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PEOPLE compiled by

Zach Hagadone

watching

“What’s a New Year’s resolution that you’ve kept?”

“Usually I make a New Year’s resolution to do better than last year — keep killin’ it.”

Amelia Mathias Sandpoint

DEAR READERS, This is our first edition of 2022, which means we’re coming up on being back in print seven years in a couple of weeks. If you add that to more than seven years the Reader was in print during its first iteration, that means we’re honing in on 15 years of this newspaper in Sandpoint. We’re pretty proud of that.

If you were to ask any of us in 2004 — when the first edition was published —whether we thought the Reader would last until the futuristic and incredibly distant year of 2020, we’d have probably laughed in your face.

The truth is, this paper has always been a labor of love. We’ve gone through some high times and low ones, too, but our core mission has always remained the same: Support an informed community.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, folks. We couldn’t do this without you.

Here’s hoping 2022 brings you all the things.

– Ben Olson, publisher

READER 111 Cedar Street, Suite 9 Sandpoint, ID 83864 (208) 946-4368

www.sandpointreader.com Publisher: Ben Olson ben@sandpointreader.com Editorial: Zach Hagadone (Editor) zach@sandpointreader.com Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey (News Editor) lyndsie@sandpointreader.com Cameron Rasmusson (emeritus) John Reuter (emeritus) Advertising: Jodi Berge Jodi@sandpointreader.com

“I’ve never thought I was a bad enough person to make a New Year’s resolution.”

Paul Lukas Sandpoint

Contributing Artists: Schweitzer (cover photo), Ben Olson, Samantha Hellman, Luz Chase Bayless, Kevin Rhoades, Bill Borders Contributing Writers: Zach Hagadone, Ben Olson, Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey, Lorraine H. Marie, Brenden Bobby, Sen. Jim Woodward, Emily Erickson, Jen Jackson Quintano, Claire Christy Submit stories to: stories@sandpointreader.com Printed weekly at: Tribune Publishing Co. Lewiston, ID

“Working on paying off debt.”

Ashley Gleason Sandpoint

“A year-long attitude of gratitude.”

Fosha Mimbs Sandpoint

“I once resolved to enjoy the snow every day before it melted. Proud to say I kept that one.”

Mac Hope

Subscription Price: $155 per year Web Content: Keokee The Sandpoint Reader is a weekly publication owned and operated by Ben Olson and Keokee. It is devoted to the arts, entertainment, politics and lifestyle in and around Sandpoint, Idaho.

We hope to provide a quality alternative by offering honest, in-depth reporting that reflects the intelligence and interests of our diverse and growing community.

The Reader is printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink. Leftover copies are collected and recycled weekly, or burned in massive bonfires to appease the gods of journalism.

Free to all, limit two copies per person.

Sandpoint Reader letter policy: The Sandpoint Reader welcomes letters to the editor on all topics.

Requirements: –No more than 300 words –Letters may not contain excessive profanity or libelous material. Please elevate the discussion.

Letters will be edited to comply with the above requirements. Opinions expressed in these pages are those of the writers, not necessarily the publishers.

Email letters to: letters@sandpointreader.com Check us out on the web at: www.sandpointreader.com Like us on Facebook.

About the Cover

It’s been an excellent week of snow here in North Idaho, and the powder at Schweitzer has been amazing. I hope you all get a chance to enjoy it up there. Photo courtesy Schweitzer.

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NEWS

Deputy prosecutor alleges ‘defamation campaign’ by county officials

Bauer files notice of tort claim against two commissioners, information officer

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff Bonner County Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bauer filed a notice of tort claim Dec. 28 against Bonner County, alleging “malicious defamation” by Commissioners Dan McDonald and Jeff Connolly — as well as Chief Information Officer Brad Ptashkin — who Bauer stated spread claims that he illegally hacked into commissioner email accounts with county computers.

Asked for more information on the claim, Bauer did not comment in detail, but confirmed to the Reader that he’d filed the notice with the county on Dec. 28 and identified County Clerk Mike Rosedale as the “custodian of the complaint.”

A notice of tort claim does not constitute a lawsuit, but rather a communication to a public agency providing information that there may be grounds for one.

Bauer listed a $3 million claim

of damages in his notice, citing “gross negligence and reckless infliction of emotional harm” and “loss of future financial support” and “emotional support,” among other damages stemming from the defendants’ “intentional and malicious defamations.”

Those instances of defamation — or in some cases, “libel with malice” — are listed in the six-page notice, allegedly occurring in the BOCC board room, “an evening barbecue,” in Rosedale’s office, in email conversations and at a Christmas party. According to Bauer’s account, these incidents began in May and persisted into December 2021.

The nature of the defamatory or libelous remarks pertain to claims that Bauer was “a hacker,” or had used a county computer — namely, that of Veronica Dixon, a deputy clerk and wife of District 1 Rep. Sage Dixon — to access the commissioners’ email accounts and “scrape their passwords.”

Bauer believes these allega-

tions against him are “retaliation” for “unwanted legal advice” — that is, advice he gave the commissioners in the spring regarding possible violations of constitutional officer custodial rights. As constitutional officers, elected county officials are responsible for who “accesses, views, edits, releases and secures their records,” according to a statement from the Bonner County prosecutor’s office.

“Records should be siloed and only integrated where proper checks-and-balances ensure that all custodial duties are satisfied when it comes to shared IT resources,” the statement continued.

Though it is has not been specified exactly what possible violations Bauer may have been bringing to the board’s attention regarding custodial rights, the prosecutor’s office stated for example that, “If a CCO fails to adequately custody his/her custodial records it could lead to the destruction, tampering, unauthorized access and/or

failure of integrity (corruption) of those public records.”

According to Bauer’s notice of tort claim, his “unwanted legal advice” on potential CCO custodial rights violations served to impose “unwanted IT checks and balances on McDonald and Ptashkin and they resisted this advice to the point of mounting a defamation campaign against me.”

This alleged “defamation campaign” was meant to “prevent me from working for Bonner County and to prevent me from securing future employment outside of Bonner County,” Bauer

The Bonner County Administration Building in Sandpoint. Courtesy photo. stated. Also according to Bauer, he received notice Dec. 21 that he’d been dismissed from advising the board “due to trust issues.”

Connolly declined to comment when reached via email Jan. 4, and Ptashkin could not be reached before press time.

McDonald did respond, writing in an email: “At this point these are allegations that have not been proven and since there will be a pending investigation, I’m not at liberty to say much more than that.”

ARPA fund legal opinion should arrive within the week

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff The use of American Rescue Plan Act funds by Bonner County has remained a hot topic of discussion at weekly commissioner meetings since early November, when Sheriff Daryl Wheeler moved to return ARPA monies after discovering possible “strings attached” to the acceptance and spending of the federal relief funds.

The core of concern, expressed by elected officials and citizens alike, is whether using ARPA funds commits Bonner County to comply with all federal executive orders — particularly, any orders pertaining to required vaccination against the novel coronavirus.

Commissioners have assured the public that their legal counsel is looking into it — an effort that should culminate within the week, 4 /

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according to Bonner County Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bauer, who told the Reader on Jan. 3 that the county’s civil attorney team will be releasing its findings on the ARPA fund requirements later this week or early next.

“We are working to get a consensus opinion between the three of us, and we’re hopefully going to get it done very early next week,” said Bauer, referring to himself, Deputy Prosecutor Bill Wilson and Prosecutor Louis Marshall. He noted that the county has also consulted with an outside firm on the issue to get “a second set of eyes on it.”

While the county regularly accepts and spends federal grants as part of daily operations, relief funds related to COVID-19 have raised concerns about what conditions could come with the ARPA money.

“I think it is clear what the intention of the American Rescue Plan Act is,” said resident Kendra Martin, who, at the Jan. 4 meeting, cited a letter from President Joe Biden that accompanied payment notices to beneficiaries under ARPA, in which the president called the act “a law that will help vaccinate America.”

“We have a constitutional sheriff who saw it plain as day right off the bat and returned the money,” Martin continued. “I still don’t understand why you are dragging your feet.”

Bonner County was allotted nearly $9 million under ARPA, some of which has already been spent by EMS. Though Wheeler requested about $28,500 for “COVID mitigation” at the jail, he asked commissioners to return that money to county coffers after consulting with Clerk Mike Rosedale

and discovering a condition in the U.S. Treasury Department’s guidelines stating that recipients of ARPA funds must “comply with all other applicable federal statutes, regulations and executive orders, and [the] recipient shall provide for such compliance by other parties in any agreements it enters into with other parties relating to this award.”

Vaccines are of particular concern to county leaders as well as their most vocal anti-mandate constituents, as commissioners passed a resolution in October pledging to oppose any orders requiring citizens to be inoculated against the virus.

According to Bauer, should county departments continue

to spend ARPA funds and then discover it ties them to all current and future federal mandates, “we could be in violation of an executive order if it says, ‘do everything that you can to encourage county-wide vaccinations.’”

“The question is, given the contract for the funds, can they impose future requirements, not just subject us to current executive orders or current treasury regulations?” Bauer said, adding later: “That is, to me, the core question.”

NEWS

New Sandpoint City Council members sworn in Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission appointees also confirmed

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff There will be a few new faces around City Hall after the swearing in and election certification Jan. 5 of Council members Joel Aispuro, Justin Dick and Jason Welker, as well as a slate of members on the first-ever Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission.

Voters reelected Aispuro, a longtime local restaurateur, to a second four-year term in the November 2021 election. Dick, also a well-known restaurateur and community volunteer, now begins his first term on the council, as does Welker, a local nonprofit leader who comes to the body after a two-year stint on the Sandpoint Planning and Zoning Commission, including one year as chair.

Properly sworn in and taking their seats on the dais, the first act of the new City Council was to elect a council president, for which position Aispuro nominated Council member Kate McAlister. Her colleagues unanimously approved McAlister’s appointment, taking over for outgoing Council member Shannon Sherman, who served eight years — with six as council president — but chose not to run in the most recent cycle. For Council member John Darling, who served one term, it was also his last meeting.

Rognstad led the rest of the council in paying respect to the outgoing members, saying that while he and Darling didn’t “see eye-to-eye on a lot of things,” his perspectives “help[ed] me round out my knowledge.

“John always puts people before politics and before issues,” Rognstad said, adding later that Sherman had served as “a really solid council member over her

terms here.”

“Sandpoint has really grown up over the past eight years and Shannon has been a big part of that transition,” the mayor added.

Darling said his proudest achievement on council was the reconstruction of War Memorial Field — “I truly feel like that’s going to create a legacy that we’re going to leave for future generations,” he said — and, for Sherman, it was taking part in the creation of the city’s first strategic plan.

“When I started on council it was very, very different from what Sandpoint looks like today and operates like today, and that is in large part due to the wisdom of the council as well as our incredible staff,” Sherman said.

The other big ticket item on the agenda Jan. 5 was confirmation of Rognstad’s appointments to the Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission, which the city created in February 2021 by consolidating the Arts and Culture and Historic Preservation commissions.

Intended to help guide implementation of the Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Master Plan, new commission members confirmed by the City Council included Heather Upton, Karin

Wedemeyer and Elle Susnis each for three-year terms ending Dec. 31, 2024; Rick Decker, Woody Sherwood and Barry Burgess for two-year terms expiring Dec. 31, 2023; and Carol Kovalchuck and Stephen Bond Garvan for one-year terms ending Dec. 31, 2022. A final, ninth, position is reserved for a regional tribal member or artist and has yet to be appointed.

Upton currently works as executive director of the Bonner County Historical Society and curator of the museum, as well as served two terms on the Sandpoint Historic Preservation Commission.

Wedemeyer is founder and current executive director of the Music Conservatory of Sandpoint and Susnis is a longtime local graphic artist and screenprinter and has served several years on the Sandpoint Arts Commission, including as chair.

Decker, a downtown property owner with experience in real estate investing and development, helped work on historic design standards in the summer of 2019; Sherwood formerly helmed a music festival in Colorado and has owned and developed several historic properties; and Burgess is a retired architect, an artist and writer, as well as served on the

Sandpoint Arts Commission.

Kovalchuk served as vice-chair of the Sandpoint Arts Commission for four years, is a past executive director of the Arts Alliance, and has worked as an art instructor and artist-in-residence program coordinator for the Lake Pend Oreille School District. Finally, Garvan comes with decades of experience in the music industry, as well as more than six years on the Sandpoint Historic Preservation Commission, including as chair, and is a member of the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions.

“I think these are eight fine candidates who have demonstrated their ability to serve the city of Sandpoint,” Rognstad said.

The commission will be aided by $150,000 in grant funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, which council members also approved Jan. 5.

Part of the NEA’s Arts American Rescue Plan, the grant dollars go to supporting arts agencies with passthrough funding for local nonprofit arts organizations to be used as a financial buffer during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — “ensuring the survivability of those organizations,” Sandpoint City Administrator Jennifer Stapleton said.

Top row: Joel Aispuro, left; Jason Welker, center; and Justin Dick, right, are sworn in as Sandpoint City Council members at the Jan. 5 meeting. Bottom row: Outgoing Council members John Darling and Shannon Sherman receive a farewell present from Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad in commemoration of their service. Photos by Ben Olson.

The grant provides $50,000 for a new part-time city employee who will work as Sandpoint’s creative vitality coordinator/historic preservation officer, the creation of which was recommended in the Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Master Plan. The coordinator will design and administer the grant program — which will disburse the remaining $100,000 — in collaboration with the new Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission as well as the city’s chief grants compliance officer.

“We were the only local jurisdiction in the state of Idaho to receive one of these grants; it’s an extremely competitive grant,” Stapleton said.

The council unanimously approved accepting the grant, with a smattering of applause as Rognstad announced, “And we have a newly populated Arts and Culture Commission that is now fully funded.”

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NEWS

Rise in omicron COVID cases have state health providers worried for hospitals, schools

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff

Idaho health care officials are sounding alarm bells about the rapid upward trend in new COVID-19 cases, as the highly-contagious omicron variant spreads in what’s being reported around the country as a post-holiday “surge.”

Primary Health Medical Group CEO David Peterman, who oversees one of the largest health care providers in the state, told Boise-based KTVB-7 TV that with 1,000 individuals tested each day at 21 facilities in southwest Idaho, the weekly positivity rate ran to nearly 27% in the last week of December alone.

The month before, Peterman said Primary Health was seeing positivity rates in the single digits, making this the sharpest increase in new cases yet seen by the provider.

“The messaging from the CDC and on TV to the public has been that omicron seems to be less of a severe disease, less patients need to be hospitalized. While that is likely true, and I am grateful for that, the fact that this is so contagious creates many problems,” Peterman told the news station.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported Jan. 4 that new COVID-19 cases nationwide “reached a record-shattering average of 480,000 this week,” which is putting mounting pressure on primary care providers around the country — including in Idaho.

The AP pointed out that Primary Health in Boise took in more than 2,000 urgent care patients on Jan. 3 alone, the largest number of patients on a single day since a week before hospitals went into “standards of care” protocols in September 2021.

“We’re seeing record numbers in our clinics, and we have 38 of our employees out sick. If primary care doctors cannot see their patients for their hypertension, for sore throats, for diabetes, then we’re in trouble,” Peterman told the AP. The Panhandle Health District reported 147 new cases on Jan. 5 with 80 patients currently hospitalized. Statewide that number was 1,441 new confirmed or probable cases on Jan. 5.

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students returning after their winter break, Idaho health care officials are also worried that relaxed masking, social distancing and other COVID-19 mitigation policies in schools may help contribute to the current spike in cases.

According to the Idaho Statesman, few school districts around the state still maintain masking in the classroom, as vaccine rates for young people remain low: 15% for children 5-11 years old, 40% for those 12-15, and 45% for 16and 17-year-olds.

Just as primary care providers and hospitals are fearing the effects of staff shortages from infection at the same time as demand for services is increasing, they are also worried that the post-holiday increase in cases may result in school closures.

“The history, even in our own state, of schools having to shut down because of being overwhelmed by COVID were significant in the fall,” Kenny Bramwell, system medical director for St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital in Boise, told the Statesman. “So I would expect that, sadly, to be worse now that we’re starting a new semester with a more contagious variant.”

State and local guidance for schools, as well as individuals, remains as it was before the holiday season: get vaccinated, maintain physical distance, wash hands, stay home when sick and get tested if symptoms present. However, a spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare told the Statesman that a best practice for limiting spread in schools is for teachers, staff, students and visitors to mask up at all times while indoors, regardless of vaccine status.

That’s exactly what the University of Idaho is doing, according to the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, as UI President Scott Green announced Jan. 3 that mandatory masking in university offices, buildings and common areas be continued into the spring semester.

“Unfortunately, the omicron variant of COVID-19 is causing us to reevaluate how we thought we would enter the spring semester,” Green told the campus community in an email. “Because of omicron’s high transmission, we will begin the semester with the same safety protocols that were in place in the fall.”

Bits ’n’ Pieces From east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact.

A recent sampling: According to a Congressional Oversight Committee report, Big Pharma has been price gouging for years, with some drug prices 250 times more expensive.

The result: taxpayers foot the bill — $5 billion annually — when Medicare is not allowed to negotiate drug prices. U.S. Sen. Katie Porter, D-Calif., said the excuse for price hikes, that they are needed to offset funds for research and development, is a “myth.”

Preliminary data from Scotland shows the omicron variant puts fewer people in the hospital as compared to the delta variant. But, Imperial College London, noted it is 10 times more infectious.

The U.K. Health Security Agency reported that booster protection against the omicron variant can drop up to 25% within 10 weeks. A Pfizer shot with a Pfizer booster can see a drop from 70% to 45% within 10 weeks. Business Insider reported that a small pool of people who had two Pfizer shots, then a Moderna booster, maintained 70% to 75% protection for nine weeks.

The FDA has now approved a second drug, molnupiravir, developed by Merck, for treating COVID-19. The previous day the FDA approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment, Paxlovid.

Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal seem to agree about the state of the nation’s economy: overall economic growth in the U.S. for 2021 was 6%, compared to 4% for China and 2% for the Eurozone. Bloomberg commented that “America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden’s first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years.” U.S. wages rose, the American Rescue Plan cut child poverty by half and 4.6 million more people were eligible for the Affordable Care Act. U.S. companies are showing a 15% higher profit margin, higher than since 1950. Reduced debt for companies has resulted in a stronger stock market.

Nonetheless, a CNN/SSRS poll showed 54% don’t approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, citing inflation as one reason. Inflation has been occurring all over the planet, but gas prices have actually declined, according to GasBuddy, and supply disruptions have not matched severe predictions. The Wall Street Journal reported that the supply bottleneck has

By Lorraine H. Marie Reader Columnist

been largely due to American consumer demand. Why the public’s low assessment of the economy? Only 19% polled said they have heard or read good things about the economy. Other sources: Pew Research and The New York Times.

The pause in student loan debt payments has been extended to May 1, NPR reported.

Despite hold-ups to passing Build Back Better (Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., block passage) the plan has not been abandoned. BBB is composed of measures to expand health and social care and combat the climate crisis. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., has urged President Joe Biden to further BBB goals with executive action.

Manchin, who has extensive ties to the coal industry, objects to funding for fighting climate change, and also objects to extending child tax credits. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., points out that, “We were elected to address these many needs and we will not stop fighting until we do.”

Failure to pass BBB led Goldman Sachs to lower its GDP forecast for the nation, joined in that forecast by Moody’s Analytics’ chief economist.

A 34-year-old man in December was sentenced to 33 months in prison for threatening to kill six members of Congress if they did not challenge Biden’s election. Another man, age 37, was sentenced to 19 months for urging the “slaughter” of Congress members after Jan. 6, The WEEK reported.

Researchers at the University of California Riverside think they’ve discovered a new way to determine who is at risk for Alzheimer’s: Those who have both amyloid plaques as well as neurofibrillary tangles. A UCR chemistry professor said that 20% of those with plaques have no sign of dementia, indicating, “the plaques themselves are not the cause.”

Part of the problem: Clearing defective proteins from cells (autophagy) slows down after age 65. But that problem, the researchers say, can be reduced with exercising and fasting as well as drug therapies. The study has been published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

Blast from the past: “In politics absurdity is not a handicap.” Napoleon Bonaparte, French military and political leader, 1769-1821.

PERSPECTIVES

Legislative preview

Budget proposals and debates likely to be significant in 2022 Legislature

By Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle Reader Contributor

The 2022 legislative session starts on Monday, Jan. 10 with the governor’s State of the State address, available online through Idaho Public Television. The annual address includes proposals for the legislative session. I expect budget proposals and debates will be significant this year as Idaho sales and income tax revenues are much greater than anticipated.

When looking at what to do with the Idaho tax funds, we must first ask where the excess revenues are coming from. If the tax revenues are due to population growth, we should invest in infrastructure to maintain our Idaho quality of life. If we are taxing at a rate that is generating more money than necessary, we should lower the tax rate. If we are seeing higher than normal sales tax collections because of federal money flowing into the state as a result of the pandemic response, we need to look at the one-time obligation of those tax revenues because, at some point, that money stream will dry up.

Last year, with a much smaller pot of money to work with, we followed the Idaho way and struck a balance between transportation investments, rainy-day savings and returning money to Idaho taxpayers. I am hopeful we can strike a similar balance this year, but with some different points of emphasis to include infrastructure and education.

In the 20 or more years after World War II, as a country, we

Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle. File photo. built a great deal of infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure is at the end of its useful life. The funds available this year are a great opportunity to rebuild and improve our infrastructure, whether transportation, utilities or public buildings. Our children will benefit from these investments.

The importance of an education system to the founders of this state is clearly visible in our Idaho Constitution. The Legislature is duty bound to the public schools of the state.

One opportunity under consideration is funding of optional all-day kindergarten. Districts that currently offer all-day kindergarten are funding it from a variety of sources, including property taxes in some areas. Across the state, more than two-thirds of our school districts have made the local decision to offer all-day kindergarten. With that kind of consensus, it appears it is time to fund the program from the state

level, remembering it is optional and a choice for parents.

While we are working to improve education in Idaho, there is simultaneously an effort to defund public education. Some try to overlay a controversial nationwide narrative about material being taught in school classrooms. I don’t think we have the same problem in Idaho, but there is certainly an effort to make that appearance. The teachers I know are long-time residents, many from logging, farming and ranching families, and are as vested in traditional Idaho values as any. It may be a lucrative business model to make outlandish claims about our Idaho education system, but it is not the truth.

Moving away from the 2022 legislative session, I would like to provide a few updates.

The Clark Fork-Pend Oreille River basin water adjudication is getting started. Notifications are going out in phases to all addresses in the basin. The water adjudication is a legal process to protect your existing water rights. As more people come to Idaho, the adjudication will become more important.

Idaho water law says that “first in time is first in right.” The adjudication determines who is first in line, second in line, etc. If a dispute arises, you will not need to pay for a private

lawsuit. There will already be a court determination of your water right. A completed adjudication also helps protect Idaho water from out of state interests. More information is available at idwr.idaho.gov.

Many of the tax changes from the last session are in place. The homeowner’s property tax exemption is now $125,000. The “circuit breaker” property tax reduction program income limitation and the benefit amount are both higher to reflect inflation. Finally, important to many small business owners, the business personal property tax exemption is now $250,000 and transient business personal property is no longer taxed.

The last topic to touch on is legislative boundary redistricting. The redistricting commission has made its final recommendation. There are a number of court challenges to

the plan by parties from across the state. Hopefully we will have an approved legislative district map in February, which will allow the upcoming May primary elections to stay on schedule.

Thank you for the opportunity to represent our northern two counties in the Idaho Legislature. Please feel free to reach out with any questions or to share your thoughts.

Jim Woodward is a second-term Republican member of the Idaho Senate, representing District 1. He serves as vice-chair of the Transportation Committee and on the Joint Finance-Appropriations and Education committees.

He can be reached during the upcoming session of the Idaho Legislature, which convenes Monday, Jan. 10 in Boise, at jwoodward@senate.idaho.gov.

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Panida event supports Quality Education Act…

Bouquets: • Here’s a quick note of thanks to the lifty crew at Schweitzer.

With all the amazing snow we’ve been having, the mountain has been in fine form. With all the snow, however, comes lots of shoveling. Whenever I get to the lifts, I’m always greeted with a genuine smile and positivity from the liftys. It’s great to see someone who enjoys their job and isn’t afraid to crack a joke or two when they can. Also, a special thanks goes out to the Schweitzer Ski Patrol for their tireless work to keep the terrain and skiers/snowboarders safe on the mountain.

• The holiday season is over, but we can still enjoy the festive decorations around our town, which include the great murals painted on local businesses’ windows. Most of these window paintings were done by Nellie Lutzwolf and Maria Larson, both excellent artists who continue to give our downtown shopping district a fun local flavor. Thanks so much for your efforts Nellie and Maria, and if I’m neglecting to mention someone else who has contributed with window painting this season, please email me and let me know so I can thank you, too!

Barbs: • I miss the good old days when people used to argue about their opinions, but agreed upon basic facts. In this post-truth America, it seems more and more people have stopped debating policies and issues and have embarked upon a dangerous trend of either discrediting the source of information or outright denying proven facts exist in the first place, despite evidence that proves otherwise. I see it happening more and more every day and it leaves me wondering whether this is just the way of the world now, or if we’ll transition out of this new dumb and begin embracing reality again.

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Dear editor, On Saturday, Jan. 8, local residents are invited to join Luke Mayville, 2003 SHS graduate, with Reclaim Idaho at our 2022 Kickoff for Education at 6 p.m. in the Panida Theater.

Reclaim Idaho is currently gathering signatures to qualify the “Quality Education Act” for next November’s ballot. Passage of this citizens’ initiative will substantially increase funding for our K-12 public schools with the primary focus on increasing teachers’ salaries, reducing class sizes, funding all-day kindergarten and funding more career-technical classes.

At a time when Idaho ranks lowest in the nation for funding public schools and our state legislators ignore the shortfalls, we, the citizens, are taking action toward a solution.

This bill is expected to raise $300 million a year with proportionally fair distribution to school districts based on enrollment.

Following at 7 p.m., a documentary film on Reclaim Idaho’s first successful campaign, which passed Medicaid expansion into law in 2020, will be shown on the Panida screen. Tickets online at panida. org. Proof of vaccination or negative COVID test required for entry.

Please come sign our education initiative and learn about our current momentum. This will be a lifeline for Idaho K-12 education!

paranoid conspiracy believers who seem to have little, if any, regard for the overall welfare of Idaho citizens.

Three individuals (out of 47,000 residents) are quoted even though they have absolutely no evidence of any factual concerns. The newspaper reporter writes, “many members of the public have concerns.”

Who are these many members? How many of them are there?

Is it the same 12 people who consistently denigrate our great country and the laws that are passed for the benefit of the common good? Will they be the same 12 people that object to the bipartisan infrastructure bill that will bring broadband to Bonner County, bring road and bridge improvements and other much-needed projects? Will these same 12 people continue to receive front page headlines with their ridiculous paranoid conspiracies?

likely saved me from diabetes. She was not as successful with Dad. Nor me, when it came to high cholesterol. When my doctor eventually recommended statins in my early 60s, I demurred. I had read Nina Teicholz’s Big Fat Surprise, which argues (with evidence) that sugar causes ill-health, not fats. Americans have cut down on fats big time, which makes us hungry for sugar.

So I gave up processed sugar.

It wasn’t hard. I stopped buying beloved milk chocolate (only worked because we live 40 minutes from town). I started reading food labels — and saw processed sugar everywhere! (Did you know that most mustard has sugar in it? Even already sweet things have “added sugar.”)

Not fanatical by nature, I kept

drinking beer and sneaked some Lindt past myself on occasion. :-) And ate all the good fats I wanted.

(Avocados, yum!)

Six months later, my husband complained, “You haven’t made any chocolate chip cookies lately!” I hadn’t even noticed. I was good for almost 10 years. Now, sugar mostly tastes bad to me. (Except in pie.)

Lately I’ve padded my diet with lots of meat and sugar (to counteract chemo side-effects.) Unsurprisingly, I’m drowning in cholesterol.

My NP guesses (with evidence) that there is a genetic component, and I’ve agreed to a low dose of statins.

While I quietly revert to my old diet.

Nancy Gerth Sagle

Steve Johnson Sagle

Chewing the fat (and some sugar)…

Dear editor, My mom saved me from gaining weight as a teenager by restricting dietary sugar and fats. Though I resented it, I eventually saw that she

Linda Larson and Rebecca Holland Reclaim Idaho co-leaders District 1 Sandpoint

A loud minority opposes ARPA funds…

Dear editor, The American Rescue Plan Act was passed by the United States Congress with bipartisan support to help all American citizens recover from the dangerous and deadly pandemic. The Friday headline in one of the local papers says the funding has prompted a “clash.” The headline implies there is widespread resistance to using this money that our federal representatives voted for and Idaho citizens need and deserve.

It is ridiculous to imply that residents of Idaho are not smart enough to see that this tiny minority of people who seem to get a huge amount of media attention are

PEDIATRICS FAMILY MEDICINE BEHAVIORAL HEALTH DENTAL VA

Bonners Ferry 208.267.1718 Priest River 208.448.2321 Sandpoint 208.263.7101 kchnorthidaho.org

PERSPECTIVES

Emily Articulated

A column by and about Millennials

The Year of the Water Tiger

By Emily Erickson Reader Columnist

I’m not usually much for reading into horoscopes or zodiac influence beyond a twinkle of entertainment, placing (maybe too much) stake in my own volition and the fundamental aspects of human nature responsible for the patterns in our lives.

But I do love symbolism.

My brain operates largely in metaphors, tying connections between things that could be considered mundane or wholly unrelated. It’s an insatiable seeking for meaning that’s seeded somewhere ancient in me — connected to the part of myself still stretching back centuries, wrapped in ceremony and mysticism.

This sliver of self is piqued when gazing into a rumbling fire, watching rolling waves or peering into a velvety, star-lit sky. It’s piqued when cocooned in a candle-lit room, during extreme forms of physical exertion, and when engulfed by any multi-part musical harmony.

And it was piqued when I read that 2022 was the Chinese Year of the Water Tiger.

According to tradition, the Chinese New Year, beginning on Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, marks a transition from the influence of one zodiac to another — the forces of the world being basically “under new management.” The tiger is the third of 12 Chinese zodiacs and is affected by one of five elements in any given year (metal, wood,

Emily Erickson. water, fire and earth) bringing further nuance to the zodiac’s behaviors.

The tiger is considered the king of all animals in China, symbolizing strength, justice and bravery. In 2022, it’s said to be influenced by the water element (last occurring in 1962), smoothing out the hard edges of the tiger’s solitary or judgemental tendencies and allowing it to lean into its softer, more thoughtful and altruistic nature.

Which — after the past few years of being at the mercy of a global pandemic, an ever-changing economic scope, political and social unrest, an imploding planet and the spreading disease of divisiveness — makes me want to fully embrace the symbolism in Chinese tradition this year.

Who better to lead us through this jungle of uncertainty and universal lack of precedence than a brave, justice-oriented and altruistic tiger? What better energy to embody when staring into the venomous face of rampant misinformation, systemic racism, campaigns against women’s

rights, gentrification of our local communities and crumbling representative democracy than the fierce dynamicness of a wild cat?

And what better element to complement that fangs-andclaws-out-for-our-cause attitude than the connectivity and steadiness of water — reminding us that ferocity can only get us part of the way to where we’re trying to go. Empathy, compassion and thoughtfulness have to carry us the rest of the way; to the future we can only dare to imagine as possible.

Chinese New Year’s traditions and zodiac signs aside, adding a new number to the end of our dates, ticking off another year on our calendars, is an opportunity. It holds all the possibility of a reset button, allowing us to reflect on the lessons gained over the past year, and use those lessons to inform our intentions for the 12 months ahead.

We are cyclical by nature, as humans, reveling in the ritual of new beginnings and fresh starts; of shedding old skins, old habits and old ways of living that aren’t suiting us anymore. The past few years have been hard, for so many people in so many different ways, that going back to where we were “before” isn’t an option. But, we can rebuild on all the collective surviving we had to do just to get by, reclaiming the clarity and vigor of a new beginning to forge a different future.

We can get clear on what we want our small communities to look like, the kind of neighbors we want to be

and have, and what values we share in our close-knit groups.

We can decide which parts of our national and global communities we should help shape, and which parts we should leave to the people most qualified for shaping.

Most importantly, we can fight tooth-and-claw to be the best versions of ourselves; to empower the people around us; to make our slivers of the world

better; and to not let our ferocity alienate us from that which runs through us and every other person we’ll ever meet.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www. bigbluehat.studio.

Retroactive

By BO

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Mad about Science:

Brought to you by:

The science and importance of reading Part 1

By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist Stop for a moment and contemplate how incredible it is that you are reading. As far as we are aware, primates — and humans in particular — are the only animals that are capable of reading written languages.

Dogs, mice and birds may be able to recognize familiar patterns formed by letters, giving them an illusion of literacy, but there has been no documented evidence that they can actually comprehend tangible words or draw emotion from them in the way that humans do.

Words are our most powerful tools for conveying our greatest strength: knowledge.

The written word grants a person’s consciousness and intent immortality, well after their body has succumbed to the passage of time.

Think about how incredible a word is. Every letter of a word is part of a code, meaningless until an eye captures the light it reflects. Our brains then rapidly work to decode that message, converting it into data, feeling, memory and emotion. After unwrapping that code, our brains will sometimes pack all of those feelings and emotions into more letters, forcing our brains to re-code all of that information and then orchestrate our fingers in etching them out with the intent of others (or perhaps our future selves), reading that little immortalized fragment of us. Words are a snapshot into a person’s mind at a very precise moment in time.

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This all happens in a fraction of a second, faster than it takes for your brain to register a blink of your eyes.

Naturally, reading comes with all sorts of benefits. We would have abandoned it as a species long ago if it didn’t provide us an immediate and tangible benefit. As mentioned above, reading is a complicated function, and it takes your brain a good deal of attention and coordination to read. This level of focus makes your brain prioritize the problem-solving of decoding the text, and places other thoughts, anxieties and problems lower on the priority list to create a natural stress reduction effect.

Reducing stress isn’t the only benefit your mind gains from reading. Studies have shown that people who read large amounts of fiction show empathy more easily than those who do not. If you’re reading a book about an ace detective sneaking through a dark, abandoned mannequin factory hot on the heels of a murderous psychopath with an obsession for collecting human skin, your brain is going to imagine all of those details vividly. It’s only natural that you’re going to feel for this character’s emotions as if they were your own — you’re embarking on this journey together, yet all you can do is watch through their eyes.

Movies and TV may try to capture this feeling, but it’s one that can’t be emulated outside of the written word.

Reading causes your brain to work harder than it does while performing daily activities. This effect is similar to

hitting the gym to work on your sweet six-pack. Putting in effort and exercising your brain will increase its capacity to retain memory, think critically, analyze problems more effectively and even ward off dementia. While the physical processes might be different — your muscles tear, rebuild with new cells and bulk up while your brain optimizes neural pathways — the result is the same. Exercising your brain will improve its performance.

It has been proven that when it comes to exercising your brain, quality matters more than quantity. For example, virtually anything that appears on social media is designed to do one thing: quickly grab your attention. Using social media as a replacement for reading would be like watching a loop of commercials for three hours instead of paying $10 to go watch a movie at the theater. Take a moment and think about how much time you spend idly scrolling through your feed every day. Add up all of that time after one week and see how much time you spent on your phone. Did anything you scrolled past stick with you for more than three days?

The average person spends about two and a half hours a day on social media recreationally. This total consists of a broken-up collection of brief scrollings, breaks from work or bathroom visits, but it adds up to about 10% of a 24-hour day. If you think that’s not enough time to meaningfully read a book, here’s more napkin math for fun.

The average American takes about five to six minutes to

read one page of a book. If you were to replace social media with reading, you could comfortably read about 25 pages per day at this pace. Most novels are between 250 and 400 pages, unless you plan on slamming through War And Peace at a whopping 1,225 pages.

That means it would take the average reader between 10 and 16 days to finish a novel at a very relaxed pace.

It might be hard to conceive of giving up social media, but if you find yourself stuck in an

emotional and psychological rut, trapped in an endless loop of boredom scrolling, consider attempting this experiment: swap your social media usage with a book for 10 days and compare how you feel at the start of the experiment and the end.

The very worst that could happen is that you might have something new to talk about at your next party. Come back next week for a deep dive behind the science of why your brain loves to read.

Stay curious, 7B.

Random Corner Don’t know much about space?

• Mercury and Venus are the only two planets in our solar system that have no moons.

• The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus. The out-ofcontrol greenhouse effect causes a temperature of 864 degrees Fahrenheit on the planet’s surface.

• Our solar system is 4.571 billion years old, give or take 30 million years. The sun will expand to become a red giant in about 5 billion years and, in 7.5 billion years, will expand and engulf the Earth.

• The highest mountain in the solar system is Olympus Mons on Mars, which is 16 miles high, making it nearly three times the height of Mount Everest.

• Earth is the only planet in the solar system not named after a god. Nobody really knows how the Earth got its name. Most believe the name is an amalgamation of both the Old English and Old Germanic words for “ground.”

We can help!

• Pluto is smaller than the United States. If you were to walk around the equator of Pluto, it would be the same distance as walking from London to Denver.

• Because of its unique vertical tilt, a season on Uranus is equivalent to 21 Earth years. That’s a long summer!

• The Earth’s rotation is slowing slightly as time goes on, due to the tidal effects the Moon has on Earth’s rotation.

• On Venus, it snows metal and rains sulfuric acid. This is because Venus is choked with sulfuric acid, causing the planet’s metals to turn into gas, then liquid in the atmosphere. It then rains down to the ground after the freezing temperatures turn it into a solid again.

• It is impossible for an astronaut to burp in space. The lack of gravity means the air in the astronaut’s stomach doesn’t separate and rise from ingested food.

OPINION

The darkest day, one year later

A year has passed since the Jan. 6 insurrection. What have we learned?

By Ben Olson Reader Staff Some dark deeds in American history will forever be associated with when they took place: Dec. 7, 1941; Nov. 22, 1963; Sept. 11, 2001.

A year ago today, another date was added to that hallowed list: Jan. 6.

On that day, thousands of people attended a political rally billed as “Stop the Steal” in Washington, D.C., where numerous speakers stood before a crowd clad largely in Trump attire and waving Gadsden Flags, Confederate Battle Flags and Trump 2020 flags, among others, and urged it to “stand up” and “fight” against a “stolen election.”

Then-President Donald Trump took the stage last, telling his followers, “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue … and we’re going to the Capitol,” in an effort to deter the procedural ballot certification process and somehow nullify the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe Biden.

What followed was one of the darkest days in American history, when democracy itself was under attack. Barricades were toppled, windows smashed, congressional offices trashed and looted. Police officers were beaten with hockey sticks, metal poles, baseball bats, fire extinguishers and even flags of our very nation. These officers were punched, kicked, mauled and spat upon. They were blasted with bear spray, crushed between doors, cursed at, called racial slurs and dragged from their positions defending the Capitol, beaten and stomped by Trump supporters who couldn’t stomach losing an election.

Lives were lost and a nation held its breath and watched in horror as the scenes unfolded across media platforms large and small.

A year later, many questions remain about the attack. Many of these questions are on the lips of Americans around our country, wondering why so many so-called “lawand-order” Republican lawmakers and pundits continue to downplay, obfuscate and outright smirk about what really happened that day.

Some claimed it was Antifa that

Jan. 6 riot by the numbers 2

The number of Republicans who served on the Jan. 6 select committee after Senate GOPers killed a proposal that would have established a bipartisan committee to investigate the attack on the capitol.

187

really stormed the Capitol. Others, most noticeably Tucker Carlson at Fox News, claimed that it was set up by Democrats — that it was a “false flag” operation because the Capitol police were “unprepared” for the magnitude of the riot.

Yet, some of these same Fox News personalities sent urgent text messages to Trump during his 187 minutes of silence during the riots — messages they apparently forgot all about while promoting conspiracy theories and outright bullshit to downplay the attack in the hours, weeks and months since it occurred. Prior to a unanimous vote to refer former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for contempt of Congress charges, a series of text messages were read to the House select committee investigating the insurrection. All of these messages were sent to Meadows during the riot: Laura Ingraham (Fox News): “Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home.

This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”

Brian Kilmeade (Fox News): “Please, get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.”

Sean Hannity (Fox News): “Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.”

Even Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., texted to Meadows, “He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.”

Other texts from unknown Republican members of Congress and others painted a clear picture of frustration growing into desperation as rioters continued to smash their way deeper inside the Capitol: “Hey, Mark, protestors are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in.

Is Trump going to say anything?”

“We are under siege here at the Capitol.”

“They have breached the Capitol.”

“TELL THEM TO GO HOME” “Mark, he needs to stop this.

Now.” “We are all helpless.”

They go on and on, these pleas for help from people who later would compare the insurrection to a “normal tourist visit,” in their attempts to keep convincing their most ardent supporters that an election was stolen. For the record — and for the umpteenth time — there has been no evidence whatsoever of widespread voter fraud that supports any claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

As we learn more and more from the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, the actions of that day in 2021 are immortalized not only in texts, photos or video footage, but in our minds and hearts as we collectively stood at the brink and almost fell off.

They say, “Never forget,” when referring to hallowed dates of our

past: Dec. 7, 1941, when 2,403 Americans died in a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan; Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas; and Sept.

11, 2001, when 2,977 people were killed as terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania — the latter plane likely bound for the very same building where almost 20 years later a mob of rioters stormed the Capitol and left a stain on this country that will be visible for many years to come.

“Never forget” means all of it: the good, the bad, the ugly. All of it. It means loving our country not for its factions or parties, but for its ideals, its hopes and, yes, its failures, too. We’re supposed to learn from failure, not lean into it.

Loving our country means believing in our people — a collection of immigrants from around the world, a heterogeneous mix of beliefs, cultures, attitudes and persuasions attempting to live in balance with the rest. That is the America most of us truly believe in, when you take away all the noise and bluster. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

When times get tough and angry voices seem to take all the oxygen from the room, never forget to ask yourself a simple question: Is this America?

The number of minutes that passed after former-President Trump told his supporters to march to the Capitol during the rally to the time when he finally released a statement. That’s more than three hours of time that passed while people supporting Trump had already broken down barriers, fought with police with everything from hockey sticks to bear spray, smashed windows and carried Confederate Battle Flags among others through the building. Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., said in an interview with CNN, “It appears that he tried to do a taping several times, but he wouldn’t say the right thing. … That dereliction of duty causes us real concern.”

140

Metropolitan Police Department and Capitol Police officers injured during the attack. One officer died Jan. 7 after two strokes due to the riot and four others died by suicide in the weeks and months following.

725

The number of people arrested in nearly all 50 states for their part in storming the Capitol. Sixteen of those arrested were either former police officers or were employed in law enforcement at the time of the riot. All those currently employed as police officers at the time of the riot have since lost or left their jobs.

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PERSPECTIVES

One habit I’ve maintained from my once-upon-a-time years as a writer is keeping a notebook on hand at all times.

Everywhere I go, paper and pen are at the ready in case inspiration hits. These days, inspiration typically comes in the form of ideas on how to take down a tree safely, how to staff the week’s jobs or how to handle those after-school hours wherein I’m still working but my daughter is not. Occasionally, though, big thoughts still emerge from my business-burdened brain and make it into the Notebook of the Interior.

Occasionally, inspiration and introspection beckon.

Recently, one burbling from the depths appeared as, There are other ways to be strong besides running a chainsaw, a statement that is both obvious and arresting. I had never considered that my occupational choices were compensating for anything.

And I don’t think that’s entirely the case. My work as an arborist is somewhat a product of my affinities for my husband, physical exertion and the great outdoors. Tyler brought tree work into my life, and I embraced it for all the great loves that it fed. Yet, there’s also the part of me that really likes the image you currently see on the page, the one in which I’m sporting a Metallica T-shirt and chainsaw. That image makes a statement about being strong and tough. Add on the fact that, with logging boots, I stand at about 6’2”, 12 /

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Jen Jackson Quintano. and the picture is complete.

The thing is, that’s not who I am at my core — I like to think of myself as a compassionate, sensitive and thoughtful person — but I do enjoy having that image at my disposal. I appreciate the armor it provides. I like that, sometimes, I don’t have to feel as vulnerable as I am.

In my 20s, I became acutely aware of my own vulnerability, as is the story for all too many women. I was drugged and raped. For someone who grew up as an overachiever in a quiet town within an all-American family, this was an eye-opening (and soul-crushing and generally life-altering) experience for me. To learn that one can do everything right and still have life turn out wrong, wrong, wrong… well, it converted me into something of a nihilist for a time. I lost hold of my own

value and the meaning of my path. I started courting risk so I could control it. I was the hunter, not the hunted. If I could talk to my 20-something self, I’d recommend therapy instead of destruction, but everyone takes their own winding path through trauma. Some people leave it writ rather largely across the landscape of their lives.

At this point, the events of those years feel like they happened to someone else.

That was all decades ago. I’ve made my peace with my past.

Yet, I see how the tendrils of that time still thread through the fabric of my world today.

Like trees that develop reaction wood in response to wind, making themselves sturdier and straighter, abler to handle the next storm, I too have compensated for trauma.

Appearing strong is of paramount importance to me.

Reclaiming my power is a continuing theme. A chainsaw is an excellent tool for making one feel powerful. The physical strength built by arborist work is good armor. I do not fear the past repeating itself — but I’m prepared just in case.

Over the years, I’ve been commended for my strength, and the overachiever in me has taken it to mean that, if a little is good, a lot is better. However, in recent years, I’ve come to learn that the kind of strength that presents as armor is an impediment to vulnerability and self-awareness.

Reactionary strength isn’t always healthy (except for in trees).

Armor doesn’t allow much inspi-

ration and introspection into the ever-present Notebook of the Interior.

During tree season, I am tough, but I am not vulnerable.

During tree season, my depths aren’t always present.

I wonder how often it is that our professions and our pathologies intersect. How many of us are unconsciously compensating for something? I wonder, too, how many strong women were born that way, raised that way or instead had to learn to be so. The thing about being human is that we’re all the walking wounded. It’s how we bear our scars that differentiates one person from the next.

There might just be a little bit of my backstory in the chainsaw I carry.

When I was fresh out of college — and still a bit of a post-traumatic hot mess — I took a job about as far from civilization as one can get, at Natural Bridges National Monument. The closest town was 36 miles away. Hemmed in by canyons and with a staff of about a dozen onsite, I figured it was the safest place — while still being adventurous — that one could be. My second night there was my birthday, and the staff celebrated. The maintenance guy plied me with shot upon shot of tequila until I blacked out. He then led me to his single-wide trailer for the night, me protesting the whole way, according to later accounts. The next day, I was left with a sense of, Even here?

Really? If I couldn’t count on

isolation to protect me, then I could only count on me.

And now I can. I am grounded in my strength. I am stable and secure and loved and cared for. I came out the other side of a tumultuous decade into a good place. Now it’s my job to parse out which of my strengths are truly powerful and which are pathological.

Which strengths serve me and which hold me back from being truly me.

I can tell you, the Metallica shirt is me, for better or for worse. When I first visited Tyler’s abode, early in our courtship, he had Master of Puppets playing (which a death metal website jokingly changed to Manger of Equals as a nod to the new woke era). He apologized and turned it down.

I shook my head and turned it back up, knowing — for many, many reasons — that I’d found my safe harbor, my partner, my equal, my guy. Being with him has helped me to become stronger in all the right ways because, with him, I can be vulnerable, too. He is a part of my post-storm reaction wood, growth rings of our togetherness making me sturdier.

Which is another insight from the Notebook of the Interior.

Jen Jackson Quintano writes and runs an arborist business with her husband in Sandpoint. Find their website at sandcreektreeservice.com.

See more of Quintano’s writing at jenjacksonquintano.com.

To submit a photo for a future edition, please send to ben@sandpointreader.com.

Right: This photo is titled “Family of Four” and was taken

by Samantha Hellman, who is in Sandpoint for the holidays visiting her parents, but lives with her family in Germany.

Great shot, Samantha!

Middle left and bottom left: Volunteers, Ponderay city staff and recreational enthusiasts gathered at the gate on the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail Jan. 1 to commemorate the decision to extend the trail into the city of Ponderay. Photo courtesy Luz Chase Bayless.

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FEATURE

For bears, forebears and the future More than 1,000 acres of Kootenai Valley farmland is conserved for agricultural, wildlife uses

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff

I

n plain terms, Hubbard Farms covers 1,040 acres in the Kootenai Valley, growing wheat, canola, barley and alfalfa on a productive patchwork between the Selkirk and Purcell mountains.

But, as any landowner will tell you, a property is more than its place on a map, or the fruits of its purpose. This is particularly true for lifelong farmers like Wesley Hubbard, who has called Hubbard Farms in Bonners Ferry home since his family moved there from southern Idaho more than 50 years ago, when Hubbard was only a few months old.

Asked during a phone interview with the Reader whether he has a favorite place on his swath of the Kootenai Valley, Hubbard lets out a small chuckle, as if he didn’t expect to be asked such a personal question.

“I see,” he says, then takes a moment of pause.

The silence on the phone line isn’t really silence at all, but the sound of a man taking stock of a lifetime of quiet sunrises, arduous harvests, long winters and hopeful springs. Each of these memories is a place not only in time, but on the farm.

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our farm borders the Kootenai River,” Hubbard starts, choosing his words carefully. “I guess that would be…”

He trails off, suddenly transported.

“On a nice North Idaho summer day, right next to the river, about just before the sun goes down.”

He laughs, possibly surprised at himself that he was able to so easily conjure this beloved, nearly spiritual, place.

“It’s really quite an awesome feeling being out there,” he continues.

Hubbard loves the land, just as his father did. In the spirit of that longevity, he has teamed up with the Vital Ground Foundation, a nonprofit land trust based in Missoula, Mont., to conserve Hubbard Farms as working farmland and important wildlife habitat. Vital Ground announced the voluntary conservation agreement on Dec. 28.

In a time rife with development and sprawl, this piece of the Kootenai Valley will remain the place it is in Hubbard’s mind as he takes a moment to pick his favorite spot, his favorite time, his favorite feeling. He is there, now, during our phone call, if only in his mind.

As snow falls outside, Hubbard is

elsewhere.

“A nice summer day in North Idaho,” he says, soft-spoken, but sure. “It’s about as good as it gets, right?”

Conserving a corridor Part of Hubbard Farms’ appeal as a conservation site lies with the property’s countless wild inhabitants.

“Farming and wildlife habitat go hand-in-hand if you ask me,” Hubbard told the Reader in an interview Jan. 3.

It’s a philosophy that Vital Ground shares, setting the land trust’s approach apart from the untouched and pristine stereotypes that conserved lands often carry.

“Vital Ground recognizes that farms and ranches across the region provide the habitat wildlife need,” said Mitch Doherty, Vital Ground’s conservation director.

“It’s a win-win-win situation for landowners, the agricultural community and wildlife when we can put Farm Bill dollars to work on the ground in places like the Kootenai Valley.”

The coexistence of agriculture and wildlife also serves a species Vital Ground is particularly interested in: the grizzly bear.

According to the nonprofit, biol-

ogists estimate that there are only a little more than 100 grizzlies living between the Selkirks, the U.S. portion of the Purcells and neighboring Cabinet Mountains, the “three fragmented groups form[ing] the species’ smallest and most vulnerable populations in the Lower 48.”

Funding for the Hubbard Farm conservation easement — known also as the Kootenai Valley Linkage project — came partially from the 2018 Farm Bill, via the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which served as Vital Ground’s primary partner in the effort. Vital Ground reports that $450 million in Farm Bill dollars are annually allocated to conservation easements like the Kootenai Valley Linkage project, which also drew support from the Pacific

Northwest Resilient Landscapes Initiative, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Jack Anderson Foundation, Clif Bar Family Foundation, Equinox Foundation, Heart of the Rockies Initiative and Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation, the Oregon Community Foundation and individual donors.

The Kootenai Valley — and specifically, Hubbard Farms — serves as an “intermountain corridor,” as officials call it, for grizzlies and other species passing through.

“As the subdivision and development of farms and other open spaces continues in many parts of the Mountain West, agricultural lands carry a double role, maintaining both rural farmbased communities and habitat for wildlife,” Vital Ground stated

You get, we

give

in a Dec. 28 media release. “In valleys like the Kootenai that connect mountain ranges and public forestlands, movement channels across working lands are especially vital to wildlife species ranging from bears and wolves to deer and elk, with the Hubbard farm identified in Idaho’s State Wildlife Action Plan as particularly valuable winter range for elk.”

As Hubbard continues to work the valley, these animals will continue navigating the landscape as they have for decades.

“To know that it’s always going to be farmed,” Hubbard said, “that’s an incredible environmental benefit if you ask me.”

A vital vision Hubbard works his land mostly by himself — “it’s a small farm,” he said — but does enlist the help of his two sons and brother, Mike, when needed. He told the Reader that he hopes to keep Hubbard Farms in the family as long as he can, but regardless of who works the fields in the future, he at least knows they will remain fields.

“By doing this, I know it will be farmed by somebody,” he said. “It wouldn’t be developed. It’s always going to be farmed.

That’s pretty cool to me.”

Also pretty cool, in Hubbard’s opinion,

is the partnership he’s been able to form with the Vital Ground Foundation to secure that future.

“I couldn’t have done this without the help of Vital Ground and the work that they did,” he said, making specific mention of Conservation Director Mitch Doherty. “I couldn’t have done it without his help.”

It’s a story that began with Hubbard’s father, who Hubbard believes would approve of this act of combined conservation, wildlife advocacy and agricultural continuity as his legacy.

“I felt like this was something my dad would like to see,” he said. “His vision is mine also.”

To learn more about the Kootenai Valley Linkage project and other Vital Ground efforts, visit vitalground.org.

Top on facing page: Canola grows at Hubbard Farms in Bonners Ferry. Photo by Kevin Rhoades/ Vital Ground.

Inset on facing page: Wesley Hubbard, farmer and owner of Hubbard Farms.

Above: A map of the Idaho panhandle, with a red star marking the location of the Vital Ground Foundation’s Kootenai Valley Linkage project.

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POAC opens Joyce Dillon Studio

An open house for the new classroom resource is scheduled for Jan. 7

By Claire Christy Reader Contributor

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The Pend Oreille Arts Council invites the community to an open house event at the Joyce Dillon Studio on Friday, Jan. 7, from 5-7 p.m. upstairs in the Music Conservatory of Sandpoint, located at 110 Main St. in downtown Sandpoint.

Upon her passing in summer of 2020, Joyce Dillon willed portions of her estate to multiple local nonprofits, including POAC. Carol Deaner, POAC board president, with the rest of the POAC board and staff, aspired to find the perfect use for Dillon’s generous donation. They wanted to find a use that spoke to POAC’s mission and honor Dillon. This is where the Joyce Dillon Studio concept was born.

“One of her last wishes was to help POAC continue its mission of providing artistic and cultural opportunities for the citizens of our community,” Deaner said. “The first step of this wish is the establishment of a classroom/studio where local artists and students, both young and old, can continue expanding their artistic endeavors.”

A space upstairs in the Music Conservatory building was designated as a classroom, renovations began and the JDS Committee was formed. POAC Boardmember Jan Rust took charge of the committee and enthusiastically dove into the project.

JDS Committee member and local artist Patricia Ragone was involved in the early planning stages.

“I was honored to help in the creation of the JDS,” Ragone said. “The creation, in my opinion, was for the friends and family of Joyce Dillon. It’s the recognition that even though death has taken Joyce’s physical presence, she will live on in the spirit of her namesake.”

The committee found instructors and built a class catalog to ensure that students would get the most out of POAC’s offerings.

“Since retirement, I have traveled all over the country to take art classes and workshops,” Rust said. “It has enhanced my life so much [that] I want others to enjoy similar experiences right here in Sandpoint.”

Consistent with POAC’s mission and Dillon’s desire to help the community, the JDS Committee aspires to make art classes accessible to everyone. Classes are designed to be affordable, with pricing dependent on / January 6, 2022

Jan Rust teaches trial-run weaving class in POAC’s Joyce Dillon Studio. Courtesy photo. class length.

“Practicing artists along with brand new artists should feel welcome,” Rust said. “The schedule, the content and the learning opportunities are so diverse that everyone should be able to find the perfect experience.”

Pulling from POAC’s artist member list, the JDS Committee recruited instructors who would provide a wide variety of courses. Offerings range from polymer clay sculpting to wildlife photography. The course catalog will go live on Thursday, Jan. 6 at artinsandpoint.org/jds-studio.

Barry Burgess, who is teaching “Drawing as a Creative Process,” had this to say to potential students: “You’ve read enough books, clicked the bait, Googled, Facebooked and Twittered yourself into insomnia. The JDS studio at POAC offers the place for artists to gather, learn, share and most importantly to do their art.

“The fine new facility is open for the aspiring artist within to find the creative spirit you know lives in your bones,” he added.

“Now is the time to liberate your inspiration and search out that bohemian you know is inside and join the JDS studio.”

The Joyce Dillon Studio will be open to the public during the Jan. 7 open house event. Visitors can explore the class catalog and learn how to sign up for courses while enjoying a complimentary glass of wine.

More information about the Joyce Dillon Studio can be found on the POAC website: artinsandpoint.org.

Claire Christy is the arts coordinator for the Pend Oreille Arts Council.

FOOD & DRINK

New year, no brews I’m doing Dry January — the post-holiday, month-long sobriety challenge

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff I fell in love with craft beer at the beginning of the pandemic.

Spring had sprung on our farm, and I was freshly laid off from my job with nothing better to do than lay on a blanket in the yard with a good novel, pretzels and a bitter, bubbly beverage.

It became my sacred routine, and over time, the beer became the only piece of that routine which remained.

It is the taste of a crisp, cold Johnny Utah pale ale that comes to mind as I write this, on the third day of my first ever Dry January.

My decision to abstain from alcohol this month is three-fold.

First, I could stand to save some money. Second, I’m experimenting with my temperamental digestive system, hoping that giving up my beloved beers will only help matters. Third, 2021 proved to be a year of overindulgence.

This is not to say that 2021 wasn’t a great year for me. In fact, it was probably one of the happiest of my life. But looking back, if I could change one thing, it would be the times I had one — or two, or

three — too many drinks.

I don’t think I’m alone in this moderate, albeit very real, shame.

Luckily for me, there is a popular movement for post-holiday sobriety: Dry January, a term coined in Europe circa 2012 that has grown into a worldwide, health-centric trend, encouraging people to quit drinking for 31 days in the spirit of starting the new year cleansed and clear-eyed.

Alcohol Change UK, the organization credited with launching the first ever Dry January in an official capacity, estimated that 4 million people worldwide made a concerted effort to give up drinking in January 2020. In 2021, that number jumped to 6.5 million.

A quick internet search shows that my reasons for participating in Dry January are common, as well as some others: to lose weight, sleep better, improve overall health, avoid hangovers and get a “doover” with your relationship to alcohol.

Among my friends who are partaking by not partaking, a simple desire to “see if they can do it” is common. In the two full days I’ve gone without a beer in 2022, I’ve managed to stick to seltzer water and soda at a birthday party, a

firewood-getting-excursion and two ever-tempting evening routines. At the risk of sounding a little pathetic, this feels like no small feat.

The best list of Dry January hacks I’ve managed to find come from Good Housekeeping, which encourages journaling, recruiting friends, breaking up your routine, working out and finding delicious, trusty substitutes — like non-alcoholic spirits and bubbly waters — to combat the desire that comes from simply having an empty hand during social events and evenings on the couch. Other helpful tips, from the Surely non-alcoholic wine brand, include eliminating temptations at home (I know my sister is happy to inherit the six beers still remaining in my stash on Jan. 1) and temporarily unfollowing social media accounts who regularly post about alcohol.

I haven’t a clue where Dry January will lead me, but so far, I’m proud of myself. I share this with our readers in the interest of transparency, solidarity and maybe even some good, old-fashioned newsprint accountability. Cheers, to whatever is in your glass, and whatever the new year might hold for all of us.

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events January 6-13, 2021

THURSDAY, January 6

Artist reception for Betty Billups 4-6pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery Billups is well-known for her Plein Art paintings and will offer a few special items only for the reception. Refreshments provided

FriDAY, January 7

17th Annual Backcountry Film Festival 7pm @ Panida Theater A mix of professional and grassroots films from backcountry filmmakers across the globe. This event raises funds for the local SnowSchool, and is sponsored by S.O.L.E. Buy tickets at panida.org

Live Music w/ Brian Jacobs 5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery Brian’s acoustic melodies are a winery fav Live Music w/ Kevin Dorin 7-9pm @ The Back Door A masterful player of blues and more

SATURDAY, January 8 Live Music w/ Bright Moments Jazz 6-8pm @ Idaho Pour Authority Live Music w/ Wiebe Jammin 5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery A mix of musical flavors on acoustic guitar Live Music w/ Steven Wayne 7-9pm @ The Back Door A masterful player of blues and more

Free Ski/Winter Access Day All Day @ Farragut State Park, Athol Explore the trails on snowshoes or cross-country skis free! Participants are welcome to bring non-perishable food items to donate to SBC Food Bank in Athol Free Ski/Winter Access Day All Day @ Priest Lake State Park, Coolin Ditto above, including ski lessons!

SunDAY, January 9

Sandpoint Chess Club 9am @ Evans Brothers Coffee Meets every Sunday at 9am

Ponderay Market 10am-3pm @ Bonner Mall Held the second Sunday of the month

monDAY, January 10

Monday Night Blues Jam w/ John Firshi 7pm @ Eichardt’s Pub Lifetree Cafe • 2pm @ Jalapeño’s “Blowing the Whistle on Abuse: One Courageous Teenage Girl Tells Her Story” Blind Beer Tasting — Belgian Ales 6pm @ Idaho Pour Authority A fun event to try new beers, learn about Belgian ales and win some prizes!

Group Run @ Outdoor Experience 6pm @ Outdoor Experience 3-5 miles, all levels welcome, beer after

Selkirk Alliance for Science presentation 7pm @ Online Email selkirkallianceforscience@gmail. com for Zoom access instructions

tuesDAY, January 11

Paint and Sip with Nicole Black • 5:30-7:30pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery Black will lead you to paint a warm island scene. $45/person includes supplies, instruction and a glass of house red or white. 208-265-8545. This class fills up fast!

wednesDAY, January 12

Live Music w/ Joe & Maya 6-8pm @ Idaho Pour Authority

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STAGE & SCREEN

Snow, science and stoke

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff When it comes to learning about winter ecology, our local watershed and the science of snow, there’s no better classroom than the great outdoors of North Idaho.

Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education knows this, and prioritizes making the winter woods accessible to local school children through the nonprofit’s SnowSchool curriculum and field days, made available to every fifth grader in the Lake Pend Oreille School District each winter.

“What we wanted to do was provide a really intentional and relevant learning experience for kids to learn about their watershed, from the mountains to the lake,” said SOLE Director Dennison Webb, “and we wanted to also teach them about what else is out there in our winter wildlands: winter ecology, habitat, flora and fauna — that type of thing.”

Such an undertaking requires community support, which Webb

said SOLE has been fortunate to receive since its 2012 inception.

Events like the annual Backcountry Film Festival — this year screening at the Panida Theater on Friday, Jan. 7 — provide the financial backing to make SnowSchool happen. Featuring work by both veteran filmmakers and novice outdoorsmen, the popular film fest highlights the stories behind epic winter excursions — sure to heighten the stoke for anyone who loves a romp in the snow.

Money raised from ticket sales, as well as an on-site auction and raffles, provide vital funding to SOLE’s SnowSchool, which is one of two flagship sites out of 70 nationwide due to a commitment to localizing and personalizing the hands-on curriculum — part of which is taught in the classroom, and the other part students experience at SOLE’s Mountain Field Campus on Schweitzer.

“We took that SnowSchool curriculum and we essentially extended it and made it more rigorous, and tailored it to our specific

geographic region,” Webb said.

“We integrated basic geography — identifying the local mountain ranges, local tributaries.”

Students also learn avalanche awareness, how to dress and travel in snow and how, exactly, North Idaho’s watershed works.

“Fifth-graders are using tools that snow scientists and hydrologists and avalanche forecasters utilize in the field,” Webb said, noting that the science and math the students use at SnowSchool align with curriculum standards for their grade level. “They’re collecting their data in real time, hands-on, and then they’re synthesizing that data and comparing and contrasting it to historical trends.”

During a time of year when many kids can’t afford to partake in popular recreation opportunities like skiing or snowboarding, SnowSchool is a doorway to better understanding North Idaho’s winter woods, and how it serves to shape our landscape all year long.

“We really want to sustain this program by building awareness,”

Backcountry Film Fest to hit Panida Jan. 7, benefit SOLE SnowSchool

Webb said, “and funding is obviously a big part of this.”

Check out the 2022 Backcountry Film Festival at the Panida Theater (300 N. First Ave. in Sandpoint) on Friday, Jan. 7. Doors open at 6 p.m., and films begin at 7 p.m. Youth tickets cost $7 in advance, $10 day of; adult tickets cost $12 in advance, $15 day of; and a $25 donation ticket — which funds one student’s entire day on the snow — comes with free raffle tickets at the door. Tickets can be

Local students participate in SOLE’s SnowSchool program. Courtesy photo. purchased at panida.org.

SOLE and the Panida highly recommend purchasing advance tickets online, due to limited capacity at the theater. Vaccination status and proof of a negative COVID-19 test will not be required at this event. The Panida Theater strongly encourages all guests to wear a mask, regardless of vaccine status.

Learn more about SOLE and SnowSchool at soleexperiences.org.

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STAGE & SCREEN

Disney delivers magic and mayhem with Encanto and The Book of Boba Fett

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff Almost certainly banking on Americans hunkering down during the holiday season — it’s not like anyone’s getting anywhere via plane — Disney+ rolled out two big-ticket offerings in recent weeks: the animated magical family dramedy Encanto and a Star Wars spinoff of a spinoff, The Book of Boba Fett.

The former is a swirling burst of sound and color centered on a Colombian family of literally gifted adults and children, the Madrigals. The central character in Encanto is Mirabela (Stephanie Beatriz), a sort of middle child living amid her superpowered relatives in a sentient home aptly named Casita, which both houses and nurtures the Madrigals generation after generation.

Lorded over by the judgy-yet-loving matriarch Abuela Alma (Maria Cecilia Botero), Mirabela is the only member of the family who (apparently) has received no magical gift during her coming-ofage ceremony. Hence, she’s had to make do with simply being a kind, generous and helpful person. While her sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles and parents all possess one extraordinary ability or another (some more useful than others), she serves more as the family’s somewhat reluctant mascot and most committed cheerleader.

While the Madrigals have long lived 20 /

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in Casita as the chief citizens of their community, there are cracks in the foundation — both real and figurative.

The mysterious source of their powers is fading, and it falls to Mirabela to travel into her family’s past to uncover the source of the disruption and, in the course of her heroine’s journey, discover her own worth. One highlight here is the role played by estranged uncle Bruno, voiced

by John Leguizamo.

It’s a flashy, brash production, absolutely jam-packed with music — scored by no less than Lin-Manuel Miranda (the mind behind the acclaimed musical Hamilton). Seriously, there are so many musical numbers that even my kids started to weary a bit; my almost-7-year-old daughter started counting them every time the soundtrack started to swell into what would inevitably explode into an extravagant set piece number.

Judging by the YouTube figures, Encanto’s soundtrack seems destined to become a Disney classic. Only released online in late November 2021, certain tunes such as “Surface Pressure,” performed by Jessica Darrow as Mirabela’s super-strong sister Luisa, have already racked up nearly 30 million views.

As Disney films go, Encanto can and should be classed with Moana in so far as its heroine is a young girl who must represent and defend her family and wider community in a series of trials that test her mettle. It’s a refreshing, feel-good

story that eschews the traditional Disney prince/princess formula in favor of self actualization in service of the greater good. Even more refreshing, it doesn’t include any goofy side characters or stockin-trade silly animal sidekicks. Instead, the audience is invited to be absorbed into the Madrigal family and fully immerse themselves in Mirabela’s journey.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Disney has also plopped viewers into a character-driven series focused on everyone’s favorite anti-hero bounty hunter, Boba Fett.

Premiered on Dec. 29, 2021, The Book of Boba Fett picks up where we last saw the morally ambiguous blaster-slinger almost 40 years ago in Return of the Jedi. For those whose memories or fandom don’t stretch that far, Boba Fett met his inglorious end when Han Solo accidentally knocked him off one of Jabba the Hutt’s sand skiffs and and he fell into the waiting mouth of a sarlacc, where presumably he would be slowly digested over a thousand years (at least according to Jabba).

The Book of Boba Fett explains via flashback that Boba actually survived inside the sarlacc’s gullet long enough to punch his way out and climb to the sandy surface of Tatooine — still littered with the smouldering ruins of Jabba’s sail barge — where his armor was stolen

by Jawas and he was taken prisoner by a roving band of Tusken raiders.

Left: A screenshot from the film Encanto.

Right: The Book of Boba Fett has fans of The Mandalorian renewing their Disney+ subscriptions. Courtesy photos.

The first episode spends about half its time catching us up on where Boba’s been and the other half showing his attempt to take over the crime racket in Mos Espa in the vacuum left by Jabba and his successor and former majordomo Bib Fortuna.

These events are occurring contemporaneously with Disney’s other Fett-inspired series The Mandalorian.

It’s all a feast for Star Wars nerds, made even nerdier with the knowledge that Boba Fett was never intended to be one of the central figures in the canon — he was an animated side character in the doomed and unwatchable 1977 Star Wars Holiday Special, then a background player in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. All in all, he had about six lines of dialogue and about as many minutes of screentime.

It wasn’t until people fell in love with the distinctive “Boba Fett” helmet that he was retconned into the story by the prequels and, now, gets his very own show.

As with The Mandalorian (in which he also appears), Boba Fett’s solo outing is a vigorous, space-cowboy romp that aficionados will love and even casual Star Wars fans will enjoy. The seven-episode arc goes online Wednesdays through Feb. 9.

STAGE & SCREEN

Reclaim Idaho film screening at the Panida

Event features meet-and-greet with co-founder and info on education funding ballot drive

By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff

to Reclaim Idaho organizers, the act would funnel more than $300 million each year into K-12 programs around the state, as From the grassroots orgawell as increase pay for teachers nization that brought Idahoans and school staff. As of the first the successful ballot initiative week of 2022, the organization to expand Medicaid in the state had collected more than 43,000 comes a documentary film about signatures of the required 65,000 that 2018 effort, which will to qualify for the ballot. screen Saturday, Jan. 8 at the “Idaho ranks last among 50 Panida Theater. states in education funding per The film follows organizers student,” the organization stated — including co-founder and in a media release. “School disSandpoint local Luke Maytricts across the state, especially ville — of Reclaim Idaho as in rural areas, lack stable funding they traveled the state gatherfor a wide range of programs — ing enough support to result in including programs like welding, passage of the ballot measure, carpentry and agricultural sciwhich 61% of voters ultimately ence that provide students with approved and provided health job-ready skills.” care to more than 100,000 IdaMeanwhile, according to hoans.

Reclaim Idaho, the average What’s more, Medicaid teacher salary in the Gem State expansion has resulted in $400 fell by almost $900 over the million each year in federal past year — a situation that has funding for Idaho, as well as helped push an ongoing trend helped support rural hospitals toward Idaho educators leaving and create jobs. the profession — as many as one But the Jan. 8 film screening in 10 each year, isn’t all about the Reclaim Idaho (NR) according to a past — Reclaim 2018 report by Idaho is currently 7 p.m., doors open one hour before the show, $5. Panida the Idaho State collecting signaBoard of EducaTheater, 300 N. First Ave., tures for another 208-263-919, panida.org. tion. citizens’ initiaLearn more at reclaimidahoIn addition to tive, this time to film.com. The Panida will rethe film screenput the Quality quire proof of vaccination or ing, Mayville Education Act on a negative COVID-19 test will take part in before entry to the theater. the ballot. a meet-and-greet According

with attendees, as well as present audience members with ways to get involved with Reclaim Idaho’s Quality Education Act ballot drive.

“When I speak to the audience on Saturday I will thank all of the local volunteers who helped us get this far, and I’ll urge everyone — whether they’ve volunteered in the past or not — to help us cross the finish line in the final months before our April 30 deadline,” Mayville told the Reader in an email. “The first volunteer opportunity after the film screening will be a door-knocking event the next day [Sunday, Jan. 9] at 1 p.m. in Sandpoint. With enough volunteers that day, we will come very close to collecting the total number of signatures we need from Bonner County.”

Looking ahead to the 2022 Legislature, which will gavel into session Monday, Jan. 10 in Boise, Mayville said, “it’s likely

The official poster for the Reclaim Idaho documentary film, showing at the Panida Theater Jan. 8. Courtesy photo. that the Legislature will do what they always do: Fail to invest in K-12 education. Even if they make modest investments, as they’ve done in recent years, those investments will not be enough to make a significant difference for our kids.”

Citing a “best-case scenario,” Mayville said Gov. Brad Little may front investments that are larger than in years past, but they still wouldn’t budge Idaho from its “dead last” position among the states for funding K-12 education.

“It would remain as urgent as ever to put the Quality Education Act on the ballot and secure over $300 million a year in support of strong programs and better pay for teachers and support staff,” he said.

A snapshot of notable live music coming up in Sandpoint Wiebe Jammin, Pend d’Oreille Winery, Jan. 8

Joe and Maya, Idaho Pour Authority, Jan. 12

Nick Wiebe is essentially a oneman jukebox. Take a scroll through his 200-song-strong set list and you’ll see a tune for every taste and occasion. From classic rock and pop to R&B, hip hop and blues, to oldschool and contemporary country, to favorites from the ’80s and ’90s to reggae, Wiebe has downloaded a vast catalog of 20th and 21st century musical styles directly into his guitar.

These aren’t just covers, though; whether it’s Nirvana or Justin

The year 2021 proved to be an eventful one for Sandpoint-raised singer-songwriter Maya Goldblum, who released an EP in May under her stage name Queen Bonobo. The EP, Sail From This Life, gained regional acclaim and established the artist in her current era as an experimental instrumentalist, vulnerable songwriter and confident vocalist.

Goldblum has been hard at work over the past year, playing gigs in the Inland Northwest with

Bieber, Dr. Hook or Prince, Dirks Bentley, Bob Marley or The Beatles, Wiebe makes each arrangement his own. Wiebe Jammin will take listeners on a sonic journey through styles and eras at the Pend d’Oreille Winery on Saturday, Jan. 8, when it’ll surely be “you be jammin.”

— Zach Hagadone 5-8 p.m., FREE. Pend d’Oreille Winery, 301 Cedar St., 208-2658545, powine.com. Listen at nickwiebe.com.

a cast of well-loved local musicians. She’ll bring her signature style to Idaho Pour Authority for a Wednesday night performance to kick off 2022, performing as part of the duo Joe and Maya.

— Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey 6-8 p.m., FREE. Idaho Pour Authority, 203 Cedar St., idahopourauthority.com. Listen to Maya Goldblum, also known as Queen Bonobo, at queenbonobo. bandcamp.com.

This week’s RLW by Ben Olson

READ

... your old love notes.

While cleaning out a closet recently I found a box of notes I wrote to a girlfriend I had in elementary school and was both touched and embarrassed by the foolish romantic I was at 10 years old. If you ever kept any old love notes — whether written by you or to you — grab a glass of wine and read a few for the fun of it. Nostalgia is better than any drug.

LISTEN

Local musician Kevin Dorin put together the second annual Sandpoint Songwriting Competition recently, and there were quite a few entries for the judges to choose from. If you’d like to hear some of the submissions yourself, visit sandpointsongwritingcompetition. com and give them a listen. Special thanks to Dorin for his tireless work promoting musicians in our town and for Chris Paradis for putting together a GoFundMe to give Dorin a thank-you present from other musicians for his efforts.

WATCH

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since the release of Rivers and Tides, a documentary film following the work of artist Andy Goldsworthy. The film is a masterpiece equal to the artist it showcases, who creates artwork out of natural materials like mud, wood, ice, sticks and stone to imbue the physical world with his own ephemeral element. If I were to come back and do this whole thing called life again, I’d choose to be Goldsworthy. He’s a quiet, passionate and extremely talented artist who has the patience of Job and makes art that is supposed to fall apart and join the natural world it enhances. A+

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BACK OF THE BOOK

RIP Betty White New Year’s omens From Northern Idaho News, January 27, 1925

ISAAC BOYER DIES AT MONTANA HOME Isaac Boyer died at his home in Helena, Mont., Wednesday, according to word received in Sandpoint.

Although never a resident of Sandpoint he was well known here, having in the early days made this city in his capacity of salesman for a liquor house, during which time he acquired considerably property here which necessitated his frequent visiting the city.

Boyer avenue is named after him as is also Boyer addition. His acquisition of this property in the early days when it was of little value was unpremediated and one might say forced. One of his customers in a wet goods emporium owed the firm he represented considerable money and had no assets except this land which he agreed to turn over to square his account.

As the house would not accept the land Boyer took it over, paying the bill to the house. As the town grew the land increased in value. This property, called Boyer addition, lies west of Boyer avenue and north of Pine street and is now pretty well built up. After his first acquisition of property he became imbued with the idea the town was bound to grow and purchased considerable more, making him one of the heaviest individual taxpayers of the county.

He was engaged in the mercantile business in Helena at the time of his death and was president of the Commercial club. He was 60 years old at the time of his demise and leaves a wife, son and daughter.

His Sandpoint interests have been represented by F.M. Molyneux.

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By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff By my reckoning, I’ve spent 11 of the past 16 New Year’s Eves in a newsroom, either partially or entirely abandoned, halfheartedly trying to do some work while watching the clock until an early quitting time.

If I was smart, I’d take New Year’s Eve off from now on — it feels either auspicious or inauspicious to be mucking around on a keyboard on the last day of the year.

Regardless, I’m suspicious of ’spiciousness, whether it’s au- or in-. Best to let the old year slip into the new one with as little tempting of fate as possible.

Yet here I am, sitting in the Reader office by myself on Friday, Dec. 31, 2021 with the wall heater blasting behind me and a north wind knifing under the windowsill to my left. Before long I’ll have a miniature weather system develop around my ankles.

I don’t think I’ve always felt this way.

I seem to remember most of those past New Year’s Eves as times of quiet, pleasant reflection — even a little hopeful and exciting, considering what might lie ahead in the coming 12 months. Not anymore.

The past six or so years I’ve experienced the changing of the calendar with the same trepidation as a beaten animal, shaken by what has already happened and cringing at what might follow.

Generally speaking, all the fun has been whipped out of weirdness, leaving just the whipping and the weird. I shudder to think what 2022 will bring with it; no matter what, it’ll be weird and probably no fun at all.

I’ve already given my predictions for this new year — and already gotten one wrong, as Betty White passed to the other side on New Year’s Eve 2021 at the age of 99. For the past two installments of our annual review/preview article we’ve predicted

STR8TS Solution

that Betty White will continue to exist for another 365 days — a half-joking prayer that at least one good thing will persist.

It wasn’t to be this time.

News Editor Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey, who was working from home, called the office in the mid-morning and, without so much as a greeting, simply said: “You killed Betty White.”

It took me a few beats to figure out who was on the other end of the line and what the hell they were talking about. Though Lyndsie and I have communicated primarily via telephone over the past 20 months, she sounds different on the office phone. So I sat at my desk, confused, as Lyndsie repeated at least two more times: “You killed Betty White,” and, “I thought you should know.”

For a moment I couldn’t figure out if I was being seriously chastised by some unhinged crank caller (we get more than our fair share), or some acquaintance of the paper who was overstepping their familiarity with an obnoxious joke.

No, just Lyndsie, who said something along the lines of, “I knew something bad was going to happen when we wrote that Betty White wouldn’t die this year. We’d said it too many times.”

There’s that ’spiciousness again.

Now, I’m in no way suggesting that there’s some metaphysical connection between Betty White’s passing and the fact that fewer than 24 hours before she died I announced that she’d live to see 2023. It’s a coincidence, but this time of year — and especially this day — is ripe for superstition and omens. And, as omens go, this is not a good one.

In keeping with that observation, I’ll follow my own advice and sign off on this before anything else goes sideways. Rest in peace Betty White and I’m crossing my fingers that we find more fun than whiplash weirdness this year.

Rest in peace, Betty. Courtesy photo.

Crossword Solution

Sudoku Solution I think a good movie would be about a guy who’s a brain scientist, but he gets hit on the head and it damages the part of the brain that makes you want to study the brain.

Solution on page 22

Solution on page 22

wynd

Woorf tdhe Week

By Bill Borders

/wahynd/ [noun] 1. a narrow street or alley

“They found the bum drunk and sleeping in a wynd across from the church.”

Corrections: I misspelled a word in the calendar last week, as pointed out by our friend Jim Corcoran. “The” is spelled “the” not “teh” like I used last week. In the words of Homer Simpson: “D’oh!”

Copyright www.mirroreyes.com

Laughing Matter

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1. Apparel 6. Western tie 10. Frozen 14. France’s longest river 15. Murres 16. Central area of a church 17. Breathing problem 18. Fluff 19. Journey 20. In spite of everything 22. Brute 23. A river through Paris 24. Gambits 25. No 29. Clique 31. Discard 33. Make downhearted 37. Hair curler 38. Sweetheart 39. A partial bra cup 41. Incinerator 42. Physical 44. Tut-tuts 45. Celebration 48. Well-known 50. Slender 51. Circuitous 56. Possess 57. Church alcove 58. Body 59. Ends a prayer 60. Ailments 61. Glowing remnant

Solution on page 22 62. Herbaceous plant 63. Colors 64. Impudent

DOWN 1. Winglike 2. Lasso 3. Jewelry 4. District 5. 10 in a decade 6. Gold ingots 7. The far east 8. Flaxseed 9. Horse feed

10. Narrow-minded 11. Freight 12. Each and all 13. Fakes opponents 21. Propriety in manners 24. He plays the bagpipes 25. An aromatic ointment 26. Double-reed woodwind 27. Inside of your hand 28. Tour of duty 30. Made less in size 32. Lure

34. Historical periods 35. Ill 36. Views 40. An impressive array 41. Good physical condition 43. Dishevel 45. “Hogwash!”

46. San Antonio fort 47. Stream 49. Days of the month 51. Police action 52. Python 53. Spheres 54. Functions 55. Conservative

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