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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2014
Serving Oregon’s South Coast Since 1878
New suit to block logging in Elliott
theworldlink.com
“They’re simple enough a fourth-grader could do. When I was in fourth grade, the money to buy a guitar was outside of reality; so was making one.” Nick Krissie, Sunset Middle School teacher
BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
Photos by Lou Sennick, The World
Alexandria Saye plays her custom built diddley bow, a one-string guitar, Tuesday at Sunset Middle School. Several fourthgraders in the school used found items to build the guitars devised during the Great Depression. They used wooden boxes, tins, dominoes, wooden dowels and strings to make music. By the end of the class, they learned the musical riff to Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”
These kids know diddley (bows) Fourth-graders try their hand at one-string slide guitars ■
KLAMATH FALLS (AP) — With another year of drought taking hold in the Klamath Basin and the irrigation season underway, water rights holders are putting in their claims. It’s the second year for allocating surface water on the basis of a new state-level determination of who has priority, based on seniority: The older the claim date, the more senior the water right. The Klamath Tribes hold the most senior water right but have not yet made a formal call for water this year, the Herald and News reported. Irrigation districts and the national wildlife refuges have made calls. The tribes exercised their right last year in the interest of fish they hold sacred, keeping water in streams running through their former reservation lands. “I don’t know if we are going to be regulating or not. It’s too early to tell,” said Scott White, watermaster at the Klamath Falls office of the Oregon Water Resources Department office. Flows into Upper Klamath Lake and the snow pack at Crater Lake are well below averages — 6 percent of normal at one observation point in the national park.
Wonnacott guilty, but not contrite North Bend man pleads guilty to the attempted murder of a business rival, indicates he’s not done
The World
Klamath drought settles in
COQUILLE — When Dave Wonnacott’s tattoo business started to drop off he blamed the competition, namely Brian Graham’s Flying Chicken Tattoo shop. To most business owners though, that is just a risk that goes with the territory. Unfortunately, Wonnacott has proven that he is not like most business owners. Instead of trying to do more advertising, or improve customer service, Wonnacott decided to try to violently eliminate the competition. On the morning of July 31, 2013, investigators say Wonnacott pulled up in a car outside of the Flying Chicken shop on Broadway in North Bend and tried to shoot Graham. The handgun didn’t go off, and the two struggled before Wonnacott hit the victim with the gun and got away. Graham went right to the police. He said he knew the man who approached him, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a gun, was David Pierce, the owner of Bay Area Ink. But, during a records check for David Pierce, North Bend Officer Milo Arnesen actually turned up a Department of Motor Vehicles record for Wonnacott who was a convicted felon out of Nevada. He had come to Oregon after serving time for the crime of assault with intent to commit bodily harm. They were able to arrest their suspect later, at the Eugene Airport, after he returned from Reno, Nev. But even in custody he seemed to remain fixated on Graham. Jail personnel would uncover a numSEE WONNACOTT | A8
The season for tsunami debris ends BY CHAD GARLAND The Associated Press
BY CHELSEA DAVIS The World
COOS BAY — A group of Coos Bay fourthgraders are ending the school year on a good note. On Tuesday, Nick Krissie’s class of nine students at Sunset Middle School put the finishing touches on their diddley bows, one-string slide guitars that originated in the South and became a big influence on the blues. When the music class became overcrowded this year, Krissie had an idea. In his spare time, he makes cigar box guitars. “They’re simple enough a See the video for this fourth-grader could do,” he story online at theworldlink.com/video said. “When I was in fourth grade, the money to buy a guitar was outside of reality; so was making one.” So he put a call out for essays. Out of the school’s 125 fourth-graders, 70 wrote essays hoping to get into the class — 10 made the cut. Some talked about why they deserved to be in the class. Others, like Ryan Liggett, went into extensive historical detail about the one-string guitars. He was among the first Tuesday to find the right frets and play the first three immediately recognizable notes of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” The diddley bows are made of very few parts — cookie tins, dominoes, nails and wire — but soon the students were plucking away, trying out that famous riff. The class did the math. After doing just a few chores, they would each be able to afford the materials required to make a diddley bow.
Nick Krissie, right, works with the fourth-graders on playing their one-string guitars Tuesday. In the back is Principal Dale Inskeep and Coos Bay school’s Superintendent Dawn Granger checking out the students’ work. “It’s organized chaos,” Krissie said to superintendent Dawn Granger, with the students scattered behind him, heads bent over their new instruments. “That’s OK,” Granger laughed. “That’s what learning is.” The students built everything themselves, besides the holes that Krissie drilled. Principal Dale Inskeep even joined in, wowing the kids with his guitar chops as lead of the Dale Inskeep Band. Fourth-grader Anna Quaglia said the diddley bows took four weeks to make. She plans on practicing over the summer, hoping to add some more songs to her repertoire. This class is a new realm of hands-on learning, incorporating science (sound waves), math (calculating fret positions) and history. “If you practice it, you will get better at it,” Krissie told his students. “All you need to do is practice.”
SALEM — A change in the winds could signal an end to a spike in tsunami debris and other marine trash on Oregon and Washington beaches. Federal researchers say this year’s soggy spring probably aided a noticeable uptick in flotsam along the West Coast, including the northern tip of California. Some of the debris stemmed from the tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. “This is a significant year — 2013 seemed to be a quiet year, comparatively,” said Charlie Plybon, Oregon field manager for the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit that helps with cleanup. Winds blowing south during winter months, especially during storms, tend to help push debris toward land. But researchers at the Oceanic and National Atmospheric Administration say the annual transition from wet winter lows to dry summer highs has brought warmer, northwesterly winds that tend to push debris-laden surface water back out to sea. It’s a shift that happens every year between March and June, but
Obituaries | A5
Surf rescue A Curry County deputy sheriff is hospitalized after spending nearly an hour in 50-degree water rescuing a 14-year-old boy. Page A5
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BY THOMAS MORIARTY COOS BAY — Environmentalists fired another legal shot across the bow of Oregon timber companies Tuesday morning in an effort to stop logging of recently sold sections of the Elliott State Forest. In a letter sent Tuesday to Scott Timber Company and Seneca Timber Company, Eugene-based Cascadia Wildlands says it’s planning to go to court to prevent logging of the contested forest lands. “Following your recent purchase of parcels within the Elliott State Forest, and as forewarned in our letter sent March 13, 2014, we intend to commence litigation to obtain an injunction — the very same injunction already obtained against the State of Oregon — to prevent you from logging in suitable or occupied marbled murrelet habitat,” the letter reads. Seneca Sawmill’s land-holding company, Seneca Jones Timber, was the sole bidder in a recent Department of State Lands auction for the East Hakki Ridge parcel. Scott Timber submitted the high bid for both the Benson Ridge and Adams Ridge One parcels. Coast Range Forest Watch, a South Coast group that conducts surveys for marbled murrelets, had documented nesting activity by the birds on both parcels. Last month, the group also documented nesting activity at East Hakki Ridge. Much of the Elliott is subject to a 2012 federal injunction against logging in identified murrelet habitat. Cascadia also filed separate litigation seeking to block the sales themselves, on the grounds that state law prohibits the transfer of lands formerly belonging to the federal government.
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Sunny 61/51 Weather | A8