness with action plus GOLD FEVER!

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OPENING SHOT ®

Year 5, Number 9 September 2011 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

colors in the fountain “In May of this year I made

the transition from real estate to photography full time, specializing in real estate photography,” writes local photographer Travis Knoop in telling the story about the photo above.

“One of the first things I did was join the Photography Association of Wenatchee, a small group that hosts a website and has monthly get-togethers and assignments. In June the group was planning on meeting at the Performing Arts Center. I was unable to attend but when

I saw some of the photos being posted on the website, I decided I wanted to try a few things too.

“I went down to the P.A.C. on the evening of June 21 to wander around trying for some night shots and to see what caught my eye. It didn’t take long to gravitate to the fountain and start trying different settings.

“I had only been down there in the daytime and had no idea that it was even lit up at night.

Although it was ‘evening’ it was far from dark; I wanted to use a longer exposure to smooth the water but not so long that it lightened the sky too much.

This photo was taken at 8:45 p.m. on the longest day of the

year with a Canon 60D and Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens.

I ended up exposing the image for 15 seconds to get the results I was looking for.”

Travis said that although his current focus is real estate photography, he enjoys shooting landscapes when out hiking, backpacking and snowboarding.

Examples of his images can be found at www.TravisKnoopPhotography.com.

On the cover

Lisa Bradshaw is launching a drive to promote her book and her message of “don’t wait.”

Photo by editor Mike Cassidy.

Editor/Publisher, Mike Cassidy Contributors, Travis Knoop, Beverly Jagla, Andy Dappen, Lisa Bradshaw, Nancy Albert, Jimmy McGregor, Suzie Hollingsworth, Bonnie Orr, Alex Saliby, Jim Brown, June Darling, Dan McConnell, Susan Lagsdin and Rod Molzahn Advertising sales, John Hunter and Donna Cassidy Bookkeeping and circulation, Donna Cassidy Proofing, Joyce Pittsinger Ad design, Rick Conant 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), Eastmont Pharmacy, Martin’s Market Place (Cashmere), A Book for All Seasons (Leavenworth) and the Food Pavilions in Wenatchee and East Wenatchee 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

The Good Life® is a registered trademark of NCW Good Life, LLC. Copyright 2011

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Contents

page 12

editor’s notes

MIKE CASSIDY

Living in the sweet spot of life

Panning for gold has cool rewards

Another bad day at black

Julene McGregor Features

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BACK TO NORWAY

Local women find the homes — the actual houses — of their courageous ancestors

7 thank you, helmet

Outdoor enthusiast Andy Dappen takes a short flight — and luckily lands on his head

8 don’t wait for a better day

Lisa Bradshaw has written a memoir about becoming a young widow and is now promoting the message of living fuller today

11 sending a message

Book author Nancy Albert has several stories to tell — and wants to hear stories back from her readers

14 laid off but not laid to waste

Illustrator sketches his near-life experiences as he deals with becoming unemployed

16 At Home

with

The Good Life

• New home is a cliff hanger • Good stuff — Bret Duffin makes furniture with a story

Columns & Departments 22 Alex Saliby: How to make a good wine go bad 23 Bonnie Orr: You’ll flip over these eggplant pancakes 24 The traveling doctor: The inner richness of aging 26 June Darling: Secret to motivating people 27-31 Events, The Art Life & a Dan McConnell cartoon 32 History: Seeking gold in the Wenatchee Valley 34 Fun Stuff: 5 activities to check out

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rock.

Wall Street took a sickening fall the first of August, bumming — and burning — investors just like the tech bomb of 2001 and the dizzy fall of 2008.

But, if life has taught me anything, it’s not the money you have in the bank (or in stocks) that counts but what you are doing with life right now.

Here at The Good Life, we love to find people in the sweet spot of their lives.

Rhett Hoffmeister is not our usual subject for a story — we generally concentrate on what people are doing away from work. Rhett’s story is about his work as a book publisher.

As I listened to Rhett, I tried to wrap my head around the concept of a book publisher working out of a spare bedroom practically in the shadow of Saddle Rock. Book publishers are supposed to be in New York, or at least San Francisco. They are supposed to have a bevy of English Lit graduates running proofs around, with the art studio down the hall.

Yet, Rhett’s company, Rhemalda Publishing, has nine books in the marketplace, with more on the way. And it’s clear when Rhett talks about working with an artist in Germany, writers throughout the U.S. and an editor across the mountains, he is working on the good life by creating a business around his personal sweet spot between his skills and his dreams.

A person who has her life back in the sweet spot is Lisa Bradshaw. Widowed as a young mother, she has written a book

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of her experiences.

But that’s not all. Rather than dwell on the past and its sadness, she is rolling with a new project to encourage everyone to “don’t wait.”

“If your marriage is broken, don’t wait to get help to fix it.

If your grandmother gifted you her heirloom china, don’t wait to use it as a tradition in your own home,” she writes.

Lisa is so in the zone that during her upcoming book tour, she plans to collect examples of people not waiting on tomorrow to share over Facebook and her radio show.

Bret Duffin has found the sweet spot in his life to be in a little less populated place.

Bret had a production cabinet shop on the other side of the mountains before moving here to build homes. He was good at it, and his homes had a reputation for craftsmanship.

Yet, as a builder, “the busier you are, the less hands-on time you have — to be successful, you are driving around talking on the phone all the time… I always had the desire to get back to the shop.”

He satisfied his desire a couple of years ago. By the time this issue comes out, Bret expects to be back in the work world, but he plans to keep his furniture shop in his barn, where often using non-power tools he works alone to create comfortable and beautiful furniture that springs from his own imagination.

Do what you want to do, be who you want to be. Enjoy The Good Life.

— Mike

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BUCKET LIST

Back to Norway: finding the homes of 2 courageous ancestors

By Beverly Jagla

“Harbors open their doors

to the young searching foreigner” is the beginning line of the Neil Sedaka song The Immigrant.

Every time I’ve heard that song, it has created images of my Norwegian grandparents who left their native land for America in the 1890s. “Now he arrives with hopes and his heart set on miracles” the song continues.

What courage it must have taken to sail away from their homeland, knowing they very likely would never again see their parents and most siblings. One can only imagine the mixture of feelings they experienced.

The dream of traveling to Norway to find the birthplaces of my maternal grandparents has always been at the top of my bucket list.

Earlier this summer, I fulfilled that dream.

Accompanied by my youngest daughter, Debra McGill, we

TOP: The Dyven Farm house, where Grandmother Guvi (above right as a young woman) left when she immigrated in 1899. ABOVE: Debra McGill and Beverly Jagla flank Oddgeir Johanssons, who through research found Grandpa Gregor’s home and farm.

spent two weeks in Norway and were successful in not only finding, but also getting inside of

September 2011 | The Good Life

both 200-plus year old houses of my grandparents and exploring the old family farms.

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Through the magic of Internet and some detective work, we

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Back to Norway }}} Continued from previous page were able to find and connect with distant cousins and neighbors who were only too eager to help us with our quest.

Arriving in Oslo, we discovered a city of immense beauty and history.

From Oslo, we drove two hours northwest to the village of Bagn, where my Grandmother Guri was born in 1875 and lived until she immigrated in 1899.

The house and farm had been acquired by her family in 1830.

As tradition would dictate, the Dyven Farm was passed from the father to the oldest son, Anders, who had six children.

My grandmother, his sister, must have felt her future was not there and decided to travel to Minnesota to join a sister who had immigrated earlier. Three of Anders’ daughters continued to live on the farm and run it until their deaths.

We had connected via Internet with the current owner who met us and drove us up to the old farm. We crawled through a fence, tromped through waisthigh grass, walked over a knoll and there it was!

The large farmhouse has sat abandoned since the last daughter of Anders died in 1984. It was a time capsule! Furniture, dishes, clothing, photographs and farm equipment had been untouched since that time.

Lace curtains still hung at the windows. A photograph of my grandparents sat on the top of a cabinet in the parlor looking down at us. The house never had indoor plumbing. Wood burning stoves sat in each room.

We were invited to take any photos or other memorabilia. A previously unseen photo of my grandmother taken prior to her immigration was the prize. It was difficult to leave the house and walk away.

Next, we took two days to drive the winding, mountainous

roads across southern Norway to begin our coastal voyage at Bergen on a Hurtigruten ship, which functions as both a mail and passenger vessel. It makes over 30 stops as it travels north.

After five days of breathtaking scenery in and out of fjords, we arrived at Harstad, the 1870 birthplace of my grandfather, Johan Gregor. We were greeted as we disembarked by my second cousin, Oddgeir Johansson, whom I had met in 1968 when he and his family visited Washington State.

He was only 11 at the time and our families had totally lost contact with each other over the years. Finding him after all that time was a huge challenge.

I started with Facebook and found three “Oddgeir Johanssons” in Norway. None was the correct one but one of them offered to help me find the right Oddgeir.

I sent a letter off to him with my information and hoped for the best. The letter was forward-

ed to a fourth “Oddgeir” who was still not the right one but his wife decided to start calling everyone she could find in Norway with that name! About the fifth call, she found “my Oddgeir” who was totally delighted to reconnect after 43 years.

His email brought tears to my eyes. Children in Norway begin learning English at age 6 so he, his wife and three sons all spoke flawless English and were wonderful hosts.

Prior to our trip, I had sent Oddgeir a photo from my mother’s album of Grandpa Gregor’s home and farm, which I knew were on a fjord near Harstad.

Oddgeir did some research and found the old house and farm.

Better yet, he contacted the present owner to ask if we could visit.

The current owner’s grandfather had bought the farm from my great-grandparents in 1890 and she knew a lot about the family history. Once again, we were in awe of what we were experiencing. Not only was she able to share a lot of family information, but she also recounted WWII and the German occupation of Norway.

The Gregor family left Norway for America in 1892. My grandparents met on a train traveling from Minnesota to Whatcom County in 1899 where they married and began farming and raising a family. The rest is history; my family’s history.

After two days in Harstad, we continued our journey on the Hurtigruten up to Kirkenes, which is eight miles from the Russian border. From there we flew back to Oslo and then home via London.

We left Oslo just four days before the tragic bombing and shootings in late July. It has been difficult to fathom such an incident happening in a country that is so peaceful and beautiful.

Beverly Jagla a retired Eastmont administrator and Debra McGill teaches at Sterling Intermediate School.

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guest column // andy dappen

Flying off bike is fine, but landing requires a helmet Recently I purchased a new-

to-me mountain bike that has considerably better components and much better geometry for my size than my old bike.

The good news is that this bike lets me ride rough terrain lots faster. Some would say that’s also the bad news.

On a recent ride, I was enjoying taking some little air hitting the whoop-dee-dos of the water bars intersecting the trail. The first few little jumps felt good so I ramped up the speed.

The next few water bars felt good, so it was time to try flying a little farther still... with more speed.

OK, you see where this tale about flying is headed, don’t you?

Naturally, I quickly came face to face with the Peter Principle.

Extra speed combined with a water bar that had a much steeper pitch than the preceding water bars sent me flying over the handlebars.

The flight itself was awesome.

Unfortunately it was a horrible two-point landing distributed equally between the left side of my head and my left shoulder. It was so violent and with so little rolling to dissipate the force that I was sure serious injury had ensued. Frankly, I thought a broken neck was going to be the aftermath of this incompetent landing.

I lay there for a minute taking stock. Hmmm, no tingling in the fingers or toes like the last time I broke my neck six years ago. But the headache was intense. I waited to see if a

contusion in the skull would apply pressure to the brain and black me out.

By now my partner had turned around, found me in a heap, and was checking my pupils. “Any oddity in dilations probably has more to do with my heroin addiction than this fall,” I told him.

Ray figured all was well if I was joking around but informed me all was not well with my helmet. It was squashed and the left side was fractured into six pieces.

So let me give thanks to a helmet that had been with me for over 15 years and, that on this day, sacrificed its welfare to protect mine. It took the bullet. Without it, I’m certain I would be typing unintelligible sequences of letters right now rather than words.

You don’t need a bike helmet often, but when you do it can definitely make the difference between being beat up (as I was for the next several days) and becoming a vegetable.

In the past 12 years this is the second incident where a bike helmet probably saved what little IQ I possess.

The last time was a fall on a steep sandy trail where I pitched over the handlebars, kept rolling down the hill, and tried to ring the bell of a tree trunk with my head. The tree was unfazed but bells rang inside my skull.

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Most cyclists are clued into the wisdom of protecting their wisdom with a helmet, but I still see people (a few on the trails, more on the roads) riding without them.

One school of thought says if you’re not smart enough to wear a brain bucket you obviously don’t have much to protect. More often, however, the absence of a helmet is a case of misplaced confidence in one’s control over life.

Most of the time you can control the knocks you take. Yet out on the trail and even more so on

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Andy Dappen might have bit the dust, but his head is still whole.

Better than what can be said for his helmet.

the roads, where the actions of motorists must be factored in, the unexpected happens.

The unexpected may not happen often, but once without a helmet can be once too much.

Andy Dappen is a freelance journalist living in Wenatchee and editor of WenatcheeOutdoors — a website devoted to local muscle sports — where this story first appeared.

The

DON’T WAIT Project®

author wants to send a message after learning first hand that life isn’t about waiting

By Lisa Bradshaw

As I wrote the final chapters

of my new book, Big Shoes: A Young Widowed Mother’s Memoir, I feared the sadness readers would experience on each page.

When reading that my late husband Wesley died on Easter Sunday seven years ago — after receiving a double lung transplant and expected to make a full recovery — I knew readers would be as shocked and horrified as we were at the time.

Many people, even our family and closest friends, would be learning the enormity of our daily fight for his life for the first time.

Even I was overwhelmed recounting the magnitude of our struggle.

As the person closest to it, who lived through it all with Wesley, I knew if I was over-

whelmed, others would be as well.

After weeks of wrestling with the sadness parts of the book might bring to others, I woke from a deep sleep early one morning with an idea how readers could take the emotions evoked in them and do something with their reactions.

I thought about the years it took me to begin the book, but also, once I decided it was time to share the story with others, how the words flowed out of me like the melting snow from the mountain caps near our home, feeding into the nearby river.

I questioned my procrastination but was quickly reminded of the necessary steps it took me to get here — raising our son Hunter, rebuilding my career, healing our lives. I did not wait to write the book; the story had to reveal itself to me in its own time.

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Lisa Bradshaw plans on driving her specially wrapped car promoting The DON’T WAIT Project® while also interviewing people on their own “don’t wait” stories.

In the early hours that morning, I wondered about the things we put off in our lives, assuming there is always tomorrow.

I thought about how some people faced with tragedy manage to rebuild their lives and become better than they would have been without the experience.

I thought about the people in our country who are losing their jobs and being forced out of their homes, realizing for many people, it has been a lesson in the difference between what we want and what we truly need in

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this life.

I wondered what all of us are waiting for when it comes to healing ourselves and rebuilding our lives.

How could we change or expand our thinking in simple ways that could affect our outcome? How could we begin to do what we often wait too long to do?

Then, with clarity it came to me on a snow white winter’s morning — create a project that would propel people to stop waiting and start living.

As these thoughts ran through

As I grieved the loss of my husband and the father Hunter so deserved, I fell down so many times I questioned why I should bother getting back up again. But the truth is, it is the getting up that makes us stronger. my mind, I hurried out of bed and began searching the Internet to find out if anything like what I was considering already existed.

A fire of excitement and purpose ignited inside me as I got down to business in a hurry.

Within days, I put together a two-page proposal and quickly received enough corporate and local business sponsorships to fund the entire first phase of the project, including filing the trademark and nonprofit corporation applications.

The DON’T WAIT Project® was founded and its purpose defined.

The DON’T WAIT Project® means different things to different people. It can be as simple as a new way of thinking, a new approach to what we already know.

The possibilities are endless — nudging us to reconsider the life we are currently living.

Through one, simple statement, we can revisit people, places, things, dreams and ideas that have long been forgotten.

In life, we all must face adversity and choose how we will cope with the struggles we are confronted with.

While it took years for me to move on and begin to heal after the loss of my late husband, the

family picture next to the bed

Chapter 21: Heading West When I bought the plane tickets for Hunter and me to leave Houston and vacation along the West Coast the summer after Wesley died, I wanted to escape.

I needed to escape our empty home.

No matter how hard it was, I had to get away from the familiar routine we had once known as a family but was now lost, replacing it with a new place to wake up and new experiences to enjoy.

What I did not expect was the

healing it would bring.

I thought Texas had to be our home because that was where Hunter would be closest to his dad. But through the days and nights we spent far away from Houston and the home we had shared with Wesley, I discovered one very important thing: Wesley was everywhere. It did not matter where Hunter and I were. In Texas, California, or Washington, Wesley would always be with us.

It was not until the fourth stop along our journey Hunter finally commented on the photograph of the three of us I placed on the bedside table in each guest room we stayed along our journey.

“Mommy, everywhere we go, people have that picture of us next to the bed!” he observed, seeming perplexed.

“That’s our picture. I bring it with us wherever we go,” I smiled.

The truth was, we did not need the picture to remind us of the

only path I had in front of me was to find my way through the grief — and to bring Hunter with me.

My sole purpose in life was to bring to fruition the only answer that made sense: There had to be an enormous reason for Wesley not to be alive, and it was up to me to discover and live what that was, even if it took my lifetime to do it. Along the way, I discovered there was nothing quite like finding myself on the other side of something I didn’t know I would survive.

This is my second book. I went the traditional, big publisher route the first time around.

This time, I held my rights, retained creative control, went with an independent publisher, and am working everyday to promote Big Shoes in a unique way, offering people the opportunity to connect with each other by launching The DON’T WAIT Project®.

This got me thinking of another idea.

What if I traveled the country, starting on the West Coast, sharing my story and asking other people to share their own “don’t wait” stories, sharing the common bond of the things that are left undone — such as a single mother returning to college, a father who promised his children a simple family vacation but had never taken time from work to do it, a woman who schedules an overdue mammogram, a friendship restored by a simple phone call to say hello?

I interview people every week on my radio show, The Life with Lisa Show, in my own community. What if I took my show on the road, interviewing everyday people in coffee shops, at dog parks and on street corners?

On Monday, Sept. 19, immediately following my regularly scheduled radio show at 1 p.m.,

Editor’s note: Lisa Bradshaw’s new book, Big Shoes: A Young Widowed Mother’s Memoir, about rebuilding her life after the unexpected death of her late husband, is being released locally in September and in bookstores everywhere in November. In this book excerpt, she is taking a vacation before moving with her son from their hometown of Houston to a new life in Wenatchee.

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three of us together. That was as much a part of our existence as the rising and setting of the sun. We were a vital part of each other’s human experience. We would always be what we had worked to build — a family.

Big Shoes: A Young Widowed Mother’s Memoir is celebrating an early release book signing at Wenatchee’s Hastings on Tuesday, Sept. 13, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

I will leave Wenatchee to begin my 10-day book tour from Seattle to Los Angeles.

I will prearrange media and book signings at every stop while leaving time for the unplanned interesting ways of meeting people where they are.

The interviews will be posted on my daily blog and supporters of the project and tour will be able to follow the adventure on Facebook and Twitter, while I give my best effort everyday to share and live The DON’T WAIT Project®.

As I grieved the loss of my husband and the father Hunter so deserved, I fell down so many times I questioned why I should bother getting back up again.

But the truth is, it is the getting up that makes us stronger.

I once read: “Get knocked down eight times, get up nine.” It is painfully yet incredibly true.

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The DON’T WAIT Project ®

}}} Continued from previous page Maybe you will live to be 100 years old. Maybe you’ll live to see your children have children.

Maybe you will die in your sleep holding the hands of those you love. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it? It could happen, but it is not guaranteed.

Consider, from where you are right now, what is your DON’T WAIT®?

And if you don’t have one, not a single one, because you are living the exact life you know you are supposed to be living, every minute of every day, please share with the rest of us how you do it.

However, if you are like me, flawed with shortcomings, not always living the life only you were meant to live, or even knowing what that life is, then don’t wait.

The message is not to suggest you live each day as if it were your last, because then you

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Consider, from where you are right now, what is your DON’T WAIT®? would not go to work, you would probably keep your kids home from school — who knows how many distractions would come by truly living that statement?

Instead, live each day as if it is your first.

Be flawed and uncertain, but also be a glorious work in progress.

Lisa Bradshaw is a mother, radio talk show host, author and philanthropist eager to share what can be gained when one is willing to learn from the unimaginable. Big Shoes: A Young Widowed Mother’s Memoir is available at www.dontwaitproject.org today and in bookstores in November. Follow the project on Facebook and Twitter.

Author has a message — it’s that everyone has a story to tell

By Nancy Albert For me, my dream for more than 15 years is finally starting to unfold.

I was working part-time over the holidays in the cosmetic department of the Omak WalMart when I became aware of how many men did not have a clue as what to buy for their women.

All winter I worked on my first book, Gifts For Her, and had it published by Vantage Press in New York. The whole process was so exciting. I loved writing and telling new and different ideas to readers. Although I was not a seasoned writer, I felt that I had something important to say.

My first attempt at writing a new book was not very lucrative (the price of self publishing a book in 2000 was about eight times as expensive as today), but that did not inhibit me, it only made me want to try harder.

I started writing faith-based short stories — sort of on a lark.

My first story, called Unprom, came out of our living on our 50-acre ranch in Riverside.

Missy was a neighbor’s daughter and she was always outside in her jeans and work clothes doing the hard work like watering the crop. Then she decided she wanted to be a young lady and go to the prom.

She went through a series of adventures, including leaving for the prom by riding her horse sidesaddle in her fancy dress.

After Unprom won a short story contest, I was on my way to more stories.

I believe the move to Eastern Washington from Seattle was critical to my success in developing the stories because living in

...ideas began forming in my mind and would not leave until I started writing them down.

Nancy Albert has a better marketing plan for her second book.

the country you get to see firsthand many experiences that you otherwise would not see in the city. Those urged me to write.

Once I finished that first story, ideas began forming in my mind and would not leave until I started writing them down.

Many times a story would take a completely different turn and amaze me.

It took about 10 years for me to write these 20 stories. I came across a publisher called WestBow Press (a division of Thomas Nelson). Because my short stories had a Christian theme, I wanted to stick with a Christian publisher. WestBow Press fit perfectly.

The contact person who called me was encouraging and what really sealed the deal was he let me send him copies of my stories. It impressed me when he told me his wife enjoyed the stories.

For me, the publishing process was easy. I sent them my stories and they edited and distributed the book to major retailers, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others.

One striking feature they added was an amazing cover picture, an old cottage with a warm surrounding. When my grown daughter saw the book sitting on my table at home she could not believe it — the cover really grabbed her attention.

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When I self-published my first book, I did not have a strong marketing plan and so the book sales were not good.

With Message In A Story, I am creating a better marketing plan.

Along with the book, I have launched my own website, MessageInAStory.com, that along with offering a look inside the book and a method for buying either hard copies or e-books will also provide readers with a format to tell their own story.

My other marketing idea is something I have never seen in retail stores. This concept is called “book in a bag” and it will actually be my book, a writing pad, pencil and bookmark — all inside an attractive new product called a “bag box,” which is sturdy like a box but flexible like a bag.

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I will take these to bookstores, hospital gift shops, specialty shops and possibly Christian schools. I may also take this idea to the county fairs.

The bag will also include an information card describing how to write a story and submit it to my website.

Our goal is to make writing something that anyone can do — and not seem like a big chore.

I hope to incorporate readers’ stories from my website into my next book.

So tell me, what’s your story?

Nancy Albert and her husband live in Wenatchee where they both are retired. Message In A Story is available as an e-book and printed book through her website, MessageInAStory.com or from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. She has a book signing at Hastings in Wenatchee from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 24 and 25.

Gold fever!

The dream: ‘just one more pan full, maybe I will find a big nugget’

By Jimmy McGregor

F

or my entire life I have had a secret.

I have a fever that will not go away. Not the kind of fever that is life threatening, but a fever that appears rapidly and may linger for days — gold fever!

From the first time I read about The Lost Dutchman’s Mine, I have thought about striking it rich. For years this was just a dream — now as an adult, I have been able to indulge this fever.

Since the dawn of civilization, one thing has always had value.

Gold! While prospecting basics have not changed, technology and knowledge have made it possible to locate and extract gold quickly and efficiently.

Other factors like watching for claim jumpers and bears have been replaced by dodging cars as you cross a busy highway to a promising gold find, although I believe that bears could still be an issue.

The gold I am looking for does not come from a mine, instead it comes from the stream bed.

This type of gold is known as placer gold. This is gold that was formed millions of years ago deep in the earth.

Over the years this gold has been exposed by weathering and erosion. Eventually this gold is moved to a small stream and is pushed by currents and floods until it arrives at the location where I am able to retrieve it.

This process is very violent.

As the rock moves downstream, it is pounded and crushed by

Jimmy McGregor indulges his gold fever in a very relaxed way — sitting on a rock, feet in the cool water, swishing around a pan in search of glittering gold.

the force of the water pushing it along. The rock that gold is attached to is removed by this force.

As the gold nuggets are pounded, they tend to flatten and break down into small pieces. The closer you are to the source of the gold the bigger the pieces of gold.

Nuggets are found very close to the original source. Flakes are found further down the stream.

Toward the end of the process gold dust can be found.

For example, you might find a nugget in Scotty Creek near Blewett Pass, while you will find gold dust along the shores of the

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Columbia River.

Now, for the actual prospecting… at an undisclosed location up Blewett Pass, where the North Central Washington Prospectors a club I belong to owns a claim, I prepare for the day ahead.

My wife, Julene, and I stand by the car and load up all of the essentials: a gold pan, bucket, shovel, dry socks. While none of these objects are heavy alone, when combined into what I would call a lazy-man’s load (carrying it all in one trip) can make travel awkward, especially since we have to cross the busy highway.

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| September 2011

And off we go. Our trek across the highway starts with our waiting, and waiting; finally the road clears, we quickly cross and jump over the guardrail. We stand catching our breath, then go down the hill through the thick woods.

The trail is marked only by animal travel. While I do not need to have my brush-clearing machete out, I do have to hold several branches for my wife as she makes her way down to the creek. Even in the wild you should still maintain some civility and be a gentleman (my Grandma VanWell taught me well).

As I approach the creek, my attention is drawn to the sound of water churning. The sun beats down, making it feel hotter than the 84 degrees the experts had predicted. This heat makes the water so inviting — I can feel the sudden cool sensation of flowing water — and upon entering the slow moving stream, I feel like I am in my own little heaven.

The area where I like to go is marked by a huge rock that is split down the center. While I don’t think there is more or less gold at this location than any other location on any other claim owned by the NCWP, I like sitting on the rock.

And besides, I am down here to enjoy myself not get rich; however, in the back of my mind there is a thought: This could be the day I find the mother lode.

Finding gold can be tricky.

Gold, by nature, is heavier than most materials in a body of water. This gives me an advantage, as long as I follow the rules of nature. Because of its weight, gold is usually located in areas where the water flows a little slower. Currents will push the gold toward shore at every bend in the stream, similar to the way a raft is pushed.

dig.

This I believe is the true nature of gold fever, the hope for more.

The cure for gold fever is simple: I must realize I am prospecting for fun and not profit.

I believe that standing knee deep in a cool creek on a warm day is relaxing. I could be water skiing, rafting, or even tubing on a warm day like today and even have my feet in the water; however, all I would have at the end of the day is a story.

Instead, I have a small vial of the most precious substance in the world — right after family and friends, of course.

At first there is just a little glint.

This yellow sparkle drives me to continue.

In addition, it is the first material to drop from the current.

Since gold is heavy, over time it will work its way down through other lighter materials like gravel and sand. In most cases gold will not stop until it hits material that is dense or solid.

That is why people look for gold on top of bedrock. This is not Bedrock, the town the Flintstones live in, but a solid rock that marks the end of the loose material that we live on.

After locating several good spots, I replace my shoes with a pair that are shoes in name only. The holes and tears allow water to freely enter as well as exit. The water is cold but not uncomfortable. It’s actually very refreshing.

After taking panning samples from several locations, I find one that seemed better than the others and start to dig.

I carefully place the material onto a large screen — called a classifier — that is placed over a gold pan to remove large material. Both the pan and classifier are sitting in water.

After sufficiently filling the classifier, I slightly elevate it to allow the smaller and heavier material to fall into the pan. After carefully cleaning the large material, I remove the classifier and move the pan to faster flowing water.

The gold pan I use has two large ridges. These ridges allow the gold to settle into a groove.

I place the pan completely under water and shake the contents flat. This process moves the heavier material to the bottom of the pan.

After shaking the contents flat several times, I shake the pan at an angle forcing the heavier

Specks of gold begin to separate out from black sand in the pan.

material into the grooves. This action allows the gold to stay at the bottom of the pan and the lighter material to flow over the lip of the pan back into the stream.

This process continues for several minutes depending on how confident I am the groove will actually catch the gold. Even though I trust this pan, I find myself being overly cautious.

After most of the light material, as well as any larger pebbles that do not contain gold, is removed, I start to work on concentrating the gold.

Using a rocking motion, I move lighter materials away from the concentrated heavy materials. I watch for black sand, a material that is lighter than the gold but heavier than sand and gravel. Upon seeing the black sand, I rinse the remaining light material from the pan.

Now comes the fun part.

Slowly and lightly I rock the pan forward and back, slightly removing the black sand. After a few rocks, the object of my fever appears.

At first there is just a little glint. This yellow sparkle drives me to continue. After a few seconds, all of the gold is revealed and I start on my next pan full of material.

This process continues all September 2011 | The Good Life

afternoon. Over and over, I dig, classify and pan. Until I say to my wife, “I think I am done!”

Then something happens. I know that I am ready to pack up and go, but I think to myself, “Just one more pan full, maybe I will find a big nugget,” and I get the shovel back out and start to

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Jimmy McGregor is a graduate native of the Wenatchee Valley and is currently employed as a Paraeducator.

When James is not working or hunting for rocks, fossils, or treasures, he writes fiction, nonfiction, and is the current editor for the North Central Washington Prospectors newsletter. For information about the NCW Prospectors, Jimmy can be contacted at NCWProspectors@gmail.com

Starting from scratch Laid off graphic artist draws on what he knows to find a laugh, and maybe an income

By Suzie Hollingsworth

M

y husband, Clint, has a sense of humor that never quits.

He can also worry with the best of them, imagining worstcase scenarios to rival the “end of the world is next Tuesday” group, but that’s a story for a different day.

Or is it? In point of fact, Clint lost his graphic arts job at the Wenatchee World in a recent lay-off.

But rather than feeling sorry for himself, he created an online web comic, Starting from Scratch, about Flint and Tudy Hollingshead who lose their jobs in the big city and are forced to move into a run-down trailer on their parents’ property in a Bavarian theme town (with their six cats).

You have to admire his spirit.

“What’s it like to live with a comic artist?” you might ask yourself. I get that a lot. We moved to Wenatchee in 2004 to be closer to my husband’s parents, leaving behind great

Clint Hollingsworth draws from home, where inspiration is all around.

jobs in the process. (Clint has a B.A. in Fine Arts from Washington State University and an

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advanced art degree from The Art Institute of Seattle. He was 2008 Designer of the Year at the

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Wenatchee World.)

The economy turned south not long afterwards.

We had some very rough times. We were humbled. We learned gratitude. We learned the hard way that fear does one absolutely no good and is a block to good fortune.

And we learned that if you lose everything and still have your family —you have everything.

The unique, talented, capable person you are is everything that you need to create a new life (from scratch). No one can take that from you.

Every week we go to Jimmy’s Diner in East Wenatchee for the $4.25 breakfast and brainstorm ideas for Starting From Scratch.

It’s become a special date — with a lot of laughs.

And, yes, the comic has a lot in common with our lives. Although we have fared much better than many, we understand the fear of losing everything, we understand downsizing, and we understand stressful work environments. And — best of all! — we don’t have to create any characters: Clint’s family has nothing but characters!

I won’t go into his cousins, aunts and uncles here: you’ll

have to read the comic for that.

But I will tell you that his mother, Duffey Bergren, put herself through nursing school racing at Longacres. Clint’s Dad, Alf Bergren, a World War II veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, had a log felled on him the last day, the last hour before retirement. He had a broken back, a ruptured spleen, and the medical staff said he wouldn’t live. Then they said he wouldn’t walk. He does.

Is he bitter? Nope. Does he have an indomitable spirit? Yep. Is he honest, generous and as stubborn as the day is long? You betcha.

Clint doesn’t wish to make light of the many in his comic who have suffered a great deal in today’s economy. He merely wishes to remind people not to devalue themselves — even if the people around you do — and to be open to the possibilities.

Most of all, he hopes to make people laugh in the midst of it all. Amidst the struggle, laughter changes the look of an otherwise dismal experience.

Clint developed his love of the graphic novel/comic book format from an early age when his dad began reading Sgt. Rock to him. The creator of Starting from Scratch admits he might be happy only 80 percent of the time but that might be enough to live a great life.

Despite being an out-of-work

artist in eastern Washington, he is applying for jobs — even secretarial with a graphics element. But rather than sit on the couch watching Oprah! and eating potato chips, he keeps to a strict drawing schedule five days a week.

And he works hard at maintaining a daily exercise routine to reduce stress (if you see a person along the walking trail displaying a peculiar interest in animal tracks, it might be him).

My husband hasn’t had a break in employment in 14 years.

I’m very proud that

he is using this time to create something new and pursue his dreams.

Check out Clint Hollingsworth’s online web comics — he has three different series. Viewing Clint’s comics is free, but Clint makes money from every page view.

>> RANDOM QUOTE

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Albert Schweitzer September 2011 | The Good Life

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To view the comics, visit: www.startingfromscratchcomic. com; www.wanderingones.com, 2066 A.D. post-apocalyptic Apache-trained warriors fight alien invaders bent on total domination; and www.shinkage. com, a 1700s naval sailing fleet (inspired by Patrick O’Brien’s Master and Commander series) set in a futuristic other-world with two moons.

Suzie Hollingsworth is a finance and contract manager employed by Douglas County. She is also an aspiring novelist of historical romance; her website is www.suzettehollingsworth.com (designed by her graphic artist husband).

CLIFF HANGER Flowing tour home on the hillside is built to take advantage of the valley views

Story by Susan Lagsdin Photos by Donna Cassidy

Cloud-hugging high but

solid in the earth, 1550 Skyline Drive is ready to receive visitors at the NCHBA and Sangster Motors Tour of Homes on Sept.

22-25.

The first careful turn down the driveway shows that the owners of Bollinger Construction — winners of multiple home building excellence

awards over the years — don’t take baby steps and don’t believe in halfway measures.

Their latest showplace perches on the steep edge of the west hills of Wenatchee. Positioning new construction perfectly for views, sun/shade, and privacy (maximum lot use) is a given, but with its base engineered and excavated down to structural rock, overbuilt downspouts, catch basin and storm drains, and a head-high retaining wall,

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ABOVE: Eight-foot-wide double doors were purposely chosen to provide a grand entrance into the home, and to enhance the impact of the living room’s wide open view.

TOP LEFT: Late afternoon sun still brightens the front of the house, but in midsummer, Wenatchee’s hottest hours can be spent relaxing in the cool shade.

this home rests solidly on a particularly trustworthy foundation.

The family business (dad Jay and son Ace Bollinger) also

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| September 2011

depends on solid continuity.

Over time they have determined exactly what floor plans, detailing, and building materials seem to suit local sensibilities. And

Elements like European-style cherrywood cabinetry and the Bollingers’ signature slate floors connect the sunny kitchen with rest of the main living area.

many of the same vendors and craftsmen have worked with them for years, now familiar with their standards yet free to be innovative.

The Bollingers may tweak an idea or try a new technique, but they pride themselves on delivering their well-tested product, a family home that’s the best they have to offer, every time a key turns in the lock.

This two-story house (4,450 square feet of living space for $675,000), essentially mirrors the floor plan of Jay’s own nearby place, with the inevitable tweaking that grows from practical use. Father and son agree that the replicated floor plan, open and inviting, is a strong feature. “There aren’t any long hallways,” Jay said. “We meant for every room to flow naturally into another one.”

Even with four bedrooms and multiple use spaces for media

}}} Continued on next page

Cooking and cleaning up are likely to become coveted tasks when the view is this extensive. The kitchen opens on to the deck for outdoor meals.

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ABOVE: Painstakingly hand pieced to use precious scraps of granite from elsewhere in the house, this bathroom sink shows attention to detail.

LEFT: A family-friendly style or simply luxurious for one? This shower features multiple jets and tiger patterned granite, which also surrounds the long soaking tub.

}}} Continued from previous page projection (already plugged in with seven speakers worth of surround sound), storage, fit-

NCW Home Professionals

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| September 2011

ness, or crafts, there’s a clearly articulated flow. Each floor is anchored by a big central great room, with a kitchen and master suite on each level, and the Bollingers are proud that each floor also has its separate heating and cooling system — good for both utility savings and individual climate preferences.

Another sensible approach to heating and cooling is the return to human-scaled ceiling height. Jay admits, ”There was a time when everybody was building 20-foot ceilings just to keep pace, but we realized lower is better for a couple of reasons.”

The tallest ceilings here (12 feet) have wood-bladed fans to move the air, and scaling down the great room’s height also gives prominence to the windows, drawing the eye laterally rather than up.

Because the high, wide view to the east is an exciting feature of the home, they also chose double-wide front doors facing directly into the living area so that the first look from the open foyer has dramatic visual impact.

The easy-to-access outside deck opens up between sitting

Tour new local homes in September

The 2011 NCHBA and Sangster Motors Tour of Homes is Sept. 22-25, featuring homes in Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Chelan, Malaga and Peshastin.

Tickets are $11 for an adult and $5 for children ages 2 to 12. Coupons for $1 off will be available at various local locations and on the website, www. nchba.cc More information on the sponsors, builders and the event can also be found on the website.

area and kitchen. Long (12 feet by 45 feet) and completely covered, it is usable in all weathers — warding off summer sun and in other months offering more outdoor life than typical open decks.

It looks down on a terrace of lush green lawn, then sage and native grasses that tumble into an arroyo. Jay pointed to dense growth far below on the property. “We think there‘s a whole family of deer living down there — you can see them traveling through almost every season.”

Signature elements that Jay and Ace point out are standard in all their projects: 18-inch earth-toned slate tiles cover high use areas (and after an installer had fun using smaller chunks on a fireplace surround a few years ago, they’ve since adopted that look.) Multi-toned granite and travertine marble gleam.

Rich European framed cherry wood cabinetry, its depth and height staggered for textural interest, adds elegance. Jay points it out in the living area, “It’s the only kind of wood shelving we’ve found that naturally darkens with age.”

The wood trim in coved ceilings, baseboards, around windows and doors is all hemlock,

Ace finds a minute to relax on the 45’x12’ covered deck that offers views of the Columbia, mountain bluffs to the east and most of the city of Wenatchee.

burnished with the Bollinger signature 16-step treatment.

“That’s after it’s placed,” he explains. “Then every piece gets oiled and hand rubbed.”

Downstairs, in the ground level “basement” — a term that in their homes denotes opulence and comfort — where light spills in from a wall of glass, both men are quick to describe their favorite feature: the warm coppercolored poured cement floor.

Acid stained and artistically contoured like stained glass (a trade secret retold: long after pouring, where it’s naturally bound to crack, decorative grout is added) the floor space is huge: dance-able, rug-able, usable.

The whole downstairs could become a separate living area, or for a large family, simply a way to shape privacy, entertainment, or friend and family time to their liking. Constructed on a solid foundation of rock, designed on a solid foundation of experience, this two-level home is a safely situated cliff-hanger.

NCW Home Professionals

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>>

good STUFF // Ideas for the home

furniture with stories to tell “I

t’s nice to have a story behind a piece of furniture,” said Bret Duffin, and fittingly, the Rock Island furniture builder has stories aplenty.

“This desk,” he said surveying a richly detailed inlaid office desk, “I started 30 years ago, and just recently finished. I hand logged every piece of wood in it myself.”

It’s true that Bret prefers to work slowly on his fine furniture — using hand tools more often than power tools — but BRET TELLS STORIES OF HIS FURNITURE: there is another reason from the start to the finish of his “Rocking chairs are fun to build. The inspiraoffice desk. tion for this chair (above) came from the Bret had been a cabinetchunk of maple burl I found in my stash that just seemed to want to be a crest rail maker for 20 years in Redon a rocking chair. It is all Western Big Leaf mond when he moved to Maple except for the Ash Seat. This chair the Wenatchee area to build is real comfortable and rocks nicely. I love homes. But with the desire to get back into a wood shop, sitting in it. It’s also very strong. I can’t get even a small creak out of it.” two years ago he organized a wood shop in the barn on his hobby farm in Rock Island, and had the time again to complete the desk — and begin constructing more furniture.

Still, each piece has a story.

The wood for a computer desk came from an urban tree in Walla Walla. Bret found the wood on Craigslist, then found a man with a portable saw mill to cut the tree into planks.

From there, Bret used a combination of the dark interior wood and the light exterior wood to create the frame and inlaid surface.

A natural curve in the wood flows around a pull-out drawer where a keyboard will go — part of Bret’s strategy of letting the wood tell him how to use it.

“I don’t do anything from plans. I like to be as original as I can,” Bret said of the pieces he describes as “modern design with classic lines.”

While his shop and home are filling up with handcrafted furniture, Bret said it’s more of a hobby than a business (a business makes money, a hobby costs money). “I would take custom orders on a limited basis, but I don’t want to put myself under the stress of making it a business.”

It takes time to build furniture with a story.

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Bret Duffin made this computer table from an urban walnut tree he found on Craigslist and had milled.

“The Curly Maple Inlaid Partners Desk (at left) has a construction time lasting almost 30 years. I began building this desk as a hobby piece after gathering the wood from the forests surrounding my home in Western Washington in the early 1980s. I used a chain saw attached to an Alaskan Mill to cut the boards and then had to wait a year or so for the wood to dry and cure. Then I built the frame and panel carcass using 17 bookmatched curly grained raised panels.

I built the drawer boxes using plain sawn boards half an inch thick. Then the project got put on hold and into storage when I sold my cabinet shop until my present shop was built in 2009. I then drug it out of storage and cleaned it up, built drawer fronts and the inlaid top and finished it. It’s now in my home office. It’s very useful.” | September 2011

“The Walnut Bar Stool (above) is one of my latest designs made from an urban walnut tree I purchased and had milled into lumber. It’s really nice wood. The chair is elegant yet sturdy and quite comfy.”

“The Compound Curve Fronted Bombe Cabinet on Stand in Easter Soft Maple (above left) utilizes some interesting techniques. The quartered book-matched panels on each end of the cabinet are made from some pruned limbs off some old Nectarine trees from my property. The large crown molding and curved drawer fronts were fabricated as a segmented cylindrical tube which I turned round on the lathe and then ripped into one-quarter sections.

Two of the pieces were used concavely for the crown and the other two were used convexly for the drawer fronts. Hinging the compound curved doors was a head scratcher.”

“This outdoor table was made from recycled glulam beam scraps. I hand carved the ball and claw feet. The table was designed to live outdoors and is doing well after two years.”

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column ALEX ON WINE

ALEX SALIBY

How I did wrong to a fine red wine Our dinner the other night,

a Basque Lamb Stew, called for lamb shoulder cut into one-bytwo-inch pieces.

My chef du jour substituted ground leg of lamb meat, blended with some extra lean ground beef, to make meatballs she stewed in the piquantly flavored sauce.

As you might imagine, we drank a wine with that dinner.

The wine was from the Spanish region of Jumilla, an Altos de Luzon 2005, a blend of 50 percent Monastrell, (aka Mourvedre here in Washington) 25 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 25 percent Tempranillo.

We chose the wine for three reasons: n We were eating Basque and

I now know it is true that time in the decanter improves all wines... this was a Spanish wine, so it was as close to a Basque red as we could get in our cellar. n We knew we needed a wine with some tenacity to hold its own against the sauce’s tomato and pepper undertones. n We drank our last Tannat (a grape indigenous to the Basque region) a week or so ago and this seemed the closest matching wine remaining in our cellar.

Food was, if I may brag just a second on the skills of the chef du jour, magnificent!

Wine, on the other hand, was, well, “good.”

We weren’t looking for good.

We were in search of “great” or “wonderful” or even “earthshatteringly marvelous. We got “good.”

But the fault, dear readers, lies not in our wine; rather it rests squarely upon my shoulders, for I abused a quality wine. I mistreated the bottle from the very start.

I came to that realization later, after dinner, after Jeopardy had

ended when I poured more of the wine into our empty glasses thinking we’d just have a small amount of wine before cleaning up the mess that making Basque Lamb Stew leaves in the kitchen.

What is that expression, “Time heals all wounds?” I suppose that’s true.

However, I now know it is true that time in the decanter improves all wines, particularly the red wines.

Sipping that second helping of the wine proved that point. The wine had sat and breathed; it had had time to unwind and display its real qualities, and what qualities they were. The wine had changed from being merely a good wine into being a wine we both wished we owned more and had it in the cellar.

I sat sipping, but I could hear the judge of the Wine Court in my head asking, “…and to the charges of improperly handling a wine from your cellar and of failure to decant and allow the wine time to show its qualities prior to your drinking it, how do you plead?”

“Guilty as charged, your honor,” I’d have to respond.

I did pour the first glass for each of us using one of those new technologically designed aerators. I won’t mention the

brand here because it is not my goal to disparage the items. To a point, they do work, but in my view, they don’t really replace the need for an actual decanter for allowing a wine to open up and develop.

So, bottom line, here are my sins: n I should have stood the wine up in the cellar 24 hours before bringing it up. Wines that have been lying on their sides need to be moved to the vertical position to allow pigment polymers to settle to the bottom before uncorking and pouring. n I should have decanted the bottle at a minimum of one-and-a-half hours prior to pouring. However, some wines don’t even begin to open until after 24 hours after having been decanted.

All red wines, young and modestly elderly, benefit from time in the decanter. Our Altos de Luzon didn’t begin to shine until well over a 45-minute period.

I can’t say I won’t be guilty of committing the same crimes in the future; knowing today what’s for dinner tomorrow isn’t always a certainty at our house, so it’s really difficult to abide by rule one above.

Rule two however… that’s a nobrainer and easy to comply with always. For certain this dinner was such a time when that deed was critical… I failed to perform as required. I hope I won’t repeat the blunder in the future. We’ll see.

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 GARDEN OF DELIGHTS

bonnie orr

You may flip over these eggplant pancakes September is three-veggie

month.

In my family, when the garden is producing we consume at least three different vegetable dishes each day to keep ahead of the ripening bounty.

An eggplant, which is a cousin of the potato, tomato, tomatillo and petunia, produces about half a dozen fruit per plant. “What does one do with these things?” asked my friend, Deanna Lorentzen.

The Europeans call them aubergine, (pronouncing oh ber zheen), which is so much more elegant than eggplant, but it does not disguise the fact that this purple produce has little taste and texture of its own.

This is why I call it “purple tofu.” You mix it with flavorful ingredients, and it tastes just ducky.

With its mild taste and high fiber content, eggplant can be used as a pureed sauce, and with added herbs and veggies, spread on toast, focaccia or pizza. It can also be used as a base for tomato soup or provide thickeners for other types of soup. It can even be made into savory jam!

Well, you did ask me, didn’t you Deanna?

Most familiar recipes have an eastern Mediterranean taste with garlic, lemon, lamb, feta cheese or yogurt.

Chinese cooking also incorporates eggplant as a vegetable filler. I ate a delicious eggplant, cheddar and tomato pie in England. I read a recipe for mock liver and onions made with eggplant that I would not even force myself to cook.

The whole fruit is often stuffed with meat, rice and vegetables and baked in a tomatobased sauce. This can often be a soggy meal and is not one of my

garden or the farmer’s market, you will not have to peel nor salt and leach out the bitterness since the flesh is mellow and the peel is tender.

The other problem is that most recipes call for cubing or slicing and deep fat immersion frying or dipping in a batter or breadcrumbs and frying. This is to create a crunchy texture and an olive oil taste.

To avoid a sagging, floppy eggplant, try brushing half-inch thick slices with just enough oil that the flesh does not stick to the pan and broil it until brown and crisp and then add it to your favorite recipe.

Veggies from the garden go into making eggplant pancakes.

AUBERGINE PIKLETS

Bonnie Orr gardens and cooks in East Wenatchee.

(aka) eggplant pancakes Makes two dozen 20 minutes preparation, 15 minutes cooking This recipe incorporates lots of veggies from the garden. These pancakes can be served as hors d’oeuvres, a luncheon dish or as a main dish. These are even better eaten the next day.

Ingredients 3 cups raw eggplant flesh chopped fine but not pureed 1 cup raw fresh sweet corn cut from the cob 1/2 cup minced onions 2 large new potatoes, grated (Peeled or unpeeled, your choice) 2 large carrots, grated 1/2 cup parsley, or a mix of green herbs: argula, basil, savory, rosemary, etc 1 poblano pepper, diced 2 eggs slightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water 1 cup flour 2 tablespoon oil 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese 3 tomatoes diced

favorites.

One problem I have with most recipes is they are made with September 2011 | The Good Life

Directions Mix the veggies together in a large bowl.

Add the eggs and cheese and mix well.

Add the flour to make a pancakelike batter. The veggies will give off water as they cook, so the batter can be thick.

Heat a griddle and lightly oil it.

Pour the batter onto the griddle in pancake shapes — about one-third cup of batter per pancake.

Cook until bubbly.

Turn and cook the reverse side.

Take off of the griddle and place on a plate with a cover or in 125-degree oven to keep warm until they are ready to be served.

Serve with the tomatoes diced to serve as a condiment with the pancakes along with sour cream, chives and more parmesan cheese or homemade tomato sauce..

eggplants that are bought from a store in February.

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column THE TRAVELing DOCTOR

jim brown, m.d.

ELDERHOOD

If you discover the inner richness of aging, this stage of life really is about getting better is the primary source of income for low-income he fastest growseniors. For seing segment of seniors niors with higher consists of people who incomes including are older than 85 years pensions and inof age. vestment income, There were 40 million Social Security Americans over the age only accounts for of 65 in 2009, and it is 19 percent of their projected that there will income. be 72 million by 2030. It The leading is likely that 5 percent of causes of death our population will be for seniors over 65 over age 85 by 2050. are heart disease, These numbers are cancer and stroke. staggering and will have Alzheimer’s a profound effect on our disease, a prohealth care system no gressive brain matter what plan we end disorder, is the up with. most common I have long been fascicause of dementia nated by people over the in the older popuage of 85 who remain aclation. More than tive, alert and involved.

350,000 new cases I remember a 90-yearare being diagold patient of mine from nosed annually Wenatchee, a prominent and this number local businessman, who is expected to always came to see me in increase. In the sport coat and tie with At age 96, Sterns Eason is still taking swings at living well. future the finanhis Wall Street Journal cial burden of under his arm because do these people do it?

Alzheimer’s alone might dwarf he was headed to his office after Well, we know it is a combithe costs of most other health seeing me. He played golf with nation of good genes, healthy seven other 80-plus seniors lifestyle and luck. But there may care issues.

The United States has the every week. be other things to consider. greatest number of centenarHe told me that if I told him to After 85 only 13 percent of ians in the world, with 71,000 stop drinking his glass of scotch females are married while 53 in 2010. Reaching the age of 100 every day and stop smoking his percent of males are married. has always interested the public cigar after dinner, he would find This is partly due to the fact another doctor. that males are much more likely as it is often considered a sign of a life well lived. Those achievSince his examination and all to remarry after the loss of a ing this milestone frequently his blood tests and x-rays were spouse or divorce. have their pictures in their local normal, I told him I could find Married seniors are less likely paper and get a congratulatory no reason to change what he to be poor, to enter a nursing letter from the president of the was doing. home or be in poor health.

United States.

Another favorite patient travThanks to Social Security, the Of 100-year-olds, there are eled to Katmandu, Nepal at age poverty rate for seniors has four females for every male.

90, and she enjoyed an Alaska fallen significantly since it was Public health measures includcruise with friends at 92. How introduced. Social Security

T

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ing clean water, vaccinations and better personal hygiene have allowed more people to live into old age.

Treatments for cancer, heart disease and other chronic disease have extended the life of the elderly. The importance of lifestyle and attitude cannot be underestimated. The majority of those over 85 surveyed consider their health “good.”

Chronic diseases that cannot be cured but can be managed with medication and life style changes often improve the ability of this group, allowing them to live independent and active lives.

I decided to interview two people I know, both of whom are over 85 years of age, who are living active and involved lives.

Stearns Eason is a legendary local golfer. At 96, he plays golf three times a week and is on the driving range at least twice a week working on his game.

This year he finished second in a country club tournament in the 80 plus division.

Sterns told me he took up golf when he was working on a highway project in Africa as a highway and construction engineer.

He likes golf because “it gets me out of the house,” and he likes the social aspects of golf.

When he retired in 1980, he was the City of Wenatchee engineer. A widower for 20 years, he cooks all his own food and says, “I don’t eat TV dinners.”

In 1985 he took a stained glass workshop and loved it, so he has continued in that pursuit.

Later he got interested in fused glass. His home is a treasure trove of stained glass windows and lampshades plus fused glass

An elder is a person who is growing intellectually, still a learner, whose life continues to have within it a promise and connection to the future. plates, bowls and beautiful wall hangings. He has two kilns in his basement.

His two Seattle-area daughters visit a few days every month and bring over supplies of glass for his projects.

Randy Cooper is another golfer who at 87 has a 16 handicap and rarely misses the fairway.

When a young man, Randy enrolled at the University of Washington, but when WWII broke out, he enlisted in the

Navy and became a Navy pilot.

After his service he returned to the UW, where he met his wife now of 64 years, but did not finish college as he took a job in apple sales. This led to his becoming an orchardist.

At age 44 he sold his orchard and enrolled in Central Washington University, this time getting his degree in psychology.

For the rest of his career, he was a school psychologist.

He is an avid golfer but also spends a lot of time gardening, which he thoroughly enjoys.

In my view both of these men epitomize what it means to be an “elder.” They are active physically, mentally and socially and continue to enjoy their full lives.

A few years ago as I was approaching retirement from my clinical medical career, Lynn and I decided to attend a threeday workshop at the Whidbey Institute called “Aging and Sageing.”

The purpose of this workshop, taught by two Buddhists, was to add “life” to our remaining years

September 2011 | The Good Life

rather than years to our life.

Instead of thinking in terms of being “elderly,” it was suggested we might change our paradigm and think of becoming “elders” who still have potential to grow and learn.

An elder is a person who is growing intellectually, still a learner, whose life continues to have within it a promise and connection to the future.

An elder continues in the pursuit of happiness, joy and pleasure.

According to psychologist Gay Luce, “elderhood” is a time to discover inner richness for self-development and spiritual growth, as well as being a transition for our dying, which is at least as important as preparing for a career.

People do not become “sages” just by living to a great old age.

Sages bear witness to the enduring values that transcend conflicts and selfishness.

One ought to enter old age the way one enters life after graduation from college — in anticipa-

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tion of a time that will enable us to attain the values and insights we might have missed or ignored in our formative years.

As much as I loved my career in medicine, I have enjoyed the freedom of these post-retirement years in some ways more than nearly every other phase of my life.

My wife and I have been surprised at how full and enjoyable life is at this time of our lives. As we move into our “elderhood,” it is a time to realize our worth is not measured by acquiring more material things.

Proverbs 6:16 says it well: “How much better to acquire wisdom than gold! To acquire understanding is more desirable than silver.”

To those over 65, I wish you a happy elderhood, striving to become a “sage” for the good life.

Jim Brown, M.D., is a semi-retired gastroenterologist who has practiced for 38 years in the Wenatchee area.

He is a former CEO of the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center.

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column moving up to the good life

june darling

Psst! How to get people to perform better W

ant a ridiculously simple practice that makes people do what they need to do?

I’m going to reveal it to you.

But not yet.

Before I give you this little gem, I want you to fully appreciate its value.

People just don’t do what they are supposed to do. Students just don’t always write their essays, employees just don’t always do their jobs, patients just don’t always take their medicine, fat people just don’t always go to the gym, smokers just don’t always stop smoking.

Take poor Mr. White. He’s tried his best to hold his students accountable.

He’s yelled, waved his fists, threatened dire consequences,

offered rewards, explained the importance of doing homework.

He’s even called students’ parents and begged for their support.

Many students have seemed motivated and have told him they will indeed get their work in. Still only about 30 percent of his students have consistently turned their work in on time.

He feels irritable, depressed, and is experiencing chest pains.

It’s not only teachers and principals who can sympathize with Mr. White’s plight around trying to get people to do what they’re supposed to do — ask any parent, spouse, or volunteer leader.

Employers also commonly complain about the gut-wrenching process of trying to hold their employees accountable.

Here’s the simple “no fuss, no muss” solution to holding others accountable. Here’s the milliondollar secret to helping them do what they are supposed to do.

Researchers have found that people are overwhelmingly more likely to do what they are supposed to do if you simply ask them to tell you when and where. That’s it. Just ask them to write down or tell you specifically when and where they plan to take action.

When researchers ask students who are supposed to turn in essays to write down when and where they are going to write the essay, the results are astounding. More than twice as many students get their essays in.

Researchers have studied almost everything you can think of.

The “when and where” questions work whether it’s helping people to drive more carefully, to stop smoking, to remember to recycle, to go to the dentist, to pay their bills, to get mammograms, to use public transportation, to follow through on resolutions, or to adhere to an exercise plan.

Dr. Heidi Halverson, goal attainment expert, says that planning when and where we will take action is probably the >> RANDOM QUOTE

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.

Danny Kaye

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single most effective thing we can do to increase success.

By simply asking anyone to state when and where they will do what they say they will do, they become wildly more successful at following through.

September means back to school for many. It’s not just students who need to become more accountable, we all do.

We can use “when and where” to help ourselves succeed. Most of us can think of times when we have not followed through with our own goals or intentions.

The “when and where practice” curtails useless abstract talk such as, “I’m going to lose weight.” “When and where” squashes equally useless platitudes like, “I’m going to eat less and exercise more.”

We get specific with “when and where.” We nail down our intentions with, “I’m going to go to the gym on Mondays at 6 and exercise.”

When we become more accountable, we are happier, more productive, and more successful.

We can save our own and others’ stomach lining by simply telling, writing, or repeating to ourselves precisely when and where we’re going to take action.

How might you move up to The Good Life by using the “when and where practice” to increase accountability?

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.

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WHAT TO DO

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

Farmer’s Market, every Wednesday at Columbia Street, 8 a.m. – 1 p.m.; every Thursday at Methow Park 3 p.m. – 7 p.m.; every Saturday at Columbia St. 8 a.m. 4 p.m.; every Sunday at Memorial Park 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Fresh local fruits and vegetables in season. Bakery items, cold drinks and more.

Mission: Improv, 9/1, 7 p.m. & every Thursday. Free open workshop, theater games for novice and experienced players. Fun and

casual. Riverside Playhouse. Info: www.mtow.org, Wenatchee Blues Jam, 9/1, 8 p.m.

Open blues jam every first Thursday of the month. Grizzly Lounge in the Red Lion Hotel, 1225 N. Wen. Ave. Info: Tomasz Cibicki 6698200.

ArtWalk, 9/2. Seven new visual art installations open during the September Wenatchee First Fridays ArtWalk… all within the historic district of downtown Wenatchee.

There are 11 venues from which to choose, and if you start early you may be able to cover the district.

Offerings include: gallery openings, artist receptions, street side

September 2011 | The Good Life

musicians, open houses at the museum and stores, outdoor art show, bronze sculptures along the streets, dining amid art and live music. Pick up the walking map, plot a course and enjoy a summer evening walk about. Cost: free. Info: wffs.artwalk@gmail.com.

Recycled Art, 9/2, 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

As part of the Wenatchee First Friday downtown art walk, the Wenatchee Valley Museum will host a reception to present a new exhibit in the Gold Gallery. It will be comprised of works by the prestigious jurors of Recycled Art, an art show presented in Leavenworth

by Icicle Arts. The jurors are Ross

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Palmer Beecher, Marina Dingus, Ruby Re-usable aka Diane Kurzyna, Jasen Emmons and Jenny Fillius.

Their works are created in many media from recycled materials.

Refreshments will be served and Museum admission is free, with hours extended to 8 p.m. Show continues through September.

Mary Powell, 9/2- 9/30. Meet Methow Valley painter Mary Powell 9/2 from 5 - 8 p.m. Mary’s Capturing the Impression is a collection of impressionist oil paintings depicting today’s contemporary West.

Gallery 4 South. Cost: free. Info: gallery4south@gmail.com.

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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 First Friday at Two Rivers Gallery, 9/2, 5 p.m. The oil paintings of Ruth Couraud Mattson will be featured at a reception held at Two Rivers Gallery. The exhibit will include 40 other member artists including wood sculptures of Milo Mirabelli and the bronze work of Larry Gay. Live music by guitarist Kirk Lewellen. Wine and complimentary refreshments. 102 N Columbia Wenatchee. Cost: free.

Yoga in the Park, 9/3 & every Saturday through Labor Day weekend, 9:45 a.m. Centennial Park, Chelan.

Info: yogachelan.com.

Miniature Railway Run, 9/3, 1 – 5 p.m. The miniature train in Riverfront Park runs on a figure-8 course of rails, bridges and trestles along the Columbia River. Rides are fun for all ages. The Wenatchee Valley Museum operates the train with a crew of volunteers. More information and the full 2011 schedule may be viewed wenatcheewa.gov/index. aspx?page=343.

3 Band Concert, 9/3, 7 – 10 p.m.

Live on the Crush Pad three different bands. Lake Chelan Winery.

BBQ food and wine available. Info: lakechelanwinery.com.

Wine and Cigar Social, 9/8, 6 – 8 p.m. Pick your perfect cigar to pair with award winning wine. Saint Laurent Estate Winery, Malaga.

Info: stlaurent.net.

Leavenworth Quilt Show, 9/7 – 9/11. Enjoy quilt displays throughout the village. Info: 548-6173.

Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott, 9/9, noon to 1:30 p.m. Pioneer House Restaurant, Cashmere. WSU Extension Urban Horticulturist and award winning author will have a presentation over lunch about her book The Informed Gardener. On 9/10 she will be at the Thai Restaurant in Wenatchee. On 9/10 at 6 – 7:30 at the Thai Restaurant she will talk about A Successful Multiinstitutional Blog for Transferring Garden and Landscape Information.

Reservations: buffalo916@hotmail. com.

Chelan County Fair, 9/8 – 9/11.

Lots of animals, exhibits and food vendors. Info: co.chelan.wa.us/fa/ index.htm.

Viaggio, 9/7, 7:30 p.m. Follow a young child on her journey to a world filled with colorful fantasy creatures and hauntingly beautiful music. Experience breathtaking acrobatics in this theatrical spectacle that tells the story of a child’s dream. Town Toyota Center. Info: wenatcheevalley.org.

WineFest at the Chelan County Fair, 9/8 – 11. Award-winning wines of north central Washington will be featured at the Chelan County Fair. A wine garden will be open all four days of the fair, with a tasting event to be held Friday and Saturday evenings. Cost: $16 for 10 tastes of wine. Info: Doug Bergstrom 669-0993.

Car Show & Cruise, 9/9 – 10.

BBQ, ridge dance with live music, car show and general cruising the highway and byways. Downtown Chelan. Info: lakechelan.com.

Book Signing, 9/9, 7 p.m. Leavenworth Library and 9/10, 1 p.m. A Book For All Seasons. Seattle dog whisperer Steve Duno will be on hand with his new book Last Dog on the Hill. Winner of the 2011 IBA Award for best pet book, is the story of Lou, a dog born of guard dogs on a secret marijuana farm in Mendicino County, the ailing, tickinfested feral pup was rescued one winter day by Steve. The little pup changed Steve’s life and together the two went on to change the lives of hundreds of people and dogs.

Steve’s career as a pet behaviorist began as he tried to understand and work with the smart but wild pup.

The Steamers, 9/9, 5 – 9 p.m. Live on the Crush Pad. Lake Chelan Winery. BBQ food and wine available.

Info: lakechelanwinery.com.

Shore-to-Shore Marathon, one-half marathon and 10K run, 9/10. The course begins at Field’s Point Landing on Chelan’s South Shore Road. Runners pass through Chelan on Hwy 97A onto Manson Hwy 150, the North Shore Road, for the final stretch to the waterfront finish at Manson Bay Park. The course is predominately flat and rolling with two half-mile inclines in the full marathon. Info: www.shoretoshoremarathon.com Farmer Consumer Awareness Day Chef Extravaganza, 9/10, 6 p.m. Three chefs, all local produce and meat, incredible food, great music. Chefs: Richard Kitos from Ivy Wild Inn, Patrick Garmong from CWU Catering and Bear Ull-

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man from Cave B Inn. White Heron Cellars, Quincy. Cost: $25. Info: wenatcheevalley.org.

Balloon and Wine Festival, 9/10 – 11. Bring a lawn chair or blanket to sit on and don’t forget the camera for the fourth annual Balloon Night Glow. Balloon launches on 9/11 & 12 at sunrise. Beer and wine garden, food and fireworks.

Parties on the Green, Quincy. Info: partiesonthegreen.com.

Art Class, 9/10, 17 & 24. 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. Martha Flores will give a step-by-step instruction in the modeling of the human figure: woman, man or child. Cashmere Arts & Activities Center. Cost: $75.

Info: 782-2415 or iciclearts.org.

6 Author Book Buzz, 9/10, 1 – 3 p.m. The Mystery Within by Michael Archer, Last Dog on the Hill

by Steve Duno, A Spark of Death

by Bernadette Pajer, Dinah Pelerin Series by Jeanne Matthews, Divine Destiny co-authored by Linda Lindsay and Jane Johnson. A Book For All Seasons, Leavenworth. Cost: free. Info: iciclearts.org.

Lake Chelan Swim, 9/10, noon.

The swim is 1.5 miles long and starts at Willow Point Park and goes to Manson Bay Park on the north shore of Lake Chelan. Event is to raise funds and awareness for swimming lessons on Lake Chelan to serve both residents and visitors.

Info: lakechelanswim.com.

Sailing Regatta, 9/10 – 11. Open to all sailboats and sailors of all skill levels. First race starts at 10 a.m.

The event is intended to be a fun opportunity to sail with your sailing friends, water balloons may be discharged at 10 paces to settle any conflicts. Info: lakechelan.com.

Amy Grant & Michael W. Smith, 9/15, 7 p.m. Live concert. Town Toyota Center. Info: towntoyotacenter1.com.

Wenatchee Leaders of 1920s, 9/15, 2 – 3 p.m. Historian and writer Rod Molzahn will present a slide show of people significant to Wenatchee history in the 1920s and ‘30s. These town leaders and characters, from lawmen to politicians to businessmen to moon shiners, helped shape the Wenatchee of today. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center.

Cost: $5 adults, $4 seniors/students, $2 kids 6-12; members free.

Info: wvmcc.org.

Good SAM Ride, 9/16 – 17. Motorcycle bucket runs, all day entertain-

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WHAT TO DO

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

ment, show and shines and BBQ. All proceeds benefit Detric, a 9-yearold boy from Manson with leukemia and lymphoma. Info: samaritanriders.org/GoodSamRally.

Manson Centennial Celebration, 9/16 – 18. Join the community for the historical exhibit, wine tasting, Ag expo, apple bin races, parade, family games, BBQ and a Sunday brunch. Downtown Manson. Info: lakechelan.com.

Desert Rocks Bonspiel, 9/16- 18.

Curling tournament with 20 teams.

Town Toyota Center. Info: towntoyotacenter1.com.

The Temptations & The Four Tops, 9/17, 7 p.m. Live concert at the Deep Water Amphitheater, Manson. Cost: $35 - $75. Info: colvillecasinos.com.

Writers Workshop, 9/17, 10 a.m.

Self-publishing without tears with author Ron Lovell. Ron presents a guide to publishing and marketing your book, from manuscript to finished product. Topics include editing, page design, cover design, ISBN registration, copyright registration, dealing with distributors and bookstores, and setting up signings and other promotional events. Kristall’s, Leavenworth.

Cost: $28 includes lunch and Ron’s newest release: Murder in E-Flat Major. Info: iciclearts.org. Lovell will also have a book signing 9/17, 3 p.m. at A Book For All Seasons, Leavenworth. Cost: free. Info: iciclearts.org.

Master Gardener Tour, 9/17, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. Come be inspired and learn from gardens featured in the WSU Chelan County Master Gardener Garden Tour. The tour features five private gardens and two bonus gardens that demonstrate sustainable gardening. The gardens are the ultimate cottage garden, a beginning garden, a reuse, recycle, reduce garden, a pollinator and bird garden and from field to flowers garden that features 200 different types of Dahlias. These are not competitive gardens — you can learn to grow flowers, vegetables and fruit from these treasures.

Cost: $15. Info: Deanna 884-1426.

Fly & Bike, 9/17 – 18. Hang glider and paraglider pilots compete in a bicycle race from Chelan Falls soccer field park into Chelan and back,

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The Art Life

// SKETCHES OF LOCAL ARTISTS

Jan Mack Cook: painting her world a frame at a time In Jan Cook Mack’s gallery on

Easy Street in Wenatchee, you’ll find her cards in a basket, her prints ready to riffle through, her handmade bead jewelry displayed, and always an open canvas or two, bracketed by paints and tools.

But dominating the big airy space, a converted barn, are dozens of finished and framed oil paintings of all sizes, each an uplifting wash of pure color.

They cover the white walls up to the roof beams: luscious fruits, glowing flowers and high-perspective views of natural terrain.

Many of Jan’s landscapes reflect north central Washington’s mountains, cliffs and bluffs, snow-heavy trees, wheat fields, blankets of blossoms, patchwork green fields, and often a ribbon of river running through them all. Currently she’s at work capturing it all in a cumulative opus, 100 Views of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers.

Jan is a lifelong artist, her creativity sometimes pragmatic: “When I had babies I realized I could just paint a small water color square at my kitchen easel between changing diapers or feeding a child. But then I learned to put them all together like a quilt.”

In later years, faced with the logistical problem of hauling vast panoramic paintings from site to car to galleries, she realized she could more easily create triptychs or five-panel sets and reassemble them.

Despite the logistical challenge of working outside, Jan values being there with her easel and paints, physically involved September 2011 | The Good Life

Jan Mack Cook painted her son Ben when he was 9.

in the light, air and essence of nature.

She declares, “You get a lot more from painting on-site — with a photo you have to try to remember the energy. Sometimes it’s hard to feel the emotion of a place when you get back to the studio.” She arranges plenty of outside time, for herself and for her students.

Teaching others comes naturally to her.

Jan says, “I realized when I watched the Olympics that each one of those athletes probably has a personal trainer to coach them to do their best. Artists need that kind of attention too.”

And that’s how she works with her students: close up, easels side-by-side facing the same subject. Not with generalized classroom lectures on art theory but with individualized real time tips, pointers and tactics that with practice can help make a good artist a fine artist.

Jan, celebrated in 2010 with the Stanley Lifetime Achievement Award for devotion to the arts, is known for landscapes and still life work, and recently she’s stretched in another diwww.ncwgoodlife.com

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rection, delving seriously into painting both portraits and murals.

Earlier (pre-1986) East Coast portrait commissions included high ranking government officials, but now she’s enjoying painting local people in their natural environment.

The latter, more public and collaborative art has also recaptured her enthusiasm.

This summer’s venture is the 128-foot-long, sidewalklevel mural on Fifth Street in Wenatchee, depicting life-size Loop Trail users recognizable down to their smiles: dog walkers, kayakers, bikers, pedestrians.

The project with Wenatchee High School students exhilarated her, got her imagination churning.

Jan hopes Columbia Avenue can be her next big community project, envisioning it already.

She exclaimed, “Just look at all those big blank walls — that would be a great place to have murals!”

— 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

}}} Continued from previous page and in spot-landing and bomb-drop contests in the soccer field park.

Info: lakechelan.com.

Home Tour and Art Sale, 9/17, 11a.m – 5 p.m. Featuring beautiful Lake Chelan Valley homes. An art sale will feature NW artists at Tslillan Cellars. Cost: $20 per person proceeds help purchase medical equipment at Lake Chelan Community Hospital. Info: lakechelancommunityhospital.com.

Taste of Harvest Wine Garden, 9/17. Street fair offers wine garden 12-6 p.m., Battle of the bands live concerts, food booths, farmer’s market, kids activity area, fun run, and much more.

Downtown Wenatchee. Info: www. wenatcheedowntown.org or www. wenatcheewines.com.

Flea Market, 9/17, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Parking lot of Apple Annie Antique Gallery, Cashmere.

Four Seasons Gala Dinner & Auction Under the Stars, 9/17,

4 – 9 p.m. Silent and live auctions, live music, dinner in the meadow and an after dinner concert. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons performed by the Icicle Creek Piano Trio Black Tie and Tennies. Icicle Creek Music Center’s Canyon Wren Recital Hall and the Meadow. Info: icicle.org.

Grand Columbia Triathlon, 9/17. Info: 800-268-5332 or trifreaks.com.

Leavenworth Crush Festival, 9/17, 3 – 7 p.m. More than 30 wineries from across the state to participate. Grape stomping, silent auctions, live Jazz, food vendors and wine for purchase.

Leavenworth Festhalle. Cost: $30 in advance or $35 at the door. Info: 548-6789 or leavenworthcrush. com.

Sarah Sample, 9/17, 7 p.m. Live music. River Haus in the Pines B & B. Cost: $35 includes dessert from Homefires Bakery and The Gingerbread Factors. Info: riverhausinthepines.com.

Autumnfest Mixed Doubles Tennis Tournament, 9/1819. Women’s and men’s doubles tournament – round robin. Lots of matches throughout the weekend.

Wenatchee Racquet and Athletic Club. Info: Charl Grobler 662-3544.

Piano Fitness Retreat, 9/21 – 25.

Focus on piano fitness, physical fitness, yoga for pianists, practice, private instruction, naturalist guided field trip/hike, faculty concert, healthy meals, lecture topics on caring for your piano and how to conduct a symphony orchestra.

Icicle Creek Music Center. Info: icicle.org.

The 2011 NCHBA and Sangster Motors Tour of Homes, 9/2225. Featuring homes in Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Chelan, Malaga and Peshastin. Tickets are $11 for an adult and $5 for children ages 2 to 12. Coupons for $1 off will be available at various local locations and on the website, www.nchba.cc.

Autumn Leaf Festival, 9/23-25.

Grand parade noon on Saturday.

Lots of entertainment. Downtown Leavenworth. Info: autumnleaffestival.com.

Book Signing, 9/23, 7 p.m. Leavenworth Library & 9/24, 1 p.m.

Underdog: Poems by Katrina Roberts. The poems wonder at how individuals through the ages have handled, often with grace, tremendous injustice, and they seek to comprehend the mysteries of our perpetual migrations from and toward each other. A Book For All Seasons, Leavenworth. Cost: free.

Info: iciclearts.org.

Wenatchee Valley AppleairEs, 9/24, 2 p.m. & 7 p.m. A cartoon feast of sights and sounds from your favorite animated characters,

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Get Animated is the theme. Performing Arts Center. Info: pacwen. org.

Tomatofare, 9/24, 3 p.m. Heirloom tomatoes, chefs, salsa and music.

White Heron Cellars, Quincy. Cost: $25 includes tomato tasting, all you can eat and music. Info: wenatcheevalley.org.

Hydrofest, 9/24- 25. Watch as many as 50 to 60 hydroplanes and racing runabouts. Race boats throw rooster tails over 50 feet into the air as they skim the lake with speed over 150 mph. Beer garden and food vendors at the Chelan Waterfront Marina. Info: lakechelan.com.

Book Signing, 9/25, 1 p.m. Author Therese Ambrosi Smith will be on hand with her new release, WAX: Pearl Harbor Changed Everything. A Book For All Seasons, Leavenworth.

Cost: free. Info: iciclearts.org.

Music Theatre Gala Show, 9/30, 7:30 p.m. Celebrating 50 wonderful years of music and theater in the Wenatchee Valley. The program will include songs from the past 50 years of MTW productions, all performed by people involved with MTW over the last 50 years. Riverside Playhouse. Info: mtow.org.

Oktoberfest, 9/30 – 10/1 and every weekend through October.

Authentic German food, beer, music and dancing. Downtown Leavenworth. Info: leavenworthoktoberfest.com.

Civil War Re-enactment, 10/1 - 2, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. In celebration of 100th anniversary of Plain and 150th year anniversary of the Civil

The Art Life

// SKETCHES OF LOCAL ARTISTS

Book publisher treats an author’s child with respect Rhett Hoffmeister,

Wenatchee book publisher, grew up on an Ephrata farm and developed a theory: the only real labor that counted was, he says, “the kind that gets your hands greasy, gets stuff under your fingernails.”

Even when he fantasized early on about living the artist’s life, he figured he’d have dirty hands to show for working with pencils, acrylics and oils.

But now he never touches the stuff. As a full time artist/ entrepreneur with Cat5 Internet capability, computer programs like CS5 Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and an array of other tech wonders in his arsenal, “Just about everything I do is on the computer… now instead of washing my hands, at the end of the day I wash the day’s work from my mind. “ Rhett, 34, and his wife, Emmaline, own Rhemalda, a young local company that gently but firmly brings a writer’s book from manuscript through a carefully calculated online marketing and distribution pipeline.

That’s not, he explains, the same as self-publishing, or a “vanity press” — his company picks up the tab and takes the risk.

Eventually the book goes into e-book publication, and/or into brick and mortar stores, bound and delivered, ready for pur-

War, there will be a Civil War Reenactment. Tour the camps, watch the battles, view the field hospitals.

Sunday worship service at 9 a.m.

The battlefield is at 18639 Beaver Valley Road in Plain across from the Old Mill Cafe. Cost: $8, $6 for seniors and students. Info: wcwa. net or 670-3796.

Wenatchee River Salmon

Rhett Hoffmeister with titles in hand and more covers to come on the wall.

chase and page-turning.

His home office is adorned with overlapped displays of stunning book covers that beg you to pick up the novel and settle in for a read. Whether they originate from paintings, digital designs, or photographs, each one has been tooled and tweaked.

Some grew from hand sketches by Rhett, or from contract illustrators, a favorite one in Germany. Rhett knows every piece of book art, and its evolu-

Festival, 10/1, 10 a.m., 10/2, 5 p.m. A natural resource education event celebrating the return of the salmon to the Wenatchee River.

Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. Info: salomnfest.org.

Lake Chelan Crush at the Wineries 10/1– 2 & 10/8-9. Observe first hand the steps involved in grape harvest and wine production September 2011 | The Good Life

tion, intimately.

“See this wisp of hair? And the eyes farther apart to make her look younger? We added the brooch, and then the berries on the vine to show the magic…” So the cover of Witch Song (ranking fifth out of 80,000 books by online reviewers, foreign rights sold) evolved.

An artist with a business degree from Central Washington University and a decade of auditing, as well as city and construction project manage-

and interact with the growers and winemakers. Do a little sampling.

Info: lakechelanwinevalley.com.

Wings, Wheels & Wine! 10/1.

Wine is a new addition to East Wenatchee’s Wings & Wheels Festival. Join Wenatchee Wine Country at the Wenatchee Jet Center for 12 tastes of wine in a souvenir glass for $20. Noon to 4 p.m. A free

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ment under his belt, Rhett was inspired to start his hands-on company by a conversation with a writer who was deeply disenchanted with her publisher’s choices. “I figured we could do something positive for authors — give them ownership, creative control; let them love the books they’ve written all the way to the bookstore.”

Rhett compares an author’s three or four-year writing project turned over to traditional publishers with a young child suddenly given up to strangers with an agenda and thus becoming almost unrecognizable at maturity.

He collaboratively publishes six titles each fall and spring, and figures his capacity in this labor-intense process could be 15 titles.

“What we do here is work personally with the writer every step of the way — I spend a lot of time sending ideas back and forth, refining and clarifying.”

He oversees the creation of cover art, font, colors, gutter size, chapter breaks and spacing, end sheets and even maps of fantasy fiction worlds. “This part is really great — I get to draw just the kind of maps I loved to make when I was younger!”

Rhett, keeping his hands clean, can use his visual skills every day as he labors over polishing and publishing literary creations.

For more details on publishing, go to rhemalda.com. A link leads to the company’s writers magazine, Opus.

— by Susan Lagsdin

shuttle runs guests from Douglas County Park to the Wine Garden/ Airport. For more information, go to www.wenatcheewines.com, or call 669-5808.

Mahogany & Merlot Vintage Boat Event, 10/1-2. On the water boat show featuring vintage unlimited hydroplanes. Docks on the Chelan Waterfront Marina.

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column those were the days

rod molzahn

Mining for gold in the Wenatchee Valley As the West was settled, the

extraction of minerals from the newly claimed earth was always an early activity. North Central Washington experienced that same trend.

By 1860 white and Chinese placer miners were panning gold along the west bank of the Columbia and up all of its tributaries. Chinese miners built the five-mile long “China Ditch” on the lower Methow River.

They used the ditch for 10 years, diverting river water into sluice boxes all along the length of the ditch.

By the mid 1880s hard-rock mining had begun in a number of locations around the Methow including John Stone’s claim near Twisp. Stone sold the mine for a red shirt and a bottle of whiskey. Soon known as the “Red Shirt Mine” it became one of the most productive in the area.

The mountains around Republic, in the northeast corner of the state, continue to be mined for a variety of minerals and a rich gold strike near Colville in the early 1860s raised the population in eastern Washington to nearly triple the number west of the Cascades.

It was 1858 when Mortimer

Ladders built by Chinese in the late 1860s helped them dig gold deposits from the rocky cliffs up the Squilchuck. Photos by Rod Molzahn

Robinson found gold in the gravel of Peshastin Creek. Panning and sluicing along the creek quickly grew as word spread.

Samuel Culver filed the first hard-rock claim in the Blewett

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area in 1874. Within three years there were 10 mines and a stamp mill that could crush eight tons of ore every 24 hours.

The Wenatchee Valley has produced wealth from the

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ground since placer miners began arriving in the late 1850s. Ten years later Chinese miners followed the gold up Squilchuck Creek and located exposed deposits in the rocky cliffs at the east end of a ridge that would, in a hundred years, become known as “D” reef.

The Chinese built a system of wooden ladders and platforms to reach the higher cliff levels.

Chunks of ore were dug from the crevices and dropped down to waiting miners who crushed them and panned the ore in the creek. It was the first hard-rock mining in the valley. They used the same technique in cliffs south of the Rock Island Rapids and below the Chelan Falls.

In 1884 the cliffs were acquired by Frank Morris who began the first tunneling into the ridge. After 10 years of digging Morris closed the mine.

Over the next 40 years several individuals, partnerships and companies mined the property.

There would be flurries of activity for a few years then quiet until someone new bought the land and went to work.

In 1948, a group of Wenatchee developers hired Ed Lovitt, a

Marketplace

Early tunnels dating to the 1880s are possibly the work of Frank Morris.

mining engineer from British Columbia, to evaluate the mine area, then owned by J. J. Keegan.

Lovitt was so impressed by the mine’s potential that he sold his holdings in Canada and moved to Wenatchee. In 1951 Ed Lovitt bought Keegan out and the Lovitt Mine began work in earnest.

If “gold is where you find it,” then Ed Lovitt was a great finder.

An option deal with Anaconda Mining from Montana left Lovitt with a mine full of supplies, heavy equipment and new tunnels when Anaconda pulled out in 1953 when their geologists said there was no promise of profits.

Over the next several years, production of gold and silver ore steadily increased as Lovitt extended a maze of tunnels on 14 levels under “D” reef. The cavities created by ore removal were so huge they could hold the West Coast Hotel, according to James Marr, Jr., who worked in the mine.

Mineable gold was quickly disappearing in “D” reef by the mid 1960s and the Lovitt mine was closed in 1967. In its 16 years of operation the mine produced over 410,000 ounces of gold and 625,000 ounces of silver and a

regular payroll for Wenatchee.

In spite of the mine closing, interest in the area continued, but mostly in the Dry Gulch area across the hill to the north of Squilchuck Canyon and south of Appleatchee Stables. In 1967 Ed Lovitt had predicted gold would be found in Dry Gulch just to the north of where the Chinese had built their ladders.

In 1985 the Cannon Mine began operation through a main tunnel opening in the base of The Wenatchee Dome at the south end of Miller Street. In 10 years of operation the mine produced 1.25 million ounces of gold and 2 million ounces of silver.

In the 26 years the Lovitt and Cannon Mines operated, the earth between “D” reef on Squilchuck Canyon and the mouth of Dry Gulch at the Appleatchee Stables was one of the most productive gold and silver mining areas in North America.

Medicare Health Insurance

Legal Plan

Massage Therapy

Accounting/bookkeeping

Advertising

Magazines

ADVERTISE IN THE MARKETPLACE

Extra copies HoAmt

WENATCHEE VALLEY’S #1 MAGAZINE

Fre For sh ide the as ho me

e

iNsi

de

September 2011

Cover price: $3

Reach the adventurous readers of THE doN’T WAIT PRoJECT ®

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.

September 2011 | The Good Life

who are willing to try something new.

Please contact

Donna Cassidy donna@ncwgoodlife.com John Hunter (509) 699-0123 www.ncwgoodlife.com

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overcoming sadness with action plus GoLd FEVER!

Hastings, Eastmont Pharmacy, Caffe Mela, Martin’s Market Place, A Book for All Seasons & Food Pavilion

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FUN STUFF // check out these activities

5 reasonS to venture out September is a month to get

out and see stuff, as the temperatures cool enough to make leaving the air-conditioned home behind.

Although “home” is sort of a theme this month, as we have two home tours and one garden tour.

Let’s get started:

Fair daze — Messy

BBQ sandwiches cooked by service club volunteers, cute animals raised by FFA kids, glad-handing politicians, a wine garden, spinning rides full of screaming youth, the biggest pumpkins you’ve ever seen and an entire building full of flowers, fastpaced rodeo — and that doesn’t even begin to describe the fun to be had at the Chelan County Fair Sept. 8-11. $8 for adults, $6 for students and seniors.

Those were the people — The Good

Life’s own, columnist Rod Molzahn presents a slide show of people significant to Wenatchee history in the 1920s and ’30s. These town leaders and characters, from lawmen to politicians to businessmen to moon shiners helped shape the Wenatchee of today. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Cost: $5 adults, $4 seniors/students, $2 kids 6-12; members free. Sept. 15, 2 - 3 p.m.

to grow flowers, vegetables and fruit from these treasures. Sept.

17, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Cost: $15.

Info: Deanna 884-1426.

R-r-r-oar! —

What a pretty garden! — The WSU

Chelan County Master Gardener Garden Tour features five private gardens and two bonus gardens that demonstrate sustainable gardening. The gardens are the ultimate cottage garden, a beginning garden, a reuse, recycle, reduce garden, a pollinator and bird garden and from field to flowers garden that features 200 different types of Dahlias. These are not competitive gardens — you can learn

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Then the following weekend, Sept. 22-25, is the 2011 NCHBA and Sangster Motors Tour of Homes featuring homes in Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Chelan, Malaga and Peshastin.

Tickets are $11 for an adult and $5 for children ages 2 to 12. Coupons for $1 off will be available at various local locations and on the website, www.nchba.cc.

We could live here —

Two home tours are this month.

On Sept. 17, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. the Lake Chelan Hospital Guild B presents its Annual Home Tour & Art Sale, featuring five beautiful Lake Chelan Valley homes. Cost: $20 per person, proceeds help purchase medical equipment at Lake Chelan Community Hospital. Info: lakechelancommunityhospital.com.

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If touring gardens and homes seems, well, a little too quiet for you, then here’s something to get your heart pounding and your ears ringing: Watch as many as 50 to 60 hydroplanes and racing runabout at Hydrofest on Lake Chelan Sept. 24-25.

Race boats throw rooster tails over 50 feet into the air as they skim the lake with speed over 150 mph. Beer garden and food vendors at the Chelan Waterfront Marina. Cost: Free. Info: lakechelan.com.

Know of a special experience we should check out? Eating, drinking or playing, we want to know.

Send us an e-mail at editor@ncwgoodlife.com